“I’m good.” He smiled down at me. “Look at that.”
For the first time I could remember, the clock’s huge gears turned, and the minute hand inched a tiny degree with every second’s click, click, click. Fort looked at his watch while I marked the clicks with the stopwatch on my phone. Thirty seconds. A minute. It matched up perfectly.
“Holy shit, Forsyth.” I let out a whistle. “You got it working again.”
“I told you that piece would solve everything.” He climbed down the scaffolding, amazingly nimble for a guy his size. “And there’s a piece that’ll solve everything for you and Alice also. Make sharing optional. Word the new rule so it’s at the sponsor’s discretion. That way the men still feel like they’re in charge, the women still feel owned and controlled, and couples who don’t want to play with other people can do their own thing.”
I thought a moment, looking up at the clock. “Maybe. It might work. I’ll send an email to the current members, see what they think. I’d love to bring her back here, you know?”
“It’s better than Underworld any day,” Fort said. “Even if I met my future wife outside that skank hole. I think Juliet and I would come back here more often if you made that small change to the rules.”
“What about the collars?” I asked. “They all say ‘Property of The Gallery.’”
“So? Hell, we’re all property of The Gallery when you think about it. We’re the ones who make this place come alive on Saturday night.”
He had a point there, and coming with Alice would make it even more alive for me. I thought of bringing her back in her gorgeous uniform and stockings, letting others look but not touch. That was as sexy as sharing, now that I thought about it.
“No, man, wait.” Fort smacked his head. “It’s so obvious. The collars, the locks. If a submissive’s communal property on any given night, she wears the Property of The Gallery lock on her collar. If she’s not available to other Doms, no lock. They can come on and off.”
“That’s genius.” And he was right, it was such an obvious solution. “That way, the ones who get off on the communal property thing can still have their fun times—”
“And the couples who aren’t so into sharing can have their boundaries respected without a lot of uncomfortable body language.”
“And punching, in Dev’s case,” I joked, rubbing my eye where he’d landed a vicious left. “This is good.” I smiled at Fort. “Seriously, it’ll be a good change. I think everyone will be on board with it.”
“Agreed. Oh, and when you email everyone, make sure you tell them we’re keeping proper time now, thanks to me.”
I looked at the turning gears, watching them connect for the first time since we’d bought this clock tower. “Where’d you find that missing piece, anyway?”
“I didn’t find it, my friend. I made it with my ‘petite metal solder’ and those fancy jeweler’s tools you always make fun of. You’re not the only one who can build cool stuff in a workshop.”
“How’d you figure out the right size?” I squinted to make out the small inner workings beneath the big gears. “How’d you make it fit?”
“Skill and experience,” he laughed, making a lewd finger-in-the-hole gesture. “With enough patience, you can fit anything anywhere. Speaking of workshops, how does Alice like her new violin?”
“She loves it. It gets a name this weekend. We’re flying to Italy to see my parents, and, I guess, everyone else she hasn’t seen for a while. Her parents are meeting us there too.”
“Wow, a big family thing in Milan.”
“All Fierro violins officially come from Italy,” I said. “Once it has my mother’s blessing—and name—it’s formally adopted and registered.”
“Congrats, man. That’s a big deal. The family stuff, more than anything. I don’t know. Alice might be the one. If so, you’re a lucky man.”
“I’m a very lucky man.” I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. “It’s so weird. I never thought everything would work out like this. For me. For you. For Devin.”
He studied me a moment, then shook his head, taking off his toolbelt. “Yes, you did. With you and Alice, you knew. It was pretty apparent to us, anyway, from the first time we saw you two together. Maybe we don’t deserve the women we ended up with, but I, for one, am not going to let that stop me.” He punched me on the shoulder. “Now get out of here and write that email, you selfish motherfucker. It’s time for The Gallery, Version Two.”
Chapter Twenty: Alice
We dropped Blue at Milo’s parents’ home in Chappaqua, so he could be spoiled by their house staff for the weekend, and run wild across their wide open lawn. I watched in amazement as he broke into a sprint the minute we hit the backyard. He went from lazy dog to rocket streak in the space of a few seconds, kicking up sod with his narrow feet.
“Jesus. I never knew Blue could run like that.”
“Of course he can run like that. He was a great racer in his day.” Milo smiled at me. “Even though he’s changed, he’s still got that wildness in him. He likes to let it out now and again.”
Blue blew past us with a big dog grin on his face, starting lap two of the fence’s perimeter. I squeezed Milo’s hand, smiling back. “It’s good to know that wildness isn’t gone.”
We left Westchester County Airport on a private flight to Atlanta, and picked up a transatlantic Gibraltar Air flight from there. Devin wasn’t in the cockpit this time. Milo told me his friend sometimes flew that route, but this particular weekend, he was taking Ella to Martha’s Vineyard to propose to her, skywriters over the beach and everything.
“That’s so perfect,” I said. “Ella will love it, because she studies space and stuff.”
“Yes, Dev’s been working on his proposal speech for a couple weeks. The big line is: You’re my whole universe.”
I pretended to faint. “That’s too romantic. I’m dead.”
“Me too. We’re both dead.”
We slumped in our first class seats together, settling in for the hop over to Milan. The violin he’d made me was in its case, tucked carefully beneath the seat. Skywritten proposals and speeches of love were all well and good, but he’d made me a violin that would last hundreds of years, and bring me, and future owners, untold magnitudes of happiness. When I played Milo’s violin, I felt those magnitudes in the tones it produced. He’d made me a miraculous thing.
And yet he could still sit beside me, a normal, slightly frazzled man. “Worried about seeing your family?” I asked.
“Why would I be worried?”
“It’s your parents’ first time hearing this violin. My parents too.”
“Think they won’t like it?”
“You know they’re going to like it,” I said, nudging him. “You’re worried that your father will be upset when he realizes you’ve become a better luthier than him or your grandfather.”
“Shh.” He shook his head. “Not better or worse, just different.” He took my chin in his hands and kissed me, rough and quick. “And if they hear you play it, of course it’s going to sound like the finest violin in the history of the world.”
“Too romantic. I’m dying again.”
He grinned at me as he brushed back an errant lock of his dark hair. As the plane flew over the ocean, I thought about which song I should play for our families as we celebrated Milo’s achievement. Probably Vivaldi. There was no better choice to express my happiness. It wasn’t great to lose everything you owned in an explosion and fire, but I was alive, and everything had turned out more wonderfully than I could have imagined.
“Oh,” said Milo, turning to me. “I was talking to Fort on Monday, about The Gallery and the rules. He suggested we tweak them a little.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. For those of us who have trouble sharing our pretty toys. You know the lock on the collar, the one that says Property of the Gallery?”
“Oh!” I blinked at him. “Members can take them on and off.”
He thr
ew up his hands. “If it’s so obvious to everyone, why are we only thinking of this now? Yes, the idea is that people who are into sharing have the lock attached, and people who want a private scene leave it off. I explained it in the email to all the current members, and every response so far has been positive, so…”
“So we can go back!”
“Yes, if you want to.”