Elemental Pleasure Read online

  Elemental Pleasure

  The Trinity Masters, Book One

  By Lila Dubois and Mari Carr

  Copyright 2013 Lila Dubois and Mari Carr

  First electronic publication: January 2013

  ISBN: 978-0-9889107-1-3

  Cover by Valerie Tibbs

  ~~~~

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writers’ imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

  ~~~~

  There is power and passion in three.

  When Carly Kenan joined the secretive Trinity Masters in college, she knew one day she’d have to pay the piper. That day has come. Returning to Boston, Carly meets former Marine Lance Glassco, a mathematician for DARPA, and Preston Kim, a celebrated chemist. Though on the surface they have nothing in common, it's clear the Grand Master thinks that together the three of them can do something amazing. And that's why he's declared that Carly, Lance, and Preston must unite. In a ménage.

  Tempers flare as they struggle to understand each other, but their physical attraction is explosive, and the sex leaves all of them begging for more. Pushed beyond her limits, Carly runs from Lance and Preston. What she doesn't understand is that she now belongs to them, body and soul...and they belong to her, too. When Lance uncovers a dangerous crime in Preston's firm, Carly is caught in the crossfire and the struggling lovers are forced to move beyond desire…to trust.

  The Trinity Masters have the power to make careers and change lives, but there's a price. All members know that the day will come when the Grand Master will select them, and pair them with two others. For the Trinity Masters the strongest bond isn't a pair, but a threesome.

  ~~~~

  Dedication

  For Lila’s Farm Boy, for handling the technical part of this process, and for his tireless help with research. Not that kind of research! The math and chemistry research needed to create a DARPA mathematician and nanotechnologist.

  Honestly, some people have dirty minds.

  ~~~~

  Prologue

  The Grand Master sat at his desk and studied the files. Three people. Three lives. Their destinies lay in his hands.

  Leaning back in his leather chair, he let his gaze travel over the portraits on the walls—paintings of the men who’d served in this position before him. Men who had been called to lead one of the most powerful organizations in the world. They had taken their position seriously, understood the gravity of their choices. His decisions, like theirs, could influence the future and bring fate to its knees.

  The Trinity Masters were a secret society, as old as the U.S. sect of the Masons, but unlike them, the Trinity Masters were still a secret. It had been started by some of America’s founding fathers as they sought to replicate the networks and relationships that drove European society in America, a country that was wild and new. Hundreds of years later, the Trinity Masters counted some of the most powerful people in politics, science, the arts and even religion among its members. It was credited, though only in secret, for developing the relationships that had driven much of America’s success.

  Being a member meant access to people, money and power.

  In exchange, you gave them your future. And that future was the Grand Master's to decide.

  He looked at the pictures again. A pretty, dark-haired woman. Brilliant, creative. An attractive, serious-looking scientist. Driven, powerful. And the final one, a soldier. Strong and courageous.

  Yes, he decided. All the pieces were there. He sealed the letters and prepared them for the messenger. It was time. Together, they would make a powerful bond.

  A perfect trinity.

  ~~~~

  Chapter One

  She’d made a deal with the Devil, and now the Devil had called to collect.

  Carly Kenan pulled her scarf up around her neck. At home in California, it was a sunny seventy degrees, but in Boston, early March still meant winter. The wind whipped down Boylston Street as she stood outside the imposing Boston Public Library.

  Carly rubbed her cheek against the baby soft cashmere of her scarf. It cost more than her parents had made in a month when she was growing up. Those days were long gone, thanks to a deal she’d made nearly ten years ago. With her dark hair pulled up in an elegant chignon, a black wool coat, cream scarf and knee-high black boots, she looked exactly like what she was: a beautiful, successful woman.

  Had it been worth it? Her success had surpassed even her wildest dreams, but it had come at a price. Now it was time to pay up. She wouldn’t know if it had been worth it until she walked inside.

  The city moved around her, everyone with somewhere to go, something to do. Another minute ticked by, but Carly couldn’t bring herself to mount the steps and face the consequences of her achievements. Someone bumped her, forcing her forward a step, and she hitched her designer bag higher. The man who bumped her, chatting away on his phone, turned to glare. When he caught sight of her, he stopped mid-word, managed a smile, then slunk away.

  She mounted the steps. It was something she’d done a hundred times before while a student at Harvard. A computer science major, the public library had always been a chance for her to get away from her electronics, and to honor the lineage of the scholars and inventors who had been trailblazers to the world she knew.

  And in her junior year, the library had started to play a new, secret role in her life.

  The grand hallway with its arched, illustrated roof was bustling with people, though the noise was muted. It was the hush of a library. The heels of her boots clicked against the stone floor as she made her way to the elevator. She rode it to the top level where there were fewer people. By the time she reached the rare book room, she was alone in the quiet hallway that smelled of books and secrets. There was a keypad on the door. She paused, realizing the Grand Master’s instructions hadn’t included a code. Surely it wasn’t the same one the society had used when she was in college.

  Pulling off her leather glove, she folded and tucked it into her pocket. As she reached out, she noticed her fingers were trembling. She curled her hand into a fist, willed herself to be calm, then pressed the numbers.

  333

  There was a click as the door unlocked. Carly turned the handle and let herself in, careful to close the door behind her. The code was the same. She wondered what else would be unchanged.

  The rare book room was small, with each rack dedicated to a subject. There were a few tables, each with a box of cotton gloves placed precisely in the center, so the rare books could be handled without picking up corrosive oils. Behind a section containing maps and diaries said to belong to members of the semi-secret Masonic Temple was a section of wall with a triangle inscribed into the plaster. She touched her scarf, which hid the chain she wore with the same symbol hanging from it. Below the triangle were three words. “Mitimur in Vetitum.”

  “We strive for the forbidden,” she whispered, tracing the words.

  Her stomach clenched. She was terrified of what she’d find beyond that door, of what she’d discover in the temple of the Trinity Masters.

  With their help, Carly’s company was now one of the fastest growing in the industry, and at only
thirty-two, she was well on the way to becoming very, very wealthy.

  Taking a deep breath, she placed both hands on the triangle relief and pushed. A section of wall popped in and then slid to the side, disappearing into a pocket. She passed through and waited in the darkness on the other side as it shut, sealing her inside.

  Once the door was fully closed, the lights clicked on.

  The small foyer was exactly as she remembered. The room was small enough to be mistaken for a closet if anyone who was not a member found their way in. The walls were paneled wood, the floor covered with the same carpet as the outer room. An empty book cart took up a third of the space. Turning to her right, she examined the panels. Numbers were etched into the wood, seemingly at random.

  The Grand Master’s instructions said she was to open box thirty-one. Pressing her finger against the number, she felt a click. When she pulled her hand back, a small tray popped out of the wall. Reaching in, she retrieved a key and a piece of paper.

  You’ll find garments in Room C. Right hand corridor.

  Wait until you hear the bell.

  -Grand Master

  The note was written by hand. Carly shivered a little. The Grand Master was the head of the Trinity Masters and a man of unspeakable power and influence. No one knew who he was, though there were plenty of rumors. At the Trinity Masters annual gatherings, meetings hidden inside library benefit galas, Carly had done her share of gossiping about who he might be.

  Now she wasn’t curious, she was afraid.

  Note and key in hand, she moved the cart out of the way and—with another push—opened the door hidden in the back wall. It revealed a narrow elevator. When she pressed the button, the door opened and Carly stepped in. She took a moment to gather herself as the small elevator took her down to the sub-basement. When it stopped and the door slid to the side, she bit the inside of her cheek to center herself.

  A long marble hallway stretched out in front of her. Columns supported the double-high arched ceiling, which was a smaller replica of the grand hallway above. Her footsteps rang as she made her way along the hall, the sound bouncing off the walls to echo down to the grand double doors at the far end. There were no books here to muffle the sound. At the midway point, there were openings in the walls, one to the right, another to the left. She’d been down the left hallway before. There were changing rooms there, elegant as the locker rooms in a fancy spa. For ceremonies, all members wore robes to protect their identities, and those with the most need for secrecy had private dressing rooms.

  As she turned right, she wondered if that was where she was going—to a private dressing room. Now that she had been called to the altar by the Grand Master, she supposed she’d earned a private dressing room.

  After all, she was about to meet her husbands.

  Or maybe it would be husband and wife.

  Her hands shook, and it took her a few tries to get the key into the lock on Room C. Once in, she found a small, but well-appointed room. A white robe waited on a hook. Normally they wore gray.

  Setting her purse on the vanity, she touched the robe. “It’s like a wedding dress,” she whispered to herself.

  It would be the only wedding dress she’d ever wear.

  In exchange for the Trinity Masters’ help, she’d given up her future, specifically her choice of whom she would marry.

  Throughout history, the world had been secretly controlled by relationships that defied societal standards. Some of those relationships had come to light, the most famous of which had been Vice-Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson, who’d been in a relationship with Lady Emma Hamilton and Sir William Hamilton. The gossip papers of the nineteenth century had called it an affair between Lady Emma and Lord Nelson, but it had been so much more. The three-way union between them had helped end the Napoleonic Wars, and both Emma and William had mourned Lord Nelson after his death.

  The Trinity Masters believed that when three people were united, it created a bond far stronger than the pedestrian two-person marriage, and that these triads—if made between those with power and intellect—had the capability to change the world.

  Carly slid out of her clothes, leaving on the corset-bra, panties and garter set she’d bought especially for today. She closed her eyes, trying to still her nerves.

  She’d joined the Trinity Masters at nineteen, when the idea of some crazy secret ménage marriage had seemed exciting, elicit. In her twenties, she’d enjoyed herself, knowing there was no need for her to worry about falling in love or getting married. By the time she was twenty-eight and her friends were married, some expecting children, she finally understood what she’d really given up in her quest for success.

  However, the consequences of crossing the Trinity Masters were too dire to contemplate, and so here she was, waiting to meet the people she’d share the rest of her life with. That thought sent another shard of panic through her before she beat it down.

  She checked her hair and makeup in the mirror, then raised the hood and tugged the chain out from under the robe so it lay on her chest in plain sight, the triangle glinting in the low light. Carly had never shirked from a challenge…or a commitment. She wouldn’t begin now.

  Taking a seat on a velvet chair, she breathed deeply, trying to calm herself.

  A bell rang, the deep sound vibrating through her. She looked up as a door in the wall opposite where she sat opened.

  Rising to her feet, Carly threw back her shoulders, lifted her head and walked through.

  *****

  Preston Kim stretched, and then slowly sat up as the bell rang. He was in one of the Trinity Masters’ private dressing rooms. It wasn’t the first time he’d merited the honor of one of the private rooms, but it was the most important.

  Preston smiled and rose to his feet. He pulled the black hood over his head, hiding his dark hair and eyes.

  It felt like Christmas morning. Anticipation hummed through him, and yet he didn’t want to rush. He wanted to savor it, wanted to remember every detail so one day he’d be able to tell his children how Dad met Mom and Mom, or Mom and other Dad.

  The same way his parents had told him.

  Preston was a legacy to the Trinity Masters. His parents—Dad and both Moms—were members. His biological mother had married his father in a traditional ceremony several years after the three had been married by the Grand Master. All three parents raised him and his sister. He’d grown up knowing he was the child of something special, powerful and secret. His dad, mother and Imo—the name he and his sister used for their other mother, which was a bastardization for the Korean word for aunt—were now all immensely powerful in the world of education. They’d been joined together by the Trinity Masters at a time in their lives when it seemed they had nothing in common—an electrical engineer, a junior political aide and a mathematician. Many years and two children later, his father, the engineer, and Imo, the mathematician, owned an educational company that developed much of the technology and curriculum used by the country’s leading science magnet schools. His biological mother was a lobbyist, who worked to keep the money flowing to education no matter what happened to the national budget.

  And now it was Preston’s turn to meet his partners.

  The call from the Grand Master had been both welcome and poorly timed. Though he’d been waiting for years to be called to the altar, his company was having financial trouble, with lower profits than projected in the last quarter. He’d walked away from a lengthy financial report—far from his favorite reading material—to fly to Boston. Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to put work concerns away. Today was too important.

  The door opened and he stepped through.

  The room on the other side was intimate, unlike the massive gathering room with its stone altar. The floor and walls were marble. Three high-backed wing chairs sat in a semi-circle, facing a large metal medallion in the center of the floor. A rectangle of lighter colored stone led him to the chair farthest to the right. A soft sound made him look to his le
ft, and he saw two other robed figures, one in black and one in white, emerging. Turning his attention to the center, he followed the path in the floor and took a seat in his chair. There was the rustle of fabric and the pad of feet as the others took their places. In the shadow of his hood, Preston grinned.

  Light illuminated the bronze medallion with the Trinity Master’s symbol and logo, as well as the chairs, but the corners of the room were cast in darkness. Less than a minute passed before a patch of shadow detached from the wall and came forward to stand in the center of the medallion. He wore a black robe trimmed in gold and a heavy chain draped his shoulders.

  The Grand Master.

  Preston sucked in a breath. He’d been introduced to the Grand Master as a child, had seen him at the galas and initiation events, and yet he still scared Preston. He knew, from hearing his parents’ whispered conversations, that if crossed, the Grand Master was ruthless. It was said that he’d not only ruined members who disobeyed their laws and ignored their vows, but had them imprisoned, sometimes even killed.

  “Welcome.” The Grand Master’s voice was deep, commanding. His hood moved from side to side as he looked at each of them. Preston thought he caught a glimpse of a nose or chin in the darkness of the hood, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “Grand Master,” he murmured in greeting. He heard the others do the same.

  If the robe colors hadn’t given them away, the voices would have. There was one man and one woman. He felt a small moment of disappointment. Secretly he’d hoped for two women—he’d always thought his father’s life seemed more than agreeable—but growing up as he had made him more open-minded than most. He would accept the other man into his life—and into his bed—if they were attracted to each other.