“Condom,” Calvin mumbled.
Emory’s hand flailed around the bed, his eyes squeezed closed. Graham tore open one of the condoms and placed it in Emory’s waiting palm. Emory dragged his hands down low and Calvin cursed, bowing his back to make room for Emory’s hands.
“There you go, boss,” Emory rasped into Calvin’s ear. His eyes opened and he locked his stare onto Graham. His hands came up to wrap around Calvin’s back and his lashes fluttered. “Yeah. There you go.”
Calvin grunted, his hips sliding down and pinning Emory to the bed. Graham pressed his fingers back inside of Calvin, burying himself to the knuckle and twisting his wrist. Calvin’s hips snapped forward and Emory whimpered.
“Come on, tiger. Fuck your husband and your lover.”
Withdrawing his fingers, Graham looked down at Calvin’s ass, a lube-slicked swirl of hair hidden between the two thick mounds of flesh. Graham kneaded his fingers into Calvin’s skin and spread him apart. He pointed himself toward home, and surged forward.
Everything after that was a blur of slapping skin and sweat. Tight muscles triggered orgasms and they collapsed on top of each other with light hearts and tired smiles.
When it was done, Calvin rested his cheek against Graham’s chest and tangled his fingers through Graham’s chest hair. Emory, on the other side, met Calvin halfway and their hands entwined, sealing comfortably over Graham’s heart.
Eighteen
Emory
“Why can’t I access any of my money?” Emory glared at his cell phone, which lay on his father’s desk. The screen was the only thing illuminating the otherwise dark study. It was Saturday, and he’d untangled himself from Graham and Calvin an hour earlier and driven himself home. They were warm, and it felt good to be wrapped in their arms, but he’d been neglecting the things he needed to attend to.
His father’s funeral, for one, and getting the house on the market as soon as possible.
He’d stopped at a fast food restaurant on his way home to get a greasy breakfast sandwich and his card had been declined. He went to withdraw cash from an ATM at the bank and was also denied. Emory wasn’t his father, but he knew how much money was in his bank account, and he knew his father’s attorney had something to do with the restrictions.
“Emory,” Mr. Carson answered with a yawn. “It’s early.”
“It is. What did you do to my accounts?”
“It’s customary, Emory.”
“Absolutely not,” Emory snapped. “And I’m your client, not a child. You should treat me with the same respect you treated my father.”
“Of course, Mr. Edgewood.”
Emory could hear the sneer in his attorney’s voice.
“You can answer me any time.”
The screen on his phone flashed with an incoming call from Calvin. Emory was shaking with rage and he couldn’t even process whatever answer Carson was offering him.
“Listen,” he interrupted. “You take whatever holds you’ve put on my accounts off. You provide me the most recent statements on all my father’s holdings and family accounts, and you send them all to me within the next hour and, in the meantime, I’ll be drafting up paperwork to have you removed as Edgewood representation.”
“Mr. Edgewood…”
“No. I shouldn’t have signed the POA to you, or for Peterson. I’ll deal with him later. I have a funeral to plan and you’re making it impossible. I can’t even eat a fucking breakfast sandwich,” Emory shouted at his phone. “An hour, Carson!”
Emory ended the call, and Calvin’s name filled the screen as his phone automatically accepted the other incoming call.
“You snuck away,” Calvin grumbled into the phone, his voice grainy with sleep.
“I was hungry.”
“I have food.”
“You’d have never let me out of bed.” Emory’s temper cooled and a smile pulled at his lips.
“S’not so bad,” Calvin yawned. “It’s Saturday after all.”
“Does life stop on Saturday?”
“Mmmn. It’s slower.”
Emory listened to the sheets rustle.
“I need to call Zach,” Emory admitted, not looking forward to dealing with pulling everything out from Carson. He knew enough about the law he could do it himself, but he didn’t have the mental bandwidth to get it done.
“Can we not talk about my boss while my dick is hard?” Calvin chuckled.
“I didn’t know your dick was hard.”
“I’m in bed with a hairy beast of a man. Of course it is. Except there should be some twenty-five year old with better taste in suits than me here too, and he’s not.”
Emory smiled. “I am well dressed.”
“Why Zach, though?”
“I’m having some issues with the asshole who has power of attorney over the trust and family accounts. I don’t want to deal with him and I think he’s shady, so I’d rather have someone I know a little better managing things in the interim.”
Calvin was silent.
“You know what I mean?” Emory prompted. “Since I have a funeral to plan and no access to any money.”
“What do you mean no access to your money?” Calvin finally spoke up.
“I don’t know. I signed over power of attorney the night my father died and I tried to get breakfast on the way home and my card was declined. The bank said my account was frozen.”
“That’s…weird.”
“I know. Hence, Zach.” Emory flicked a pen off the desk. It flew across the room and bounced on the floor.
“You should have stayed and eaten here,” Calvin said again. “You could have at least been fresh off an orgasm when you found out your attorney was screwing you in the bad way.”
“Just one, boss?” Emory teased.
Graham mumbled something Emory couldn’t hear, then Calvin asked, “When can we see you again?”
“Later?” Emory answered hopefully. “Assuming you two don’t make up and realize you don’t need me anymore.”
“Emory.” His name snapped out of Calvin’s mouth, sharp and serious. “You’ve got to stop this. Hold on…You’re on speaker.”
Emory leaned over and rested his head in his hands. “Good morning, tiger.”
“Good morning to you,” Graham grumbled.
“This has got to stop,” Calvin repeated. Emory had a feeling he was staring at Graham as he spoke. “This is different, and this is new, but if you really believe that Graham and I are going to walk away from you, then you need to walk away now. We have history, Emory, and it’s not all the best, but we haven’t walked away yet. No divorce has been filed, no leases have been signed, no community property split. Graham and I have too much between us to risk our entire lives on someone else’s whim. So if that’s all this is to you, then just walk away now, I’m begging you.”
“It’s not like that, boss,” Emory whispered, feeling ashamed.
“I…we…we found something in you that reminded us of who we used to be. I can honestly speak for us both when I say we don’t want to lose that. I need you to understand that.”
“I know it’s new, but you’re important,” Graham added. “To us.”
Emory rubbed his eyes, wishing he’d stayed in bed after all.
Maybe he’d been doing Graham and Calvin a disservice by assuming he was one thing to them when he was clearly more than that. But if he stopped to think about it, it wasn’t so much what he was to them, as what he needed to pretend to be. If he went into it thinking it would end poorly, he wouldn’t be as hurt when he did, and on the off chance it didn’t, well, then he’d be pleasantly surprised.
“It’s more for me than for you,” he told them. “I want more than that, but it seems too good to be true.”
Emory stared across the room at the ornate brocade curtains his father had hung years earlier. Bronze hooks around a rod near the ceiling allowed the material to drape and fall, landing on the floor in a pool of shimmering blues and golds. He hated those things. He hate
d the entire room, now that he looked at it. Ridiculously plush looking fabrics and bronzed and gold decorations filled a mostly useless mahogany bookshelf, artfully arranged around books he was certain his father had never read.
“Just have reasonable expectations, Emory. You can’t go into relationships with the expectation they’re going to end.”
“Statistically, they do, though.”
“Is it better to be alone?” Graham asked.
“Up until now,” Emory answered with a laugh.
“Listen,” Calvin said softly, “you think about what you want from us. We’ll be here all day. Come over if, and whenever, you want.”
“Yeah,” Emory agreed, mind swirling with the things Calvin and Graham had told him. “Alright, boss.”
“Bye, Emory,” Graham and Calvin said at the same time.
The call disconnected and his screen lit up. It was nearly eight in the morning now and the room looked as if it was midnight. How did his father ever live like this?
“No wonder Mom left,” he grumbled, shoving the chair away from the desk and stalking across the room.
Emory reached above his head and fisted the thick upholstery curtains and yanked. The curtain rings clanged against the rod and the material whooshed, but nothing happened. He pulled again, harder, and one of the rings snapped. Another yank, using all his weight as a counterbalance, another, another, another, and finally, the curtain plummeted to the floor.
The one panel alone had to weigh twenty pounds. He grabbed the second panel and tore it away from the wall; the metal rings ricocheted across the room, scattering and bouncing across the floor. Emory shielded his eyes with his hand, the sun glaringly bright. He tore the third panel down and kicked at that piles of fabric at his feet.
He couldn’t even fathom how expensive the fabric was, and his first inclination was to set it on fire. He turned his attention toward the bookcase and grabbed a crystal sculpture of a tree and threw it into the tangles of curtain at his feet, then he added carved stone bookends and an ashtray.
Feeling barely better, he tapped out an email to Zach, who replied promptly that he’d get the paperwork drawn up and coordinate everything with Carson on his behalf. Emory breathed a sigh of relief, then opened Yelp on his phone, trying to find a furniture removal company who could come same day.
After four misses, he found someone who was willing to come—and offer thirty day terms on payment. Emory removed the few remaining files from his father’s desk and tossed them onto the dining room table and waited for the movers to arrive.
It took four hours to clean out his father’s study, and another two to haul down all the furniture and clothes from his bedroom. After the haulers were gone, Emory stood in the middle of the empty master bedroom, hands braced on his hips while he stared out the window and down to the pool in the backyard.
There had been a time when he’d loved this house. Summers as a very young child, with his bare feet slapping against the marble floors as he ran in from swimming to get something to eat. That was back when they had staff and Barb the cook was who he’d spent most of his time with. She was always sneaking him cookies or other sweets when his father wasn’t looking, which was almost always.
Emory paused, trying to find a memory from his formative years that involved his mother, but he couldn’t. There were brief glimpses from the age where memories barely existed where he could see her smile, or the swish of her hair, but he didn’t remember her voice, her laugh…her love. Even when he’d been older, he couldn’t find a memory she was in. Even before she’d left him, she’d been gone. Emory couldn’t imagine abandoning a child for money, but he also couldn’t imagine what life with his father must have been like for her. He was glad she hadn’t resurfaced after his father had died, because he found he didn’t have any words or love to offer her anymore.
He walked to the window and looked down, the trellised ivy not reaching to this end of the house. He’d started sneaking out as a teenager, and he’d never been caught. He didn’t remember his father even noticing if he was late for dinner, let alone if he’d slipped out of the house at midnight.
He thought a lot about what Calvin and Graham had said on the phone. He wasn’t sure if he was able to be as all in as they wanted, or even if his level of all in would be comparable to what they had together. Calvin was right; he and Graham had an entire life together, and Emory had nothing.
Well, he had money. More than he’d ever need. But nothing tangible to offer. He never believed that Calvin or Graham were interested in him for money, so they had that going for them. In fact, Graham hadn’t even known who he was related to at first.
It wouldn’t be so bad, being with them. He needed to make up his mind and go for it. Emory had never gotten along with his father, but at least he’d always been there; even if he existed as nothing more than a figurehead from across the country and represented a life Emory didn’t want. He’d been there. And Emory realized for the first time in his life, he was completely alone and not in a voluntary way.
Wetness pricked the backs of his eyelids and he blinked away tears, swiping at his eyes with a shaking hand. This wasn’t a life he’d planned or that he’d wanted. He’d felt forced into it by his father, by his name, by his own fear, and he was tired of it.
He wanted more.
He wanted Calvin and Graham.
Nineteen
Calvin
“When was the last time we did this?” Calvin rolled over and faced Graham, who was lying on his back with his hands folded behind his head.
Graham closed his eyes. “I can’t remember.”
“It’s nice.” Calvin rested his cheek against Graham’s chest and reached up, tangling his fingers through the patch of hair that sprouted on Graham’s sternum.
“Do you think he’s going to come back?”
“I don’t know,” Calvin admitted.
Emory had sounded tense on the phone. It was obvious he was battling with himself over whether getting involved with Calvin and Graham was the right thing to do or not. Calvin didn’t want to push him, he wanted the decision to be made freely.
“What happens if he doesn’t?” Graham asked, covering Calvin’s roaming hand with his own large palm.
“Do you think we can still…” Calvin swallowed. “Do you think you’d still feel this way toward me again without him?”
“I'm not sure. Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Yes, maybe,” Graham confirmed. “Maybe it’s not him; maybe we needed a push start back into how to be intimate with each other.”
Calvin flung his leg over Graham’s hip and sat up. He straddled his husband and flattened his palms against Graham’s chest, their cocks pressed together beneath his weight.
“I missed it,” Calvin whispered, working his hips over Graham’s thick thighs. He missed the feel of Graham beneath him, inside him…
“I missed you.”
He leaned down and kissed Graham. It was the first kiss they’d shared that didn’t somehow involve Emory waiting in the wings. Graham’s mouth opened and his tongue slid into Calvin’s. Graham’s hands slid up his back and held him down, minimizing the space between their bodies while his tongue began a brand new exploration of a place it used to know.
Calvin’s cock jerked between them and he twisted his tongue with Graham’s until they were both hard and breathless.
“How is it that easy?” Graham asked, puckering his lips and kissing Calvin away.
Graham bent his legs at the knees and Calvin reclined against him, their hands clasped between them.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s been months, at least a year, of us flailing and not able to find these feelings again. How are they so readily available now?”
Calvin had ideas about it, but nothing he’d had time to fully flesh out. He chewed his lip between his teeth and smiled down at Graham. “I’m not sure, but remember when we first got together? How new and exciting it was?”
“Not that long.”
“Eleven years is a long time.” Graham snatched his hand and kissed his knuckles.
Eleven years felt an eternity. Even though they’d been in their twenties when they got together, Calvin was hard pressed to think of an adult memory that didn’t involve Graham.
“I think it’s the newness. Emory just…sparked it.”
“Is it Emory, or is it because it was someone new?” Graham asked.
Another thing that Calvin had fallen asleep thinking about last night, with the scent of their mingled sweat and cum in the air of the bedroom.
“I think it’s him,” Calvin answered.
“I think so too,” Graham whispered.
“So not really a maybe then,” Calvin referred back to Graham’s earlier statement.
“Probably not.” Graham sat up and kissed him, licking into his mouth. “He’s special.”
“He doesn’t believe it.” Calvin tipped his head back and Graham kissed his way down the column of his throat.
“We’ll have to show him,” Graham kissed the words into Calvin’s skin.
Calvin’s cock throbbed, smashed between their stomachs. This man in front of him was the epitome of the man he’d fallen in love with. The longer they talked, the more he was reminded of the way Graham used to be. The solid way he’d always let Calvin work through his own brain before he fucked him to sleep. The way Graham had worshipped his body, his heart, his soul…
“You need to stop.” Calvin shoved Graham and stood up, his cock shiny with precum and pointing straight to the bed. “Kissing only is your rule.”
Graham licked his lips. “Until he comes back.”
“You think he will now?”
“I’m optimistic.” Graham threw the sheets to the side.
“You’re horny,” Calvin laughed, looking away from Graham’s erection. “I’m going to get some food before I wither away.”
Secrets in Edgewood: The Complete Series Page 62