by Holley Trent
Lisa pulled Finch into Joey’s bedroom without bothering to turn on the lights. There was enough of a glow from the electronics in the room for her to make out all the shapes she needed, and for Finch to, as well.
She found Lisa’s nipple once more and also the clasps of her bra.
Their breasts collapsed against each other as Finch pulled Lisa’s head down to hers. Her tongue tasted of the spice of vodka and the sweet warmth of chocolate cake.
Somehow, that seemed to Lisa exactly what Finch should taste like.
At least there.
She guided Finch toward the end of the bed.
Finch fell onto her back and Lisa had her fingers hooked beneath her panty elastic before she could think to rise—or to try to direct the messy, unstructured thing they were doing.
Lisa didn’t want to read the music when playing by ear was so much more communicative.
Joey must have wandered in as Lisa was bending Finch’s legs toward her chest because her body suddenly went tight in that flee! way and her head whipped toward the door.
They hadn’t discussed the what or the who or the how, only that something would probably happen. Privacy was never a given.
Lisa didn’t need it, but Finch may have required some.
Lisa stopped touching her so Finch could think and answer without feeling compelled to do anything she didn’t want.
“Is this fine?” Lisa asked.
“It’s okay,” Finch said quietly. “I’m just not used to having an audience.”
“I’m not entirely sure that’s what I am,” Joey said. “Like I said, I won’t interfere. Lisa’s getting touched, though. That’s the price she gets to pay for being with a needy motherfucker like me.”
Lisa couldn’t be certain, but she thought she saw Finch raise her shoulders in that “Okay, sure,” kind of way. And because she couldn’t be sure, she had to ask. “Are things going to get weird if his dick is near you?”
After a nerve-racking delay of a minute or more, Finch said, “No weirder than they already are.”
“So, you won’t freak out if he touches you, accidentally or otherwise?”
“No.”
Lisa cast Joey an instructive look, but he’d already started peeling his shirt over his head and wasn’t watching her.
“Well, then.” Holding Finch’s thighs apart, Lisa settled between her legs and let her nose and lips find the center of her.
There was something particularly arousing about working lips across that valley and licking until the taste changed and the tenderest part went firm.
“God,” Finch breathed as Lisa latched her mouth around her clit and sucked.
Her body may have been trying to pull away, but her hands were in Lisa’s hair and holding her down.
Lisa slid a finger into her, and another as Joey approached the bed with condoms and lube.
He left it all there on the edge and gripped Finch’s ankles. “There you go. Now you can use two hands.”
“Wait,” Finch said. She wriggled herself upright and scooted back farther. “I don’t like feeling like I’m dangling.”
Lisa crawled up after her. Before she could resume her taste-testing, Finch made her other plans clear. She guided Lisa over her, clasping their breasts so sensitive nipples collided and twining her leg around Lisa’s thigh.
“Open,” Lisa whispered.
“Ah!”
One hot core found the other, and within seconds, Finch had managed to align those hot bundles of nerves and press hard.
“Fuck,” tumbled out of Lisa’s mouth, because there was nothing delicate about the way Finch sought her pleasure. There were no gentle, sweet, around-the-way circles. She took full-on pressure and rough grinds from Lisa, and soon, their thighs were wet, and Finch’s sharp nails tore into Lisa’s ass.
“Between the two of you, I’m going to have more claw marks than stretch marks,” Lisa said with a laugh.
“Oh! I’m sorry. Sorry, I—”
“It’s all right.” Still chuckling, Lisa brought Finch’s hands to her mouth to kiss. “I don’t give it if I can’t take it.”
“Are you asking to take more of it?” Joey asked.
His hands were already on her hips, lifting her off Finch and pulling her back toward him.
“Maybe I wasn’t done,” Finch said with a pout.
“You were done. You were so done that you nearly popped blood vessels in your eyes.”
Already sheathed and lubed, Joey slid into Lisa in one quick thrust. She was so wet already, there was no resistance.
She dug her fingers into the covers and put her cheek down onto the bed between Finch’s thighs because the ride was going to be fast and probably rough. He was a lot like Finch evidently was. He wasn’t interested in sexual Olympics. He wanted to come and to make Lisa come, and big orgasms didn’t need an hour.
“Reminds me of the night we met,” Joey said.
His thrusts were slow as he got his knees spread to where he wanted them and positioned Lisa at the precise angle he liked.
“You had sex with a coworker the night you met?” Finch asked.
“No.” Lisa laughed into the mattress. “The only way he could get me to shut up was to press my face against the bed. Served him right when I did the same thing to him.”
“For what purpose?”
Lisa and Joey laughed in unison.
“Oh, you dear, sweet innocent,” Lisa said.
But her laughter tapered off quickly because Joey had found that angle and he’d found his rhythm.
And somehow during that, Finch had moved beside her, and she’d found Lisa’s clit.
That time, Lisa didn’t have to worry about anyone walking into the room nearly catching her in the act.
She didn’t have to muffle her shouts as her body tightened around his cock and those explosions pulsed low down inside her.
She didn’t have to stop her body from writhing into ugly shapes or keep her lips from curling away from her teeth.
There was no point in trying to be pretty when her body was trying to exorcise all the fire from inside of her.
Joey gave her ass a retaliatory smack as he let her collapse onto her belly.
Until the stars cleared from her vision, she wasn’t convinced she was still on the mortal plane.
Finch cleared her throat, and the sound dissolved any worries Lisa may have had about her whereabouts.
“That’s…an impressive performance for your age,” Finch murmured.
Lisa didn’t bother holding back her laughter. “Oh, God, Joe.”
Her body shook as the joyous sound came out of her, and apparently, Joey wasn’t so put off by her failure to defend him because he was too busy making her ass jiggle more.
“You should be happy I’m enough of a gentleman that I won’t say the same to you in however many years.”
“You should be knighted for your abundant self-restraint,” Finch said.
“Oh, I get knighted every time I’m on my knees. Ask Lisa about it someday.”
“I don’t tell other people’s business,” Lisa murmured.
She didn’t care if her voice was muffled. Her body was in its boneless, sated, happy place and didn’t want to move for at least an hour.
“What does it involve?” Finch asked.
Joey snorted.
The bed dipped and then recovered as he eased off the edge.
“You edit mystery books. Use your keen observation skills in the coming weeks and figure it out.”
The bathroom door clicked shut. Joey turned on the water in the sink.
As much as she hated to observe the blissful pose her body had thawed into, Lisa lifted her head to look at Finch.
Finch was sitting on her shins with her hands folded primly onto her lap, staring in the direction Joey had gone in.
Lisa needed to know what the other woman was feeling about what was happening, and if it felt as right and easy to her as it did to Lisa.
She gave Finch
’s big toe a playful squeeze.
Finch scurried around to face her, eyes a bit unfocused.
“Penny for your thoughts.”
“They’re not really so expensive.” Finch let out one of those little huffs of air indicative of incredulity. “I just…” She shrugged, and unquestionably that time.
“Did we scare you off? We can be a little weird. We own that.”
“Scare me? No.” Finch’s eyes widened in horror. She lowered herself onto her belly beside Lisa and rested her chin on her hands. “I was just thinking about what he said. He said in a few weeks, and I was…hoping he meant it and that you’d let me be around.”
“I don’t think we would have invited you here if we didn’t have it in mind that that would be a possibility.”
“So, you…you’d let this be permanent?”
Lisa nudged Finch’s hair out of her face and held her words in check.
She didn’t want to risk answering too quickly or with what seemed to be cocky certainty. Nothing was ever certain.
But she knew that Finch connected with her in a way she felt amazing about, and she was happier for having met her and for being with her. And none of that changed what she felt about Joey. Of course she and Joey were a mess, but they were working on it.
And would work on it.
Forever, probably.
“Let’s just say that I really want to see what this tangle grows up to be,” she told Finch.
It could be something amazing—something Lisa never would have dreamed of even in a thousand years, despite the fact that her best friend had done nearly the same thing.
Suddenly, it made perfect sense that hot pink would need more than one color to complement it.
Finch breathed. “So do I. I really, really want that.”
EPILOGUE
“You gotta admit, that country boy went above and beyond the call of duty,” Lisa said as she stared at the new ballroom ceiling.
The group seated around her made sounds of agreement as they looked, too.
Lisa hadn’t expected mind-blowing results when Keely’s father and his team started sketching out upgrade plans. All Lisa had wanted was for the space to quickly earn back the cost of the work.
Now that it was all done, she didn’t think that was going to be a problem.
They’d replaced the entire roof and installed dozens of skylights. They’d left all the beams exposed to show off the natural wood tones, which somehow made the place look like it fit in with the more rustic parts of the property, but it was an elegant modernization, as well.
Keely had already accepted a booking for an all-star cheerleading competition that suffered a last-minute venue cancellation. Their inconvenience would certainly be Lisa’s gain, as those cabin bookings and what they’d be charging for catering could probably keep the place afloat for three months, even if they didn’t have another guest.
She needed more immediate bookings like that because soon enough, she was going to be short on free time and wouldn’t be there to oversee them. Pregnancy always seemed so long when other people were the ones doing the gestating.
“Acoustics seem to be pretty good, too.” Everley, in the folding chair at Lisa’s right, said. “Might be different once the room is full, though.”
“Huh. Bruce might know. I’ll ask him.”
Lisa was already counting the dollars in her mind. A concert series for music lovers staying on-property? That sounded like a perfect way to get the place booked up during the shoulder season.
It also sounded like a hell of a lot of work.
“Ugh, of course we have more ideas now than we know what to do with. I won’t even be able to take a full maternity leave.”
“Shh!” the women around her hissed, with Everley being the loudest, though Finch’s warning could certainly be heard in that chorus. She would have known better than anyone—save Lisa—how meddlesome Joey was about the pregnancy. He was annoyingly protective.
Everley had called him out about that, and he’d thrown up his hands and said, “Well, they’re mine!”
Fortunately, Joey was in what appeared to be an engaging conversation on the other side of the room with Raleigh, Bruce, and Adrien. They were walking around and doing that weird testosteroney thing involving examining the engineering of the renovated structure as though they knew anything at all about architecture. Technically, only Adrien did. He had a degree in civil engineering, but he didn’t use that knowledge much in his acting job.
“Don’t get him started again,” Finch said quietly. “I keep thinking I should carry around a spray bottle in my purse and mist him whenever he gets too excited.”
“I can’t blame him for the excitement,” Dara said. “I think we all are on pins and needles.”
“Y’all are just waiting to see the chaos unfold,” Lisa muttered. “That’s okay. See, y’all forget that that like Mother Gaea, I was born from chaos. I’ll be in my element as always.”
The ladies laughed.
Lisa wasn’t joking, though.
It wasn’t like she’d planned, exactly, to get pregnant. Obviously, they’d known it could happen given their fast-and-loose tendencies. She’d just thought there’d be a little grace period, of sorts. She’d only gotten to wear a wedding band for six weeks before her finger got too swollen to keep it on.
“How did you sort out your schedule drama?” Stacia asked.
She was looking at Finch, so of course, Finch was looking anywhere but at Stacia.
They gathered the way they were, with all nine of them, fairly frequently whenever Adrien wasn’t on-set filming for his television show, and when Bruce didn’t have obligations for his Broadway work. Finch’s comfort around Stacia was still in the early stages.
At least she didn’t try to scurry out of the room anymore before Stacia could make eye contact with her.
Chuckling, Lisa said, “I had to let go of the reins on some things here. Keely’s in the office on the days that I’m not, and my aunt is going to help out temporarily until we’re sure Keely’s not in over her head. I’ll spend three days out of every week in the city.”
“And Joey and I are here for the other four,” Finch said. “Lots of driving for all of us, but it is what it is. My queendom for a high-speed rail system between western New York and the city.”
Everley emitted a low snort. “Raleigh had a finger on a pulse of all the rumors going around Athena concerning you terrorizing the publicity department.”
Finch’s cheeks spotted with purple and red, but the color faded quickly after she took a breath. She was getting better at that with Lisa’s help.
Shouting, “Don’t you dare be embarrassed” at her every time she went the slightest bit round-eyed probably had something to do with it.
“I-I wasn’t terrorizing them!” Finch said.
“That’s the word I heard, too,” Stacia said dryly. “Obviously hyperbole, but it definitely made me interested in what was going on.”
Finch raised her shoulders jerkily. “All I did was made everyone agree not to be in the office on certain days. If everyone is working remotely at the same time, there’s no appearance of inequity in workload. In fact, they’re even more productive now.”
“When Joey found out she did that,” Lisa said, smiling, “he couldn’t talk for a whole twenty minutes. I thought I was going to have to call an ambulance.”
“I think it’s sweet,” Dara said, smiling in that dreamy way she always did.
“I just saw it as a problem that needed a solution,” Finch said. “If I didn’t love Lisa and if I didn’t care about him at all, I wouldn’t have meddled. The last thing I need is a new reputation as an unhinged she-beast in a department I don’t even work in.”
“It’d hardly be unexpected of the person editing my books,” Stacia said.
Finch did meet her gaze then, although briefly. It was progress.
Lisa gave her thigh a proud-of-you squeeze.
“I’m still trying to wrap
my head around this,” Stacia said. “I’ve sure we’ve all talked about kids, but it’s never seemed like the right time.”
“I’ve decided that there’s no such thing as a right time,” Lisa said. “Life gets more and more difficult. It makes sense to concentrate on the troubles of right-now and worry less about things that may or may not happen down the line.”
“Taking each day as it comes, hmm?” Everley asked.
“Exactly. And to be candid with you, Joey is happy that we’ll be having two at once. The upfront costs are going to be astronomical, but he sees it as making up for lost time.”
Finch made a face and crossed her legs as though the thought truly unmoored her. “I’ll be content with just watching your two grow up. I’m happy to be an extra pair of arms or soothing voice for them.”
“Better get friendlier with birth control, then, sweetheart. Thoughts and prayers don’t work on sperm.”
“Oh, God.” Everley shook her body hard and made a sound of disgust. “Too much information about people I used to work with.”
“You used to work with Raleigh, too, and you see his too-much-information pretty much every night, probably,” Lisa said sweetly.
Everley harrumphed and squirmed a bit more in her seat. “That’s different.”
“Uh-huh. Sure thing.”
The ladies erupted with a slew of giggles that drew the men over from the north side.
Joey squatted in the gap between Lisa’s chair and Finch’s.
Lisa gave him a kiss on the top of the head.
She didn’t know if that feeling of relief that he showed up so much would ever go away, but she welcomed the emotions because she knew what they meant.
“What’s funny?” he asked. “Hopefully not me.”
“No, we were just talking about babies.”
“Have you decided on names yet?” Bruce asked. “I had some ideas. I wrote them down.” He patted his tight jeans for a bit and finally produced a tiny moleskin notebook. Thrusting it toward them, he said, “Got fidgety during a meeting. It may be…excessive.”
Lisa accepted the little notebook like the treasure it was and held it against her heart. “I’m glad you’re my friend, Bruce.”
He weaved himself through the scattering of chairs and hugged her tightly. “I love you, friend.”