Tempted

by Megan Hart

  “He did.” I tried wriggling away from him, but he was strong enough to hold me in place. “Alex just popped his head in to tell me something.”

  “Oh. He’s still there?”

  She knew he was, of course, because I was sure she called James at least every other day. “Yes.”

  He pulled me back against his erection. His fingers stroked me, slowly, circling. I was wet for him. My body ached at his touch.

  “We’ll see you at ten, then.” She hung up and I hung up, then collapsed back against Alex with a groan.

  “You’re wicked.”

  “I told you, I’m a rascal.” He kissed my earlobe. Hot breath made me shiver. The hand on my breast caressed my nipple, while the one between my legs kept up the steady motion. “Good morning.”

  I turned to straddle him, my nightgown the only barrier between us. My arms linked around his neck. His hands drifted to my ass, holding me closer.

  “Good morning.”

  “You’d better go get ready. She’ll be here soon.”

  “I know.”

  Neither of us moved. Our breathing shifted, his going in while mine went out. My clit throbbed, and I rocked slightly against the heat and hardness of his cock. Alex bent his head to trace my collarbone with small, light flickers of his tongue.

  I ran my fingers through his hair, the strands tickling the back of my hand. “Did you get up earlier?”

  He nodded, mumbling against me. “Had breakfast with Jamie. Came back to bed.”

  I hadn’t even woken when James got out of bed this morning. “You’re the better wife.”

  He looked up at that, his lips glistening. Those gray-dark eyes flickered. He licked his mouth. His hands grabbed my ass harder, pulled me tighter. “I didn’t know it was a competition.”

  I hadn’t meant it that way, but once the words were out there was no denying them. “Is it?”

  His lips pursed, looking sly. “You tell me.”

  He let go of my ass to grab a handful of fabric at my belly and pull it upward until nothing was between our bodies. Bare skin to skin, his cock trapped between his stomach and my cunt. I couldn’t move for a moment. It felt so good. Heat from him, slickness from me. It would only take a small shift, the tiniest arch of back and thrust of hip, and he’d be inside me, if he wanted. If I wanted.

  We didn’t move.

  His hands kept pulling until the nightgown came off over my head. My nipples brushed his chest. Alex put his arms around me again, while I adjusted my legs to close around his waist.

  The air might still have been morning cool, but all I felt was heat. I put my hands on his face, tipping it up. I held him still while I looked down into his eyes. My thumbs reached the softness of his mouth and traced his lower lip. He turned his head just a bit and kissed my palm.

  When he looked at me again, I lost myself in his eyes. Deep and dark, not like James’s bright blue summer sky gaze. “Do you love him?”

  “Everyone loves Jamie.”

  “Then why are we doing this?” I whispered against his parted mouth. I breathed in his air, took him inside me in the only way allowed.

  I moaned when he put his hand to the back of my head and forced my mouth to his. When he kissed me so hard our teeth clashed. When he twisted to push me down on top of the tangled mound of sheets, and when he covered me with his body. His erection stroked along my inner thigh, tantalizing my flesh with his.

  “Because we can’t stop ourselves.”

  The perfect answer, if not one that made me happy. I didn’t have time to reply because he was kissing me again. He rubbed himself on me. The friction built. My hand found his cock, fingers curling into a tunnel he could fuck into. Our mouths bruised each other. He bit the soft skin of my shoulder, and I cried out. Sweat coated us, making us slick, helping us slide.

  There were, he’d said, lots of other things to do besides fuck, and he was right. We did them all. Hands, mouths, skin on skin, my body making places for him to fill. I held my breasts together so he could slide his prick between them as I used my mouth at the same time. We lay head to foot, licking and stroking. He got behind me, thrusting against the groove of my spine while his hand stroked me closer to climax from the front.

  We tangled, we writhed. We contorted. But we ended up face-to-face, mouths open, concentrating too hard on what was happening between our legs to even kiss. He pushed into the space between my hand and hip, while he used two fingers inside me and a thumb on my clit.

  The position was awkward. He was pulling my hair. His arm had to be falling asleep. We didn’t care. Too close to coming to stop, to move, to breathe, we moved together until the headboard banged the wall.

  “Fuck,” Alex breathed. “Just like that…”

  My fingers curled tighter. He groaned and buried his face into the curve of my neck. I shuddered, lifting my hips to meet his thrusting fingers.

  He spoke, low muttered words muffled into my skin. How much he loved to fuck my mouth, how good my pussy felt around his fingers, how much he wanted to make me come. Mostly he whispered my name, over and over. Cementing me to him, making it impossible for me to think he didn’t know me, or that I could have been anyone.

  Anne, he whispered. My name. My body beneath him. My taste on his tongue, my breath in his lungs. He said it again and again until I answered with his. We were joined.

  Pleasure filled me like water in a well, bubbling up from some place deep inside. It filled all my crevices, every inch. I shook with it. I was lost in it, swallowed up in it. James had been right about him. Alex was like the lake, and I was drowning in him.

  We came within seconds of one another. Slippery, sticky fluid coated my fingers. The smell of it made me gasp. Spent, breathless, we eased to stillness and relaxed inch by inch.

  Alex, face still tucked against me, moved off me just enough so I could breathe. His arm lay across my stomach and his leg stayed over mine. His breath tickled more now that passion had passed. We stayed like that for a while. Quiet.

  “This is more than it was supposed to be,” I said, staring at the ceiling.

  Alex, so vocal a few minutes before, stayed quiet. His body replied in a way his voice did not, with a small, swift tension all over. He rolled onto his back, then away from me, and he got out of bed and padded down the hall without saying a word. I heard the hiss of the shower a moment later.

  I looked at the clock and hopped out of bed with a curse. I had ten minutes to shower and dress before they arrived to take me shopping. I had no time to ponder what Alex’s lack of response had meant, and I was glad. That meant I didn’t have to think about it, either.

  The shopping trip with Evelyn wasn’t as disastrous as it might have been, despite her repeated attempts to engage me in discussions about when I might consider having a child. I managed to smile and grit my teeth and fend her off with vague answers. By the time I got home, my eyes throbbed with a tension headache as well as PMS.

  “Oh, look. James is home.” She sounded like she’d won the lottery. Instead of just stopping to let me out, she turned off the ignition.

  “I guess you’re coming in.” I couldn’t manage to sound welcoming.

  “Of course!” She was already out of the car and opening my kitchen door.

  I’m not sure what she saw, since by the time I came in behind her all that was left were the guilty looks, but whatever Alex and James had been doing it was awkward enough to make Evelyn stammer. Since this was a woman who prided herself on having a response for all occasions, watching her stumble and fumble for words was quite a sight.

  “Mom,” said James. “What are you doing here?”

  “I took Anne shopping and I’m dropping her off. I saw your truck and I thought I’d come in and say hello.” She straightened her back and patted her hair, though it wasn’t messed up.

  I looked hard for evidence of what she’d seen. Nothing seemed out of place. A cigarette burned in an ashtray, but though I didn’t allow smoking in the house that didn’t se
em scandalous enough. Alex was giving James small sideways glances and looking away quickly like he was afraid he might laugh. James was ignoring him.

  “Yeah, I just got home. About twenty minutes ago.” There was something off about James’s grin. It was too broad. Too silly. Too something.

  “How was work?” Evelyn didn’t move far from the doorway, so I pushed past her.

  “Great. Really good. Really, really good.”

  Whatever they’d been doing, it wasn’t something they’d intended for anyone to see. They looked like they’d been caught with their hands in the cookie jar…or down one another’s pants. I looked around my kitchen, but other than the cigarette sending up its small plume of smoke, nothing was out of place. Alex looked like he was getting himself under control and stood up to give Mrs. Kinney a too-innocent smile.

  “Hi, Mrs. Kinney, how are you?”

  She gave him a glance. “Fine, Alex. You?”

  “Great. Really, really great.” His smile got broader.

  I’d have been suspicious even if I hadn’t seen her reaction. I shot James a narrow look he missed completely. Now they were both pressing their lips together like they were trying to keep from bursting into laughter.

  “Well. I’ll just be going, then.” Evelyn paused, but James just waved at her.

  “Bye, Mom. See ya.”

  “Buh-bye, Mrs. Kinney.” Alex wiggled his fingers.

  James and Alex stood shoulder to shoulder, smiling and waving, and Evelyn took her leave without another word. I watched her go to her car, watched her slide into the driver’s seat and put the keys in the ignition. I waited to see if she’d let down her guard when she thought she wasn’t being watched, maybe break down, but she didn’t. She drove off, and I turned to them.

  “What was that all about?” James burst into guffaws. Alex’s laughter was smug. I stared at them. “Oh my God. You’re high.”

  I sniffed the air. The smoke from the regular cigarette was masking the tang of pot, but it was there. James opened the fridge and pulled out another ashtray, this time with a joint in it. It had gone out.

  “You’re smoking pot? James?”

  They were laughing about the snuffed joint, paying no attention to me. I raised my voice.

  “James!” They turned to look. “Why did you have pot in the refrigerator?”

  “He put it in there when his mom came in.” Alex snickered.

  “Did she see you smoking it?”

  “I don’t think so.” James cleared his throat and gave Alex a cautious glance. “We were sort of…fighting over it when she came in, and I…”

  “He grabbed it out of my hand and stuck it in the fridge right away.”

  “I’m sure she saw you.” I put my hands on my hips, not wanting to see either of them acting like boys.

  They gave each other another glance, guiltier this time.

  “She didn’t see the pot,” James said firmly.

  “Then what did she see?” I demanded. “You two acting like teenagers? That’s not shocking. She looked like she’d seen a murder!”

  Alex snorted lightly. “C’mon, Annie, it wasn’t that bad. And Evelyn always looks like that.”

  “We were just fooling around.” James came from behind the island to put his arm around my shoulder. “Just acting crazy. That’s all.”

  Something a little cold settled in the pit of my stomach. Fooling around could mean many things. Had they been roughhousing, fighting over the joint? Or had they been standing closer than she’d expected them to stand, maybe touching a little too long? Had they been kissing?

  Alex lifted the joint to his lips and lit it, sucking in smoke while his eyes squinted shut. He breathed in. Held it. Let it out. Offered it to me. “Want some?”

  “No.”

  “Jamie?”

  I looked at James. He looked at me. Then at Alex. “Sure.”

  I said nothing, just left them in the kitchen to giggle and wrestle or whatever the hell they were doing. I went to my bedroom and shut the door against the sound of their laughter. I pulled out a book I tried to read but on which I couldn’t concentrate.

  Had they been kissing? Should I care if they had? How could I be jealous of something they might have done that Alex and I had definitely done?

  Was it a competition after all?

  It could’ve been easy to lose sight of my marriage, having a husband and a lover, but I didn’t. Part of it was James’s unquestionable lack of jealousy about Alex and his unstinting belief that no matter how many times Alex licked me to orgasm, I loved James best. It was his complete self-confidence in the matter that allowed the three of us to enjoy what we were doing so well…and so often.

  James wasn’t jealous of his best friend, so how could I be jealous of Alex? Their small secret jokes that left me out, their memories? Both were here with me now, both were attentive and passionate. Sometimes too attentive and passionate.

  “Enough,” I said that night when cramps and bloating and a day with Evelyn had made sex seem like a chore rather than some exotic adventure. “Not even with Brad Pitt’s dick.”

  “Damn, that’s cold.” Alex leaned back against the headboard, his shirt undone but his pants still zipped. He looked over at James, who’d just come out of the shower. “Did you hear that, man? She’s comparing us to Brad Pitt’s prick. Unfavorably.”

  I didn’t want to laugh, I wanted to soak in the tub with a scented candle burning and a good book to read. “I wasn’t. I was just saying I can’t do it tonight. You’ve both rubbed me raw in half a dozen places. And I have cramps.”

  “Orgasms are good for cramps.” James came up behind me and put his arms around me to nibble my ear.

  “Didn’t you just hear what I said?”

  “Something about somebody’s dick,” he murmured with a low laugh, sliding his hands up to cup my breasts. “I like it when you talk dirty. Say it again.”

  From his lounging spot sprawled out on our bed, Alex made a shooing gesture. “She doesn’t want to, Jamie. Forget it. She doesn’t love us anymore.”

  “No?” James tweaked an upright nipple. “Are you sure?”

  I gave a disgruntled sigh and slipped out of his arms. “I’m tired, James. And sore.”

  “Is that a compliment or an insult?” Alex asked from the bed. “Blaming us?”

  I turned to give him a glare I had to work at maintaining. “You’re both insatiable satyrs, and I want to take a hot bath and read a book. I do not want to have sex. Not with you. Not with him. Not with both of you.”

  “Not with Brad Pitt, either, apparently.” James tossed his towel onto the chair and strode, comfortable in his nakedness, to the dresser to yank open a drawer. “Hey, babe, do I have any clean boxers?”

  “I’m sure you would,” I snapped, “if I had time to do some laundry instead of spending all my time in bed with the two of you!”

  Alex stretched. “To be fair, Anne, last time it wasn’t in bed. It was on the living room floor.”

  I’d been trying to make lists for the party. James had seduced me with a foot massage. Alex had joined in with a back rub. It hadn’t been difficult from there.

  James turned, still naked, a pair of shorts in his hand that he tossed to the bed. “These are yours, dude.”

  “Hey, I’ve been looking for those.” Alex snatched them up. “I probably have some clean ones that belong to you.”

  Neither of them were blaming me, but hormones had sent me down the slippery slope to irrationality. “Well, pardon me! It’s not the underwear fairy who delivers your clean laundry, you know! It’s me! And you both wear the same size! So pardon me! Maybe next time you can both do your own damned laundry!”

  The outburst made me feel better at once. Identical looks of surprise greeted me, and I revved up again. “While you’re at it, you can take over the toilet cleaning, because I’m sure not the one who can’t aim!”

  Blink. Blink. James, still naked, took a step back. Alex sat up higher, looking like he meant t
o speak, but I cut him off before he could.

  “And if you’re horny,” I shouted, “you can just take care of yourselves! Or each other! Because I’m not interested!”

  With that, I stomped through the door into the bathroom and slammed the door behind me so hard it knocked a picture off the wall. It was an ugly picture, some wretched picture of kittens in a bathtub that Evelyn had given me when she’d redecorated her powder room. It fell to the tile floor. The frame split in half, along with the pane of glass, which fortunately didn’t shatter but stayed in two pieces.

  I took a couple deep breaths and waited for guilt to assail me. It didn’t. I still felt good. The outburst had been silly, even I knew that. I wasn’t even mad about the laundry. I wasn’t even really mad…which somehow made my shouting all right.

  Yeah. That was fucked up, and I knew it, but I smiled as I picked up the kittens and tossed them in the trash. That felt even better.

  “Fuck you, kittens in the bathtub,” I whispered.

  I calmed as the water filled the tub. Had I really told them to take care of each other? Would they do it?

  So far no matter how tangled our bedtime arrangements, Alex and James hadn’t had sex. I’d done everything a woman can do with each of them, separately and simultaneously. They’d been side by side and facing each other. Even back to back. But they hadn’t kissed. Hadn’t touched.

  Maybe that was another one of the rules they hadn’t bothered to share with me.

  I drained the tub and threw on a robe. When I flung open the bathroom door, I again got two identically startled looks. Alex and James had sprawled out in my bed, both wearing only boxers. The television was set to the sports channel. They both had beers lined up along the nightstands. They could have been any long-married couple, comfortable with each other to the point of not noticing when one of them belched or picked his nose.

  “Why don’t you guys ever touch?” I demanded.

  Blink, blink. Blink.

  James was the first to answer, I think because Alex was wisely keeping his mouth shut. “What?”

  I went to the bed and grabbed up the remote, turning off the television. “Both of you. Why don’t you ever touch each other when we’re fucking?”