by Jayne Rylon
They laughed together.
Every instant was foreplay for the wedding night that wasn’t theirs but might as well have been. Devon glanced up in time to catch Kayla watching them with her head canted as Dave swirled her around the dance floor.
Things had been insane lately as they rushed to wrap up their latest project before Mike left for his honeymoon. The crew hadn’t gotten to spend as much time exploring as usual. Could that be why Kay seemed so…interested?
“Guys—?”
“Yeah, Dev?” Neil angled her face toward his to lick a dollop of chocolate from the corner of her mouth.
“Ah, never mind.” She shook her head.
“Since when are we keeping secrets from each other?” Neil’s intense focus stole her breath.
“Don’t let him pressure you.” James rubbed her arm. “You don’t have to share your thoughts.”
“It’s more like I’m not sure now is the right time.” She surrendered a small sigh. “It’s just that I’ve been wondering lately… How do you know when to act on one of your fantasies with the crew and when you’re having an idle daydream?”
“Uh, honey, we’ve pretty much done everything I ever imagined. Most everything that’s possible and a few things I didn’t think were.” Neil barked out a laugh. “What’s left?”
Devon reached for James. He gripped her hand. She peeked up and found Kayla still staring. She met the other woman’s gaze and smiled at her friend.
“Do you remember that first night with the whole group?” She looked between her two men, amazed she was so lucky and ashamed of being so greedy.
“You really think I could forget it?” Neil laughed.
“One of the best nights of my life.” James bussed her knuckles.
“What about when Kay kissed me?” She couldn’t believe heat tingled in her cheeks after all they’d been through.
“Holy shit, Dev.” Neil knocked a napkin into his lap when someone passed close behind them. “Are you saying…?”
“Maybe.” She shrugged. “I think I’d like to try it. Do you suppose she would—”
“Yes!” Both guys answered in unison.
“Kayla’s bi, Devon.” James stroked a wisp of hair from her face. “She mentioned it during that snow storm we told you about. The one that finally forced her and Dave to come together.”
“Well, then.” She cleared her throat. “Maybe next time, when we’re all sharing, we could see what happens?”
“Damn, I love you.” Neil nibbled a line down her neck while James kissed her sweetly.
“We’ll be there with you. No pressure. You know how the crew works.” James held her shaking hand. “It gets better every time we’re together. And I’ve noticed lately that some of the girls have wandering hands. It might be time for another crew meeting. Have you ever wanted to touch the other guys? How would you feel about Kate or Morgan with me or James?”
“Oh.” She blinked. “That would be…interesting.”
“Interesting hot or interesting not?” Neil didn’t pressure her. He seemed genuinely concerned.
“We better talk about this more upstairs. In bed. After someone takes the edge off. Or maybe we could slip under the table here for a minute.” She practically panted. “Then I could probably think more clearly.”
Both guys laughed.
“Yeah, I feel the same about it.” Neil grinned.
“Me too,” James echoed.
“Why exactly do you three look like you’re up to no good?” Mike sauntered over, his chest puffed up to ridiculous dimensions with his lovely bride on his elbow.
Kate was radiant in her antique lace gown.
“I guess it’s because every time I think we can’t get luckier, I realize there’s more to explore. More love to share.” James stood to kiss Kate on the cheek. “I think today’s the beginning of a new era. One I can’t wait to spend with my best friends.”
Morgan and Joe rejoined the head table, a pair of shit-eating grins on their faces. Neil stealthily retucked Joe’s shirt while Devon plucked a leaf from Morgan’s hair.
“The gardens are lovely, aren’t they?” Kate winked.
“Spectacular.” Joe nodded, trying to keep a straight face.
The pop song in the background faded into a familiar wedding standard. What a Wonderful World had never seemed as perfect to Devon as it did in that moment. The lyrics washed over her as Kayla and Dave took the last two seats at the table.
“Tired of dancing?” Joe poked Dave in the ribs.
“Maybe we missed you guys.” Kayla rested her head on Mike’s shoulder. “It’s going to be weird not having you around for a few weeks.”
“Don’t let things go to shit. Morgan, you’re in charge. Keep these guys in line, would you?” Their foreman chuckled. “I’m going to be too busy to answer calls for bail money.”
Kate scooted as close to her husband of three hours as her voluminous crinoline would allow. “You might be the one phoning a friend. I’m pretty sure some of the things I’ll be doing to you are illegal in most countries.”
“Then what the hell are we waiting for?” He stood up so fast he almost knocked his chair over.
“I wanted to say goodbye to everyone.” She sniffled. “Thank you all for making today the best day of my life. I love you. Every one of you.”
“Crap. Not again.” Morgan dabbed her eyes with the corner of a napkin. “Go on. Take your ridiculously handsome husband and get out of here.”
“All right, then I guess there’s only one more thing left to do.” Kate bustled from her chair with Mike at her elbow for support. She made it halfway across the dance floor before peeking over her shoulder and taking aim.
She tossed her bouquet in Devon’s direction.
It would have been a direct hit if not for the ceiling fan over their table.
A whmmmp similar to a table saw cut through the sappy music and the din of conversation before a shower of petals rained onto the rest of the crew. Devon raised her hands, palms up, to catch as much of the floral confetti as possible.
Rainbow colored bits of fauna decorated them all evenly.
The photographer Mike had hired swooped in close and took a candid picture of the disaster. Devon knew she would frame one of the standard portraits of the group they’d sat for earlier to hang in the living room of the apartment she shared with James and Neil.
But the snapshot he’d just captured would go in their bedroom.
It would live in the hearts and minds of the crew.
Forever.
For Eleanor Lees, the undisputed queen of that’s what he/she said jokes. I especially love it when you do it to yourself (that’s what she said!). You crack me up.
1
“My hands are full, stick it in my mouth.” Devon wrapped her lips around the stem of the lavender rose Kate wagged in her direction.
Kayla sing-songed, “That’s what he said.”
Devon choked. She met her friend’s gaze in the mirror, then burst out laughing. It was even funnier because her joke held a kernel of truth. When their husbands and the rest of the crew got together for one of their steamy sessions, the logistics of five guys going at it made for some interesting challenges.
Somehow she managed not to drop the pretty prop clasped between her teeth. The laces on the corset Morgan had been tightening around Devon’s slim ribcage slipped in the aftermath of their raucous exhalations.
“Shit, sorry,” she mumbled around the flower, hoping it had no thorns. Then she forced herself to calm down. An extended sigh deflated her torso. She yanked taut the panels of the garment she attempted to squeeze into, less certain than ever about this foray into femininity.
Being girly was not her strength.
Morgan seized the opportunity to cinch the black satin. Embedded with boning, it hugged Devon tight. A few flicks of Morgan’s fingers left the long tails of a bow dancing over the swells of Devon’s ass. She’d seen postage stamps bigger than the matching thong they’d boug
ht to complete her ensemble. It didn’t protect the skin bared between her skimpy undies and the top of her fishnets from the brush of the soft laces.
“Damn, you’re smoking hot.” Morgan surveyed her handiwork before nodding.
Devon angled her torso sideways to the mirror, cupped her breasts, then plucked the rose out of her mouth. “It’s magic. It makes even me look stacked.”
“Because it squishes your already tiny waist down to the size of my pinky.” Kayla pouted. “I hate you.”
Ever the practical one, Kate marched over. She slipped her hand around the edge of the bustier. “Are you sure you can breathe okay? How does it feel?”
Devon twisted from side to side, testing the bounds of her hindered flexibility. “A little uncomfortable, but nothing I can’t handle. Sort of a nice pressure once you get used to it.”
“That’s what he said,” Morgan chimed in this time.
Another round of giggles bled some of the nervousness from the gathering of scantily clad girlfriends who milled about in Kate’s living-room-turned-studio.
Relief relaxed Devon enough that she blurted, “Okay, so, don’t laugh. I know we’ve seen each other naked more often than with clothes on. We’ve gone wild and crazy during not one but three bachelorette parties scandalous enough to require a Vegas-esque pact of silence. And I can’t count the number of nights we’ve spent watching each other or our guys get fucked senseless. But suddenly this seems a little… I don’t know.”
“Intimate?” Kate supplied.
“Yeah.” Devon gnawed her lip. Sometimes it sucked being the youngest, least experienced, of the bunch. She was the newest too, though it’d been almost a year since they’d adopted her as the runt of their tightknit group. Their family-by-choice was comprised of a five-man construction crew and their four female lovers. “Am I the only one who’s sweating?”
“No.” Morgan plopped onto the padded bench Mike had painstakingly restored for Kate, who had fallen in love with the previously half-rotted carcass at a garage sale. Devon smiled, recalling how they’d struggled to jam the thing in Kate’s tiny hybrid sedan. In the end, she’d had to ride to Kate and Mike’s place on Kayla’s lap while their treasure occupied the other half of the backseat. They’d laughed the whole way.
The furniture fit in the renovated house Kate had inherited as if it had been designed specifically for the nook by the stairs. Devon considered her niche in the crew and could relate.
Morgan’s sudden drop to the tufted-fabric seat fluffed out the frilly edges of the microskirt on her naughty peek-a-boo nighty. She wafted cool air across her artfully painted face with a vintage hand fan. Sultry and sleek, she could have come straight out of a girly magazine or maybe the classiest of Amsterdam’s famous red-lit windows.
“Let’s jump right in and do this.” Devon rolled her eyes when Kate opened her mouth to interject. “I know. That’s what he said. Seriously though, if we don’t get a move on, we’ll be more nervous than a roofer in an electrical storm. Next thing we know, Kate will have chewed a hole in her lip and my hair will wilt like week-old lettuce. I can’t believe you were able to fluff it so damn high to begin with. Anyway, that’s not going to be a good look for our boudoir photos. Our pictures will suck and our husbands will leave us and we’ll all die old and lonely.”
“If they’re hideous, we’ll figure something else out,” Kate shushed her.
“We’re running out of time to come up with an alternate Valentine’s Day present.” Devon paced. “It has to be perfect for them.”
“Stop before you hyperventilate, munchkin. This only feels weird because we let our guys maintain their illusion of control.” Kayla hugged Devon. Warmth seeped into her from her friend’s embrace. It settled her like a shot of steamed milk before bed or the afterglow of a really good orgasm. “With them gone, things are out of sorts. I miss them too, you know.”
“Stupid ice-fishing trip.” A lonely long weekend hadn’t sounded so awful when the guys had first proposed it. The sparkle in their eyes at the thought of three whole days filled with beer, trash talk and freezing their nuts off had guaranteed that none of the women objected. “Why couldn’t Joe’s Uncle Tom have brought his gang to Kayla’s resort instead of luring our crew to the middle of nowhere? What if they get attacked by a herd of psychotic moose? Or sucked into a vat of maple syrup? Neil has a massive sweet tooth. I could see him leaning over for a taste and tumbling right in.”
“Um.” Kay looked like she’d bitten into a lemon. “All those crazy cousins are more than my retreat can handle. They’re so feral they make our husbands look tame by comparison. No thanks. Canada is barely far enough away. It’s only one more night. We’ll survive. And so will the crew. I’m pretty sure.”
Devon sighed. “Do you know how many spooky noises our pipes make at two o’clock in the morning? I’ve never noticed that before. It got so bad last night I stayed up until dawn trying to fix some of the loose joints in our ductwork. Granted, HVAC isn’t my specialty. That’s more of Joe’s thing. But I swear, I’m usually pretty terrific with my hands. Not today. I sucked big time.”
“That’s what he said.” Kayla winked.
Devon smacked her forehead with the heel of her hand.
“There aren’t any monsters under your bed or in your freaking H-whatever. You’ve just never listened hard enough before. Probably because you’re moaning too loud to hear the creaks and pops or knocked unconscious by a zillion big Os in a row.” Morgan wiggled her eyebrows.
“Good point. But that’s not my fault. You know how it goes. Everyone has to have a turn. And then sometimes I have seconds. Or fifths. Or seventeeths. I mean, sex with James and Neil is the best-tasting, calorie-free dessert of all time.” Devon pouted. Spoiled? For sure. She liked it that way. “How can I resist the temptation of two fine men in my bed? And once I’m snuggled between them, the rest of the world melts away.”
“They make it easy to surrender. All of our guys do. They have a knack for affection—giving and getting. It’s part of who they are. Maybe it’s time to sprinkle a little girl power in the mix.” Kate’s lips angled up in a wry smile. She propped her hand on her hip. Manicured fingers splayed over the delicate ivory lace of her cat suit. Skintight and translucent, it covered every inch of her yet left nothing to the imagination.
A pair of nude platform heels added to her stature. They made her legs seem longer than the fifteen-foot extension ladder the crew used for painting exteriors. The wife of the crew’s foreman could have doubled for a pinup girl given the lustrous fall of her loose, wide curls.
“What did you have in mind?” Kayla slung her arm over Kate’s shoulder and bumped her hip into their friend’s. The flattering lines of Kay’s ruched, purple merrywidow complimented the troublemaker glint in her eye and the assortment of body art escaping the limited cover-up provided by her lingerie. Wicked black leather boots rose above her knees, completing her alternative ensemble.
“Well, let’s see how sexy we can make these pictures, shall we?” Kate winked. “I figure it won’t take much to have the crew eating out of our hands. They’ll be our extra-horny hostages. Then maybe we can draw up a list of our demands.”
“Sounds like a plan to me.” Devon stalked to the tripod standing in the center of Kate’s living room, which they’d cleared of furniture other than a cameo-backed occasional chair and mounds of cushions they intended to use as props. They’d also strategically crumpled a creamy silk sheet before hanging it as their backdrop.
She aimed the digital SLR camera at the top of the mountain of pillows they’d arranged earlier. While she fiddled with the focus, her best friends entered the frame one by one. Lots of natural light from the late-afternoon sunshine flooded the space, making the women practically glow. Or maybe their flushes were a side-effect of envisioning what would happen when their guys got a hold of the final product of today’s session.
The photography classes Devon had taken at the local community college would pay off a tho
usand times over.
“Okay, I have the settings where I want them. But if we’d like to review the images as we take them with the remote, we’ll have to rely on my laptop. I tried to connect it before. The video cable wouldn’t work although I swear it’s the right one. I’ll give it another shot. If that doesn’t do the trick, we’ll have to wing it. Where’s Dave and his geeky tendencies when you need them?”
Before she’d finished mumbling, her friends began shouting out suggestions in the tried-and-true fashion of onlookers providing impromptu tech support. Devon ignored them. She fiddled with the connections while the bombshell peanut gallery peppered her with advice.
“Nothing’s happening. Push the wire in deeper. Make sure the connection is tight.” Morgan surrendered a mini-snicker.
“Maybe you’re aiming for the wrong hole?” Kate asked with faux innocence.
“Take it out, then put it back in again.” Kayla joined the fray. “Give it a tug and wiggle.”
“Damn it. Let me concentrate.” Devon bit her lip to avoid granting them satisfaction by cracking up. Had they forgotten she was supposed to be the juvenile one of the bunch?
She focused on the stubborn cable. The slightly misshapen prong looked like it might have been stepped on. Probably by someone wearing steel-toed construction boots if she had to guess. Crap, this had to work or they would be shooting blind. No way would they be able to arrange a second session without their guys getting suspicious.
She changed the angle of her laptop for better access, then shoved hard enough to void her warranty.
“Good idea. Sometimes it’s easier to slide it in from the rear.” Morgan hid her smile behind her hand.
The cable locked into place.
“I knew I could work it in if I was patient. Or barring that, if I rammed it in. Whatever works to open that bitch up.” Devon laughed as deeply as she could, given the snug fit of her corset. “All right already, I surrender. That’s what he said.”