“Shhh, Tina. It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t okay, was it? Everything I treasured was defiled: Josh, Des, me, my career.
He helped me get into the tub and once I was laid back against the porcelain, he kept hold of my hand. He sat there on the toilet seat, quietly letting me cry.
After a time he asked, “Do you want to tell me about it?”
I shook my head.
“Des should be home soon. Do you want to talk to her?”
I covered my face with my hands and wept. The thought of Des, my best friend and lover, gone from my life, broke my heart beyond comprehension.
Josh seemed to intuitively sense my need for silence because he didn’t speak. He simply rubbed the back of my hand with his thumb and let me cry.
“You’re too good to me,” I finally managed to say.
“Too good? Why shouldn’t I be good to you?”
“Because I’m stupid.”
“No, you’re not.”
I could only shake my head miserably.
“You’ve done so much for me. This past week alone you’ve taken care of me and my mom. Now it’s my turn to take care of you.”
That comment sent a fresh wave of tears down my cheeks.
“Hey,” he whispered softly as he wiped the tears away. “Don’t cry. I’m here.”
“I don’t…I don’t—” I couldn’t finish. The words, deserve you, kept getting stuck on a sob.
After I managed to get my sniffling under control, Josh said quietly, “I love you. You know that.”
The tears started anew. I was such an idiot. I’d taken the very best thing in the world—love—and thrown it away.
“Please don’t cry.”
It was impossible to stop.
Josh gently let go of my hand and stood to remove his clothes. I watched him with a mixture of hunger and grief as I devoured the sight of his magnificent body—the body I’d grown to know and love. Then another image intruded: a horrible, sickening image of Kenton, his naked torso, his vile cock. A wave of sickness swept over me and I covered my mouth to keep from gagging.
“Josh…” I moaned, shaking my head.
“Shhh. I just want to hold you.” He climbed into the tub behind me and lifted me up onto his lap to wrap his big, strong arms around my shoulders. I leaned back against him, reveling at how wonderfully solid he was. How wonderfully good he was. I loved him like I’d never loved another man before.
The revelation was bittersweet, considering I was about to betray him on Friday. But I put my pending betrayal out of my mind. I hadn’t completely made up my mind about going to Kenton’s. There was still time to find another solution, one that had been forming in the last hour. Until I decided what I was going to do for sure, I still had Josh, at least for now.
I swiveled in his arms so I could lay my cheek against his marvelous chest. I licked the moisture that had accumulated there as if I were dying of thirst.
“You don’t have to do this,” Josh whispered, his voice thick with desire.
But he was wrong. I did have to. I needed him. I needed his goodness, his purity and his love.
So I moved until I was seated in his lap facing him and rubbed myself against his apparent need for me too. He groaned when I wriggled against him, working my way from his collarbone up his neck to his jaw.
“Not here,” he whispered. He slid my body away from his and stepped out of the tub. He gently dried me off and carried me to the bedroom, where he laid me down on the massive bed. For just a moment he gazed at me, lying there spread before him. He kneeled beside me and asked, “Why are you crying?”
“Because I love you.”
He smiled and kissed me. My forehead, my eyelids. He touched the tip of his tongue to each and every tear I’d shed. Then he ran his tongue down my neck to my chest. “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?”
It was the same thing Des had said. Hearing that phrase again—one I definitely did not deserve, this time coming out of Josh’s mouth—made the tears flow even faster. With every word he spoke, every taste, every touch, I just cried more. The faucet had opened and now was stuck. There was no turning it off.
I would pay for one moment of pleasure with Vixen, a virtual stranger, and the cost of that would either be my career or the two people I loved most. How could I ever have lusted after anyone else when I had Josh and Desi at my beck and call? What the hell was wrong with me?
When Josh’s kisses found my hip and slid lower, I bucked with desire and shame. “No!”
“What’s wrong?” he asked, looking up from between my legs.
What was wrong? I loved having my pussy kissed. Nothing would feel better than Josh’s lips on my clit, his tongue caressing me.
“Not right now,” I said as I rolled away. “I want to do something for you.”
I slid down beside him, on level with his beautiful cock, and I took him inside my mouth, opening my throat and sucking him deeper than I’d ever taken another man before. His pubic hair tickled my nose, his sweet musk overwhelming me.
“Fuck, Teen, that’s deep,” he breathed.
But he didn’t know just how deep I wanted him. I needed to keep him—a part of him—forever inside of me. It was desperate, I know, but it was my way of showing him what he meant to me.
I moved my mouth along his length, sliding him in and out, each time taking him in deeper and deeper until he cried out my name. He tensed, and I willed him to do it, thinking the words I couldn’t speak because my mouth was jammed with cock. Come, Josh, come. Come for me, baby. Please.
But he didn’t, and a part of me was glad.
He carefully grasped my head and eased himself out of my mouth. His voice sounded shaky when he said, “Do you have any idea how incredible that feels?” I went to touch him but he grabbed my wrist and said, “Don’t.”
Flipping me onto my back, he returned the favor. This time he wouldn’t listen to any protests and eventually I gave up. How could I complain when his tongue felt so good? When there was nothing more satisfying than watching him feast on me, his head moving so erotically between my thighs?
It was selfish but I couldn’t help it.
My selfishness continued when I came in his mouth. I came and I came and I came and he sucked it up, swallowing me with delight.
“Josh,” I cried, but before my pussy finished throbbing he moved up on top of me and slid his cock inside.
“Jesus, Tina,” he groaned into my hair.
“Harder,” I moaned. How I needed him to pummel me. To make me pay for the sins I’d committed and the ones I still might commit.
He acquiesced to my demands but just when I thought he was about to explode, he slowed down again, cringing as he fought to maintain control. Maybe he understood. Maybe he knew this was a monumental fuck, an end-of-innocence sort of thing. And he, too, was trying to draw it out as long as possible.
We rolled on the bed until I was sitting in Josh’s lap. I wrapped my legs around his back and we rocked together, his cock buried so deep inside me I could practically taste him. I was so close again and I knew he was too. But I was afraid to bring him to orgasm because I never wanted this to end.
However, I couldn’t hold the emotions at bay any longer. Josh couldn’t either. Together we picked up the tempo until we became frenetic in our lovemaking. With encouragement from me, he pounded his beautiful cock into me until it hurt. But that’s how I wanted it. I needed him to leave his mark on me, like an inscription on a wall, so I’d never forget he was there.
Just as a rapturously painful climax struck, I clung to Josh, digging my nails into his back, but when I opened my eyes my orgasm blew up in my face.
Desi leaned against the open door to my bedroom. Her face was shaded by the brim of a ball cap, but there was no mistaking the huge tears rolling down her cheeks.
Suddenly I was flung three years into the past. It wasn’t Josh I was in bed with but Curtis, and I was sending him off to war with a farewell fuck. Only
this time, Desi caught us. I wanted to stop but I couldn’t. Josh hadn’t seen her yet and he wasn’t done. His final thrusts were so hard and jarring it seemed like my neck would snap because I couldn’t tear my gaze from Desi’s.
When Josh finally grunted his release, I felt none of the pleasure I’d experienced only moments before. My orgasm crashed like a test car into a brick wall and I was the dummy—shattered. Broken.
Josh must have sensed the change in me, because instead of holding me tight, he pushed away to look at my face. Noticing where I was staring, he turned and looked at the door.
“Hey, babe,” he said, out of breath. “I didn’t see you there.”
Des simply stood there for a moment before she said softly, “Josh, would you give Tina and me a minute alone?”
“Sure.”
The second he pulled out of me, I began to shiver uncontrollably. He strode nude across the floor of my room, stopping only to kiss Desi’s cheek, and then left, presumably to get his clothes from the bathroom.
Desi’s gaze raked over my naked body. “Get dressed.”
I thought she might leave, but she didn’t. She stayed at the door and watched as I fumbled through my drawers for something to put on to cover my nakedness. I yanked on a T-shirt and a pair of panties. My hands began to shake as I pulled on a pair of yoga pants. Slowly I turned to face her.
“I’m not going to share, Teen. I can’t do it.”
“What?” Not going to share? Had the rules between us inexplicably changed? When?
Sometimes I get jealous when I watch Josh fuck you. I fell back against my dresser. She couldn’t be jealous of Josh, could she? Or was it me? I suddenly remembered the blank look on her face in the hospital when I’d been allowed in to see Josh’s mom and she hadn’t. Family only, they said.
“History’s repeating itself and…it’s too familiar,” she said. “Too humiliating. I can’t do it.”
Oh, shit. She knew. She knew about me and Curtis. Of course she did. How long had she been keeping the knowledge inside? “Listen, Des, I can explain. I didn’t mean for it to happen but it did. He came over and—”
“He came over here?”
“You were away and…it just happened. I’ve wanted to tell you but—”
Des held up her hand to stop me. “No. No, I don’t want to hear it.” She started to pace. “I can’t…I can’t stand it.” Her voice sounded so raw and her eyes looked so large and pained when she stopped pacing right in front of me. “You need to choose.”
“Choose? I-I can’t. Don’t ask me to.” No sooner were the words out of my mouth when I realized I was wrong.
Holy hell, here was the answer to my problems. It was a terrible solution—one that would break my heart into a million pieces—but it was a solution nonetheless. I bit my trembling lip. “You don’t have to share. You can have Josh all to yourself.”
She gasped. “What? So that’s it?”
I nodded. I didn’t trust my voice to speak.
“You’re not going to fight for us?”
My eyes were dry. I’d finally cried myself out. “He’s all yours.”
She stood there staring at me, but I couldn’t take it. I turned toward my walk-in closet and went in, partly to find a sweater, partly to avoid Des’s penetrating stare. But she followed me in. The air in the small room was so charged I could barely breathe. When I turned around, she was blocking my exit. I tried to push past, but she wouldn’t move.
I stood in front of her, staring up into her face, both of us breathing hard. She grabbed both sides of my face and kissed me. There was no mistaking the hunger of that gesture, and I couldn’t help holding onto her for dear life.
She ripped her mouth away and said, “So this means nothing to you?”
“Of course it does.”
With a ragged breath, she said, “Is he that much better?”
Seriously? How could she ask me to compare her and Josh? “No. Not better. But I love him.”
She sucked in her breath like I’d hit her.
I reached for her but she flinched away. “I love you too,” I whispered.
“Then you’ve got a choice to make. Us or him.”
I shook my head and opened my mouth to say “no,” but Des put a finger to my lips. “Don’t answer now. I’ll be back on Friday. You can give us your answer then.” A miserable smile barely touched the edges of her lips before she turned to leave.
“Des?” It sounded like I was pleading. I guess I was. But pleading for what? A lost cause, I guess.
“Friday.”
Des walked out of the room, the house, my life.
I leaned against the wall. Numb. All my tears had been spent. My decision had been made. I’d go to Kenton’s Friday and take part in his little sex party. Betraying Josh and Des didn’t matter anymore because Desi’s demands were impossible. There was no way in hell I could choose between the two of them. No fucking way.
Shutting my eyes, I rubbed my chest, certain the terrible pain behind my sternum was my heart shattering. My only consolation was that Josh and Des could be together, just the two of them. At least that was good. After all, they deserved each other.
Chapter Thirteen
The next day was Thursday. I felt like I was moving through a strange, murky fog, throwing myself into work, though never there completely in spirit. I also spoke to my real estate agent friend about listing our house. I hadn’t talked to Des about selling, but I knew it was something we’d have to do.
By Thursday afternoon, I became listless. What was the point? Why was I working so hard? What was it all for and why did it matter?
“I think you should go home. You don’t look well,” Nancy, my assistant said.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.” She dropped a work order on my desk. “This is the second time today you’ve sent the wrong shipment to the wrong address.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “Go home, Tina. Get some sleep. You need it.”
I didn’t want to leave. Home only reminded me of them. And I didn’t want to be reminded of them. It hurt too damn much. But Nancy was right. I was doing more damage by staying at work than if I took the rest of the day off.
I gathered up my stuff and headed for the door. Once out on the street, I dropped my briefcase so I could search my purse for my sunglasses.
“Tina.”
Startled, I looked up and squinted at the woman who approached me. My stomach dropped and despite the unusually warm December day, my spine tingled with a terrible chill. But as the woman neared, I realized I was mistaken. Again. It wasn’t Desi. It was Vixen.
“What the hell do you want?” I asked.
“I want to talk. It’s important.”
Giving up on my sunglasses, I started to walk toward the parking garage and my car. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
The sound of her high heels tapping purposefully across the cement of the parking garage followed close behind me. I picked up the pace. When I neared my car, I unlocked it and just as I went to open my door, my briefcase slipped from my fingertips and cracked open, spilling all over the ground.
Vixen crouched beside me, helping me pick up the papers. “I’m sorry, Tina.”
A furious breath burst out of my lungs. “Sorry? What for, Vixen? For luring me to Kenton’s so you could fuck me? Or for helping him fuck me over?”
“I’m sorry for all of it,” she said quietly. “And it’s Vivien.”
“I don’t care what your name is.” I stuffed the papers into the case and snapped it shut. “Now get out of my way.”
Vivien didn’t move. “You need to understand what’s going on.”
I butted my briefcase into her stomach and with an “Oomph,” she stumbled back, giving me the opportunity to open my car door. I shut the door before she could stop me but rolled down the window because I wasn’t finished with her. “I understand perfectly. You’re Kenton’s little minion. You do his bidding. Now get out of my way before I run over your fo
ot.”
“You’re right.” She lifted her sunglasses to the top of her head and I saw that her right eye was swollen and bruised. “But I’ve never seen him like this and it’s all because of you.”
Suddenly Vixen or Vivien or whatever the hell her name was, had my attention.
She glanced behind her at a man who was walking toward his car. “Can I come in?” She indicated the passenger seat of the car.
I bit my lip and grudgingly nodded and unlocked the door so she could slide in.
She sat for a moment before starting.
“Well?”
Staring straight ahead, she said, “It always starts like this. He chooses someone and reels her in. It’s a game to him, but it’s different every time. Sometimes he gets her with drugs. Sometimes it’s a loan or a business favor. Of course, there’s the old-fashioned way.” She glanced at me. “The video blackmail.”
“And you helped him do it.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Yes.”
“Why?”
She looked at me with her bruised face. “Because once he has a new plaything, he’ll be done with me.”
“I don’t understand.”
Vivien sighed and leaned back against the headrest. “How did you put it? I’m Kenton’s little minion, isn’t that right?” She turned her head toward me. “Do you think I want to be that person? Do you really think I have a choice?” She pointed to her black eye.
“So what happened? How did you get involved?”
“About a year ago, he gave me a loan to start up my consulting business. Low interest, everything. Then he started asking me to help out with the parties. You know, play hostess. It was no big deal. I liked going to his parties anyway. Soon he was asking me to sleep with some of his ‘friends’—government officials, judges, police officers—as a favor. It was all part of his parties, you know? No big deal. But pretty soon it started feeling like I was being used like some high-priced call girl. When I tried to get out of it, Kenton threatened to pull his money, ruin my business and reputation.” She sat forward and pressed her hands to her cheeks. “My only out was helping him find a replacement.”
Party of Three Page 11