by Gemma Snow
“I want,” she managed, shaky, nervous, excited. “I most definitely want.”
Chapter Nine
Quinn didn’t let her take another step. Instead, he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom, where he placed her down on the bed, Lucas close at their heels. The shade covering the enormous picture window was drawn back and showed that snow had started in the time since they’d last been outside, and that the world was a deep silvery-blue winter wonderland.
“Are you gonna close that?” Ev asked, without much conviction. She knew what their answer would be before they gave it, and she also knew, deep down, that she didn’t want the curtain drawn any more than they did.
“Evvie, cariña, tonight is about your desires.” Lucas was leaning up against the wall looking like sin incarnate, his Adam’s apple slick with sweat and thrumming with every word. “Now tell us, do you want the curtain closed? Or do you want the risk of the whole world seeing what we’re going to do to you tonight?
She shook her head, her voice somewhere else, her tongue all tied up.
“We want you to say it, baby,” Quinn’s voice was demanding. “Can you do that for us?”
Yup, definitely dealing with two Doms right now. Fine. She’d been handling their bossy, controlling attitudes for years, so she could more than handle them now.
“You two are very demanding.” She jutted her chin in the air and tried for her best ice queen impression, the one that had helped her climb the ranks in the Bureau, even as a young woman. Still, with her hair mussed and her panties…somewhere…and the burning heat now building inside her again, the look probably missed the mark.
“You don’t like it?” Lucas’ smirk could have created an international incident. The man was too fucking sexy for his own good and he damn well knew it. Quinn, on the other hand, had her number.
“What are you planning, Evs?” he asked, those green eyes discerning and so dangerous for it.
She shrugged and settled back against the plush pillows right in the center of the enormous bed. Thank goodness it was so big. They were going to need a lot of space for the evening ahead of them.
“Just that I don’t really need you two, ya know?” She slid her hand up her thigh, bent her knees and spread her legs wide to expose her now bare pussy, still so slick with need and tension and her recent releases that Ev honestly couldn’t tell if she was coming or going. Or coming and coming and coming. Before they could stop her, she slipped a finger between her folds and deep inside her body, hissing at the contact with her still sensitive flesh. She heard twin inhalations of breath and stroked deeper, bringing herself higher and higher on simply the thought that they were watching her toy with her clit and stroke her needy cunt.
“Go slower, baby…” Quinn sounded far too in control for Ev’s liking, so she did the opposite of what he asked and pressed a second finger into her pussy, pounding her body faster and more erratically. Amazing. She was actually close to another orgasm even after all the pleasure they had just shared. She honestly might not survive the night.
“That’s enough.” Lucas was on the bed in a flash, holding her wrists still in mid-motion. Her cunt quivered and Ev let out a string of curses under her breath. He nipped at her neck, at her chest, at her collarbone as he held her in place. “The only thing I want to see in your tight little cunt is my cock, do you understand?”
Oh, she understood. She also understood that while the Dom thing totally turned her on, she enjoyed fighting with them way too much to just roll over at a few choice words.
“Or what?” She rocked against her hands, giving herself none of the release she so desperately needed.
“Or I’ll put your over my knee and spank your pretty ass red until you’re dripping all over my fingers, then I won’t let you come. How does that sound?”
It sounded like maybe she might roll over at just a few choice words.
“Stand up.” This time, Ev did as she was told, disentangling herself from her fingers and Lucas’ grip, before coming to stand at the side of the bed. Quinn’s gaze tracked her every move and she felt the heat like a physical caress. It should have been disconcerting, but the three of them had been dancing together for years. Communicating like this, in this new way, with their mouths and bodies, felt nearly as natural as sharing beer and pizza and arguing over what they were going to watch on TV.
“Strip, Evvie, slowly.” Lucas’ voice had an almost lazy quality to it, but she saw the way his jaw pulsed and the taut need in his eyes and she knew he wanted more almost as much as she did.
So she didn’t argue. Instead, she slid her hands down her hips to reach the zipper at the top of one boot then the other, her ass high in the air. Then she kicked the boots off and slowly began to pull the dress down her body until her breasts plumped free, her stomach was bared and fabric pooled at her feet on the floor.
And in the moment, standing before them wearing nothing but her mingling pride and desire, this all felt real. This all felt like she wouldn’t be able to go back. Lucas and Quinn were here, in front of her, looking at her with admiration and desire and affection so clear in their eyes, and Ev’s heart felt a little fuller. Of course this was wonderful. This was them.
“God, you’re so fucking beautiful.” Lucas’ words were harsh and guttural and a little surprised, like he hadn’t meant to say them. And that felt too real, too much, so Ev smiled at him then pushed the unbuttoned shirt off his shoulders and onto the bed.
“You both have three seconds to get undressed and join me on the bed,” she said with a grin. “Or I’ll see if Maddy Hollis and her husbands are looking to experiment tonight.”
That got Quinn off the wall in an instant, with what sounded like a growl.
“Like hell you will,” he said, undressing slowly, his movements still controlled and powerful, despite the obvious thread of jealousy running across his voice. Wasn’t that funny? He’d invited Lucas into their bed, but the idea of sharing her—sharing her, wow—with another man, even as a joke, turned him into something carnal. Of course, with Lucas, it made sense in a way it couldn’t possibly with anyone else.
Then Quinn was standing beside her, gloriously naked, gleaming in the light of the few candles around the room and the soft light from the falling snow outside. But for once, it wasn’t enough just to have him. This time, she needed Lucas too. She shot him a pointed look and unlike Quinn he practically scrambled to get his pants and shoes off, into a ball on the floor.
“So…” She laughed, her confidence faltering for just a second. “How does this…work? Should we play Twister and just start putting our hands places…or—”
“You’re tense,” Quinn said. “Lie down on the bed and let us take care of you, okay?”
She hesitated for only a moment before climbing back up on the bed and turning to lie down with her head facing the vista outside. They moved slowly then, and not knowing when or where they might touch her made Ev’s body tremble with anticipation. Strong hands massaged the backs of her calves, slowly, patiently, working out the kinks she had sustained on the dance floor and right in their shared living room. Those were Lucas’ hands. His were worker’s hands, calloused and hardened. Quinn’s had been once too, but he spent more time in an office now than he did on the streets of Kabul, and his hands had softened just a bit, no longer shaped to fire a gun or limber enough to cover his face from falling debris, though he still did both.
She knew Quinn’s demons well, knew Lucas’ too, just as they knew her deep fears of settling down, of becoming everything her parents had always wanted for her. It wasn’t war or street violence, but Ev’s inner need to be more than another Portuguese-American girl from Newark made her shoulders tense and her teeth grind. It was the knowledge that even if she did just that, exactly the way the storybooks told, she still couldn’t keep her family safe, her friends safe, not really.
“You really have to learn to turn off that oversized brain of yours.” Quinn’s voice now, and he brought his hand
s to her shoulders, strong and expert. He beat back the knots that formed whenever Ev remembered why she refused to settle down, why her fears of becoming just another person who lived just another life were compounded with the knowledge that she could do everything in the world right and bad things would still happen to her.
“He’s not here, Evvie. He doesn’t need to be here.” Quinn, expert at his job, expert at her that he was, always knew when she went back to that place, to that night over twenty-five years ago, when her world had been shattered.
Quinn had been nineteen when he’d left for his first tour of the Middle East. Lucas used to say he first realized East Los Angeles wasn’t paradise when they found a bullet lodged in the frame of the bunk bed he shared with his younger brother and they started sharing the bottom bunk. He’d been eleven when that happened. Ev. Her stories. Her demons. She’d been eight.
Longest amount of time to get over it, then.
But, of course, who got over the expression on their best friend’s face when she stood, shell-shocked, dark-red blood staining the faces of Tinker Bell and Peter Pan on her flannel pajamas? Who could get over their own?
Whoever got over the knowledge that someone had killed their next-door neighbors, while they hid, that this made the fourth family in the neighborhood and eighth in the state? Clearly not her, since she’d gone into a life fighting the kind of people who had robbed Carly of a childhood and Ev of any sense of normal.
“Evvie, look at me.” Ev looked up, or rather, Quinn tilted her chin up with a gentle hand, demanding her attention. “Where are you right now?” She tried to shake her head free, but he held it strong. This wasn’t the first time he’d walked her through these memories.
“I’m here.”
Quinn shook his head. “You’re not here, Ev. Do you want to be here?” Here, as in now, as in Montana as in thirty-five and not the terrified eight-year-old watching through the slit in the bathroom closet as the serial killer later known as Peter Buldark hacked Carly’s parents and older brothers to pieces in the hall.
“Of course I want to be here, Quinn,” she managed. “Sometimes it just comes back.” It, the memories of those nights, of the lineup she had held Carly’s hand to go look at, despite her mother’s protestations, of the trials. It hadn’t come back in months, even years. Why the hell was it returning when she should have been focused on the best fucking night of her life?
She sat up, suddenly feeling a chill that had nothing at all to do with the snowstorm outside or the bareness of her skin. Lucas was still beside her on the bed, and he pulled her into his lap without another word. She let him, let herself rest her head on his shoulders, let herself be sad, let herself give in to the sensations of Quinn’s fingers running up and down her skin, as she remembered.
For just a moment.
But these men, her best friends, they made the memories fade a little, like dust plumes in sun streaks, and after a few deep, steadying breaths, Ev came back into herself, a sudden weight off her shoulders she hadn’t realized she had been carrying around.
“Better, baby?” Lucas asked. He knew the stories of her childhood just as Quinn did. Between the three of them, there weren’t any secrets. Except for the one where she’d spent months wanting to sleep with both of them and now that she had the opportunity, she was rehashing old serial killer cases.
The first serial killer case. For me, at least.
But if she wanted to psychoanalyze, and lord only knew she was good at that, there’d be plenty of opportunities for it later. This whole getting fucked six ways to Sunday thing was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
“I’m okay now,” she said. PTSD, of course. In her line of work, she’d always assumed PTSD where killers were concerned capped at a certain threshold. Apparently, it took a sense of calm and comfort to make her feel the most vulnerable.
“You’re always okay,” Quinn said. “You’re the strongest woman I know.” He yanked his briefs up his legs and Ev frowned.
“Flattery isn’t going to distract me from the fact that you’re putting your clothes back on…” she said, raising one eyebrow. It often happened like that, the memories—sometimes flashbacks, sometimes just memories. She’d come out of the darkness so relieved to see that she’d be giddy for it—which was probably inappropriate, but she’d long since stopped caring about the different ways she coped.
Quinn only shook his head and disappeared into the other room. She could hear him in the kitchen and that comforted her for the moment, so she turned to look at Lucas instead. God, she was still in his arms, muscled, powerful arms, banded with tattoos—an homage to Los Angeles, tangles of thorns around names, each one a niece or nephew, a clock because he never knew how long he had, a cross.
She traced the cross with her fingers. It was simple, blocky and black and ran across the sinew of his upper arm.
“When was the last time you went to church?” she asked, with no idea where the question had come from. Lucas raised a brow.
“Probably ten years ago,” he said. “For one of the kids, I’m sure.”
She tilted her head up to look at him and, even now, with the tension her memories had stirred, Lucas was still one of the most beautiful men she had ever seen. He played at the hard-ass just like she did, but his eyes were stained glass of deep browns and golds and his hair was soft under her fingers, almost as soft as the skin of his chest. For scientific purposes, she ran her hand down his abdomen, enjoying the way his muscles tensed under her touch.
“Evvie,” he said, his voice almost a question. Good, it was satisfying to know she could make this man lose his steady grip on the world around him. “What are you doing?” She pulled back, but he grasped her wrist and held her there. “I didn’t say to stop. I just asked what you’re doing.”
“I like touching you,” she said. The words sounded strange because they didn’t sound strange, because she did like touching him and because for the first time since the dangerous desire had overtaken her, Ev was allowed to do just that. The problem was that she feared her own liking it far too much.
Problems are for the morning. This is now and it’s the only damn chance I’ll get.
“You can touch him, Evs.” She turned to see Quinn leaning against the doorframe. He was a big man and he took up the air in the room by just standing there, dark muscles and dangerous smile. A bottle of dark whiskey dangled from his fingers. “That’s why he’s here, for you to touch him.”
Lucas’ cock twitched against her leg and that familiar glow invaded her senses all over again, riding up her spine and making her feel heady and dizzy at the thought. Nothing was going to interrupt them now. No way. She was going to enjoy them to the freaking fullest.
“Can I have that?” she asked Quinn, indicating with her chin. His smile was so wicked her pussy wept hot and needy. Fuck, she’d just come about fifteen times in a row and if she didn’t get one or both of them inside her in the next five minutes she might spontaneously combust.
“The whiskey?” he asked. “Or?” His cock bulged, hot and heavy behind those navy briefs, and Ev’s mouth actually fucking watered.
“Both, now,” she said. “Drop the briefs and come here.”
Quinn must have been as surprised as she was by the commanding tone, because he actually did what she asked him to and set the whiskey on the bedside table, then he dropped his drawers and joined them on the sprawling bed.
“Lie down,” she commanded him. Commanded. Ooh, this is nice. I like commanding sexy alpha men to do my bidding.
She climbed off Lucas’ lap to grab the bottle of whiskey, and he moved with her, positioning her body so she was resting on her hands and knees. He then began a slow assault of kisses against her inner thigh. Ev opened the whiskey and splashed some across Quinn’s bare chest. She took a moment to simply enjoy the view, the way the gold liquid contrasted with his dark skin, how his abs constricted when she stroked a hand down his centerline. Then she leaned down and licked, capturing the spicy drink
on her tongue as it mingled with Quinn, all Quinn, stark, controlled masculinity, the softness he rarely shared, the love deeply cared for. Quinn Langston was a man of many emotions and he had opened himself to her to share them all.
She put the warmth of her love for him into every lick and suck and taste of his contracting muscles, of his peaked nipples, straining under her touch, of the curses spilling from those kiss-swollen lips.
Behind her, Lucas teased in the same slow and demanding way. He ran his mouth up and down her thighs, never touching her where she most needed to be touched, never giving her the pressure she so desperately ached for. Until finally, finally, he pushed her legs apart, forcing her to spread her pussy wide to him, still slick and glistening with her last release and the building need to reach her pleasure again.
“So fucking pretty,” he murmured, his gaze hot, while Quinn watched her with those knowing eyes, his control threadbare and hazed over with lust. “I could eat your pussy every morning, Evvie, and it wouldn’t be enough for me.” He swooped down and kissed her swiftly, far too swiftly for the contact she really needed. “So sweet.” He plunged a finger deep inside her. “And so fucking tight. I can’t wait to see the way you take my cock, baby.”
Ev tried to ignore him, she really did. Instead, she traced more whiskey kisses up and down Quinn’s hard, muscled chest, pausing to nip his neck, which made his cock twitch against her belly. She wanted that cock, wanted to feel both of them inside her.
‘Have you ever taken a cock in your ass, sweetheart?’
God, just the once and, though it hadn’t been horrible, she hadn’t been able to see what the big deal was. But now, with Quinn below her and Lucas above her, she really, really wanted to find out.
“Lucas.” His name came out a groan, torn from the depths of her throat. She had tasted him before, teased him with her tongue and mouth and desperate kisses, but she wanted to feel him inside her, wanted to know the way his cock stretched and filled her pussy, and she didn’t want to wait for it.