by Holley Trent
“I thought you publicity types were supposed to be innovative thinkers, but apparently, it’s only obvious to me that I have a cock that’s being ignored.”
Like so often with Bruce, she couldn’t tell if she was supposed to laugh or hop to attention, so she did both. “What would you like me to do with it?”
He groaned and put his head back on Raleigh’s shoulder. “I don’t know. Who’s conducting this thing, anyway?”
“Seemed like you were,” Raleigh said. Tugging his briefs down, he sat on the edge of the bed and pulled Bruce along with him. “Here we are, all naked, more or less, and thoroughly unprepared.”
“I’m a so-called rock star. I’m never unprepared to fuck,” Bruce said, squirming atop Raleigh’s lap. “There are condoms in my wallet and lube in my guitar case.”
“Your guitar case is in my car,” Raleigh said drolly.
“So it is.”
Springing to his feet, Bruce snatched the keys off the dresser and gently unwound the afghan from around Everley. He wrapped it around his waist and ran into the storm.
Jarred, and more than a little unmoored, she met Raleigh’s gaze.
Tell me this is all right. Please.
He raised both eyebrows as though her thoughts had been conveyed from her brain to his via psychic megaphone.
“Thank you for helping with my father, by the way.”
“I’d do it again and again if you need me to, Everley. Let me be the villain. I don’t care.”
“I hope I can be more like you one day.”
“You don’t need to be like me if you have me. Do you?”
“Yes. I do.”
It’s all right.
Had things been different and if she hadn’t been brought up to suppress her enthusiasm, she might have bounced to him. Grabbed him. Kissed him too much, like Bruce might have.
But maybe one day she’d shake that off just like the career she hadn’t wanted. She could be a hundred percent honest in words and acts, and she’d be so glad.
Raleigh’s SUV bleated its keyless entry beep.
He expelled a scoff laced with disbelief. “I’m apparently in love with someone who stores personal lubricant in his guitar case,” he murmured.
“Yeah. Same.”
And I love you, too, she thought, too afraid to say the words because love wasn’t supposed to work that way. People assumed there was a finite amount, but that wasn’t true. It was multipliable and indivisible.
The heart made room.
“Must be interesting getting that through TSA screening,” he mused.
“I doubt he’d care if they found it.”
“Probably doesn’t. I bet he’d be a heap of fun to travel with.”
“Well, the trip certainly wouldn’t be boring. He’ll never be boring.”
“And that’s what you want?” Raleigh leaned back on his forearms, unabashedly nude, gaze soft.
“I want a lot of things, Raleigh.” She could read between the lines. “I want too many things.”
“Is that so?”
“Offer still stands if you want to be my boyfriend.” She tilted her head toward the door Bruce had sprinted out of. “I won’t mind if you already have one. I’m a cheap date. I like hot dogs and will eat dodgy chicken lo mein.”
“Just so you understand where I’m coming from, I can’t compete against him, Everley. He’s always going to be more interesting, more exciting.”
“He’s exciting. I’ll grant him that, and I love that about him, but he wasn’t first. He wasn’t the one I wanted to pay attention to me for so many years. He wasn’t the one I sought validation from.”
Raleigh pointed to himself, scowling. “Validation from me?”
“Of course.”
“What the hell for?”
“Because you knew what you wanted to do and you were doing it. Do you know how sexy that is?”
He looked thoroughly taken aback. “Apparently not.”
“Well, it is.”
“You’re ridiculous. You know that?”
Everley gestured to herself, sitting naked on a cold, hard chair by a semi-ajar cabin door, and nodded fervently. “I so am, but I’m owning it.”
“We’ll get along just fine then.”
“Even if you love him more?”
“Who said that I did?”
Before she could kick her trembling brain back into service and respond, Bruce lumbered in with his guitar case, closed the door, and locked it.
“Couldn’t decide,” he said. “Too many options. Not sure if I’m in the mood for the kind that warms with friction or the super slippery kind.”
“How much lube do you carry around with you?” Raleigh asked, obviously appalled.
“Just four tubes. Been in there for ages. Don’t worry. I haven’t been slutting myself all over the place or anything. I can’t get hard for just anyone, you know?” He opened the case and tossed a little bottle to Raleigh. “That one. I decided.”
Raleigh held the purple tube up to Everley. “It’s called ‘Bone Straight.’”
Everley pressed her lips together tightly and shook her head. She wouldn’t touch that one with a ten-foot pole.
A condom was applied. Ridiculously named lubricant slipped on. Bruce settled slowly on Raleigh, face to the ceiling, eyes closed. “Fuck.”
“Tell me what you want,” Raleigh said.
“E-everley. Closer.”
Everley peeled herself off the chair and reclaimed the scratchy afghan. She draped it around her shoulders as she approached the edge of the bed.
“Hand right there. This won’t take long. So strung out.”
She gripped his shaft the way he guided her to and massaged up and down, trying to stay out of the way, but that was difficult. Between two pairs of legs that were twitching from excess energy and pleasure.
She closed her eyes and devoured the sounds they made—Raleigh’s grunts of effort as he thrust upward. Bruce’s whines of pleasure as he received Raleigh’s cock.
Bruce tightened her fingers around him and had her squeeze tighter and tug faster, but then there was another hand shooing hers away.
She opened her eyes as they shifted, Raleigh with some effort, pulling out. Pressing a condom into Everley’s hand.
Oh.
Bruce’s legs were shaking even faster as Everley rolled down the latex on him and Raleigh removed his own. “Christ, don’t fuckin’ edge me like that. Don’t like it.”
“Noted.” Raleigh laid a kiss on his cheek and guided him to his back, half laying on Raleigh’s thigh. “I’ll remember next time. Can’t leave Everley out.”
“I know. Come here, Ev.” Bruce gestured for her to join them, or join with him. It didn’t matter which. She was going to do it.
She’d never been fond of having an audience before, but with those two, she didn’t really mind.
“There you go, love,” he whispered as she straddled his thighs. “Right on down.”
She usually closed her eyes after she’d climbed on because the sensations overwhelmed, but she wanted to sear the view into her memory. Bruce’s look of indolent satisfaction as his hands steered her hips. Raleigh’s knowing smirk as he threaded his fingers through Bruce’s thick hair and watched the place where she and Bruce connected.
She could get used to that view of two.
Finally, she did close her eyes because Bruce had found a pocket of energy to tap into. He met every one of her punishing squeezes with a thrust—a sort of erotic call and response made fortissimo by the injection of Raleigh’s hand. His fingertips skated around her distended nipples, pinched and tugged until she crested with a shout.
“Thank fuck,” Bruce muttered. He slammed her down on him as far as she could go. Once. Twice. Again, and then he lifted her. A reflex, perhaps. He held
her hovering over his cock.
Her arms strained to hold her weight over him, and she wondered why she even bothered.
She collapsed on him and Raleigh, by extension, and they lay there, breathing, recovering, touching.
“That’s how it should be,” Bruce said several drowsy minutes later. “That’s how it should always be.”
Everley couldn’t have agreed more.
Epilogue
“You drive like my nan.” Bruce didn’t care if he looked petulant. He folded his arms over his chest and tapped his foot against Stacia’s porch floor with impatience.
Raleigh gave him a bored look and reached for the storm door handle. “Your nan drove through the night at seventy-five miles per hour on one of the busiest roads in the country?”
Stacia’s front door was evidently unlocked. Raleigh pushed it in and guided Bruce inside.
“I take it back,” Bruce said. “Nan would have driven faster, but she would have needed to avail herself of the facilities every forty-five minutes or so. Tiny bladder. Could never get anywhere on time.”
“Coming from a man who hasn’t driven a mile since he’s left Scotland, I hardly feel the urge to change my habits.”
“I could drive here.”
Stacia walked past the front door, handed coffee to both of them, and retreated back from where she’d come, snickering.
Bruce had gotten used to it. For whatever reason, Stacia’s insults rarely landed very harshly.
“So do it,” Raleigh said.
“I will,” Bruce murmured with his lips against his coffee mug.
“No you won’t.”
Bruce shrugged and headed toward the kitchen. He’d only been to Stacia’s house once before—the weekend of a book release back in late winter—but he thought he remembered the layout.
And he was following the guidance his nose gave him. He smelled sausage and eggs. He’d been too wired to eat for a day, so he needed hot food to immediately get in his belly.
Plus, Everley’s voice was in there. He’d follow that voice anywhere.
“You’re right, I won’t. All that lane changing and merging into traffic stresses me out.” Bruce crossed the threshold, did a rapid scan of the room, and found Everley at the stove stirring something in a big pot.
“I was wondering when you two would show up.”
Somehow, he managed to enfold her into a crushing hug without spilling his coffee. His Ev. He’d missed her. He didn’t like how she was always gone, but there was nothing to do for it. Things would sort out eventually. “Raleigh couldn’t leave the office until eight, and then he hadn’t packed anything. Took him two hours.”
Raleigh sidled up to the stove, assessed the knots Bruce and Everley had wound themselves into, and opted to just put his arms around both.
That suited Bruce fine, anyway.
“Your father is a raging jackass,” Raleigh said. He planted a kiss on the top of Everley’s head, looked in the pot, shrugged, and then turned to the room. “Hey, Adrien. Hey, Dara.”
Oh.
Sheepishly, Bruce turned and waved to the couple. He’d known there were bodies in the room beyond Stacia’s, but his mind had been on a singular track and he’d been craving Everley.
She spent most of her week working with Lisa and went into the city for long weekends, or else Raleigh and Bruce would go to her. It wasn’t enough, but after being miserable for so long, they all thought it was crucial that Everley like her work.
She did.
They’d manage.
According to Raleigh, there wasn’t anything unusual about her commuting situation, but usually it was men doing all the back-and-forth.
“What did my father do?” Everley asked, groaning. She resumed her stirring.
Bruce couldn’t discern what was in the pot. It looked like some kind of porridge, but he wasn’t usually up in time for breakfast unless he had a meeting. Raleigh shook him out of bed for those.
“You shouldn’t have told him we were still dating.”
“I had to. That was the only way I could get him off my ass. True love would be the only reason he’d accept for me leaving the company. Even he knows how sketchy our relationship would look if I were still there.”
“Yes, well, now he’s holding out hope that you’ll return some day. He keeps inviting me to lunch. I keep refusing.”
“Isn’t that risky?” Dara asked, but immediately waved off the query. “Oh. Never mind. I forgot for a moment that you were attached to Stacia. No one in their right mind would disrupt that partnership.”
“I’m a model employee.” Raleigh took a slow sip of hot coffee. “Everyone knows it. I’m not getting myself tangled up with her father any more than I have to. Part of the reason I got out of the office so late last night was because Joey called an all-hands PR meeting about the Outward Reaction book. Needed to get promo kits out. I was up to my elbows in packing peanuts and signed swag, and in rolls Shannon. Because I’m an asshole of the same par, I made eye contact with him. I guess he took that as a challenge.”
Everley groaned and lifted the pot off the burner. “Please don’t have a pissing contest with my father.”
“Too late.”
“Raleigh.”
“He started it.” Unchastened, Raleigh took another sip. “He said your mother was expecting you home for Easter.”
Everley’s brows darted up and she scoffed loudly. “What? My mother doesn’t do Easter at home. She goes to her cousins’ and I imagine that’s where she is now.”
“Yes, sweetheart, I know that, and suffice it to say that he now knows that I know that. I was perfectly calm until he said something about you living beneath yourself. I can’t be responsible for what I said after that.”
“Oh, hell,” Stacia murmured. “What’d you say?”
“When I say I can’t be responsible, I mean I can’t remember. I kept on taping up a box as though he hadn’t just subtly offended me. Whatever I said in response must have been rather acid because I looked up to see his face turning red and him storming off. Then Joey trundled over to lecture the shit out of me about respectability and all that bullshit, as though he really cares.”
“He has to go through the motions,” Adrien said.
“Exactly. He didn’t want to be there any more than I did, but there we were. Being team players and such.”
“I’m sure the band will make it up to you once the book starts hitting lists,” Bruce said. He did feel a little bad about Raleigh getting roped into the project, but at the same time, he was pleased they could commiserate about it. Reviewers had already gotten their hands on it and there were extracts flying about with details of Bruce’s retelling of how Outward Reaction originated. Bruce was getting lots of nasty feedback from the band, as they hadn’t seen those sections before the book went to print. They hadn’t seen the full documentary, either, until the recent screening. They hadn’t liked that, either.
In spite of how uncomfortable the attention made him, Bruce was glad the mystery had been defused and he did his small part in breaking the stigma of atypicality. Even his parents had accepted that it was for the best.
Arnold thought that Bruce could very well turn out to be some kid’s hero one day, and Bruce thought that was all right.
“Last money they’ll get out of you, right?” Adrien asked.
“If I have my say, yes. Thank you for having your agent send over that referral, by the way. I hate having to interview people.”
“Hey. I get it. I hope your new management is a better fit for you, though. I learned that lesson early on—the first person to offer isn’t always the best person to represent you, or the one who’ll grow the best with you.”
“My last one very nearly talked me into giving him a second chance. I thought he was sounding reasonable. However, Raleigh has ears like a wolfhound, took
the phone from me, and hung up on him.”
Stacia grinned. “He hangs up on people for me, too.”
“If I ever decide to leave book publicity behind, I’m glad to know I’ll have a fallback job as a call ender,” Raleigh said. “I refined my skills hanging up on my father. That’s why I still have a landline phone—so I can have the satisfaction of hearing the plastic slam.”
“We envy you and Adrien for your families,” Everley said on a dramatic sigh to Stacia. “They’re so lovely.”
“And the rest of us do the best we can,” Dara said softly. “We make our own sort of families. I don’t feel sorry for myself anymore.”
Bruce certainly didn’t, either. He didn’t expect an overnight miracle with his relatives and would probably always hold some grudges, but at least they were trying in small ways, and they understood he couldn’t be fixed and that he didn’t actually need to be.
“What’s in the pot?” Raleigh asked Everley.
She had a big ladle and a smile on her face. “Grits.”
Raleigh scrunched his nose. “What?”
“Grits. Stacia said you once stated you either needed a husband, a wife, or a decent bowl of grits. As luck would have it, you’re probably not going to get either of those first two things, but I can offer you silky grits.”
“You told her that?” There might have been annoyance laced through Raleigh’s tone, but the telltale start of a grin twitched at the corner of his mouth.
Stacia shrugged. “If you’d gotten here sooner, maybe I wouldn’t have. Expect me to entertain your guests and I’m going to run my mouth.”
“Fair.” He took the bowl Everley offered and a spoon and dug in.
Bruce had no idea what a grit was or why anyone would want to eat something so unfortunately named, but he took a bowl of whatever they were, too, and sat next to Raleigh at the island.
He looked around, pleased at the people he’d collected, who he could count on to listen even if they didn’t understand. He hadn’t understood how gratifying that was until he’d gotten it back.
Everley squeezed in between the two of them and draped her arms around their necks. “So?”
“Not a single lump,” Raleigh said brightly.