Random Acts of Fantasy (Random Series #3, Invitation to Eden)

by Julia Kent

  And when the doctor walked in, I realized Suzy was gone.

  Uh-oh. “She escaped?” I sputtered, looking at Big.

  He frowned, clearly offended by the mere idea. “Of course not. Ms. Bergen has been taken to be held in a secure location.”

  “Say that in plain English,” I snapped at him. One eyebrow lifted but he said nothing.

  “Ms. Jennings, I am Doctor Ashwari,” the nice, white-jacketed woman said to me, placing an emergency kit on the bed next to me. “I am so sorry to hear of your injuries. Can you tell me what happened?” Her long, dark hair was braided in a beautiful plait streaked with grey and white. Kind, motherly eyes met mine. Her suit under the white coat was a lovely, light grey.

  You would think I was getting my tetanus shot updated, and not being tended to on a sex resort where I’d just been mistaken for a man with my penis taped up my ass.

  I held up one finger to Dr. Ashwari and finished with Big. “She didn’t get away?”

  A conspirator’s smile spread his scary features into a warm, teddy-bear look. “Oh, no, Ms. Jennings. Ms. Bergen will get exactly what she has coming to her.”

  That made all my muscles relax, including the ones strained in my earlier ordeal. Now I could look at the doctor and catalog my injuries, starting with my ankle.

  “Can you hurry up?” I asked as I yawned wide, my hand so heavy I couldn’t cover my mouth. “I have to manage the band.” The pillow felt so good. Soft and sweet, like Trevor’s inner thigh.

  “You’ve had a tremendous shock, Ms. Jennings. I’m quite certain that the resort staff can attend to the needs of the band,” she said, so soothing. My body went limp. Then tense.

  “No! When I set up earlier today there was a problem with,” – yawn – “one of the....” What was the word? I forgot.

  “Mmmm,” was all Dr. Ashwari said, taping some kind of salve-covered bandage to my ankle. She moved on to my wrists and damn if that pillow didn’t get even more comfortable, like resting between Joe and Trevor’s inner thighs.

  “The push of adrenaline is fading now, Ms. Jennings, and sleep is your best friend,” the doctor said in a voice like one of those new-age tapes my boss’s boyfriend, Mike, sometimes listened to in the office when he was there.

  “Can’t sleep,” I said, then yawned. “But when do they start?”

  “Forty minutes.”

  “I can take a nap...” And I did. For the next three hours.

  Damn it.

  The next thing I knew, Trevor was leaning over me on the bed as I opened my eyes. He smelled like sweat and excitement and soap, the hair around the edges of his face ringed with wetness, his body pumped and primed.

  Yet tender.

  “What?” I sat up, confused. Some dream about a chipmunk and a princess having sex gummed up my mind, followed by a twenty-one penis ejaculation salute. “Trevor – huh? Oh, is it time for the concert?” I was still in my shimmery green dress and one ankle had a huge bandage on it. I looked like a mermaid with a gashed fin.

  His eyes. So bright and warm as he leaned down and kissed my forehead gently, his hand running down my cheek and over my hair. “No, Darla. The concert’s over.”

  I sat up like a shot. “Over?” I screamed. “OVER?” Sliding past him, I stood, my ankle turning in. Limping toward the door, a stream of invective that would make an eighteenth century Scotsman blush on a pirate ship poured out of my mouth.

  “Darla,” Trevor said, his voice filled with mirth. “It really is over.”

  I was at the door, my hand on the knob, as I turned back and looked at him.

  Really looked at him.

  He was taking me in, too. Call it sleepiness, call it post-traumatic brain, call it whatever the fuck you want to call it, but my ability to perceive anything changed in those seconds as our eyes just looked each other over. In slow motion, Trevor sauntered across the space that separated us, my mind’s eye etching him in there forever. The torn jeans. The sweaty cotton t-shirt that clung to the ridges of muscle in his shoulders. The look of love in his eyes.

  Now, Trevor had plenty of looks he’d given me over the months we’d been together, and I could figure most of them out. This one, though...this one was different.

  He reached me and clicked the door back shut. Taking both of my hands in his, he looked down at me, head tilted. Those eyes glittered in the low light like diamonds, and my heart thudded, heavy and out of beat, fluttering and thumping like it was confused.

  I swallowed. Something big was about to happen, and it didn’t involve handcuffs or taping a penis under anyone’s taint.

  “I love you,” he said, eyes burning with a physical representation of his words. “I love you more than I can show you, and I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you tonight.” His eyebrows went low with a frown, a wince, a tightening of his hands in mine.

  “Darla, if something had happened,” he said, voice choking as emotion overtook him. His head dipped down and our skin touched. Each breath I took felt like his essence was mingling with my own, making another kind of love.

  “You were great. Both of you,” I murmured, the words too little. Too contained to express what I really felt as my skin flowered with pure joy. My heart took flight and I stood on tiptoe, falling half over when my ankle started screaming. His hands, sure and strong, were about my waist in seconds, lifting me up.

  I felt shy. Awkward. Alive and alight because his words...oh, those words.

  “I love you too, Trevor.” I looked up and brushed my lips against his jaw. “I think I always have. I just hadn’t met you until seven months ago. But the love’s been there for far longer.”

  The kiss he gave me next wasn’t about passion. Not lust. Nor want. It was authentic and timeless, a meeting of the deepest part of me and the deepest part of him. A reaching out to intertwine and unfurl. To mingle and mix. To be a part of him and allow a part of him in me, so that something bigger than each of us, separate, could exist.

  Speaking of which – Joe appeared just then as the door opened of its own accord and I saw the bald heads of Big and Burly bookending him in the doorway. He was in the middle of a conversation with Burly and cut off in mid-word, taking me and Trevor in with eyes filled with more emotion to add to our giant ball of love.

  Love was in the air, corny as that sounds.

  You live in a relationship, no matter how unconventional, and you know you’re wanted. Needed. Cared about and part of the flow. But it’s different when the word “love” enters into it all, because that’s a word with power. Authority. Dignity. People like Joe and Trevor and me don’t make promises we won’t keep, and we don’t say I love you like it’s the emotional equivalent of How’s it going?

  This meant something. Big.

  I opened my arms and let go of Trevor, turning toward Joe. His embrace was hot and damp, his body trembling from the pounding bliss of performing.

  “The concert went well,” I said into his smiling face.

  “The concert was fucking amazing!” he said. “Best job the band has ever done! You should have seen how crazy the audience went when Trevor played your song.”

  The look on my face must have been pretty grim, because they both went from stoked to alarmed in less than a second.

  “Nice job, Asshole,” Trevor said, punching Joe’s shoulder. “Way to make her feel even worse.”

  “No! No! I didn’t mean...shit...” Joe muttered, rubbing his shoulder.

  “It’s okay. I’ll see it on video, right?”

  Joe lit up. “Yeah! The tech said they were videoing it. Only the stage, only us. No audience members.”

  While I was sad I missed the live performance, it wasn’t like it was my fault. The night got away from me.

  Hah. Understatement.

  “Since I missed the concert, but got a nice little nap, and because you two look like you just drank nineteen shots of espresso, want to go for a walk on the shore?” I headed out the door, forgetting about Big and Burly.

  Trevor and
Joe were right behind me when I came to a halt.

  “Ms. Jennings? You feeling better now?” asked Big.

  “Yes, thanks,” I said, heading down the hall to my own room. All four men followed me. If we’d had one of those Cleopatra carriage things I could have traveled in style. Instead, I just limped.

  “Mr. Connor, I’ve been asked to give you this,” Burly said, handing Trevor a business card. I squinted to read it.

  “Who’s Gabriel Dare?” I asked.

  Trevor shrugged. “Don’t know him.” He gave Burly a questioning look.

  Big and Burly both raised their eyebrows and gave mysterious looks. “He owns a chain of luxury clubs. Elite?” His voice implied we should have heard of them.

  All three of us shook our heads.

  “Nope,” I said as Trevor fingered the card. A handwritten phone number on the back made my heart pick up speed. That always meant something good, unless it was some skanky ho groupie trying to get her hole stuffed by one of my men after a concert.

  From a guy who owned nightclubs? That could mean a gig.

  “You will,” Burly assured us. He pushed his chin forward toward the card. “That’s one number not to lose.” Trevor pocketed the card and gave Joe a curious look as we walked away.

  “Wait.” I stopped and turned back to Big. “What happened to Suzy?”

  “She’s...” he frowned, “being taken care of.”

  “Does someone need a statement from me?”

  “It’s more complex than that, Ma’am.”

  “Miss. I ain’t no ‘Ma’am,’” I huffed.

  “Miss Jennings.” That made him smile. “I am not at liberty to discuss what happens to Ms. Bergen. However, hypothetically,” he said, “The master of the island may give her a choice. Prosecution in Florida or a position, here on the island.”

  “A position? As what? A waterboarder?” I snapped.

  “Close. A dominatrix,” Big whispered.

  “She’d be good at that,” Joe and I muttered at the same time. He reached for my hand and squeezed it. I continued the walk to our room and Big and Burly stood outside as we entered.

  Trevor said something to them while Joe escorted me in. Then Trevor came in as I changed into more casual clothes. “They said they’re on orders to follow Darla, but they’ll keep a decent distance.”

  “I just love a romantic walk on the beach with four men,” I said sarcastically.

  “It is a sex resort,” Joe cracked.

  Trevor’s eyes widened and he glared at Joe. “Dude. Look what she’s just been through. Don’t make jokes like that.”

  “I am not made of lead crystal, Trevor,” I barked. “You don’t have to act like I’m all delicate suddenly just because...because....” My voice faltered. I wasn’t destroyed. Not devastated. Freaked out, sure. But mostly I was exhausted, in that internal way that made me feel like my Darla compass was off, a magnetic field screwing me out of being able to find true North easily.

  A normal woman would have wanted time to recover, space to heal and all that psychodramatic bullshit. But normal women don’t get chained to beds by their boyfriend’s ex-fiancee and get mistaken for a chick with a dick at a sex resort.

  What I wanted wasn’t privacy, delicacy, or isolation.

  I wanted to make sure Suzy didn’t win. If I let what she did to me – and make no mistake here, for she did that to me. Not Gavin or David. They were hapless, like me – just thought they were part of a game where everyone went in willing and eager. No one with a good heart ever thinks that someone else in a game is an evil puppetmaster until the manipulation is revealed.

  And when you realize you’re the target of a malevolent presence who views people as tools for their elaborate game, and who lacks simple humanity, you can’t let them win.

  Simple principle.

  Love conquers all, but evil can really mindfuck you in the meantime.

  Joe’s arm slipped around my waist. He slung a backpack on his shoulder. “Let’s go,” he said.

  “What’s that?” Trevor asked, looking at me like he wanted to say something more, but his words were for Joe.

  “Just something we might need on our walk,” Joe said. We were silent the entire way down to the beach, the night breeze balmy. No bugs. There wasn’t a single bug in the air, the moon nice and smiling in the sky, like an admiring fan.

  Just then, Joe stopped, the moonlight haloing his head. He looked at me and said, “I’m sorry, Darla,” he added, his hand reaching for mine and squeezing. “For making you feel bad with that reporter mess. That’s all me. Not you. I should never have treated you like that.”

  I smiled, the words heard, acknowledged, appreciated and definitely felt. “Thank you.” He tucked me under his arm and I pressed my spinning head against his shoulder.

  In the shadowed night sky, we three walked hand in hand on the beach. We all wore flip flops and kicked them off, the sand digging between my toes, reminding me I was alive. Not that I didn’t know, the press of both men’s palms into mine kind of clueing me in.

  But I needed something more.

  “Since we’re here at a place where fantasies come true in whatever form you seem to need them to, you know there’s one thing I’ve always wanted,” I said, suddenly shy. On our last night here, after the guys performed and were exhausted, I felt like it was selfish, and yet I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to connect with them both.

  A kind of reclamation.

  Trevor’s hand slid up the side of my chest, caressing my breast. He snuggled in closer. “Yeah? Go ahead. Tell us.” Joe’s palm slid up my thigh. This felt so natural.

  And I knew they’d love what I was about to say.

  “You know how we...take turns?”

  They nodded, both shifting slightly. I knew damn well they were rock hard, and so was my clit. The near-miss with Suzy had us all in a heightened state of...something. And that translated into one thing only when you’re twenty-three, away from home, and in a threesome relationship.

  Blindingly hot sex.

  I needed to get over what had just happened, to tuck it away (pun firmly not intended) and to wash it all off with the scent and taste of Trevor and Joe. Suzy couldn’t have one drop of power over me. Not one tiny lick. The only way to exorcize Demon Suzy seemed to be to take exactly what she wanted – my happiness – and reinforce it.

  To show that love always wins. Always.

  We took some more steps along the beach, my hands in theirs, with me between them. A strong, warm breeze swept my hair off my face, and I swear I could feel the wind between my legs, as if it sought out the newly hairless skin. Simone’s spa treatments seemed worlds away now, and yet I remembered, as a slow simmer built inside, that more than one landscape had changed today.

  The world seemed sexually charged. I stopped and kissed Joe, his mouth slanting against mine and burning with need and hunger. Then Trevor, whose kiss was – unimaginably – even more intense.

  “I want you both,” I whispered.

  “You have us both,”Trevor said immediately. Joe elbowed him hard in the ribs. “Oh. OH!” Trevor said, eyes blazing. “You want us...both.”

  We hadn’t done that yet. DP. Double penetration. Double entry. Doublemint fun. Nope. Not yet. No sir. I’d been too scared at first, and even though both guys (especially Joe) had encouraged me, I’d drawn a line and they’d respected it. I’d respected my own hesitation.

  Until now.

  Joe’s eyes went hooded and dark, his voice husky with emotion. “Here? Now?” He wasn’t asking the surface question, which was easy enough to answer. Trevor’s questioning eyes had a little too much tenderness in them, too. This was sweet and all, but if the two of them gave me these careful, worried looks for much longer I was going to run through the penis and vulva fountain in the main lobby and give myself a bath in it.

  I looked around. No one was here. “It is a clothing optional beach,” I said, peeling off my clothes faster than I knew I could. Their looks of wor
ry and doubt faded as more of my skin hit the sea air. They joined me, all pretense of going slow abandoned with the intensity of what we three clearly felt.

  “Besides,” I added, “they waxed my hole.” A light breeze came around just about then, reminding me. I puckered up tight. “Get in now while it’s smooth, because I am never submitting to that kind of masochism again.”

  Both guys just kind of looked at me like they didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I probably mirrored their faces. The night was balmy and perfect, but my big ol’ mouth couldn’t shut up, could it? Ran on and on like a malfunctioned BP oil rig, spewing mindlessly.

  “What about lube?” Trevor whispered. Ever pragmatic.

  “Got it,” Joe said, rummaging for his wallet in his discarded pants.

  “You carry lube in your pants?” Trevor’s voice was filled with awe.

  Joe produced three packets. Two were condoms and one was...hot damn.

  “You were a Boy Scout, weren’t you?” I marveled. “Always prepared.”

  “Eagle Scout. Order of the Arrow.” Then he grabbed the backpack, unzipped a compartment, and unfurled a beach blanket, the kind with waterproofing on one side and thick flannel on the other. He spread it neatly and gestured for me lay down. I didn’t need to be asked twice.

  “C’mere,” I whispered, his mouth hot on mine, muscled legs pressing into my own, with Trevor stretched out on the sand next to me, making a pillow from our clothes. Joe pulled back and I turned to Trevor, who rested on his elbows and then reached up to pull me into a straddle over him. It was like climbing a throne.

  And I was their queen.

  Oh, the delicious flow of my wet, smooth inner thighs and lips against Trevor’s hips. Joe’s hands touched me everywhere, cataloguing me with a whisper touch that made me feel wanted and cherished, desired and needed.

  It was an expression of love.

  The waves behind us crashed against the shore, lapping with the sound of muffled kisses. Nature was our bedroom, our playroom, our friend and foe, giving us a moon that was a silent guard, a beaming, peaceful presence.

  Salty air filled my lungs as my men touched me with whispers and sighs, with fingers hot and promising, brushing lips against my skin that catalogued the ways they loved me. Who would have guessed that silly old me would see so much change in just seven months? Christmas was coming soon, with its own set of firsts and wonders. Every week brought a fresh challenge as we worked to find our own path, the three of us.