Crosstown Crush

by Cara McKenna

  Caught up in the thought, she drained her glass more quickly than she’d intended. Such worries had no place in her head tonight, though. Why spend every decadent bite of a slice of cheesecake worrying about one’s hips?

  “You seem a little…” Bern trailed off, but his expression said he sensed her tension as plainly as he could taste the wine.

  Her lips were ready to spew forth her insecurities, but she held them back. He’s your lover and your guest, not your husband. Not even your boyfriend. Zip it, and remember who this man is to you.

  “You said you weren’t nervous,” he teased.

  “I’m not. Just wound up, what with all the new stuff we get to do tonight.”

  His expression brightened, only to darken as he smiled. He took a step closer, leaning on the counter and staring down at her, looking tall and hungry and devious. She thought he was going to have them toast yet again, but he merely brought the back of his hand to hers, rubbing their knuckles together. A funny bit of contact, familiar and affectionate. Sam swallowed a much-needed breath while Bern finished his wine.

  When he spoke, it was scarcely more than a whisper, hot words falling from his tongue to heat her skin. “I wanted to ask you about something.”

  “Anything.”

  “When I leave here… like, every time I’ve ever left after we hang out…”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “I’m already hard again before I’m halfway home.”

  Oh, she liked where this was going. “Okay.”

  “I’m just saying, if you guys ever wanted round two, all you have to do is ask.”

  “That’s very impressive.”

  “You deserve as much credit for it as me,” he said. “I’ve been a sort of one-and-done kind of guy, since I hit my thirties. Until you.”

  She glowed like a hearth. “It’d be a shame to waste it, then.”

  “But I wanted to ask, in case, I dunno… I’d be lingering too long.”

  “I’d be more worried that you’d be weirded out after you came. You know, like sobered up and maybe unnerved by my husband being there.”

  “Hadn’t given it a second thought.” He smiled again, the gesture different from any Sam had seen him wear before. Not shy – sheepish maybe, happy-guilty. “I like that he’s there,” he added.

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever understand what he gets out of me being with you, but I get an audience, you know? It’s like, I get your body, and let’s be honest, we’re pretty good at fucking each other.”

  She blushed. “Hear, hear.”

  “But him being there… I dunno. It takes everything and makes it five times hotter. No offense.”

  “No, not at all. That’s a lot like what he said to me, after the first night you and I messed around. Like the fantasy had always gotten him hot, but seeing us actually together, it was like cranking the volume way up.”

  He leaned in close, making Sam feel pleasantly small. “You want to get things started, maybe?”

  She rubbed his sides then took a step back, nodding, tugging at the hem of his shirt to tell him to follow. She led him down the hall and upstairs. By the time they reached the bedroom threshold, the lead had changed, Bern now guiding her backward by the shoulders, plopping her onto the mattress with a gentle push. His attention flashed to the side, just for a moment – to the camera on its stand. Sam watched his throat work as he swallowed, and smiled to herself.

  “Would you mind if I taped us?” she asked him coyly, as though she couldn’t guess. “Give me something to remember you by, the next time your job steals you away.”

  “He could find it,” Bern warned, but his real reaction was evident in his parted, flushed lips, his slitted eyes.

  “A chance I’m willing to take.”

  “For you,” Bern said, stroking her cheek with his thumb, “anything.”

  “Good.”

  He left her to investigate the camera, seeming to get the hang of it easily. He crouched to check the frame, and Sam saw the little red light blinking. Showtime. She shot the lens a smile, then turned her attention to Bern, who came to stand between her legs once more. He loomed, broad hand brushing over the front of his jeans. “When’s he back?”

  “Not for an hour, at least.” Right as she said it she heard that telltale creak, that old floorboard announcing Mike’s arrival at the threshold.

  “He caught us once.” Bern’s gaze followed her hands as she stroked his thighs. “Twice would just be cruel.”

  “Serves him right, him seeing what he’s been denying me. I ought to make him watch the tape – he could use the pointers.”

  Bern smiled, looking amused by her cruelty. He cast the camera a moment’s hot stare. “We should at least give him a good show, then.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  M

  ike was burning alive, every heartbeat pumping lava. He braced his shoulder against the door frame, so overheated his muscles felt weak and his mind foggy.

  Sam and Bern were kissing on the bed – that man’s strong body braced atop her soft one, his hips moving with subtle strokes and her hands exploring him in return.

  Mike knew those hands, and the admiring way they moved over Bern’s back and arms. She’s turned on. She wanted this man, as much as she wanted Mike.

  Outside this space, Mike trusted that his primacy was secure.

  But inside this space…

  He sank into his role, into his fantasy. Neck-deep into the humiliation and pain of discovering he was being outmanned, behind his back. And in his bed.

  “Lemme see you,” Bern told Sam as he got to his knees between her legs. She peeled her shirt away while Bern stripped her skirt. The way he drew her legs up to get the thing off… the way he held them once the fabric had fluttered to the floor, with her ankles resting on one of his shoulders, stroking her thigh with a slow hand…

  Mike’s own hand drifted. His palm was damp, catching on the cotton of his T-shirt as he touched his chest, his belly, then settled it over the front of his jeans. Even the muted touch needed to adjust his erection made him suck a breath; he was so hard and needy he felt faint.

  Taste her, he wanted to say. He’d felt this urge every time the man had come over – the desire to dictate. To be a director in these matters, as much as the victim. That was an aspect of his kink he’d never registered before. But it made sense. For years he’d been fantasizing about being cheated on, and it was his imagination, after all, that controlled the other man’s actions. But Bern was real, and once the games were under way, he took his cues from his own cock. The lack of control only buried Mike deeper in that helpless sensation he craved.

  Bern watched as Sam got her bra off, caressing the legs he held to his chest. He stripped her panties next, spreading her wide as he lowered himself, fully clothed, against her. Sam gasped beneath him. She’d be feeling his fly against her lips, his belt buckle at her mound. Bern didn’t kiss her, but locked those powerful arms beside her ribs, staring her down as his hips and ass moved in slow, controlled waves, stroking his excitement against hers.

  Mike palmed his cock, ran his fingertips along his zipper. He wanted air on his baking skin; air and friction. His mouth was dry, lips nearly chapped. He licked them, and again he thought it – Taste her. He wanted his wife’s fingers in this man’s dark hair, his head between her legs. Wanted all that, and Sam’s eye contact as it happened.

  Before him, Sam was tugging at Bern’s shirt, her feet curled and rubbing at the backs of his thighs.

  Impatience tinged her voice. “I need to see you. Take your clothes off.”

  “Don’t you like this?” Bern exaggerated his thrusts, and Mike was pretty sure he was smiling.

  “You know I do. But I want to watch you.” She stroked his chest, then his arms. “You’re so fucking hot. Let me see you.”

  He submitted, tugging his shirt up and away. Sam’s hands were greedy as the motions resumed, taking in every square inch of his flexing back. She held
his head, jacking Mike’s pulse. Taste her.

  Instead, Bern gathered her in his arms, drawing her up with him. He knelt and Sam wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms around his shoulders. Face-to-face, chest to chest. He held her ass, his fingers pressing into the ripe flesh there. His thrusts mirrored the motions he coaxed from her, and Mike wanted Bern’s clothes gone as badly as Sam must – wanted him naked and the two of them fucking. He wanted to see it all, every explicit detail. Every inch of the cock that had him outmanned, every muscle in the body his wife craved more than his. He wanted to memorize the effortless way this strong man held and handled his woman, and Sam’s moans as that cock claimed her.

  “I want you,” she said. “I need you.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Your cock. Now. Please.”

  “Worried he’ll come home?”

  “I don’t even fucking care,” she seethed, nails racking Bern’s back. “Let him see. I just need you inside me. Now.”

  “You wet for me?”

  Mike shivered. How many times he’d said those same four words to Sam, he couldn’t possibly count.

  “You know I am.”

  “Better check for myself.”

  Taste her. Mike fisted his hand at his side, no longer trusting his own self-control.

  Bern lowered her to the covers, and their eyes locked as he opened his belt buckle and lowered his zipper. He grabbed her hand, pressing it to the cock now framed by his spread fly, hidden by his shorts. Sam’s mouth was open, and her lids took on that heavy look that Mike knew only too well. If he were closer he’d hear her panting, faint and hungry, as Bern worked her hand up and down his erection.

  “Feel that?” he murmured.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. You think about that while I’m eating your pussy.”

  Mike didn’t see Sam’s reaction – his own eyes shut reflexively in that instant, a wave of excitement taking his breath away.

  When he opened them, Bern was pushing his jeans and shorts down. He stepped out of them, stripped his socks, then kicked his clothes aside and dropped to his knees.

  He grasped Sam by her thighs, sliding her to the edge of the mattress. He dove in as though starving, drawing a noise of surprise from her. Just as Mike had wanted, she held his head, slender fingers threaded through black hair.

  “Fuck, you’re good.”

  He was different as well, more vigorous and aggressive than the last time Mike had watched him do this. His entire body was in the act – back and sides flexing, hips pumping. And he sounded wild, the motions punctuated by a grunt now and then. Sam’s legs were spread wide, heels digging into his back. Mike ached to be closer, to see it all.

  “I need you,” Sam said, sitting up, running her fingers roughly through Bern’s hair. “Now. Please.”

  He looked from his task, gaze on Sam’s as his tongue delivered one, two, three final laps. “Do you, then?”

  “Yes, now.”

  One hand went to his cock, his triceps flexing as he stroked. He was hard and ready as he stood. “Got what you need?”

  Sam moved up the bed to get the condom in place. It was easy enough to edit it out of the fantasy, but Mike selfishly hoped they might eventually find occasion to forego them completely.

  Bern moved to kneel on the bed, still stroking himself as Sam got ready. Mike watched him with the strangest mix of lust and revulsion, in unsettled awe of this physical manifestation of his own most potent wants. This man made his deepest sexual wishes come true, as surely as Sam did. A man he hated, yet by proxy desired. Nearly his lover, in a way, but his enemy in another.

  With Sam on her back, Bern took an ankle in each hand, easing her open, feasting his eyes. “Goddamn, you look good. You ready for me?”

  “More than ready.”

  He braced his hands, brought his hips to Sam’s, and she guided him home.

  “Fuck.” He slouched from the sensation, shoulder blades jutting.

  Sam tugged at his ass. “More. Please.”

  “You feel so fucking amazing.” He eased back, then drove a little farther. “God yeah. Tell me how.”

  “Deeper. Slow to start.”

  Bern gave that, and Mike felt sweat slicking his own back.

  “Faster,” Sam directed, touching Bern’s face. There was wonder in her expression, a look Mike had basked in a hundred times or more. It burned him in too many ways to see it now.

  Bern’s shaft was dark and slick, now owning Sam in long, relentless strokes. Mike wanted to mimic those motions with his hand on his cock… fill his fist with his own aching flesh, fill his eyes with the spectacle of their bodies.

  Their grunting voices mingled, as hot as any of the physical action. Mike drank in the scene, owning his part. He’d come home early from work to find the woman he loved getting pounded by a hung, handsome stranger. Well, not a stranger, no – he’d caught them before, after all. In the bar, and right here in his bed. This was no one-off threat anymore; this was his rival, and Mike couldn’t measure up, not in any way. He’d gotten a ring on Sam’s finger, that was all. A token, paled by the pleasure and excitement this intruder was bringing.

  The man Mike was playing tonight, how would he frame this? How would he take this pain and manifest a segue…?

  Maybe this is for the best. If I let her get her needs met with him, she might be satisfied enough to stay with me.

  He cleared his throat, drawing two pairs of eyes to the threshold.

  Sam looked away. “Shit.”

  Bern slowed, then stilled, buried deep. His chest rose and fell with labored breaths, and his head dropped back, a cocky gesture packed with contempt. “Well, goddamn, look who it is. Guess we meet again.”

  “Get off my wife.”

  Bern smiled, and Sam’s fingers gripped him hard by the hips. She said, “Don’t deny me this, Mike. I deserve pleasure.”

  “And this asshole gives you that?”

  Her hands kneaded the enemy’s body, admiring the muscles of his hips and ass. “He does.”

  “And I don’t?”

  She held his stare, cold. “You don’t really want me to answer that, Mike.”

  Bern slid out, then back in, slow. “I think our fun’s over,” he told Sam.

  She squeezed his arms. “Don’t you dare.” She kept speaking to Bern but looked to Mike. “Keep going. He should see what he drives me to. What I need, what he can’t give me.”

  “This can’t keep happening, Sam —”

  “Don’t deny me this,” she said again. “I need this. I need him.”

  After a pause, Mike said, “Never again.”

  Catching the permissive tilt to his voice, Sam smiled. “Just this one last time.” Her legs hugged Bern’s waist, urging him. With a final glance at Mike, his thrusts resumed.

  “You can watch again, if you want.” Sam’s gaze flicked to the chair they’d left there, for exactly this purpose. Mike feigned uncertainty for a beat, then walked to it with an air of resignation, though inside, he was about to catch fire.

  “The tripod seems a little unnecessary all of a sudden,” Bern said to Sam, then met Mike’s eyes squarely. “Since you’re here, grab that camera. Get a nice shot lined up. Maybe I’ll watch it later, so I can see what it looks like from your perspective – me fucking your wife.”

  Mike rose to get the camera, tripod and all, arranging it between his knees with shaking hands. He’d have held it as ordered, except he didn’t want a second of this show flattened, reduced to two dimensions through the viewfinder. If this scene were an oil painting, he needed to see the real thing, not the print.

  “Let’s give him a good view,” Bern said to Sam, pulling out. He moved to sit at the edge of the bed, legs spread, erection looking obscene, gleaming from the condom’s lubricant – from Sam, his imagination supplied. “On my lap.” Sam came around to straddle his thighs. She was no wisp of a woman, but Bern clasped her hips and eased her down onto his cock like she weighed nothing. She sucked a breat
h, then turned to meet Mike’s gaze over her shoulder.