by Jodi Redford
“We’re not making her choose.” Ry bit off each word with deadly precision.
In the back of his mind, he knew Ry was right. It wouldn’t be fair to foist that kind of decision on Lacey. And he valued her friendship too much to risk losing it. Still, the idea of watching her with another guy—someone who wasn’t him—made him sick inside. “It’s killing me, man.”
“I know.”
He stared Ry down, knowing full well that the anguished frustration in his best friend’s eyes was a match to his own. “So what do we do?”
“We support Lacey. Be there for her.” Ry sat down in his chair and rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s what we’ve always done and will keep on doing.”
Having no argument for that, Bram cleared a path to his own desk and powered up his computer. He slid Ry another look. “For what it’s worth, if she did choose you, I’d be okay with it.”
Ry cocked an eyebrow. “Really?”
Despite the heaviness in his heart, Bram grinned. “Well, first I’d wipe the floor with your ass, but yeah, eventually I’d come to grips with it.”
Ry was quiet for a moment. He gazed at his keyboard, his dark eyebrows slashed low. “Guess if I had to step aside for anyone, I’d prefer it to be you.” He fiddled with his mouse. “But don’t go getting any ideas. Our traps are staying shut, understood?”
“Fuck, you’re a stubborn asshole.” Grumbling, Bram clicked on his email icon. He nearly groaned when he saw the number of new messages waiting for him. “How is it humanly possible to get two hundred new emails overnight?”
Ry grunted. “Bet you twenty bucks half of them are from internet porn sites.”
Bram chuckled. “Nah. I use my personal webmail for that shit.” He turned his head in time to catch Ry rolling his eyes. Returning his focus to the screen, Bram scanned down the column. “Ah damn. Maybe I spoke too soon. There’s one here called The Naughty List.” He moved the cursor to the delete button. Just as he was about to click it, he noticed who the sender was. “Wait, nope. It’s from Lacey.”
“She sent you something called The Naughty List?” There was no mistaking the disbelief in Ry’s voice.
“Yeah. Looks like she forwarded it from her home email. Must be a dirty joke or something.”
“From Lacey?”
Bram mentally tracked back to the reaction she’d given to his joke a couple days ago about the two hunters and the porcupine. “Okay. Probably not.” No longer able to contain his curiosity, he opened the file attachment and waited for it to download. Once it did and he read the top line, he choked on a stunted cough.
“What?” Ry demanded. “Is it a dirty joke? No fucking way.”
“Uh, not exactly.” Blinking a few times, Bram continued to the next numbered line. What he saw there made his mouth go drier than the Sahara. “What. The. Fuck?”
The casters on Ry’s chair creaked as he pushed to his feet. “Obviously I’ve got to check out whatever it is.”
Bram spared him the briefest glance. “Yeah. You do.” By the time Ry reached his side, Bram had read down to number five. Shock might have numbed his brain, but his cock was hard as a damn baseball bat. After a few seconds of rapt silence, a colorful swear word sprang from Ry. Bram shot him a glance. “Which one are you on?”
“Three.”
“Oh yeah. That one’s good. But wait until you get to…” He broke off as he suddenly picked out his and Ry’s names down toward the bottom of the list. His pulse speeding up, he concentrated his attention on that particular bulleted line. It took three times of reading it over to convince himself his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. Once the reality seeped into his brain, his heart hammered so hard, he actually felt a little woozy. It was tempting to pinch himself and verify that he wasn’t dreaming. Or trapped in some alternate dimension. Beside him, Ry was frozen like a statue. It didn’t take much to figure out that he’d finished the entire list too. Bram swallowed. Hard. “She wants to have a threesome. With you and me.”
Ry’s jaw worked but no words immediately sprang free. He cleared his throat. “There is no fucking way Lacey sent this.”
“Dude, it’s from her personal email.”
“A hacker?”
He gave Ry a dry look. “One who’d know to add your and my names? Not to mention the sex club?”
Ry scowled. “How the hell does Lacey know about that?”
He shrugged. “Damned if I know.”
Ry combed his fingers through his hair, his hand unsteady. “I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this.”
“Buddy, that makes two of us.” He returned his attention to the monitor. It was insane—the notion that the whole time he and Ry had been lusting after Lacey, she’d been engaged in some pretty raunchy thoughts herself. About them. Holy shit. Like a moth drawn to fire, he visually devoured the last line again. His cock thickened even more. “What are we going to do about it?”
Ry’s gaze jumped to him. “What do you mean what are we going to do about it? Nothing, goddamn it.”
“We’ve done it before. With that woman a few years ago at the club.” Just the reminder of the night in question made Bram’s cock bob against his fly. He’d participated in a few threesomes before that incident, and even one afterwards, but none of them came remotely close to rocking his world like that night. It wasn’t that he was secretly gay for Ry or anything. Hell, handling any cock other than his own wasn’t his idea of a good time, but there was no denying that sharing a woman with Ry had been mind blowing.
“That’s different. Neither of us was in love with that woman.”
“Yet it was still hot and amazing.”
A muscle ticked in Ry’s jaw. “Your point is?”
“Imagine what it would be like with Lacey, since we do love her. It’d be out of this fucking world.”
“She’s not someone to just play around with.”
Bram bit back a growl. “You think I don’t know that? I’m not suggesting anything that she obviously doesn’t already want.” He waved his hand toward the computer. Indecision warred in Ry’s eyes. Bram knew when to push his advantage. “Don’t you see what this means? It’s our shot at both of us being with her. She wouldn’t have to choose.”
“You honestly would be fine with Lacey fucking us both?”
Fine? The mental picture of being buried in Lacey’s pussy while Ry shafted her ass had Bram so damn hard, he was seconds away from coming in his pants. “Yes. Aren’t you?”
Tension bracketed Ry’s mouth. “I don’t know.”
Desperation clawed at Bram’s chest. He had to make Ry see reason. To believe this could work. He tapped his finger on the computer screen and read out loud, “I’d have someone blindfold me before tying me up and fucking me.”
The muscle twitching grew more pronounced in Ry’s jaw, and his nostrils flared. Bram knew he had his best friend by the short hairs. “Tell me you don’t want to be the one doing that to her.”
“Damn it. Of course I do.” The gruffness in Ry’s voice didn’t mask the underlying hunger in his tone.
“Then I think our mission is clear.” Bram gave a slow, triumphant smile. “This Christmas, we’re helping Lacey check off every item on her Naughty List.”
Chapter Five
It wasn’t her alarm clock that snapped Lacey from a deep snooze, but rather the loud, obnoxious droning of her next-door neighbor’s snow blower. Groaning, she rolled onto her back and winced as tiny pinpricks of pain lanced her temples. Oh man. Having that extra half a glass of wine had been a huge mistake.
Cautiously pulling her hand away from her eyes, she peered toward the window, where she could make out flurries of snow whipping against the glass.
What time was it, anyway?
Careful not to wrench her neck, she glanced toward the alarm clock on the nightstand. And yelped when she read the display. Nine a.m.! Why didn’t the damn alarm go off? Not wasting time to investigate the cause, she jumped out of bed and scurried into the bathroom.
She wasn’t one of those business owners who catered to the idea of rolling into work whenever she pleased. She believed in setting a good example for the employees. In return, she liked to think they respected her work ethics. Quickly disrobing, she hopped into the shower. And promptly got pelted in the head with the bottle of shampoo that insisted on falling out of the caddy.
It was going to be one of those kinds of days.
Fifteen minutes later, she jumped into her car and dialed the heater to full blast in order to defrost the windshield. She huddled in her seat, her teeth chattering along with “Jingle Bells” on the radio. It occurred to her that she should probably call Ry and Bram to let them know she was on her way in. She rifled in her purse for her cell phone and somehow jabbed herself with a ballpoint pen. “Damn it.”
Finally she latched onto her phone and pulled it free. She must not have turned it off last night because a text message waited on the display.
Girl, WTF??? Call me as soon as you get this.
Frowning, Lacey checked to see who the sender was. Jana, Bram’s sister. She started to hit reply, but the clock on the dash brought her focus back to her current dilemma. She stared at the tiny peek holes that the heater had managed to create on the windshield. This was going to get her nowhere fast. Heaving a frustrated breath, she tossed the cell into her coat pocket and grabbed the ice scraper from the backseat. Several minutes later, the front and back windshields were cleared and her butt and legs were completely numb from the frigid temps. She scrambled back inside the relative warmth of her Pathfinder and roared out of her driveway.
The Dockside was less than seven miles from her home, which was particularly nice on days like this, when the weather was crappy and she was running late. She parked next to Ry’s truck and rushed toward the entrance. As she reached for the door handle, her bladder decided to pitch a fit. She squeezed her legs together. “This is what I get for sleeping in.”
Her gait awkward, she hurried inside the restaurant. Ry and Bram were standing by the bar, deep in conversation. They stopped and stared at her. She waved a hand and continued streaking toward the rear hallway.
“Lacey, we need to talk.” There was a strange tension in Ry’s voice.
“Sorry, but my bladder is outshouting you right now,” she called, beelining for the restrooms. She ducked inside the women’s room and dashed into one of the stalls in the nick of time. Her relieved sigh echoing in the cramped space, she flushed and went to wash up at the sink. While she was rinsing the suds from her hands, her cell phone started ringing. Hitting the sanitizing blower with her elbow, she dug with her free hand into her coat pocket and pulled out her phone. “Hello?”
“Girl, what the fuck?”
It was Jana. Clutching the cell to her ear, Lacey moved away from the dryer so that she could hear better. “Is that your phrase for the day?”
“It will be if you keep sending me kinky emails.”
She frowned. “Kinky emails? What are you talking about?”
“Your Naughty List. What else would I be talking about?”
Naughty…
The blood slowly started to drain from Lacey’s head.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were thinking about having a threesome? That’s so hot. Okay, so I’m trying not to think of you with Bram. Because that’s just a little too weird. But Ry? Day-um. Sign me up.”
Oh. My. God. How…?
Frantic, Lacey replayed the events of last night. She remembered forwarding the file to her work email. Why did it go to Jana?
Unless…
Oh sweet Jesus. Did she accidentally send the email to a contact list rather than herself? Her email account had an autofill feature that she was usually pretty good about catching, but the damn wine she drank last night had definitely left her brain fuzzy. She racked her mind, trying to think of what directory started with the same letters as her name, one that would include Jana in the list. The answer slammed into her. Her “lame laughs” directory—appropriately titled because everyone on it had the same cornball sense of humor as her and appreciated the silly articles she occasionally found online and forwarded on. If that was the case—and it sure as hell looked like it—it meant everyone in that particular directory got the file. The contents of her stomach gave a dangerous lurch.
“Lacey? You still there?”
“I’ve got to go. I’ll call you later.” She hung up before Jana could protest. Her palms were so clammy, the cell phone nearly slipped from her hand. She shoved it into her coat pocket and collapsed against the wall. Her face alternated between icy cold and blistering hot. The blower had ceased its thunderous noise, making the pounding whoosh inside her head all the more apparent.
There was no way this was happening.
Only it was.
The good news was her “lame laughs” contact list was woefully small. Besides Jana, the only other people on it were…
Oh. Shit.
Her belly roiled and she pressed a shaky hand to her mouth.
Ry and Bram.
How was she ever going to look them in the eye? She swallowed down her nausea. Even though she knew it was pointless, she darted her gaze around the bathroom, looking for a possible escape plan. One that would miraculously teleport her to her car so she could make a quick getaway. Preferably to Hawaii, or some other destination far, far away from here.
A thought occurred to her in mid panic attack. Maybe Bram and Ry hadn’t seen the email yet. If not, she could hack into their accounts and—
Lacey, we need to talk.
Her heart sank as Ry’s tense demand spun in her mind.
They’d read the email. She couldn’t fool herself into believing otherwise. Just like she couldn’t fool herself into thinking she’d get out of the conversation waiting for her on the other side of the bathroom door. Sucking in a deep, fortifying breath, she pushed away from the wall and prepared to face her best friends.
Two men who now—without a question of a doubt—knew she wanted a kinky threesome.
Yeah, this wouldn’t be awkward. At all.
The desire to race back inside the restroom stall and have a mental breakdown—or throw up—was overwhelming. Somehow she found the fortitude to take a shaky step toward the door. Then another. You can do this, damn it. She stepped out into the back hallway. The restaurant was eerily quiet. It was easy to pretend that she was the only one in the entire building.
If only.
Shoving her hands into her coat pockets to hide their trembling, she walked into the main bar area. Ry and Bram hadn’t moved an inch from their posts. They both watched her as she approached, their expressions unreadable. That, more than anything, disturbed her. She’d half hoped Bram would be grinning and cracking lewd comments about how she’d pulled the world’s biggest prank on them.
Prank…
Wait, maybe that’s how she could get out of this—by convincing them it’d merely been a bad joke. It was a long shot, considering the incredibly personal stuff she’d included on the list, but maybe they’d take pity on her and let it go.
She offered the guys a tentative smile. “Sorry about that. You know us women and our tiny bladders.” She winced at her overly cheery tone. Why am I talking about bladders? Trying not to feel like the biggest moron on the planet, she cleared her throat. “Anyway, you wanted to speak to me about something?”
Ry stared at her for a long moment, his eyes dark and intense. She couldn’t remember ever having been under the full power of his focus like that. It took every ounce of her willpower not to shiver. Or duck and hide behind the bar. “Why didn’t you tell us, Lace?”
Although it was pathetic and ridiculous, she decided to play dumb. “Tell you what?”
Of course Ry wouldn’t let her off that easy. “You know damn well what I’m talking about. Your threesome fantasy.”
She forced a laugh. “Oh. That. I thought you guys would get a chuckle over it. I only wish I could have seen your faces when you read the email.” Not that she�
�d needed to be there. It wasn’t exactly difficult to conjure twin expressions of stupefied shock.
Actually, the shock she could handle. It was the inevitable pity concerning her delusional fantasy land that had her stomach in knots.
Bram sidled up next to Ry. A frown marred his features. “It was a…joke?”
“Well, duh. Of course.” She rolled her eyes for good measure. “I can’t believe you both fell for it.”
For a brief moment she swore Bram looked disappointed. Ry, on the other hand, just leveled her with his patented let’s-cut-through-the-bullshit stare. “It wasn’t a joke. I know it and you know it.”
“Don’t be silly. Do you think I’d tell you all of that embarrassing stuff if it was real?”
The rugged planes of Ry’s face softened, but the heat in his gaze didn’t abate. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“I—I didn’t say I was embarrassed.” Oh crap. Yes, she did. She really needed to learn how to choose her damn words better. She cleared her throat, figuring it was past time for a fast recovery. “Why would I be embarrassed over a joke?”
“Because it isn’t one. But judging from how flustered you’re acting, I’d say it’s a safe bet you didn’t intend for Bram and me to ever know about any of it. And that’s really unfair of you, Lace.”
The accusation in Ry’s stare was almost unbearable. A thick ball of shame wedged in her throat. She’d always been brutally honest with him and Bram before, hadn’t hidden anything from either of them up until now. But there were some things you didn’t go blabbing to your business partners, for God’s sake—like the desire to be tied up and blindfolded for a night of raunchy sex. “C-could we just forget any of this happened?”
“It’s too late for that, Lace. You can’t expect us to pretend we don’t know. To not wonder.” Ry stepped closer, his gaze drifting to her mouth. Hunger burned in his eyes.
Her heart thumped in response. She’d imagined that particular look on his face countless times, never believing she’d see it in actuality. This had to be a dream. Or another of her fantasies. The last part of his statement registered and she blinked. “W-wonder? About what?”