by Mel Blue
But what about Brent? What about his pleasure?
“Brent…”
“He’ll tell you what he wants,” Remy said as if he were reading her mind. “Suck her hard, Brent. I’m going to come.”
Brent pulled her clit between his teeth, and she couldn’t say for sure whether Remy came, because when she did, she could hardly see. Hardly breathe.
Vaguely, she registered Remy lifting her off his spent shaft, and she opened her eyes to find Brent in front of her, cock at the ready.
She rolled her eyes up to him in question, and he swallowed hard and pressed his cock head to her lips.
“Suck me off, Eve. Open wide.”
And she did, because it wasn’t a request so much as an order.
And an order coming from this man—this man who’d been nothing but cautious and gentle up till now—made her skin burn and pussy clench. She liked him a little bossy.
Liked it a lot.
So she licked his salty pre-cum and took his thick cock between her teeth.
Indeed, she had to open wide, but she took as much of him into her mouth as she could then swirled her tongue around the head and sucked. When the end of him touched the back of her throat she flinched, but Remy said, “Relax. Try not to constrict.”
Easier said than done, but Eve tried, concentrated, on sucking and swallowing, even when Remy settled behind Brent and cupped Brent’s balls.
As Remy fondled Brent, his fingers tickled Eve’s jaw while she worked her head back and forth. He said, with a tease in his voice, “Get ready, Eve,” before a thick torrent went down her throat that had her struggling to swallow, struggling to catch it all.
Brent blew out a ragged breath and turned his head to the side before saying, “You’re a pain in the ass.”
Remy patted Brent’s bottom twice before sinking onto the bench next to the chocolate tray. He picked up a piece of dark chocolate and examined it before placing it on his tongue. “You want to test that theory? I’m not just a catcher.”
Brent didn’t answer. He just pulled up his pants and helped Eve, now in her skimpy robe again, onto his lap.
Remy winked at them. “I’m going to go find the guy with the champagne tray.”
Brent rested his chin on her shoulder and gave her a little squeeze. “That okay? I didn’t expect Remy to call first dibs again.”
“It’s all right. It’s fun. Kind of…well, I don’t know. I like it, though.”
“That’s good.” He loosened his hold on her waist and pulled the chocolate tray closer. He offered her a bite of a white square, and she licked the melted chocolate off his fingers.
“Brent?”
“Hmm?”
“You can…touch me.”
“I am.”
“No, I mean—”
Remy returned and handed a longneck beer bottle to each of them. “There was a run on champagne. Hope hard cider will do in a pinch.”
“It’ll do,” Brent said.
It still wasn’t strong enough in Eve’s estimation, but she drank it anyway and looked from one man to the other. There was the playful surgeon at her right who always knew just what to say to cheer her up. Who always knew exactly what to do to make her feel so good. Then, she looked to the mechanic at her back who didn’t talk much but always seemed to have deep thoughts on the brain. She’d pay handsomely to know what those thoughts were and whether she was in them.
One man, the one who made her feel so safe when she stepped into her parents’ big, old house every night, she wanted to learn the ins and outs of. Everything that made him tick, because he was so interesting. Maybe more interesting than she was, and maybe that scared her a little. What could she possibly have to say to him that would be worth his conversation?
The other man, her dear friend and occasional mentor, she wanted to fix the heart of. She’d never meant to hurt him. She hadn’t read the signs. Didn’t know of his interest. Their relationship had always been easy. They filled in each other’s gaps, but the only times they saw each other was when they were working, save for a couple of exceptions.
Remy gave them a nudge. “They’re counting down to the new year in about ten minutes. I say we go claim a primo spot on the balcony.”
“Let’s go.” Brent set Eve on her feet and pulled her along behind him.
They both suited her in their own ways, but they were so far from interchangeable, it scared her. Would she ever be able to be with Brent without thinking of what Remy could add?
And she sure as shit didn’t want to give up Brent for as long as he wanted her.
She’d bristled regarding her parents’ trust fund restrictions for years, but without them, she wouldn’t have opened her eyes to what was around her.
To who was around her.
But, now what?
CHAPTER SEVEN
On their way to the restaurant at seven a.m., Brent noticed that Remy had remained a few paces behind him and Eve. He’d navigated them through the French Quarter, but there’d been no enthusiasm in his tone.
Eve had seemed to notice his change in mood, but when she’d asked him about it, he’d said, “I’m just tired, Evie.”
She didn’t seem to believe him, judging by the slight frown she’d worn when she turned around, but she hadn’t pressed.
When he and Remy had been in the bathroom earlier, Brent shaving while Remy showered, Remy said, “You need to let Eve know you want her. She wants you. You’re the one who got the enthusiastic kiss at midnight, so it shouldn’t be that difficult.”
Stunned, Brent had pulled back the curtain and read Remy’s face for signs of treachery, but there weren’t any. He still didn’t know what Remy was up to, but when Remy held out the soap and said, “Quid pro quo?” Brent could only laugh.
He did wash Remy’s back, though.
And a few other things. It’d been a long time since he’d had a cock so far down his throat, but Remy seemed to appreciate his attentiveness.
Brent didn’t regret it, either.
Oddly, touching Remy, talking to Remy, seemed to fill a different space in his psyche than what he experienced with Eve. There was no overlap between the compartments, and he didn’t feel he had to take away from one to fill the other. His body and heart said, “Maybe you need both,” and his head said, “Whoa, slow down, player.”
He was mulling that over while they sat on the back patio of Graham’s Restaurant as Eve held his left hand. Hers felt so soft, not like his mechanic’s hands. She squinted at the splinter he’d embedded in his palm during the walk from the parking deck.
Remy stared at them over his coffee cup. He’d been right. Eve gave back in spades what she was given. A tiny sliver of affection, and it was as if he’d turned a key and released something that shouldn’t have been locked away in the first place.
“You’re the native, Remy,” Eve said before letting Brent’s hand fall to his lap. “Why don’t you tell us what sort of trouble we can get into today?”
“You don’t need me for trouble.” He pushed his plate back and set his elbows on the tabletop. Not that anyone was going to call him on it. Remy was one of those men people expected to break rules, and he looked good doing it. “You can get in trouble by yourselves. And you should.”
If Eve caught the same subtext Brent did, she didn’t speak on it.
“Remy, you’re trouble embodied.” She pulled closed the edges of her cardigan and pushed back from the table. “Naturally, you’d be included.”
Brent stood and held his elbow out to Eve. She took it.
Remy remained seated, twirling his thumbs around each other and looking from Brent to Eve and back again.
“Well?” Eve said to nudge him.
“I guess I’m just a bit tired. I may head back to the hotel for a nap.”
“Oh, come on. You’re used to pushing past the exhaustion wall. Are we boring you?”
After a long blink, Remy shook his head. “Of course not.”
“Then let’s go. If
you’re still tired in half an hour, we won’t laugh and call you names if you choose to go nap like an old man before noon.”
Remy’s lips quirked up at the corners. Not quite a smile, but a movement in the right direction.
“Come on, Doctor.” Eve’s voice took on a purring quality that made Brent’s own grin wane somewhat. Yet another reminder that Remy was way ahead of the curve. Even though he’d backed off, Brent couldn’t change what had already happened. Remy and Eve had a bond, and getting in the way of it didn’t seem to be in anyone’s best interest.
“You always said you’d take me to have my cards read. Now seems as good a time as any.”
Finally the man cracked a grin, but it was forced. Tired, even. “I thought you said you didn’t believe in that junk.”
“No. I said that it scares me. Won’t even read my horoscope in the newspaper, but I think having you two as a buffer will mitigate my fear somewhat.”
Remy leaned his chair back on the rear legs and narrowed his eyes at her. “Tell you what. I’ll give you the address to a place I know, and I’ll meet you there in half an hour. I told a friend of my mother’s I’d stop by and see her when I was in town. She’s not too far from here, and I’d like to go ahead and pay her that courtesy before I get otherwise distracted.”
“Thirty minutes is a pretty short visit.”
“Yes. Almost every one of my visits is conducted standing. She has plastic on her furniture. Not conducive to lingering.” He let his chair down and pushed it back. “So, thirty minutes? Give me your phone. I’ll plug the address into your GPS.”
They parted ways at the end of the alley, and Brent knew for certain Remy didn’t look back, because Brent did. Remy’s pace was aggressive, as if the sooner he got to where he was going, the sooner he could leave. Seemed unusual for Remy, what little Brent knew of the man so far. He had a way that made it seem like he was in control of time itself, that he had no fear. Now he seemed to be on a mission.
“I think it’s actually colder here than what we left in North Carolina,” Eve said. She brushed her thumb over her phone’s touch screen and pointed toward the street they needed to cross.
He hadn’t noticed how thin her sweater was, only that the gray color suited her ruddy complexion. Most of her wardrobe fell into the same monochromatic range. Whites, grays, and blacks. The only time he saw her in a color was when she wore her hospital scrubs home, and even those were faded from too many washes. Just once, he’d like to see her in some really vibrant color. It would bring out that warm glow her cheeks took on whenever someone paid attention to her…like Remy.
Brent wondered if he could affect her the same way. Make her blush and wear that little girlish smile.
“Do you want my jacket?” he asked, already pulling down his zipper. “You might swim in it, but at least it would keep you warm.”
“Not only would I swim in it but trip over the hem as well. Sweet of you to ask, but you keep it. My phone says we’re really close to the occult shop, anyway.”
He left his jacket open all the same. She may have been cold, but his racing heart was keeping him plenty warm.
“There it is. See the sign?” She pointed to the hard-to-miss wooden shingle displaying a crystal ball and a year of establishment Brent couldn’t quite make out.
“What do you think the card reader will tell you?” Brent asked while increasing his pace.
“Probably that I’m nuts.”
“Why?”
“Isn’t that obvious?”
He hoped it wasn’t but figured if she were nuts, he was for the same reasons.
She gave the door’s brass handle a pull.
It didn’t budge.
“Huh.” After backing up a few paces, she scanned the shop windows then pointed to a handwritten sign.
Closed for the holiday.
Brent felt not a lick of guilt for being pleased.
“Maybe I should text Remy and see if he knows of some other place.”
Her fingers were already flying, when he plucked the phone from her grip. Then he tucked it into the front pocket of his jeans.
“I’m going to buy a cup of coffee and a jacket for you. In twenty-nine minutes, we’ll meet Remy here. If you still want your cards read, I can bring you back tomorrow before we leave.”
She seemed to need a few beats to process it all as she blinked at him and shifted her weight. He felt he might have been too aggressive, both in taking her phone and what he’d said, but he’d already wasted too much time being tentative. She could certainly refuse. He hoped she wouldn’t, not just for his pride, but because he really wanted to do something for her. With her.
“A jacket?” she asked, eyebrows inching up.
“Mm-hmm.” He nestled her arm into the crook of his and started them down the block toward an open-door boutique they’d passed on the way to the occult shop. “I saw one that would look great on you. It’d cover you from chin to toes.”
“Overkill.”
“Nope. Not at all. Apparently, you haven’t seen what your own ass looks like in a pair of jeans.”
She stumbled, but he held her up and chuckled.
“I…haven’t had that particular displeasure.”
“Quit it. Every guy in my shop stops working when you walk in. Before we… Well, before the marriage, it always used to chafe me the way they looked at you. I knew it was wrong of me, because you didn’t belong to anyone. Other than yourself, I mean. Nearly fired one guy, though. That would have sucked. Never had a better brake technician.”
She laughed, and the sweet quality of her voice made a passerby turn and stare. She didn’t notice, but Brent drew her in a bit closer to his side and wrapped his arm around her shoulder. She was oblivious to the effect she had on people. Even his mother had noticed Eve’s lack of self-awareness.
“She’s mighty timid to be an only child, isn’t she?” Mom had whispered during Thanksgiving, barely a month after they’d gotten married.
“She just needs a while to warm up to people,” he’d said, although he really didn’t know for sure. Any other woman, he would have called aloof for behaving the same way, but Eve just seemed to be so inward, it was hard to take her occasional coolness personally.
One day, Mom had asked her, “Eve, what on Earth are you thinking about?”
Eve had turned her gaze away from the television she evidently wasn’t watching, and said, “Running through a surgery I’m scheduled to perform tomorrow. I haven’t done it in a while, and it’s a child. I always worry when they’re so small.”
Brent would have never known anything deeper than the Bobcats score was on her mind, but his mother had watched her and guessed. He just wasn’t any good at reading people, he figured.
“You would seriously fire your brake technician because he appreciated the fit of my jeans too much for your liking?”
“No.”
“Bit of hyperbole, huh?”
“Nope.” They rounded the corner, and he led her through the narrow door into the boutique where he nodded at the listless attendant when she looked up from the counter. “He wouldn’t dare look at you now. You’re like the sun. He understands that looking directly at you for longer than a second would be dangerous to his eye health, and that I’d be the one making sure of it.”
He was only half joking. He hadn’t outright threatened the guy, but the last time Eve had stepped into the shop in search of a FedEx package she’d had delivered there, he’d decided it was a great day to do a quarterly employee evaluation conference.
“Brent, you’re a mess, and I like it,” she said, already easing through the tightly packed racks toward a display of black pea coats.
Yep. A mess.
He grabbed her hand and gave her a little pull toward the left side of the store where there were some belted sweaters and cashmere pullovers. “This way.”
He piled several into her outstretched arms and turned her toward the dressing room. “I want to see them all. Start with th
at green one at the top.”
“Bossy,” she said as she carried them away.
“You complaining, Eve?”
“No. I like it,” she said and closed the curtain in front his face with a flourish.
He raked a hand through his hair, exhaled, and paced in front of the three-way mirror. What an inscrutable woman. She wasn’t at all what he’d thought, and he should have known she’d be tough to crack.
But how could he have? Just like Remy had said, she needed to be unlocked, and he hadn’t had the key. Remy had.
Remy.
Brent turned his wrist over and looked at his watch. He’d be at the closed occult shop in about fifteen minutes. They’d need to hurry, although Remy probably wouldn’t be upset about them being a few minutes late. After all, he was the third wheel in this excursion, though one that felt oddly necessary. He seemed to make everything easier.
Eve slid back the curtain and asked, “How’s this one?”
The low-cut V-neck dipped into her ample cleavage, but the color made her skin look ashy.
“Hmm.” He slipped into the tiny stall and drew the curtain aside. Carefully, he lifted the dangling curls obscuring her shoulders and pushed them aside before letting his fingers trail down her collar where he paused just shy of her cleavage. “I don’t think so. Color looked better on the hanger. How about that red one?”
“I…” When he grazed his thumb over the fabric over her protruding nipple, her breath hitched and eyes went round. “Um. I think it’s burgundy.”
“Red.” He pulled the sweater over her head then locked eyes with her as she pushed the sleeves off her arms.
Judging by her too-fast breathing, and the way her she kept looking to the curtain gap, she was mortified. He didn’t know whether it was because of his close proximity with his hard cock teasing her belly with each small move she made, or that they were in a semi-public place where sound traveled too well.
“Let me know if you need me to grab you some different sizes,” the clerk called from the front, but she sounded indifferent. She seemed keen on doing as little work as possible.
Good.