Ryan, Sylvia - Saved by One, Shared by Two (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)

by Sylvia Ryan

  She didn’t look away to give him privacy. She realized later it didn’t even cross her mind. She just admired the gorgeous male form in front of her. Wet. With a trail of foamy bubbles rolling down his chest. His muscles moved and flexed as he washed himself. His cock wasn’t hard, but it looked to be a good size. She smiled.

  “What are you smiling at?”

  She jerked her head up and flicked her eyes up to his.

  “See something you like?” he asked, smiling.

  She didn’t answer him, but she also didn’t blush and look away like some fourteen-year-old girl. Get a grip, Julia. Remember, just staying for a little while. No complications.

  “I’m ready. You can start pumping again,” he said, breaking the mutual stare.

  She was still smiling a little when Arden gave her the signal to stop pumping and wrapped a towel around his waist.

  Holy hell, he was hot. She smiled broadly. Just about the best entertainment she’d had since she got there. Julia’s blood simmered under her skin and her pussy began to throb with the awareness of the physical perfection in front of her.

  As she started to turn to walk away, Arden angled up close to her, invading her personal space. “You didn’t answer my question.” His gaze shimmered over her body.

  Julia’s heart pumped faster, and her sex was instantly wet for him. She looked up and met his eyes. She could feel her cheeks heat up under his gaze.

  Oh hell, forget complications. Julia prayed that he would take the initiative, be aggressive and act. She willed him to do something. She wanted him to grab her by the nape of the neck and jerk her toward him. She wanted him to take her, every part of her, from her rock-hard nipples to her puckered rear entrance. Not asking. Just doing, as if she already belonged to him.

  He didn’t. He balked, probably waiting for her to give some indication he could advance, a verbal go-ahead, so to speak. That was too bad, because she was never going to give him an obvious green light. He would have to desire her enough to risk rejection and make the first move, take what he wanted.

  Julia wasn’t playing games. There was a method to her madness. She knew if she had to be the one to wear the pants, sexually speaking, that she wouldn’t want what he had to give more than once or twice. She needed a man in bed, not a boy, and the first indication that he may have what it took to satisfy her was taking that first step with confidence and aggression.

  She stood her ground and waited a few heartbeats more, then shrugged and walked away from him without a word.

  * * * *

  Over the next week, Julia regained her strength. She worked long days side by side with Arden. They harvested some apples that had not already been scavenged, from the very tops of trees on his property, and pears from a tree close to the remains of the charred house on the neighboring farm. They spent days peeling and canning and slicing and drying on screens pulled from the windows of the house. They stored piles of fruit in the root cellar next to potatoes from the garden. Other garden vegetables were preserved as they ripened. She had completed several batches of tomatoes, and with her confidence building and a canning recipe book that had once been Arden’s mother’s, she tried her hand at canning a few jars of salsa.

  Julia loved the time she spent with Arden. He was smart and easy to get along with. She felt the chemistry between them, and she knew he did too. It was exciting to be so aroused on a regular basis. It didn’t get old. She guessed every woman liked feeling the buzz of sexual attraction and the anticipation of waiting for the next move. There just hadn’t been any next move.

  It took about two weeks for Julia to really start feeling like herself again. She had gained back some of the weight she’d lost, and her energy level was back to normal.

  During some downtime, Julia decided that she was going to take a run and put some miles behind her. She hadn’t run at all since she got there, and she definitely felt up to it now.

  Julia knew it was dangerous and didn’t care. She needed some sense of routine and a connection to her former self. Her life was so different at the farm that sometimes she felt like she didn’t even know herself anymore, like she was living someone else’s life.

  Lacing up her shoes, she actually felt a flutter of excitement at the prospect of exploring. She headed out to the road and jogged at a good clip for several miles.

  The weather was still so unseasonably warm. The leaves on the trees that lined one side of the road were turning. On the other side was beautiful country with farmland as far as the eye could see.

  It also felt a little eerie. There were no cows, goats or horses one would expect to see grazing in the pastures. Julia noticed a few animal carcasses as she passed by. The rancid smell of the rotting remains of the animals traveled in the breeze. They’d likely been killed and eaten by the raiders Arden had talked about. There were no signs of life anywhere. It was like she and Arden were the only people left in the world. She saw no one. Absolutely no one. They were so far out in the middle of nowhere that even before the pulse it was likely that this one-lane, rutted road was deserted most of the time.

  Julia was about to turn around to get away from the horrid smell when she ran upon an abandoned car. She decided to search the interior before she turned around to go home. To her delight, she hit pay dirt. In the backseat she found a book bag with two textbooks and some spiral notebooks.

  “Toilet paper!” she sang to herself. She continued to search the car, checking under the seats and in the glove box. In the glove box, jackpot again—hand sanitizer and travel-size hand wipes. Okay, there is a real problem when I get so psyched over a bottle of hand sanitizer. She grabbed the book bag, dropped the wipes and sanitizer in it, and popped the trunk.

  Julia walked back to see if there was anything else worth taking.

  “Fuck!” Caught off guard, Julia jumped back from what she saw, what she smelled. Inside, a bloated and black body covered with maggots and a swarm of flies greeted her with a misshapen, bare toothed smile.

  Fear slammed into Julia’s body just as powerfully as if she’d run into the path of an oncoming train. She felt her heart rate and breathing speed up even as she froze, staring at the atrocity in front of her. It was like the scene of a movie, her own personal horror show.

  Julia found her legs and turned back toward the farm. She ran, book bag in hand, until she could see the farmhouse in the distance. Only then did she feel comfortable enough to slow down to a walk.

  Julia’s stomach turned, and it was like a switch had been flipped deep inside of her. Sadness and distress invaded her mind and heart.

  She had been so busy trying to survive and then recuperating and adjusting to her new situation that she had not really given any thought to the hard, cold reality of what had happened to the world, to all those people away from the farm.

  No, it was more than that. She purposely blocked out realities she didn’t want to face. She had busied herself to distraction so that she could overlook the new, grim reality of her life and the world around her. It was a common coping mechanism. She just hadn’t realized she’d been doing it.

  The world was very different now. Permanently changed for everybody who survived.

  Six months, a year, even two years from now, it was likely that the car she just raided would still be sitting right where it was, with that body using the trunk as a coffin.

  It had been over a month since the pulse. From the discussion she’d had with John so long ago, Julia assumed most of the people she knew were probably dead, or close to it. She might never see her mother or her brother ever again.

  Feelings of despair silently crept up on Julia like a cat stalking its prey. Alone. She was completely alone in the world now. She’d been playing house with some guy she didn’t even know to escape reality.

  So what now? Now that she’d opened her eyes and started to really see what had changed and where her life was going, or not going would probably be more accurate, what next? Her and Arden?

  She was f
eeling weird in the pit of her stomach since she’d left the farm. It didn’t feel right to not be with him. Oh sure, she enjoyed spending time with him and secretly lusting for him. She hoped he would take her when he wanted instead of just pussyfooting around. She still wouldn’t make the first move. She never did, not with any man. Period. She had noticed his hard-ons and was disappointed that he’d never acted on them.

  Oh, she wanted him. She had made a hobby of watching him work, watching his muscles strain under tanned, smooth skin, watching his sweet package bulge underneath his jeans. She was so damn horny by the end of the day that her panties were soaked when she took them off at night to wash them.

  Yet, Julia knew that it was more than that. She had more feelings for him than just lust. He was actually all she would look for in a man. Handsome. Intelligent. Hard working. But the sex thing. It was becoming a curse. With the current living arrangements, she couldn’t just walk away when she became bored with the nice country boy routine. She lived with the man in his house.

  Julia had dated nice guys—sexy, nice guys just like Arden. But bottom line, she grew bored after a while. Nice, safe guys didn’t challenge her.

  Julia knew herself well enough to know that eventually her dark, sexual perversions wouldn’t be satisfied. She loved the sexual rush she got from feeling that she was doing something she shouldn’t be doing. Pushing limits. Being deviant. She loved edgy banter that incited a man to control her. She wanted to be controlled in bed. Bottom line, she’d known for a long time that normal, “nice” sex didn’t fulfill the warped side of her sexual needs, especially after the relationship became comfortable.

  Julia had dominated thousands of men for years at her job. She needed to be able to hand the control over to her lover. There was a piece of her that wanted to be subdued, owned, taken, kept. It was the complete opposite of her public persona, but she knew herself well enough to know that even though it would be fun playing around now, she would tire quickly of Arden, because he wasn’t aggressive enough to meet her sexual needs.

  She had a few ways to go with this. She could settle for less than what she wanted in a man and try the relationship thing with Arden. She could move on, whether she had a place to go and a way to get there or not. Or, the third and safest option was no relationship at all. They were and would continue to be just friends.

  She knew she had to pick the just friends option.

  That realization saddened Julia. She was developing genuine feelings for him. Shit, by flirting and feeding the sexual tension between them, she’d set him up. She’d set herself up. Both of them would be disappointed with her at the end.

  Maybe this was the exact reason why Arden hadn’t made any move on her. He was smart. He had probably already thought this through better than she had.

  Arden had a beautiful mind. He was articulate, emotionally mature, and sensitive. That in its own right was sexy. Sexy and rare. But she knew her needs. She was not going to pretend she didn’t have them. Why did this perverted side, this need to be sexually out of control, this want to be subordinate to her lover’s extreme needs, to be the ruled instead of the ruler, keep ruining everything? She’d never found him, that man who understood what boiled inside her.

  Unlike many of her friends, Julia refused to fool herself into thinking she was in love with the less-than-perfect man for her. She would never settle and suffer the inevitable, painful consequences of that delusion. But now, after all these years, she doubted whether the elusive fairy tale man that met all of her emotional and physical needs existed. Nevertheless, she’d never settled before. She wasn’t about to do it now.

  She embraced her deviance and, even now, still hoped that someday she would find a man who would do the same.

  Julia’s mind flip-flopped, weighing and debating the pros and cons of her situation as she strolled back to the farm.

  Totally immersed in her own thoughts, she almost missed the sounds of moving water. Just off the road to the right were a clearing and a brook. She walked over and found beautiful, clear water rushing over rounded stones that lined the creek bed.

  Oh, a short rinse to clean the sweat off would be perfect.

  Julia looked down the road in both directions. She felt safer this close to the farm, but she needed to be more cautious. In hindsight, her run today had been asinine.

  She quickly stripped off her jeans and T-shirt and stepped into the cool, clear water. It came almost to her knees. She sat down. The rapidly moving water rushed over her skin. Oh, heaven. She felt clean, refreshed and…troubled.

  Despite the discovery of what was as close to a bath as she was going to have for a long time, Julia’s heart sunk to new depths. Her new reality, the changed world, and the limited choices her life now presented weighed her down like a cement block of emotions wrapped with a chain around her neck. She soaked and lost herself in thought, trying as best she could to sort everything out.

  * * * *

  Arden finally spotted her as he cleared the grove of trees. She was naked and in the creek. He stopped and stayed in the shade of the grove and watched her. Her brow was furrowed, and her expression was blank, unmoving. She sat as if her body was there but her mind was in a different place completely.

  His blood pressure rose with anger. This was so dangerous. She was alone and not in the least aware of her surroundings. Hell, she was going to make him insane with the roller coaster of emotions she lead him through every day. Lust. Love. Fear. Frustration. Now anger. But, as he watched her, the look on her face told him it was not the time to confront her about her reckless behavior. He took one more step back into the grove and watched intently, making sure she was safe and wondering what she was thinking.

  Arden knew he was falling in love with Julia. She was smart and sexy, funny, too. She became more beautiful by the day. As she healed, she transformed into this sensual, brown-eyed, pouty-lipped perfection that owned more of his heart every moment he was with her. When she looked at him with her pensive, round eyes, he felt like the secrets of his soul were bared. His body literally felt her absence when she left the farm. He had no choice but to find her. Protect her. He instinctively knew she could easily be the woman he would build a life with.

  But there was something unsaid between them. She held him at arm’s length, yet sometimes flirted. She had no problem with him seeing her naked but never shared any more of her thoughts and feelings than a friend would. Other than a fleeting look or a mischievous glint in her eye, she had never given an indication that she might think of him as something more than a roommate or friend.

  He wanted to scoop her up and know her in every way a man can know a woman—mind, body, and soul. He longed to know the feel of her skin underneath his hands. He hungered to know her taste, snack on her mouth, and lap up the dew from between her legs. He wanted to be inside of her, to know what it felt like to have her hot, eager pussy sucking on his cock. He wanted to know her intimately, to stop wondering what she was thinking or whether she returned his feelings.

  But, Arden had absolutely no idea if she even remotely felt the same way.

  When Julia got out of the creek and redressed, Arden made his way back to the house and managed to couch his anger and frustration before he caught sight of her rounding the corner into the backyard.

  She had pasted a smile on her face and announced, “I found toilet paper!”

  He peered into the book bag, “In what universe is that toilet paper?”

  She ignored his question and walked in the back door to the kitchen.

  He followed. “Hey, listen, we have to talk about where you went today.”

  “Tomorrow.” She continued with a sad, almost smile. “Please? I just want to go to bed. I’m a little tired today.” She avoided making eye contact.

  “No dinner?”

  “No, I’m not really hungry.”

  He nodded and watched her walk up the stairs to her room.

  It only took a moment for Arden to realize he wasn’t let
ting her get away from him that easily. Her choices this afternoon had been sheer stupidity. She could have been killed going off the farm unarmed. And her naked swim? Fuck! No way was he going to let that go. He wasn’t going to stand by and let her get herself killed.

  She thought she was strong, that nothing could hurt her. She thought she didn’t need anybody, but her actions this afternoon and the look on her face when she strolled through the kitchen told him she needed him.

  His blood heated with anger, and his cock stiffened with hot lust. The long tease of watching her body heal topped with her naked swim had primed him for this detonation, this perfect storm that ignited within him. His normally calm disposition dissolved.

  He took the stairs two at a time and pushed her door open. The sun was low in the sky, and the room was all shadows. He knew Julia heard him come in. She ignored him. He lifted the quilt and slid next to her nude body.

  Chapter 4

  Julia remained motionless, not reacting to Arden’s entry into the bed. His body felt so good next to hers. It felt so good to be held. The hard press of his body behind her, aroused her.

  He caressed lightly down her side, trailing his hand into the roller coaster dip of her waist, up to her hips, and then down the slow descent of her thighs.

  Her skin heated in response to his touch. No. No, I just decided I wasn’t going to do this. But Julia’s heart jerked at the thought of pushing him away. Her resolve to remain platonic with Arden diluted with every exploring stroke of his rough hand against her skin.

  “Don’t ever leave this farm again without telling me. It’s not safe.” Arden’s husky voice was laced with warning. His tone was a slow burn of angry heat that brushed past her ear.

  To her surprise, his obnoxious mandate worked like a salve to soothe her fears. His show of anger and authority relieved her. Julia released a lengthy sigh and felt some relief from her anxiety.