Love Is Hell: A Valentine's Story, Book 1 [The Male Order, Texas Collection] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Edith DuBois

  Grayson fought really hard to keep down a giggle when Emilie said the word “riled” in her French accent. The R was all fuzzy and sexy. This definitely wasn’t the time for a giggle, but he felt a little more relaxed. “Okay,” he said, “you’re right.”

  “Yes, I know.” She frowned at him. “That is not what we need to discuss.”

  “No,” he agreed.

  “What we need to talk about is you, Grayson—”

  “Me? What did I do?”

  “Hush and no arguing. I tried to let you two work this out on your own, but obviously you are incapable. So, Grayson, we need talk about you and your lack of sensitivity toward your brother.”

  Grayson huffed but didn’t argue.

  “And, Gavin,” Emilie said, holding his brother’s gaze for a long moment, “we need to talk about you.”

  Gavin’s shoulders slumped. Grayson was surprised that his brother appeared relieved. Not defensive, not denying Emilie’s statement. Instead he nodded. “Okay.” He let out a sigh. “Yes, okay.”

  “Good,” Emilie said. “Now, Grayson.” She rounded on him. Gavin had placed a few camping lanterns inside the gazebo and turned them on low so that now a golden light washed gently across Emilie’s pale face. She was so goddamn ravishing it was hard to pay attention to her for a moment. All he could think about was sinking his cock deep into her slickness, into her familiar, beloved pussy, and watching the rapture wash over her body and face. He loved that moment just before she came, when her face scrunched up ever so slightly and she held her breath. God, she was gorgeous, and he found himself wondering yet again, how Gavin could be selfish enough to not be happy. He could only think of one answer that really answered that question.

  Gavin was a prick.

  Although he didn’t particularly like that answer since, technically, he and his brother shared the exact same genetic makeup. That such levels of prickishness could exist in his body was not a comfortable thought.

  Emilie snapped her fingers in his face. “I can tell you are not taking this conversation seriously. You can be mad at your brother, you can think him selfish and idiotic, but don’t act like you don’t care about him. That is not true. That is not anything that is real.”

  “I do care about him. You’re right about that, Emilie. But what I don’t understand is what the hell he is thinking. I don’t understand his behavior, his actions toward you and me. I don’t know what is going on in his head.”

  Gavin tried to jump in, but Emilie held up her hand, reminding him that she was the moderator of this conversation now.

  “And this upsets you?” Emilie asked, keeping her gaze on Grayson’s face.

  “No, why would it?”

  Emilie shrugged. “He is your brother. He is your twin. Why does he feel this when you are so happy? Does this mean you are unhappy? Or maybe that you will be, too, one day?”

  Goose bumps tightened the skin on his neck. Emilie’s words struck something inside him. Every instinct attuned to the truth went off like a thousand tuning forks at once. Her words hummed inside him, and he locked eyes with Gavin. His brother looked shaken as well. Was he thinking the same thing? Was he wondering how Grayson could continue to be so happy when he so obviously felt like shit?

  “Or maybe,” Emilie said, her voice low, “this means that somehow, the connection you two have shared your whole life has been altered. Maybe something has come between you to warp and knock that connection askew. And you don’t know if that’s good or bad, but it’s different, and it’s uncomfortable and strange and unnerving.”

  Grayson knew what it was that had changed their connection. He had a feeling Gavin knew, too. Emilie must have been thinking it for a while now, to bring it up.

  “For now,” Gavin said, speaking first and breaking eye contact to look at Emilie. “It’s only uncomfortable and strange for now.”

  “And I wouldn’t say ‘warped,’” Grayson added. “I would say more like ‘reinforced’ or ‘expanded.’ Something more like that.” He grabbed Emilie’s hand and rubbed his thumb over her knuckles. He noticed Gavin did the same with her other.

  “You could never come between us,” Gavin said. “Never, ever think that.”

  Well, at least his imbecile brother got that right, Grayson thought. Perhaps he would listen to him rant for a bit, let him get it out of his system. If it meant the rest of the evening could pass in peace and things could go back to normal between the three of them, Grayson was for it. And maybe he should bite the bullet and try to start things off again. He released an inward sigh. He would do it for Emilie.

  “Look, I really am sorry I messed up tonight. I didn’t mean for our plans to fall apart like that. I know you put a lot of work into them.”

  Gavin nodded stiffly. “Thanks.”

  Emilie sucked in a deep breath and then let it out. With her eyes closed, she said, “See? That felt good. Would you like to add anything else, Grayson?”

  “No.”

  Emilie peeked at him out of one eye and raised one brow ever so slightly.

  “Except,” he quickly said, wracking his brain, “except…” Goddamn it, he knew what she wanted from him. He’d just have to give in. That was the only way to make her happy, he could see. “I’m ready to hear what you have to say, Gavin. I want to know what has been going on these past couple of months.” Those were some hard words to spit out, but he did it, and hell if he didn’t feel just a tiny bit better.

  Emilie looked smug, of course.

  After patting him on the hand to show her gratitude, she turned to Gavin. “So now it’s your turn.”

  Gavin stiffened under their wife’s scrutiny, and Grayson enjoyed his brother’s discomfort for a second or two. Then he refocused on Emilie’s interrogation, which wasn’t difficult, because her form of questioning was direct and simple. “What is going on?” She looked Gavin in the eye. “What the hell is going on?”

  Usually this type of questioning from Emilie would bring about two types of responses from the both of them. Either they would blunderbuss around the answer, and Emilie would ask them the same direct question again and again until eventually they answered her the way she expected them to the first time, or they would skip all that and answer her just as directly.

  Tonight, Gavin chose to go with the latter.

  He said, “I can’t work for you or your father anymore. I have to quit my job.”

  Chapter Six

  Damn. He hadn’t meant to say it quite like that. Emilie’s mouth hung open. He’d never seen her look anything less than graceful and composed, but this was probably the closest she’d come to not being those two things. As for his brother, Grayson grabbed his bubble tea and took a long, uninterrupted slurp. He got all the way down to the tapioca balls.

  Then he set his bubble tea down and said, “Well.”

  Emilie made a weird sort of huffing noise, but otherwise was unable to form words.

  “That was…” Grayson said, waving his hand. “That was…” The hand waving continued. “That was unexpected.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t really know that’s what I wanted until tonight. At the restaurant, when I went outside, that’s when it became clear, and all of a sudden I knew I couldn’t stay with Haymitch-Benson any longer. And I know you knew there was something going on, Emilie, but I swear I didn’t understand what it was. Not until tonight.” And actually, now that he had a moment to assess his feelings, he already felt a little bit better. Just getting that off his chest felt amazing. He didn’t know where his confession would lead them, but it was out there now and he couldn’t take it back.

  “Why?” Emilie finally croaked out. “Pourquoi? Pourquoi pense-tu que cette idée a la valeur? Seulement une idiote croirait cettes bêtises. C’est stupide et égoïste et tous les choses mals que je ne peux pas souviens maintenant. Où se trouve ta tête? Hmm? Hmm?”

  “I’m sorry, sweetie, but you were going a little too fast,” he said. “I didn’t quite catch everything.”

&nb
sp; “Me either,” Grayson said, “but I definitely heard ‘idiot’ and ‘stupid.’”

  “Oui. Il est le deux.” Gavin knew what that meant. Basically she was agreeing that, yes, he was both an idiot and stupid.

  “Maybe ‘dummy,’ too?” Grayson asked.

  “Non,” Emilie said, her lips set in a pout.

  “What about ‘imbecile’?”

  She rolled her eyes and shook her head.

  “Rascal?”

  “Non, Grayson.”

  “Scallywag? Rapscallion?” She glared at him. “Boob?”

  Gavin saw the corner of her mouth twitch, and the pout had slightly diminished.

  “Non, no husband of mine is a boob. At least not for now.” She turned her face from Grayson to glare at him. “So what have you to say about yourself? What do you mean you have to quit? What is it about managing a professional baseball team that is not to your liking? What do you find so repugnant about working for one of the most well-respected and revered companies in the world?”

  “I don’t find it repugnant. Not at all.”

  “Then what? What is wrong?”

  “Nothing is wrong. It’s just…not…right.” That sounded weird. God, he didn’t know how to say this. He didn’t even know what this was. Or what this meant. Or why this was happening. He only knew that this had to change.

  “So you want to quit, to just up and quit? What are you going to do? Sit around at home all day and watch the kids? Do housework? Cook dinner?”

  “Emilie.” He put a slight warning in his tone, knowing she was trying to push his buttons.

  “Well, tell me, Gavin. Is it that you don’t want to work? Don’t like the responsibility? I thought you’d moved past that. I thought you’d matured enough to realize that life without work is for a child. Are you a child? Are you a little boy? Are you—”

  “That’s enough. You know damn well this has nothing to do with responsibility.”

  Her chest was heaving, and she bit her bottom lip. “Tell me,” she whispered. “Make me understand it then.”

  “Yeah, I’m a little curious myself,” Grayson said, reaching for and then drinking Gavin’s bubble tea. “If you quit, what are you going to do? And does this mean you’re saying you’re okay with leaving the Outlaws totally in my hands?”

  “Like I said, I don’t have everything planned out. I don’t have anything really, but I think I have an idea.”

  “What idea?” Emilie asked.

  “It might sound dumb, but this is just the first few thoughts and ideas I have about it, so it, of course, would still need a lot of work.”

  Emilie didn’t interrupt or say anything, but he could tell from her expression that she was waiting for him to spit it out.

  “Okay, so right now I run the website and the social media platform for the Outlaws—amongst other things, of course—but I’ve always enjoyed that kind of stuff. At first I thought, hey, I’m actually kind of good at this, but now, it’s starting to feel more like, this is it. This is what I need to be doing. I don’t know. I just feel like, if I took some classes and learned more about web-building and management, I could really get something going with this.”

  “So you want to be on Facebook and Twitter all day?” Grayson asked, nonplussed.

  “No, it’s more than that. I want to build websites for people and teach them how to manage it. And I want to help them develop and create personas for their entire social media platform, show them how to really forge themselves as a presence. Help them devise completely unique and inventive ways of connecting with their audience.”

  “Really?” Grayson asked.

  “Yes.”

  Emilie was silent. He could tell she was processing and taking it all in.

  “And I could keep working from home, but…” He realized he didn’t know how to finish his sentence without sounding ungrateful or insensitive.

  “What?” Emilie asked, picking up on his hesitation.

  He shrugged. “I want to be useful. I think I’ve outstayed my usefulness with the Outlaws, and even more so with Haymitch-Benson.”

  “How is that possible? You and Grayson, you are the owners. You are good owners. I thought you had the Outlaws in your blood.”

  “I do. It’s not that I love the team any less or that I don’t want to be a part of it, but I don’t think it’s enough. I think I need more. This would be something of my own, something I’ve built totally from scratch and that belongs completely to me.”

  Emilie and Grayson stared at him, their eyes wide, as his last sentence sunk all the way in. He needed a moment, too. He’d never said those words out loud, or admitted them to himself. They felt strange and heavy, but also amazing and refreshing.

  “But,” Emilie said, “you do have that. You are important to the Outlaws and to my father’s company.”

  “I know, sweetie. But not in a way that is fulfilling to me. Think about it. You both have it already, fulfillment in your work. You’ve had it for years, Em. I don’t even know if you know what it feels like to not have that. And, Grayson, you so obviously belong at Haymitch-Benson, the idea of you not being there is laughable. But, I mean, think about it. The Outlaws have a team of people that we’ve trained to handle PR and social media and all of that. I don’t have much to do on that end. I need something else.”

  He thought he saw some small understanding stir in Grayson’s expression, some kind of recognition and acceptance. “I need to try at least,” Gavin said. “I need to do something because right now it isn’t working. We all know that.”

  Emilie let out a long, aggravated sigh. “What the hell am I going to tell my father?”

  “I’m not sure what we’ll tell your father,” Gavin said. “But we have a bit of time to figure it out.”

  “I don’t want you to leave,” Emilie said, frowning. She met his eyes. “You know how much it means to me, having you and Grayson by my side.”

  Gavin nodded. She’d told them that having them with her as part of the company made her feel stronger and more confident. They made her unafraid to speak her mind. She said she’d quit suspecting everyone of doubting her because she was a woman, or because she had a spotty past with the media, or because she was her father’s daughter and not her father. She’d said so many times how lucky she felt to have them as partners and as husbands.

  And he was changing all of that. He was taking part of it away from her. Without meaning to, he had already altered the dynamic between the three of them. By withdrawing from them over the past two months, he’d begun shifting and molding their relationship into something new.

  But deep down, deep down in the purest, strongest, most truthful part of himself, he knew it would be all right. He knew they could handle it. He knew they would handle it. They would change. It was impossible not to. Their relationship would take on many shapes and forms over the years. He had known this on an intellectual level from the moment he and Grayson decided to spend the rest of their lives with Emilie, but when it was actually happening, when it came time to face those changes and live through them and grapple with them in his heart, it felt much different. It felt sharper and more painful. Even more so because he knew he caused Emilie and Grayson pain, too. Despite these struggles, though, Gavin knew with dead certainty that no matter what, he was in this with them. They would roll in the muck together. He would go down into the filth and the mud and the mire with them.

  In the end, though, he would come up out of it, not alone, but with them. He knew this. He knew this more than he knew anything else.

  So he scooted closer to Emilie and held her face between his hands. “I’m still here,” he said. “And I will never, never leave your side.” He kissed her. It was slow and gentle. It meant I love you. It meant I am here for you. It meant I am beside you.

  They ended the kiss and looked into each other’s eyes for a long moment. Then Emilie pulled him to her. She held him tight and tucked her face against his neck. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged
her tight. They fell sideways onto the pillows and blankets.

  “Careful!” Grayson said, moving plates and cups out from under their legs. A moment later, Grayson lay down behind Emilie. He stroked her back while Gavin released her from the hug and began to caress her arm.

  “I never told you tonight how beautiful you look.”

  She smiled her half smile. “Merci.”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry I—”

  She put a finger to his mouth. “No more heavy talking tonight.”

  He raised his brows in question.

  Grabbing his wrist, Emilie placed his hand on her thigh. Then she slid both their hands up her leg until he firmly grasped her cunt. She wore stockings, but he could feel her heat and a bit of moisture. He needed no further prompting from her. As his thumb began to make slow, deliberate circles on her clit and as her hips rolled against his hand, she said, “It is time to make love to your wife.”

  * * * *

  Emilie purred. It had been far too long since she’d felt Gavin’s hands on her in this way. Already she felt the thick, warm moisture of arousal slickening up her pussy and the inner tops of her thighs. Heat blossomed and roiled through her blood. How could he do this? How could he call up such a response in her? After years of making love, she still felt the fire racing through her body, still felt that punch deep in her gut, knowing this man belonged to her and she belonged to him.

  Behind her, Grayson ran his hands up the backs of her thighs. She kicked off her shoes, and in seconds, he and Gavin put their fingers under the elastic of her stockings and peeled them off her legs. Gavin kissed her calves, the tops of her knees, the insides of her thighs, the small mound of her clit, though it was still covered by the silky fabric of her thong.

  Grayson traced his thumb along the crease between the tops of her legs and her ass checks. She shuddered with the shimmering zip of it. She was so glad she’d thought to grab the lube on her way out of the house. Nothing less than having both of them inside her would do tonight. She needed to feel their cocks. She needed the reassurance she got only when connected to the two of them. It was deep down in the core of her, that place where their love lived. She needed to touch it tonight. She needed to feel it alive and writhing inside her.