Season of Seduction
Page 31
“Are we clear?” Hunter demanded.
Clear on what? Jesus, he couldn’t think. “Yes,” he gasped.
Hunter pushed in, just enough to stretch his ass, just enough to make him choke on a moan.
“Yes, what?”
What did Hunter want him to say? What would get Liam the press and slide and God damned fucking he wanted?
Suddenly he knew, and the knowledge very nearly caused him to blow. Only his viselike grip on himself stopped the orgasm.
Panting, he forced out the words. “Yes, sir.”
Kat made a strangled noise beside him, but Liam couldn’t pull his gaze from Hunter’s eyes, which dilated with triumph and hunger.
Flags of color rode high on Hunter’s cheekbones. Sweat sheened his forehead and ran down the side of his face. Liam didn’t think he’d ever seen a sexier man. His heart stuttered, faltered. The world fell away for one eternal moment and everything shifted.
Nostrils flaring, Hunter pushed forward in one long, steady thrust until his balls pressed against Liam’s ass cheeks.
Liam gasped, and his heart leaped back to life. Face to face with Hunter like this was like dying and being born in the space of a heartbeat. The only other time he’d felt anything similar had been the first time with Kat. The parallel terrified him. It was one thing to want Hunter. But this was something else. This was need. Shit.
The world snapped back into place when Hunter began to pump with measured, steady strokes. Every thrust stoked Liam’s internal hot spot. Every thrust shocked their bodies together in a way that jolted his balls and sent tremors through his cock. There was no way he was going to last. “I’m going to come.”
Hunter bared his teeth and drew back until only the flared head of his cock remained inside Liam. “Not yet, you’re not. Kat, get over here and show us just how much you love this.”
Her breath hitched and the bed dipped when she folded over onto her hands and knees. Her breasts swayed as she crawled toward Hunter. Clamping his back teeth together, Liam shoved his head back against the mattress and stared at the ceiling. Whatever Kat was going to do, he couldn’t watch. No way could Liam hold out the way Hunter wanted once his lovers came together above him.
But Kat didn’t touch him.
“I love you,” she said, clear and simple. Arousal turned her voice smoky but these weren’t words spoken out of desire. They were from the heart, and they drew Liam’s gaze.
He lifted his head in time to see Kat pull out of a kiss. She left Hunter with a stunned expression that quickly darkened to a need Liam knew wouldn’t be denied.
“And I love you too.” She dropped a kiss on Liam’s stomach and wrapped her hand around his quivering dick. “This is just a really, really hot bonus.”
Hunter’s breath escaped in a rush and as Kat’s fingers tightened around Liam’s cock, Hunter surged forward. He filled Liam until there was no room left, and when Hunter covered Kat’s smaller hand and pumped, guiding her touch, Liam’s pleasure centers burst wide open.
Kat swooped to catch his release on her tongue, which elicited a sound from Hunter that was halfway between a groan and a curse. Seconds later, Hunter’s cock jerked and he froze between Liam’s legs. Hunter peaked with a hoarse shout.
When Liam regained enough sense to account for his surroundings, he realized Kat still knelt beside him. Hunter hadn’t moved, either, except to slip free of Liam’s body and peel off the condom. Liam felt pretty damned close to spent, but he reached for Kat anyway. “Come here, lovely assistant. You deserve a reward.”
Hunter finally moved, but only to collapse on Kat’s other side. Before Kat could respond, Hunter tugged her down between him and Liam and rubbed his face in the hollow of her neck. “A slow, deep reward,” he agreed.
“I choose sleep.” She searched across Liam’s stomach until she found his hand and slid her fingers between his. “Just like this.”
“Think we wore her out?” Hunter asked.
Liam rolled onto his side and fit himself to Kat’s warm curves. Her eyes were already closed. A small smile softened her mouth. Ducking his head, he kissed her.
“I think we’d better take her cue. No doubt she’ll put us through our paces again tomorrow.”
Hunter responded by reaching around to turn off the lamp beside the bed, but not before Liam saw that Hunter’s smile matched Kat’s.
* * *
She woke in the early morning dark, sandwiched between two hard, warm bodies. As the memories of the evening before sliced away the sleep fog, she realized she’d rolled in her sleep. Her nose was up against Hunter’s chest but she cradled Liam’s hand between her breasts. Perfect.
“Merry Christmas,” she whispered.
Hunter’s sleep-raspy voice answered her. “Merry Christmas to you, too.”
Liam’s fingers flexed around hers and his cock stiffened against her lower back as he started to wake, too.
“Santa left a present for you,” Liam mumbled. He released her hand and cupped her breast, using the soft mound to anchor her against him.
Still tender from the night before, Kat sat up and climbed over Hunter. He tried to catch her but, with a puff of laughter, she evaded his roaming hands. “No way. I need a recovery period. At the very least, recovery calories.”
Not bothering with a lamp because the Christmas lights outside still blazed bright, she grabbed her robe from where it had fallen the night before. As she slid her arms into the sleeves, she turned and smiled at the two men tangled together on her bed. Hunter’s hand rested possessively on Liam’s stomach, a gesture Kat wasn’t sure he’d consciously performed.
“And you two might be high on your man endorphin hangover right now but in about half an hour when you crash, you’ll thank me for having the sense to get the coffee going.”
“We could produce another round of endorphins.” Liam stretched lazily and Hunter’s hand slid down to fondle his cock.
Her pulse kicked up but she resolutely belted her robe. She wasn’t kidding when she said she needed to recover. Her body ached in good places, but it still ached. She deliberately backed away.
“You two produce whatever you want. I’m going downstairs.” Instead of venturing within range of greedy hands, she blew a kiss to both men.
Smiling, she stepped out into the hall. The Christmas tree lights guided her down the stairs. Kat spent a few minutes tidying the living room and listening to the low notes of masculine voices above. When talking gave way to a grunt and the creak of the bed frame, she sat on the sofa with her legs curled under her and closed her eyes to listen to the sounds of her men loving one another. The barista had been right. Christmas was a time to be with those you loved.
She would have ignored her body’s objections and stayed with them, but deep down she knew Liam and Hunter needed time alone. Despite Liam’s confessions and Hunter’s concessions, the three of them stood on shaky ground. Liam was who he was—a man who needed control over his life. He’d promised to back off but his control issues were deeply ingrained, practically bred into him. Hunter, on the other hand, was in control down to his marrow. He didn’t have a power struggle to fight because in his mind, the question of who was on top had only one answer—him.
The pair of them would work it out, but the best thing she could do to facilitate matters was remove herself from the middle...but only some of the time. She pressed her thighs together, relishing the warm flush of arousal stirred up by Liam’s needful groan. The rest of the time, she would enjoy the hell out of claiming her place with them.
Before she could succumb to the urge to return to bed, she rose and went into the kitchen to start coffee and put her famous rum-glazed cinnamon rolls in the oven. The shower started as she finished gathering last night’s neglected dishes. Kat closed the dishwasher without starting the cycle and turned to find Hunte
r watching her from the doorway.
He wore his jeans low on his hips and hadn’t pulled on a shirt. Her mouth went dry and her fingertips tingled with the need to rediscover the texture of the dark hair dusting all those hard muscles. Clearing her throat, she exercised some impulse control and tucked her hands into the pockets of her robe.
“You didn’t have to get out of bed. We do a pretty lazy Christmas morning.”
“I’m an early riser even on weekends and holidays.” He looked around the kitchen but didn’t move from his position. “You like sunflowers, huh?”
She glanced at the brightly printed wallpaper border over the sink. “They’re fine. Cheerful. They came with the house and we decided to leave the kitchen alone while we worked on some of the other rooms first. The upstairs guest bathroom was horrific. Bubble-gum pink. You would have been very uncomfortable.”
“Completely emasculated,” he agreed.
Kat couldn’t think of a single thing that would reduce Hunter to anything less than all-man. “Good thing we stripped the pink. There’s only enough room for one woman in our bed.”
He redirected the full brunt of his focus to meet and hold her gaze. “So that’s the way it is, huh?”
“I’m not really into women. Are you?”
“I’m into you.”
“Not what I meant.”
“It’s what I meant.” He straightened and walked into the kitchen. The shower was still running upstairs. Her ears filled with the sounds of rushing water and her thrumming awareness of Hunter, who stopped in front of her, so close she could smell Liam on his skin. The pheromone cocktail kicked up a distracting buzz in her head. She tried to shake it off but Hunter cupped her cheeks in his hands, tilted her head back, and held her immobile.
She held her breath and waited for him to come to whatever decision he was silently debating. They’d stood in a similar position only twelve hours ago, wrapped in an entirely different sort of tension. Yesterday’s Hunter was angry in his need. Today’s Hunter still displayed an undeniable degree of ferocity, but he held it on a short leash. Remembering the cold floor beneath her knees and his hard hands in her hair, she failed to suppress a shiver. Hunter answered with a slow, knowing smile and stroked the pad of his thumb across her bottom lip.
“I’m into you,” he repeated. He lowered his head to kiss her, gentle and brief and at odds with the desire vibrating between them. “If you ever need a reminder, let me know.”
Before Kat could disentangle her hands from her robe, he released her. The upstairs shower cut off. She watched him grab a clean mug and fill it from the coffee carafe. In those few seconds, she managed to compose herself. The question of other women still niggled but she was reluctant to broach the subject. Their arrangement as three was new enough without seriously raising the question of whether Hunter would ever want their arrangement to extend itself to four. Asking now likely wouldn’t yield a meaningful discussion, anyway. Liam had proven to her that desires have tremendous capacity for change. If Hunter ever wanted a fourth—a woman—well...she’d deal with that in the moment. This moment was enough in itself without borrowing trouble.
Well. Without borrowing more trouble. Bracing herself for a fight, Kat hit him with a new challenge. “Liam and I have plans to meet a few friends later. Adele, her husband, a couple others.”
The muscles in Hunter’s back tightened before she finished speaking. He replaced the carafe with a very obvious measure of calm, which carried over into his tone. “No problem. Just let me know when you need me to clear out.”
“I don’t ever need you to ‘clear out’. You’re welcome here 24/7. I’ll give you one of our spare keys. I—”
“Kat.” He turned to face her but didn’t say anything else.
She frowned at his shuttered expression and stomped on her uncharacteristic neediness before it scared him away. “Well, dinner. I didn’t tell you in order to give you an eviction notice. Will you join us? You know Adele and her husband. It’ll be us and them, Adele’s brother, and his partner.”
“Partner? Michael’s gay?” Hunter didn’t wait for an answer. He shook his head. “I can’t stay. I’m back on duty tomorrow morning so I have to head back to D.C. tonight.”
Kat pressed her lips together and watched him without saying anything. She wasn’t about to kick their relationship off by letting him off the hook every time he referenced the Marines. Hunter looked away from her and narrowed his eyes at the window above the kitchen sink. She could read his thought process in his flexing jaw. The urge to rescue him stirred behind her breastbone but she suppressed it. This was a hook he’d just have to dangle from.
Hunter was still glaring at their small backyard when Liam came downstairs and joined them a minute later.
“Morning.” Liam stopped behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. He pulled her back against his chest, comfortable with his affection. Kat turned her face up for a kiss. Liam generously complied. His warm, minty mouth and roaming hands distracted her from Hunter’s internal argument until he broke the kiss and angled his head toward their stone-faced lover. Problem? Liam mouthed.
She shrugged and silently answered. Ask him.
Brow furrowed, he shook his head, squeezed her butt and headed for the coffee. “It smells amazing down here. Hunter, you’re in for a culinary treat.”
“Cinnamon rolls need a few more minutes. I’m going to go up and get dressed if you’ll pull them out when the timer goes off.” She glanced at Hunter, who was now watching them instead of staring out the window. “Let me know what you decide about dinner.”
Hunter rolled his shoulders, an action that did interesting things to his pecs. “If we’re going to be seen together in public, we need some rules.”
Liam set his coffee on the counter and folded his arms across his chest. Even though he had a different, slimmer build than Hunter possessed, he cut a tempting image of his own. “Well, neither Kat nor I have any restrictions so rule-setting is going to be your show. Let’s hear them.”
“Fine. When we’re in public, you refer to me as a friend and we don’t touch each other.”
Kat was shaking her head before he even finished speaking. “I can’t promise not to touch you. I’m a touchy person. I even touch Adele.”
“I think we can agree to no overt PDAs,” Liam said. “But Kat’s right. If you’re going to get bent up over casual touches, we should avoid public situations completely.”
Hunter’s jaw worked. “No hand-holding, no touching below the waist. Nothing that will make a casual observer wonder about the nature of our relationship.”
Liam’s features relaxed. “That seems reasonable. Kat?”
She didn’t want to agree—wanted to spend all her time making up for the years they’d lost—but Hunter wasn’t making draconian demands. Even though he stood there with his rigid posture and shuttered eyes, his PDA limits were reasonable. They weren’t anything new, either. He’d never been the touchy type in public, not even when their peers had gone through an odd kissy-cuddly phase in high school. While the guys pretended to French kiss and the girls sat on each other’s laps at lunch, Hunter had remained aloof.
With a sigh, she nodded. “Fine. But I want a protection clause for this rule. For all rules, if we’re going to have a relationship that includes them.”
Both men glanced at each other with different degrees of wariness.
Kat rolled her eyes and continued without waiting for them to ask. “Rules come with consequences. That’s just the nature of rules. Break one, there’s a consequence. I want your assurance—both of you—that the consequence of a broken rule isn’t a broken relationship. And if either of you have a hard limit that would result in an immediate end, you need to say so up front. I’m not going to live my life tiptoeing around in fear of accidentally tripping the ‘game over’ button.”
“You just issued a tall order, K-K. Do you need a list of limits right now or can we all take a few days to think?”
The thought that her relationship with Liam might have a breaking point was unsettling. Even as emotion rolled through her, she logically acknowledged that she shouldn’t be surprised. Ten years of marriage hadn’t prepared her for the things she’d learned about him the night before. If Liam had kept details to himself of Hunter’s interest in her, and his own interest in turning their traditional relationship into a trio, he probably had other undisclosed layers. She’d meant to toss the ball into Hunter’s court. Having it served back to her caught her off guard.
“Liam’s right,” Hunter said. “And so are you. We all deserve to know where the landmines are planted so we know how to approach them. Let’s take a week.”
“A week.” Kat looked between them. “That puts us at New Year’s Day for our first relationship meeting.”
“I can’t think of a better way to start a new year.” The oven timer went off. Liam grabbed a pair of oven mitts, pulled the cinnamon rolls out of the oven and set them aside to cool.
She could think of plenty more ways, but she nodded her assent. “Okay. We’ll let it go for the week, but Hunter, that means none of us can walk away from this between now and then. No matter what mistakes we make. Agreed?”
Hunter finally relaxed. “I can live with that.”
“Okay, then. I’m going to go shower and get dressed. I’ll be back down in a while.” Having both Liam and Hunter standing against her as a unified front had sucked the energy right out. She needed a dose of caffeine and sugar, but the tension had turned her stomach sour. Both Liam and Hunter had the right of it, though. Twenty-four hours of frantic fucking wasn’t going to glue them together permanently. Only communication, respect and love would see them through.