by Cara McKenna
“Huh.” It was true, though—polite manipulation was a part of Clare’s daily life, too. She manipulated her callers into calming down. She manipulated her parents regularly, and with two very different strategies. If she was missing her dad, all it took was a call to tell him, straight up, I’m feeling a little forgotten over here. Dinner next week? He needed the direct approach, and his feelings were rarely hurt for longer than it took to wrap up the conversation. Her mom, on the other hand, required a more roundabout strategy. She worked crazy hard and was exhausted by the time she so-called unplugged. The best way to get her out for dinner was to trick her into thinking it wasn’t a demand but a treat. Mom, you sound beat. Let me take you out on Friday. Couple of glasses of wine, couple of hours away from your e-mail . . . Same result, way different methods. Manipulation, minus any nefarious intent.
“I think we all do that with the people in our lives,” she said. “Without thinking, even.”
Vaughn nodded.
Clare realized with some surprise that her mug was empty. “I better head out soon.”
“Work?”
“No, Thursday’s the start of my weekend. But I need to run a couple of errands before it’s time to go to yoga.” Class would be interesting. She had a noisy brain at the best of times and worked hard to empty her head out, get fixated on the breathing and the effort and leave the nagging thoughts behind for an hour at a time. Today she’d be absolutely useless. She’d have hard-core porn running through her skull the entire ninety minutes.
Vaughn stood when she did, taking her mug. “Well, it was nice talking, again. And . . . you know. Everything else was nice, too. Unexpected, but . . .”
“Memorable,” she offered with a smile.
“Yeah, very.” You could just about roast marshmallows with the heat coming off that handsome face. “Um . . . Okay, now I don’t mean to sound like a dick, but . . .”
“Don’t say anything?” she prompted.
“That sounds stupid, especially since we don’t share a social circle, but, well, yeah.”
“No problem—and I get it.” A three-way was personal enough, but for Vaughn, with it being a three-way with two men involved . . . The culture was weird about that stuff, and the black community could be especially so, around here. Add to that the fact that he worked a blue-collar job, was maybe a member of a union . . . His world wasn’t equipped to parse all that, and she could respect it. She wasn’t even sure if she was ready to tell Bree or any of her other friends. She needed to wrap her own head around what had happened, first.
“I won’t tell anybody. Or if I do decide to tell a girlfriend, I won’t be tossing names around.”
“Cool. That goes both ways, too. I don’t kiss and tell, to say nothing of what happened last night.”
She smiled at that and grabbed her purse. “Anyhow. Maybe I’ll see you around.” Maybe not. With Mica calling the shots and setting the mood, it felt foolish to guess.
“Hope so. Take care, Clare.” He strode past her so he could unbolt the door and hold it open.
“Thanks. See you.” She wiggled her fingers good-bye at him over her shoulder, then headed down the hall. Downstairs, outside, into the bright May sunshine. Headed toward home, and routines, and everyday life, with something altogether unusual putting a spring in her step.
CHAPTER NINE
Mica made her wait again, but not quite as long.
She even saw him at the coffee shop. She’d had Thursday off but swung by the office needing a thumb drive she’d left on her desk. Okay, maybe needed was a stretch. Perhaps what she’d actually needed was an excuse to find herself in striking distance of Mica. They shared a look—a smile, a taste of protracted eye contact, but he didn’t join her at her table, or speak to her.
Not with his mouth, anyhow. His eyes had said plenty. His eyes had said any number of wicked things, maybe even made a couple of promises to her for as long as they lingered over the bustle of the baristas’ galley.
We can leave it at that, she told herself. They could never speak again and she told herself she’d be fine with it. His eye contact acknowledged it had been real, and that was all she needed. Brazen lies, but she was prepared to believe them.
Except then the call came on Friday morning.
Clare’s weekend was in full swing and Bree was taking a personal day at her temp job. Together they’d headed across the river on an early shopping excursion, a well-overdue outing. Bree had job interviews to dress for; Clare had far less upstanding hopes for the new outfits she auditioned. But thankfully they were both equally low on cash, which found them chatting about Bree’s upcoming interview as they worked their way through the crowded racks at H&M.
“A classmate of mine had an internship there, as an undergrad,” Bree was saying. “She said the guy who’s going to be meeting with me was a total dick and borderline OCD, but for the salary they’re advertising, I think I can smile and deal.”
Clare pulled a top with potential from a shelf and draped it over her arm. “Just give me a few months’ notice before you ditch our hovel to go and find yourself a penthouse.”
Bree laughed. “Yeah, right. You take a look at my student loan statement and I promise you’ll see there’s no chance of that. Plus, I like our hovel. It has curtains.”
“Did you . . .” Clare paused, catching the digital jingle of her phone in her purse. “Hang on.” Her heart gave a little leap, a little lurch, but that was foolishness—it was just past ten thirty on a Friday. If Mica weren’t working, he’d probably be in bed. And maybe not alone, she thought, pulling out the device. It won’t be him.
“Holy shit. It’s him,” she said, staring at the name on the screen.
“Answer it, dumb-ass.” Bree nodded to the ringing phone. She knew Clare had it bad for a guy, but nothing about the three-way. “I’ll go try this stuff on.”
Clare hit ACCEPT on the fifth ring. “Hello?”
“Hey.” Man, just one syllable in that voice and she was such a goner.
“Mica? Hey. What’s up?”
“You at work?”
“No, out shopping with my roommate. What are you doing?”
“Lying in bed. Thinking about you.”
“Oh, really? Do tell.” Do tell—for example, was he thinking just of her, or of Vaughn, as well . . . ?
“Thinking about your mouth,” he said, his tone at once lazy and charged. She could just picture it: that gorgeous man, naked to the waist, hips draped in his sheets, maybe a hand settled on his rousing cock. All of it washed in cool morning sunlight from the window at the head of his bed.
“What about my mouth?” Clare asked softly, flipping through a carousel of sundresses.
“About how good it feels wrapped around my dick.”
She blushed from her temples to her toes. “Thinking about that sort of thing already? Have you even had breakfast?”
“Can’t stop thinking about you.”
Her blush changed, the hot flash of guilty excitement softening to a warm glow. Invite me over, she wanted to say. Vaughn was probably working. As hot as the idea of another threesome was, she craved Mica’s focused attention just as much. She wanted these words backed up by proof. Wanted to be with him and feel that he wanted her all to himself.
How naive can you get? She’d be smart to ignore the giddier hopes swirling in her middle. Like a guy is going to share a girl he feels seriously about with his best friend. You’re his fuckbuddy at best. Enjoy this for what it is.
“I’ve thought about you, too,” she admitted, blindly browsing accessories. She’d thought about him nearly constantly since the moment she first laid eyes on him, whether she liked that fact or not. She was obsessed in a way she’d thought she’d left behind with her teen years.
“Tell me,” said that voice in her ear. “The dirty stuff.”
She laughed. “Okay, (A):
How do you know they’re dirty thoughts? And (B): I’m in H&M. I’m not having phone sex with Fergie yowling in the background.”
“Why not?”
“Answer my question, first.”
“How do I know you’ve had dirty thoughts about me? I was in that bed. Both those beds. I saw and heard and felt you come, honey.” Honey. “I know all that was real.”
Still, he hadn’t mentioned Vaughn. That naive little butterfly of hope was fluttering around between her ribs once more.
“Fine. I have. Filthy thoughts, if you must know, but I’m not going to list them all for you here. You want to hear them, you’ll just have to have me over again sometime.” Too pushy? Nah, fuck it. Inviting herself over was nothing on the pushiness spectrum compared to talking two hesitant people into a fucking three-way.
“I will,” he said, “but give me something now. Anything. Whisper it.”
“This is a seriously unerotic setting.” And yet his voice had her getting wet right here, right now, didn’t it?
“Anything,” he said again. “I’ve got my dick in my hand. Give me something to think about.”
She swallowed, picturing exactly that. “Fine. And I have thought about you, when I’m in bed. You know.”
“When you touch yourself.”
She swallowed and spoke nearly too quietly to hear herself. “Yeah, I have.”
“What did you think about?” That voice was rougher now, all its laziness gone and his breaths sounding tighter.
“About all the stuff we’ve done,” she murmured, fingering a long strand of hot pink plastic pearls.
“Like?”
“Like how good you are with your mouth. And how good you look . . . you know. On top of me.”
“Not half as good as you look underneath me,” he teased, but his voice gave away his excitement. She could about hear the pace of his strokes in the pitch of those words.
She turned the tables on him, shifted the burden of making with the sexy talk. She could muster it just fine if she were home with a glass of wine perched on the ledge of the bathtub, but H&M was leaving her seriously uninspired. “Tell me what we’d be doing if I was in your bed right now,” she said.
“Anything you wanted.”
“And what about you? What would you want?”
A pause, then, “I’d take you from behind.”
Her pulse thumped a little harder, the jewelry racks blurring as her focus went fuzzy. “Oh?”
“Yeah, right here. Rough. With a hand on your clit and the other on your shoulder.”
And instantly she felt exactly that—a phantom palm and fingers cupping her there, tugging her into his thrusts. She felt more, even. The slick intrusion of that long, glorious cock, owning her in the sunlight. She smelled his skin, heard his moans. Tasted his sweat, his come.
“What next?” she prompted.
A soft huff of a moan. “Your hand on me. Just like I’m doing now.”
“Tell me.”
“Tight. Not too fast, but steady.”
“What about me?”
“Anything. Whatever you want.”
She considered her options as she made her way to the deserted underwear section. Any act that let her watch that unearthly face, she decided. “You on top. All wound up and on the edge. You’re seconds from coming, but you won’t let yourself get there until I do.”
“Yeah.”
She could hear it in his voice: He was working toward release now. She’d get him there, surely as if she were tangled up in those sheets with him right now. “Fast and rough. I’d touch myself,” she murmured, wandering out of an approaching customer’s earshot, “and watch you working. Watch you suffer,” she added. “So close, but so patient while I took my turn.”
“Fuck.”
“Are you naked?”
“Nearly,” he panted.
“Whatever you’re still wearing, take it off.” Man, she was better at this than she’d expected.
There was a pause, a rustle, then his breathing came back on the line. “Done. Now what?”
“Keep going. All the way. Let me hear it when you do.” She wandered slowly, aimlessly, up and down the aisles. She pictured him arched across his covers, arms and belly and chest clenched, fist racing. What she’d give to be there, shutter clicking a million miles a minute, capturing every sinful frame of it.
And he hasn’t mentioned Vaughn. This was about him and her, it felt. And that made Clare feel like more than just a casual lover up for a three-way. Special, maybe.
Dangerous as the notion felt.
“I’m close.” His voice underlined the statement. “Tell me to.”
“Come,” she whispered, flipping absently through a rack of bras.
A groan answered her.
“Come.” Christ, what she’d give to be there. In that room, with his smells, his sounds, and the sight of him right there. That skin, close enough to touch, that mouth near enough to kiss as he trembled atop his sheets, arm pumping fast and frantic.
“Fuck, honey.”
A shiver shot up her back at the pet name, chased by fever. “Do it. Come. Right now.” She took a breath and ordered him, “Come for me.”
And he did. She knew it from the pitch of his moan and the silence that followed, then the warm, disbelieving exhalation on its heels. She smiled to herself, probably looking beyond smug to any onlookers. And why shouldn’t she? She’d just help turn the sexiest man in the city into a panting, needy mess.
“You all set now?” she asked. “Can a girl get on with her shopping?”
A soft laugh, then he cleared his throat. “I guess. Thanks for that.”
“Anytime.” Now ask me out again. Invite me over this weekend. Any promise that he planned to reciprocate that orgasm. “Guess I’ll see you,” she tacked on.
“Hope you will,” he said.
So when? WHEN?
The line went blank. Clare stared at the screen, at his name and the call duration, then turned her phone off, tempted to groan her frustration aloud.
Bree must have been watching, waiting for her chance to pounce, because she was at Clare’s side a moment later.
“So? What’d he say?”
Clare rolled her eyes.
“Oh. Sorry. Is it over, then?”
“No, no. I mean, I don’t even know what it is, but no, I don’t think it’s over. In fact I think I just had phone sex.”
“You think?”
“Well, he definitely did.”
Bree snorted and slugged her on the arm. “Dude, that is random. And filthy.”
“He’s filthy,” she said, her tone making it clear that it wasn’t a complaint.
“Way to multitask.”
“Thanks. Still, it would’ve been nice if we’d settled on our next date, or hookup, or whatever. Or if he ever gave me any notice for anything, ever.”
“Ah. One of those.”
“Yeah, one of those. Jesus, you take yourself off the market for a few short years and the dating customs completely change on you.”
“Nobody really dates anymore, do they?” Bree said. “You just fuck a load of randos you meet on the Internet until eventually you wake up married to whichever one bothered to make you breakfast.”
“Christ, that sounds exhausting.”
“You’re twat-deep in the rando-fucking phase,” Bree pointed out, “and I dare you to complain.”
“Fair point.” Though Clare couldn’t entirely shake the cloud now hovering above her. She eyed the garments slung over her arm, realizing she didn’t really like any of them enough to bother with the changing rooms. All she really wanted was to get home, shut her bedroom door, and take care of the ache that had settled in her belly. She abandoned the lot of it at an empty register.
“You all set?” she asked Bree. �
�Let’s find brunch.”
“Sure. And sorry if I just stomped on a sore spot.”
“You didn’t. Not really. You know how strung out you get, though,” Clare said as they exited into the summer sunshine, “when you’ve got it bad for a guy but you have no clue what page he’s on? Like, I like this guy. He’s hot, he’s insane in bed, he’s interesting, he keeps me on edge, in a good way.” There was more to it, as well, though she couldn’t articulate quite what it was. He made her feel . . . awake? Alive? Made her feel like the sort of girl she’d lost touch with, those lost years with Davis. Made her feel wild—and wanted—as no one had before. Ever. Those were hard things to imagine letting go, when she’d only just gotten a taste. “I’d date him, properly, if he was up for it.” Could a fling like theirs ever translate to something more? Or did this breed of attraction inevitably burn itself out? Clare couldn’t guess.
“But you have no idea if he is. Up for it.”
Clare nodded. Up for it, or even capable of it, she thought, recalling what Vaughn had said about his friend. “And not to sound like I’ve lost track of my feminism or anything, but I’m kinda worried that the stuff we’ve done . . . I don’t know if it’s stuff a guy does with someone he sees as girlfriend material. Oh God, how Madonna/whore did that sound?”
“Man, we need to get about six mimosas into you so I can find out what on earth you’ve been up to,” Bree teased.
“The waffle place doesn’t serve booze, so you’re shit out of luck.”
“Ugh, travesty. But seriously—you are overthinking this. The guy just called you for phone sex at eleven in the morning. He’s probably not after some well-behaved little wifey type. He probably likes you the way you are. Which is apparently super skanky.”
Clare laughed. “Shut up.”
“Just don’t worry about it. I highly doubt a guy’s going to write a girl off just because, I dunno, she took it up the butt on the first date or whatever.”
“It’s not that.”
“Whatever. You know what I mean.”