by L. E. Harner
Hmm… The giant storm already covered the mountain. In fact, whiteout conditions were imminent, and there was no way Cade could drive back down the mountain in this weather. The crazy man had set this up so they would have the weekend trapped in her cabin together. She had plenty of food and drink. Did she have the nerve? Or was she getting ahead of herself? Maybe this didn’t have anything to do with sex.
Well, whatever this was, she needed to bring them inside. No matter how hot things got in the Hummer right now, conditions wouldn’t stay that way for long. Might as well find out what this was all about.
Christina slipped on a thong and a pair of jeans and topped them with a camisole and flannel shirt. She’d lose the shirt once the guys were inside. She kept it hot in here on the weekends so clothing would be optional for her. She didn’t see any reason to change that policy now.
She opened the garage door and was only a few feet away from the front of the Hummer when Cade pulled away from Carter’s kiss. His gaze locked with Christina’s, and his smile was slow and sexy, with not one whit of embarrassment for being caught kissing Carter.
“Come on, you two. Let’s go inside,” Christina yelled, unsure if they could hear her. They seemed to get the message because they both scrambled to get their bags and ran for the shelter of the garage. They were laughing and brushing snow from their hair and clothes, while Christina smiled at their antics. They really were like a couple of big kids sometimes, she thought. She closed the garage door and shut out the storm.
“Come on in, but don’t get water on my floors or you’ll be waxing them!” she said.
“Ooh, goody! A bossy wench,” Cade said as he stripped off his boots and socks.
Chapter Three
“So what brings you up the mountain in this weather, boys?” Christina asked. She spoke as if they’d often stopped by, when in fact they’d never been to her house before. She led them into the kitchen and enjoyed watching their reactions to her home. These were men who appeared to appreciate the balance of casual style and comfort she’d worked so hard to achieve.
Christina pulled up a kitchen chair and sat, gazing expectantly into Carter’s beautiful gray eyes. His face was the more classically handsome of the two men, with chiseled features and perfectly formed lips. Lips that looked swollen from the kisses he’d shared with Cade. His hair was short, and the snow left softly tousled black curls around his face. Her fingers itched with the desire see if it was as thick as it looked.
“First, let’s get one thing clear, right up front,” Carter said. "You have about ten seconds to tell us to go, otherwise we won’t be able to make it back down the mountain until the plows get through. With the size of this storm, I expect that will be Tuesday morning at the earliest. We promise to negotiate everything else in good faith, but the decision of whether we stay or go needs to happen now.”
Christina blinked. It never entered her mind that they could still make it back down the mountain. “It already isn’t safe. So since you’re here for the weekend, maybe one of you wants to tell me exactly what’s going on.”
“This seemed much easier back at our place,” Cade said to Carter.
Carter grinned at Cade’s suddenly uncomfortable face and thought he might relieve some of the pressure. Being lawyers, they were both good at presenting facts the way they wanted them told. Apparently Cade had temporarily lost that skill.
“It occurred to us that you’ve never dated either one of us. Not once in high school or any time after college have you ever spent an evening gracing one of us with your presence. Considering we’ve known you since you were seven, that means you’ve resisted our considerable charms for twenty years now. Why is that?”
Christina’s lips twitched. “You never asked,” she said simply.
Carter thought he was ready to counter any argument she might offer, ready to show her the fault of the logic that had led to such a deplorable situation. He wasn’t ready for that answer. He thought about her response and knew why he hadn’t asked her out.
Because Cade had loved her first.
Carter looked at Cade, who was staring transfixed at the woman in front of him. “Cade? You want to take a stab at explaining this?”
Cade shook his head. Carter sniggered. In all the years they’d known each other, Cade had never been at a loss for words.
“What my eloquent friend is trying to say is, he was afraid to ask you out, afraid it might be too important, and afraid that you might turn him down.”
“Enough with the ‘afraids’ already,” Cade interrupted.
“And I never asked you out because you were too important to Cade,” Carter finished smoothly.
“So, did you drive all the way up here in front of the biggest snowstorm this decade to ask me something, or did you just want a tour of my home?” Christina asked sweetly.
Cade looked at Christina and tried to judge what was going on behind her quiet exterior. So far, Carter had done all the talking. The damn woman left him tongue-tied. He blew out a breath, hoping he was going to say the right thing.
“Will you go on a stay-at-home date with us tonight? I mean, since we can’t take you out, will you have a date with us here?” Cade asked.
Christina’s face broke into a brilliant smile. “I’d love to,” she said. “Now let me show you to your rooms so you can put your things away.” They took a tour of the rest of the house, and she flushed at their praise of her home. She showed them her bedroom upstairs with the king-sized four-poster bed and giant Jacuzzi garden tub in the master bath. He noticed she pretended not see the look that passed between the men. They all trooped downstairs, and Christina handed Carter the remote control.
“You might want to watch TV before the satellite dish gets snow covered. I can guarantee we won’t have power for long. I’ve got some things to take care of now that I have company for dinner.”
Carter plopped in front of the flat screen, his feet on the ottoman, the remote clutched between his hands and flipped through the local channels looking at the weather forecast before finally settling on SportsCenter.
Cade grinned at Carter’s predictable viewing choice and followed Christina into the kitchen.
“May I help?”
“Yes, please. Would you get the candles down from the top shelf in that cabinet there? We need them in a couple of places around the house so that when we lose the power we can find them. I’ve got some flashlights here, too.”
She continued to give him little tasks while she started marinating steaks for dinner. Baked potatoes were wrapped in foil. She made the salad and set it back in the refrigerator. All the while she and Cade made small talk, getting to know each other again.
The kitchen opened into the great room where Carter had the volume turned low enough he could throw in a question or answer when it suited.
“Cade, there’s beer in the fridge, or wine. I don’t usually keep any soda in the house, but there’s juice or water. Oh, the liquor is over the wine rack, if you’d rather,” Christina said.
Grabbing two beers, Cade brought one to Carter, and then went back to stand by Christina in the kitchen. “You’re keeping awfully busy,” he murmured, brushing a silky brown curl back from her face.
“I just wanted to get everything done before the power goes out. It does every storm. It’s why I have a woodstove—”
“You know,” Cade interrupted, “the most embarrassing part of a first date is the kiss at the end. I could kiss you now, and we could avoid that whole awkward will she or won’t she let me moment.”
Without waiting for an answer, he swooped in and kissed her. Her lips so were soft against his. He wanted to plunder her, claim her as his for all time, carry her upstairs, and ravish her. He did none of those things. He kept the kiss chaste, not even offering any tongue. It was just a gentle brush of lips, a promise of more to come.
When Cade drew back, Carter was there. He stepped aside to let his friend have a taste of Christina’s sweet kiss. Cade watche
d as their lips met, and something warm turned over inside him. Not jealousy that another man was kissing the woman he wanted, but a warmth that promised this weekend could be the start of something much bigger than he’d ever dreamed.
* * * * *
The men had been true to their word and tried their best to make the evening a perfect date. Carter cooked and Cade cleaned up, while Christina complained she had nothing to do. The guys sent her in search of a board game. She thought their grins looked wicked when she returned with Scrabble.
“You never want to play word games with a lawyer,” Cade teased.
After she clobbered them the first game, they changed the rules. “It’s called Sex Shot Scrabble,” Carter said.
Cade took up the explanation. “Every word has to relate to sex or you have to pass. If you pass, you drink a shot. Pick your poison.”
Christina thought it over. Carter wanted tequila, but she didn’t really like the way it tasted straight. If she was going to have to drink, she preferred the single-malt whisky. After much laughter and increasingly ribald comments, the score was two shots for Christina and six apiece for Cade and Carter. She suspected they were losing on purpose, because they were getting increasingly outrageous trying to link common words to sex. They were all nicely buzzed, and Christina thought they were getting nervous as the evening wore on.
With a few flickers, the power finally died, and the only light in the room came from the softly glowing woodstove. Cade lit the candles and declared Christina the Scrabble champion. He and Carter toasted her supremacy with another shot.
The atmosphere felt tense, as if they all were waiting for something. Finally, she said, “I guess I’ll go to bed now.”
Cade stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Wait, Christina. Don’t go. At least not alone. We’re all adults here. We know what we want.”
“Do we?” she asked.
Carter hid his unhappy face in the shadows. “You mean because of the kiss you saw,” he said. He moved to sit on the couch next to Christina, and Cade sat on the other side of her. Cade held her hand and traced his thumb over the palm.
Carter’s voice was tense. “This whole day is turning out to be something I never imagined. I think maybe it’s important that we have truth between us. I’m not going to apologize for what happened earlier, but you should know that’s the first time anything ever happened between us.”
“I thought so,” Christina said. “I looked out the window when I heard you pull up. I saw the whole thing.”
“Oh boy. This is really awkward,” Carter said. “Cade doesn’t know this either.” He looked away. He didn’t want to see anyone’s face when he told the next part.
“The last six months things have really been getting to me. We’ve had some high-profile cases, long hours, and not much happening on the dating front. In fact, the few women either of us dated just annoyed me. I realized I was looking forward to coming home and spending each evening with Cade, watching TV or reading. I didn’t really think too much about it because it had become routine, comfortable. But I missed the intimacy of having someone in my bed.
“Then one night I had a dream. A wet dream…about Cade. I’d never thought of him that way before. We’ve always been good friends, but nothing like that. I figured it was the stress. I blew it off as a bad reaction to a long day.
“It got harder and harder to be around Cade though. I kept thinking about him and my dream. We’d always been casual about clothing; we walked around our house in a towel or underwear. After that dream, I couldn’t watch him without getting a hard-on. I had more dreams.”
Carter stopped talking then and put his head in his hands. Very quietly, he whispered, “I don’t know what to think any more.”
Cade reached across Christina’s lap and took his hand, but no one spoke.
It was very quiet in the room. Finally, Christina said, “Let’s all go upstairs. I think I’d like to hold you, Carter.”
Chapter Four
Christina came out of the bathroom wearing a short, blue satin nightgown and a hesitant smile. She knew she was inexperienced in bed, especially compared to these two legends. What she lacked in actual experience, she thought she more than made up for in a willingness to try. She was grateful the flicker of the candlelight hid her emotions.
The covers had been pulled back to reveal crisp, blue sheets. Cade was stretched on the opposite side of the bed, his head propped on his hand. In contrast to Carter’s dark good looks, Cade was golden. He wore his hair long but pulled back for his attorney persona. Now it spilled over his shoulders in shimmering waves. His blue eyes were the color of a summer sky, and he looked for all the world like a god waiting to be worshipped.
Carter was sitting on the edge of the bed. For such a large man, he gave the impression of being hunched in on himself. She knew he’d been talking to Cade downstairs more than he’d been talking to her. She suspected it actually might have made it easier to talk about with a third party in the conversation. It didn’t matter. Carter had put himself out there and shared the most intimate detail of his life. That meant a great deal to her.
Cade patted the center of the bed. “Come lay between us, Christina.”
She walked to the foot of the bed, weak-kneed at the thought of slipping between these two men. “I have a confession to make, too,” she said softly as she climbed up on the bed and settled between them. “I haven’t had a lot of experience in bed. Oh, don’t get me wrong,” she added at Cade’s sharp look. “I’m not virginal. It’s just I don’t run in the same circles you do. The men I’ve been with never seemed to want to try much variety.” She was even more grateful for the candlelight now. She could feel the heat and knew a blush was running up her neck to her face.
“I’d be willing to try some different things with you two.”
Carter drew strength from the way Christina looked at them from between her lashes. He could tell she was embarrassed. He leaned back and stroked a hand down the bare length of her arm. “Let us make love to you,” he said, just before his mouth claimed hers in a kiss.
His tongue thrust into her mouth, hot and demanding, and he groaned at the sweetness of her mouth. He pressed closer and deepened the kiss. He threaded his fingers into her curls and pulled her tighter against his mouth. His tongue glided in and out, a promise of what was to come. When Christina sucked his tongue, he moaned in anticipation.
He could tell when Cade’s hands began to explore Christina’s body. She made little whimpering noises, and her kiss became even more heated. God, it was sexy as hell to know they were working together to bring Christina pleasure. Carter was nearly overwhelmed by a wave of desire.
He tore his mouth away from the kiss long enough to gasp out, “No clothes.” Cade helped as he pushed Christina’s nightgown up and slipped it over her head. He resumed the kiss while he pulled his boxers down and tossed them aside.
Carter slid his palm up Christina’s flat belly to cup one of her heavy breasts. He kissed his way down her neck across her collarbone to her chest. She moaned when he rolled her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. He tightened his grip and rubbed his shadow beard across the tip of her nipple, and he heard her sharp intake of breath. His tongue laved her tight nipple, and her breast swelled under his attention. He glanced over to see Cade’s mouth working over Christina’s other nipple. Carter mirrored the other man’s movements.
He watched his friend, who appeared lost in the moment, and wondered how they would survive this weekend. He wasn’t jealous that Cade was with a woman, but he was turned on beyond belief that they were with Christina together. When Cade looked over and caught him watching, Carter flashed a happy grin. Cade smiled back, then trailed his hand lower. Christina squirmed. Her hips rose as her desire rode her. Carter watched when Cade dipped his fingers inside Christina’s pussy to gather some of her creamy wetness and then he painted her nipples with the juices. His lips followed Cade’s fingers, and he had his first taste of her.
&n
bsp; Carter noticed that whenever he pulled hard on Christina’s nipples with his fingers, his mouth, his teeth, she moaned louder and arched her chest to press against him even harder. “Cade, I think she might like it a little rough,” he murmured.
“Oh, God,” Christina moaned as a shudder passed through her body. Carter watched as Cade bit down on her breast, and a small scream escaped Christina. He laughed around her nipple and pulled sharply, drawing another yelp. Before he could stop to think about what he was doing, he rose a little on one arm and leaned in to kiss Cade.
Cade’s mouth was firm and strong against his lips, nothing like the gentle press of Christina’s. He worried for a moment that Cade might turn away, might refuse his desire. Instead, Cade’s kiss made him feel hungry and hot, and a small groan escaped. He pulled away with a smile before the kiss could overwhelm him, and they both returned to the beautiful woman below. Christina’s gaze was locked on their kiss. Carter thought she looked hungry.
Christina had been thoroughly kissed by Carter and watched Carter kiss Cade, but she still wanted to taste Cade’s kiss for herself. Threading her fingers into his long hair, she pulled him to her mouth while Carter returned his attention to her breasts.
Cade pulled her against his chest and kissed her hard. When he opened her mouth with his thumb, she felt as if he were laying claim. Heat raced through her at the fierceness of his kiss. He drew her tongue into his mouth and suckled. He explored, he nibbled, and she melted at his touch.
As Cade kissed her senseless, Carter moved to her other breast. She wondered if he could taste Cade on her skin. A hand brushed down her stomach, lightly trailing over the insides of her thighs and back again. Christina let her legs fall open and arched her hips. She thought she might die if someone didn’t touch her pussy, didn’t fill her.