by Julia Kent
“Day after? I’m free,” Josie said.
Mental scan again. “Yes! I’m free.”
“See you at Jeddy’s. One o’clock.” Click. That was easy. A little too easy.
Laura needed easy right now.
The fact that the company existed at all was its own reward in such a scenario. When you took away the standard economic trappings that the bottom 99.9999999999999 percent of the world assumed to be a permanent, fixed, and universal part of the structure of society, what Laura and Josie were doing with the dating service made zero sense.
Who starts a new business in a down economy, with an extremely limited niche clientele, with no simple way to advertise, and with people like the Westboro Baptists as likely to generate negative publicity as the local start-up incubator in Cambridge?
There wasn’t a huge support network for threesomes, after all. That wasn’t conjecture. They’d learned the very hard way since news about the company had spread as it had become the butt of bad jokes on Reddit and BuzzFeed, at one point going viral—but never getting the attention dinosaur porn or Duck Dynasty had captured, thank goodness. What she, Dylan, and Mike viewed as a simple attempt to help people earnestly searching for something hard to attain had become corrupted by the views of a small minority that viewed the very existence of a desire for love out of step with society as an abomination.
Dylan weathered it best, somehow able to compartmentalize and view the negative press as “their fucking problem, not mine. Assholes.” Mike had gone quiet, angry, and disappointed, though Laura shouldn’t have been surprised. His own family rejected him for the same reason; why should he expect strangers to hold him in any higher esteem?
But Laura had needed to put herself on a strict media diet. A news fast. Josie read everything because she seemed to be made of Teflon (“Plus, it’s my job now, Laura,” she’d explained in a kind, though troubled, voice).
Why all of that mess invaded her thoughts now, as Mike surprised her in the bathroom wearing jeans and nothing else, sliding his hands over her shoulders and sinking one into her hair, bringing his mouth to hers, was a mystery. All she knew was that he needed and wanted her to help heal a rift between them (among them?) and she was here.
“I love you,” he sighed against her mouth. He winced and pulled back.
“I love you, too.” She saw the funny look on his face. “You okay?”
“That’s quite a…taste.” He reached for a glass of water and turned on the tap, filling it. After chugging a glass, he refilled it and handed it to Laura, who just chuckled.
“What about you?” he asked in a slow, lazy voice. She knew he didn’t mean love. Lust, on the other hand…
“You can take care of me later,” she said, laughing in a manner she’d only recently been able to reach, a tone of playful understanding that everything in this household would balance out in time. No niggling need to get what she wanted while she could. It would come to her eventually. As if the universe were somehow conspiring to make her happy.
In a way, it was. Good karma was flying her way, and if she slowed down enough to grab on to a piece, the ride was amazing. So was the view.
“We can take care of you later,” he said, making her eyebrows arch. Men. First he spent two days pouting…sulking…stewing…eh—pick a word—because she was sexual with Dylan on Mike’s “day,” and now he acted as if that was all over and of course she’d sleep with both of them.
Of course.
And then there was Dylan, who had confessed he knew it was Mike’s day, and further knew that Mike would be upset, but had jumped her bones—in his words—“because your tits looked so fucking scrumptious when you walked past me wearing no bra.” So evolved. She’d strained an optic nerve rolling her eyes.
What was she? A piece of meat?
The anger that would have rushed to the top in a wave of pure, primal fury wasn’t there. In its place uncoiled a slow, deep breath, one of experience and a carefully developed pause button on her tempter. Reactions would get her nowhere.
“What if I don’t want we?”
Blinking hard, Mike seemed taken aback. “You don’t?” The lush moment in the bedroom just now faded. Fast.
“Maybe I just want you.” On firmer ground now, she was balancing on the razor’s edge of being an adult and focusing on forging alliances and connections with mindfucking him. She didn’t always choose the mature path, no matter how hard she tried.
Right now, maturity was barely winning out.
Barely.
With intent, she held back from touching him or sitting within physical proximity. Sometimes she wanted to nurture her anger. Defensive? Yes. Unfair? To everyone. But when she was outnumbered two to one and there was no blueprint for how to navigate living with two men in a balanced (supposedly), permanent, loving threesome, she had so few options that gave her any sense of equilibrium, no matter how misguided at times.
If being angry and embracing it was a stepping stone to a better understanding of who she was within this crazy relationship, then so be it.
Besides, if Mike could be pissed for two days and take it out on her, she should be able to have a couple of hours where the guys were in the wrong, right?
Balance and all that.
Balance was increasingly overrated.
Mike
Run. Run and just…run some more. His body started the low, deep rumble, the vibration that made his soul scream out for release. Whatever was going on inside him didn’t have words, and that made interacting with Laura and Dylan so damn hard.
Words were hard.
Running was easy.
The pounding of his feet on the pavement, the blur of trees and sunshine and clouds. Or, hell, rain pelting him while he ran in the heat, stripping off his shirt and being as close to nature as he could. Within public nudity laws and basic physics, because naked running would, um, hurt. Rebound effect and all that.
As Laura’s speckled green eyes glared at him, he stood shirtless and commando, his jeans an afterthought, his body pulsing now with the desire not to escape, but to push his body into a zone where emotions could be handled one by one, instead of on top of each other in a giant pile.
Right now, his inner world looked like a fucking garbage dump.
And no one wanted to smell that.
“What’s wrong, Laura? What did I say?”
“It’s what you don’t say,” she said with a sigh. Mike knew that sigh. He’d thrown it around these past few days. No name for it, unfortunately. It just was, like a stray cat that shows up on your door and proceeds to piss all over the perimeter of your home, claiming its territory and making life miserable for you.
Until it decides to leave.
He had no control over these feelings. None. It made his jaw tighten, because holy shit—if he couldn’t control his own feelings, how could he reach out and help Laura with hers?
It made him feel like a giant failure. As he towered over her, standing behind her at the sink, he saw their height difference and realized that compared to her, he really was a giant.
Failure, too.
These damn feelings…and talking. Laura had been content, when they’d first met, to have him be silent and to just be with him. In fact, she had seemed to like his stillness. Years of meditation, practice, and thousands of miles eaten up by his legs had gotten him to that point. The reality of being centered on the inside was that it took a lot more work than it seemed from the outside.
And now, Laura had worked to pierce his shield and succeeded, not just with sex but with the expression of caring, of wanting to ride out his confused mood with him. Not just to help, but to walk alongside him on his psychological journey as he plumbed whatever these emotions were.
That was love.
That was rare.
She tilted her head to the side and the expanse of her creamy skin, where the neck and shoulder met, called out for a kiss. Not knowing what else he could do without screwing this up more, he planted a t
iny kiss there, his tongue slipping out to taste her. Salty, with a touch of something more. Laura seemed to have an essence about her, and not just in her sensual juices when they made love.
She tasted like Laura. He couldn’t describe it any more than he could detail what an orgasm felt like, or how he’d experienced the moment Jillian’s head had crowned, watching his daughter emerge into the word. Like trying to define love, it couldn’t be contained within something so rudimentary as language.
It was a flavor he savored.
Her anger—he guessed it was anger, at least—melted as his lips caressed her neck, dipping over her to the collarbone. The jeans tightened, his shaft down his leg and pressed against his thigh, now thickening.
Already? Not bad for a guy in his thirties. When he was seventeen he could be rock hard ten minutes after a rousing batch of sex. Lately it took longer.
Apparently, this was different. He took a deep breath half filled with pride and amusement, his lips turning up in a smile he couldn’t stop.
“What’s funny?” Laura asked. Could she feel his smile on her skin?
And then he looked up. The mirror. Of course. Yet it wouldn’t surprise him if she could read his emotions purely by touch. Their connection was that strong.
All three of them.
“I’m thinking about how hard I’m getting.”
“Again?” Her voice turned up with a questioning surprise and a sultry tone that made him remove one hand from her shoulders and dig into his jeans, adjusting himself as the seam irritated the head of his cock.
Oh, yeah. Again, all right. He was hard as granite.
“You said you didn’t want we right now. How about me?” he asked, his tongue now seeking the sensitive spot beneath her earlobe, the part he knew she could barely tolerate having touched. That spot made her wet, though.
And Mike definitely wanted her nice and wet for what he was about to do with her.
Something that required very few words, half of them variations of “Oh, God.”
Those words he could handle right now.
Laura spun around and reached up on tiptoes. He slid his hands over that hot ass and, cupping it, lifted her up. Just as he hoped, her legs wrapped around his waist as her hands plunged into his hair, mouth slanting across his and tongue burying itself. His tongue sought her heat, craved her touch, needed more connection than they’d just had.
And he’d thought that had been just fine.
Tired of accepting just fine, Mike shifted into some predatory mode that fueled him, his body taking everything she gave and insisting on more, his hands hungry on her ass, her back, prowling over her breasts and stroking each nipple to a peak, the way he claimed her absolutely and utterly complete.
He owned her.
He wanted her to know that. While he and Dylan shared Laura, and she shared them, there was no reason she shouldn’t also know that she was his one hundred percent. Relationship math did not have to balance out.
Ever.
There was room for New Math in plenty of places.
Barreling out of the bathroom, he threw her onto the bed where she’d just sucked him off, where his body had shimmered and convulsed under her steady and knowing hands.
His turn.
This really was his day. In full. He raked her clothes off, hands moving so fast they felt like a blur. Making love with Laura, with or without Dylan, was always passionate and sweet and loving, but sometimes…sometimes he wanted more of an edge.
The thought passed through his mind that he needed to slow down, to contemplate, as her bare body wiggled under his, her gasps and wide eyes telling him she was aroused and excited, and then when her hand unbuttoned his jeans and he kicked them off, the full length of his muscled heat pressed against her hot, lush curves, he kicked that thought away like a ninety-yard punt.
Through the fucking goalposts, man.
Balance was so overrated.
Laura was on the pill, one of the first things she’d done after having Jillian, so he knew he was safe, and he reached down between her legs to find her slick and ready. Her moans as he moved his thumb in lazy, wet circles over her swollen clit told him she was ready, but he wanted to be sure.
“Fuck me, Mike. I want you in me,” she whispered.
Okay…sometimes words worked.
With his arms on either side of her, he steadied himself above her, dipping down for a heated kiss as she lifted her hips up, wrapping her legs around him. She was so soft and tantalizing, a gift that kept on giving, and as she shifted just enough and used her hand to guide him in, he said the only words he could think.
“I love you.”
The moment of pushing into her was like looking up to see a shooting star, as if the heavens made it just for you and you alone. That was how Mike felt as her wet warmth encased him, his head bent down next to her neck as her little gasps and moans fueled him. All he wanted to do was to take, to be free and uninhibited, and something primal pounded through him as a low heat singed his skin, sweat forming on their chests as he thrust into Laura, her body moving up to meet his, her hips tipping in concert.
He pinned her to the bed with each deep thrust, imagining he was burrowing into her soul to combine his and hers, to create a new love that would pulse through them both. Watching her was like seeing the world for the first time, her face glowing and eyes unfocused, brow furrowed with concentration and the epic sense that his body, his will, his touch was driving her to a place no one ever took her before.
And then she clenched deep inside, encasing him, the power of her sex muscles so strong he cried out her name, the deep grooves milking him like a determined hand, the wetness and the warmth and her power making his release so close.
“Oh, Mike, oh,” she shouted, her voice low and smoky, like a woman who knew herself and how to make him hers. He took one rosy nipple in his mouth and nipped, the bite stronger than intended, and she came with a force that made him smile through her orgasm, matching her rhythm, never letting go of her pebbled flesh.
One of the final spasms inside her tipped him over, too, and he finished with deep, almost-frantic thrusts that burst through with a growl, like an animal making his mark on his mate, the feel of his hot seed pouring into her so ungentlemanly that he wondered at the power he possessed, ever at his access, her arms around him and scratching at his back as she tightened around him and came again, this time with God’s name pouring out of those luscious, beautiful lips.
He collapsed on top of her, breathing hard, her breasts sliding against his chest, the feel of her goodness pinned under him like a prize.
He balanced himself on his elbows and looked tenderly at her, the animal instinct all gone, replaced by a slyness.
“What was that?” she whispered, breathless.
“That,” he said, kissing the tip of her nose, “was me.”
* * *
Maybe it was time to hand off the reins to someone else, Mike thought, as Shelly calmly explained that their liability insurance would increase twenty-three percent when they renewed the policy, and that the lodge restaurant really needed to add a gluten-free menu, because their competitor across the mountain had just added one, and customers were asking.
Laura’s scent filled his brain, taking over.
“Earth to Mike? We need some decisions,” Shelly chided. Young and bold, his assistant had this way of being that demanded obedience, even when she was the subordinate.
It was unsettling, but she kept the place going, so he tolerated it. On days like this, he reveled in it.
“You know what, Shelly? It’s time to give you a promotion.”
Her neck pulled back in shock. “A what?”
“A promotion. How about…operations manager? A move up from administrative assistant.” He paused for a second, realizing he had no idea what he would pay her. A promotion had to come with a raise, though, right?
“But the operations manager job…you’re still taking resumes and the interviews start nex
t week. And I don’t have a bachelor’s degree. The job requires one.” The arguments surprised him. She almost didn’t seem to want it. Weird.
Too bad.
“You’re more qualified than any of the applicants, and it’s easier to get a good administrative assistant than it is to find an operations manager who can run this place smoothly.”
She snorted. “You think finding a good admin is ‘easy’?” She brushed a piece of her overgrown red hair out of her eyes. He wondered if she was growing it out. There was a scraggly look to it. Appraising her, he realized she was looking thin and stressed. She was twenty now. No one should be stressed at twenty.
“You want the job or not?” Truth be told, he didn’t want to make liability insurance decisions, or deal with finding cooks who could be retrained to deal with food allergies. All of those issues were important to the ski resort, of course.
But did he have to be the one in charge of making those decisions?
No. Hell no. Time to delegate.
“Uh, yes!” She reached for a file on Mike’s desk and pulled it out. “The job description,” she said, waving a piece of paper in his face. “You realize the salary is…I’d get a sixty percent raise.”
He smiled wide. “You deserve it.”
“You are fucking kidding me.” Her eyebrow cocked up. “What kind of CEO are you, throwing jobs around like candy and hiring someone who doesn’t meet the qualifications on paper?”
He looked out at the fresh powder on the double black diamond trail, the tip of the mountain calling his name.
“The kind of CEO who needs to do quality control on his own mountain.”
“Mike!”
He shrugged into his coat, ignoring the messages and paperwork that would keep him here for ten hours. “You can take over a lot of this,” he said, gesturing at the pile. “Leave the things I need to do. And start your raise and promotion immediately.”
“But—”
“I think that you’re struggling to find the right words, Shelly.”
“The right words?” She looked at him like he was crazy.