by Jory Strong
Lifting his mouth off hers, he said, “We should get out of here. Tyler’s expecting us.”
“Okay.”
But he couldn’t help himself.
“One more for road,” he said, closing the distance between their mouths, the heated merging of his desire and hers widening and deepening the ache for more.
With a sigh he stepped back, immediately snagging her hand, then grinning at seeing the things they’d taken from the locker scattered on the floor because she’d dropped them in favor of touching him.
Gaze flicking to the fifteen-thousand dollar check then back to meet her eyes, he said, “Am I good? Or am I good?”
She laughed. “Got much of an ego?”
“Hey, I’m self-aware. I thought that was a good thing.”
She snorted. “Right.”
They crouched, gathered the broken sticks and check and clue.
Standing, he recaptured her hand, held it as they returned to the Jeep. Taking it again and not releasing it until they’d parked in front of Tyler’s place, and the man himself stepped out of the house.
Instant hard-on.
Between Tyler and Madison, his dick was starting to remind him of a yo-yo.
Fucking strike that. It was more like an elephant’s trunk.
Shane choked back a laugh.
“I take it that’s Tyler.”
“Yeah. That’s him.”
“He works for Crime Tells?”
“Part time. He also works for the police as an artist.”
“The two of you are related?”
“Feels like it. We’ve known each other since we were kids.” Though what he wanted was far different than the simple friendship of their growing-up years.
“Don’t worry about your stuff,” he told her. “I’ll grab it.”
He needed a minute to get himself under control. Just because he was mostly convinced that Grandma M had seen something and was the reason Bulldog had arranged for the three of them to spend a lot of time together, didn’t mean working out the kinks was going to come easy.
His cock pulsed, putting kinks and coming together, and warning him that if he wasn’t careful, he’d do the second thing far too easily and probably in an embarrassing manner.
He opened his door at the same time Madison pushed hers outward. “For the record, Tyler’s unattached.”
Madison stopped, halfway out of the Jeep.
Why was he telling her that?
She looked back at Shane, tried to get a read on him, but for the first time since meeting him, he wore a poker face.
Was this his way of saying, no strings, no complications, she was free to do what she wanted? Or his way of saying he was interested in a threesome?
Her pulse quickened. Her eyes probed his but he maintained the poker face.
“Thanks for telling me that, I think.”
What else could she say?
She got the rest of the way out of the Jeep and shut the door, going ahead of him to meet Tyler on her own—and she was attracted.
He might be an artist, but with his long blond hair and blue eyes, he looked like art, his sharper facial angles making her think of the gay manga Elijah used to love, the images they’d lie naked together looking at, talking about.
Tyler’s hand was warm against hers. His voice, when he introduced himself, was the smooth burn of whiskey, sliding downward and making her aware of the empty place in her heart that’d been left by Elijah’s death, by the loss of a dream that didn’t have anything to do with music.
“You okay with dogs?” Tyler asked. “I’m guessing Bulldog didn’t warn you about my girls.”
“He didn’t, but it’s not a problem. I love dogs. What are yours?”
“Dachshunds, thanks to a case Lyric took on. You meet her yet?”
“Heard about her. According to Shane, she has a little trouble staying inside the lines.”
Tyler laughed. “That’s Lyric, not that Shane’s any better. Come on and I’ll introduce you to my girls. Kiki’s the black one. Daisy is the red dapple.”
They entered the house.
Shane breathed a sigh of relief.
Fuck, this was going to be torture.
He’d underestimated the impact of seeing Madison and Tyler together, close enough that a quick mental strip and shove and their bodies were flush in his imagination.
He could get off just watching the two of them go at it. Same as he could get off being watched, if Tyler was the one doing the watching. Or Madison.
And the thought of all three of them—
Yeah. That was a fantasy he wasn’t going to be able to shake. That was a fantasy to take with him into the shower for a little hand-held relief when he got home.
If he paid Grandma Maguire a visit, would she tell him she’d had a vision starring him with Tyler and Madison?
Probably not unless he was willing to lay some cards on the table first.
Heat crept up his neck thinking about even trying to have that conversation. Not that he really needed to. He had to trust himself on this one.
He grabbed Madison’s guitar and carry-on, got to the front door and toed it open, suppressing a groan at finding Madison crouched, her mouth not nearly far enough away from the bulge in Tyler’s jeans to keep his mind from going there.
Kiki and Daisy were delivering cheek licks, making Madison laugh and pull them onto her thighs, though they wriggled too much to actually hold.
Seeing her like that carved more openings in his heart, leaving half of them feeling empty while filling the other half with warmth.
He set her stuff down. Tyler said, “You sticking around?”
Bad idea? Good idea?
Considering that Madison and Tyler being in the same room had the fantasies raging, he wasn’t sure whether having Madison there would make it more difficult or less to hide how much he wanted to feel the front of Tyler’s body against his, to see an answering desire in Tyler’s eyes and the obvious evidence of it in Tyler’s erection.
“I’ll stick.” Truth, he couldn’t force himself to leave. “We can work on Bio-dad’s latest clue.”
It was as good an excuse as any. And who knew, he might actually be able to concentrate on it to keep from screwing things up with Tyler.
“Clue?”
Shane wasn’t surprised by Tyler’s question, not after having been left ignorant of the facts until he’d gotten Madison to the office. “I take it Bulldog didn’t fill you in?”
“No, just asked if I could put Madison up as a precaution. Didn’t even fill me in on the danger.”
“There might not be any,” Madison said, standing.
“You want to bring Tyler up to speed?”
“Sure.”
“Hold on,” Tyler said. “I’m going to grab a beer. You guys want one? Or something else?”
Not a good idea to start drinking. Not with a couple of Tyler’s sketchbooks on the coffee table. Not with both Madison and Tyler in the same room.
Shane said yes to a beer anyway and headed to the couch, unable to keep from brushing his hand against Madison’s on the way there.
Tyler escaped to the kitchen—walking, not running, though the urge to exit through the back door and keep going was strong.
Madison and Shane were like a one-two punch.
The reaction to Shane he’d been expecting. He’d been living with it for a long time, long enough to have mastered casual. But Madison made holding on to that appearance a challenge.
She’d gotten out of Shane’s Jeep and stepped right into his fantasies. And then Shane had come into the house, wanting her, adding to the erotic images.
It was too easy to envision the three of them together. Too easy to capture on paper. And that’d be too damn incriminating, though he knew he would draw the pictures anyway.
He grabbed three beers, wished he had a walk-in refrigerator so he could cool down—if such a thing was even possible.
In the living room, Shane had plopped on on
e end of the couch. His legs were stretched and Daisy was belly-up along his thighs, Shane’s hand stoking her stomach.
This is going to be torture.
Tyler passed off Shane’s drink, careful not to let their hands touch.
He was less careful with Madison.
When had he turned into such a masochist?
He dropped onto the other end of the couch, Madison between him and Shane, Kiki on her lap.
He took a swallow of beer.
Madison said, “You’ve got a nice place.”
He couldn’t stop himself from reaching over and stroking Kiki’s velvety soft ear.
“One of the perks of working at Crime Tells. Bulldog owns this house and the three next to it. He owns another three around the corner. Shane and his brothers live in them.”
“Sweet deal.”
“Very. So what do I need to know?”
She filled him in on Bio-dad’s unexpected insertion into her life. And as she did it, old anger, old pain, old fears welled up inside him. If his old man were still alive, no amount of money would make him open the door for him.
Tyler took a long pull of beer and leaned forward, only to be distracted by Shane.
His head was tipped back. His eyes were closed, his throat working as he swallowed, the hand that’d been on Daisy now playing with the nipple ring.
How many times had he seen that move lure a woman over? Too many to count, which was one of the reasons he usually said yes to outings with Shane and Braden.
It didn’t bother him to see Braden with a pickup. The same wasn’t true of Shane.
See it enough, and it might kill off the feelings for Shane. It was a brutal kind of therapy, one he’d come up with early on, when he’d labeled the thing with Shane a crush.
He’d lied to himself back then. Even known it deep down. But it’d been safer to believe that wanting Shane wasn’t a permanent affliction. And at first there’d been a body of evidence to suggest it could be a temporary infatuation.
Hadn’t he imagined himself in love with Cady and Erin and Lyric? Hell, he and Lyric had played doctor as kids and experimented as teens, not that they’d ever become lovers.
Madison leaned forward, blocking the view of Shane and making Tyler go hot then cold at what she might have seen in his face. His pulse fluttered and sped. Usually he was a lot more careful than this.
Not daring to check her expression, he touched the piece of paper lying on top of the sketchbook he’d been working in before they’d arrived. “The clue?”
Madison nodded.
He read: From coast to coast, 2903 miles mark the distance. By air, by train, or on asphalt highways, the bounty of the San Joaquin travels. Two thirds of it is hidden from sight, but offer the first and the rest is revealed.
“What did you and Shane come up with so far?”
“Nothing. His brain hurts and mine goes numb. Does anything jump out at you?”
“A movie set maybe, or somewhere close where they’re shooting scenes for a film.”
The beer bottle left Shane’s mouth. “Say what?”
“By air, by train, or on asphalt highways. It made me think of that old Steve Martin movie, Planes, Trains and Automobiles.”
Shane leaned forward, causing Daisy to abandon his lap. “Could be there’s a shoot going on in the San Joaquin somewhere.”
Madison tapped her finger on the word bounty. “If there are more than one, maybe something with a bounty hunter, or with a plot that has a bounty on someone’s head.”
Tyler stood. “I’ll grab my laptop.”
He got it, for all the good it did them.
They ended up with nothing. Even after brainstorming possibilities through take-out Chinese.
“Enough,” Madison finally said. “I’ve had enough. Bio-dad has gotten enough of my attention for today.”
Shane leaned back on the couch. “Sounds good to me.”
Tyler moved the clue and laptop to the counter separating the living room from the kitchen. He grabbed another round of beers, handing off the bottles and taking his seat, his arm settling along the back of the couch.
Madison tilted her head, resting it on his arm. A shiver of heat traveled from point of contact to his dick.
His fingers twitched with the desire to draw a picture of her. With the desire to grasp her long blonde hair and guide her mouth to his.
His eyes locked onto the bottle against her lips. Then locked onto Shane, watching her too, the slight flush across his cheekbones all the tell Tyler needed to know what was going on in Shane’s head—not that it kept him from glancing downward, at the erection pressed against the front of Shane’s jeans.
Shane wanted Madison. He wanted Madison too, and his gut told him she was comfortable enough with her sexuality to be with both of them, separately, together—
Heat swept through him, his heart putting on an explosion-burst of speed.
Together would be ecstasy. Together would be disaster. Together it would be impossible to hide that he wanted Shane.
Whatever else happened, he had to keep that secret. The best day of his life was when the Social Services Department had placed him in a group home where going to school meant becoming friends with the Maguire and Montgomery kids.
He couldn’t lose the closeness. He couldn’t do anything to jeopardize the feeling of being part of their families.
Not that they’d ostracize him if they knew he was bi. Or if he came on to Shane. But if he actually had a relationship with Shane and that ended—
His gut cramped and his chest tightened. He’d seen what happened when there was a break-up. It always left one person standing on the outside, looking in and remembering the good times, aching to have them back.
That’s why he rarely introduced the women he dated to any of the Maguires or Montgomerys—not that there’d ever been one important enough to introduce to the people closest to him.
That’s why it’d be smart to fight the attraction to Madison, though the feel of her silky hair against his arm had him imagining it fanned across his sheets.
“Maybe tomorrow we call in reinforcements,” he said. The more bodies present, the less likely he was to do something stupid, like end up in bed with Shane and Madison.
“Lyric?” Shane asked.
No way. She’d catch his interest in Madison, and Shane’s interest, and say go for it.
“Renata. Local stories are what she does. Something in the clue might jump out at her.”
“Good luck getting her and not Cole.”
“Renata works for Crime Tells?” Madison asked.
“She’s a reporter,” Shane said. “She’s also big brother’s ball-and-chain.”
“Doesn’t sound like he’s exactly protesting.”
“Not now. But you should have seen him running. I’m glad he held out as long as he did.”
Madison laughed. “Let me guess. You had money riding on it and you won.”
“True.” Shane tipped his beer bottle in a salute.
“Which reminds me,” she said. “You owe me two hundred.”
“Don’t worry, I’m good for it.”
Tyler rolled his beer bottle against his chest. “More like, he’s counting on winning it back and then some.”
She swallowed the last of her beer and put the bottle on the table. Her hand dropped to the yellow sketch pad, her index finger riffling the page edges.
Oh shit, Tyler thought. He knew what was coming even before she glanced at him, their eyes connecting and sending a punch of heat to his cock.
“Can I look?”
“Sure.” So what if seeing her do it meant a cold shower. He was destined for one anyway.
Shane’s smile was wicked sensuality. “Bringing police work home? Or is this the good stuff?”
“The good stuff.” Not the best. Those drawings all starred Shane.
Madison flipped open the cover, onto a pen-and-ink scene of a woman lying spread-eagled on a bed, her wrists and ankles boun
d.
“These are for a graphic novel,” Tyler said.
“You ever try this?” Shane asked, true to form, never afraid to color outside the lines.
Her husky laugh had Tyler’s hand twitching. Had him fighting twin urges, to grasp his cock or to grasp her hair and guide her mouth down to it, because he knew what the rest of the sketch book held and it was too easy to replace the woman he’d drawn before meeting Madison with images of her.
“You wish I’d answer that question,” she said.
Shane laughed. “Hell yeah. I’m a guy.”
The heat in Shane’s voice added to what was already shimmering through Tyler.
Madison flipped the page onto the scene that would have happened before the last.
A naked woman was on her hands and knees at the foot of the bed. It was drawn from behind, her thighs parted to reveal swollen, wet folds as she crawled toward the tethers attached to the headboard.
“They aren’t in order,” Tyler said, trying to control his breathing.
“When do we get to the good part?” Madison asked. “When do the guys show up?”
Guys.
Tyler was helpless against the rush of fantasies that had the three of them naked and on his bed.
Shane stood. “Anybody else want another beer?”
Tyler needed something to combat the heat. “I could use one.”
“I’m good,” Madison said, heart racing at the slip that’d turned guy into a plural.
She flipped to the next page.
Tyler had drawn the woman as she began tugging her panties down, though the far more interesting sights, as far as Madison was concerned, were at the front of Tyler’s jeans and at the front of Shane’s.
Men. They were so visually oriented.
Not that she wasn’t affected.
She’d been riding a wave of sexual attraction since Shane picked her up, and it had only gotten worse with Tyler added into the mix. Flip a coin and she’d take either, though she wanted both—as evidenced by the slip.
They wanted her, no doubt there. What she was less sure about, was them wanting each other.
Were they fighting an attraction to one another? Or was she projecting her own desire, because that first sight of Tyler had made her think of Elijah’s gay manga, and how the two of them would lay naked after making love and talk about one day being part of a threesome.