They might never know, but he’d check with Danny. If Kai had been making payments on the loan, there had to be a record of them and some official explanation. He considered Kai’s observations about Patricia, and knew that the AA had once had extensive familiarity not only with Randall Enterprises but with the Randalls’ personal lives. Maybe he should talk with her, too. If the woman who was now Kai’s partner would be willing to talk with a Randall.
That was all a lot to think about, but the bigger deal was what Vinnie had just called Kai.
Their woman.
Finally, Vin appeared to grasp that all three of the others were looking at him in question. He glanced back at each of them, sat back with his hands behind his head, elbows out, and feet up on the coffee table. “What? You guys don’t get it yet?” He turned to Kai next to him. “It was your idea, wasn’t it, babe?”
“What?” Both Tim and Ryan asked that. Kai, too.
Vinnie shrugged like they were being dense. “We all want her. She can’t decide among us. So, we all take what we want. We share.”
“No, we don’t.”
That had been Ryan and Kai.
“See that?” Vin asked. “That’s like the third or fourth time today that two or three of us have said exactly the same thing at the same moment. That’s how much we think alike. I’m telling you, it’s the answer.” He looked at Kai. “We all get you. Like you said.”
But Kai was shaking her head. “No. I never said that.”
“Babe.” Vin sounded a bit frustrated, but Tim didn’t think it was anything compared to how he felt hearing Vin call her “babe” over and over again.
“Vin,” Kai answered, showing a little attitude of her own. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Last night. When we finished that conversation.”
Vin might not know it, but referencing what he’d done with Kai the night before was inching him closer to getting punched.
“You said you wanted more,” the fool went on. “I said, yeah. All. Let’s share. You said yes.”
“No. That’s not what we…that’s not what I meant.”
Vin shrugged again. “You said it.”
“I—”
Ryan spoke up then. “Vin, it doesn’t matter what you think she said. You’re talking crazy anyway, and you know it. We can’t all have her.”
“Why the hell not?” Vin asked. He looked over at Tim. “What about you? You over that deal with the money?”
Tim looked at Kai and could almost see what Vinnie was getting at. “Yeah, I’m over it.” He’d talk with Danny and maybe with Patricia, but the fact was, he’d bought Kai’s story.
In truth, even before hearing Kai’s end of it, he hadn’t been able to shake his desire for her. He’d spent the week without her and suffered every day for it. He’d finally made a date last night, taken a woman to dinner and then to the Met.
Then he’d taken her home.
Because she wasn’t Kai.
He turned back to Vinnie. “What have you got goin’ on in your head?”
Vin gave that damned know-it-all shrug again. “We’re good friends. We spend most of our time together, anyway. We think a lot alike. It’s no surprise we’d all fall for the same woman.” He looked at the girl next to him. “She’s spectacular, isn’t she? How could any of us do better?”
“Vin,” Kai said. But she said it quietly.
The guy took her hand to his mouth and kissed it. “You spent this last week with me,” he said.
“Yes,” Kai said.
“You weren’t happy.”
“I was. I told you I was.”
“Yeah,” Vin said. “But not all the way. You missed Ryan. You missed Tim.”
Kai’s mouth twisted in a little moue. “I missed Ryan,” she agreed. “I was mad at Tim.”
“Sorry, Kai,” Tim said.
She looked over at him. “You heard about the money from your brother. After the gala, right?”
He nodded. “It…took me a minute.”
“A week,” she corrected.
“Sorry,” he said again. Sometimes he said he’d call a woman when he didn’t mean it. He hadn’t said it that way to Kai. “Want me to grovel?”
She looked at him and shook her head.
But that wasn’t really the answer he needed. He hadn’t asked the right question. What he’d meant was—“Want…me?”
She took longer to answer than he could hold his breath. In fact, she didn’t answer at all. Instead, she turned to Ryan and squeezed his hand. Ry looked back at her for a long minute then got up and went to the windows.
All three of the others were looking at his back until Vin turned his gaze expectantly to Kai. He said her name in question. Not the least subtly, he nodded her over to Ryan. He even gave her ass an encouraging little pat when she stood. She probably didn’t know that at least half of Vin’s motivation no doubt was to rescue Ryan from the wild danger of a firmly closed, high-rise window.
Tim felt like he was watching the critical point in some romantic movie, except he didn’t want to get up and walk out. He followed with his eyes as Kai went to Ryan.
She stood next to him and put a hand on his back, even as the butthead kept his fists stuffed into his jeans pockets.
“Ryan,” she said.
Turning just his head, he looked at her. “That’s what you want? To…what? Belong to three men? Like a, like a…”
Vin interrupted the nasty word Tim thought might be coming. He spoke loudly. “It’s called a ménage. Polyamory. It’s a thing, not unheard of at all.”
Ryan shot a look toward Vin, maybe suggesting he didn’t need help.
But Kai was the one who spoke. “I know I want to be with you,” she said. “Vinnie was right. I haven’t been happy since…”
“I didn’t break up with you,” Ryan tried pointing out.
“You said I had to choose.” She turned, putting her hand on Ry’s arm instead of his back, tucked next to him so she could look up at him but also see toward where Tim and Vinnie sat waiting, watching. “I couldn’t,” she said. Simple and fucking complex, both, at once.
Ryan kept his gaze on her. He took his hand from his pocket and reached around to her hip. “Does this make any sense to you?”
Kai turned more toward him, placing both hands on Ryan’s arms. She shook her head a couple times, but gave Tim hope when she spoke. “It just seems better than…every other option.”
“You couldn’t be happy just with me?”
Kai seemed to search those damn blue eyes of Ryan’s for a long time. “Could you be?” she asked. Then, she turned her head. Tim rose to his feet, knowing that Vinnie did the same.
With visible reluctance, Ryan looked over. After a moment, with an audible sigh, he turned back to Kai. She met his gaze.
“Vin said he loves you,” he said.
She nodded.
“I wouldn’t trust it, if I were you, unless you see him empty his contact list.”
Kai smiled. “Noted.”
“Tim got all dressed up last night, but he says he wasn’t with a woman.”
Tim started to object, but Ryan cut him off. “He means he was with a woman, but he didn’t fuck her. He meant to. He meant to fuck you out of his mind. But he didn’t.”
“Couldn’t,” Tim said, at the same time Kai said, “I know.”
Ryan sighed. “I’m afraid I’ve fallen in love with you.”
“I’m afraid the same thing has happened to me.”
He gave her a small smile. “I gotta say, it feels pretty good when we’re all together with you.”
“There’s that,” she said with an answering smile. “I guess we set that bar ten years ago.”
Ryan wrapped his arms around her, lifted her off her feet, and kissed her.
* * * *
Kai didn’t have an idea in hell what she was doing.
She’d meant it, the night before, when she’d told Vinnie she loved him. And she knew he’d meant it when
he said it, too.
But, this felt so blessedly good. Touching Ryan, having him take her up into his arms, kissing him. So good.
Even knowing that Vinnie and Tim were there, watching.
In fact, there was a small chance that circumstance made it even better. Even…hotter.
Because, though the kiss had started sweetly, as a declaration of feeling, it was turning to…that thing each of her men did to her. Making her feel hot and needy. Causing her body to weep with desire, to yearn for touching and stroking and…penetrating. Possessing.
Ryan held her suspended and turned so her back was to the window. Kai heard a little, half-suppressed murmur from Vin.
She was dressed in yoga clothes because she’d been headed to Tone for a couple intense sessions when Vinnie had left her that morning. She’d needed not so much the workout, because Vin had already given her that. But the centering, the calming, the soothing of her spirit. She’d needed that.
Because she’d exchanged words of love and acts of love with one man while she’d been missing another. While she’d been miffed at yet one more in a way that pretty much meant there was love there, too.
She’d been in between sessions, transitioning from one of her favorite instructors to another, when Vinnie had called. When he’d asked her to come to his place, she’d known in her heart that some sort of reckoning was about to happen.
Kai hadn’t thought it would be this. Vin’s proposal of a “ménage” was so out there that it hadn’t even skimmed the surface of her mind.
Though maybe it had her heart, deep inside, because as soon as Vin voiced it, she’d felt the rightness of it. The relief of it. Her heart, if not her mind, had already figured it out.
So she went with it and wrapped her legs around Ryan’s waist. She moaned quietly as he moved his hands to her ass and ground his hard cock against her center. He gave his own soft groan.
His mouth opened hers and he was there, inside her. His tongue, the heat of him, the taste, the scrape of his teeth. They exchanged spit and air. After long moments of it, drawing a rough breath, Ryan lifted his head. He looked at her, those gorgeous blue eyes hot and needy. Pivoting with her, he turned his head to face his buddies.
“It’s been a while,” he said. “We could use a little time.”
Tim looked like he was going to object, but Vinnie raised his hand. “Go,” he said. “But you don’t get all day.”
Ryan didn’t wait for anyone else’s opinion. Kai met Tim’s somewhat disgruntled gaze as Ryan carried her away. She caught Vinnie’s eye and a wink from him just as the two disappeared from view. She thought there might follow some competitive video gaming.
Then she didn’t think of them at all, because Ryan took her down onto the big expanse of Vinnie’s bed. He had his weight on his elbows and his hands cupping her head. “I don’t know how this will work,” he told her. “But I need you. I tried doing without you, and I can’t.”
She lifted and whispered against his lips. “I love you, Ryan.”
He pressed her back down and they kissed, and she fell into the sweetness of it. He was so good at it, expressing love through it, attending it as though it was its own end. As though all he needed was there in her kiss.
It brought tears, just single drops from the corner of each eye. He found the trail of them with his fingers, lifted to look at her, and then took them with his lips. She tasted them—and him—when he kissed her again.
Long moments later, he pushed up until he knelt between her thighs. Looking down at her, he crossed his arms, grasped the hem of his tee, and slowly raised it over his body and drew it off. He crouched there, letting her look, like she so much wanted to.
Like his friends, he was such a picture of male beauty. Below that pretty face, he was all smooth skin and muscle. His shoulders were brawny, like his arms, and broad. He was solid, like a man who worked with his body. From his prominent pecs, his torso narrowed to his waist where his jeans were slung low. The light patch of soft brown hair in the center of his chest narrowed and arrowed down to where his hefty package strained against his jeans. Lower yet, his muscular thighs did the same.
Kai reached for him, and he leaned forward so she could touch. She grasped his neck, threading her fingers through his hair. Then, palms and fingers flat against his warm skin, she stroked down. To the bulges of muscle at his shoulders and biceps, to the smooth slabs of his chest, and down to the six-pack of his abs. Up again, so she could lift herself against her grip at his shoulders while he stripped her out of her top.
Once more, so he could take her bra.
Then he looked, too, and touched—his big hands tracing her much as she had done to him. Fingers through her hair, then palms down her neck, shoulders, and arms. Over her breasts, where he cupped and palmed and lightly squeezed, then down to span her waist. To lift her so she arched, making something happen with her tits he seemed to find very attractive. He stroked his thumbs over her ribs while he savored the view of her breasts.
After a while of that, his eyes met hers. Watching her, he lifted upright again. Slowly, starting with his belt and taking his time with the buttons on his jeans, he opened up. He lifted the elastic waistband of his briefs up and out to release his cock. He left it there, long and hard and thrusting out, for a teasing moment before he pushed his clothing down toward his knees. With impressive balance, he went back on his toes, off his knees, until he cleared them of jeans and briefs, and then worked the clothing away. Naked, he came back to her, his knees pressing up high between her thighs.
Again, he let her look while his hot gaze took her in.
In another moment, he put his hands on her knees, sliding down until his fingers circled her ankles. Lifting each foot, he thumbed her flats off then placed the soles of her feet against his chest. With his hands stroking back up her legs, he brought her knees together in front of him. Going farther, he moved his warm palms along her thighs and hips.
Tucking his fingers into each side of her smooth waistband, he waited for her to get the message. Reading his eyes, she gathered his intent. Pressing her shoulders into the mattress and her feet into his chest, she lifted her hips.
His attention now was fully on what was revealed as he tugged her pants over her hips and out from under her ass. When he had them past her knees, he pushed her feet up. Way up—a lot farther than he needed just for the purpose of stripping her pants and little panties away from her legs. Far enough to give him a hell of a view—her bare pussy framed by her ass and her closed thighs.
Ryan got rid of her clothing but still used his strong arms to hold her up, his hands gripping her calves and crossing them. “You’re wet for me,” he said. “I can see it. I can smell it.”
Kai wasn’t about to deny it. She didn’t mind him looking—at all—but she needed more. “Ryan.”
“Yes, sweetheart,” he said. He leaned forward, and, even without the use of his hands, somehow the length of his cock rested along her pussy. Lightly, without really engaging, he stroked over her.
Confined as she was, she flexed a little, seeking more. “Ryan.”
“I’ve got you.”
Of course he did. She fully trusted him. Still, she needed…
Exactly what he did. He slid his hands to her knees, opening her even as he let her down on the bed. He leaned forward as he did it and, in the end, when he put some of his weight on his hands alongside her shoulders, her legs were splayed open and his cock pressed at the opening of her pussy. Perfectly, he was lined up to thrust into her.
Which he did slowly, intently. Letting her body stretch around his girth first, prolonging that wicked moment when it felt impossible, when it seemed surely he was too big and she was too small. Pausing there, having proved to her great satisfaction and probably his, too, that it wasn’t impossible at all, but just exactly right.
And then pushing into her, a slow inch at a time, claiming, invading. Watching with conquest in his eyes.
Bare, without a condom. Like
Vin the night before, making not a request but a statement. A commitment.
She was wet, yes, as he’d noticed. But it really was a tight fit, and she moaned with the slight edge of pain with it. The exquisite incursion of it.
Her breath was rough, not quite fearful, and he seemed to know exactly what she needed.
He came down onto his elbows, his arms pressing hers up. Following his intent, she put her hands on his biceps and slid them up to his shoulders and neck. She clutched at him, a hand in his hair and another spread along his back.
Holding himself just enough over her, still filling her, holding his place like a claim staked, he moved his hands to her breasts. Watching her eyes, he pinched both nipples between thumbs and fingers. He squeezed, and he flexed his hips, and she shuddered out a breath.
“Ryan,” she said once more.
“Yes,” he said. “Like this.”
Keeping his hold on her nipples, he leaned in and she raised up, and they kissed. They were kissing and fucking and touching each other every way they could. Every way that made them crazy, his fingers at her nipples, her hands stroking his body and her legs wrapping around him.
His cock filled her, stretched her. With each stroke, she felt the pull of it on her clit and the friction as he rubbed against her where they were joined. She closed her eyes and tossed her head as he left her mouth to suck and nip at her neck. She clung to him as he thrust into her, driving her up. Opening her eyes, she looked at him and saw that he was determined to make her come. That he was going to watch her as it happened.
Then she turned her head and saw that he wasn’t the only one who would watch. Tim stood inside the bedroom. He must have showered, because his hair and chest were still damp. The tuxedo was gone, and he wore only a pair of sweats hanging low on his hips. His full cock bulged out the fly.
Kai shuddered, her attention torn between his intense gaze and the wild thrill of the fucking Ryan was giving her. She wanted to stop it, to send Tim away. It seemed so intimate a thing, too intimate, to fall apart, to lose herself in a messy, rowdy orgasm while one man fucked her and another watched.
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