Three Men and a Woman_Indiana

by Rachel Billings

  She opened the door to the bedroom hallway and then the next one to the suite’s living area, but she hadn’t escaped like she thought she had. Tyler was there in the kitchen, taking a bottle of water from the fridge, still in his sweated-up workout clothes and looking over his shoulder at her. And J.J. too had joined the party, all après ski in gray, wide-wale cords and an Icelandic sweater. He stood and Indy took an automatic step back, only to find that Sig was right there, a big, solid mass of you’ve-got-nowhere-to-run.

  She almost squealed. “Bye,” she said and hurried for the door, just barely thinking to grab her bag, which sat on the floor next to it.

  Then she did squeal when Sig’s big, drill-sergeant voice sounded. “Indy!” Then more gently, “Take your coat.”

  She inched over to the closet, not having to turn to know all three pairs of eyes were locked on her. Grabbing clumsily for her coat, she knocked another one to the floor—J.J.’s dress coat, she realized. In her head, she said, Fuck it, left it where it fell, and hit the door.

  * * * *

  Three pairs of eyes followed as that nervous, pretty ass disappeared. Tyler was only a little distracted when Sig walked up, took the bottle of water from his hand, and downed it.

  “How’d that go?” Tyler asked.

  “In the sack?” Sig responded with a snotty smirk. “Fucking spectacular.”

  “You want me to beat the hell out of you?” But Tyler’s question faded away when J.J. lifted a hand for quiet and motioned toward the door.

  It hadn’t latched, wasn’t even quite closed all the way.

  Sig looked, too, and then spoke up a bit louder. “As for the other, I think she might have just enough crazy in her to consider it.”

  They all held their breath and waited. In another moment, Indy peeked her head around the door. She didn’t commit herself so much as to step back inside the room. “It was,” she said, looking at Sigge. Then at Tyler, suppressively. “No.” Her gaze circled the room, hitting all three of them, before she spoke again. “And…maybe.”

  They all seemed to start breathing again as one. But she was a woman, so she wasn’t done. “But if I’m going to think about it, I have to ask.” She looked away, wiggling the doorknob, then back at Sig. “If I’m with you, Sig,” she started.

  “You are with me, babe.”

  That made Ty want to hit him again, but, well, he guessed there was a new order in Tyler world.

  Indy frowned a little but let it pass. “You’d be only with me?”

  “Indy,” Sig committed to her and corrected her all at once. “I am only with you.”

  “And…these two?”

  J.J. didn’t miss a beat. “I’d be only with you, Indiana.”

  Tyler sucked it up and realized it wasn’t even that hard. “I’d be only with you.” She couldn’t know what a fucking sea change that was for him, but he was sure his buddies got it.

  Indy looked at him a minute, evaluating, then looked at Sig. “Do you think we can trust…?” She waggled her fingers entirely unsubtly in his direction. Maybe she did know.

  Tyler crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the counter behind him. “I’m right here.”

  Sig smiled. “Yeah, babe. I’d trust him with your life and mine. Plus, he knows I can take him down with one hand tied behind my back.”

  Ty rolled his eyes, knowing that was sufficient response.

  But she still had a little bee in her bonnet. “It hardly seems fair,” she said. “The three of you, and just me.”

  “It seems fair to me,” Sig said. If he’d said “babe” one more time, Ty really would have decked him. “More than fair.”

  J.J. was right there again. “Me, too. More than fair.”

  Could they fucking move on? But Ty wanted this to happen, so he anted up. “More than fair.”

  She looked around at each of them, still mostly hiding behind the door. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Take your time,” Sig told her, no doubt made stupid by the fact of his recent spectacular time in bed.

  She nodded once and was gone.

  “We don’t have a lot of time,” Ty reminded Sig. Their suite was only reserved through Sunday at noon.

  “No,” Sig said. He was supposed to report to his trainer for rehab on Monday, Ty knew. “But we can give her tomorrow.”

  * * * *

  The farther Indy drove from the Four Seasons, the crazier she felt to even consider Sig’s, well, proposal was certainly the wrong word to use. She tried to get back to work Friday afternoon and evening, but she couldn’t find her focus. So she did what she normally did when she was stuck on a problem. She went for a ski to clear her head, and then she researched it.

  Polyamory, she learned, was a term describing relationships in which the participants declined to be limited to loving just one person, and apparently hundreds of thousands of humans chose that path. A rationale choice, many argued, more consistent with human nature than monogamy. Ménage was a word she already knew, thanks to her erotica-writing friend Jennifer, and it could be applied to the sort of relationship Sig was offering. Compersion, she read. In contrast to jealousy, it meant finding a sense of joy in the joy a loved one finds with another.

  Sig and his friends hardly struck her as the sort to experiment along the far edge of the human relationship continuum, and she had to guess they’d laugh if she tried to bring “compersion” into their vocabulary. But she had at least some idea of the depth of their bond, what Sig referred to quite convincingly as family.

  They loved each other, though she didn’t expect they’d say so out loud unless pressed. Could they be happy, each of them loving her? Could she love all of them?

  She wouldn’t lie. She’d been attracted to them all from the first. And more so, each one, as she’d spent more time with them. When Sigge said he thought he was in love, it wasn’t so far from what she was thinking.

  What she was feeling.

  She went to bed that night considering that maybe it wasn’t so crazy. She ignored the late text from Sig. Thinking of you. Wish you were here in my arms. Sleep well.

  Well, it wasn’t exactly true that she ignored it, not given the way she held her phone in her hand like a giddy schoolgirl, reading his words again and again. But she didn’t respond.

  And not the next day either, when he texted her several times. Working out, he wrote. Not as much fun without you.

  Suit’s pissed at me, he told her an hour later. He’s wondering what I’ve done with you.

  Finally, she left her phone downstairs while she went to her desk to apply herself to work. Later, she learned she’d missed his invitation to lunch and then to dinner.

  By midafternoon on Sunday, he’d reached his limit. Time’s up, he texted. I’m bringing dinner. See you at 7. Dress up.

  * * * *

  Sigge had to appreciate that Indy had done what he’d asked—or instructed, might be more accurate to say. She looked great.

  He’d dressed up himself, which was kind of a pain in the ass in snow country in February. He wore an Italian suit with an asymmetrical vest he’d gotten seduced into at Sid Mashburn’s in Atlanta. Luckily, the smart, totally stylish sales staff had also talked him into a pair of Chelsea boots and a wool dress coat.

  When Indy opened the door to him, it was all worth it, because she seemed to think he looked great, too. Though, it was possible she was just glad to see the takeout bags from Sweet Basil. He was counting on it being more.

  He told her she was lovely, leaned in, touched his lips to hers, and settled for that. He’d rather have taken her up in his arms and never let go, but with the food and crutches in his hands, his cold, heavy coat, and her thin, little black dress, he held himself back. And was happy for it, when she took their dinner from him and walked away with it, letting him enjoy the low back and high slit of her dress. He took his coat off, left it on a hook at the door, and followed that outstanding view to the kitchen.

  “Shall we eat while it’s stil
l warm?” she asked, lifting containers from the bag.

  Sig nodded, not quite sure he’d find his tongue. She wore high heels and black stockings with even blacker seams running up to disappear at either side of that unholy slit. If that wasn’t an outfit begging to be pushed up against some hard surface and taken from behind, he didn’t know what was.

  She took out a bottle of wine and held it up, a question in her eyes. “Do you want a glass?”

  Sig held her gaze. She’d never seen him drink because he rarely did. And he never, ever had a drink, even one, if he was driving. “It depends,” he said. “Am I driving back to town tonight?”

  She set the bottle down and rested her hands on the granite counter between them. He tried hard to breathe easily, to let her make her own decision without pressure from him.

  “Not if you want to sta—”

  “I want to stay.”

  “Okay,” she said, simply. She turned and took two wineglasses from a high cupboard. When she drew a corkscrew from a drawer, he hopped forward and took it from her. While he opened the wine, she plated the appetizers and put the two main dishes into the oven to keep warm.

  She poured the wine and took both glasses. “Come sit,” she said. “I’ll bring the plates.”

  He got to enjoy the view again as she led him to the dining table. She’d set it with a linen cloth and candles. The china and silver had a modern look, nothing passed down from a grandmother. He wondered if the lack of family connections would work for them, him and J.J. and Tyler. She was pretty alone in her life and maybe wished for more family.

  They ate pear salad and a caramelized-onion-and-walnut tart, sharing both. When they finished, he went with her to the kitchen and managed to bring back the wine bottle as she carried their dinners. He refilled her glass but left his half-full as it was.

  “You really don’t drink much,” she said.

  He shook his head. “Ahlstrands and alcohol have never been a good mix.”

  “I don’t care that much one way or the other,” she told him. “We don’t need to have it around.”

  Sig set down his fork and reached for her hand. They were sitting at a corner of the table, and she was close enough that he could bring her fingers to his lips. “It doesn’t really matter. I don’t mind being around it, and I have a drink once in a while.” He kissed her fingers again. “But I’m really, really happy you used that word.”

  She smiled like she knew. “‘We’?”

  He nodded, sinking into her gaze.

  “You said we were together, you and I.”

  Sig nodded again, though he thought about tossing her up over his head and swinging her around in joy, bad knee be damned.

  “You said to trust that, and I do.”

  “Good,” he said, and he held her fingers tighter.

  “I haven’t made a decision about the rest of it. I don’t know how to make it.”

  He took a deep breath, wishing he could just be happy she wasn’t totally shooting them down. “I understand. It’s…a bit out there.”

  “It’s not so much, really.” He looked at her, brows raised, and she shrugged. “I researched it.”

  Sig smiled. Of course she had. “What did you learn?”

  “There’s kind of a…a small trend, maybe you could say. Since the nineties. Some popular discussion and a little bit of academic investigation.”

  That was interesting. “Into what, exactly?”

  “Polyamory,” she said. “Relationships that aren’t open, but… Well, they could be open, but I don’t think that’s what you want.” She took a soft breath. “You three.”

  “If that means you could be with other men, or we could be with other women, then, no, that’s not what we want.”

  “Or what I’d want. So it would be closed. A…ménage.”

  He looked at her, considering. “And that’s a thing?”

  “Well,” she said. “A small thing.”

  “And you’re considering it.”

  “Yes. I guess so. There are other ways to configure it.” She told him more about her research, and he had to keep from rolling his eyes at the extent of human idiocy. But he figured a man who was lobbying for the thing he was lobbying for—her term ménage suited best—probably would be wise to develop a live-and-let-live policy.

  She’d taken her hand back as she spoke, and now she sat straight up in her chair, serious. “You’ve been more…forthcoming with words than I have. I want to say them. You mean a lot to me, too, Sig. I’m falling for you, too.”

  He wanted to grab her up, to take her in his arms and never let go, but clearly she meant to say more. “You’re right that I was attracted to J.J. and Tyler too—of course I was, since…”

  Since she’d slept with Ty. But thankfully she thought better of saying so.

  “I like them more, as I’ve spent a little time with them and as I’ve come to know more about them through you.”

  He nodded again, encouraging her.

  “I understand what they mean to you. It just seems so…so big. And at least a little bit crazy.”

  All in all, this seemed like good news to Sig. He reached over and snagged a bite of her lamb. “Crazy,” he said, “it seems like we can live with. None of us—” he circled his fork “—none of the four of us have, let’s say, mainstream lives. And big—well, maybe we can save big decisions for later. Maybe, right now, we can just start with small things. You, I guess I mean. You don’t have to decide everything at once. You don’t have to do anything you’re not ready for. Maybe you can just do what seems right at the time, do what you want to do.”

  He stood up. “Like right now.” He hobbled over to where his coat hung at the door. From a pocket, he took what he’d been told at the music store was the best romantic dance CD ever made.

  You could learn a lot when you had more than twenty-four hours with nothing to do but think about how to seduce a woman into crazy.

  He went over and spent a minute figuring out her sound system. Then, with soft music playing, he leaned one crutch against the wall and put out his hand. “Will you dance with me, Indy?”

  One of his college athletic coaches was a little spitfire named Adi whose job included teaching yoga and dance to all the varsity teams. Football and women’s volleyball were both fall sports, so they’d been paired. Which worked out great. When Indy stood and came to him, her heels put her just a couple inches short of eye level. It felt normal to him, a perfect fit.

  Using just one crutch, he danced her around with small steps, not feeling nearly as idiotic as he’d thought he might when he’d bought the music on the skinny store-geek’s say-so. Almost smoothly, he moved her to a light switch and flicked it off. At the second one, she got the idea, so all he had to do was swing her out to flick it off. By the end of the first song, they were in the dark except for the fire and a few candles.

  Indy was gorgeous, her blond hair shimmering, her gaze locked on his. She moved easily with him, graceful as much as athletic, and he had to wonder if there was an Adi in her past, too. But he let that thought go and just enjoyed the moment, because he didn’t want to think about some other dumb jock holding Indy like this.

  After a couple songs, when he figured he’d established that he had some skills, he took her hands and slid them up around his neck. That gave him one hand free to explore the soft, bare skin of her back, and then the firm mound of her ass under layers of lace and silk.

  By the fifth song, he had a real appreciation for the geek. His fingers had found the slit of Indy’s skirt, and he’d learned the black stockings ended right there, held in place with a lace garter belt. They were kissing by then, lips locked, and their bodies swaying into each other more than actually dancing. He’d had to adjust a couple times as his cock rose.

  She didn’t seem to mind.

  And she didn’t have anything on under that dress but stockings and the garter belt.

  By the time he’d ascertained that, he was about done even pretending
to dance.

  He lifted up from her mouth to look at her. “I want to take you to your bed. I wish I could carry you there.”

  Indy smiled, and, even in the faint light, he could see the blush on her cheeks.

  “Ty did that already, didn’t he? The rat bastard.”

  Her smile quirked a little, and she lifted one brow, giving him a steady look until he relented.

  He huffed out a breath. “What was that word you used?”

  “Compersion.”

  “Yeah.” To find joy in the joy a loved one finds with another, like a fucking idiot. He tried opening his mind to it, to accept what at first glance seemed crazy, just as he was asking her to do. Would he ever be able to find joy in seeing her in Ty’s or J.J.’s arms? Images danced through his head, and some of them were…hot. Maybe. Just, maybe, he thought.

  “All right,” he said and kissed her swiftly. “I can aim for it. But for now, if I get to join you in your bed tonight, I’m afraid you’re going to have to walk yourself there.”

  Her warm hand was on his cheek, and he turned his lips to her palm. Her eyes flared a little.

  “I can live with that,” she told him. She brought him his second crutch, and he nodded his thanks.

  “Lead the way.”

  Chapter Nine

  Sigge followed Indy upstairs, so close behind her she felt the heat of him. He made love to her perhaps the way he’d “meant” on Friday in his hotel room. Sweetly, romantically, adoringly, like the way they’d been together downstairs as they eaten and then danced.

  Slowly, he undressed her and patiently tolerated it as she did the same for him. He’d been so gorgeous in his handsome, stylishly tailored suit that a person would think he could hardly be more attractive. And yet he was, as she bared hot skin and hard muscle, as his eyes heated and his breath quickened.

  She felt closer to him than ever. He’d let her see his own misgivings, his own willingness to push past the boundaries of comfort. He’d let her know she wasn’t in it alone. The words they’d exchanged—hers, returning his declaration of love, and his, assuring her that she could choose her pace—seemed to cement what was between them. To form a commitment.