by Anne Calhoun
“His turn, sweetheart.”
She turned once again to Sean. He sat back on his heels and crooked his finger at her. His gaze dropped to her mouth while she unfastened the buttons of his shirt, taking her time exposing the hard, planed muscles of his shoulders and chest. While Ben had the hard-muscled build of a man frequently called on to run down then restrain drug-crazed offenders, Sean was lean, taut strength, deceptive until she bared his body, revealing muscle and bone held together by sinews visible under his skin. When she eased his shirt from his shoulders and put her mouth to the hollow of his throat, she felt blood pulsing into the very surface of his skin.
She focused on the planes of his chest and shoulders, and this time her path to Sean’s cock held a little more urgency, a little more need. He went up on his knees when she tugged at his belt, helped her unfasten the buckle and release his straining shaft, then stayed there when she leaned forward and took him deep into her mouth.
The feedback loop humming between her and Sean, the one she couldn’t seem to break no matter what she did, kicked into high gear, shutting down her rational brain. Through the haze of arousal in her mind she heard a condom wrapper tear, then after a moment’s pause, Ben situated himself between her legs and aligned the head of his cock with her soft opening.
Pleasure spiked along her nerves, and she moaned as Ben pressed deep. He held still for a second, gently caressing her hips, until Sean slid his fingers into her hair and lifted her face to his. “Now it begins,” he said.
The rough growl eddied over nerves already stimulated into anticipation. Ben timed his thrusts to Abby’s mouth on Sean’s cock, a slow, deep sensory overload that felt like more than she could take…until it wasn’t enough. This was a battle for control, not just a pleasure-drenched evening, so she sat back and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “You know what I want,” she said.
Sean nodded, a blue-white flame burning deep in his eyes. “Sit back,” he said to Ben, who withdrew and leaned against the headboard as Abby turned to face him. Behind her another condom wrapper tore, then Sean snugged up against her, chest to her back, erection urgent against her ass.
“Watch,” Ben commanded.
She bit her lip and shook her head. She didn’t want to see Sean’s face, or for him to see what she feared she’d be unable to hide.
His brown eyes darkened with a lazy, sensual heat. “You have to watch,” he said, and turned her to face the mirror hanging from the open bathroom door. “It’s very, very hot.”
The reflection made her gasp. Ben leaning tanned and sexy against the headboard, his erect cock straining from its thicket of dark hair between his legs. Herself straddling his hips, a heated blush staining her freckled skin, her mouth wet and swollen. And Sean at her back, the Marine Corps emblem tattooed high on his shoulder, a tube of lubricant in his deft hands. He flipped open the lid and coated his fingers, then began to circle her anus with the tip of his finger.
No hesitation. No regrets. Tonight Sean was all in, and she couldn’t face what she’d begun.
She let her head drop back and moaned. Ruthlessly Ben turned her to face the mirror. As she stared at the tableau, Ben cupped her breasts, squeezing the soft flesh, pinching her nipples. Her mirror-mouth opened on a low sigh, and Ben chuckled. “Oh yeah. Show us, sweetheart. Show us how you feel when he does this.”
Oh, no. No, no, no. The only thing that made this bearable was having her back turned to Sean so he couldn’t see what he did to her. Because this wasn’t just about pleasure, or about new experiences, or even the old experiences. This was about feeling more than she could afford to feel for a man who’d broken her heart once already. This was rapidly becoming about feeling more than she could afford to feel, period.
But if she focused just on her body, on the purely physical connection, it was…shockingly good. Scarily good, the pressure just enough, then tantalizingly not enough, then deeper, and more, until one finger slid easily into her anus. She threw her head back and moaned. Ben laughed again, that low, rough laugh, then one hand dropped and formed a fist. Ever so gently he stroked the side of her swollen clit with his knuckles. Each caress sent eddies of pleasure chasing each other along her nerves until her entire body was aflame.
Sean added a second finger, and she moaned. “Yes,” she gasped. “Oh, yes.”
Ben kissed her cheek, her jaw, the sensitive corner of her mouth, flicking glances at her in the mirror as he did. “It’s good,” he said, the light in his eyes dark, knowing.
“So good,” she said faintly.
His melted dark chocolate eyes went heavy-lidded. “It gets better,” he whispered.
Then Sean settled the head of his cock against her anus. Abby gazed at his reflection in the mirror, the set line of his jaw, the blue flame in his eyes as he pushed, pushed, and breached the tight ring of muscle. She moaned, let her eyes drop closed to absorb the sensations. When she opened them again Sean still watched her in the mirror. Without breaking eye contact he pushed all the way inside.
“Oh, God,” she gasped.
He bent forward, chest to back, and left a trail of kisses from one shoulder to the other. When he reached the shoulder closest to the mirror he nuzzled his cheek against hers and once again met her gaze. “Okay?” he asked softly.
She refused the connection implicit in his question. He waited, infinitely patient, his stubble grazing the heated skin of her cheek, until she nodded jerkily. Then he kissed the corner of her mouth as he gave an easy, slow withdrawal and thrust. Sparks skittered along her nerves, made her moan. Then Ben nudged into place. When Sean pulled back, Ben pushed in, and the slow glide over aching nerves and flexing movement of his hips and abs triggered another rush of heated sparks to her core. Her head dropped back against Sean’s shoulder as she sank into the dark, heated pleasure, kissed his throat at the spot where stubble gave way to soft male skin. Tasted sweat. Sean gripped the headboard with one hand and wrapped the other around her waist to hold her. Ben cupped her breasts, rolling and pinching the nipples, drawing her into the slow, submissive currents eddying in the room.
This wasn’t about pounding or plunging into her, hard or fast or dirty. This was about a slow, steady rhythm, one that forced her to feel every stroke, every pause, hear every gasp and grunt and shuddering exhale. Neither man touched her clit, instead relying on the unavoidable, erotic internal stimulation and their devastating tag-team approach to nudge her up the slope. She’d been prepared to be physically vulnerable to them, but not for the total destruction of the walls holding back everything she felt. Waves of pleasure and emotion surged at the edges of her skin, eroding the shell she’d built around her heart. The girl in the mirror, the sweet-looking redhead getting thoroughly fucked by two hard-bodied men, was her. Sean was there, accepting the woman she’d become without him. He’d changed, she’d changed, they weren’t together, and she couldn’t take the vulnerability any longer. She closed her eyes, but that only intensified the cascade of feeling inside her.
Emotion and pleasure wound together, braiding and knotting, pussy, ass, stomach, nipples, heart, throat, mind. Blindly she slid her palm along Sean’s outstretched arm and curled her fingers around the top of his hand, then braced her other palm on Ben’s hip. His hands dropped from her breasts to her hips, and the slow flex and thrust of his body under hers shoved her right to the edge. Another stroke in from Sean, then Ben’s cock glided over the aching bundle of nerves inside her, again…again…
She threw her head back, high-pitched gasps tearing from her throat as the black hole of orgasm sucked her into the whirling vortex. Ben shuddered under her, his fingers tightening on her hips as he succumbed, but it was Sean’s mouth on her nape, Sean’s helplessness in release that extended her orgasm almost unbearably.
And when it was over, when the physical tension eased to the point where she could breathe again, when she felt Ben’s hands slip to his sides even as Sean’s grip tightened and he bent to kiss her shoulder, the knots remained. S
he stayed still, clinging to the sharp-edged fragments of her shell as Sean withdrew. As soon as he sat back she lifted herself off Ben, then curled up on her side facing the closed bathroom door. Reflected in the mirror there was a flushed, pale woman, her red hair pooled against the white sheets. Ben’s dark hand stroked her hip, the movement hypnotic. “You okay?” he asked quietly.
No. Not even close to okay, but that wasn’t Ben’s problem. “I’m fine,” she said.
Sean pushed the bathroom door open, and her reflection disappeared. The bed dipped as Ben got up, then the mattress swayed when Sean lay down on her opposite side. The bathroom door closed again, and this time Abby saw herself with Sean curled protectively around her. He brushed her hair back from her face and kissed her jaw. “Go to sleep, Abby,” he murmured.
She drifted in a haze to the sound of Ben dressing, jeans against hair-rough legs, shirt tugged on, belt buckled. Of course she would. Because that’s what she did with Sean, have amazing sex and fall asleep in his bed. But this had to end. She would use this to prove she was over him, that he meant nothing more to her than…well, than Ben did.
“I’m heading home,” she said. “This all started because you had a ménage. I’m ending it with one. Now I’m leaving.”
Chapter Nine
Good thing he was already lying down. Sean took Abby’s verbal roundhouse kick but couldn’t fall any further. Air rushed from his lungs as Abby scrambled off the bed and hurried down the hall to the living room without a backward glance. “Hold up, Ben. I’ll walk out with you,” drifted back to Sean’s disbelieving ears.
Sean hurled himself out of bed, snagging his shorts and pants from the floor on his way to the living room. Abby stood by the ottoman. She stepped into her panties, then shrugged into her bra and fastened the clasp between her breasts.
“What the hell is going on, Abby?” He reached for her arm, but she jerked away from him, picked up her jeans, and shook them out.
“Nothing’s going on, Sean. This is just the logical conclusion to what we’ve been doing for the last three weeks.”
“The fuck it is, Abby,” he said flatly. “You’re not leaving.”
“If she says she’s leaving, she’s leaving,” Ben said evenly from his position next to the door. He finished lacing up his shoes, then straightened to study Abby, and from the look in his eyes he’d figured out that this wasn’t just a happy-go-lucky night of sexual exploration.
Focus on the goal. “Abby. Please stay,” Sean said, every ounce of command he could muster in his voice.
She pulled on her jeans and spoke as she zipped up. “I don’t have any reason to stay.”
“Sure you do,” Ben said from across the room. “I know what you’re like at this time of night, and you’re not safe to drive. The adrenaline will wear off in the car, you’ll drift over the centerline or into a tree, and I’ll get a call that you’ve been in a wreck.”
Abby blinked. “Why would you get a call?”
“Because I would.” Ben dug his keys from his pocket. “If you want to leave, I’ll take you home. We’ll get your car in the morning. I suggest you stay. You two have unfinished business that goes way beyond what we just did.”
“Fuck you,” Abby said, her voice shaking. Hunched over slightly, she wrapped her arms around her torso, as if to stop the tremors rolling through her body as she fought with Ben.
Sean’s awareness slipped into tactical crystal clarity. Fought with Ben. No goose bumps, just shakes. The kind of adrenaline shakes he saw in Marines during combat. Combat stress, the human body’s reaction to intense, unavoidable situations where emotional responses were delayed, or suppressed, or both.
The kind of reaction he’d never seen in Abby.
Because he wasn’t around to see it?
“That option is closed to you until you get your shit together,” Ben said. “I’ll hook up. This was just for kicks. I draw the line at fucking someone long-term who’s in love with another man.”
Abby went white. The sexy flush drained from her face and neck like a vampire had latched on, drawing blood and life from her. “I am not in love with him!”
Air huffed from Ben’s chest in something that was too painful to be amused. “It’s against the law to lie to a cop, Abby. It’s just plain stupid to lie to yourself.”
She jerked like he’d slapped her, then reached for her blouse and shoved her arms into the sleeve holes. “What the fuck do you know about love?” she jibed.
Oh, that wasn’t Abby. That wasn’t Abby at all. Sean watched. Waited.
A muscle jumped in Ben’s jaw. “Staying with him or going with me?”
“I’m leaving in my own car, and you can’t tell me otherwise,” Abby snapped.
This wasn’t about the ménage. This was about the slow-motion trench warfare that was Abby’s daily life, something devastating that had to be suppressed so she could go on, do what had to be done.
Devastating. Suppressed.
Oh, Jesus. In all of his planning, his strategizing, his tactical analysis of their situation, he’d assumed Abby had been angry with him, but she was over it. He’d never taken into account the possibility that she’d never dealt with it at all.
When would she? You were gone. Her dad got sick. She couldn’t find a job. When would she deal? And if she couldn’t deal, how could she move on?
You’ve screwed this up from the first move, Winthrop. Like the Chinese fortune cookie joke, you read her perfectly…in bed. You unearthed, explored, and satisfied her every need…in bed. Emotionally, you missed the boat, the bus, the point. Everything. You missed everything.
She and Ben were still jabbing at each other, if he could call Abby lashing out and Ben standing there like he’d been carved out of rock jabbing.
“The badge says I can,” Ben said. “Pick up those keys and I’ll call dispatch. You’ll be pulled over in less than a mile.”
“On what charge?”
Ben’s smile walked a fine line between edgy and mean, like maybe he’d had enough. “The traffic ordinance book is two inches thick, Abby. Any cop with a month on the street will find something.”
In all of Sean’s strategizing to get Abby back, casting her uniformed lover in the role of bad cop never occurred to him. This was clearly an abject failure of imagination on his part. But Ben wasn’t her target. Time to shift her attention.
“Abby.”
Still shaking like she would fly apart she jerked around to face him, and he felt a moment’s anguish for what was coming, what it would likely do to them—finish them like they should have been finished ten months earlier. No matter the consequences for him, she had to get loose from this, to walk into the future she chose to create.
With or without him.
“Stay. Please.”
She was white with rage, her freckles standing out like burning stars from her hairline to the waistband of her jeans. She didn’t say anything, just buttoned her blouse with trembling, jerky fingers, but it was clear from the way she refused to look at Ben that she wisely wasn’t going to put his ultimatum to the test.
Ben nodded at Abby’s keys, still on the tall, square table by the door. “If she leaves before she’s gotten some sleep, call me.” He stepped through the front door and closed it quietly behind him.
The shaking intensified. Abby probably didn’t realize she was doing it, or what it meant, because she’d had no support, no CO or sergeant to watch over her, no friends with deployed boyfriends or husbands, a disinterested mother and a self-interested father. No boyfriend/fiancé/husband checking in on her mental state. That was his fault, his failure. Or so he assumed.
Time to stop making assumptions and start getting the story from the boots on the ground.
“Abby, tell me how you felt when you got my e-mail.”
* * *
“That’s old news,” Abby said. Her fingers refused to function on her shirt buttons because she couldn’t slip the green pearl button through the hole. She flicked her fingers
to get them working again. “I felt then what I do now. A little disappointed, then nothing. It’s over and gone, in the past.”
“No it’s not,” he said. He stood in front of her, shirtless, his cargo pants riding low on his hips, legs braced, hands shoved in his pockets, his face grave. “It’s in this room, right now, between us. How you felt a year ago is at the heart of what we just did, and why. So tell me.”
She stopped, swallowed hard against the lump in her throat. Truth be told, it made her sick to think about it. Her stomach churned. Funny how a ménage with two men—so dirty! so bad! so wrong!—left her limp with pleasure, near peace, and remembering how she felt when she got an e-mail turned her guts to water.
Then she realized that this was the final nail in the coffin. This was the best way to prove to him that she was over him, by rehashing this like it was no big deal. She shoved her sweaty, tangled hair behind her ears and folded her arms across her chest. Be specific. Use details.
“I was sitting in the front parlor,” she said. “Reading e-mail on my laptop, looking out the front window. This is important because I’d gotten the biggest yellow ribbons I could find, the kind with the big bows and rosettes on them, and tied them around the trees in the front yard. You know how your mind drifts when you’re just hanging out…you hadn’t written for a couple of days, and I was worried about you, and the men in your platoon…and thinking about those ribbons and wondering what they’d look like after a year.
“And then there was an e-mail from you. No subject line. I was so disappointed when I opened it because it was really short. When you were in training, you sent me two single-spaced pages, full of description and funny stories about your men. Then you deployed, and it dropped to a page, then a couple of paragraphs. Then this. Four sentences. Abby, I think it’s better if we end our relationship. You’re in a transitory stage in your life, with a lot of growing up yet to do. It’s not fair to ask you to support me through the next year when I’m not able to make the same commitment to you. I wish you all the best in the future. Sean.”