Not until tonight. Until he saw the expression in Riley’s eyes as Gigi mentioned their past together that had his stomach clenching. Whether it had been there before or not, he couldn’t be sure, but this time he saw it for sure. The spark of pain filled her gaze for a second before she covered it again.
“No, Gigi, we’re fine here with Riley.” Logan made a point of shifting his body away from Gigi’s and closer to Riley, making his choice blatant in every way he could.
Their time together had been fine. But definitely not enough fun to justify hurting Riley in any way. Even before tonight, if he’d known being with Gigi hurt Riley, he would have lost her number. No woman was as important to him as Riley. But he’d never seen that pain before. Or maybe he hadn’t let himself see it. Justifying that he wasn’t doing anything more than playing around with Gigi, and that couldn’t mean anything to Riley. But he was seeing a lot of things differently tonight. More than he probably wanted to.
She only shrugged her shoulders, clearly just as interested in him as he was in her. Which worked fine for him. “Well, if you change your mind, give me a call. You know my number.” She winked at them as she walked away. Her heels clicked as she strode along the smooth wood floors. Her hips swaying a little harder as she walked away. But he had no urge to watch her. He had no interest in how she moved her hips or what her ass looked like in that dress.
The only woman he was interested in sat at the table beside him.
“It’s okay if you want to go with her. I understand.” The grin Riley gave him was the same as all the previous ones she’d offered, yet something felt different about it. There was a softness to her voice he’d never heard before, that dug at something deep in his chest like a woodpecker he couldn’t escape. “A man has to eat, right?”
She might be right, but the one he wanted to eat was her. He wanted to lick her all over, taste every delectable inch of her. He’d drink her in for days if she’d let him. Licking and tasting until she panted his name. Which were completely inappropriate thoughts to be having toward his best friend.
A glance toward Jasper showed the same emotions flashing across his face. His eyes burned, his tongue licked his lips as if he envisioned her taste on his mouth. He could see the truth as clear as if the words were written across his forehead. Jasper wanted her. He wanted Riley. Just as much as Logan did.
They were really in fucking trouble now. Worse than he could have guessed.
“I’ve got to go to the can.” Jasper stood up abruptly. The screech of the table legs being quickly jolted across the floor assaulted his ears.
“Me, too.” Logan stood up next to him, his own chair squeaking across the floor as he all but jumped from his place and ran after Jasper. “Too many of these Blitzen drinks.”
The confused look on her face would have been priceless if there weren’t so many other confusing emotions running through his mind.
“Since when did you two start going to the bathroom together like a couple of girls?”
“Since now, I guess,” Logan offered over his shoulder as he all but sprinted after his best friend to the only salvation he could think of.
* * * *
Riley stared after her two best friends as they scampered off to the bathroom together. They were acting so damn weird tonight. She had no idea what had gotten into them. She sniffed her drink experimentally. It still smelled way too sweet and nowhere near strong enough, but she didn’t think there was anything elicit in it.
But that’s all she could think of that would explain their behavior. Someone had clearly dosed their drinks. It was the only way to explain why they’d turn away Gigi when she offered a night of fun and an escape from this party.
What could possibly make them want to stay here with her? At the Christmas Ball of all places. Hell, she’d leave with Gigi right now if she could. It would have to be a pretty damn good reason—or possibly the effect of some crazy drug—to convince them to give up the chance to have sex to stay here with her. A really good reason.
Chapter Three
Jasper stepped back from the urinal, turning on the water to wash his hands. Even the small act of cleaning himself seemed to take more work than usual. He groaned, leaning against the sink. Damn it, this was not the Christmas present he was hoping for. Far from it.
The confusion warred inside him, threatened to overtake everything else. A few hours ago, his life had been exactly what he’d wanted. Their ranch was doing well. He had two best friends to confide in. Even his dad’s health was better, after a long recovery from hip surgery.
Until Riley had walked into the party in that dress. Now everything was a muddled mess that made no sense at all.
“You’re feeling it, too, aren’t you?” Logan piped up from the sink beside him. So consumed with his thoughts, Jasper hadn’t realized he’d joined him at the sinks.
Jasper opened his mouth, about to deny what Logan suggested, but Logan cut him off before he could say a word. “I know you feel it. You reacted from the second she walked into the room.”
He could try and deny it again. That was an option. But Jasper was smart enough to know if he didn’t convince Logan the first time, he had little hope of doing so the second. Instead, he nodded. “Yeah.”
How could he not? In that shiny gold dress, every man in the room must be fantasizing about being with her. Even the married ones. She looked so drop-dead gorgeous. But it was more than just lust. There was something else to the way he looked at her. Some emotion buried beneath the surface that he was afraid to look at too hard.
“She looks so good in that dress, I can’t stop looking at her, thinking about her in all these not best friend ways. I don’t know how I didn’t see it before.”
Jasper nodded. Yesterday she’d just been Riley. His best friend. The girl who’d always been covered in mud and more interested in running through the woods with them than playing dress-up. But after tonight, he wasn’t sure he could ever see her that way again. She’d never be just Riley again. Just his best friend. Now she was a woman. A gorgeous, amazing, beautiful woman. And he had no idea where to go from here.
“All I want to do is take her home, peel off that dress, and lick every inch of her skin, before sinking my cock between her thighs.”
Jasper groaned again at the image Logan painted in his mind, so close to the one Jasper had created himself. Except in his fantasy, he pushed her up against the front door—unable to wait any longer to have her—and fucked her brains out until she screamed his name so loud the neighbors called the cops. But Logan’s idea sounded good, too. Maybe for a second round, after the police had been convinced she wasn’t being killed and left them alone.
God, this was not how they were supposed to think about their best friend. Logan and he had spent most of their high school days chasing guys away from Riley, refusing to let anyone near her that would only think of using her. With the two of them as bodyguards, it was amazing she’d ever gotten a date in her life. Now he was the jerk contemplating using her body, over and over again, until she was too tired to move. How the hell had that happened?
Sticking his hands under the facet, Jasper gathered a handful of cold water and splashed it across his face, hoping the cool water would shock his system back into reality. This couldn’t be reality. It had to be a horrible dream. And in the morning he’d wake up, drenched in a cold sweat, thanking god it was over.
No such luck.
“You want her, don’t you?”
Jasper nodded. He couldn’t deny it, any more than he could deny he needed to breathe. He certainly couldn’t hide his desires from his best friend. Logan would see right through him. But did he want to act on it? That was a whole different question. One he wasn’t sure he had an answer to. Or that he wanted the answer to.
“Me, too.”
Jasper glanced up into the mirror in front of him, the determined look in Logan’s eyes reflected back to him, tearing at something deep in his chest. In the tick of a second, everyth
ing changed, the realization hitting him so hard it almost knocked him backward. He wanted Riley. Wanted her bad. In his bed, moving beneath him, calling out his name. He wanted to taste her lips, and feel her soft breath puffing against his cheek as she slept.
And so did Logan.
If they weren’t fucked before, they definitely were now.
“What are we going to do about it?” Jasper leaned on the sink top. Water still dripped down his face but did nothing to cool his ardor. “We can’t make her choose.”
That wouldn’t be fair. They’d been best friends, the three of them, since grade school. They’d never been separated. Not by relationships or jobs or family. If they forced her to choose one of them now, Jasper had no doubt they’d lose her completely. Both of them. He couldn’t let that happen. He wouldn’t.
He needed Riley for much more than his bed. She was his closest confidant. His port in a storm. She was there for him in all the ways another guy just couldn’t be. Holding his hand all through his father’s surgery, and lending him a shoulder to lean on when Sally Michaels had dumped him. If he didn’t have her, he wasn’t sure what he’d do.
“Who says we have to?”
Logan’s words echoed through the otherwise unoccupied bathroom like the shot of a gun. Honestly, Logan shooting a gun in the town hall bathroom would have surprised him less than what he’d just said. It probably wouldn’t be the first time a gun had gone off in here.
Jasper stopped drying his hands in midmotion. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Come on, man. We’re not the first guys in history to have this problem.” Logan shrugged his shoulders, acting like what he said was so commonplace it was no big deal. But it was a big deal. A big freakin’ deal when they were talking about Riley. “Hell, many of our ancestors shared women.”
It was a little-known secret about the west. With a shortage of women, many of their early settlers shared a lot more than just a warm place to stay. It was a history they’d always laughed over before. It didn’t seem so funny now.
“If they did it, why can’t we?”
Jasper ran his hand through his hair, pushing the strands back from his face. “Those were different times. Women were scarce. This is different.”
“You mean now women have the right to choose what they want in bed. And who they want to have sex with.” Logan’s left eyebrow shot up, daring him to correct him.
But he wasn’t wrong. Women did have the ability to choose what kind of sex life they wanted, and that should extend to how many people they wanted to have sex with. But they weren’t just talking about women here. They were talking about Riley. Their best friend. The most important person in his life.
“We’ve never done this before.” Jasper tried to convince himself as much as his best friend that this was a bad idea. Because it was. He had no question about that. But it also sounded really damn appealing, too. “We don’t know what we’re doing.”
Logan shrugged his shoulders. “It can’t be that hard. The same thing we usually do, just times two.”
Fire flamed to his cock at the thought. Jasper tightened his hands so hard on the sink’s edge his knuckles ached. Two times the orgasms. Two times the naked Riley, squirming beneath him. “But this is Riley we’re talking about. She’s like our little sister.”
Logan rolled his eyes. “If you’re still feeling sisterly toward her, you can sit this one out. But I’m going for it, with or without you.”
Jasper shook his head. He couldn’t sit out. He couldn’t walk away. Not when all he could think about was Riley. How her sweet pink lips would taste or how smooth her skin would feel beneath his fingers. If he didn’t at least follow this through, to see where it went, it would be the biggest mistake of his life. He knew that for sure.
“Fine, we’ll talk to her.” Jasper released the porcelain. The tips of his fingers tingled as the blood rushed back into them. His knees felt a little solider beneath his resolution, sturdy enough to hold him up.
“But we can’t pressure her. This has to be her choice.” Just the thought of Riley feeling compelled to give in to their whims and one day regretting the night with them had his stomach rolling like he’d eaten bad clams. What happened after all this, he couldn’t control. But he sure as hell wasn’t losing his best friend because he couldn’t contain his hormones. She was worth more than that.
Logan nodded. “Of course. I’d never let anything hurt her.” The even us was left unsaid.
Silence fell between them for a minute, as they both contemplated what they’d said.
“So we’re doing this? We’re asking Riley to come home with us?”
Jasper nodded, though he couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d both lost their minds. They were about to proposition their best friend since childhood into having a three-way with them. The same girl they’d played cowboys and Indians with in her backyard and built baking soda volcanoes with. It was insanity, yet it felt so right he couldn’t deny it either. He wanted her. They wanted her. More than anything else in the world.
They both filed out of the bathroom, their steps strong and purposeful. Their only goal was to find Riley. One way or another, after tonight, their lives would never be the same.
* * * *
She was going to kill them. She was going to rip out their hearts with a million tiny papercuts or an old rusty spoon. She was going to murder her best friends in the most irritating way she could think of. It would have been bad enough if they’d skipped out on her to go home with Gigi. She’d hate that, but she could understand it. But ditching her without a word. After all her pleas for them to save her from this party was absolutely, totally inexcusable.
Riley glanced around the room again, but their wide shoulders and pressed suits were nowhere to be found. It had been fifteen minutes since Logan and Jasper had escaped to the bathroom together, and she hadn’t seen a hint of them since. Unless they’d both somehow grown a set of ovaries in there, they were taking too damn long.
They’d been acting weird all night. Making odd comments about her clothes and her shoes. Telling her she looked good. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think they were trying to butter her up for something. If she had something to give them, she might have been worried.
At least they’d accomplished their job. The night was almost half over, and Victoria hadn’t sent a single suitor in her direction. Victoria stood across the room in heated conversation with the Sullivan cousins. Riley was definitely off her cousin’s radar. One more year down.
She’d done her rounds for the night. She’d made one full revolution around the room, and greeted everyone she met. She’d done her duty for the Willis family. There was no reason she had to stay.
If Logan and Jasper had cut out on her, she could do the same. Without them she felt out of place, like a jigsaw missing half its pieces, and she didn’t like the emotions it brought up inside her. She could get out of the here and be home before anyone noticed she was gone. She’d send them a text once she got to the car. With any luck, she could be snuggled up in her horseshoe pajamas and Frostbite Falls High T-shirt, scraping this crap off her face in less than then twenty minutes. If Jasper and Logan ever escaped the bathroom, they could fend for themselves.
Experience told her the easiest way out of the town hall without anyone noticing was the back exit. Quietly she stood up and tried not to stumble toward the back of the room on these too-high heels Victoria had insisted she wear.
She was only partially successful. Her ankle twisted slightly beneath her, and she grabbed onto the wall, grateful she’d made it to the small hallway between the county clerk’s office and her uncle’s office before her tumble. She was almost home free and even closer to taking off these torture devices on her feet. A step closer to the world returning to normal. To Jasper and Logan acting like her best buds again, instead of the crazy people they’d become tonight. Why doesn’t that sound as good as it should?
Before she could follow that t
rain down the dangerous track it was on, two hands reached from the dark of her uncle’s office and pulled her inside.
Embarrassingly, she didn’t even consider fighting back, too stunned to do anything but let them yank her into the dark depths of the room. A truth she’d never admit if she ever retold the story. In her version, she fought off the kidnapper, killer, or rapist with all she was worth. Assuming she survived to tell the tale.
A light on the farthest desk flicked on, illuminating half of Jasper. The warm rays cast across Logan beside her, his arm still holding her. Not exactly tight, but still there was something more than friendship in his grip. She wasn’t sure how she could tell. She just did.
“There you are, sweets,” he whispered in her ear, a little deeper than necessary.
No longer stunned, or under attack in any way, she snatched her arm back from Logan before pounding her fist into his shoulder. “What do you mean, there I am? I’ve been in the same spot this whole time.” She punched Logan again, feeling somewhat vindicated when he flinched beneath her blow. She couldn’t reach Jasper to smack him, too, but she did her best to flay him alive with her eyes. “You jerks left me. Not the other way around.”
“Hey, hey, hey.” Logan held his hands up, blocking her next blow. “We didn’t abandon you. We were headed back when you walked into the hall.”
“We figured it would be better to meet you in here than out there.” Jasper gestured toward the hall behind him, but he didn’t walk closer, still too chickenshit to come within hitting distance. It didn’t matter. She could wait. He’d have to leave that corner some time.
“If you were coming back to the party, what have you been doing all this whole time? Did one of your dicks grow wings in there?”
The boys shared a concerned look, and she rolled her eyes. Yeah right! Nothing that happened in there could be that surprising. They were just trying to avoid her, or the party, or Gigi. Or all three.
Golden Forever Page 3