by Elia Winters
The last inch, and his hips pressed flush against her ass, filling her completely. Lori’s breath caught. Geoff smoothed a hand over her lower back. “Look at you,” he murmured, his voice low and filthy and rough. “You should see yourself, stretched around our cocks like this. You’re so beautiful.”
There it was again, another compliment, more praise, and Lori’s defenses were down. She blinked her eyes open, but the world was a blur. Patrick had one hand tracing up and down her back, slowly, his breathing regulating as he grew used to the tightness, soothing her with his touch. Lori couldn’t think straight. In some deep animal part of her brain, she was only a collection of nerve endings, and this double-stretched feeling flayed her open like sex never did. She was naked, and vulnerable, and helpless in the face of this intensity.
Before she could fully relax—she might never relax, might never come down from this high—Patrick began to thrust. They were just gentle rocking movements of his hips, maybe an inch or so, in and out, but each movement rubbed hard over her G-spot and stole her breath.
“There we go.” Geoff moved his hands back to her hips once more and began to move as well. Their cocks slid against each other inside her, separated by only the thinnest of walls, and Lori mewled and dropped her forehead back to Patrick’s chest.
This wasn’t who she was. She was confident and outspoken and playful in bed; she wasn’t one to lose herself in the emotional openness of sex. Sex was fun. It brought her joy. This kind of sex, though, stripped her defenses and left her operating on pure instinct. She didn’t move at all, paralyzed by her need and her overwhelmed senses.
“Lori. Sweetheart.” Patrick’s voice brought her back to herself, made her lift her head and look down at him. His face was flushed, lips swollen, eyes dark with lust. He looked as destroyed as she felt. “Tell me you’re okay.”
They had stopped moving, and she blinked, focusing. “Yeah.” She kissed him, the barest brushing of lips, all she could manage in her blissed-out state. “Don’t stop.”
She let the men inside her guide her movements, let them control the bend and flex of her body, and held on for the ride. Pressure built, her muscles tensed, and her pleasure escalated. She floated on the current as it carried her, helpless to do anything but feel, until her body reached that impossibly high peak.
She hovered, hovered, and crashed over the edge.
Through the haze of pleasure-pain, the sharp razor of unbearable intensity, she felt them still moving inside her, heard Geoff cry out and thrust once more, heard Patrick chase him over the edge. Stuffed full like this, she could feel their cocks pulsing in release. God, she was going to die like this. There was no way for her to survive this much pleasure, and that was her last thought before everything went white and soft and she drifted away.
Her muscles weren’t working properly. She could barely lift her head, and she lay limply across Patrick’s chest as they each disentangled themselves from her. Then, Patrick gently rolled her to the side, and the noises of cleanup and soft conversation reached her ears before they slid into bed with her again and held her, one on each side. Geoff was the one in front, now, and he brushed a curl away from her forehead. “Hey.” He leaned in to kiss her, and the kiss tasted salty. She blinked.
“Am I crying?” Regaining some muscle control, she brushed her hand over her cheek. “Shit.” She never cried after sex.
Patrick’s voice rumbled behind her. “We were worried we broke you.”
“You did.” She laughed, because laughing was easier than confronting this open vulnerability inside her. Something had shifted, and she couldn’t define it, but this connection to Geoff and Patrick seemed solid where it had once felt breakable. Now, the only thing feeling breakable was her. She swallowed. “I’m broken.” And yeah, as she sat up, her body protested in some distinctly broken ways. “I think I need a shower.”
“You want company?” Geoff asked, and Lori smiled, putting a hand flat on his chest.
“Not this time, bud.” She leaned in to kiss him, though, so he’d know there were no hard feelings. “Maybe after.”
On wobbly legs, she got up to grab her overnight bag.
15
Geoff was the kind of guy to fall asleep at a moment’s notice, so it didn’t surprise Patrick that by the time he got out of his shower, his husband was conked out in bed. He looked so sweet, stretched out on his side of the bed, bare-chested and lightly snoring. Patrick had expected to find Lori snuggled up with him, but she wasn’t in the bedroom. Hopefully, she hadn’t left. Tonight had been intense, and he wouldn’t blame her if she’d slipped out rather than stayed to deal with the aftermath.
He found her standing out on the balcony with her arms crossed on the railing, looking out at the night. She wore a purple silk nightgown that flowed down to her knees, and she’d wrapped her curls up in a silk scarf to spill out at the crown of her head. She looked over her shoulder to smile at him as he joined her on the balcony.
“Thought I’d find you in bed.” It was so easy to casually touch her now, lightly rubbing between her shoulder blades.
“I’m too amped up to sleep.” She leaned on her folded arms. “It’s quiet out here.”
“Generally, yeah. It’s not New York.” Immediately as the words left his mouth, he wished he could snatch them back in. Geoff hadn’t told him about Lori’s plans to move away, and Patrick still wasn’t sure why, but he had been circling around the idea all week now. The thought of her leaving unsettled something inside him that he couldn’t articulate.
Lori made a soft “hmm” noise and looked down to the river. Although it wasn’t visible in the darkness, the sounds of water rushing over rocks rose up to him through the blackness. “I’ll miss Mapleton. I’ll miss places like this.”
“I’ll miss you.”
The words slipped out without him consciously deciding to say them. Lori smiled, a sad smile in the moonlight. “You barely know me.”
“I know you enough to know I’ll miss you.”
He leaned on the railing beside her. In the darkness, without having to look at her face, it was easy to make these declarations. He was only telling the truth, but maybe the truth didn’t have a place in this empty, quiet space between them.
“New York’s not far.” She turned her head away from him, looking off into the distance. Her hair cut a curled silhouette against the star-filled sky. “Do you miss it?”
His instinct was to respond the way he always did when people asked, to say, I don’t miss the traffic, or New York’s so expensive, I’m better off here, but those responses were always incomplete. “It’s complicated.”
She looked back toward him. “I’ve got time.”
The light coming in from the glass doors behind them illuminated the curve of her cheekbone, the shadow of her lashes. She was beautiful, and he wanted to kiss her. The desire settled on him differently, not like the urgent intensity of sex, but like the soft swell of emotion in its aftermath. Was this all right? He and Geoff had discussed this briefly, the idea of kissing her when they were alone. Although they had said it was fine, neither had done so yet. So, even as he wanted to step in and press his lips to hers, he didn’t.
“Leaving New York meant I could take care of my mom until she died, and I’ll never regret that. I met Geoff here, and I’ll never regret that either.” Those parts were easy, the positives he’d earned for staying here. “Geoff’s job means I can pursue my career as a musician without having to worry about money. I’m lucky. Most artists don’t have that freedom.” He looked down at his hands curled together, his elbows resting on the metal railing, and then out at the shadow of water far below them. “I don’t know what my life would have been like if I’d gone back to Juilliard after my mom died instead of staying in Massachusetts. I don’t like to think about it.”
“Because you’d have lost Geoff?”
“That’s part of it.” Patrick paused. He didn’t share this part of himself with anyone but Geoff, and then, onl
y in the quiet times between them, when Geoff let him open up and pour out his confusion and longings into the empty space. “Most musicians don’t make it in New York. Artists, actors, singers, musicians, writers, all the creatives, New York chews them up and spits them out again. It’s an expensive place to live when you aren’t making any money. I don’t want to be gigging my whole life. I don’t want to live with five roommates in a fourth-floor walk-up in Queens, eating ramen and waiting tables and hoping each new audition will net me something great.”
He hesitated, and Lori stepped gently into that hesitation. “But some part of you does want that. Right?”
Patrick laughed bitterly, hanging his head, the tumult of emotions bubbling up inside him. “Fuck, Lori, I’m a thirty-five-year-old man. I’m too old to be living like that anymore.” He closed his eyes. She had to know what he wasn’t saying, so he might as well just say it. “But, yes. I wonder all the time. What if I could have done something great? What if I could have actually made it?” He stood upright, no longer leaning over, and gripped the iron railing. The rough edges pressed into the soft skin of his palms, the metal still warm from the heat of the day. “I know I’m good, Lori. I don’t know if I’m ‘New York’ good, but I know I’m good, and I wonder all the time what could have been.”
She let his words settle, standing as well, so they were shoulder to shoulder on the small porch. “What’s your dream role? Symphony?”
“Pit orchestra, actually. I love live performances. Theater, the ballet, all of it.” He’d gone to so many shows while living in the city, spending most of his available cash on rush and standee tickets to consume as much theater as possible.
“You ever think about giving it another try?”
“I try not to think about it anymore.” He had entertained thoughts of it in the early days of his relationship with Geoff, back before Geoff had settled into his current job, before they’d bought the condo, before he settled into a routine with Nine Possum Thursday and started giving violin lessons and developed new rhythms to his life. “Geoff’s going to get tenure at the university. He’s shaped his life around his academics He’s worked for this his whole life. I would never ask him to give that up, not when he’s already supporting me the way he is. It’s not fair.” He tried to smile, but his face felt too tight. “I can’t say I don’t envy you. Going after what you want. Nothing holding you back.” He winced at the words. “I don’t mean that. Geoff’s not holding me back.”
“I know what you mean.” She exhaled fast and shook her head, curls bouncing above the scarf. “It’s scary, but I can’t second-guess myself. I can’t spend the rest of my life wondering what might have been.” She blanched, pulling back visibly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”
“It’s okay. It’s fair. I’ve made my choices.”
“Does Geoff know?”
She didn’t specify what she was asking about—his feelings, his regrets, his former hopes—but Patrick could fill in the blanks and knew she probably meant all of it.
“I don’t know. Probably. He’s practically a genius. But if you’re asking if we talk about it, no, not anymore.” They’d had enough of those conversations at the beginning, and again when Patrick had proposed, and there wasn’t a reason to revisit them now.
“How have you two been since we all started sleeping together? Everything okay?”
Patrick laughed. “Great time to ask, after we slept together again.”
Lori hung her head and echoed his laughter. “Sorry. I’m not on my game tonight.”
“I dunno. You seemed pretty on your game earlier.” He nudged her with his elbow.
Lori leaned over and bit him on the shoulder, gently, affectionately. “Shut up.”
“Did you just bite me?”
“I bite all the people I care about. Answer the question.”
Even offhanded, her comment that she cared about him made something warm settle in Patrick’s heart. “Yeah, we’re good. Better than good. It’s rejuvenated us.”
“New things can be like that.” Lori nodded, her posture and expression slipping into the mode of Lori Clark, PhD. She probably didn’t realize it. “It’s new relationship energy.”
“I know. I read all the polyamory books back in the day.” Patrick smiled, so she’d know he wasn’t making fun of her. “It doesn’t usually last that long.”
“It’s true. And in our case, we won’t even have time for that. With me leaving and all.” Her voice dropped on the last few words, even though her expression stayed neutral. “But I’m having fun. As long as you’re both having fun too, I don’t see why this can’t continue.”
“We should go out this week.”
“We’ve been going out.”
“But like…like actually go out.”
Lori raised an eyebrow. “Like on a date?”
“Yeah. Like on a motherfucking date.”
“All three of us?”
“Why not?”
Lori tipped her head to the side and studied him, like she was trying to figure him out. “How is this different than what we’ve been doing?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we’ve already been dating. It’s been a long time since I’ve dated anybody. But I want to be dating you.” He paused. “And I’m pretty confident I speak for Geoff too.”
“Hmm.” She turned her attention back to the night. “Tell me about this date.”
“Dinner and a movie.”
“Classic, classic.” She nodded. “Just one date?”
Patrick laughed. “You want to get together more than once?”
“My nights are pretty free lately.” She shrugged. “I know you’ve got the band on Wednesday, but we could work around it.”
“Or you could go out with Geoff without me.”
Lori raised an eyebrow. “Like on a date?”
Patrick had to laugh. “You’re killing me. Yeah, like on a date. I like when he’s off having fun when I can’t be home.”
“So many dates, we might have to make a schedule.” She nudged him with her elbow.
“We’ve got that shared Google Calendar,” Patrick suggested. “You could actually start putting things on it. And we should probably start a group text.”
Lori’s smile faltered.
“No on the group text?” Patrick rubbed his beard. He hadn’t thought it was a big deal.
“Group text makes sense. It’s just…” She shook her head. “Never mind. It’s just something Hannah said. Text me up.” Then she covered a yawn with her free hand. “Is there really room for me in that bed? I can sleep on the couch.”
Patrick gave her other hand a squeeze. “There’s room.”
16
Lori frowned at her phone again, for what was probably the fifth time tonight. We’re going to a bar, Geoff had typed in the group text. Be ready at nine. And then he hadn’t specified anything else.
A bar? A bar didn’t exactly seem like the kind of adventure she’d come to expect after this week. They’d been on dates every night. On Monday, she’d done dinner and a movie with both of them. On Tuesday, they’d driven to the top of Mt. Williams and had a picnic. Another picnic, just because she’d liked the barbecue picnic on the campus lawn. On Wednesday, when Patrick was at practice, she and Geoff had gone to a gallery to see one of the new exhibits. Yesterday, the three of them had spent the evening hitting local bookstores. And tonight, apparently, it was…a bar.
The doorbell rang at precisely nine, which was no surprise. Geoff was terrifyingly punctual. She opened the door to see them both standing there, and damn. Damn. Geoff wore a slim-fitting teal button-down shirt with the top few buttons undone and a pair of sleek gray trousers. Patrick wore a white oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up above the elbows and a pair of navy-blue jeans, and he had on suspenders.
“Holy shit,” she said out loud, because they needed to know. “You guys look amazing.”
“You too.” Geoff took her by the shoulders to look her up and down. Lori had worn a wh
ite dress that clung to all her curves and barely reached her knees, the kind of dress she’d wear when she wanted to find some hot guy to take her home. She’d hoped to wow them, but she hadn’t expected how much she’d be wowed in return.
“What kind of bar is this?” Lori asked. “You’re dressed really nicely.”
“I’ll tell you on the way.”
Lori frowned. “I don’t like the sound of that.” But she trusted them—which was surprising in itself—and thus got in the car anyway. Patrick had given her the front seat in a gentlemanly gesture, and she’d taken it.
“Tokens,” Geoff finally answered, steering them onto the highway out of town. “We’re going to Tokens. The barcade. It’s karaoke night.”
“What?” Lori made a face. “I don’t sing in front of people.”
“You don’t have to,” Patrick explained, leaning forward from the front seat. “Geoff and I can sing enough for the three of us.”
“You’re serious.” She turned in her seat so she could look at both of them. “You guys sing karaoke?”
“Patrick sings karaoke,” Geoff corrected. “What I do is some kind of horrible wailing that deafens small children and brings fear to the hearts of men.”
“Oh, come on.” Patrick nudged his husband’s shoulder from the back seat. “You’re not that bad.”
“Not that bad,” Geoff repeated, with a meaningful look at Lori. “This is the most favorable compliment he can think to give me.”
This was nowhere near what Lori had expected for the night, but she was more excited than anything. Even if she didn’t like singing in front of groups, she could at least enjoy the guys singing, and probably some video games as well. “I can’t wait,” she said, and meant it.
Patrick really knew what he was doing. He had a stage presence, of course, and even though the evening had barely kicked off, he had the bar singing along with “Pour Some Sugar on Me” in only one verse. Lori couldn’t help joining in, especially when he got up on a table and started fiddling with the buttons on his shirt.
