by Helena Maeve
Sobs racked Jackie’s body, curtailing the rest. She didn’t realise she was crying until she saw Tony’s face blur and change before her eyes, a mask of despair twisting at his features. He gripped her tightly and she him. There were plenty of people staring, but this couldn’t be the strangest thing they’d ever witnessed in a bar at the witching hour.
“I’m in love with you,” Tony whispered against her ear. “I’m so in love with you and Marten.”
Chapter Eleven
“Jackie?” Marten’s voice was thick with sleep as he slowly made his way into the oblong of light streaming from the living room lamps. “What’re you doing—” Up, he might have added, but then he saw Tony and cut himself short. “Oh.”
“Hi,” Tony said, looking justifiably sheepish.
Jackie took pity on them both. “Apparently Clara pushed the envelope a little too far this time.” It was one way to put it. Another might have been to say that Tony had been too kind for his own good and this was the yield of that kindness.
Marten stifled a yawn behind his hand, gingerly picking his way to the ottoman. “What happened?” He may have woken suddenly to find his bed empty and his girlfriend missing, but he was alert enough now, hesitation present only in a half-aborted attempt to pat Tony’s knee.
Tony looped fingers around his wrist when Marten made to arrest the gesture. Youth had its advantages. “She nicked my phone.”
“Really?” Marten sounded more than a little taken aback, though he already knew that to be true from Jackie. Maybe it was the context—breaking up with someone as neurotic as Clara over something as petty as a missing phone—rather than her obsessive need to control who he could and could not see—was certainly a little peculiar. Then again, Tony’s entire relationship with Clara defied logic. They could marvel at it but they would never understand.
“It’s a little more complicated,” Tony admitted, “but yes. The bare bones of it are that she tried to stop me from contacting you by confiscating my phone. I’m not a toddler. I don’t take well to thieves. Anyway… It opened a can of worms we shouldn’t have left sealed for so long. We finally had a talk about our relationship.”
“And how did that go?” Marten asked, arching a brow.
“Worse than you can imagine. Clara can be—”
“Psychotic?” Jackie suggested helpfully from the couch.
“Creepy?” Marten offered in turn, not to be outdone.
Tony offered them a wry smile and ducked his head. “I was going to say overdramatic. She seems to think that if I’m not with her, I’m against her, that kind of thing… We had…words.” He circled his thumb over and over Marten’s wrist bone. “She’s threatened to cut me out of Joni’s life, but I don’t think she’ll do it. For one thing, my name is on the birth certificate. I’ve been more of a father to that kid than any other man in Clara’s life. And there have been others.” He seemed to want them to understand that. Jackie had already been told twice, as if Clara’s dating record played any part in what Tony was permitted to do with his own love life.
“Why are you telling us all this?” Marten ventured, dragging his free hand through sleep-tousled hair. “You said—”
Tony shook his head, interrupting, “I know what I said at the restaurant. I thought I was keeping the peace by keeping her happy. I’m so sorry, Marten. I never meant to hurt you. Either of you. I just wanted to diffuse the tension, get her home and go on with my life. She’s never been this dogged about wrecking my relationships before. If I’d known she was working with Jackie, I would’ve—”
“Hey, hey…” Marten cupped his cheek. “It’s okay.”
It wasn’t, Jackie knew full well, but she kept her silence, watching as Tony took a fortifying breath. “I want to be with you guys. Both of you.” From her vantage point, Jackie could only make out the shaking of Tony’s shoulders, the slight quiver in his body that told her he might be looking to get to his knees. Marten either didn’t notice or he didn’t want that show of submission right now. Without his suit and tie, her boyfriend looked almost haggard. A pang of empathy shot through her ribcage—this had been a rough time for him, too.
“You don’t have to say that,” Marten insisted. “Commitments can be—”
“You’re not hearing me,” Tony protested sharply. “I want to be with you. I’m good when I’m with you. It’s not—there are no rules, you guys don’t want me to be someone I’m not. I’ll take down the website if you want…”
He was bargaining, Jackie realised with dismay. “Do you want to take down the website?” She hadn’t given that much thought. It had to be a cost, but subscriptions and advertising were also a source of revenue. Tony met her eyes, shrugging. For them, he’d close it down, pretend to walk the straight and narrow. Marten was right about commitments being dangerous when they were all feeling so vulnerable. “We can talk about that some other time. As for the rest,” Jackie hesitated, “nothing has to change. You’re always welcome in our bed…”
“But I want it to change. I want—” Tony broke free of her gaze and Marten’s hold. “I’m done being someone’s second choice. If you guys don’t lo—like me, in that way. Or that much, then…”
He wore a look too honest, too young for Jackie to deceive him. “Marten got a job offer. Trouble is, it’s, um, based in the US,” she murmured, putting that card on the table along with all the rest. “We could be moving to Seattle.”
“Oh.”
Tony hunched his shoulders. He wouldn’t follow them, for reasons that were perfectly understandable—he had a daughter, he wanted to watch her grow up, whatever his disputes with her mother. “If that’s settled, then…”
“We’re not going,” Marten interjected, scrubbing a hand over his face.
It was news to Jackie. “We’re not?”
“I don’t see you getting on that plane and leaving him behind,” her boyfriend said. “Do you see me doing it?” For all his faults, for all his workaholic ways and his occasionally selfish bluntness, Marten could be ridiculously sappy.
Jackie shook her head against the couch cushion. She couldn’t imagine herself up and leaving, not now. She didn’t think they’d last very long together without Tony in their lives. “Forget I mentioned it.”
“Are you sure? If it’s a job offer—” Tony’s half-hearted attempt at playing devil’s advocate was stopped with a hard kiss. Marten could do that, too, and apparently well enough that Tony shuddered bodily against him, undone by that small, chaste show of affection. “Okay. You’re not going. Does that… Does that mean you want to be with me, too?”
He was trying for hopeful, but inevitably came across like a know-it-all trying to force their hand into admitting they were more than a little smitten with him. Of course, he’d figured it out already. The grin gave him away.
“Now you’re just fishing for compliments,” Jackie snorted. She was too tired to quantify the magnitude of such a call, but knew to label it momentous and open her arms to Tony when he crawled over to share Marten’s kiss. Two months ago, she couldn’t have imagined being here, a man draped across her lap while her boyfriend watched them together. She couldn’t have anticipated that she’d be feeling of all things relieved. But there it was. As Tony drew back, she found herself looping an arm around his waist and scooting back to make room for him to join her on the narrow couch.
“You two look cosy over there,” Marten noted, smiling crookedly. If he’d noticed her wearing yesterday’s clothes instead of her pyjamas, he didn’t say.
“We are,” she agreed. She wasn’t ashamed of wanting Tony anymore, or of Marten knowing how much. Fatigue had smoothed out the jagged edges of self-consciousness, of wanting to please. Her boyfriend had never been particularly demanding in that regard. It had taken them falling in love with another man to realise they had a good thing going.
Marten slapped his knees, standing. “Well, I’m going to bed. You know, that big thing that looks like a couch but is big enough to fit three people?”<
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“We know,” Tony muttered, grinning against Jackie’s mouth.
Jackie hummed in acquiescence. “We’ll be right there.”
She made no move to rise from the couch, or to dislodge the welcome burden draped across her hips. She settled her hands at Tony’s nape. “Looks like you played your cards right.”
Tony arched his neck, indecision flashing in his gaze. “This isn’t a game,” he breathed. “Not to me.” The sex, the things they did in the bedroom—those were another story. Jackie found herself believing him.
“Last time I took a chance on you, I wound up falling in love,” she murmured. It was important for him to understand. The feeling was mutual—he wasn’t the only one gambling with his heart.
Tony’s grin was ear-splitting. “Yeah?”
“Oh, shut your face.” Cockiness was a good look on him, but Jackie could already picture the delicious hassle of dealing with two men. Two lovers. Hers. “Bed sounds good. What do you think?”
Tony seemed to think so.
* * * *
It was the squeak of bed springs that pulled Jackie from the pleasant haze of sleep into partial awareness. She must have twisted herself up in the sheets during the night. Her legs were caught, one arm pillowed beneath her chin and the other hanging in awkward sprawl over the edge of the bed. She kicked out blindly, eyes still shut against the glare of morning. It was no use. The sheets held her prisoner. And still the mattress creaked like a rusty hinge, an oddly rhythmic note noticeable despite the grating noise.
Jackie cracked an eye open and peeked at the alarm clock. Nine eighteen. She had been out some six hours, just enough to make up for yesterday’s bout of insomnia but not nearly enough incentive to leave her bed, even if it was potentially falling apart beneath her.
That was when she heard Tony’s soft, smothered gasp, the enchanting snap in his voice as he begged for mercy, “Jesus, fuck—yeah, just like that. Oh God, don’t stop…”
Jackie would’ve recognised that voice anywhere, but she’d almost given up on ever hearing it again in her bed. Last night’s emotional rollercoaster had done nothing to prepare her for its return, much less the sight of Tony knotting fingers in Marten’s hair as he arched up and into his talented mouth. It made for a pretty effective wake-up call and she was glad she’d twisted around to see it.
She watched, enthralled, as her boyfriend filled his lungs with breath and put his mouth to Tony’s length, the first couple of inches easier to master than the rest. There was no overstating the importance of going slowly, but Marten had always been ambitious. He’d squeezed his eyes shut as he’d dipped his head, the better to concentrate on what he was doing, but he snapped them open when Jackie slid a hand over his nape. “You’re rushing,” she mumbled, her voice husky with more than just sleep.
“Is he?” Tony sucked in a breath and made to dig his hips back down into the mattress. It must have been taxing to deny himself. He did it anyway, reaching out with clumsy hands to grasp Marten’s shoulders. “You don’t have to, you can just—”
Seeing him so exposed, so intensely trying to hold back sent an electric jolt skittering down Jackie’s spine. She pushed herself up onto her elbows, desperately determined to ignore the flush of heat prickling at her skin. Tony’s own body was warm and familiar beneath her hands as she crawled a little closer. So much for having a nice little lie-in. “You know,” Jackie murmured, “I could listen to you beg for hours.”
Marten choked, pulling off. “You’re such a spoilsport.” It was a lofty accusation, delivered with a kiss and a smirk. Jackie paid him no mind.
“You couldn’t wake me up?” she quipped.
“You looked tired,” Tony said, smiling too blithely to be anywhere close to apologetic. He had a hand in her hair and Jackie let him tug her down, uncaring of morning breath or the protesting noises Marten made as he watched her take over. Tony looked a great deal more serious as they broke away—not the desired effect. “We didn’t mean to leave you out.”
“I did,” Marten chipped in. “I was happy with the leaving and the outing and the—”
Jackie pinched his side. “Want me to show you how it’s done?” Marten didn’t need lessons, but the wagging of his eyebrows was a challenge in itself. Jackie did her best to hold his gaze as she bowed her head to lick a long, continuous stripe from the base of Tony’s dick to the flushed, leaking tip.
The helpless whine that crept out of his throat was almost more than Jackie could stand. She didn’t stop as she noticed his hands balling into fists at his sides, tendons a steep crest under tanned skin. The taste of him was as heady as it was familiar. Jackie brushed the hair out of her eyes before clasping a fist mercilessly tight around his length. She wanted Tony to watch her mouth work sloppily around him, to see her.
A warm puff of breath against her cheek disrupted her plans just a little. “Be a good girl and share?” Marten was grinning. He would be. He knew Jackie too well to imagine she’d refuse. She even forgave him for insinuating she didn’t normally behave herself—the cresting staccato pace of Tony’s moans was more than enough incentive.
One look at the two of them together, perched over him like birds of prey animated by some sweeter instinct than hunger, seemed to be all Tony could bear. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, visibly overcome.
“You’re killing me here.” He gulped. “Fuck, please, just—”
He begged so beautifully. Jackie set her teeth into the soft, freckled skin on the inside of his thigh. “What’s that, sweetheart?”
“I’m close.” It wasn’t a request, but they would’ve had to be very cruel not to have taken it as a warning. Some other time, perhaps, they could tease him mercilessly to the brink of what he could stand. There would be time for that.
“Already?” Marten left off swirling his tongue around Tony’s cock and Jackie took over just as quickly. How long could they keep it up for? How long could Tony last under such delicious torment? He wasn’t the only one breathing hard—Jackie just concealed it better with her mouth so full and her body still sluggish from sleep. She thrilled with the knowledge that she was lapping at Marten’s fingers with every inch of Tony’s cock that she took into her mouth.
Tony covered his face with both hands. “Please,” he wheezed, a pitiful sound teetering on the edge of anguish.
“Not yet,” Marten said and sent his fingers skating down to squeeze Tony’s balls. It did the trick. Tony met his eyes, nodding fervently.
“Yeah. Yeah, okay.” Jackie watched him lick his lips. Absurdly, the flash of pain seemed to pull him back from the edge, to make it a little easier to hang on. She tried the paradox on for size when she let her teeth graze a soft, rapidly-fading bite at the join of Tony’s hip and thigh, just to hear him cry out.
He was quick to give her what she wanted. Tendons in his neck pulled taut as Tony arched his head back and moaned something that might have been her name.
Jackie couldn’t say if it was all part of Marten’s plan to drive them both crazy, but it was definitely working. She pinched her nipples between thumb and forefinger as she watched her boyfriend bob his head over Tony’s spit-shiny length, trying to make herself wait. It was a half-hearted attempt. “I can’t decide which one of you I want first,” Jackie confessed with a choked laugh, caught between euphoria and frustration.
“Why not both?” Marten asked. He was close enough to kiss, but instead he chose to press his lips to her shoulder and let his morning stubble scrape her skin like the bristles of a brush. Jackie might have whimpered for the sandpapery rasp. There were so many reasons to moan and quake that she couldn’t zero in on any one in particular.
“What, at the same time?” It seemed like a pretty bold proposition.
Marten hummed agreement into the curve of her neck, drawing her back against his chest. “You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about it…”
She hadn’t. Or at least, she hadn’t thought about it like this, her cunt aching to be filled and every
nerve aflame. By contrast the thought of taking turns riding Tony’s cock seemed fairly run-of-the-mill. “Is that what you want?” she asked Marten, plucking his hands off her flanks to guide them where he was needed most. “You’ve had me before.” It had never been bad when it was just the two of them, but now that he’d had Tony—
Okay, so maybe Jackie was still a little anxious about striking a balance between being with one and being with the both of them. Six hours of sleep wasn’t enough to curb that absurd sentiment. She needed a little time. To her great relief, Marten left her misgivings in peace and focused only on the moment: “I always want you,” he breathed. “Always.”
Tony slid his hands over her legs, as if in echo.
The two of them together. Yeah, Jackie thought, I can do that. And not just because Tony was looking at her with big, liquid eyes and Marten had dipped a finger between her folds, lazily stroking her vulva. “Get the lube.”
She left it to the boys to prep her, which Marten did so well that it almost didn’t feel weird. Almost. The rest of the time she had Tony’s lips coaxing hers into submission and Jackie was more than happy to let him distract as he pleased. She straddled his hips a little shakily as she heard Marten tear a condom out of its foil. Begged, “Let me do it,” when he made to sheathe Tony’s hard member. Marten did.
If anything, the angry red of Tony’s dick was even more visible through the condom. As she settled into place astride his lap, Jackie picked up on the hitch of his syncopated breaths. “Close?”
“Yeah,” he said, nodding, “but I’ll cope.” Jackie believed it. Sure, Tony was easily aroused, but a career as a porn star had borne its fruits. He hung fast as she lowered herself over his hard cock. His girth was familiar to her now, but there was still a little stretch to be had. A little gasp.
Marten had her by the shoulders and he stroked his thumbs against her nape until she relaxed. Jackie tried not to think about him spreading lube all over her. If he didn’t mind, then she didn’t, either. “God, that feels good.” Tony stretched her wide. It might’ve hurt if she hadn’t been so wet already, slick running down her thighs thanks in no small part to Marten’s light teasing.
