by Katee Robert
Again, I almost tell him what Grayson and I talked about. Again, I hold back. I don’t have to make a decision now. It’s possible my husband made that offer and he’ll regret it later. It’s possible I’ll regret it later if I take him up on it.
But Derek’s right; we’re still in the cabin, still within the parameters of our extended Christmas.
I slowly unbutton the front of my dress to my waist and then tug the fabric aside. Derek hisses out a breath. “No bra, Emma?” He moves closer yet, until he’s almost touching me. “If I pull up your skirt, am I going to have your pussy bare, too?”
“Only one way to find out,” I murmur.
He sinks to his knees in front of me. He’s tall enough that his face is nearly level with my bared breasts in his position. I reach out and dig my fingers into his hair, pulling him closer until his mouth is on me. “I’ll tell you a secret if you want.”
“I want,” he growls against the curve of my left breast.
“I never wear anything under my sundresses.” I gasp as he pulls my nipple into his mouth, but force myself to keep talking. “Grayson loves to fuck me whenever the mood strikes and panties just get in the way. We fuck in the bathroom at parties, in the car on the way home.” He moves to my other nipple and I moan and tighten my grip on his hair. “We fuck in your parking garage nearly every time we visit.”
Derek moves down my body, kissing his way over my stomach. “You walk into my apartment all filled with his come.”
“Yes.” I shiver. He nips my lower stomach but doesn’t move from there. I take a slow breath. “It feels particularly dirty to be having a conversation with you while he drips down my thighs.”
He presses his head to my stomach. “Fuck, Emma. What am I supposed to do with that?” He curses. “Every time I see you, I’m going to wonder if he’s just been inside you.”
“You could always check so you know for sure.”
Derek doesn’t hesitate. He runs his hands up my legs, barely pausing where the hem of my dress brushes my upper thighs before he shoves it up around my waist. He pushes me back onto the bed and spreads my thighs. One thorough lick later and he lifts his head. “I don’t taste him on you.”
“Then you have your answer, don’t you?”
“Guess I do.” He looks down at me, and I try to see myself from his perspective. My dress does a better job of framing my nakedness in our current position than covering anything. My skin is flushed and I’m breathing hard despite the fact that we’ve barely done anything. My entire body is shaking with a pure bolt of need. Derek strokes up my thighs and uses his thumbs to part my pussy. “Show me.”
“What?”
“At some point, you’re going to start remembering how good it felt to fuck me and you’re going to touch yourself. Show me.”
I don’t hesitate to reach between my thighs and stroke my clit. He’s kneeling next to the bed, getting a close up view of me masturbating, and the look on his face only makes this hotter. So I double down. “I’m going to think about how you ate my pussy on the couch that first time. You fucking tricked me, and then Grayson caught us and joined in and…” I moan.
“I always peek at my presents ahead of time.” His breath ghosts against my thighs. “Grayson knows that. He sent you to me on purpose.”
I slow down my touch, wanting to make this last. “And then when we played out that fantasy on the couch. When I rubbed my pussy all over your cock and took you deep.” I inhale sharply at the bite of pleasure. I have to be careful or I’m going to come and then it ends. “You felt incredible inside me, Derek. Your giant cock fills me so good.”
His lips brush my knuckles and then his tongue is sliding between my fingers licking me. He winds me tighter and tighter…and then lifts his head. Derek looks almost angry as he shoves to his feet and his hands go to the fronts of his pants. “Your husband told me the damnedest thing just now.”
I freeze, watching him draw out his cock. “Did he?”
“Yeah, he did.” He grabs my hips and yanks me to the very edge of the mattress. “He told me to help myself to your pussy whenever I feel like it.” Derek guides his cock into me in a rough thrust. Again and again, until I’m trying to clutch him closer. He takes my hands and pins me to the bed, fucking me hard and deep. “I know what you’re doing.”
I moan. “Let me touch you.”
“No.” He strokes deep and stays there. He’s still wearing all his clothes, his jeans shoved down barely enough to get at me. I can feel the denim against my ass, his flannel rubbing my breasts with every shaky breath we take. Derek glares down at me. “You don’t get to seduce me with your tight pussy, wet just for me, and your perfect fucking breasts and that mouth that likes to spin out dirty fantasies no good girl would admit to.”
Just like that, I’m as angry as he is. I lean up and catch his bottom lip, biting down just hard enough to make him flinch. I lick the spot and sink back to the mattress. “You are choosing to walk away, Derek. Not me. Not Grayson.” I unwrap my legs from his waist, not quite sure when I linked my ankles at the small of his back. “You like it when I play the little slut, and you’d fucking love it if I showed up at your apartment and told you not to tell my husband but I need your thick cock too much to go another night without it.” I hold his gaze. “That’s just pretend, and we both know it. Just like we both know that I’d go straight back to him and describe exactly how hard you made me come while he licked all evidence of you away.”
He stares down at me. “He wouldn’t.”
“You damn well know he would.” I yank my hands free and shove at his shoulders. He lets me roll us, ending up on his back with me still on his cock. I brace my hands on his chest and start riding him. “You’re the one who wants to deny Grayson what he wants, Derek. Not me. Never me. And if what he wants is for me to fuck you, then that’s what I’ll do.” I lean down until my lips brush his ear. His hands go to my ass, gripping me tightly as he guides my strokes. I let him have this because it feels good to be held by him, because I have more to say. “You could have both of us; morning, noon, and night. In every fantasy you’ve ever wanted to play out, in every position and place you can think of.” My breath comes out in something resembling a sob. “Just like you could have the nights with Grayson cooking one of those fancy meals of his, and late nights reading with me, and lazy Sundays, and all of it.”
“Emma, stop.”
I lean back and hold his gaze. “You are the one choosing not to, Derek. So forgive us if we’re willing to take you however you’ll let us.”
He hooks my neck and pulls me down to meet his mouth. I know it’s just to shut me up, but I don’t care. I’ve said what I needed to say. It won’t change anything, so I grab the pleasure he offers now with both hands. We devolve into grasping hands and moans and pure animal fucking. I come hard and Derek follows me over the edge, fucking up into me hard enough to extend my orgasm and have me shrieking. I collapse on his chest and turn my face toward the door.
Grayson stands there, his expression the pure agony of seeing something he desperately wants but no longer has access to. He spares me a brief smile that fails almost as soon as his lips curve and then he walks out of the room without looking back.
I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know if it’s possible, if I should even try.
So I simply press a kiss to Derek’s lips and climb off him. I button up my dress without another word and duck into the bathroom to clean up as best as I can. I expect him gone when I return to the bedroom, but he’s still sitting on the edge of the bed, his clothing now righted.
He watches me pull on my leggings, his expression just as tormented as Grayson’s was early. “I don’t want to lose either of you.”
“Then we never should have crossed this line.” I can see that now, even if I couldn’t in the midst of Christmas Eve, with lust clogging my senses. We had no business going there unless we were willing to go the rest of the way. I knew it wasn’t as simple as playing out a sex
y fantasy, that Grayson wanted Derek even more than I did.
It’s too late for regrets.
I grab a hair tie from my suitcase and pull my hair back into a ponytail. “That offer stands, Derek. Our door and our hearts are open to you.” I glance at the doorway. “But I’m not going to hurt Grayson. He thinks he wants me to fuck you if he can’t, but I won’t do that to either of us. This is the last time.”
“You said—”
“I know what I said.” I give a mirthless smile. “You should know better than anyone things said in the heat of the moment are to spike the pleasure. I want you. I’m never going to not want you. But you only want to fuck me, and he’s my husband. He isn’t afraid to admit that he loves me.”
His brows draw together. “That’s not fair.”
“I know.” My throat feels tight. “Just… Just think about it, okay? Can you promise me that?”
He nods slowly. “I wish I could say I’m going to think about anything else for the foreseeable future.”
Chapter 17
Grayson and I barely speak on the flight back to New York. The silence isn’t exactly fraught, but it’s a sign of things changing. Things I desperately don’t want to change. I manage to make it until we’re back in our apartment before I burst. “Are you mad?”
My husband looks at me with something akin to shock. “What? No. Not even a little bit.” He pulls me into his arms and wraps me up tight. “I’m sad. It feels like we opened Pandora’s box on Christmas Eve, and it’s going to take time to put things back into their place.”
I press my face to his chest and breathe in his clean scent. “What if we can’t?”
“Then we go on differently than before.” He strokes my hair and presses a kiss to my temple. “Let’s unpack and I’ll order in some Thai. You pick a movie tonight.”
“Okay,” I whisper. It’s a blatant olive branch in the middle of something that isn’t really a fight, but that doesn’t change the feeling of the ground shifting beneath my feet. “We’re okay, right?”
“Yeah, baby. We’re more than okay.”
But as the days pass, I start to worry that we’re both lying about our level of okayness. It’s nothing overt. We spend the remaining days between arriving home and New Year’s Eve like we’d planned; painting the living room, but skipping organizing the storage.
I’m a bit superstitious about getting life in order during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. I believe that how a person enters into the new year makes a difference. It’s why we are always fucking when the clock strikes twelve, why I go a little planner crazy with things I want to make sure happen in the next twelve months. Grayson has indulged me since we started dating, and this year is no different.
Except it is different.
It feels like we’re missing part of us, like we left it back in Colorado in that cabin with Derek. There’s nothing wrong with Grayson and I, but I keep looking over like I expect Derek to magically appear. And when Grayson and I have sex, it’s pure fucking. He drives my pleasure like if we can just orgasm enough times, we can purge this feeling of missing away. I don’t know if it works for him, but every time I stir on the other side of coming, the memories of those few days crash over me in waves.
It’s not just missing the sex with Derek, though. Interspersed in those memories are ones from farther back. We’ve spent so much time together over the years, and it never really occurred to me that we could be a throuple instead of a married couple and Derek playing the comfortable third wheel. But we fit. Every piece of evidence points to us fitting.
It’s a damn shame Derek doesn’t agree with us.
New Year’s Eve feels more bittersweet than any year past. Grayson chats with me while I set up my new planner, putting on the designing show marathon on television and referencing his digital calendar as we work through each month.
When we finally reach December, I stare at it. “Are we doing another trip with Derek for Christmas?” It wouldn’t be a question I’d ask normally; our annual Christmas trip with Derek is tradition. It’s a given. Until it’s not.
“I don’t know,” Grayson says softly. “Mark it in pencil or washi or whatever temporary option you have.”
My chest tries to close and I blink rapidly against the burning in my eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Baby, no.” Instantly, he’s up and around the table, bending down to cup my face. “I’m sorry it’s hurting now, but I’m not sorry we did it.”
“How can you say that? You’re friendship with Derek is changed forever.”
Grayson shrugs a little. “Friendships change. We’ll figure it out once he’s had time to think. I’ll take him however I can get him, even if that means it’s not what we wanted.” He strokes my cheekbones with his thumbs. “Are you okay with that?”
“I’m not going to sleep with him again.” I catch his frown and rush forward. “It doesn’t feel right without you involved. And no matter what games I like to play, I already have feelings for Derek. Being confined to only sex will make me resent the hell out of him, and it’s not worth it to add bad feelings to confusing ones.”
He finally nods. “Okay. But my offer remains open if you change your mind.” He glances at my planner. “I think we’re good?”
“Yeah. We’re good.” For a moment, it even felt like it. No matter what else is true, Grayson and I will find a way forward through this. Our foundation is too strong for the outcome to be anything different. I wrap my hands around his wrists. “I didn’t say this before, but if you want to be with him, I’m okay with it.”
He goes perfectly still. “What?”
“If you want to keep having sex with Derek.” I study his face. I didn’t feel threatened at all when they were fucking with me nearby, and I can’t ignore the sliver of doubt that tries to worm its way into my heart. They’ve known each other so much longer than Grayson and I have, have been nursing an attraction to each other in addition to their friendship. Sending Grayson into Derek’s bed might be a mistake. But I want him happy, and if we can’t have Derek in our bed and in our life in a permanent way, then this is something I can give Grayson. “I’m okay with it.”
Grayson pulls me to my feet and kisses me hard. “Thank you for offering that, but I’m not going to take you up on it for the same reasons you won’t.”
“The offer stands, though.”
He smiles down at me, the first real smile I’ve seen on his face since we left Colorado. “I love you, Emma.”
“I love you, too.” I go up on my toes to kiss him again.
The buzzer sounds.
We look at each other. “Did you order food all sneaky-like?”
He shakes his head. “I hadn’t gotten around to it yet. I was waiting until you finished with the planning marathon.”
The buzzer sounds again. I step back from Grayson, my heart doing something fluttering and worrisome. “Better see who it is.” I have no business hoping. Absolutely no business letting that feeling blossom in my chest.
He presses the button to call down to the front door. “Yeah?”
“I’d like to talk.”
The blood rushes out of my head at the sound of Derek’s voice, even tinny from the speaker. He’s here. I turn back to the table with my planners and start to put them to rights. Anything to keep my hands busy as Grayson buzzes him up. I can’t believe this is happening. Except I don’t know what is happening. He might be stopping by to tell us to our faces that he never wants to see us again. That we broke our friendship with him irrevocably when we crossed the line Christmas Eve.
By the time Grayson opens the door for Derek, I’ve got all my things picked up. It feels like a mistake because now I have nothing to do with my hands. I wrap my arms around myself and drink in the sight of him.
He looks good. Really, really good. He’s trimmed his beard and he’s wearing his customary jeans and T-shirt that’s just fitted enough to show off his shoulders and chest and presses lightly to the curve of hi
s stomach. He looks at Grayson and then at me, his expression carefully guarded. “I was hoping we could talk.”
Grayson motions to the living room. “Sit.”
Derek takes the chair. Grayson and I sink onto the couch across from him. My husband’s hand finds mine, and I give him what I hope is a reassuring squeeze. The silence stretches out for several long beats, a tangled messy thing that none of us seem all that inclined to break.
Finally, Derek curses. “What would it even look like? If we went for this?”
The rushing in my head nearly drowns out Grayson’s careful response. He’s holding my hand tightly enough to hurt, but his body language is otherwise relaxed. Like he’s afraid of spooking Derek. “We feel it out as we go. We keep communication open and talk to each other.” A brief smile touches his lips. “We fuck.”
Derek looks at me. “That’s too simple. There’s no way it’ll be that easy.”
Grayson takes a slow breath. “No one says it’ll be easy. It won’t. Relationships can be challenging with two people, let alone three. But I’m willing to work through it in order not to lose what we started in Colorado. I can’t promise that things won’t be hard, but I can promise I’ll work through whatever comes up.”
“And if it blows up in our faces?”
That startles a ragged laugh from me. “Have you been enjoying the last few days since Christmas, Derek? Because we sure as hell haven’t.”
His eyes go soft. “No, Emma. I haven’t enjoyed the last few days, either.”
“We crossed too many lines to go back.” I hate that it’s true, but it is true. “The only way is forward. Can’t we at least try? Would that be so bad?”
Derek scrubs his hands over his face. “What about the future? I want kids.”
“So do we,” I say slowly. I hadn’t even considered how that would look, but the thought of raising kids with the three of us sends a jolt through me that’s entirely too intoxicating. “Eventually.”
