From three until five thirty, she was back at her day job. Then it was time to get ready for whatever Evan and Faris had planned for the evening.
Tenealle giggled to herself. She wondered if they’d realized yet just how often the activities she chose fit into her home improvement plans. Still, every evening ended up most satisfactorily in bed, so they couldn’t complain.
It was just after six, and she was showered and ready for the men to pick her up. She’d actually talked them into going to a home show tonight. A group of home improvement stores had hired a convention center and filled it with bathroom designs and furnishings, and Tenealle wanted to look at the various different kinds of hot tubs. She wasn’t sure whether Evan and Faris simply hadn’t been paying attention when she’d suggested getting tickets for the show, or whether they were thinking of “show” as in “movie,” but either way she was looking forward to both the bathrooms on display and the men’s expressions when they saw inside the building.
Tenealle walked out through her great room sliding doors, into the courtyard garden. Already it was starting to look lovely. Jodie had planted a lot of flowers as an underlayer to the shrubs, and the first of them were already in bloom, making a pretty picture of color against the green shrubs. Tenealle drew a deep breath into her lungs. There was a special scent to the garden too. Not a definable one, just an earthy, growing sort of smell. It made the air seem fresher, cleaner somehow, despite being in the city.
She sat on the side of the fountain and trailed one hand in the water. It was cool and clear, and the fountain made a bubbling noise that provided a happy background to the garden.
Tenealle pulled her hand out of the water and patted the stonework. “You’re happier now you’re all cleaned up, aren’t you?” she asked rhetorically.
“Oh, yes, and I do like seeing flowers in my garden again, too. When are you going to buy my fish?”
Tenealle jumped up and turned around quickly, her hands against her pounding heart. “All right, which of you cousins nearly scared me to death?” she asked, her voice still quavering a bit. “And how did you get in? The door’s locked.”
“Oh no, dear, I’m not one of your cousins. Although you do have such a lot of them. My name is Mary, and I’m so glad you moved in here. I miss Enid. We knew each other for nearly fifty years.”
Tenealle looked all around the garden again and walked to the great room doorway, but no one was teasing her. Only when she shook her head in disbelief did she see the shimmery, wavering figure standing inside the fountain. She shook her head again, harder, and blinked her eyes. The figure was still there, and the woman was smiling at her.
“Mary?”
“That’s right, dear. This is my fountain and my garden. I live here.”
“You live here?”
“This warehouse building was originally my home, and this was the rooftop garden. This is the only piece that has remained unchanged. Enid and I spent a lot of time sitting out here in the sunshine and chatting. I’ve really missed her,” Mary finished simply.
“I’m—I’m pleased to meet you, Mary. I hope you’ll be happy here once again,” said Tenealle, gathering the shreds of the manners her mama had taught her as child, even though her mind was screaming, Ghost? Mirage? Have I been breathing in too many cleaning products?
“It’s been lovely hearing young voices and seeing young people around the garden again. But I do miss the fish. You were serious about replacing them, weren’t you?”
“Yes, yes, I am. It sounded like an awesome idea. I’ll do that at the weekend. How do you feel about a small dog living here, too?” Tenealle asked a little hesitantly, wondering if talking to a ghost was a sign of incipient insanity.
“Ah, my dear little Sultan passed on a long time before I did, and I never had the heart to replace him. But a doggie would be good company for both of us, I believe.”
“Sultan. That’s a good name for a dog. It’ll be a few more weeks yet before I can organize time to go to the animal shelter for a dog, but the fish will be no problem. They’re easy to care for.”
“That would be lovely, dear. Your young men are here. Enid was so proud of Evan. He’s a fine man, a credit to his family.” Mary seemed to disappear into the stone of the fountain.
Tenealle stood there for a moment, still wondering if she was hallucinating from cleaning product fumes, when the doorbell rang. Shaking her head yet again, she went to collect her purse and go out with Evan and Faris.
* * * *
The bathroom exhibition was a lot of fun, and Tenealle collected an enormous pile of glossy brochures. Even the men were interested in the displays, so the three found a lot to discuss. Finally they had gone full circle around the building and were back at the entrance. Only then did Tenealle realize how much her feet ached and how late it was getting.
Evan wrapped his arm around her and asked, “Had enough? You look exhausted.”
“Yes, let’s go home.”
“Our place, I think. I don’t want you trying to measure up things or search for electrical outlets or anything more tonight. By the way, why do you always look for electrical outlets everywhere we go?” asked Faris.
“Because I prefer to vacuum rather than sweep,” she answered absent-mindedly trying to remember how many flights of stairs she needed to walk down before they reached the parking lot.
“Huh?” “Say what?” the men responded together, sharing confused looks over the top of her head.
“When you sweep, the dust gets spread around even farther. When you vacuum, the dust is sucked up inside the bag, and it’s done,” she explained.
“Tenealle, we’re guys. We do know what a vacuum cleaner is, but can you explain the relationship between looking at electrical outlets everywhere you go, and a vacuum cleaner, a little more lucidly please?”
“Yeah, maybe use words of one syllable so a mere man can understand,” added Evan.
She laughed, then explained. “Because I work from home, I often use my break time to do a household chore. But because I’m on a strict time limit—if I don’t work, I don’t get paid—I only do one thing at a time. So I would never vacuum more than one room at a time. This means I plug the vacuum in a particular room and vacuum it, then go back to the day job. If there is no electrical outlet, I have to get out an extension cord, get it all set up, then vacuum, and then put it all away. It’s just too much hassle. So I need a vacuum-cleaner-accessible electrical outlet in every room.
“Ahh, now it makes sense,” said Faris, unlocking the car and ushering Tenealle inside.
“You know, woman, you’re crazy. But it’s a good kind of crazy,” said Evan, lifting her feet onto his lap and massaging her arches.
Tenealle sighed in bliss as his clever fingers soothed all the tension and untangled knots she didn’t even know she’d had in her foot muscles. By the time they arrived at the men’s apartment, she was relaxed, yet aroused, happy and contented, yet more than ready for sex.
They undressed quietly, then snuggled together on the bed. As happened frequently, the men put her between them, one pressed to her front, the other plastered along her back, and their arms wrapped around each other so she was firmly held in the middle.
But tonight Tenealle wanted to do things differently.
“That foot massage was excellent. I want to play with you both.” She wiggled, and they loosened their arms, letting her sit up. “Hmm. I think you should lie on your backs first.”
Obligingly they rolled onto their backs.
Tenealle thought for a moment. She didn’t want to copy Evan by massaging their feet. And she didn’t really want to repeat the time she’d tied them up with their own neckties, assuming they’d even let her try such a game again. So what could she do?
She leaned forward to let her hair trail over their torsos, flipping it this way and that lightly, teasingly, angling her head so it trailed over their chests and their abs.
She held a handful of hair in one hand and teased it
around their nipples, swirled it around their belly buttons, and drew it down toward their cocks. Cocks that were growing longer as she watched them. Bellies that were developing goose bumps.
Faris’s breath hitched as she turned to him and scraped her fingernail across one of his nipples. Both men’s gazes were focused on her, their eyes swiveling with every movement she made. That gave her an idea.
Tenealle bent toward Evan, her hand out as if to touch him on the face or neck. His head dipped a little so he could watch her. Like a magician’s sleight-of-hand trick, while both men were concentrated on her hand near Evan’s face, she used the fingers of her other hand to tease his thigh. His chest rose and fell faster, and she knew she’d successfully aroused both men a little more with that tactic.
Extrapolating from there, she nudged their legs with her knees and wiggled her butt across their legs, back and forth, bending her body and swaying. As she’d hoped, their eyes followed her movements.
This time she grasped both cocks in one hand and rubbed them together against each other.
“Holy shit,” groaned Faris.
Evan just gasped.
Tenealle settled herself properly over their legs and began stroking their cocks smoothly from root to cap, root to cap, using both hands now. Then she pressed her fingers along the big veins as she twisted the cocks before tracing the shafts with her nails.
Finally she leaned down and licked first one head, then the other, running her tongue into each slit to catch the drops of pre-cum beading there.
“Enough,” said Evan hoarsely. “Daisy chain.”
They formed a loose triangle, Evan’s head at her pussy, hers at Faris’s cock, and Faris’s mouth on Evan’s cock.
Tenealle concentrated on sucking deeply, relaxing the back of her throat to take as much as possible of Faris, then letting him slide almost out as she nibbled along his stalk and around his cock head. She knew how sensitive the ridge joining head and shaft was, and tried hard to press with her tongue at just the right place to arouse him intensely.
But it was so hard for her to concentrate with the delicious things Evan was doing to her pussy. His licking, sucking, and nibbling on her folds and her clit were driving her to an orgasm so fast she despaired of having time to properly pleasure Faris.
Someone’s hand reached out to tweak her nipple, and someone was stroking her leg. Tenealle couldn’t think, couldn’t concentrate, and could scarcely remember to breathe.
Frantically she sucked Faris deep down her throat, hollowing her cheeks for extra pressure. Then she hummed, hoping the vibrations would give him as much pleasure as she was receiving.
It must have worked because a thick stream of cum erupted into her mouth just as Evan bit her clit.
Her mouth opened automatically to scream in pleasure, and she had to consciously make herself close it to suck Faris as he spurted again. Evan’s rhythmic shaking reassured her that he, too, had climaxed, and she relaxed into her orgasm, letting the waves wash across her and carry her with them, her mind free and her body shaking in delight.
Then arms and legs were tangling with hers as she was hauled up the bed so all three heads were sharing the one pillow and she was tucked securely between her men.
“Good teamwork,” she mumbled, feeling herself drift into sleep in their arms.
Chapter Five
Tenealle stood up from her computer and stretched, easing the kinks out of her back, rolling her shoulders, shaking her ankles. She couldn’t help but notice no cousins had descended on her since the day she’d moved in, and while her bad angel was singing and dancing in joy about this, her good angel was nagging her that maybe Evan and Faris had something to do with her vanishing cousins. And that maybe she should say something about it.
She kneeled on the office floor with a tape measure, pencil, and piece of paper, writing measurements, drawing a floor plan, and calculating how many tiles she’d need to buy, but all the time her bad angel and good angel were arguing in her head.
By the time she’d finished the math, she’d decided. I’ll talk to Evan and Faris about it tonight.
But it seemed they’d come to some sort of decision, too, as Faris rang only half an hour later.
“Um, honey, would it be okay if we go to your cousin Herb’s tonight for a bit of a chat?”
“You only ever call me honey when you’re suggesting something you think I might not like. Define ‘chat.’”
“Well, um, it’s about your shoes.”
“My shoes? I thought we’d gotten past that. It was just a stupid prank.”
“Well, um—”
There were some strange noises on the line before Evan spoke. “God, Faris, sometimes you’re useless. Tenealle, we know who put that stuff in your shoes and why. But we want them to tell you themselves. So how about we pick you up at seven and go to Herb and Delores’s place?”
“Have you two been keeping my cousins away from me?”
“Not exactly.”
“Define—”
“We’ll tell you everything tonight. We’ll pick you up at seven.” Evan hung up.
Tenealle stood looking at her cell for a while, then shrugged. I was going to talk to them tonight anyway, so nothing’s changed really.
* * * *
The men had obviously planned their strategy carefully, because they kept up an unbroken stream of inconsequential chitchat from the moment she opened her front door to them, until Herb opened his to the three of them.
She shot Evan and Faris a fierce look. “Don’t think you fooled me for a minute with that tactic. We’ll discuss it later,” she said.
She could almost feel their grins on her back as they followed her inside.
In Herbert’s great room stood Delores, Emma and Steve, and Nick and Nate. Mentally, Tenealle patted herself on the back. She’d thought Nate and Nick were the most likely culprits, and here they were. Well, she was interested to hear what they thought they were achieving by the prank.
But it was Steve who was shuffling from foot to foot and refusing to look her in the eye, and Emma looked mighty unhappy with him.
“I bought it on the Internet. Cost me fifty dead presidents, plus shipping. And it wasn’t even magic witch’s powder. It was drain cleaner. Drain cleaner! Two bucks in Wal-Mart,” he said aggrievedly.
Tenealle kept a tight grip on her urge to laugh and asked gently, “But why did you buy it, Steve? I don’t understand.”
“It was supposed to make you go away. They said it was a disappear spell. I thought Mr. and Mrs. Jones would like me better if you weren’t around. They’re always talking about you. In fact, the whole fucking family is always talking about you. Everyone likes you.” The aggrieved tone was still strong in his voice.
“And now even Emma doesn’t like me anymore.” His tone had become plaintive. It appeared he genuinely liked Emma.
Steve stood taller, aged several years before Tenealle’s eyes. “I’d like to apologize, Ms. Jones. It was a dead stupid thing to do, and I’m sorry. I had no wish to hurt you or anything. I just wanted you to go away.”
He looked her in the eye, and she knew he was speaking the truth.
“That’s fine, Steve. I forgive you. I wasn’t hurt, thanks to Mark throwing me in the pool. Fortunately, Evan was quick enough to rinse his hands, so he wasn’t hurt either. Likely, you have learned a few important lessons from this experience.”
Steve grinned. “Yeah, don’t buy nothing off the Internet, and don’t believe witches.” He turned to Herbert and Delores. “I apologize for my behavior. It was stupid and childish. Good-bye.” Then he turned to Emma. His face seemed to crumple a little before he straightened his shoulders and said, “I’m very sorry, Emma. I never wanted to upset you.”
Nodding at the others in the great room, Steve turned and left. There was just the faint sound of his shoes on the tiles, then a quiet snick as the front door closed behind him.
Tenealle sent a questioning look at Nick and Nate.
“We knew he had something planned.”
“But we didn’t know what it was.”
“We never would have wanted you to be hurt.”
“We’re really sorry, Cuz.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s okay, I understand,” Tenealle replied.
Nick and Nate nodded to Herb and left.
“So that’s it. No plot, no bad motive or evil intent, just a young man trying to impress his girlfriend’s family?”
“That’s about it,” said Herb.
Emma threw herself into Tenealle’s arms. “I’m sorry, Tenealle. How could I have thought I liked such a dickhead?”
“He wasn’t so bad. But it seems he did need to do some growing up.” Tenealle hugged her back.
“Yeah, I reckon the Terrible Twosome have done some growing up in a hurry too,” added Delores. “Now, let’s eat. I made coleslaw, potato salad, and chicken-fried steaks.”
* * * *
The Domain was full of cousins. Cousins sitting on the floor, talking. Cousins leaning against the wall, talking, all with pizza in one hand, paper cup of soda in the other. Out in the courtyard, a few young third or fourth cousins were running around with Sultan the puppy, kicking a soccer ball, and laughing and screaming in joy.
Sitting on the side of the fountain was Katie. She was maybe five or six years old, a cute, pigtailed blonde, and she seemed to be chatting away to herself. Or maybe to the goldfish who now lived in the fountain.
Tenealle stepped out into the courtyard with a tray of pizza and sodas to see if any of the children were still hungry or thirsty. She looked at Katie, her gaze following the direction of Katie’s gaze. Very faint in the bright sunshine was the shimmery outline of a woman in the fountain. Mary! Katie was talking to Mary.
Brown, Berengaria - Tempting Tenealle (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 6
