by Vivian Lux
"That's good. You'll make bank and you can finally get your own place. I bet you're dying to stop sharing everything with Cal."
I made a noise that was a cross between a yelp and a retch. "Yeah," I squeaked into the phone, sounding exactly like a middle schooler whose balls just dropped. "Okay thanks!" Then I hung up the phone before I told him exactly what — no, who — I was sharing with Cal.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Harper
Sundays were the worst part of my week.
"I look forward to this all week," I sighed. "And then it feels like it's all over in a second."
"Hey," Gray protested as he trailed his fingers up my thigh. "It lasts a hell of a lot longer than a second."
I laughed and twisted to the side to run my fingers through his short brown curls. "Yes it does," I reassured him, kissing the tip of his nose. "I'm talking about how you always have to leave again so soon."
"We'll be here again next weekend," Cal added. He lifted his leg from where it had been slung over mine and sat up. "Only five more days."
I reached out and twined my fingers in his, loving the way his smile crinkled in the corners of his bright blue eyes. But try as I might, I couldn't smile back. "How long can we keep this up?" I sighed.
"I'm good with forever," Gray said softly.
"Oh!" I said, shocked, and suddenly burst into tears.
"Hey, hey, hey," they both chanted in a panic. Gray started rubbing my arm so fast it was like he was trying to start a fire while Cal leaped from the bed and dashed to get me a drink of water.
I coughed into the back of my hand and wiped my eyes. "Holy shit," I gasped, taking a deep breath. "Where the fuck did that come from?"
"Why don't you tell me?" Cal said softly, handing me the water.
I thanked him with a wan grin and lifted it to my lips, trying like hell to answer his question. But there was no answer. Other than, I'd been a wreck all week. Tearing up in meetings, laughing like a lunatic at things that weren't funny. "My emotions are all over the place," I sighed as I set the glass down on the bedside table. "I think...I think this is taking a bigger toll on me than I'd like to admit." I looked into their uncomprehending eyes. "The separation," I clarified.
Cal — my problem solver — visibly winced, and I reached out and grabbed his hand, my heart aching for having hurt him, however inadvertently. "Hey," I reassured him. "You can't fix it. At least, not right now. There's nothing to be done, right? At least you'll be down next weekend, right?" I smiled brightly. "It'll be here before you know it."
He winced again. "What?" This time it was Gray who was worrying.
"Rett," Cal sighed, and I felt Gray tense a little.
"What's wrong with my brother?"
"He's... a little pissed at us," Gray explained.
"Because we keep ducking him," said Cal. "To come here."
I let out a deep breath. "Shit," I muttered.
"It's been forever since the three of us hung out," Cal went on. "And you know, we used to spend a lot of time together."
"Every waking moment," I nodded.
"Luckily he's got this huge project at work," Gray added, drumming his fingers on my comforter. "So he's not really too upset...yet. But when the project is over..."
"And it's over this Friday," Cal finished. "He's gonna want to celebrate."
Gray nodded, biting his lip, and suddenly grabbed my hand.
I took another deep breath. "Okay!" I said brightly, clasping both their hands more tightly. "Then it's settled. Next weekend, I come to you guys."
Cal wrinkled his nose. "Stop it," I chided him. "We talked about this. We switch off, three weekends to one. We'll just move my weekend up, right?" My voice was rising a little higher, nearing hysteria as I tried like hell to make all the pieces fit together in my head. "I'll come home, and we can see my brother, and it'll all look completely normal, right?" I looked back and forth between their distressed faces. "Right?"
Gray lifted my fingers and brushed a kiss across my knuckles. "Harp," he said gently. "None of this really counts as normal anymore."
I looked between his soft brown eyes and Cal's sharp blue ones and for some reason the tears started welling again. "But that's okay, right?" I said, and there was no disguising the note of pleading in my voice. "Because who cares what's normal when it's good, right?"
Cal and Gray were both silent a while. "Sure baby," Cal finally said. "That's exactly right."
I lifted my chin and tried to keep from slumping over as they both got ready to leave. I kept my goodbyes bright and cheerful and positive, even though I desperately wanted to just curl up in a ball and cry for a solid year.
"Okay," I breathed to myself once I was alone in my apartment again. "Okay."
The place seemed so empty, and echoingly huge without them there to take up the space. I wiped away the tears that refused to stop leaking from my eyes and I went to my messy work desk.
I've always been a pen and paper girl. Friend after assistant after mentor had tried to wean me off my notepads and calendars, but I'm a stationery freak, through and through. So instead of apps and cloud drives, I have scrawled appointments on wall calendars, and a paper day planner studded with so many scraps of paper sticking out of it that it resembled an octopus.
It was that day planner that I opened — carefully — right now, and flipped to the next weekend. "Okay," I repeated as I ran my finger down the line of deadlines and appointments. "That's not that much." I'd just need to reschedule one early morning meeting I had Saturday morning, because I'd want to be on the road by nine, but other than that, I could do it. I could go see them, go back to Reckless Falls.
I leaned back on my heels and grinned for a moment just thinking about it. Showing up at Cal's house, the three of us playing house in our hometown. Gray could make soufflé in an actual soufflé pan and maybe Cal would take me out snowshoeing. I'd never tried it before. And then, when I was all cold and sodden at the end of the day, they'd take me back home and we'd figure out ways to get warm...
The sudden rush of heat through my body sent me standing bolt upright. I took a deep breath. "Okay," I said aloud...again...since that seemed to be the only thing I could tell myself that made it possible to keep my shit together. "It's only a week. I can handle waiting." I grinned and looked back down at my day planner. "So long as I don't ruin anything by having my period that weekend."
Before I even finished my sentence, my blood was running cold.
My period.
I knelt back down and frantically paged back through my day planner. I always recorded the first day because this pill I was on sometimes made me skip periods, so my doctor asked me to keep very accurate records. I flipped back to January and ran my finger down the column.
Nothing. No red circle.
I flipped back other month and suddenly all the breath left my lungs at once.
There it was. The red circle.
And it was around December twenty-first.
Just before Christmas. Just before I'd come home to Reckless Falls.
Just before my first time with Cal and Gray.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Callum
Gray stomped into the mudroom, yelling the lyrics to some song from the 90s at the top of his lungs. I looked up from the sofa and raised my beer in his direction. "Good first day?"
He leaned against the doorway and stretched. "I need to get back to the gym. I got fat as fuck lying around here." He rolled his shoulders and then reached down and lifted a box from behind the door with a grin.
I leaned forward. "You serious? You haven't even gotten paid yet."
"My treat man," Gray said, puffing his chest. "I know it's your favorite."
"Damn, a whole case." I slid from the couch and went to grab the case of Ommegang Rare Vos, my absolute favorite beer, from him, but he snatched it away. "Hey!" I protested.
"It's warm," Gray said, shaking his head. "I’m gonna go put two in the freezer and the rest in the fr
idge.”
I followed him into the kitchen, chuckling. "You know when I was saying you were staying here in exchange for beer money, it was just a figure of speech."
Gray grinned as he started stacking the bottles in the fridge. "Yeah well, I'm a pretty literal guy, so it went over my head."
"So," I couldn't help but prod. "How did today go?"
He sighed without looking at me. "Fucking old woman, I swear to god," he muttered into the fridge.
I laughed out loud but my laugh was cut short by a noise outside.
"Did you...?" I started to say. But Gray had already stopped loading the fridge and stood up, with his head cocked. Listening.
"It sounded like a car door?" he said, walking over to the kitchen window. "Oh shit, it was. It's a...is that a fucking taxi?"
"No way." I was interrupted by a loud banging on the door.
Gray looked at me, and I looked at him, and neither one of us moved. "It's your fucking house, dude," Gray pointed out.
The banging came again, then a loud voice shouting.
"Harper?" I gasped, but my feet were already moving. I flung open the door to see her standing there, eyes wild. "Baby?" I said, but any other words were muffled by her desperate kiss.
"Harper?" Gray said, coming up behind me. "Honey, what are you doing here?"
She kissed him too, and I shut the door and tried to wrap my head around her showing up like this. At five o'clock on a Monday.
"Baby, can you please tell me you're okay before I have a fucking heart attack?" I begged her.
She let go of Gray and took a deep breath, looking at both of us in turn. "I flew, I didn't drive," she said, leaning against my arm. "And then paid that taxi driver's kid's college tuition to get here. I just…" She sighed. "I missed you."
"Well holy shit, we missed you too," Gray growled, brushing her hair back from her neck. "And now that you're here..."
She nodded, biting her lip. "Now that I'm here..."
It was that lip bite that did it. In a second I shoved my apprehension down and went to her. "We haven't done anything here yet," I pointed out, nipping a line down her shoulder. Gray had already tugged her jeans down and grabbed a fistful of that luscious ass. "So you pick the place."
But there was something different about her. She didn't seem to want to play our usual teasing games. Her eyes were wide and so incredibly green. "I wanted this," she exhaled, resting her palm in the center of my chest as she stroked. "This... whatever it is... The three of us. I wanted it so bad, for so long."
"And you have it," Gray growled, and his eyes were already getting darker, so he didn't notice that she was using the past tense.
And I was too terrified of what that might mean to question. I swallowed and nodded. "You have it," I echoed, grabbing her hand and pulling her towards me.
Her kiss was wild, mindless, a desperate melting of our mouths. I had never felt her so wild before, and even though part of my brain knew that this was wrong, that we should sit down, talk about whatever it was that had her so upset that she drove across the fucking state to see us, I couldn't think when her sounds filled my head.
"You always tell me that I need to tell you what I want," she said, turning to me.
"It's true," I said, my voice muffled in her neck. "You do."
"I want both of you," she said. "I want you both inside me, both... places."
"Yeah?" I hissed, desire crowding out the last thought I could think. "You want to feel us both inside of you?"
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Grayson
I felt my heart stand still in my chest when she nodded, her mouth open, licking her lips.
Whatever version of Harper this was — a wild, unchecked fury showing up at our door — it had me completely unglued.
Cal's hands were already on her, his lips moving along her neck. "So which one, baby girl?" he asked her. "Which one of us is going to be the first one inside of that tight little ass?"
My dick twitched and a wicked heat spilled into my stomach. "You tell me," I told her, cupping her face. "Because unless you say, I'm going to fucking knock Callum unconscious so I get to be first."
Cal growled an obscene threat.
I expected Harper to demur. She'd always told us she couldn't choose, and I expected this to be one more thing she couldn’t make up her mind about.
But that wasn't true today. She lifted her chin and looked me directly in the eye.
"You, Gray." She closed her eyes and opened them again. "You are gentler."
As much as I growled to think that I could claim part of her that Cal had never had, my heart twisted in my chest when I realized just how much she trusted me.
She turned and touched Cal's angry face. "I want you to fuck me like you always fuck me," she said and her voice was low and insistent.
He curled his lip. "How's that?"
"Like you own me," Harper gasped.
The storm cloud passed across his face and suddenly his eyes were blazing again. "I do," he said thickly.
"We both do," I echoed.
In a nanosecond, we had her completely undressed, and just like always, I couldn't stop my hands from roaming those curves, cupping her pert little breasts before moving down the front of her belly. Cal was already kissing a trail down between her breasts, and I kissed her neck as I began to move my fingers around that tight little opening.
"You feel that?" I whispered. She moaned as Cal's tongue found her center. "It's going to hurt you at first, baby girl, but then it's going to feel so, so good. I'm going to make it so good for you." I lifted my lips from her neck. "Cal, is she wet yet?"
"She's dripping," Cal murmured, and my dick was already at a right angle. I sank my thumb down a little bit, feeling the way that tight muscle squeezed. She tensed, bearing down on me, and I kissed her neck and pinched her nipple in my fingerss. "Relax," I soothed. "Feel that? Feel the way I'm inside you now? Nobody's ever had this ass before, have they?"
"No," she moaned, her head lolling back on my shoulder. "Oh God," she said, and it was a low animal moan unlike anything I'd ever heard come out of her mouth. I buried my face her neck and growled out the tension that was gathering at the base of my spine. How badly I wanted to bend her over and take her so hard she yelped. I wanted to fuck her, lay claim to her, fucking melt our bodies together so that we were one fucking body. I loved her sighs, I loved her moans, I loved...
Her.
Fuck.
"Gray," she was whispering "Cal… Fuck, Gray...."
Callum growled something utterly profane, and I sank my thumb further into that tight little space, feeling her clench and relax around me, her body tense, and this time it had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with what we were doing to her, slowly tearing down the last little bit of defenses before we could make her ours. This girl, the one we both loved.
"Jesus," she gasped, and suddenly she was coming there, her muscles tensing around my thumb, a fluttering sensation as her whole body tightened from the inside out. "That's right, come for me, come for us," I told her, ordered her, begged her.
Cal was devouring her, his eyes slitted, only the white showing like he was in some kind of trance. Harper fell boneless back against me, giving over her entire weight into my arms. I looked over her shoulder, and looked down to Cal, who nodded imperceptibly and stood up. "Hold on to me, Harper," he said.
"Go on, baby girl," I urged her, lifting her arms for her and wrapping them around Cal's neck. "We've got you. We've got you."
Cal lifted her up and she wrapped her legs around his waist. He reached out, crossing and linking his arms with mine and I saw both of their eyes fly open as she sank onto his cock.
"It's going to be cold," I whispered, squirting the lube onto in my dick and then massaging it around that tight little asshole of hers. Cal was already moving in and out of her, establishing a slow rhythm. She was ready.
"Shit," I whispered as I pressed myself against her. She was hot, tight...perfect. "S
hit," I hissed as I slid in that first anxious inch. "I fucking love you."
"I love you," Cal grunted.
"Shit, Goddammit..." Harper said, and I swear there were tears in her voice. "Goddammit I love you too. Both of you."
Chapter Forty
Harper
I gritted my teeth, as the fiery pain subsided and suddenly it was nothing more than a melting, spreading warmth.
Gray held still for a moment, holding himself there, allowing me to adjust to the strange, stretching sensation of being filled in both holes.
I grunted, low and deep, an animal sound I didn't recognize, but then again I didn't recognize any of this. I felt like I was falling apart, like I might dissolve into pieces, but at the same time both of their arms were holding me up, buoying me, lifting me upwards and I had no choice but to be held together by their love.
Their love.
Holy shit.
They love me.
"I love you," I repeated, moving myself, shifting and driving myself backwards. Gray responded with a low moan, and then he began to move. Slowly at first, while Cal matched his rhythm, and at first it was nothing more than quiet, desperate breath as we clung to each other. Hot, ragged gasps and whispered promises filled my ears, even as their cocks filled me, and my heart was so filled with every emotion walking the line between ecstasy and despair. I clung to them, because how could I give this up? How could I give both of them up? How could I do this to myself, but then again how could I do it to them?
The incessant warring noise in my brain fell away when Cal pressed his forehead to mine, so there was nothing in my sight but the bright blue of his eyes. He watched, lips parted, and I drowned myself in the abyss of that blue as everything broke open, all those pieces I was holding so carefully together fell apart.
I pulled myself up, driving myself down on both of their cocks at the same time, reveling in the painful pleasure.
It was too fucking overwhelming for me to do anything other than cry out both their names as the orgasm was wrenched from my body, sending me into toe-curling ecstasy. I pressed myself in closer, so tight I could barely breathe, but I needed it. I needed them to hold me together, because I was sure that this orgasm would tear me apart. When I heard Gray's low, shuddering moan in my ear, I nearly started crying. I buried my face in Cal's shoulder even as he rasped out his own animal grunts. And then suddenly I was crying, and I couldn't have told you why I was crying, except that I knew I had to tell them.
