by Rhian Cahill
Logan pulled his head from the curve of her sex, smoothing his hand in an arc over her belly, up her ribs to her breasts and back to her belly again. “You are, babe,” he murmured, smiling up at her. “Trust me, you are.”
He kissed the spot below her navel.
And again, the sight of such open desire stirred Curtis on a deep, soul-clenching level.
Clearing his throat, he shuffled his feet and turned away. “Just gonna let you guys—”
“No.” Logan’s steady voice halted his retreat. He looked back at his friend, a tight lump filling his throat.
Both Logan and Bethany regarded him. Logan with the kind of smile Curtis recognized, the kind that said Logan knew Curtis was trying to wimp out on doing his homework. Bethany with eyes fogged by desire and passion and excitement.
“Don’t go,” she said, holding out a hand to him. “I want to feel you against me as the nerd here makes me…ow!”
She pouted down at Logan, whose sharp smack to her naked butt still hung in the air. “Hey. What was that for? ’Cause I called you a nerd?”
Logan chuckled. “No. I wanted to let the jock here see what he was going to miss if he left.” He smacked her butt again.
And as much as Curtis knew he should leave, he couldn’t.
Instead, he crossed to where Logan kneeled at Bethany’s feet and joined them.
Again.
He pressed his chest, his belly, his groin to her back, her butt, and held her, his face buried to the side of neck, his hands massaging her breasts, as Logan made her come once more with his tongue and teeth and mouth.
Chapter Four
Lying on her back on Logan’s living room floor, utterly spent and drained and gloriously happy, Bethany let her gaze wander over the white ceiling as she attempted to catch her breath.
Holy hell, she’d never had a guy go down on her with such masterful skill or intent. Once again, Logan had made her come three times. And when he was finished making her come, Curtis had done the same, propelling her to a bone-melting climax with his fingers that tore a wordless scream from her she was positive the whole of Sydney Harbour heard. At the very least, Logan’s neighbours must have felt the ten-point-five-on-the-Richter-scale quakes that rocked her to the core as the orgasms claimed her.
It was only by sheer willpower and wanton greed that she was capable of exerting enough energy to reach for Logan’s still-zipped fly. When he removed her hand with a shake of his head and a low chuckle, it was all she could do to whimper out a protest.
“Later,” he murmured, before brushing the knuckles of his hand down the line of her jaw and walking away.
“Where are you going?” she asked, all too aware of the plaintive note in the question.
“Going to grab us all something to eat,” he threw over his shoulder as he plucked his glasses from the coffee table. “We need sustenance and someone—I won’t mention any names—didn’t deliver on cooking us dinner.”
“Hey!” she protested with a grin, watching him leave the room.
“Don’t argue,” Curtis chuckled, waving his hand about with weary exhaustion from where he lay, eyes closed, stretched flat on his back on the floor. “I definitely need a minute or two to catch my breath before we continue.”
Bethany nudged his ribs with her foot—finally devoid of her stilettos. “I thought you sport stars were meant to be super fit?”
Curtis snorted, dropping his hand to his stomach and scratching at his six-pack with languid effort. “I’m a retired sport star. Now I’m just super…” He patted his sublimely sculpted abs. “Pudgy.”
Laughing, Bethany stretched out beside him, determined to not examine the madness whirling through her head as they waited for Logan to return with whatever constituted sustenance in his book.
She lay on her back, her heartbeat still rapid, her breath still shallow, her stare jumping over the stark-white ceiling as she tried not to accept the fact she was completely in love with Logan.
“I’ve never seen this side of Logan before, ya know.”
At Curtis’s low murmur, Bethany’s heart thumped faster. Rolling her head on the lush carpeted floor, she turned her attention to his profile. “What side it that? The dominating sex-god side?”
He nodded. “That, and the confident side. He’s a bloody genius with more money than God and more business clout than just about every billionaire in the country, but most of the time he’s still trapped in the school yard, facing down ridicule and contempt and bullying.” His Adam’s apple slid up and down his throat before he turned to regard her with a wry smile. “You bring out a confidence in him I’ve been trying to get him to believe in for over two decades.”
Bethany’s belly clenched. Her pulse tripped over itself. Rolling onto her side, she propped her head up with her palm and studied him. “I’ve been wanting to ask about you two. You’re so different. How did you become friends?”
Curtis chortled. “What? A nerd and a jock just can’t be friends?”
She gave him a pointed look. “It’s not the norm, no matter what the movies of today are trying to tell us. So tell me, what’s the story?”
A tormented tension pulled at Curtis’s eyes and he returned his gaze to the ceiling. “Back in high school, I was a walking talking cliché, awesome at sport, lousy at school work. When I was fourteen, I was selected to play on the state cricket team. I lived for cricket. It’s been my one true love since I was a kid. By the time I turned fifteen, I was the captain of the team and already being courted by the national team’s manager. Not the junior national team, but the big guns. The professional team. The team that plays in the Ashes. Everything I wanted in life was unfurling before me and I couldn’t be happier. Except for the fact I was failing school.” He let out a dry snort. “And by failing school, I mean I was last in every class except PE. Mum and Dad came down hard on me. So did the coach of the state team. If I didn’t pass at least the core subjects—English, science and maths—I was off the team. I didn’t want to be off the team, but my brain didn’t want to come to the party.”
“And Logan what? Tutored you?”
Curtis laughed. “Logan found me one afternoon sitting on the steps of the music block, slowly tearing up my maths workbook. I’m ashamed to say I had tears in my eyes. I’d been aware of him before that. It was hard not to be aware of the school target when you go to an all-boys’ school renown for churning out Olympic gold-medal winners, Grand-slammers and more than one English-league pro-soccer player. Logan didn’t do sports. He could have. Even at fourteen, I could see that, and I was pretty much the most self-absorbed kid there. He was tall and rangy and fast when he needed to be. And fuck, did he have to be fast often. I saw him fleeing more than once from the rugby league players, but until that afternoon, he’d been little but a blip on the edge of my radar. Someone to pity and laugh at.”
He stopped, giving Bethany a quick glance. “I’m not proud of that, by the way. But I’ll own it. Until Logan took notice of me, I was a prick.”
Bethany frowned, finding it hard to imagine Curtis anything but the relaxed charmer he was. She found it damn near impossible to imagine him as anything but wonderful to Logan. “What did he do? When he found you crying?”
“He sat down beside me, took the book from my hand, closed it and whacked me on the head with it.”
Bethany couldn’t help herself. She burst out laughing. “He what?”
Curtis chuckled, grinning at her. “There was a reason the rugby-league guys had it out for him. Back then, Logan didn’t really have much of a filter when it came to pointing out how dumb people were. Most of the time, his sarcasm was too intelligent for those around him, but when the penny did drop…yeah, he copped quite a few canings in those first few years of school. I figure that day, seeing me destroying something he deemed of paramount importance, pushed him over the edge. He resorted to the very kind of attack he spent most of his days trying to avoid. He hit me with my maths workbook, told me to suck it up and if I want
ed to stay on the cricket team to come to his house that afternoon. How he knew I was on the verge of being booted from the team, I still don’t know.”
Bethany narrowed her eyes. The scene Curtis was painting made her tummy knot. Kids were cruel and mean. She knew that firsthand. To this day, she remembered all too well the jibes and bullying insults her brother had been subjected to about his undeclared homosexuality. Those insults and attacks had contributed to Lance never coming out. To him committing suicide before his twenty-first birthday. “Why did he want to help you?” she asked, trying to put herself in Logan’s shoes. “Was it a tradeoff for your protection at school?”
Curtis shrugged. “If it was, he never asked and I never offered. But I don’t think it was. By this stage in Logan’s life, he’d already resigned himself to his social status. No, I think he just wanted to help me. In case you haven’t noticed, he’s a genuinely nice guy.”
A heavy pressure wrapped Bethany’s chest and she swallowed. She had noticed. Had been noticing for fourteen wonderful days, in fact.
Shifting on her side a little, she watched Curtis study the ceiling. Her heart raced. A horde of butterflies cavorted in her belly. It was so very easy to picture him and Logan together, sitting at a desk in some generic school setting, both with their heads bent over a book, Logan walking Curtis through the equations and numerical problems math teachers tortured students with on a daily basis. So easy to see Logan grow proud of Curtis as he became more adept at working said problems and equations out.
So easy to see Curtis’s opinion of the nerd transform to one of respect and, ultimately, friendship.
“And that’s why you’re so close now?” she asked. “Because he helped you with your school work? So you could stay on the cricket team, thereby becoming the captain of the Australian team when you grew up?”
He shook his head. “No. Because he taught me how to understand and do it myself. Because he didn’t judge me and never spoke down to me. And by being in his company, I grew to be less of a wanker.”
Rolling his head to face her, he drew a slow breath. “At least that’s why I love him the way I do now. Ask Logan why we’re so close and he’ll probably tell you a different story.”
Bethany frowned. “Which would be?”
“That I saved his life.”
The tight pressure wrapping around Bethany’s chest constricted. “Literally or figuratively?”
Curtis let out another breath. “Literally.”
“Fuck.” The curse fell from Bethany on a whispered sigh.
A haunted pain twisted Curtis’s face. “Two years after we became friends, a new kid started at our school. His folks were stupidly rich and powerful. Very influential in Australian politics and business. He was already a national swimming star, representing the country at international junior events. He came from a school where the student body worshipped him. By the time he started at our school, Logan was less the target of the morons and more the brainiac to be revered. I’m not stupid enough to deny us being friends didn’t help. It did. The other kids left him alone. And then this fuck-knuckle arrived, sussed out the situation and the hierarchy and decided to elevate himself to top dog by beating the cricket captain’s nerd best friend to a bloody pulp.”
Bethany’s stomach rolled. “Jesus.”
“I was still in class talking to my science teacher about the upcoming state cricket finals when he started. By the time I walked out of the room, five other students were running for me. I arrived at the scene, pushed my way through a crowd of screaming students just as the bastard was about to smash his fist into Logan’s nose.” He paused, swiping his palm over his mouth. Bethany couldn’t miss how much his hand shook. “After,” he went on, his voice a flat note of contain rage, “already fracturing Logan’s cheekbone and eye socket.”
She stared at Curtis. Pictured Logan beaten and bloody. Pictured him broken on the ground. She felt sick.
Curtis let out an emotionless snort. “I was suspended from school for a week and had to step down from the state cricket team for the rest of the season for what I did to that new kid. To this day, I don’t regret it.”
The churning tension in Bethany’s belly flared to a tight heat. She caught her bottom lip with her teeth, studying Curtis. Undone by his words and the sheer acceptance in them.
He rolled his head again, giving her a lopsided smile, a hint of his dimple creasing his cheek. “Logan makes me a better man, Beth. Has done since we were fifteen. If ever the term bromance applied to two hetrosexual guys, it’s to us. I love the bastard like he’s my own brother. Even more, to be honest. My own brother is a bit of a git. And it tears me apart every damn day that deep down inside, Logan still considers himself a lowly social outcast. Despite his phenomenal success and intelligence and status, despite his money and influence in the technology and business world, Logan will always view himself as the nerd who never gets the girl.”
He paused once again, his smile widening, his eyes shining with an emotion Bethany couldn’t decipher. “Until you came along, my American friend. And it doesn’t take a genius to see he’s got you.”
Bethany sucked in a swift breath, her stare locked on Curtis’s face.
“And for that,” he whispered, “I will cherish you forever.”
And before she could say a word, he rolled onto his side and brushed his lips over hers.
Two instant and conflicting emotions crashed through Logan at the sight of Curtis kissing Bethany.
Arousal. Carnal, base arousal. An arousal so potent it was as if his entire body had been injected with concentrated pleasure.
And jealously. Elemental, primitive jealousy. The kind that sank into his gut and stole his breath.
He stood at the entry of the living room, the cheese and fruit platter he’d just made gripped in one hand, an open bottle of chardonnay in the other, and watched his best mate’s lips caress Bethany’s.
Watched them both close their eyes at the soft contact.
Watched Bethany reach up to feather her fingertips over Curtis’s jaw.
Another hot wave of turmoil rolled over Logan. His cock pulsed. He’d denied it any release so far. Curtis had already blown his load, but Logan couldn’t bring himself to relinquish the tenuous control over his body, his need for Bethany yet.
It had nothing to do with being worried he physically or sexually couldn’t compete with his well-endowed best friend, and everything to do with the irrefutable knowledge that once Bethany’s flesh—be it her hand, her lips, her tongue or her sex—touched his cock, he would be completely undone.
Hers forever.
He couldn’t do that until he knew the status quo.
The simple fact jealousy tore through him now illustrated beyond doubt he felt more for her than desire. He wanted to spend the rest of his life learning everything there was to know about her, to spend the rest of his days making her happy.
He longed for her face to be the first he saw every morning and her lips the last thing to touch his before he went to sleep every night.
He was in love with her. No more proof was required. No more analysis.
And yet even with this realization, his body still ached with untethered arousal and burned with tortured jealousy at the notion of sharing her with Curtis. Of discovering the heights of her pleasure with the one man who’d given Logan the strongest sense of belonging and worth and friendship he’d ever experienced.
It was a conundrum he had no answer for.
In all the years he’d known Curtis, he’d never been jealous of him.
But now…witnessing that one almost platonic kiss…
What were they talking about before I entered? Me? Were they laughing at me? Were they—
With a silent growl, Logan killed the unworthy thought. They hadn’t been. He knew that. In his heart, his soul, he knew that. Just as he knew his mind—as brilliant as it was—was doing its best to protect him as only the mind of a nerd could, by reverting to the cautious suspicion o
f a terrorized outsider.
Stupid fucking mind.
Drawing a deep breath, he crossed to where they lay on the floor, Bethany gloriously naked, Curtis still semi-dressed in undone jeans and his unbuttoned shirt. They both looked up at him as he approached, their smiles wide.
And yet their eyes told him something had…shifted.
Changed.
But what?
Does it matter? Right now, does it matter?
“No hamburgers?” Curtis grumbled with a grin as Logan placed the cheese platter and bottle of wine on the coffee table beside them.
“Sure there’s hamburgers,” Logan answered over his shoulder as he moved to the bar and retrieved three long-stemmed glasses from the shelf. “Maccas currently have the Curtis Clarkson Chicken Feast on their menu if you want to go get one.”
At the mention of the burger named after him currently being sold by McDonalds to celebrate the cricket season, Curtis let out a dramatic groan and shook his head. “Ah, nerd humour. Love it.”
Walking back to them, his whole body hyper-aware of Bethany and the way she studied him, Logan laughed. “No, this is nerd humour. There are two types of people in this world. Those that can extrapolate from incomplete data.”
He didn’t say another word.
On the floor, Curtis rolled his eyes. “Bloody hell, Logan. That’s bad.”
Chuckling, he gave his friend a sideways smirk. “But funny, no?”
He turned back to Bethany, wanting to see her reaction to his joke.
Instead, he found her on her feet. She was walking toward him, an enigmatic light in her eyes.
“What do you think?” he asked, his throat growing thick as she drew closer. “Funny?”
“I think,” she said, stopping but an inch from where he stood, the heat of her beautiful body seeping into his, “it’s time.”
He stared down into her eyes. Witnessed the mysterious emotion in her eyes change to open desire. Desire and…something more.
His chest squeezed tight. His stomach knotted. “Time for what?”
