“Come on,” I protest, “she can’t possibly hold the grant against me.” I down the beer as I think through his words, a sinking feeling going through me. Then I get a short, terse text message from Bailey, asking if I’m at home and announcing that she’s coming over. She says she wants to talk to both Sebastian and me. I quickly reply in the affirmative. “She’s coming over,” I tell Sebastian, showing him my phone. “She sounds irritated, don’t you think?”
Sebastian looks puzzled as he reads her message. “Why does she want to know if I’m here? You fucked up, not me.”
“Thank you for the support, asshole,” I reply, but there’s no energy in my words. Sebastian is right. I’ve fucked up, not once, but twice.
“I can explain,” I say as I open the door.
She sweeps in without saying a word. She’s dressed in her usual black. The only jewelry she’s wearing are silver hoop earrings and a chunky bracelet. Her hair’s loose and soft over her shoulders. She smells like flowers and for an instant, all I can see is her beautiful, naked body lying on my pool table, sweet and open. The only sounds I can hear are her breathy moans.
Then I see the ire in her violet eyes, and I grimace. Yeah, as Sebastian predicted, she’s furious.
She stalks in, her back held ramrod straight. I lead her toward the kitchen, where Sebastian waits. It might be cowardly of me, but I need support here and I’m counting on my best friend for help. Though, in fairness, he’s had to do some heavy lifting in the last two days.
“I really want to get published in the Smithsonian Institute Press, Daniel,” she snaps. “Can you buy me a spot?”
Sebastian snickers and she shoots him a look that’s filled with hatred. “I’m not thrilled with you either,” she bites out.
“What’d I do?” he protests, looking confused.
She’s not listening. No, our redhead is on a rant. “What is wrong with you guys? You,” she points to me, “who the fuck bets fifty grand on a pool game? Oh wait, I know the answer. The kind of guy who has so much money that he’ll spend a hundred and fifty million dollars on some kind of half-assed apology.” Her coat flies across the room. “I just spent,” she hisses, “eleven months with a guy who measured my worth by how much money I made. And you try to buy my forgiveness with an endowment to the university?” Her voice trembles with rage. “Do you know how angry that makes me?”
I open my mouth to cut in and tell her that I did not give the university the money as a gesture of apology, but she’s whirled to face Sebastian. “And you.” She points an accusing finger in his direction. “You thought my friend’s restaurant wouldn’t last six months? What kind of asshole would say that and crush her dreams? Now that you have two Michelin stars, do you think you can wander around the city and insult struggling chefs? You don’t know anything about Piper’s circumstances. How dare you.”
“What are you talking about?” Sebastian blinks. “Is that Hell’s Kitchen dive run by a friend of yours?”
“Yes.” Her voice makes ice look balmy in comparison. “My roommate Piper.”
“Ah.” Sebastian digests that with an embarrassed look on his face. “Shit. I didn’t know that.”
Bailey isn’t mollified. She transfers her glare to me. “A hundred and fifty million dollars?”
Her voice catches just a little, and I can tell she’s really upset. “Okay.” I hold up my hands. “Stop. Sit. Listen to me, please.”
She settles down on a chair, a guarded look on her face. I open a bottle of vodka and pour the three of us a drink. “I shouldn’t have said what I said the other day,” I say quietly. “I’m very sorry. It was stupid and uncalled for, and it was a dick thing to do.”
“You gave my school a hundred and fifty million dollars because you were sorry? Daniel, in the real world, people send flowers to apologize.”
“I did,” I run my hand through my hair in frustration. “Well, not flowers. It took a while to arrange, but the package should have been delivered today.”
She opens her mouth to say something, then she shuts up. “Wait a second,” she says slowly. “Piper did say something about FedEx. You sent me something?”
“I did.”
“And the hundred and fifty million? Did that have anything to do with me?”
I have to be honest with her. “Yes.” I put my hand up before she starts yelling at me again. “Please let me finish. I didn’t spend any time thinking about the funding gap in liberal arts until I met you. Then I read the blog you kept while you were in Siberia, and I found it fascinating.” I kneel in front of her and take her hands in mine. “The work you do is important. It deserves to be funded.” I shrug. “The money for the endowment was already earmarked. I just suggested to my mother that we give it to the liberal arts school instead of the business school.”
Her expression is still wary. “What did you send me?” she asks. “What was in the package?”
I gesture to the untouched drink in front of her. “Take a sip.”
She drinks, and a look of startled surprise fills her face. “Daniel,” she says softly. “What is this?”
I slide the bottle over her way. It’s a bottle of Five Lakes, a small brand of vodka that’s very hard to find outside of Russia. From reading Bailey’s blog posts, I know that this particular brand is one of the things she misses about Siberia. It took all weekend to locate a dozen bottles in Moscow and fly them to New York. After all that effort, FedEx just stuck a delivery notice on her door, and it’s probably languishing in one of their pick-up centers. This has to be the textbook definition of irony.
“You found this in New York?”
“Moscow.”
“This weekend?”
I smile at her. “Yes, Bailey.”
“You read my blog?”
I can’t quite make out her tone. Is she angry? “I did.”
She digests that silently, then she turns to Sebastian. “Why did you eat at Piper’s restaurant?”
He’s been silent so far, watching the two of us. Now, he answers Bailey’s question. “I have a very unstable chef at one of my restaurants, and I’ve been hearing good things about your friend’s cooking. I thought I might eat there and look for a replacement at the same time, in a low-key kind of way.”
She finally cracks a smile. A small one, but at least she’s not frowning any more. “Sebastian, you do know that people recognize you, don’t you? There’s no low-key way for a two-Michelin-starred chef to eat in a restaurant in the city.”
“I’m beginning to realize that,” he replies. He takes a sip of his vodka and looks up. “Hey, this is good,” he says to me. “Nice work, Daniel. Appropriate big gesture.”
“Big gesture?” I stifle the urge to kill Sebastian as Bailey looks at us with a curious look.
“Daniel here,” Sebastian teases, unabashed, “goes for the big, dramatic gesture.”
Ignoring Sebastian’s amusement, I give Bailey a serious look. “I screwed up, but it won’t happen again. As multiple people have pointed out to me, I’m not the only one that stands to lose if this thing between us becomes public knowledge. That is, if you are still interested in pursuing it…” I hesitate, almost holding my breath waiting for her answer. I’m not the only one. Sebastian is waiting expectantly too.
She surveys the two of us. “Tell me what you want,” she says finally. “This situation isn’t typical for me. Billionaires and celebrities don’t stumble into my world. Hot guys aren’t interested in me, and as you already know, I don’t have wild, crazy sex. I don’t know how to navigate all of that.”
I kiss the pulse that beats nervously in her wrist. She’s not as calm as she appears. Neither am I. “I find everything about you fascinating, and I’d like to get to know you better.”
“Me too,” Sebastian says from his corner.
“Both of you at the same time? That wasn’t a one-time thing?”
“Is that bad?” Sebastian asks, his words a challenge in her direction as I brace myself for her answer. There are a lot of w
omen out there who think they want to try a threesome, and some of them even will. A longer commitment to something so unorthodox? That’s a rarity. “Can you handle something outside the norm?”
She looks intrigued. “I’m a cultural anthropologist. Outside the norm is my bread and butter.”
“Is that a yes?”
“No more big gestures, Daniel. If I do this, it isn’t because of how rich you are.”
“If I thought the reason you were here was my money, we wouldn’t be doing anything.”
She smiles. “Thank you for noticing. And Sebastian? Be nice to Piper.”
“Yes ma’am.”
It’s far too early to talk about serious relationships or the future, or where this thing between the three of us is headed, but there’s one thing I need to make clear. “While we are dating,” I tell her, “I’d like us to be exclusive.”
“What does that involve?” She examines her nails intently, and avoids looking at us. “There’s three of us. If I sleep with Sebastian when you aren’t around, am I cheating on you?”
A spike of unwarranted jealousy pierces through me at that image, and I force myself to suppress it. “No. I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that it doesn’t bother me at all, but no. That’s not cheating.”
She bites her lower lip. As I see her teeth indent her flesh, I realize how much I want her. I can’t wait to see her naked again. To see her spread out, open, ready for us.
“Okay.” She looks at the two of us. “I don’t really know how to be anything other than exclusive anyway.”
Both Sebastian and I exhale with relief at the same time. My fuck-up wasn’t the death knell to us. Now, I can’t wait to see what happens next. I pick up the bottle of vodka and my glass, and gesture to the living room. “Follow me.”
22
Bailey
If I had a flower for every time I thought of you… I could walk through my garden forever.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
I cannot believe I’m doing this.
There was, I can’t lie, a lump in my throat when I realized what Daniel had done. Yes, getting vodka flown from Russia to New York was the act of a man with significant resources, but he couldn’t have done it without learning something about me. Had he got me something shiny from Tiffany, I would have walked away.
He said he found me fascinating, and his actions have backed up his words.
Sebastian was always easier to forgive. His words about Piper’s restaurant were cruel, but he clearly hadn’t meant for her to overhear the conversation, and he had been there for a good reason.
And so I follow them to the living room, knowing full well that in a few minutes, I will succumb to the blazing attraction I feel.
There’s one question I haven’t asked either of them. Where is this going? I haven’t asked because whichever way they answer, I’ll be bruised. Even though I’m going away to Argentina for six months in the fall, I still don’t want to hear them tell me that this is just a fling, and I’m not ready to confront the truth about why I feel that way.
The last time I was here, I only saw Daniel’s kitchen and his rec room. This time, he leads the way to the living room, with floor to ceiling windows on two sides, overlooking Central Park.
“Nice,” I say, looking around.
That’s an understatement. The room is huge, easily fifteen hundred square feet, but the furniture is arranged in a way to make the space seem friendly and cozy, not intimidating. The two walls that aren’t windows are covered with artwork. I see a painting that has to be a Picasso, another that’s clearly Salvador Dali. There’s also a Star Wars movie poster on the wall, and one of those ubiquitous Keep Calm and Carry On posters. It’s very eclectic.
“I’ll give you a proper tour at some point,” he promises. “But please, sit. Want a top-up of your drink?”
“Probably not,” I reply, taking a seat on an ocean-blue stuffed chair. “I don’t want to be too buzzed when we…” I feel the heat rise on my face, and my voice trails off.
“When we fuck.” That’s Sebastian. “Say the words, Bailey.”
I lift my chin. “I don’t want to be too buzzed when we fuck.”
“An admirable goal,” he agrees, crossing the room to sit down on the white couch that’s perpendicular to me. I’m a little disappointed by that. I thought he’d sit on the arm of my chair, but instead, they are both giving me space. I don’t want space. I want to be fucked.
Daniel lifts up his glass in a toast. “Cheers,” he says simply. I wave my own glass in his direction and take another sip of the vodka, feeling the heat travel a fiery path down my body. Sitting here, having to pretend I care about small talk, when all I want to do is be bracketed between their hard bodies… The anticipation is killing me.
Sebastian leans forward and takes my hand in his own. His skin is callused from hours spent in front of the flames, and the contrast sets me shivering. His thumb glides over my palm, pressing down firmly. It’s an erotic touch. My body reacts with a rush of wetness and I bite off my moan with difficulty.
“I want to hear you, Bailey.” His blue eyes locking onto mine, his other hand moving to my wrist to hold me. “Each whimper, each moan. Don’t hold back, baby.”
He gets up to sit on my armrest, pulling me into his body for a kiss. His lips press down on me, insistent and forceful, and I surrender to the pleasure. One part of me wonders when Daniel’s going to participate. Another part - a bigger part - likes the idea of giving him a show. He leans back on the couch, drink in hand, a half-smile on his face. His gaze stays on us.
He’s enjoying watching us. Game on. I grab Sebastian’s head with my hand, gripping the back of his neck, pulling him even closer to me. I don’t stifle my noises of pleasure, the little moans, the soft gasps. It is such a turn on to know that Daniel is captivated by our display.
“You like being watched, Bailey?” Sebastian says into my ears, his teeth nibbling at an earlobe. His hand glides a caress on my chest, from my cleavage to my neck. “My little exhibitionist. Take off your top.”
His hands are at my waist, plucking the fabric up and over my head. When my lace-clad breasts come into view, Daniel leans forward and takes another sip of his drink. His expression is hungry, and his eyes blaze with lust, but he remains in his seat.
Sebastian goes back to kissing me. His hands caress my breasts over the bra, but disappointingly, he doesn’t make any move to unfasten it yet. Instead, he nudges me to my feet. “Your jeans are in the way,” he mutters. “Let’s get them off.”
His big hands roam down my abdomen, and I flinch automatically. I don’t have six-pack abs, or anything even close to them. Rolls of squishy flesh cannot be attractive.
Except Sebastian’s kissing the same rolls of flesh, his breath heated, his stubble rasping against my skin, his hand pressed against my back to move me closer to him. His other hand works at the waistband of my jeans till they are undone, then he pushes them down my hips, kissing each bit of skin as it is revealed. “Ah fuck, those panties,” he groans. “Soft, pretty pink. Just like your pussy.”
I blush at his words, and Daniel chuckles from his spot on the couch. “I do like how you flush, Bailey,” he says. “It’s so much fun to corrupt the good girl.”
“Please,” I scoff, though I’m distracted by Sebastian’s kisses, by the rub of his hard erection against my crotch as he stands back up. “I’m not really such a good girl.”
Sebastian’s teeth nip at my nipple through my bra, and I forget Daniel’s words, though I feel every bit of his burning gaze on me. This is so hot. I’d have never thought I’d be so turned on by the idea of someone watching. His hand runs over my ass, and I tense, waiting for the spank that does not come. Pity.
I’m nudged back into my chair, and Sebastian pulls my jeans free, tossing them carelessly across the room. They land against one of the windows and slide to the floor, and I giggle. “I can’t believe I’m making out in full view of Central Park,” I confess. “I fee
l so naughty.”
Daniel raises an amused eyebrow. “You little hussy,” he scolds. “All the way down to your underwear before you even noticed the window.” He leans back and unzips his own pants lazily. His erection springs out and I can’t help it, I actually lick my lips. I’m keyed up, okay? They’ve had me wanting them ever since I saw them, and this is my first glimpse of cock. I want more.
My view of Daniel’s dick is blocked off because Sebastian once again leans into me. His lips press on mine, nibbling and sucking on my lower lip. “Such a bad girl,” he growls. “Can’t take your eyes off his cock, can you?”
“No,” I whisper, a thread of defiance in my voice. “I want to see. Take off your pants.” I move my hands up his thighs, my fingers tracing the rock hard outline of his erection. “I want to touch you. Taste you.”
A fire burns in his eyes. In an instant, my bra is off, and my wrists are pressed together behind my head. Sebastian uses the scrap of lace to bind my hands. “Keep them there,” he orders. His fingers tangle in my hair, his grip tightening until little sparks of pain prickle at my scalp.
Oh my god. This is better than my dreams, even hotter than my most powerful fantasies. This is real. This is the hard press of his torso on mine. The ache in my shoulder blades anchors me, while his large hands boldly feel every heated inch of me and threatens to drown me in pleasure.
“Sebastian,” I whisper. “Please…”
“Bailey begging,” he says into my ear. “I like that.”
His hands run up my bare thighs, inching slowly toward my core. I’m still wearing my panties, and my crotch is soaked, a fact that both embarrasses me and turns me on in equal measure.
“Fuck,” Sebastian groans as his knuckles brush against the damp fabric. “You are so wet…”
“You make me wet,” I say “Both of you. I want you.”
“And you’ll have us tonight, Bailey.” Sebastian’s blue eyes hold mine. “All in good time.”
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