Could Lore’s need for these two men blind her to the extent her mother had been blinded? Would she come to be defined by her relationship with them and that alone? Would she lose herself? The prospect was too terrifying to consider, and her willingness to participate in this relationship broke every single vow she’d made herself to never get close to anyone ever again. It was all part of that last resolution.
But then there was the other side of the coin, and this was something it had taken her a long time to admit to herself. She missed the camaraderie that came with friendship beyond acquaintances. She missed intimacy of a nonsexual nature. Hell, she missed intimacy that was of a sexual nature. She missed little moments of joy and laughter. She missed New Year’s Eve and making resolutions. She’d taken everything she loved about life and put it in a little box. And for what? So she couldn’t get hurt? How was that even living?
It wasn’t.
She turned back to the two men with hearts so big they’d left their own wide-open and waiting for her. They’d done everything the past few weeks to prove they were capable of being beyond perfect. They were silly yet intelligent, understanding when she needed a night in her own home or when after a night out she just wanted to hold them, no sex involved. Which currently had only happened once since they first slept together. Who wouldn’t want to make love with these gorgeous men? More importantly, when would she ever find what they were offering her again in her life? She wouldn’t, and she didn’t want to.
“I believe you. And you’re both more than just two men I’m sleeping with. You’re much more.” She took a deep breath and dived in. “I trust you.”
Kieran was there before she could finish, his body so hard, pressing her to the floor, stripping her clothes piece by piece. First her T-shirt, shimmied over her head and accompanied by hair-raising licks and kisses. She felt him on her stomach, on the underside of her breast, and nipping her nipple with his teeth.
Lore cried out, grasping his shoulders, she wanted something her lips could hold on to. Then Nolan was there, whispering soft and tempting encouragements in her ear. Nolan turned her head to meet his kiss, slow and carnal. She felt the men’s attention shoot from her skin all the way down to her core, the walls of her cunt contracting, cream dripping down her thighs. It was so much; it was everything.
“I can smell you,” Kieran moaned around her nipple, his tongue flicking out to tease and torture her. His hands tugged her sweatpants and panties down and off her body, leaving her completely bare while they remained dressed. There was something to be said for putting her naked body on display to two fully dressed men that spoke of a new kind of surrender. It wasn’t just her body she was giving them, but also her trust.
Kieran moved down her stomach and lifted her legs to rest on top of his shoulders. He gave her a devilish smile before leaning toward her pussy and licking it from base to clit.
“Kieran,” she whimpered into Nolan’s mouth, writhing her body farther onto Kieran’s. The man had a gifted tongue.
“Tell us what you want tonight, baby,” Nolan whispered, coming away from the kiss.
Lore didn’t need to think twice before she gave her answer. “I want Kieran to fuck me while you fuck him.” They’d been very careful with their lovemaking the past couple of weeks, showing her little hints here and there of the men’s physical relationship. But she didn’t want hints, she wanted the full monty. Their being together was part of the reason she’d wanted them in the first place.
“Nolan, I want to see you fuck Kieran so hard he can’t concentrate on what he’s doing to me. Don’t ask me if I’m sure, just do it.”
Kieran didn’t wait for a second command to give her what she wanted. With a lithe move she could only attribute to his years of yoga, he was on top of her, her legs stretched up and over her head as they rested on his shoulders. His cock plunged into her without any warning, bottoming out as his balls slapped her ass.
“Like this?” Kieran grunted, resting his hands behind her shoulders to keep her from sliding across the floor as he pounded into her, a relentless battering that was so good in the pure brutality of it. That was what she needed from them, a simple, animalistic fucking, one that would only be enhanced once Nolan thrust his cock inside Kieran’s tight ass.
“Open up for me.” Nolan grunted as he pressed up tight against Kieran’s back. Kieran stopped breathing, and Lore saw a tube of lube hit the floor before Nolan shifted his hips. There was tension in Kieran’s shoulders, but it wasn’t a bad tension. It was more like anticipation.
“I don’t want prep; just get in me,” Kieran growled impatiently, grinding against her clit. She moaned, rejoicing in the delicious friction that almost burned from its intensity.
“Fine, take it.” A slap of flesh and a harsh grunt from Nolan let Lore know he had thrust home. Kieran cried out hoarsely, bending over and subsequently stretching Lore’s legs farther over her head. The burn in her muscles added to the stimulating power of Kieran’s out-of-control thrusts.
“Don’t stop, Kier,” Nolan gasped as he thrust his hips and Lore heard the sensuous rhythm of skin meeting skin “Give our girl what she wanted.”
“Yes” was the only word Kieran formed.
And on it went, a deliciously torturous cycle that spun a web of lust with the potential to have gone on forever. Nolan knelt behind Kieran and fucked him brutally. Lore framed Kieran’s face, giving him an anchor as he attempted to concentrate and keep a steady pace within her, his face red from the exertion, his breath labored and rusty.
“It’s happening,” Lore whimpered, feeling the tightening in her womb, that spinning coil reaching the end of its length, about to burst from the tension.
Kieran, remarkable and steadfast man that he was, slowed his thrusts down to a grind, letting Nolan take over most of the work. Kieran’s lips graced hers as Nolan’s teeth sank into his shoulder, biting down and holding him still like some animal in the throes of a mating heat.
The coil broke, spinning like a freight train to release the tension that had been spindled within her. She cried out, dug her hands into Kieran’s hair, and held on as she rode the storm of her orgasm, praying for it to never cease yet waiting for that clear sky on the other end. The pulsing in her cunt just went on and on.
Kieran shuddered, digging his arms underneath her and burying his face in her neck as he came, low groans the only sound to accompany the release. Nolan followed a thrust or two later.
“Yes, I love when your ass squeezes me like that—” With a hoarse shout, he was bent over Kieran, moaning through his own release, a beatific smile forming on his face when it was over. After a few deep breaths, they rolled to their sides. Nolan slipped into the bathroom to clean up before returning with some wet washcloths to tend his lovers with.
This was another facet of their relationship Lore would always treasure, how they cherished and took care of each other after the frantic need passed. They didn’t just roll over and go to sleep, although she could feel herself drifting off even now, but they stayed together and basked in the feeling they’d just created by being with one another. It really was something special, something to hold on to and to fight for.
NOLAN KISSED THE back of Kieran’s neck, loving the little goose bumps that popped up whenever he did it. Kieran looked back over his shoulder, a sweet smile on his face. His hair was frizzy from the sweat their lovemaking had produced, and his face was still red from the exertion. He’d never looked so handsome.
Nolan peeked over Kieran’s shoulder to see Lore sound asleep. The woman never seemed to be able to stay awake after they fucked her. It gave him a smug measure of pride but also warmed him, as if she dedicated every last speck of energy she had in her slight body to their mutual pleasure.
“She’s beautiful, right?” Kieran whispered, following Nolan’s gaze.
“Yes. So are you. And seeing you both together is so beautiful it’s almost blinding.”
Kieran snorted, earning a gentle poke in the
back to keep his voice down. “Don’t wake her.”
“She’ll sleep for a half hour at least.” Kieran sighed, brushing her pitch-black hair away from her face.
“Learning her patterns already?” Nolan asked, familiar with Kieran’s attentive ways. If it hadn’t been for those ways, Nolan would probably have still been the bitter, jaded man he’d become after his third divorce.
“It’s taking longer than it took me to learn yours.” Kieran sighed again, shaking his head as if the lover asleep in his arms confounded him. “The damn woman keeps everything so close to the chest.”
Nolan kissed Kieran under his ear, understanding his frustration in just waiting for her to fully accept them. It had only been two weeks of a steady relationship, but Nolan was already prepared to keep her forever. “I know she said she trusts us, but do you think she’ll ever trust us enough to open up?”
“You know, I don’t think it’s about a lack of trust. She trusts us more and more every day. I mean she’s letting us help clean her childhood home. I doubt anyone but us or Wayne knows this place even exists, or that her parents are gone.”
“So what is it?”
“I think she had her heart broken,” Kier said, pursing his lips in thought, “a long time ago, and is afraid to have it broken again.”
“She said she’d never been in a long-term relationship before.”
He smiled sadly back at Nolan. “You can have your heart broken by people you’re not in a relationship with.”
Maybe that’s why she’d seemed so relieved to have help when they volunteered to assist in cleaning out the house, an impossibly long task for one person to do by herself. Maybe this house held more than just bittersweet childhood memories. Maybe it held childhood nightmares.
“I think we need to go out.”
Kieran looked back at him with an endearing confusion. “Now?”
“No, no. Let her sleep.” Nolan reached over Kieran and skimmed his hand down Lore’s soft arm. “Maybe this weekend. We’ll take her on a picnic, get her away from this house and all the memories. Let’s see who Lore becomes when the weight falls away and she has nothing left to hide behind.”
“That is a perfect idea. I love you, lawyer man,” Kieran said, twisting back to give Nolan’s bottom lip a small nibble.
“I love you, painter man.”
* * * *
After waking from her nap, Lore convinced the men they could help her clean a bit more but then had to go home, much to their annoyance. She needed time to think after making love to them in the living room of her childhood home. She’d never had sex in this house. She’d lost her virginity in a college dorm and, after she turned eighteen, had never spent another night in the house with her mother.
She didn’t know what she expected to feel, maybe uncomfortable or disrespectful of her mother’s memory. Before her father’s arrest, Darlene would have been royally pissed to discover any sort of sexual shenanigans dirtying her pristine floor. And with two men? Pure scandal.
But Lore didn’t feel shame or embarrassment. Yes, she felt a small adolescent thrill at doing something naughty in her parents’ home, but she also felt content. There was nothing wrong with making love with her men in this house; in fact, it felt right. It felt purifying, as if the passion and love—yes, that’s what it was—the love they expressed for one another through the act banished any emotional demons that lingered in the house.
Lore spent the next hour or so walking through the rooms, digging for emotions and memories she’d buried, and allowing herself to open a door she’d locked a long time ago. The happy times she’d had with her mother before things had gone sour, the sweet gestures her father had made to get her mother to smile. Little things. There were a lot of them.
Lore looked at the weathered kitchen table and remembered a smile from her mom as she poured her young daughter a morning glass of orange juice. She spotted a pink stain on the kitchen counter where a bunch of beets had been left out a little too long and soaked into the butcher-block. Her mother had laughed and said Lore’s love of the color pink had spread to the kitchen. Thinking of the violently pink bedroom she used to have made her frown. When Lore entered her sophomore year of high school, she’d painted it white.
She stepped to move out of the kitchen when the phone rang. Not her cell, but the wall-mount phone.
“What the—” She thought she’d taken the number out of the phone book when her mother passed.
“Hello?” she said, answering.
“Greetings, is this Ms. Lore Beyer?”
“I’m sorry, who’s calling?”
“We met before. My name is Denny. I’m a friend of Rocko’s.”
She gripped the phone hard, the old plastic creaking under the force of her anger. This couldn’t be happening. “I removed this number from the phone book, Denny. How did you get it?”
“Well, Rocko and I were driving, and he pointed out your folks’ house to me and I realized you were probably going to be selling—”
“I can’t believe this. Listen, Denny, this house isn’t for sale, and it is extremely inappropriate for Rocko to give you my number. I appreciate all he did with his advice on why I hired him, but this has crossed a line. If you call here again, I will have to notify my lawyer. Understand?”
There was a slight pause before Denny spoke again. “Sorry, ma’am. Didn’t mean to upset you. I’ve just always loved that house and wondered if you’d be willing to do a quick sale.”
“I’m not. Good night and don’t call here again.”
Lore slammed the phone back into its cradle, and then for good measure tore the damn thing off the wall. What was so great about this stupid house that people wanted to buy it so terribly? Lore wished she hadn’t foolishly made Kieran and Nolan go home for the evening. She needed to feel the ease and comfort that had become synonymous with their presence. Feeling edgy in the old house once more, the cleansing she’d experienced vanishing into the ether, she grabbed up her belongings and headed home for the night.
When she pulled into her driveway twenty minutes later, what she saw made her heart shake off the shackles of cold discomfort and warm with tenderness and care. Kieran and Nolan were parked on the street, both asleep and waiting for her. They hadn’t gone home. They wanted to sleep in a bed with her. She didn’t have the energy to be mad that they’d gone against her wishes. Instead she was thankful to have two attentive men who understood when to give her space and to go after what they wanted simultaneously. It was scary how intuitive they were about her needs, but not scary enough for her to want to run. In fact, it made her want the opposite.
With a smile on her face, she woke the men and brought them into the house for one of the best night’s rest she’d ever had, curled up between their larger, warm and soothing bodies. Something that, she had to admit, was becoming increasingly more difficult to live without.
Chapter Thirteen
Kieran’s heart was light as a feather. Nolan had promised Lore a day for the three of them, a day where the world wouldn’t exist, and damn if he hadn’t delivered. The sun was shining, Kieran had packed a scrumptious and luxurious picnic lunch and snacks for them, and the field of green grass their picnic blanket sat on could have been on another planet for how otherworldly and solitary it was. It had taken Nolan days to find the perfect place to bring their Lore, a place where she could let go and forget their everyday lives. A place where she could truly learn to trust them to catch her if she fell. It was a magical place, an isolated field of cool grass and warm wind. Kieran had always known his lover had the heart of a poet, but when Nolan first described this place, Kieran could have wept at the picture he painted.
The day had been peaceful. They’d told Lore to be ready at seven in the morning, wearing clothes to relax in, nothing prim and proper allowed. No tightly buttoned collared shirts or pencil skirts to constrict her movement. She’d obeyed and worn a white cotton T-shirt with jean shorts and a pair of old slip-on canvas sneakers. Simp
licity had never looked so sexy.
The hard part came when they told her to trust them before she asked where they were taking her. Kieran had expected a fight, knowing how much she valued holding the reins, unable to place even the planning of her day completely in their hands. After telling her to let them take care of the details, she’d opened her mouth as if to speak, a pensive frown marring her features. But before she uttered a word, she caught herself and snapped her mouth shut. Her red lips pursed, and she stared at them for a long moment, debating something inside her head Kieran desperately hoped would come out on the better side of the line. Miraculously she closed her eyes and nodded, agreeing with their planned surprise. She didn’t ask a single question pertaining to their day trip. Instead, she played DJ in the car and chose randomly hilarious songs from the ’80s and ’90s, turning the car into a karaoke session and setting the carefree mood for the rest of the day. The drive was a portal, transporting them to a different plane of existence, one where they didn’t have burdens of their past or secrets weighing them down. Or maybe they traveled to a place where those secrets could be set free, their worries dissolved into dust, and something else—something stronger—could take their place.
After they parked and hiked for fifteen minutes off the trail of the local reserve, Nolan stopped them and pointed to the wide-open space of the field. The sky stretched on beyond the breadth of Kieran’s imagination, unencumbered by clouds or fog. It was just the big ol’ blue, the sun, and the grass to keep them company for the day. Lore turned back to them in an innocent glee Kieran had never seen before, a laugh of amazement bursting from her chest. She turned back to the field and ran, shucking her shoes in favor of being barefoot, her arms stretched wide. Her feet barely skimmed the ground as she dashed around in sporadic patterns, exploring this otherworldly place, a land of peace and joy where the real world couldn’t penetrate. Her black hair was wild and free, blowing in the wind as she cartwheeled on the grass and beckoned them to join her. It was exhilarating, and Kieran knew he was seeing a true, unencumbered Lore for the first time.
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