Callie, Unwrapped

by Amy Jo Cousins

  “God, I missed this,” she said before she could think better of admitting it.

  “My magic hands.” He sounded smug. The hands in question pushed her further forward as they slid down her spine, thumbs pressing to each side of her vertebrae.

  She snorted.

  “No. Your willingness to trade back rubs for sex.”

  The knots in her neck muscles were melting like taffy and Callie was feeling much more I-don’t-give-a-shit about the noises she was making as Gabe stroked and smoothed his hands over her. The heat in her belly pooled thickly with the growing need to be touched. Her eyes were barely slits, staring blindly at the floor, her long hair curtaining her face, when the toes of a pair of dark brown leather boots stepped in close to the bar stool.

  “Hey now.” Kate’s voice was already familiar. A gentle hand fell on the back of her neck. “How’s our girl?”

  “Run your fingers through her hair. Think you’ll find out.”

  Callie hugged her knees and braced herself, knowing what was coming and cursing Gabe under her breath for never forgetting a goddamn thing that involved sex.

  Kate’s fingers combed through her long hair, separating strands and trailing through them until Callie could see the ends drop off Kate’s fingertips. She could feel the tug of each individual hair on her scalp and the tiny, sharp pains when Kate hit a snag or the tangle of crossed waves of hair. Every nerve from her scalp down the length of her spine to the top of her ass fired awake and she shivered, knowing they could see. Knowing they could feel her skin quiver and her back curve under their hands.

  Kate brought her hands back up and sank her fingers into Callie’s hair again. But this time she scraped her nails against the sensitive skin of Callie’s scalp, hard enough to leave tingling trails over the crown of Callie’s head. Gabe’s hands settled at her hips and dug in hard, his thumbs pushing almost to the point of pain at the base of her spine. She pressed her lips together but couldn’t keep it in.

  “Fuuuuuck,” she groaned out, fingers clenched on her kneecaps. She loved having someone’s hands in her hair, as Gabe clearly remembered. The same way that a light touch on her lower back made her skin tingle until her ass clenched and the way she remembered thinking she could come if her lover would just keep sucking and stroking and licking her breasts. Only one thing made it even better.

  “Slide off for a sec, Kate.”

  Gabe’s hand felt larger and harder in comparison as he wrapped it tight about most of her hair, strands still hanging down from her temples. He twisted.

  And pulled.

  “Ahhh!’

  She hoped the soft cry didn’t travel far, but kept her eyes closed now as Gabe forced her to sit up, not wanting to see if he was making a spectacle of her in this very public place. Gabe leaned in close and spoke quietly near her ear.

  She could hear the smile in his voice.

  “Are you ready to play, Callie?”

  There was only one answer.

  “Yes.”

  She felt more than heard Gabe’s chuckle, her eyes still shut. Then his mouth was on hers, the faint scrape of stubble abrading her skin as he dragged his lips back and forth against hers. Her stomach dipped and rolled and every nerve in her system fired as he tested her bottom lip with his teeth and tugged. The tiny sting vanished when he licked her lip before pulling away.

  “Put your hand on me.” His breath feathered over her face. It took her a moment, then heat exploded on her face and she snapped her eyes open. Even the tips of her ears were on fire and Gabe was right there. She shivered. And obeyed.

  He was thick and long and more than halfway hard beneath his jeans, and her hand closed around him reflexively. Memories washed over her, sensory black holes that sucked her into the feel of him sliding into her, the first few moments of pain from his size hitting her system like a drug, because her body knew what that pain meant. Pleasure. Heat. A slow grind or a hard fuck and a building pressure that would break her into a million pieces.

  She slid her hand down the length of him to the tip and scraped her fingernails across the denim there until Gabe shivered too and pressed his hand over hers, pushing against her palm.

  She leaned forward and kissed him, opening her mouth until his tongue surged into her mouth and every squeeze of her hand sparked a bruising attack on her lips. She dug her free hand into Gabe’s hair and pulled him close, closer. God, yes, she still wanted this man.

  Kate’s words had her sitting up straight again and pressing her hands to warm flushing cheeks when they finally registered.

  “Didn’t she tell you yet? What we’re playing?”

  The other woman grinned and spun the wooden triangle rack she held around her index finger.

  “I think we distracted her.” Gabe rocked the hand tangled in her hair, making her head tilt from side to side, and then let her go. He moved to where Kate stood and leaned back against the pool table, the edge pressing into the back of his thighs. He reached out with one hand and slid it under the back of Kate’s shirt, grabbing the waistband of her jeans and tugging her back until her ass pressed against his crotch.

  “Callie?”

  Kate’s eyes were wicked. Callie could almost feel Gabe’s fingers sliding down over her own ass as she watched him touch her. The muscles in her own back and shoulders were loose and warm and her skin tingled from having had so many hands on her. So many lips. She was a little dizzy.

  “Tell Gabe what I told you to say.”

  Shit. She’d forgotten about that.

  Callie cleared her throat. Felt her face heat.

  “That we’re going to play cutthroat. And the winner.” She lost her breath for a second, light-headed with want but so, so self-conscious as she remembered Kate’s exact words. As if she could forget. They were seared on her brain, burned into her skin like a brand. She swallowed and continued at a near-whisper. “The winner gets to decide.”

  Gabe wrapped his arm around Kate and watched from over her shoulder. Callie saw Kate relax back into his body. Using his cheek to brush pieces of her mussed hair back, he laid open-mouth kisses along the length of Kate’s jaw, his eyes locked on Callie the entire time.

  “Decide what, Callie?” Kate asked.

  Every time one of them said her name it made her shiver.

  “Who fucks who. First.”

  She felt her pussy clench, actually aching with the cramp of desire, and had to remind herself to breathe. She needed to move, to do something to break the spell of this moment before she passed out from nerves and need, but she was locked in place, waiting for them to release her.

  Kate lifted her arm in a curved, elegant gesture and then dropped her hand holding the triangle until she was extending the rack and holding it out to Callie.

  “Rack ’em, lady.”

  Callie felt like a puppet with her strings suddenly cut. She sagged in her seat for a moment and then stood up, lifted the rack off of Kate’s outstretched finger, and practically race-walked to the end of the table. She pulled balls from the pockets closest to her and corralled the ones rolled to her by Gabe and Kate, who emptied the rest. The rhythm of dropping the stripes and solids in the maple triangle, picking them up and putting them down in new spots, balancing the placement so as to randomize the scatter of balls after the break, was soothingly mindless. A task she could complete without thinking about it, which was probably good because there wasn’t a working brain cell left in her head. Bantering with these two felt pretty much how she imagined mainlining heroin would feel. A pure rush of pleasure that blocked out every other thought or sensation.

  She looked down and realized that she’d set up the rack for a game of eight ball. Shit. She speedily rearranged the rack for cutthroat, then shook it forward and back sharply, tucking her fingertips inside the edge to brace the balls in a tight triangle once they snapped into place.

  Ha. A triangle. She looked up. Gabe and Kate were chalking their cues. Kate threw her head back and laughed, almost certainly because Ga
be had made some kind of comment about the phallic nature of their gestures. She smacked him on the arm with an open palm and left a ghost-like handprint in white that made Gabe scowl. Kate had evidently chalked her hands before her cue. Callie looked back down at the rack that she’d automatically shaken and nudged over the circular sticker that marked the precise location of the top of the rack.

  It wasn’t often that life smacked you so blatantly in the face with its symbolism.

  Cutthroat. One of the few pool games for three players.

  She felt suddenly lucky as hell to be here with these two. A twinge of guilt ran under that general glow of happiness though. She hadn’t given a damn about who Kate was as a person when she and Gabe had first started teasing and then seriously exchanging words about this experiment in fucking and friendship. The truth was she still wanted him. Had never stopped, not even when she’d broken her own heart over him or in the first days of her marriage. But she’d never even flirted with dragging a bare toe along the line in the sand between ‘old friends who were once lovers’ and ‘old friends who might be lovers again’ during those years. Now, however, she was ready to stomp and kick that line until it was unrecognizable. And this slowly unfolding realization she’d had, that there was nothing holding her back anymore, that she could touch and stroke and suck and lick who she wanted, whenever she wanted, had sparked with a little thrill at the idea of getting naked with a woman for the first time in years.

  Who that woman was hadn’t really mattered. It was enough that Callie wanted Gabe and could have him. That he’d promised she would like Kate and that the turn-on of this threesome would overcome the awkwardness of their being strangers to each other. She hadn’t worried about Kate’s feelings, her thoughts and opinions as a person who was going to watch her boyfriend with another woman, or who might be fucking that woman herself just to please him. Callie was pleasing herself with the arrangement and hadn’t given a thought to anyone else. In retrospect, this night had contained the possibility of things going so very, very wrong.

  She felt herself smile and shook her head. Imagined calling Kate up in the spring and asking for help picking out something more exotic than petunias and marigolds for her porch railing planters.

  Sometimes you got damn lucky in life.

  “Callie. Finish racking that break or I’m going to beat your ass. And I don’t mean on the pool table.” Kate shouted out from the far end of the pool table, sticking out her tongue and crossing her eyes, teasing. Callie laughed.

  “I wish,” she sassed back and then yelped as Gabe walked behind her and landed a firm smack on her ass. It stung for a moment and then mellowed into a warm heat on her skin as he bent over the table, helping her perfect the rack as if that had been his objective all along.

  “That can be arranged.”

  She shivered and laughed at the same time. Lifting the rack smoothly without jostling the balls, she bowed in Kate’s direction.

  “Lag for break?” she asked.

  “You bet.”

  They took turns hitting the cue ball down the table and off the far bank, trying for the perfect speed to make it bounce and return as close to the rail as possible without touching. To her dismay, Callie won the break.

  “Damn.” She chalked up and frowned. “I hate breaking.” Before Gabe could say anything, she put her hand in the air. “I know, I know. Put my hips into it. Shut up.”

  He grinned. “I was gonna say, put your ass into it, but close enough.”

  “Ha ha. What a surprise, that you’re thinking about my ass.” She bent over and braced her hand on the rail, curling her index finger over the cue.

  “Don’t be silly. We’re all thinking about your ass,” Kate said, making Callie’s hand on the cue stutter.

  “Stop it, you two. Or this is going to suck.” She rolled her eyes. “Don’t even go there.”

  The other two giggled like children. One of them muttered something using the word suck. Callie pulled her elbow all the way back, cocked her hips, and slammed her whole body forward through the cue stick and into the white ball.

  The table exploded.

  Stripes and solids scattered so fast, rocketing off the rails and each other, that she couldn’t follow the action. She heard at least one ball drop into a pocket.

  “Yes!” She shot her fist into the air. “Now that’s a break!”

  When the balls stopped rolling, the seven, eleven and fourteen were sunk. She accepted Gabe and Kate’s congratulations with a bow and claimed the table again.

  “That makes me little ones.” She set about protecting the one through five balls by lining up a shot that took out one more of the middle group and left most of her balls still poorly set up for the others’ shots.

  Gabe sent Kate ahead of him to the table with a “Ladies first,” then joined Callie by their drinks. They watched Kate study the table for a minute before setting up her first shot.

  “Can she play?” Callie asked.

  Gabe nodded and smiled slowly.

  “Just you watch.”

  Kate moved around the table with grace and even speed, never wasting a motion or hitting the cue with an ounce more force than necessary. The balls kissed at perfect angles and rolled smoothly across the green felt, dropping one after the other into the pockets.

  “My girl can play.”

  “Yes, she can.” And, because of this night and the words already laid down between the three of them, there was heat under her words. Gabe rested his hand on the back of her neck and squeezed. Callie arched her spine just a bit, reflexively.

  Strange how it felt so natural still, as if her body had never forgotten how she melted under this man’s hands. Gabe rubbed his thumb against the corner of her jaw and her pulse beat faster. She opened her mouth to inhale, needing more air.

  In front of them, Kate was stretched all the way across the table, one toe barely touching the floor, her other leg thrust out behind her for balance. Her left hand made a high bridge, only fingertips on the felt, as she attempted to shoot over the fifteen ball where it blocked the cue. It was a terrible shot but the only one she had, and Kate huffed in audible frustration as she gave it a go.

  A miscue moved the fifteen with the barrel of her cue and sent the white ball spinning uselessly to the side rail. She grimaced.

  “No surprise there. You’re up, Gabe.”

  He released Callie’s neck and took up his cue. Kate came over to where she stood. Gabe capped his cue with the small blue chalk square and spun it back and forth.

  “Did you leave me anything? And what am I?”

  Callie eyed the table, easily spotting that the middle set of numbers, six through ten, had the most balls left on the table. That would be Kate. Which made Gabe…

  She tried hard to keep the chuckle out of her voice when she spoke.

  “Yeah, I believe you’re big balls, Gabe.”

  “I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

  “Like we need flattery to get anywhere with you.” Kate’s retort made her giggle.

  Gabe took in the table. His eyes widened suddenly before narrowing as he glared in mock threat at Kate, who stuck her tongue out at him.

  “You brat. You tried to take me out.”

  The fifteen was the only high ball left on the table.

  Kate slung an arm around Callie’s waist and lifted her glass in a toast. Callie grabbed her own pint off the rail and clinked it in solidarity.

  “Chicks rule. We’re coming after you.”

  He set the chalk square on the edge of the table and leaned over for his first shot. Looked back over his shoulder at the two of them with a wicked grin.

  “Good luck. Just know you’re gonna pay for that later. Both of you.”

  Callie shivered. Kate’s hand, wrapped around her hip, squeezed tight, but she didn’t look up. Her warmth was pressed against Callie’s side, the smell of her skin sultry and citrusy. Callie felt her breasts rise as she inhaled deeply through her nose, a little intoxi
cated with the scent of this woman. She drank a swallow of her beer and let the sharp bite of the hops clear her head.

  “He will, you know.” Kate’s words were low enough that Gabe couldn’t hear.

  “Will what?”

  “Make us pay.”

  Callie felt her pulse catch and stutter. Kate never took her eyes off the table, where Gabe was still lining up and sinking one shot after the other, the balls cracking loudly as he used more power and precise spin on the ball to leave himself set up after each shot for the next one.

  “If you want him to, that is. He’s particularly good at making you wait.”

  “I remember,” she murmured.

  That brought a cocked head from Kate and a steady gaze. Her face was close enough that Callie could see the bare hint of lines to come around Kate’s eyes. The merest beginning of a smile crease at the corner of her mouth. From moment to moment, she forgot how much younger Kate was, that knowledge overridden with every sure-handed touch or brash statement full of swagger. It was easy to forget that when she had been this woman’s age she’d been just like her on the surface, but a seething wreck of insecurity and false bravado on the inside.

  She wondered what Kate was like on the inside. Then reminded herself that this was just sex. She might think of it as friendship and fucking, but the truth was she didn’t really know Gabe any longer, and an hour or two of conversation wasn’t going to make her much more than acquaintances with Kate.

  Kate was still watching her, bottom lip tucked between her teeth on one side.

  “What was it like, when you guys were together?”

  Callie paused for a moment. Instead of blocking it off, she let herself remember, truly remember, what it had been like when she and Gabe loved and fought and played together. Remembering was like slipping into an old skin that didn’t quite fit anymore. She wanted to tug at something, to twist and stretch.