by Taryn Quinn
She had such expressive eyes. Each nuance of emotion showed up there, a virtual guidebook to her thoughts.
Right now anger brewed in them. Maybe even jealousy. But there was more.
“What’s going on with you?” he asked softly, tightening his hold when her shaking intensified.
She shifted her face away. “I asked you to let me go.”
“You really do want him,” Matt murmured, pressing his fingers into her sensitive skin. But he couldn’t let go. Her scent wrapped around him, fresh like peaches but warmer, sweeter.
Drugging him into forgetting he was supposed to be making her understand.
She set the teapot aside on the small refinished hardwood table. If Tris were there, he’d grab an oven mitt and slide it underneath to protect the wood.
Since he wasn’t, the pot remained.
“I bet you loved it when you realized I’d be out for a while tonight. Plenty of time to rip the rug out from underneath me and use it to whack each other off.”
Since that phrase made him think of a mobster show and not sex, he had to fight back a smile. “Why should you care? You’re not sleeping with either of us.”
“Why should I care? Did you really just ask me that?”
“Yes.” He stepped a fraction closer. “I did. So?”
“How long have you been fucking each other right under my nose?”
Matt swallowed, hard. “Almost a year.”
Her eyes widened, and she whirled out of his grip. “A year? You’re kidding me. There’s no way, just no way you could be—” She clutched her midsection. “There were girls. You’ve been with women since then. I know you have.”
Now he was the one to shrug. “Yeah. We’re still into women too. It’s not an either/or with us.”
“No, it’s screw whatever’s available, right? If it’s some pussy, fine. Or a cock in the ass. What difference does it make?”
“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,” he said, his tone easy. “Have you?”
“God. Only you would turn this into an excuse to talk about sex.” She picked up the teapot and sloshed tea into her favorite cartoon coyote mug.
“Isn’t everything?” He stepped closer and rested his hands lightly on the table on either side of her, effectively boxing her in. She wouldn’t be running from this like she’d run away upstairs.
She drank her tea, swallowing audibly, and didn’t reply.
“So,” he said, moving his face closer. Almost immediately she bristled from the feeling of his breath hot on the back of her neck. Or maybe it was the erection he’d be damned if he would try to hide. “Anal sex. Ever tried it? Ever let a guy slide his dick inside your ass? Stretch you wide open and make you burn from the inside out, until it feels like your whole body’s throbbing, aching for relief. Until you’re begging him to make you come.”
“Have I ever mentioned that to you?” Her voice caught and gave on an impatient breath. “You know I tell you everything. If I’d done…that, you’d know.”
“Obviously we don’t tell each other everything.”
“You don’t. I do.”
“Really.” He reached up to undo the ponytail gathered at the base of her neck. She stiffened, but she didn’t stop him. Interesting. “Except that little thing about you wanting Tristan.” Her gaze bounced to the stairway leading upstairs. “He won’t bother us,” Matt added, tossing aside the band and running his fingers through the silken gold strands.
“How do you know that? And what are you doing? Is leftover lust addling your brain? Christ.” She elbowed him in the gut—without checking her strength—and turned to face him. “I get what you’re doing, you know.” She banged the mug on the table. “You’re trying to get me to forget what I saw. I know your games, Matt. I’ve seen you use your tricks on other chicks. Do you really think I’d fall for them?”
“My games. My tricks. So is that why Tris got in bed with me, you think?” Idly, he twirled a lock of her hair. “You think I coerced him the way you obviously believe I do with women?”
“You got him into bed. Not the other way around. Right. That’s why he was inside you, ramming away.”
“You’ll learn, sweetness, that sometimes the one on the bottom isn’t any less powerful than the one on top.”
Something hot and primal flashed in her eyes, and she firmed her trembling lips. “I wouldn’t know.”
“Huh?”
“I. Wouldn’t. Know. I haven’t been underneath anyone. Or on top. Or any other damn way.”
His breath tripped. Nope. Couldn’t be possible. She wasn’t saying what he thought she was saying.
She couldn’t be a virgin.
Matt searched his memory banks. She’d discussed sex with him lots of times and not in the abstract. He always got the deets if her boyfriends got her off—or if they didn’t. Usually he heard more details than he needed, and he reciprocated in kind.
For nine years, they’d been the kind of close friends where anything went. No detail off-limits.
Except him and Tristan being lovers. From day one, he’d hidden that from her, not knowing how she’d take it. Or knowing precisely and being unwilling to see the judgment in her eyes.
But she wasn’t judging him right now. What lurked in her gaze brought to mind something else entirely.
“What are you saying?” Maybe he’d read her wrong. Didn’t happen often, but it did now and then.
“I’m saying I’ve never had sex. Not all the way.” She reached for her mug and tossed back the rest of the tea, wiping her chin with the back of her hand when some escaped her lips. As if it were on a spring, his cock swelled and stretched for glory. “Maybe I should be like you. More open to all experiences. Find myself a nice whomever and go to town.”
In spite of the tightness in his groin, he grinned. “A nice whomever. Sorry to say, I’m not that indiscriminate.” At her eye roll, he added, “And nice doesn’t have a whole lot to do with what attracts me to someone.”
At least usually. In her case, it did. He’d been attracted to her for years, and the reasons weren’t all physical. She was so funny and sexy and sweet.
Cait was a nice girl. A good girl.
One he’d yearned to taint for so long he’d almost resorted to taping his dick down whenever she was within speaking distance. Another secret withheld between them.
She tipped her head to the side. “So what does? What made you one day look at Tris and say, ‘I want that ass’?” She made a face. “Or vice versa.”
He swallowed and fought the urge to take a step back from the perceptive gaze she trained on him. “Hypothetically,” he began, relieved when she smiled.
It was their little game, the way they revealed things to each other when the topic became too personal. Cait had started it the first time she’d told him about a guy going down on her, and she’d wanted his advice about how to encourage her boyfriend to give her what she wanted. Since then, anytime the conversation turned to intimate topics, they used the word as a signal things were about to get serious.
“Of course.”
“Hypothetically, it may have had to do with us both wanting someone else. At least at first. Now…”
Now everything had changed. If he hadn’t been in love with Tris a year ago—though he was reasonably sure he’d been on the way—he sure as hell was now.
That love was reciprocated, he knew. They didn’t talk about it because they didn’t have to. Like the other shared burden they’d avoided discussing since the first night they’d gotten together.
“Someone else.” She nodded briskly. “Someone I know?”
Matt had to smile. God, she could be so endearingly clueless. “Think you might have met her.”
Pain rolled over her face before she composed it. “So it’s a her?”
“Most definitely.” He reached up to cradle her jaw in his palm. Their gazes clashed and held, the air between them hot enough he expected to smell smoke. “Go take a look in the mirror, Cait.”
<
br /> When her lips fell open, he pressed his advantage and moved in close. He’d waited for this moment, this opportunity, for so long. Maybe it hadn’t been presented to him the way he’d hoped, but he wouldn’t turn away.
If she really didn’t want him, if their occasional flirtations and lingering looks over the years just amounted to the natural offshoot of a guy and a girl spending too much time together, better he know now.
And if he still had any chance of getting her to see another man besides Tristan, he had to make this count.
Instead of going in for the kill, he laid his lips full on hers, absorbing the feel of her beneath him. Erotic images of her being beneath him in other ways filled his mind. Her legs opening for him, locking around his hips as he drove into her until she accepted every inch of him. Until she pleaded for more. Sliding into her so deep that he became part of her, as she became part of him.
He felt her tremble again, but she didn’t shake. The sound that escaped her mouth and slipped into his spoke of pleasure, not fear.
When he extended his fingers into her hair, angling her head backward so he could lick his way inside, she wrapped her tongue around his to invite him in.
Thank God.
The intensity grew quickly, hijacking his plans to go slow. He slanted his mouth over hers and consumed her hungrily, their tongues fighting for dominance while her body revved against his. Her breasts pushed against his chest. Her hands clutched his hips. Their centers locked together. He rocked against the vee of her thighs, and she moaned, her shudder seeping into him while they devoured each other.
How often had he dreamed of the first time he’d taste her? No matter what happened after this, there could be no going back. He’d always remember when she’d tasted of beer and dark excitement, the kind that pushed people to do very bad things.
Like sweeping his arm out and sending the mug on the table clattering onto the floor. Her favorite mug.
Even so the crash barely registered as he picked her up and set her on the table. His patience had vanished in an instant. He hadn’t expected the way her flavor would punch through his system.
He needed more. All of her, raining down his throat.
“I’m only asking because it’s you. Normally I’d say to hell with it and take my shot,” he said, his voice guttural. “I want in those pants of yours, and I’m going to get there. But only if you say yes first.”
To his surprise, she gave him a small smile and rubbed her palm over her wool-clad thigh. “I’m wearing a dress.”
“Is that a yes?”
She paused just long enough to make him want to drop to his knees and say a loud, fervent prayer. “No.” He still hadn’t recovered from her answer when her smile widened. “That’s a hell yes, please.”
He soon found himself on his knees anyway, close enough to her heat to breathe her in. He translated the confusion on her face as he rolled up her dress, revealing her pale legs. No stockings or garters. Just pure, untouched flesh.
Really untouched.
His mouth went dry, and he glanced up to seek her permission again. This wasn’t some random girl he’d hooked up with in a bar. It also wasn’t Tristan, who not only took what he dished out but served it right back up to him.
This was the girl he’d loved so long, platonically and then otherwise, that he hardly remembered the years before she’d come into his life. It felt like she’d always been there.
Always would be.
Trying to get himself back in line, he kissed the inside of her knee. She touched his hair, reaching down to loosen his ponytail like he’d done with hers. She brushed her fingers over the back of his neck, saying more with that one gesture than she could have with a thousand words.
I want you. I trust you. I love you.
He pulled her closer to the edge of the table and registered her heeled boots digging into his ass when she wrapped her legs around him. The wool clung to her skin, but he forced the material out of the way to bare her black and pink panties.
“Polka dots?” he muttered, earning a muffled laugh.
She ran her fingertips over her shoulder. “Matches the bra. Except the bra has cutouts.” Her touch moved to her breasts, narrowing his focus until he groaned and dragged his gaze back to her panties. He reached out to stroke the satin panel between her thighs, closing his eyes at her surprised moan.
Wet. So damn wet.
“I’ve wanted to eat your pussy since you wore that bikini to Tristan’s house party senior year.” He felt her stiffen, but he didn’t stop. If he could put his mouth on it, he could damn well use the word as something other than a curse. “The blue one with the white hearts all over. You were on the couch, spread out asleep after swimming all day, and I saw a little of this.” He tugged on a wispy blonde curl that escaped the confines of her panties. “It made me want to see the rest. To put my tongue right here,” he demonstrated, flattening his tongue against her clit through the fabric, “and make you moan like you are right now.”
Cait’s legs tightened around his back, and her thighs opened farther. “God, I’m so embarrassed. So much for a neat bikini line.”
He stroked the wet curl, then licked it, pulling lightly. She bolted upward as if he’d prodded her with a fiery poker. “I’d figured you’d be shaving now.”
“Waxing,” she corrected, laughing before another lick and press stole her breath.
“Whatever. Mmm, I can taste you even through the fabric. You like having a guy’s tongue here, don’t you?”
“I’m assuming that’s a rhetorical question.” Her voice had lowered to match his.
He grinned and nipped her soft inner thigh. She whimpered just as he’d wanted. Then he went to work with his fingers, sliding them up and down so that the material soon became saturated with her juices. He yanked her as close as he could get her and buried his face between her thighs, inhaling her with every stab of his tongue against her eager, swollen clit. She pulled on his hair—even harder than Tristan, for God’s sake—and rubbed against his mouth, grinding hard, shameless in her pursuit of her orgasm.
When he’d imagined her in bed, he’d guessed she’d be like this. Not some limp rag doll waiting to be pleased, but a willing, excited participant.
Completely complicit in her own sensual implosion.
What he hadn’t guessed was that she’d come with a long, ragged whimper with hardly any stimulation at all. Her heels beat against him, and her release poured through the fabric, a thick honey he couldn’t swallow fast enough. Through it all, she clutched his hair, bringing him against her, so close that the pulse of her clit beat against his lips.
“Better than I thought,” he whispered, breaking the silence once her panting had subsided.
He sucked in a breath and relished the perfume of her orgasm. He’d given her that. That sweet, tangy scent belonged to him now too.
She nudged him back with a hand on his shoulder, her expression way too intense considering the climax she’d just had. “I was going to ask you or Tris to take my virginity,” she said after a moment, still sounding breathless.
“Oh.” As the full weight of that sank in, he rocked back on his feet. “Either of us? Like whichever tool comes to hand?”
“No. Of course not.” She pursed her lips as if he’d just said something terribly offensive. “I figured we’d decide. As a group. Like we decide everything.” Her throat moved. “We’re best friends.”
“Best friends, right. Makes sense.” He shook his head. Wow, she’d taken her organizational planner life a little too far. “So you’re interviewing candidates. At least you’ve narrowed down the possibilities to two.”
“You’re making it sound—”
“Insane?” Matt shook his head. “No, absolutely not. It’s perfectly rational to ask your best friends which one wants to shoulder the responsibility of popping your cherry.”
“Shoulder? Excuse me? Who just had his tongue in my…”
“Pussy,” he said patiently. “
A word you have no problem using when you’re pissed.”
She took a breath and didn’t answer.
“And my tongue was on top of it, not even in. I didn’t get that far.” He ignored the flush that crept up her neck and kept going. “You’re a keg ready to blow, short stuff, and just because you’ve decided whichever one of us is willing to do the deed is good enough doesn’t mean we’ll just go along.”
“Right. Sure. You’ll gladly screw each other, but me? Forget it. Even though you both supposedly wanted me, which is complete crap, and I’m sorry I believed it for even a minute.” She hopped off the table. “Thanks for the orgasm. I appreciate you favoring me with your speedy tongue.”
Regret jabbed his gut. He hadn’t meant to hurt her, but dammit, didn’t she get that he’d been hurt? How could she make sleeping with her into something they’d discuss as casually as which movie to rent?
“Cait, wait.”
“I’m tired, and I’m going to bed. We’re done talking. As for what happened with you and Tris, I’m done talking about that too. I don’t want you to tell him I saw you in bed tonight.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because it’s over.” She gave him a thin smile. “Hope you’re very happy together.”
“Look, I’m sorry,” he called after her, but she didn’t halt her rush upstairs.
Matt pulled out a chair and slumped into it.
God, could this mess get any worse?
CHAPTER 3
Cait didn’t sleep. She curled up in the center of her bed, staring at the wall that separated her from Tristan. Matthew’s set of rooms was on her other side.
Right there, but so far.
In the past, she’d loved knowing her guys were only feet away. Not anymore. Now that knowledge was like a dozen knives slashing open her heart.
They were lovers. They undressed each other, kissed, touched each other’s naked bodies. And then, after all that, one of them thrust in the other’s ass and—
And then what? Did they curl up afterward and murmur endearments? Engage in pillow talk? Or mutter something manly and strut away?
Letting out a soft groan, she covered her face. Her nipples felt as hard and hot as burning coals, and her pulse had yet to stop racing, hours after her fight with Matt.
