Smooth, Allen. One word answers always impress the ladies.
“Me, too. With Tatum coming home, I imagine we’ll be throwing popcorn and cussing out the refs in proper style by the time the game starts.” She cocked her head. “You want to join us? There’s room for one more.”
Oh, no. Hell no. No, no, and triple no. No way could he risk being alone with them, especially not in a house with a bed just down the hall. He was a man, for Christ’s sake. He might have a huge amount of willpower to draw on, but a man could only put up with so much before hormones started overtaking brain cells. No way could he take that risk. But how to get out of it without offending her?
“Uhh…”
She pressed on, her voice cajoling. “Come on, it will be fun. You’ll have a chance to hang out with Tatum before we get shuffled into work mode. I know you two will hit it off perfectly.”
That was what he was afraid of. He swallowed, hard, the hamsters in his brain working overtime to come up with a solution.
Time for a distraction.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course, Allen. Anything.” Sidri smiled encouragingly.
He paused, took a deep breath, and blurted, “How long have you and Tatum been a couple?”
Mortified, Allen cringed, waiting for her anger. She’d never spoken of Tatum as her lover, making it clear she preferred to remain discreet. What if she hated him for bringing attention to their relationship? What if she got offended?
But she surprised him with a short bark of laughter. “You want the short answer, or the long one?” she asked with a mischievous grin.
He blinked. “Uh…both?”
“Fair enough. Short answer? We’re not.”
Allen swallowed hard and grated, “And the long answer?”
She shrugged. “More like friends with benefits.”
He sat back, not sure what to say. Sidri sighed. “Look, I understand why you ask. He is my best friend, and you’re perceptive enough that I’m sure you saw the connection between us this morning.” He nodded grimly. She went on, studying his expression earnestly. “We’re not a couple. Never have been. But if you’re asking if we’ve ever had sex, then the answer is yes.”
“Why?”
She cocked her head. “Why have we had sex? Have you seen him?”
That startled a laugh out of him. He shook his head. “Why aren’t you a couple? Why aren’t you together instead of…”
“Friends with benefits?” she supplied with a wicked smile. Then she sighed again. “My relationship with Tatum is…complicated.”
“Uh, okay,” he stammered lamely. What was he supposed to do with a statement like that?
Sidri quirked her lips in a half smile. “I see the wheels turning in your head. Ask. What do you want to know?”
Allen closed his eyes a moment. He did want to know, and she seemed willing to share tonight. He might never get another opportunity like this one. He was leaving, after all. The thought brought a lump to his throat and burn behind his eyes, so he shoved it back immediately. Blinking, he fixed his gaze on Sidri’s open, welcoming expression.
“How long have you two been…seeing each other?” He couldn’t think of any better way to word it.
She sat back a little, pulling her empty glass close and running a finger along the rim while she thought. “Since we were teenagers, I guess. Certainly since college.”
“But not as a couple?” he asked curiously. “Why not? Were you ever together?”
“Briefly,” she said with a nostalgic little grin. “In high school, we decided to call ourselves boyfriend and girlfriend. But since most of our conversations seemed to be about the people we had crushes on, and who of our classmates we wanted to sleep with, we figured out pretty quick that we would always be friends first and lovers second. We’re just wired that way, I guess.”
She regarded him steadily, gaze clear and open, hiding nothing. “We grew up together, Allen. We did everything together. He was there when I rode my bike without training wheels for the first time—and there when I rode it straight into a tree, and ended up in the emergency room.” Allen grinned, earning a wink. “He was there when I got my first car, when I had my first wreck.”
She paused and looked Allen straight in the eye. “We were each other’s first kiss and each other’s first sex. And yes, at first, we assumed that meant we were supposed to be a couple. But love can have many forms, and just because you love someone doesn’t mean you’re meant to form an exclusive union. So, yes, before you ask, I do love him, and he loves me. But we don’t belong to each other the way a husband and wife should. It’s just not how we’re built.”
Allen leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs out straight under the table and bumping the bottom rung of her chair. Her expression had remained clear and untroubled throughout her recitation, so he knew she was telling the honest truth.
But he could also tell she was holding something back.
“So, what? You date other people, but still sleep with each other? How does that work?”
“We don’t cheat,” Sidri said sharply, green eyes flashing fire. Allen cringed inwardly but kept his expression blank. She scowled. “If either of us is in a relationship that demands exclusivity, we give it. Period. Sex isn’t the only thing we have in common, you know. Just because we’ve had sex in the past doesn’t mean we’ll have it in the future.” Then the anger drained from her expression, and her gaze turned disconcertingly lustful. “But that doesn’t mean we’re not open to sharing,” she said with a little grin.
Allen’s jaw dropped, eyes going wide.
She laughed. “What, you’ve never had a threesome?”
Allen tried, but couldn’t stop the flinch that shook his shoulders. Sidri saw it immediately. Before he could draw away, think of some excuse, she grabbed one of his hands and laced their fingers together. Allen looked up sharply.
Sidri’s smile was genuine, open, and sincere. “I apologize for being so crude. Forgive me if I’ve offended you.”
Swallowing hard, he shook his head. “You didn’t.”
“Then why did you flinch?”
A pause. Then his right shoulder twitched up in a quick shrug. “Wasn’t expecting you to say…that. And I have…” He stopped, squeezed his eyes close for a moment. “History.”
“History,” she repeated, her voice soft. He looked up and found her regarding him thoughtfully. “So you have had a threesome?”
He sighed, tried to remove his fingers from hers. She refused to release him. Squirming, Allen cleared his throat uncomfortably. “No, actually. I don’t…play well with others,” he finally grated out, eyes focused on the table. He refused to look at her face.
“Tell me,” Sidri said quietly. It wasn’t a question, wasn’t a request. It was a demand for information.
Memory assaulted him even as he tried to push it back. He was seventeen, living on Buddy Sorensen’s couch for the last year. Sorensen was a foreman for a small construction company in Beaumont, a fifty-something widower whose sons had both been killed in the line of duty on their first tour as Marines. He caught Allen sleeping under a pile of tarps in his construction yard one morning, shivering in the tattered remnants of his coat and missing his shoes. Rather than run the starving boy off or call the police, the lonely old man had given Allen a hand up.
“You can run my errands around the yard during the day,” the old man said gruffly, voice thick and raspy from his two-pack-a-day habit, “and sleep on my couch at night. Work to earn your keep, and you’ll get three squares a day and hard work to put some muscle back on those scrawny bones. I don’t know where you come from, boy, and the law says I ought to turn you into the state and let them deal with your sorry behind. But I ain’t getting any younger, and your legs are stronger than mine. Long as you work for it, you gotta place to stay and food to eat.”
Then his hard blue gaze pinned Allen motionless. “But you bring one needle into my house, bring one joint,
one pill, and your ass is back on the street where you come from. Got me?”
A year after that life-changing conversation, and Allen had never once betrayed the man who probably saved his life. He wasn’t attending high school with the other kids his age, but he’d put on enough weight and developed enough muscle that few people noted his relative youth. And by that point, he’d given up hope of having anything close to a “normal” teenage experience.
Until he met Sonya. She was his age, a student at the nearby high school and the daughter of one of the rivet men who worked for Sorensen. She thought Allen attended the private high school that also served the neighborhood, never dreaming he could be a runaway. She made him feel like a normal, everyday teenager, and for that he loved her desperately.
One night, about six months after they started dating, he’d taken her to a movie for their weekly date night. It was supposed to be a private meeting, but several of her school friends showed up at the theatre, and she’d invited them to come along. Allen didn’t mind—too much—because hanging out with her friends let him pretend he was just like her, with nothing more weighing on his mind than the upcoming chem test or the score from the latest high-school football game. For that night, he actually felt like one of them.
Afterward, he and Sonya were walking back to Sorensen’s place for a little alone time when one of her guy friends decided to tag along. Taylor was a jock, all teenage testosterone and bull-necked strength. Sonya explained they had lived on the same street most of their lives, so he would walk with them until he reached the turn-off. But instead of doing so, he followed them all the way to Sorensen’s tiny house and invited himself inside with them.
Allen was all set to protest, ready to kick the asshole out on his butt and spend some time alone with his girlfriend when Sonya wrapped her fingers around his biceps and shot him a pleading look. “Let him stay,” she begged in that silky purr that did so many wonderful things to his seventeen-year-old hormones. “Just for a bit.”
Grudgingly, Allen consented. He left the two of them sitting on the couch while he went to the fridge and fished out a couple of sodas and grabbed a glass of water for himself. Then he stood with his back to the living room for a long moment, fighting the tension that knotted his shoulders and the headache growing behind his eyes.
He had no reason to be upset right now. Girls had guy friends all the time. Just because Sonya wanted that dickhead to hang out with them when they were supposed to be spending the night alone didn’t mean anything bad was going on. He needed to get over himself, get back out there, and make sure that jackass realized Sonya belonged to him. The fuckhead.
Allen turned around quickly and marched back around the ugly green couch that doubled as his bed. Sonya sat in the middle, far too close to Taylor for Allen’s comfort. He shoved the cold soda can in Taylor’s hand, plunked his glass of water and Sonya’s Sprite on the coffee table, and threw himself down on her opposite side. Claiming her hand, he aimed a glare at the gate-crashing bastard and started to tell him to get the hell out.
That was when Sonya stood, turned, and straddled Allen’s lap. His cock went rock-hard in his jeans, pressed up against her cotton-covered pussy. She wore a light summer dress, the sunny yellow fabric hiking up around her hips as she jammed her knees into the couch cushions on either side of him. Stunned, suddenly horny beyond belief, Allen immediately forgot what he’d been about to say and dragged her down for a mesmerizing kiss. Lost in her lips, her smell, and the softness of her body pressed against his, he’d almost forgotten they had an audience.
And that’s when Taylor spoke. “Oh, yeah, just like that. Fuck, I love the way you always know just how to touch me.”
Since the words made no sense, Allen opened his eyes and glanced to the right. And that was when he realized Taylor was sitting right next to him, the fly of his jeans open with his cock hanging out. And Sonya’s small fingers were wrapped around his girth, jerking for all she was worth even as she rubbed her pussy against Allen.
For a moment, the sight had him mesmerized, lust pounding through his veins. Then he found himself doused in a haze of red rage.
He stood straight up, dumping Sonya to the floor with a startled yelp. With one hand, he reached down and hauled Taylor to his feet. The other he drew back into a fist. He put every ounce of power he had into that punch, connecting with the bastard’s jaw hard enough to break bone and sending him down in a heap, spitting blood everywhere.
Allen didn’t bother acknowledging the pitiful moans from either of his betrayers. He reached down and dragged his now-ex-girlfriend up by the arm, yanking her bodily across the floor until he reached the foyer. Then, he opened the front door and shoved her outside so hard she lost her footing and did a face-plant into the sidewalk.
“What the fuck, man?” Taylor yelled, wiping blood from his chin.
Allen stalked over to his ex-girlfriend’s lover, grabbed the front of his shirt, and hauled him across the room. With one push, he tossed the much larger boy outside with Sonya and then stood there, watching them with cold, cold eyes as they cussed him out. Then he slammed the door in both their faces.
That was when the rage cleared, and Allen realized what he’d done. Hurt two people in the blink of an eye. Mortification, horror, and self-hatred burned in his gut for months afterward.
He never spoke to either one of them again. Sonya tried to corner him, but Allen adamantly refused all contact. He couldn’t explain the immediate, overwhelming rage that had washed through him the moment he realized his girlfriend was touching another man right there next to him. It wasn’t the first time he lost control of himself in the heat of the moment. It wasn’t even the worst. But that night taught him he couldn’t trust himself to act rationally, no matter how much he cared about the people with him. It was a hard lesson but one he learned down to the marrow of his bones.
He couldn’t share. That knowledge had wormed its way into his soul that day, and he knew without a doubt that no matter how turned on he might be by the thought, the actual act would turn him into an unthinking, possessive asshole. He couldn’t risk putting himself or anyone he cared about in that position ever again.
Allen stopped there, Sidri’s continued silence echoing in his mind. There was more he could have told her about his past—much, much more—but he didn’t have the stomach to tell her that much of it yet. What he’d revealed was bad enough. So he just waited for the condemnation he knew was coming.
He deserved every foul word she was about to throw at him. It almost made him feel better, in a sick, twisted sort of way—after hearing the story of Allen’s uncontrollable rage, Sidri would probably welcome his resignation in her in-box come Monday. He sucked in a deep breath, breathing it out slowly, and waited for the axe to fall.
“So, let me get this straight,” Sidri said quietly. “You were about to get it on with your girlfriend when you heard your friend say…” She trailed off, one eyebrow raised.
Why was she making him repeat it? Allen swallowed hard. “Not my friend. Hers. And what he said was, ‘Oh, yeah, just like that. Fuck, I love the way you always know just how to touch me.’” Even years later, the words still burned like acid in his mouth.
Sidri nodded. “So, I take it that, up until that moment, you had no idea your girlfriend was cheating on you?”
Chapter 7
Allen froze. “What?”
Sidri leaned forward again, elbows resting on the table while she regarded him thoughtfully. “How else would she already know how he liked to be touched, Allen? I assume she hadn’t dated him before dating you?”
He shook his head, thunderstruck. “She said I was her first,” he grated softly. “Her only.”
Sidri snorted. “Obviously not. Seems to me like she and her so-called friend were getting it on behind your back, and for quite some time by the sound of it. No wonder you got so upset. I’d be pissed, too, if I was in the middle of kissing my boyfriend and suddenly looked up to find him fingering another c
hick that I had no idea he’d slept with before.”
Allen’s head swam, his equilibrium completely upended. “No, you don’t understand. They wanted a threesome…”
“Did they?” Sidri pursed her lips. “A threesome implies all three participants are aware of what’s going to happen between them. You said you’d forgotten the guy was there, which means you certainly didn’t invite him to join you. You said you looked over to find your girlfriend’s fingers wrapped around this guy’s cock, right?” Allen couldn’t help another flinch as he nodded. “And you didn’t invite him to sit down?” Headshake. “Or tell her she could touch him while she kissed you?” Another headshake.
Sidri squeezed his fingers, her eyes going soft with sympathy. “Then it seems to me that you were under the impression that you were about to get busy with your girlfriend, and she decided to invite her secret lover to the party without asking permission. You look up and realize she’s touching another guy, whom you probably assumed would have the decency to leave when you two started making out. And then, on top of that shock, the guy freely admits he’s already slept with her before, and probably on multiple occasions. No wonder you saw red.”
It made sense. God help him, everything she said made sense. And the more he thought about it, the more he compared his memories of rage with the logic of her words, the more he knew she was right. He’d been so wrapped up in his own emotions, so disgusted with himself for losing control, he’d never stopped to wonder why he got so mad in the first place. All these years he’d blamed himself, when it turned out he’d had every right to get pissed off.
The revelation floored him. Allen sat there, staring at Sidri with his mouth hanging open.
“You weren’t overreacting to being part of a threesome,” she said, voice soft and eyes certain. “You found out your girlfriend was cheating on you. That’s more than enough reason to flip your lid. I would. So would Tatum.” Sidri loosened their fingers enough that she could caress his palm, the spaces between each digit. Allen shivered.
Demons Within [For Love of Authority] (Siren Publishing Ménage and More) Page 7
