Anything But Vanilla
Page 19
Kara had no such problems. She lay on Zach’s right, nestled into the crook of his arm, although, like Ric, she slept facing away from him. However, her back pressed against his side, binding them together, skin to skin. Her blonde hair fanned across the top of his arm. Her lips were slightly parted and shiny. He had more reasons that he could count to be grateful to her, but that wasn’t the emotion he felt while watching her sleep. She’d come to his rescue last night, both in trying to manage his relationship with Ric and in getting him off the causeway. He didn’t recall anyone ever rooting for him to such an extent before.
What he tried not to dwell on was what it might have cost her if he hadn’t held on so tightly while they were in the water. If his grip had faltered, then she might very well have been swept out to sea.
Zach hadn’t feared for himself. From an early age he’d been a strong swimmer. He surfed too, so he’d been battered by bigger waves than those they’d faced last night and still gone back for more another day, whereas his money was on Kara never having swum except in a heated indoor pool.
She murmured softly as he turned to spoon his body against her back. His hand slipped comfortably into the arch formed where her waist flared into the curve of her hip. More women ought to be built like Kara. Maybe they were; it was just that most of the models Ric worked with were stick-thin and not the least bit interested in him, only in getting his lover into the sack. To Kara he was another source of pleasure, not just someone to remove. He hadn’t fully appreciated that until last night. Not that he was a hundred per cent sure her plan was working. It was too early to say. However, Ric was here, and he’d chosen to stay rather than fallen into a torpor.
Zach didn’t know yet if Kara was the sort of woman who appreciated being woken to some tender loving, but he couldn’t resist touching her. His palm stroked back and forth over her hip. The duvet covered most of her form, so he had to rely on his sense of touch to provide him with details. Her skin was delightfully warm, and the cheeks of her arse pleasingly soft, not at all like the muscular glutes Ric owned.
That thought prompted him to roll on to his back again, so that he might reach his other lover and trace a finger over that springy muscle.
Zach sucked his lower lip, his cheeks bunched into a grin as he drew concentric circles over both his lovers’ butts. Despite all the loving they’d done last night, his loins were growing heavy again. Soon enough, his erection would be making a tent out of the duvet.
Kara opened her eyes a moment later. She gave a sleepy yawn. ‘Mm, is that for me?’ Instead of clasping Zach, her hand bumped into Ric’s reaching out to touch him from the other side.
‘Oh!’ They jerked away, rolled, and propped themselves up on their sides on one elbow. They stared at one another across Zach’s chest before wordlessly, and in perfect sync, bowing down to fasten their lips around each of his nipples. Their fingers knit too, around his erection.
Zach revelled in the moment. Though it didn’t stay quite so harmonious for long. Ric started getting a wee bit more demanding, his stroke dictating the rhythm. What’s more, he coaxed Zach on to his side, so that he could nuzzle up tight against his back, and stroke his own erection between Zach’s buttocks.
‘What do you say, Zach, shall we make this a proper morning wake-up?’
Instead of immediately replying, Zach lifted his leg over Kara’s body, which successfully tipped her on to her back, so that he lay above her, looking down into her pretty blue eyes. ‘Absolutely.’ He captured her wrists above her head, and lay against her so that the tips of her nipples brushed against his chest. His erection nuzzled up against her pubic curls. ‘What do you say, Kara?’
‘Come on in and let’s party.’ She smirked.
‘I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.’ He prayed she accepted his words on the many levels he intended, and that she realised he wasn’t doing this purely to rile Ric. He wanted her. Maybe she had something with her crazy plan to form a triad. Maybe they could build a decent relationship as a threesome?
The only uncertainty was whether Ric would accept that. Really? Genuinely? Would opening himself to two lovers be any easier than accepting one? He seemed drawn in at the moment, but that didn’t mean it would last.
Zach brushed his lips lightly over hers. Kara sighed into the kiss, her body relaxed beneath him, thighs parting. The lips of her slit were wet with fresh arousal. She opened up to him, guided the head of his cock into place so that one teeny push would see him seated perfectly between her thighs.
‘Wait up.’ Apparently Ric wasn’t going to sit idly by and be left out. ‘We can do this together.’ He knelt up, straddled both sets of legs, and lined himself up with Zach’s anus. ‘Hold still now.’
Keeping still went against every instinct Zach possessed. The warmth of Kara’s cunt beckoned him from the fore. He had only to slide forward a fraction in order to bury himself inside her and enjoy all the magic that union would bring. At the same time, if he just pushed back a little, then Ric’s cock would stretch open his rear, lighting all the hungry nerve-endings in his arse.
He couldn’t pick, so he stayed absolutely still, save that his prick kept twitching of its own accord.
Slowly, slowly, Ric began to exert more pressure. The wet and slippery head of his cock pressed persuasively against the puckered entrance of Zach’s arse, and each time he pushed, Zach was nudged forward a fraction, so by the time Ric was fully sheathed inside him, Zach’s own stiff cock was fully buried in Kara’s cunt.
He was wedged between them, frighteningly, contentedly so.
Zach released a great sob of joy. Two sets of hands encompassed his hips, directing him, as he began to move, sliding swiftly forward into Kara, then slowly backwards so that he impaled himself upon Ric’s cock.
‘Are you convinced you won’t be content with a mere single lover yet?’ Ric drawled. ‘This is absolutely why we should not be exclusive.’
Zach deliberately kept his mouth tightly closed. He refused to debate the pros and cons of forming a genuine relationship while wedged in this position. Instead, he concentrated on the strange, clinging tightness that filled his rear and the mirrored image of that when the walls of Kara’s pussy hugged his cock. Forward and back, impaled and possessed, until everything became a red blur on the inside of his eyelids, and pleasure surged through him in a loop with no beginning or end. As his senses turned inwards, Zach’s awareness of Kara writhing beneath him, crying out his name as her flesh spasmed around him, became distant and unconnected. Nor did he fully comprehend the increasing urgency of Ric’s strokes, as he drove more deeply, snarling each time their bodies smacked together.
Zach trembled as his climax began to crawl across him. It trembled between his legs, not his arse or his cock. He clenched tight his fists and his bottom, wanting to slow the inevitable. If he just had a hand free to grasp his balls, or squeeze tight the base of his cock, then he might prolong this moment of delicious agony. Sadly, his balance wasn’t good enough to attempt this one-handed.
His belly tensed. Beneath him Kara crooned, and her pussy began to milk him in pulsing strokes. He couldn’t fight that. His seed forced its way up his shaft. His prick jerked, only for Ric to choose that exact moment to withdraw. His hot seed splashed against Zach’s cheeks.
Zach groaned, bereft of the pleasurable intrusion into his rear. He cried out, releasing a hopeless moan, and then lolled against the pillows, his face buried in their cloudy softness, until Kara began to drum against his shoulder in order to get him to move.
‘Never try to tell me we’d be better off as an exclusive couple when my way we can do things like this.’ Ric rolled off the bed and landed on his feet.
His way, Zach thought derisively. Ric was acting like this was his idea. If he genuinely believed that then maybe it would work.
With an enormous effort, Zach lifted his head from the pillow. ‘Only because Kara is special. I wouldn’t want to do it with anyone else.’
‘Hm!’ Ric st
alked towards the bedroom door. ‘I’m going to avail myself of the facilities, and then you can explain to me what the hell happened last night. Kara, I believe, said something about your van having broken down.’
He’d certainly spoiled it now. Reality crashed over Zach like one of the waves that had claimed his ice-cream van. He pulled the duvet over his head.
Kara snuggled up to him. ‘We ought to rise and find out what’s happened. See if it can be salvaged.’
‘I know,’ he said, finding her lips and kissing her. ‘And I will, in just a moment. Shit! You didn’t tell him what happened, did you? He thinks the van is stuck in the bay.’
‘Well, there wasn’t anything he could do about it last night. I didn’t want to spend all night reliving the experience of being half drowned. I thought fucking would be more fun, and I was right. I got repeatedly screwed by two gorgeous men and it was ace.’
‘He’s going to freak when he finds out.’
Her exuberance faded a little. ‘Why would he?’
Zach crawled out from under the duvet scowling. ‘Because his wife drowned, that’s why. I’m going to talk to him.’ He squared his shoulders and made his way to the bathroom. He took a deep breath. Time for a little reality check. What he was about to say wasn’t going to go down well. He guessed it had been optimistic to think everything could be righted by one good shag or even three or four. If it could, the world would be a far happier place. He braced himself for a setback, then opened the door and waded into the steam-filled interior.
* * *
A small group had assembled on the shoreline by the time Kara caught up with Zach and Ric by the Bunker. They’d left her to get dressed, having drained the hot-water tank between them, forcing her to use the immersion heater to warm the water for a shower. They’d been in there a long time, and Ric had emerged grim and businesslike.
‘How’s it going?’ she asked him. Ric stood off to one side in the shelter of the rocks, while Zach dealt with the salvage team.
His blond hair whipped about his face as he turned to acknowledge her. He’d pulled on a fisherman-style cable-knit jumper that he hadn’t had on when he left the cottage. Zach was dressed in a similar assortment of cast-offs. ‘The van’s a total write-off. All the electrics are fried, the engine’s full of seawater and there are barnacles stuck to the dashboard. They’re going to have to winch the damn thing off there. Back two wheels are stuck in the sandbank. I think they’re about to start digging if you want to join in.’
‘No, thanks.’ She really didn’t need to get any nearer to the water than she was currently standing. ‘It’s pretty quiet around here.’ The normal flock of tourists weren’t in evidence. There was only the work crew and a few curious seagulls.
‘Nobody can get across. Well, I say nobody. Some people manage it.’ He nodded towards the shoreline, where a lone figure was negotiating the causeway on foot. ‘Not anyone welcome, mind.’
‘Robin.’ Kara recognised the figure after the wind claimed her hat. Her long mane of red curls was bound by a bun-net, but several corkscrew ringlets still framed her face. She spotted Kara and Ric and immediately waved.
‘Why’s she come across? Doesn’t she have anything else to do?’
Ric’s already weary expression became further drawn around his mouth. ‘I’m going to help dig.’
Keep her away from me is how she translated that. She’d do her best, not that she wanted to talk to Robin either. She’d been hoping to find out what Zach had told Ric about last night
‘This is all a bit exciting, isn’t it?’ Robin crunched across the shingle towards Kara. When they were side by side she turned to look back at the causeway. The front wheels of the ice-cream van were lifted at a forty-degree angle; the back two were buried in sand and mud at the side of the concrete path. ‘What happened?’
‘He broke down.’ Kara said, without elaborating. She pushed her hands into her coat pockets.
‘Oh! Coming across this morning?’
‘No, last night.’
Robin dipped her chin in acknowledgement and then mirrored Kara’s stance, pushing her slender hands into the pockets of her dotted sou’wester. They stood in silence a moment, watching the men in their waders wielding their spades. ‘I guess Zach’s pretty miffed. I suppose the insurance will pay for it. Ric’s looking good. I’m liking the chunky knitwear. It makes him look all masculine and brutish.’
Kara made a non-committal grunt. She actually thought the fisherman’s jumper hid one of his better assets, which was a shame, because the waders kind of drew attention to his arse. For a moment she considered asking Ric to produce a naked fishermen’s calendar, where various gorgeous blokes posed nude in waders with their rods and tackle.
Zach, meanwhile, paced up and down the stretch of causeway by the van with a borrowed mobile phone clamped to one ear. The wind blew an occasional four-letter expletive towards them from his direction. Evidently dealing with the insurance company wasn’t going well.
Kara pulled her phone out of her pocket to check the time. Rather miraculously, a night in the airing cupboard had dried it out. Occasionally it made an odd screech, and the screen remained a bit dim, but mostly it was working.
‘How have you been doing, Kara? We’ve not caught up since you moved in,’ Robin asked, as if the fact they hadn’t spoken was pure chance and not because Kara had actively avoided her.
‘OK.’ Kara started walking. Not because she had anywhere to go, but because she didn’t want to have this conversation. She knew where it would lead, and didn’t want to discuss her relationship with Ric. Unconsciously her feet took her nearer to the shore, though she stopped short of where the foam lapped at the pebbles.
‘Just OK? I was hoping you’d have something a bit more exciting to report. I know you’ve seen a fair bit of him. You’re not telling me there’ve been no developments.’
Kara stopped pacing and turned to look Robin in the eye. ‘Look, what happened before was a mistake. I don’t get off on sharing my private life. Whatever I do with Ric is between me and him.’ She started to move again, only for Robin to catch hold of her arm.
‘Hang on. No. You don’t get to just cancel the agreement like that. We agreed a deal.’
‘No. No, we didn’t.’
‘I was prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt when you were rude last time, but you’re mistaken if you think I’m going to let you fuck around with him if I’m not reaping the benefit.’
Kara remained sure that it was none of Robin’s goddamned business. Implied threats weren’t going to make her back away. Zach needed her to stick around in order for him to get Ric, and she’d enjoyed herself far too much not to want to help. If ultimately she happened to gain something long-term out of it too, well, there were worse commitments to make than being loved by two guys, like marrying her ex. ‘I don’t need your permission to do anything, and nor does Ric.’
She kept moving away from Robin.
‘I know about you, Kara,’ Robin called out. ‘I found out. If you won’t share, you’re out of here, understand me. I’ve contacts.’
She understood the woman was stark raving crazy, so demented in fact that striding out on to the wet sand to help with the digging started to look appealing. Ric came up to her and ushered her back from the van, which, even supported by the crane, was starting to sway precariously.
‘We don’t need you out here. Stay on the shore and keep dry.’
Tears prickled the corners of her eyes. She shook her head and peered glumly at him, wishing he’d put his arms around her and give her a hug. Zach would have known to do so, but he was still on the phone. She hadn’t realised what a fright their swim last night had given her, or how tense looking over their battleground would make her feel.
‘All right.’ Ric planted his spade in the sand between them and leaned on the hilt. ‘What’s going on? Did Robin just say something to you?’
The woman was watching the pair of them with all the zeal of a psy
chotic mediaeval sorceress. If she’d been standing at the top of the cliff instead of the bottom, Kara would have seriously feared for her life. Fuck! How had Ric’s wife died? It wouldn’t surprise her to learn at this point that Robin had pushed her off a ridge. Instead of pursuing that line of thought – he’d warned her off that subject once – she asked, ‘What is it between you and her? Is she really as bat-shit crazy as she sounds?’
Ric raised both brows. Kara couldn’t figure out whether he was surprised by the question or astounded that someone finally agreed with his opinion. ‘I’ve told you how things are. I’m not interested in her. Do you want to tell me what she just said to you?’
Kara swallowed slowly. ‘I’ve been given the “if you can’t share, keep your hands off my property” speech.’
‘Share?’ he queried. His brows dropped, and a frown crumpled his forehead and the corners of his eyes instead. ‘Share what, precisely? There’s nothing between me and her. Never has been. What’s she on about?’
‘She wants me to share the details of our sex life,’ Kara explained.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ He slammed a fist down on the handle of the spade, driving it deeper into the sand. When he looked at Kara, whatever other line of invective he’d intended to utter died on his lips. His eyes slowly narrowed. ‘And have you done that?’
Fuck! She’d screwed up. She knew it even as she opened her mouth to make the confession. God, I’m so sorry, Zach. I really hoped I could make this work for you. ‘Once. She caught me off guard the first time we met.’
‘Jesus, Kara! I thought I could trust you. Have you told her all about Zach and me too?’
‘No, of course not.’
He didn’t seem to hear her. He hefted his spade and went back to his digging with renewed zeal.
Kara watched him go with her mouth hanging open. She’d always known that incident in the bathroom with Robin would come back to bite her on the arse and it just had. She didn’t even have an excuse. She’d known at the time it was stupid but had allowed her libido to get the better of her. Drat! And just when the plan she had for getting him and Zach together had looked so promising.