Three of a Kind

by Jess Dee

  Alex buried his head in her neck, gasping for air. He waited until the last flutters of her orgasm died away altogether before withdrawing from her. While she struggled to find her breath and her bearings, he lifted her off the table and carried her to his bed. Instead of tucking her tenderly beneath the covers as she’d expected, he ducked down, slipped his head between her legs and licked her pussy.

  It took all of ten seconds under his clever tongue and Megan convulsed again.

  Dear God, how had he known to do that?

  She must have asked the question out loud because Alex answered her.

  He chuckled as he disposed of the condom. “The last time I tried it, you had four orgasms in a row.”

  “Ahh.” She nodded, breathless, quite unable to say any more.

  Alex slipped into bed with her and pulled the doona over them both. With the last ounce of energy she possessed, she rolled over and snuggled into his chest.

  He wrapped an arm around her and kissed the top of her head. “I love you, baby,” he whispered into her hair.

  Megan’s heart filled to bursting. She smiled a tired, satisfied, happy smile and before she gave in to the tempting tug of sleep, she whispered back, “I love you too, Desmond.”

  The light woke her. She yawned and stretched and instinctively reached for Alex. Her body was already primed for the long, sensual lovemaking she’d forfeited on the table. Her breasts were heavy with desire and her pussy wet with wanting.

  She adored waking up beside him every morning. Loved the expectation of what she knew lay ahead. He’d roll her onto her back and slowly seduce her. Kiss every inch of her body until she writhed beneath him, begging for more.

  Perhaps today she’d take on the role of aggressor. She’d explore his body, lick every sleek muscle in his chest and taste every beautiful inch of his male flesh.

  Searching for him with her hand she found nothing but his pillow.

  Lazily she opened an eye. His side of the bed was empty.

  Megan frowned. She’d spent almost every night at Alex’s place since they’d met, and not once had she woken up alone. She didn’t like the solitude one bit.

  “Alex?” Her voice rasped in her throat, not quite as awake as the rest of her body.

  “Over here.”

  She turned to look for him and blinked against the glare from the bedside lamp. So, not morning after all.

  “Hey, you.” She smiled at the sight of him.

  He sat naked in the blue armchair against the wall, the same chair he’d fucked her senseless on just a couple of nights ago. One foot rested on his thigh. His elbows were propped on the arms of the seat, and his fingers were steepled together.

  “What’s the time?”

  Alex’s gaze flickered to the clock on his side of the bed. “A little after two a.m.”

  She scrunched her eyes, trying to clear away the sleepiness. “Whatcha doing all the way over there?”

  “Thinking.”

  “’Bout what?” Did he have to think at all? Couldn’t he just climb back into bed so they could start that slow, sexy dance of love?

  “About my name.”

  She yawned again, and this time when she stretched, she deliberately let the covers fall down to her waist. Perhaps an eyeful of her breasts, nipples hard from wanting him, would tempt him back under the doona with her. “What about your name?”

  “It’s Alex.”

  “Huh?”

  “My name. It’s Alex.”

  She laughed. “I know that, dummy. Now come here and kiss me and make me scream your name out loud.” She patted the empty space beside her.

  “You called me Desmond.”

  “What?”

  “Last night. Just before you fell asleep.”

  Megan sat up, the last wisps of sleep clearing from her head. “You’re kidding me.”

  How the hell could she mistake the two of them? They were chalk and cheese. Alex all steady, focused determination and Des as informal and relaxed as they came. Different as two men could be, and she’d confused them?

  He shook his head and Megan took a long look at his face. It was void of the smile he always reserved for her. In fact, it was void of any emotion whatsoever.

  “What did I say?” She had no recollection of saying anything at all about Des. Alex had consumed every thought she’d had.

  “You sure you want to know?”

  Apprehension crept into her stomach. Could she really have done something so bloody stupid? “Yes.” No.

  He pursed his lips together before answering. “Your exact words were, ‘I love you too, Desmond’.”

  Megan’s jaw dropped. She gaped at him while her heart dived into her belly, sending mad surges of blood to her head. At least she figured that’s what was going on inside her, because nothing else would explain the consuming dismay or the nausea that rose in her stomach. “Please tell me I didn’t.”

  “Wish I could.” He shrugged.

  Dear God, what had she done? “Alex.” She breathed out his name. His name. “I am so sorry.”

  “Yep. Me too.”

  She threw off the covers and sat up, flinging her legs over the side of the bed. “You have to know I didn’t mean anything by it. It was a mistake.” A terrible, horrible, rotten mistake.

  “Ah.” He nodded. “You make that mistake often? Call all the men you love Desmond?”

  A muscle ticked in her cheek. “In the last four years I’ve only loved one other man besides you.” She’d had a string of lovers, but no one special. Until Alex.

  Alex.

  “So you do love me?” he asked.

  “God, yes.” The truth of her words resounded through the room.

  Alex’s lip twitched with a hint of a smile. “You sure about that?”

  “Absolutely, positively, one hundred percent sure.” Would he ever believe her? God, she hoped so, although she wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t. How could she have said something so heartless? So bloody stupid?

  It was a wonder Alex hadn’t tossed her out on her butt.

  Alex’s mouth did not crease into the full-blown smile she’d hoped it might.

  Her heart ached.

  “I don’t get it.” He shook his head. “You say you love me, and I beli…I want to believe you…” His voice trailed off, leaving him deep in thought.

  “But?” she prompted, afraid of his response. Why, oh why, did there have to be a but?

  “But you called me Desmond.” There it was again, the hollowness in his voice.

  Shit, she’d done this to him. She’d taken all the solid, unwavering light that was Alex, and stamped it out. She wanted to cry. Wanted to slap herself for being such a moron.

  Maybe if she explained, he’d understand.

  Somehow, she doubted it.

  She had to try anyway. Had to make him see how much she loved him. “Des was on my mind last night. I must have been thinking about him subconsciously and slipped his name in when I should have said yours.” Lame, lame, lame.

  “That’s nice.” Alex’s smile could have frozen the sun. “Do you always think about him when you’re fucking me?”

  The blood drained from her face. She did, but how could she confess that without crushing everything she and Alex had built together? Without breaking his heart and her own?

  “Last night wasn’t about sex,” she said in a voice not louder than a whisper. It was all she could mange.

  Alex raised a derisive eyebrow.

  She rushed in to correct herself. “With you and me it was.” Boy, was it ever. “Not with Des.”

  “No, Des was obviously about love, not sex.”

  Megan dragged a hand over her face, rubbing her eyes. Alex was so distant, so aloof. She didn’t blame him one bit. If their positions were reversed, she’d have marched strai
ght out his front door and never looked back.

  At least he’d hung around for an explanation.

  “I fought with him last night. During your poker game.”

  “Aw, what a shame. Lover’s quarrel, was it?”

  “Alex!” God, could she ever make this right? “Des is my closest friend. He’s one of the most important people in my life. But that’s where our relationship ends. He is not, nor has he ever been, my lover.”

  Which wasn’t to say she hadn’t spent four years wishing he was.

  Therein lay the essential problem. No matter how much she loved Alex—and she did, she loved him immeasurably—she loved Des too. She had for years.

  When she’d met Alex, she’d given up on her dreams of Des. If Alex had never entered the scene, she’d probably still be pining for the carefree, beautiful blond man who’d owned her heart for so long. But Alex had interfered, and now everything was different. Everything. So beautifully, wonderfully different.

  She needed to explain all of this to him. She had to help him understand why she’d made that god-awful blunder.

  Alex’s gaze was hard, unrelenting.

  “Des and I have never fought. Last night was a first. It threw me.”

  Her world had tipped off-kilter. Nothing had felt right for those few moments she and Des were at odds. She bit her lip. Whatever he was going through must be huge, or he’d never have been so disrespectful of her. So disinterested.

  “Even when we met, he didn’t lose his cool with me, and he should have, considering I drove into the back of his brand-new car.”

  Finally Alex spoke. “He must have been charmed.”

  Alex obviously wasn’t.

  Her heart constricted.

  “Not charmed, no. But charming.” It had been her shock that had garnered Des’s empathy. She’d been both stunned and distressed by the crash. Distraught at the idea she might have hurt him and contrite that she’d crumpled his bumper. “Instead of blasting me to hell for my negligence, he laughed it off. He wasn’t pleased with me. But he never lost his temper once. Not even when my insurance gave him a hard time about paying out.”

  Instead of getting irritated and blaming her for the accident, he’d worked with her to sort out the whole mess. The day he’d gotten his car back from the panel beaters, all expenses paid compliments of insurance, he’d taken her for dinner to celebrate. They’d been friends ever since.

  “Great story.” Alex rolled his eyes. “Any reason you chose to share it with me?”

  “I need you to understand why I was so upset with him last night. Why he was on my mind. We fought. Des and I don’t fight. Ever. We made up in the end, but it left me…unsettled. I must have been thinking about him subconsciously. Going through what happened and sorting it out in my mind.” Oh God, she was babbling. Trying too hard. Talking too much about Des.

  Alex’s mouth tightened. He put his foot on the floor and stared steadily at her.

  She babbled right on, her cheek ticking away. “Des doesn’t get mad. We don’t fight. We never have, until last night. It shook me to my bones, Al. I didn’t know how to deal with it.”

  “So you called me Desmond. Did it help you sort things out in your own mind?”

  His sarcasm cut her. “No.”

  When it came to Des, nothing helped her sort through her feelings.

  The muscle in her cheek throbbed madly. Heat rushed her face. She had to tell Alex everything. “Calling you Des was a stupid, heartless, cruel mistake I wish to God I’d never made.”

  This time, Alex was the one who prompted her. “But…”

  Her heart lodged in her throat. God, she couldn’t tell him. Couldn’t hurt him like this. But how could she not? How could she keep such a big secret from the man she loved? “But…there’s something I haven’t told you.”

  Alex went rigid. He didn’t breathe, he didn’t blink.

  Megan launched herself off the bed and across the room, dropping to her knees at his feet. “I do love him.”

  “Fucking hell!” His face turned scarlet.

  “I’m sorry,” Megan cried. Her heart twisted in four different directions at once, the pain excruciating. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. God, she hated hurting Alex. What kind of a selfish bitch was she, subjecting the man she loved to such…such…anguish? “So, so sorry. I never dreamed my feelings for him would impact our relationship.”

  Alex glowered at her. “If you’re trying to make me feel better, you’re failing miserably.”

  Tears stung her eyes. She blinked them back. Alex was the one hurting. Not her. “I don’t want to lie to you, Al. I can’t. That wouldn’t be fair.” She’d never disrespect him like that. “The truth is I’ve loved Des for as long as I’ve known him.” The feeling was as instinctive as breathing. “But he’s never reciprocated my feelings. Ever. Never once given me any indication what he feels about me is anything more than friendship.” She swallowed. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to love someone who doesn’t love you back?” It had taken her forty-eight painfully long months to accept the truth.

  Alex gave a sarcastic snort. “I’m getting a pretty good idea of it right now.”

  “Then you’re getting the wrong idea,” she sobbed. “I do love you, Alex. More than I ever believed possible. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s just not as simple as I’d like it to be.”

  “Yeah. I can see how loving two men could be a complex matter from your perspective.” His bitterness stung. “You should look at it from my side. That’d really knock you over sideways.”

  She absorbed his emotional punches as he struck out. She deserved every damn one of them. “Al.” She grabbed his knee. “I love you. You have to believe me. Regardless of how I feel about Des, I love you.”

  “How about you keep your hands to yourself?” He pulled his leg away, letting her hand drop on the chair.

  She stared at it, shocked at his rejection. No! No, no, no. She wouldn’t let him push her away. Not until he’d heard the full story. Not until she’d made it clear how deep her feelings ran for him.

  And then…then…if he still rejected her…

  Megan pulled her offending hand away and clasped it in her lap so Alex couldn’t see how shaken she was. “I’ve…I’ve…” Breathe. Get yourself together. “I’ve accepted the fact that Des doesn’t love me. It took a while, but I finally came to terms with it.” Her breath shuddered in her chest, and she forced her gaze up to his. “What I never expected was to fall in love with someone else, knowing how strongly I feel about him.”

  She stared up at him, hoping to God he could see the honesty in her eyes. “I fell in love with you, Alex.”

  His chest stilled, as if he were holding his breath.

  “When I saw you at Hunter’s party, something changed, like a gear shifting inside of me. I knew then it was time to move on. Time to give up on my fantasies of Des and me. I hadn’t been ready to do that—until I met you.”

  Alex had attracted her like a child to a lolly. She’d taken one look at him and known her world was about to change forever. “I couldn’t stop looking at you. Couldn’t stop my heart from pounding so loud I was sure Des could hear it too.”

  The dark eyes staring down at her softened slightly. “I couldn’t stop looking at you either.” His voice was a tense whisper.

  She remembered. Felt the heat of his gaze as it swept over her body before settling on her face.

  “I made Des introduce me to you.” She’d taken his arm and dragged him over to Alex, the beginnings of a fire smoldering in her stomach. “When you shook my hand and told me your name I knew I was in big trouble.” She flexed her hand now, the same hand he’d held as Des had made the necessary introductions. “I can still feel the imprint of your palm on mine,” she whispered. “Your touch burned me. It set me alight. Made me feel something I hadn’t felt
for anyone but Des in a very long time.”

  She turned her hand over and stared at her palm. It tingled now with the same heat Alex’s simple handshake had inflicted the first time he touched her. With the same heat that flared when Des kissed it last night. “I fell for you, Al. Every minute I’ve spent with you since has just reinforced what I instinctively knew the minute I laid eyes on you. I love you.”

  “You love Des too.” The accusation wasn’t as acid as his previous comments had been.

  “Yes, but it’s irrelevant now that I’m with you.”

  “It’s not irrelevant when you call me by his name.”

  Ouch!

  “It was a mistake. Fighting with Des is an anomaly. Something out of the ordinary. As far as you and I go it means nothing. I love you, Alex. You have to believe that.”

  His cock twitched. “Tell me again.”

  “I love you, Al.”

  “Again.” The word was a demand, not a request.

  She loosened her grip on her hand. “I love you.”

  He stared down at her, his eyes burning with emotion. Hurt? Disbelief? Desire?

  Yes. All three of them.

  “Please, believe me. What you and I have has nothing to do with anyone else. I love you.” She placed her hand on his thigh and breathed a sigh of relief when he didn’t push it away. The muscle beneath his skin flexed and his cock, which had sat limp and disinterested, pulsed.

  She felt an answering tug in her belly.

  “Alex.” This time his name was not so much a confirmation of his identity as a moan of hunger and need. Megan straightened her back and shifted closer to him.

  His head hit the back of the chair and he groaned out loud. “Christ, woman, what am I going to do with you?”

  Megan took a shuddery breath, sensing his capitulation. He believed her. She blinked back tears of relief and tried to speak, but her throat was all clogged up. She had to swallow and clear her throat to answer him.

  “You’re going to carry on loving me?” She hadn’t meant for her answer to come out as a question, but she needed the reassurance. Needed to know he’d accepted her truths and assimilated them. Needed to know her feelings for Des didn’t affect how Alex felt about her. “You’re going to tell me you understand, and you believe me. That you know, no matter what I feel about Des, I love you.”