“Actually,” Clay said, “I’d love a margarita.”
Belle hadn’t made a ’rita in so long she was at a loss and looked at Gage, dumbfounded.
“Can I do the honors?” He picked right up on her need.
“Love it, Gage. Thanks.”
Clay wandered into the kitchen. “Can we go sit out by the pool?”
“Sure!” Belle, you sound like an idiot.
Trey rubbed his hands together. “Why don’t I fix us some guacamole and salsa? Clay? June?”
The young woman smiled, hesitant about what exactly was happening here. “Absolutely. Love it all. I can always eat!” She patted her tummy. “Med school makes for skinny doctors!”
Gage chuckled as he worked with the liquor and limes. “So you’re in school, too. What’s your specialty?”
She came up and sat in one of the bar stools. “Psychiatry.” She lifted both brows. “Sometimes I think I am the one who needs my head examined!”
Clay scoffed. “Don’t listen to that. She’s a whip at anything she touches. If I had my eyes closed? She’d rush past me faster than a road runner with a worm!”
Belle watched the four of them begin to laugh and converse easily as if they had known each other for years.
And that night, when she went to her own room alone, she had to smile that Trey and Gage had shown in little ways that they belonged here. To her.
She shut her eyes. Knowing that she drifted closer to deciding the final two pieces of her puzzle. A new life. How? And why?
* * * * *
Courage had never been a characteristic Belle lacked. Or at least, she’d never thought she had.
But now when she needed it, gobs of it, she reflected on precisely what issues she’d had to confront in her forty-five years. She’d never been robbed or attacked. Never been betrayed. Or fooled. Never had to face the terrors of a long illness by any member of her family. Her parents had died of strokes. Boom, and they were each gone. Walt the same way. Instantly. Clay had never been sick a day of his life. She herself was so healthy that she assumed she’d live until all others she knew were gone. And she was alone.
She inhaled and strode out to the pool on Sunday morning at dawn. Clay and June would be up soon, headed back to San Antonio and their flight to Newark.
She had to talk with Clay before he left. Had to tell her only child. And she did not know how to begin.
She sank into a chair and stared at the way the morning sun cast rays of gold and pink upon the water swirling in her pool.
“Coffee?”
Belle turned and Clay stood in the doorway smiling at her.
“It’s done perking,” he told her. “Shall I bring yours out and sit with you?”
“Please.” She sat back and took her meager courage in both hands.
Clay’s hair was tousled. He’d thrown on a tee and jeans. He was barefoot.
She laughed. “You have never worn shoes in your life.”
“I hate ’em still. Only reason I wear them is so I don’t kill myself on the polished floors of the wards.”
She drank, licked her lips and then put her mug down on the table. “I have to tell you some things.”
When he didn’t say anything, she had to look over at him.
His eyes were the compassionate ones of his father. And the look of acceptance had tears rushing to her eyes. She blinked them back.
“Don’t cry, Mom.” He said in that same rough bass that sounded so like his father’s. “Tell me.”
“I’m closing my business.”
“Good for you. You were getting bored doing the same thing over and over again. You should have fun. You earned it. All those years you and Dad worked the ranch. Then after he was gone, you ran yourself ragged with the wedding planning business.
She smoothed her jeans. “Thank you. I think I need a change, too.” Here goes. “I’m going to sell this house, too.”
“Really? Grandma and Grandpa’s house? I’m really surprised!” He shook his head.
“Do you want it?” She had never thought he might. “I could lease it, rent it out, if you—”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I have no idea what I’ll do after residency. Too much to think about. But I guess, if you want to sell it, you should.”
She frowned. “I’ll keep it for awhile. See what you think in a year or two. I don’t need the money.”
“No. And you don’t need the worry of looking after it, do you, Mom?”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t. I’m moving.”
He tipped his head as if to say, clearly. “Where?”
She stared at him, her throat clogging up with the words that might send him from her forever. “I’m moving to Brewster County with Trey and Gage.” I’m going to be their lover. “I’m—”
“I like them both, Mom.”
She listened to her heart beat as she examined her only child. Then her heart did this funny thing she had felt only three times before in her life. The day she got married. The moment Clay was born. The first time she knew she loved two men. Her heart blossomed like a flower, expanding in her chest, filling up her body with an indescribable joy.
Clay sat forward and smiled. “Trey and Gage are great guys. Men. And it is very clear they each love you to distraction.”
“I love them.” The truth spilled out of her. “I love them both.”
“I know you do.”
“You do?” she asked on a thread of a sound.
“I can see it on your face every time you look at either one. And I can see why you love them.”
“So you don’t ha—”
“Mom, don’t say that. Do not even think it. Not ever. I love you. Adore you, honey. There is nothing you could do, ever, to change that. You have chosen two smart, talented men who happen to think you walk on water. They’re right. You do. And you should enjoy that. Not many women are up to that kind of loving. You are. You taught us all how to love big, wide and handsome. Dad. Me. Even June says she can see your huge heart.” He grinned. “Close your mouth. The bugs are gonna fly in!”
She snapped it shut and laughed. That was a phrase about the bugs that she and Walt used to say to Clay when he was little and astonished at something wonderful.
He got up from his chair and leaned over to kiss her cheek. “I love you. Live your life as you wish. I would never stand in your way of any relationship you wanted. And it’s clear you want this one. Need it. And Trey and Gage do, too. As for me? I always did like Brewster County. Now, I gotta go wake up June and pack! Later for you!” He ruffled her hair.
And simple as that, he left her to sit in the rising sun and bless her stars she had such love in her life that she could bask in it.
For a few minutes, she let the tears of joy run down her cheeks.
Then she shot up from her chair and rustled up some bacon and pancakes.
Had to feed all those people she loved!
Epilogue
Trey came through the door of their hotel suite on the Left Bank and held the fax up in his hand. “We were right! It is a fax from our realtor in Brewster County. It’s official! The sellers are agreeing to our offering bid!” He walked over to Gage and the two men did a high-five.
Belle laughed with them. “We’ll have to celebrate!” She jumped from her chair in front of her laptop and came over to give each man a swift kiss.
The three of them had arrived in Paris three days ago for a two-week vacation. For their first day in the City of Light, the men had taken her to Auguste Rodin’s home and museum. There, she had kissed each man in the artist’s garden in front of the many models the man had made for his famous work, “The Kiss”. Yesterday, they had taken her to a famous lingerie house on the Champs Elysees and purchased some of the most gorgeous silk and satin chemises, bras and panties. “So we can take them off you,” Gage had promised.
Today, they had planned to tour Versailles. All of them had been to the palace of Louis the Fourteenth before, but each wanted to stroll
the gardens.
“Do you still want to go to the palace?” she asked them. “I think we need to do something wonderful to celebrate.” She licked her lips as each man looked at the other and nodded.
With a fingertip, Trey traced the outline of her mouth. “Ah, ma cherie, but I had a plan to make love to you in the garden there.” He winked.
She threw back her head to laugh as he caught her close to his startlingly hard body. “Did you, darling?” She felt Gage caress her hips and her ass. “What will you and I do, Gage?” She turned her head so that she could kiss her other lover.
“I was going to taste your luscious pussy just before Trey fucked you, baby.”
She ground her cheeks back into his wonderful erection. “In public? Sounds terrific. If we don’t get arrested!”
Trey put his hands to the new silk wrapper they had purchased at the lingerie shop yesterday and spread it wide. “We’d never let that happen.” Then he bent to lick the tips of her very needy breasts. “But Versailles is just dessert, cara.”
She shivered in anticipation. “Oh. And the main course?”
Trey picked her up in his arms and carried her into their bedroom and laid her down on their king size bed. He pushed her hair from her cheeks and whispered, “We’re both going to love you. At the same time.”
She opened her mouth to exclaim that this is what they always did, but then realized that this time, they meant together at the same time. She could hardly believe she was about to take both of them. In her body. At once!
Gage climbed in on one side of her. “We’ll be gentle.”
“You’re ready, cara. I know you are,” Trey told her. “It’s what I’ve been helping you with, caressing your sweet ass all these weeks.” He tapped the end of her nose. “I won’t hurt you. Ever.”
“I know.” She pulled his face close and kissed him. “I trust you.”
“I love you, cara,” he told her with those soul-dark green eyes. “There is no one I have ever cared for like I do you.”
Tears came to her eyes. “Make love to me.”
He smiled, long and lazy. “Roll her up, Gage.”
Gage grasped her around her waist and pulled her on top of him. “Taste me, baby. I’m ready for you.” He shifted and she felt the rigidity of his cock against her hip.
“Oh, Gage, I need to make you happy, honey.” She shimmied down to take his marvelous long, red erection in her hand. “You’re beautiful.” She bent down to suck him inside her. She reached around to cup his balls. He lengthened in her hand and she hummed in joy as the thrill of coupling with them zinged through her.
“Ah, god. No more, baby,” he demanded all at once. “Let me get some latex.” He grabbed a condom from the nightstand and in a few deft moves, flicked it on. Then he lifted her hips and positioned her over him. “I need you to ride me. Now.”
She sank over him in a smooth glide. And the two of them held, eyes closed.
“Oh, Gage, you feel so divine. I don’t want you to move.”
He let out a laugh. “Sure you do, baby.” He arched up and took one nipple in his mouth, then bathed the other in tiny kisses. “I’ll never get enough of you, Belle. Look at me.” He captured her face between his two big hands. “I love you, Belle. Love you to distraction.”
She rode him then. “I know you do, honey. I feel it every time you look at me.”
And then from behind her, she felt Trey’s big warm hands on her hips, his blunt fingers on her asshole. He’d been so kind, so sweet these last few weeks, massaging her there, invading her little by little, soft and sure and sweet little forays. Now he had a cool gel on his fingers and he spread it over her tiny opening. “Lean forward, cara. Let me see this pretty ass of yours.”
With a tremor of icy-hot expectation, she moved upward over Gage. He smiled slowly at her, caught her red hair back and spread little kisses up over her chest and throat.
With Gage buried deep inside her, she mewled as Trey began to sink his cock deep inside her dark little hole. “Oh, damn.” He cursed softly in Spanish. “Cara. How good you are, my dearest love.”
As he sank inside farther and farther, Belle breathed slowly, deeply. She had forgotten the ecstasy of being taken up this way. She had forgotten the feeling of being possessed. But this time, with two men inside her at the same time, she was filled with more love than she had ever had before.
“Ready, Gage?” Trey asked his friend.
“Me first, buddy,” Gage rocked into her and Trey pulled backward.
Belle let out a silent cry of delight. Mouth open, she felt her body give to this one and take from that one. Their tempo increased, their rhythm never failed. In the rapture of their possession, she felt so much it seemed she knew each cell in her body all at once for the very first time. She felt whole, complete, astounded at the bliss of being loved by two strong men.
As her cunt pulsed and Gage shouted in orgasm, she whimpered. In the next second, her ass convulsed and she felt Trey climax. She collapsed over Gage. Shaken, perspiring, sore, she knew Trey and Gage guided her down to the bed. She rolled to one side. One lover kissed her forehead, the other, her nape.
Hours later, she rose as the two men slept on. The sun was high in the Parisian sky now and she drew back the drapes to smile across the rooftops of the city made famous for love.
She sat down at her laptop and went to post a message at the Tempt The Cougar blog.
My dear friends, I have so much to thank you for and I hardly know where to begin. But let me tell you where I begin from! Paris! With my two lovers whom I might never have had the courage to claim if it weren’t for you, I look out across the Seine to Sacre Coeur and smile in gratitude.
I do also wonder when we meet next month at the RomantiCon conference, will we have another new recruit?
About the Author
An award-winning author of more than two dozen romances and mysteries, Cerise DeLand creates heroes readers crave. Cerise has met many men in her worldwide travels and created the best of the best from all the wonderful places she’s lived and visited. Today, she lives—and writes—in wild west Texas, where a never-ending stream of cowboys, vaqueros, para-military types and diplomats stroll into town and fuel her imagination for red hot affairs.
Cerise welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.
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Also by Cerise DeLand
Carried Away
Her Three-Way Merger
Laid Bare
Mia Dolce
Until the Dawn with Desiree Holt
Whenever We Meet
Discover for yourself why readers can’t get enough of the multiple award-winning publisher Ellora’s Cave. Whether you prefer ebooks or paperbacks, be sure to visit EC on the web at www.ellorascave.com for an erotic reading experience that will leave you breathless.
www.ellorascave.com
Hat Trick (Cougar Challenge) Page 8
