Downtown Devil: Book 2 in series (Sins in the City)

by Cara McKenna

  What does it feel like? he wanted to ask her. What must it feel like, being served by two people at once? I could find out for myself. Let Clare see the two of us the way we’ve been, out in the wilderness. Vaughn could have either of their mouths on him as the other stroked his face or back, or kissed him. He could be the one ravaged by two lovers.

  No, I can’t. No one can ever know about that. Not here. Not at home.

  Not even if it would mean the most exquisite pleasure of my life.

  No sex was worth cashing in your identity for. Who you were was for life, versus this . . . ? This was just for tonight. And tonight was for Clare, he reminded himself.

  “Like this?” he asked her, giving her his cock in long, quick strokes, just as his body craved.

  “Yes.” Her eyes were shut tight, her hands gripping his neck and his shoulder, squeezing each time he drove deep. Between them, Mica was working her clit. His knuckles met the root of Vaughn’s cock with each stroke, and the restless muscles of his forearms danced along Vaughn’s belly and ribs.

  “What are you thinking about?” Mica asked Clare.

  “Just this,” she whispered, her voice airy with pleasure or distraction. “Exactly this. Both of you.”

  “This?” Vaughn echoed, and slowed his hips to give it to her deep and explicit for a handful of pushes.

  “Yeah.”

  “And his hand?” Vaughn asked, speeding once more. The dirty talk no longer felt like an imperative set by Mica, a mood to adhere to. It felt right—intuitive and exciting.

  “Yes,” she mumbled.

  “Next time,” Mica told her, his voice shallow from panting, excited breaths. “Next time, you, on your hands and knees. Me behind you. Him in your mouth.”

  Vaughn watched her lips part, imagined that if that pretty face weren’t already flushed, Mica’s words would’ve stained those cheeks pink. She didn’t reply except to move against him, against both of them, hips squirming, seeking some subtle angle from Vaughn’s cock or Mica’s fingers, or both.

  Next time. Two little words, but Mica had spoken them like a promise.

  There can’t be a next time. Can there?

  Vaughn knew his best friend well. Well enough to know that Clare’s pleasure wasn’t the only thing he was after, this three-way not the only taboo he was brushing up against. Clare didn’t know about their history, and he had no doubt that Mica was getting off on that fact, getting off on dancing around that rule Vaughn had established when he’d agreed to let Mica sublet.

  That stuff that’s happened, on the trip, he’d said. That’s not happening here. Not in my apartment, not in Pittsburgh. Not in my real life—you got that?

  Mica had been unpacking his one piece of luggage—a too-familiar frame pack—in his temporary room, not two weeks earlier. He’d looked up from the dresser with a smile. “That stuff”?

  You know what I mean.

  Mica had shut the drawer, opened another. Smile still lingering on his lips, he’d said simply, Sure. A pause. Though funny how it all felt pretty fucking real to me.

  As it had to Vaughn. As intense and exciting and dangerous as any free climb. Scary. But natural, too. And maybe that was what made it scary—exactly how natural it had felt. How inevitable, almost.

  Mica spoke, and Vaughn could sense that very same smile in his voice as he told Clare—told both of them—“Next time, we’ll show you even more.”

  Show her what? What was Mica fantasizing about, precisely? About his mouth on Vaughn’s cock, perhaps, and this woman’s eyes on the two of them. Whatever would make Vaughn nervous, that’s what he was after. Always pushing, always edging up against too much. Sometimes crossing that line. Sometimes hurdling it.

  “How’s he feel?” Mica asked Clare.

  She breathed, “Amazing.”

  “Big, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Deep. Long. Hard.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You gonna come on that cock? Show him how much you like it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Vaughn felt Mica’s hand racing between their bodies and felt Clare winding up, her motions tight and needy now.

  “Use me,” Vaughn whispered. “Take me.” He gave her what he thought she needed with a steady, quick pace and felt Mica’s stroking fingers fall into step.

  Those squeezing hands on his shoulders were clawing now, nails raking. Transfixed by everything happening in his bed, he heard his own voice reduced to wordless pants and moans.

  “Use him,” Mica said, echoing Vaughn’s own words. “Both of us. Come for us.”

  A vision flashed—Mica’s face lit golden by the setting sun, last summer. Dark hair and brows, black eyes staring up, full of hunger. That man, on his knees. Warm and waning light, cool breeze. The smell of their sweat and the smell of sex, and the snug heat of Mica’s lips around Vaughn’s dick, his hands on Vaughn’s hips. Come, those eyes had told him, as real as a spoken order. Let me taste it. Let me taste what I reduce you to. That hot stare had told Vaughn a hundred nasty things. Like with that smile when he’d been unpacking, the man could speak without opening his mouth. Give me a week, that smile had said. Give me a week, and I’ll have my way.

  Mica’s way involved a third party, it turned out—a twisting of the rule as opposed to outright breaking it—but he’d gotten them there in the end, just as that smile had promised.

  Against him, around him, Clare was coming undone. Vaughn plugged himself back into reality, turned his attention to this new lover, this charming, unsuspecting woman, and blocked Mica out. He panted in time with her moans and his thrusts, awed.

  “Don’t stop,” she gasped.

  “Never.”

  “Don’t stop.” She said it again, again—four thoughtless, breathy times before he felt her shudder and clench, clench once more, then cling. He stilled his body, lost in the subtle squeeze of her sex around his before she fell slack against him.

  “Good,” he whispered.

  Mica’s hand gave a final twitch, and Clare tensed from the contact, then relaxed. Vaughn kissed her forehead. Her sweat was salty, her skin warm, and he imagined eating her pussy—how she’d taste, what she’d say. What Mica would say.

  Vaughn’s cock was pounding. So focused on Clare’s pleasure, he’d not let himself feel how hot he’d gotten, how badly he needed to get off. Now that fact was screaming at him, his flesh aching for relief.

  He eased out a little, then back in. “Okay?” he asked her.

  She nodded, her temple brushing his chin. “Very okay. You’ve more than earned your turn.”

  “You feel spoiled?” Mica asked her, and Vaughn heard him kiss her neck.

  “Completely.”

  “Greedy girl. Now maybe it’s our turn, huh? Maybe now you let his dick take whatever it wants, since it gave you exactly what you needed.”

  She nodded, sighed out a dreamy, “Of course. However you need it,” she added to Vaughn.

  “Just like this,” he said softly. Just as they were—the three of them. He began to move, for himself, this time. Shallow, quick thrusts, punctuated with the odd rough plunge, letting the both of them feel how deep he could take her. Each time he drove in that way, she gasped, the sweetest little sound that lit him up like a five-alarm fire.

  On her other side, Mica was panting, grunting. Vaughn could feel the motions of his hips and knew he must be rubbing along her ass. He knew those sounds well, and others. He knew the sound of Mica’s voice, muffled by Vaughn’s cock but humming in time with Mica’s own stroking hand on his dick. Mica wanted more, he knew, when it was just the two of them, out in the middle of nowhere. He wanted everything two men could do, though Vaughn never intended to give it to him. Still, was Mica imagining those things now, finally privy to the sight of Vaughn fucking? he wondered. Did he wish he were in Clare’s place? Vaughn shuddered at t
he thought, cooled by a familiar shame, heated by the memory of it. At once his hips were speeding, taking Clare rougher. He could feel so much. Her wet, hot body, the cotton of his covers, the cool of the room. He imagined more—another body, warm and tight, and hard earth against his knees, through the slippery nylon of a sleeping bag. He felt as though he were fucking both of them, right then, and suspended between two times, two places—a strange, almost overwhelming sensation. A high.

  “Baby.” He said it without thought, so close now.

  Clare urged him with her hands on his sides, kissed his mouth. He felt her lips but tasted Mica’s, somehow. The man’s smell was sharp, his labored voice intoxicating.

  And what has you so hot? he wanted to demand of Mica. The friction of Clare’s skin against his cock, or maybe Vaughn’s proximity? Maybe both, maybe more. Maybe the knowledge that he’d made all of this happen, drawn the three of them together, right where he’d wanted them.

  Mica’s voice broke through the haze. “Fuck.”

  Vaughn knew that word, in that tone, set off by those panting, raspy breaths. He’d earned that sound with his hand on Mica’s dick, and felt what came next, warm and wet in his palm. One of the most frightening, exhilarating moments of his life. Do it, he wanted to say. Get there. Let me hear it again. So easily, this could be the last time he did. So easily, next year Vaughn could be dating someone when the time came to meet up for a climbing trip, could have met the woman of his dreams. If he was single, all bets were off; that had been the unspoken rule for the past six years. Though it cut both ways. Mica was seductive, no doubt, but Vaughn was loyal.

  Between their bodies, Vaughn felt a hand. Mica’s? No, a glance told him. Clare’s. The notion jolted him.

  “You need another?” he asked.

  “We’ll see.” Her voice was breathy, distracted, and he tried to cool himself so she could get there again. She touched herself to the beat of Vaughn’s driving cock, Mica thrusting behind her with a graceless pace that could mean only that he was on the brink.

  For the first time in minutes, Mica spoke. His tone had changed, strained almost beyond recognition. “Come on his cock,” he hissed.

  She moaned, fingers working faster.

  “Tell him how good it feels.”

  “It does,” she told Vaughn, barely a whisper against his jaw.

  “Tell him how big he is.”

  “You’re fucking huge.”

  You’re so fucking big. That was what Vaughn heard, words plucked from his memory. From the night when he and Mica had first taken everything so much further than he’d ever expected they might. His friend’s voice had been strained then, too, sounding overcome, almost fearful.

  You’re so fucking big. Lemme take you deep.

  Against him, around him, Clare was losing it all over again.

  “Good,” he murmured, working to keep his pace steady.

  She lost it with a glorious sound, a sharp ahhhh, nearly as though she were frightened.

  Normally Vaughn would have cooled himself, given her a break, but he was too close himself. He rushed home, too desperate to slow or stop. Every sound and smell, both of the faces he could see.

  “Fuck, you’re beautiful.” He could have said it and meant it to either one of them, but Clare had drawn the words out of him. He pressed his face to her throat as the orgasm struck. He heard Mica groaning. The climax took him hard, turned him inside out, wrung him dry until the lightning strike of the pleasure had sizzled away, leaving only soft, rhythmic pulsations of relief.

  As he cooled, he opened his eyes and eased back, wanting to see her face. Her smile and her eyes. Her lips were parted, lids shut, but he transformed both with a mumbled “Fuck me.”

  She laughed. “Same.”

  Had Mica come, as well? He’d gone still. Vaughn let his gaze drift beyond Clare’s shoulder, and he knew with a glance at that face that yes, Mica had. His eyes were shut tight, lips flushed, and he was breathing hard.

  “I should . . .” He reached between them to secure the condom, then eased out. He excused himself to the bathroom, and when he returned he found the other two talking softly. Mica was wiping Clare’s lower back clean with his shorts, and something he said made her laugh.

  How is this my bed? How was this now a part of Vaughn’s sexual history, his sexual identity—a three-way? And with two guys, no less.

  Don’t be surprised. It’s Mica.

  What Mica wanted, he made you want right back. Made his kinks yours. Made your body, your bed, your desires, his territory.

  I was a fool to think I’d be able to resist him. Maybe it had taken a woman’s body between them to get Vaughn there, but Mica had succeeded nonetheless, and not even two weeks into this extended stay. Vaughn had told himself nothing was happening. But something had, if not quite the thing he was determined to resist.

  It’s going to be a long summer.

  A long, hot, nerve-racking summer, if Vaughn intended to hold fast to the promise he’d made to himself.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Clare came down slowly. Her own orgasm had faded minutes before, but the intoxication of the sex itself was only now starting to thin, to cool.

  That really just happened, didn’t it? She’d really just had sex hotter than anything she’d ever seen or read, or manifested in her own imagination, hadn’t she? Jesus.

  Beside her, Mica. He was facing her, tracing light lines along her upper arm with his fingertips. In her periphery his chest rose and fell with slowing breaths, and she sensed his calm as she might hear his voice or taste his kiss.

  On her other side, Vaughn. He lay on his back, one arm flopped across his ribs, fingers flexing thoughtlessly on his belly. His other arm was stretched between their bodies, his knuckles brushing Clare’s hip.

  I wonder how long we’re supposed to linger, before he expects to get his bed back. This night, as decadent and perfect and mind-blowing as it had been, didn’t feel as though it would end with the three of them cuddled up under one blanket, falling asleep and waking up together.

  Waking up . . . waking up, would these two men even be able to look each other in the eyes? she wondered. Ultimately, that wasn’t her problem, though it would definitely tarnish the memory some, should she ever find out their friendship had gotten banged up in the wake of this crazy, impulsive one-off.

  Wait.

  Had this been a crazy, impulsive one-off?

  With sobriety growing, and hindsight snapping into focus, she had to wonder. Had she been groomed for this, the entire scene hatched, planned, and orchestrated in Mica’s mind the very hour they’d met? He could have known all along that Vaughn was due home when he had been, and only pretended to think he was on a night shift.

  And Vaughn could’ve been in on it just as easily. Was this maybe an actual thing that they were into, and that they’d done before? Was that something that went on—two kinky guy friends getting off on sharing a girl?

  A surge of misgiving settled like a chill, and she panned the room, searching for a light—a tiny red or green light, some sign of a camera, some proof that this might have been creepy all along. She found nothing, though. The closet door was shut, the dresser uncluttered, the bookcase looking dark and innocent. And both men had abandoned their phones on the coffee table. Her heart slowed.

  So worst-case scenario, they’d planned it. Both gotten what they’d been after, perhaps.

  And if so, I was only too eager to be what they wanted. Hell, it had been the hottest night of her life.

  As a woman, it was hard not to bump up against the sexual motives of men and not feel a touch manipulated, a touch paranoid or exploited. But she didn’t want this night to be marred with that thinking. She wanted to remember it fondly, in fact, as the dirtiest, hottest, kinkiest thing that had ever happened to her. Even if it had been planned, she wanted to choose to view it like a surp
rise party, and she its unwitting—but nevertheless delighted—target.

  Though some questions did need to be answered.

  She turned to Vaughn, spoke softly. “We should probably give you your bed back, now that we’ve all desecrated it.”

  No reply. His hand had gone still atop his middle, chest rising and falling subtly; he was asleep.

  “It’s fine.” This from Mica, barely a whisper. He sounded about ready to drift off, himself.

  “You think?”

  “We all shared far more than a bed tonight,” he mumbled, and turned over.

  True. She turned as well, pressing her body to his, front to back, wrapping her arm around his waist. He closed her hand in his and squeezed. The room was warm, no need for covers just yet.

  I’m going to wake up and be very confused for half a second.

  And then I’m going to panic, and worry about all the ways this was maybe too weird, too far.

  And then she’d catch her breath, slow her thoughts. Regain her senses and her perspective, and revisit all this for exactly what it was.

  The single hottest night of her entire life.

  —

  It was nearly déjà vu—the warmth of morning light on Clare’s face, the shadows of an unfamiliar space. The smell of sex and the smooth caress of cotton against her bare skin. The only difference this time was that she wasn’t in Mica’s room. She was in Vaughn’s. The realization woke her like a smoke alarm, launching every nerve into high alert. But a moment later it all eased, and heat washed over her as she remembered everything that had led up to her waking in these sheets.

  Two men.

  Two men mastering her body, yet she was alone in this bed now. Again.

  She rolled over. How long had Mica lingered? she wondered. Had he woken in the night with the spell of the sex gone and decided his best friend’s bed was a step too far? Had he left for work? Was he making her breakfast? It was impossible to guess with that man. And as for Vaughn, well, she barely knew him, couldn’t begin to theorize where his head might be at—