Kitty relented, and gave him a hug. “I’m sorry, Dev.” She pulled back and stood on tiptoe and he obligingly leaned over so she could kiss him. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he answered. “Now, let’s shag. He’ll sleep through it.” He was only kidding a little bit.
Kitty laughed, as he’d hoped she would. “Oh, you. How about dinner first? Then we can negotiate shagging.”
It was more than Dev had hoped for.
Kitty’s fork clattered to her plate at the first shout. By the second she was running down the hall, Devlin close on her heels. Thom had only been asleep for a quarter hour or so. When she rushed into the room he was thrashing around on the bed, muttering. He shouted again, as if to be heard. Something about North’s leg. He was dreaming.
“Thom,” she said. She ran to the bed and grabbed his shoulder and he struck out at her. Kitty shrieked, but Devlin yanked her out of the way before she got hit. Her scream woke Thom and he sat straight up in bed, looking around in a panic. He was panting and she could see sweat beaded on his forehead.
“Where am I?” he asked, and the panic was there in his voice.
“You’re in my room,” Kitty said, still shaken from Thom’s accidental assault. She cautiously tried to approach the bed again but Devlin held her tight. She tried to break loose. “Let go, Devlin,” she said impatiently.
“Not until I know he’s not going to try to hit you again,” Devlin growled.
“What?” Thom asked, shock and guilt written on his face. “I didn’t know what I was doing,” he said.
“Who are we?” Devlin asked.
“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Thom spat out, throwing off the covers and swinging his legs over the side of the bed opposite where they stood. “Stop asking me that. Devlin bloody O’Shaughnessy.” He turned to Kitty, looking guilty again. “I beg your pardon, Kitty,” he apologized.
Kitty smiled weakly. Only Thom would worry about offending her. “That’s all right. He annoys everyone.” At that Thom laughed, a huff of genuine amusement. Devlin scowled at her. “Are you all right?” she asked. She moved toward him and this time Devlin let her go. She sat on the edge of the bed next to him and reached up to brush a curl of hair off his forehead. She’d waited years to touch him like this. He stared at her and she got caught in the storm of his eyes. Even bloodshot they were beautiful. So intense and fathomless. Suddenly there was a tension in the air that sucked the breath from her lungs and she thought he might kiss her. But he broke the eye contact by looking over his shoulder at Devlin.
“I really didn’t mean to hit her,” he said, clearly contrite. “You must believe me.” He was speaking to Devlin, not her.
“I know,” Devlin said gruffly after a moment of awkward silence. “You were dreaming.”
“I always dream,” Thom said flatly. He looked down at his feet and wiggled his toes in his threadbare socks. “Where are my boots?”
“I took them off,” Kitty told him. “I didn’t want them on my bed.”
At that Thom looked startled and leapt to his feet like the sheets were on fire. “This is your bed?” he exclaimed.
Kitty nodded with an amused smile. “Yes, it is. My home, my bed.” And he looked good in it, though she wasn’t going to say that.
Thom turned to Devlin with a frown. “What were you thinking to put me in her bed?” he demanded.
“That I didn’t want to hold you while you slept,” Devlin said. “And I was hungry. Can’t eat with an armful of sleeping doctor.”
“Why were you holding me?” Thom’s cheeks were flushed with embarrassment and he was looking around on the floor. “Where are my boots? I need to go.”
“Because you were sleeping standing up at her door and I couldn’t think of another way to get you in here.” Devlin answered his first question. Then he leaned his shoulder against the wall and crossed his arms while he watched Thom search.
“Simply waking me up and telling me where to go would have worked,” Thom said drily. “You should try that next time instead of muscling people around all the time.”
“I don’t muscle people around,” Devlin said, finally getting irritated. “A thank you would be nice.”
“Thank you for ignoring my wishes?” Thom said, standing next to Kitty and glaring at Devlin who was across the bed from him. “Thank you for dunking my head in cold water?”
“Thank you for sobering you up and bringing you to Kitty, you thankless shit,” Devlin answered without rancor, straightening from the wall. “And thank you for making you look like a man again, instead of a drowned rat before I did so.”
Kitty was fascinated by their interaction. They sounded as if they’d known one another far longer than they actually had. And Devlin hadn’t shouted or stomped out at Thom’s sharp tone, as he was wont to do. He observed Thom as if he couldn’t figure him out. Something about Thom fascinated him too. Her heart was beating so hard in her chest she had to resist the urge to place her hand over it. Had Devlin’s mention last night of Thom between the two of them gotten him thinking? She hoped so. She dearly loved Devlin, but her feelings for Thom hadn’t waned over the years. If given the opportunity she would definitely welcome him to her bed and her life. But she’d never give up Devlin to do it. Just as, if she got a chance with Thom, she wouldn’t give it up for Devlin. In a perfect world she could have both. But her world had never been perfect.
But it could be. The thought brought Kitty up short. It could. She was intelligent and not without wiles. She could make them both want it too, and she could make them both stay.
“We were eating,” Kitty interrupted. Both men turned startled eyes to her, as if they’d forgotten she was a witness to their exchange. She just smiled. The first flush of feelings did that to a person, didn’t it? She wasn’t worried. “Join us,” she told Thom, taking his arm and hugging it to her side. She deliberately turned slightly so it was pressed to her breast and she saw Thom swallow. “Come on,” she said encouragingly. “We just want to fatten you up.”
“For the sacrifice?” Thom asked with a bit of his old humor.
“Of course,” Kitty told him, pulling him along. “I wouldn’t want a scrawny sacrifice in my bed.”
She turned to Devlin and he was watching her with those all-knowing eyes of his. He quirked his brow in that way she both adored and found exasperating and she smiled slyly at him. He just shook his head and followed them out to the kitchen.
“You know, Thom,” Kitty said to him a few minutes later as she put some beef and potatoes on his plate while he sat there across from Devlin at her small table feeling decidedly uncomfortable, “now that I’ve got you here I might not let you go.”
Thom sputtered and coughed as he swallowed the bite of food in his mouth. Kitty patted him on the back while his eyes watered.
“Kitty,” Devlin growled.
“Kitty,” Thom choked out.
“At least not tonight,” she said. She sat down at the end of the table between the two men and put her hand over Thom’s where it lay on the table. “Let me take care of you tonight. You need to eat and rest. Please?”
Thom turned away so she couldn’t see how tempting he found her offer. But he was afraid if he stayed she’d see how ruined he was. He was ashamed of it. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said. He slid his hand out from under hers under the pretense of wiping his mouth with his napkin.
“I do,” Devlin said, surprising Thom and, from the looks of it, Kitty, too. “I don’t want to have to go and fetch you again. So you can stay here and prove to Kitty you’re just fine and then she’ll let you go.”
If only it were that easy, Thom thought. But I’m not fine, and she’ll know. She knows already. He just stared at Devlin, who gazed back with an inscrutable expression.
“Then it’s settled,” Kitty said with finality. She looked very smug as she took a bite.
“And so you two will just decide for me, eh?” Thom asked. He didn’t like how childish he sounded an
d he forced himself to say nothing more. He just sat there with his hand fisted on the table, staring at his plate.
“Yes,” Devlin said, as if he was astounded Thom would even think to make his own decisions. “That’s what I do.”
Thom stared at him, flabbergasted. “You just make other people’s decisions for them, willy-nilly, without their say-so?”
“Yes,” Devlin said. He leaned on the table with both arms and stared hard at Thom. “And if they know what’s good for them they do what I tell them to.”
Thom leaned forward, too. “Maybe I don’t know what’s good for me.”
Devlin immediately leaned back, looking as smug as Kitty. “Which is precisely why I’m making your decisions for you.” He stabbed a bit of beef and brought it halfway to his mouth before he gestured at Thom with it. “But you’re staying on the sofa. Kitty and I will sleep in her bed.”
Kitty gasped next to him. “Devlin O’Shaughnessy,” she said as if she were scandalized, as if Thom hadn’t known already that she and Devlin were involved that way.
“Fine,” Thom said, very carefully picking up his fork and not looking at either one of them. As long as he wasn’t in Kitty’s bed, and he knew the two of them were, he could trust himself to stay. He wouldn’t hurt Kitty with Devlin here to protect her, and he most definitely wouldn’t be tempted to touch her either.
Chapter Nine
Thom lay awake on the sofa. He couldn’t sleep. Not because of the dreams. Because Kitty and Devlin were fucking. Twenty feet away. In her bedroom, with the door open. They were neither of them quiet lovers. He was tormented by their cries and moans and murmurs. He was sure the door had been left open to hear him if he called out again. But the result was he could hear every moment of their coupling and he was hard as a pike and miserable. For the first time in a very long time he actually wanted to fuck, and this was the one place it most definitely wasn’t going to happen.
If he could, he’d get up and do some exercises to try to sleep. But again, open door, fucking, twenty feet away.
Kitty’s bedroom door was partially visible from where Thom lay. Her flat was small, over her shop, with just the one bedroom and a water closet off the short hallway. It took every ounce of willpower he had not to turn his head and watch them.
“Dev,” Kitty cried out, her voice trembling. “Right there,” she panted, “harder.” She cried out wordlessly a moment later and Thom would have given his right arm to know what Devlin was doing to her. Was he lying on top of her, or was he thrusting into her from behind? He put a trembling hand over his eyes as if to block out the sight, but it was in his head and his ears and he bit his lip as his prick ached and throbbed.
“Fuck me, Kitty,” Devlin growled, “just like that. I know how my girl likes it.”
Oh, Thom just bet he did.
Kitty had always seemed an unattainable dream. But now, listening to them, she was earthy and passionate and demanding and, though she was even now with another man, she somehow seemed within his grasp. Which was ridiculous of course. And this odd…obsession he had with Devlin had to cease. The man was clearly a lover of women. Kitty, to be precise. And why was Thom even thinking about that? Christ, the last few months had changed him, it would seem.
“I’m going to come,” Kitty said in a throaty voice. “Don’t you dare stop.”
Devlin laughed, and it was wicked and cruel and dangerously erotic. “I won’t,” he said. “Not even if you do.”
Thom could hear the slap of flesh on flesh and his mind was full of sensual images of what was happening. If he turned his head he could watch Kitty come. They’d left a lamp burning. God, he wanted to see her come. He wanted…no. He needed to see what Devlin was doing to her. He had to know. He had to see them.
His heart was pounding. What would happen if Devlin saw him? He took a deep breath and turned his head. He was only a man. He couldn’t resist the chance to see heaven just this once.
Kitty was on her knees before Devlin, in the middle of the bed. Her head was on the mattress, her arms stretched over her head, and Devlin was pressing her hands into the mattress. He had his other hand on her hip and was thrusting hard into her. Kitty spread her legs wider, and the angle of Devlin’s entry sharpened, and Kitty cried out again. Her eyes were closed, her teeth biting into her lower lip, her face scrunched in concentration. Thom could tell she loved every second of Devlin’s fucking, his dominance, his cock. She bowed her back and her hips thrust back against Devlin, taking what he was giving her. She took Thom’s breath away. Gone was the efficient, practical, proper woman whom Thom had known and admired and in her place was this creature of sensuality and desire and lust. Thom lusted after her. He’d desired her before, but watching her get fucked made him lust after her. He wanted to do that to her. Slowly, so as not to alert them to his presence, he rolled to his side and rose to rest on one elbow. He could see them better. His hand crept down to cup his hard prick through his pants. He bit his lip to keep silent, but it felt so good.
Kitty moaned long and low, with a catch in her voice and Devlin stopped thrusting, instead pressing hard inside her, his fingers clutching her hip so tightly Thom could see white circles in her skin. “Yes,” Devlin hissed. “Come on me like that, Kitty. Fuck me like that.” He let go of her hands and rose behind her. He threw his head back and ground into her and Kitty gave a gasp and a whimper and Thom could see her shaking with the force of her climax. She went limp then, and Devlin brought his head forward until his chin hit his chest, staring down at where they were joined. He rubbed Kitty’s hip. “Yes?” he asked, and Thom could tell his teeth were clenched.
Kitty barely nodded. “Yes,” she said breathlessly. And Devlin began to move again.
Thom watched Devlin pull his cock almost all the way out of Kitty. It was a fat cock, red and glistening in the lamplight. He was so hard he must ache as much as Thom did.
Devlin ran his palms up Kitty’s back and down, cupping her arse and squeezing it. Then he ran his thumb down her crease and pressed it into the little star there. Thom had to hold his breath to keep from moaning at the sight of it. Kitty gave a breathy little moan for him and thrust back, taking Devlin’s finger expertly. Devlin began to pump faster into her, both his cock and his thumb. Thom was transfixed by him, his fist moving in time with Devlin as he pumped his cock. Devlin was large and muscular and hairy and so bloody masculine it made Thom want him, which was insane. He’d fucked quite a few men the last few months, but he’d never wanted one like he wanted Devlin at that moment. He’d never bent over for a man, either, and he wanted to bend over and be the one Devlin was fucking. Be right in between them, fucking Kitty and being fucked by Devlin.
His hands began to shake. He started to lie back down when Devlin threw his head back again. “I can’t last, Kitty,” he ground out. “Such a sweet fuck.” And then he came with a groan, shuddering visibly. He ground into Kitty, his hips jerking. And Thom came too, biting his lip and gripping his prick, his hips jerking.
Thom was about to lie back down when Devlin turned his head suddenly and looked right at him. And smiled.
“Good morning, Doctor Peters,” Dev said as he entered the kitchen. He was still shrugging into his waistcoat. The doctor was wearing his shirt and pants and socks and nothing else, and looked as if he hadn’t slept a wink. Served him right for watching him and Kitty fuck. The doctor had liked it and gotten his too, Dev could tell last night.
Dev turned away when he remembered how much he’d liked that. He pretended to use the window as a mirror to adjust his cravat. He’d liked knowing the other man was watching him fuck Kitty so well last night. He’d put on a bit of a show for him. Flexing his muscles and showing his cock. He hadn’t done that since his whoring days. It was different though, when you did it because you wanted to, for your own pleasure and not someone else’s. He’d done it for Kitty too. She’d been the one to insist on leaving the door open and then she’d slithered across the sheets and grabbed his cock and whispered, “F
uck me.” Dev had known what she was about. But he did it anyway. And it had felt a little like he was fucking them both. Last night that had felt good. This morning he was a bit unsettled by it.
“Thom,” the doctor said. His voice was rough with lack of sleep and he cleared his throat and tried again. “Thom.”
“Thom is it?” Devlin said, still not looking at the other man. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be familiar with him like that. He wasn’t sure about anything concerning this whole situation, which he didn’t like one bit. If there was one thing Devlin needed, it was to be in control. He’d spent too many years having none.
But he was using that control to give Kitty what she wanted, which was the doctor. Wasn’t he? Wasn’t that what this was all about? He’d spent years telling himself and Kitty and anyone else who’d listen that he was no good for her. Well, here was the perfect solution. The doctor was well-bred, connected, polished, educated—everything Kitty deserved. He could give her a fine life, a respectable life. But he’d have to be cleaned up a bit first. Dev had to make sure he wasn’t going to keep drinking and fucking like he’d been doing. So the doctor was staying right where he was for the time being, whether he liked it or not. Rufus should be here before too long and Dev would make sure he kept an eye on the doctor.
Dev refused to acknowledge the sharp pain in his chest when he thought about giving Kitty up to the other man.
“Yes,” Peters said, and Dev had to think a moment to recall what they’d been talking about. He crushed his embarrassment and uncertainty under the boot heel of necessity and turned to face the doctor.
“Why? We don’t know one another well enough to use first names.”
The doctor blushed and wouldn’t meet his eyes. He didn’t take the opening to talk about last night. “I don’t like being called Doctor Peters,” he said. “Too many memories associated with it, and we both know I’m not much of a doctor anymore. I just want to be Thom.”
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