by Edith DuBois
“Squeeze around me,” Johnny whispered. She did as he said, and at first it helped, but the burning grew brighter and stronger. She closed her eyes.
“James,” she whispered. “James, please.”
“Look at me, Marina.” Her eyes snapped open, focusing on Johnny. His hand came to her cheek. “Let him in. Let us both in.” James stroked her back, and Marina continued to clench and then release around Johnny. “That’s good,” Johnny said in a low, soothing voice.
James’s tip popped through the ring of muscle, and her breath came out in a sharp gust. Then he kept going. His arm wrapped around her stomach as he pushed deeper inside her ass. “Almost there,” he whispered into her hair. He kissed the back of her head and inhaled deeply. “Almost there.”
And then he was. She felt his balls nestled up against her ass.
“Give me one moment,” she said, breathing heavily.
“Whatever you need.”
Holding on to Johnny’s shoulders, Marina rolled her hips forward. Johnny met her with a slow-burning upward thrust. Then she moved back, and James was there. He continued to hold her around the stomach as his cock pushed into her ass. Marina rolled between them, unable to decide whose flesh called more strongly to her.
As she swayed toward Johnny, her body belonged only to him, but then she flew back into James, and she was his, only his. Her body flickered, moving toward one and then toward the other, unable to plant itself firmly with either. Johnny plunged up into her pussy, moving around, never penetrating her depths the same way each time. And James held her tight, never releasing her as his cock claimed her ass time and time again.
Something sprang to life inside her. She didn’t know what it was, didn’t even know if it had a name, but Johnny and James—they were the masters of it. It moved between them, yet it also stayed deep inside her. It was special. It belonged only to her, and it grew brighter.
As all three of their bodies began slamming harder into each other, Marina felt her climax drawing near. She was panting and whimpering and moaning, desperate for the release hovering just on the edge of her senses. “Come on,” she roared. “Fuck me harder!”
Johnny slammed up into her.
“Yes!”
And James’s cock plowed into her ass.
“Yes!” she screamed.
Their dicks pummeled her body, and they drew forth crazed, wanton moans from her swollen lips. She’d been biting them back the whole time, trying to restrain herself, but she couldn’t do it anymore. She had to let everything go. “Yes!”
She let that one word expand and morph into a pleasure-filled gasp. Her back arched violently as the hot tingles of orgasm spiraled uncontrollably through her body. She cried out as her pussy spasmed, pulsing and throbbing and pounding around Johnny’s dick.
With a loud groan, Johnny arched his hips and held on as he came. A few strokes later, James pressed himself hard and deep into her ass. His arm around her stomach squeezed tight, and she could feel every muscle he had straining as he came. His forehead dug into the place between her shoulder blades, and she felt oddly comforted by the strain she could feel holding him in its grip.
When he reached release, he held on to her and rolled them both off Johnny so that she fell on her side between them facing Johnny. She let out a few shuddering breaths, unsure of how she should behave after such an earth-shattering experience. Johnny rolled over to the opposite side of the bed, his back facing her, to take his condom off.
“I need a shower,” she said, sitting up.
Rolling back toward her, Johnny tossed a hand over her body. “No, stay and snuggle. James needs to clean up first.”
“Umm… but I—”
“James, go,” Johnny said, pulling her close.
“I’ll be quick, and then we’ll get you cleaned up.” James pressed a kiss on the side of her neck and then slid out of the bed. A few moments later, Johnny began breathing heavily next to her, as if drifting toward sleep, but she was wide awake. Her mind was working overtime.
What the fuck just happened? Her breathing grew short and panicked. She had not just fucked two men. She hadn’t. She couldn’t. It wasn’t possible.
Oh, but she had, and she knew it. She had to get out of there. She couldn’t stay with them another minute.
But she couldn’t run away. It hadn’t been horrible. In fact, it had been the best damn sex of her life. Besides, she didn’t have a car, and she didn’t have a leash. She didn’t feel like carrying Roy all the way back to her aunt’s.
Not to mention the wild emotions she could feel swarming through her body. She didn’t know where to start, where to dive in, or where to begin sorting through them.
What was she so afraid of?
She forced herself to take deep, steadying breaths. She could think herself out of this mess. Johnny let out a loud snore, interrupting her train of thought.
“Shut up,” she said, shoving him. He chuckled low and pulled her closer, nestling his face in her neck and on her breast.
At first she rolled her eyes, annoyed that he held her even tighter now, but then something tilted inside. She realized that she liked the way his body hugged so tightly around hers. He’d nudged one of his legs between hers and wrapped himself around her. Taking a deep breath, she tentatively rubbed her cheek on the top of his head, inhaling deeply and taking his scent inside. Chills ran across her skin at how good it felt holding him this way. Her body fit with his.
She began to tremble and bit her bottom lip in annoyance. Then she put a hand on the back of his head, tracing her thumb across the round arch of it. She ran her thumb behind his ear and cradled his skull.
She pressed a kiss on the top of his head and then closed her eyes.
After a moment, she gasped in surprise because she was trembling. She was trembling all over. This felt too right, too good. This was too beautiful.
The bathroom door swung wide open, and James strode toward her with a rag and a small basin with steaming water.
“Roll over. I’m gonna get you cleaned up,” James said in his deep, rumbling voice.
She did as he said, closing her eyes as the warm washrag moved across her flesh. “Where’s Jeremiah?” she asked, looking out the bedroom window. The temperature had dropped dramatically overnight, and the sky was gray and low hanging. It made Marina feel claustrophobic. She much preferred the blue clearness of summer when it felt like her heart could fly anywhere it wanted and at any time.
“At the Woodland Den. He leads a singles nature walk.”
A derisive laugh flew out of her mouth. “Wait, wait. Jeremiah leads a singles nature walk? People actually sign up for that crap? Didn’t that fake, ‘I’m so perfect, you’re so perfect, let’s get married’ bullshit end in like, I don’t know, like the ’50s or something?”
“What a jaded attitude for one so young, Ms. Andrews.”
“No, not jaded. Realistic. I know how things work.”
“Then please inform me, oh wise one. How do things work?”
She glared at him. “Not if you’re going to make fun of me.”
“I would never.”
“Yes you would.”
James peered innocently at her as he continued to stoke the warm rag over her body. Then the corners of his eyes crinkled. “All right, maybe just a little, but I apologize. And really, I’m interested. You don’t believe in marriage?”
She chewed on her bottom lip for a moment, enjoying James’s ministrations with the warm rag. Her chin rested on her arms and she thought about her answer. Most people were pretty sensitive when it came to love and marriage and the like, but she felt like she could talk to James, that he would listen and weigh her opinions.
She didn’t know why she felt that way around him, and she didn’t want to spend too much time thinking about the implications of that trust, but it was there. So she let herself open up a little bit. She let herself talk freely. “This might seem strange at first, seeing as all I ever sing about is heartbreak and true love, but act
ually, it’s less of an ‘I don’t believe in marriage’ and more of an ‘I don’t believe in love’ thing.” The humor drained from James’s dark eyes. “You think it’s real, don’t you?”
“As a matter of fact, yes I do. I very much do.”
“Well, in my opinion and more importantly in my experience, love isn’t real. It’s something people make up so they don’t have to feel guilty about sex or about bad decisions or whatever.”
James frowned at her, abandoning his handiwork for a moment, and Marina got the feeling he wasn’t buying it.
“Humor me for a moment.”
He placed the washrag on the bed stand and crawled up next to her on the bed, grabbing her hand in his and stroking tiny patterns across her skin. Johnny mumbled next to her, but apart from that, didn’t stir. After they were all settled, James nodded for her to go on.
“If you take love out of everything,” she said, “what’s left between two people in a marriage? At the beginning there’s sex and companionship. Then say children come along. That brings obligation and duty. And after the children are gone, there’s familiarity and fear of change. But people aren’t happy with that. They want to make those things romantic and frilly and magical, so they get lumped into the word love. And think about all the marriages that don’t work. It’s because people become disenchanted. They see the truth, and they see no reason to go on living the fairy tale.”
“Okay, not taking into account the simplicity of that argument and its complete generalization of marriage, that’s only one type of love. That’s romantic love between men and women. That’s only looking at one small aspect of the word. What about a mother and her child? Or a father for that matter? You don’t think that’s love?”
“It’s a heightened form of protective instinct.”
“If that’s what you want to call it,” he said in a low voice, peering at her with a strange intensity. “You never met my mom.”
“Yeah, well, of course you’re going to be biased. She’s your mom. You call it love, and I call it a heightened protective instinct.”
His frown grew deeper. “You never saw her when Johnny got picked on at school. Or when one of us got sick. It’s not easy to raise three bear-shifting sons. I can tell you that. Not for a mother or a father.” Something flickered through his dark eyes, but it didn’t last long enough for Marina to understand. “I think it takes more than a heightened protective instinct to stick around and see that through.”
“But you see, your mom is just one example of motherhood. And she’s probably the exception, right? Not the rule.” James didn’t say anything. She didn’t like the way his black eyes were digging at her, so she giggled, trying to ease the tension. “Johnny got picked on at school? Who on earth would try to bully Johnny?”
His gaze relaxed, but only a bit. “Jeremiah and I would bully the shit out of him.” His eyes crinkled as he smiled, seeming to replay some childhood memory through his mind. “Well, until he was about fourteen. That’s when he got his first good growth spurt and realized he could hit us back.”
“I love a little sibling warfare in the morning,” she said, smirking up at him.
After the moment had passed, James continued. “So what about your mom? Didn’t she ever storm up to the school when someone stole your lunch money on the playground?”
Her amusement dissipated, and she blinked a couple times. “My mom was never home for anything like that. She liked her boyfriends too much to worry about whether I had lunch money or not.”
James watched her, his black gaze intense. “And your dad?”
Marina shrugged. “He could be anywhere. Maybe dead for all I know.”
“I see.”
Fighting back a growl, she rolled her eyes and tried to yank her hand out of his. “People always say that. Like, ‘Oh, look at Marina. She’s so sad because her parents weren’t around. And she’s so sad because she drinks too much. And she’ll never settle down. That girl is wild, but don’t blame her. Blame it on her parents. They’re the ones who left her.’ Oh my god, if I could just count how many times I’ve heard that.” She laughed wildly and then glared at him when he wouldn’t let go of her hand. “So no, James, you don’t see a damn thing. You see what’s convenient and easy, but you don’t know me. Not you, and not your brothers.” She looked out the window, breathing heavily. Suddenly, disappointment—heavy and overwhelming—settled on her, pushing on her chest and her shoulders. For a short moment, she’d hoped that somehow the Greenwoods were different, that somehow they would know her. She almost laughed at the thought.
No one knew her. It seemed like she would never learn that, no matter how many times she found it to be true, because she kept waiting for someone to prove her wrong about it.
James put a hand on the top of her head and pushed his fingers into her hair. They remained still for a long while, she looking out the window and he running his fingers through her tangles.
“Okay, Marina, tell me then.”
When she didn’t say anything, didn’t make a move, he applied a gentle pressure on her hand.
“Why don’t you believe in love? I want to know.”
She turned to face him and then shrugged, not knowing if she even could explain it to him. But hell, she might as well try. Taking a deep breath, she looked him in the eye. “It’s fake, James. It’s a fairy tale. We see it in movies, in books”—she laughed—“in singles nature walks. All of us have this hope. No, more than hope. It’s an expectation, like we deserve it. There’s something we’ve been told since we were young, maybe since birth, that says, ‘Somebody will care about you. No matter what, there is someone in this world who will care about you.’ But that’s just not true. It’s a myth. Eventually, if anyone does care for you, it stops. They move on. Their needs eventually become more important than what you have together. And it’s not a bad thing, or sad, it just is. It’s how we’re made.” Marina stopped, her breath hitching. Her dad, her mom, countless lovers, and even her sister—the one person in the world she thought she’d never lose—they’d all left her.
A cold fear gripped her. James would leave her. She knew it like she knew her eyes were blue. The Greenwoods would be a part of her life for a while, but eventually, like everyone else, they would see that she wasn’t enough, that she was broken, that something about her wasn’t right. For some reason, the thought of them reaching this inevitable realization filled her with more sorrow than she’d ever felt.
The sudden wrench of pain inside her was too much to hold inside, and she gasped.
“So, you know, when people start to get all teary eyed when goddamn Brad Pitt gets the girl or when Megan Fox goes for the pimple-faced geek or when everyone decides to sing a fucking song because they’re happy or sad or whatever, I can’t help but to think how stupid it all is. All the time, I find myself wondering if people actually buy into all that crap, and then I laugh because yes, they fucking do.
“And, hell…look at me. I’m the perfect example. Need money, Marina? Go write a song about getting wasted and falling in love. People eat that shit up. But it’s not worth anything. It’s nothing. It’s just shit.”
She turned away from James and stared out the window for a long moment, biting her trembling lip. James had opened the door on his way to the bathroom earlier, and now Roy trotted inside, jumping up on the bed and settling in next to her. He put his head in her lap, and she patted his velvet fur.
“Why did I even write that song?” she whispered, thinking about the one she’d played at Catdaddy’s. It was different from anything she’d ever written. It felt real. When she sang it, she felt as if her soul was pouring out of her body. But deep down, she knew it would never go further than Savage Valley. “No one wants to hear that. No one’s going to listen to that or pay for it. No one’s going to watch me if I’m not shaking my ass or jiggling my tits. I’m useless.”
“Marina.” He pulled her chin, forcing her to look at his face. His dark eyes were steady. His gaze held
her tight. “You’re not useless. You’re—”
“What?” she asked, knowing there was nothing he could say to prove her wrong.
He brushed dark hair off her cheekbones, looking deep into her eyes. “I’m going to change your mind, Marina Andrews.” He spoke softly and had the gentlest look on his face. Marina wanted to shove away from him, from his words, but she couldn’t. She could only hold perfectly still.
“Love is real, Marina. It’s as real as the air I’m breathing right now, as real as the softness of your skin and the silkiness of your hair. It’s as real as life itself. I’m going to prove it to you, and I’m going to change your mind.”
“Did you not hear a word I said?” she asked in a choked whisper. “I don’t believe in it.”
“You’re wrong. You’re so wrong.” He kissed her forehead. He kissed her nose. He kissed her eyes, and he kissed her lips so softly. “You do believe in love. Only thing is, you could never love without giving all you’ve got. You know it could destroy you, so you’ve convinced yourself it’s not real. You’re trying to protect your heart.” He put his palm against her chest, and she could feel her heart beating against him.
She shook her head and closed her eyes. She couldn’t listen to that kind of talk. She knew it would only end up tearing her up inside. Those kinds of words made her want to believe, but they’d been proven false time and time again. She couldn’t listen.
“Love is real, Marina. It exists. It’s the strongest emotion two humans can share.”
“You’re not even trying to hear me.” She hated that she was about to cry and tried to shove away from him. “Such a typical man. I’m a dumb woman, right. Nothing I say has any value whatsoever. Well, fuck that.”
He was calm, not releasing her with his hands and keeping her captive with his gaze. “You’re putting words in my mouth. I never mentioned anything about being me a man or you being a woman.”
“You didn’t have to,” she said, tripping on the words. “And why are you trying so hard to convince me? What’s in it for you?”
“Everything,” he said, smiling and leaning even closer. “Everything’s in it for me.”
