by Julia Kent
Lean in. Her heart told her what to do. One step forward, so awkward and hard, and she rested her cheek against his spine, her belly pressing into his thigh.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, the teardrops mottling the back of his shirt. She reached the middle of his back like this and it made her feel childlike, small and wrong.
One out of three was true.
He turned around and somehow, the unbreachable was broken, the wall of thorns stripped away, the wall vanquished, as his arms wrapped around her shoulders and she twined hers about his waist. The heady aroma of orange and mint on his hands now had the scent of hope and renewal, of wholehearted love and faith.
Mike was so tall, so stalwart and steady, that she had taken for granted that his sheer size meant he was unbreakable, never shaken, always strong. Selfish of her to think it, she now realized.
He was fallible. And soft and vulnerable like her, too.
On the inside.
“When you acted like it was no big deal and Dylan said I should get over it and just take two nights in a row you both really made me feel as if my feelings didn’t matter. How I felt in that moment has nothing to do with divvying up everything. It was a feeling, and they can’t be spreadsheeted.”
Her smile made her lip catch on of the buttons on the front of his shirt, which made her sniffle, which made her snort, which made him laugh.
“Sorry.” She coughed. “I always get a stuffy nose when I cry.”
“I know.”
She loved that he knew. He pulled her back and gently wiped each tear from her face, the pad of his fingers tracing the path, working to give the rolling drop eternal companionship, a traveling partner in pain.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For telling me why you’ve been so closed up. And for having the courage to open up after I didn’t treat you well.”
Dylan’s voice surprised her from behind. “We didn’t treat you well.” With a half-turn she could see him, a sleeping Jillian on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, dude. I had no idea you were that bothered.”
Mike arched an eyebrow and Laura got it. Got it. What Dylan said wasn’t an apology. She thought it was, and Dylan probably did as well, but seeing someone else deliver it like this gave her a new perspective.
“Dylan,” she said quietly. “The fact that he was bothered at all is something we all need to deal with. It’s not just Mike’s issue.”
Mike nodded quietly, his chin bobbing against the top of her head. “You get it,” he whispered, squeezing her gently.
Blinking hard, Dylan shifted the baby to the other shoulder, resettling her head on his shoulder as she snored lightly. Absentmindedly, he stroked her hair, cupping the back of her head in a soothing manner that made Laura so ridiculously happy she couldn’t put words to it.
“I think I understand. I basically just fake apologized, huh?”
Mike nodded.
“Like ‘I’m sorry you were offended’? Where I’m apologizing for your emotional reaction and not for my action?” Dylan’s lips pursed with the intensity of his realization.
“Someone’s been watching Dr. Phil,” Mike replied, as if impressed. Laura bit her lip, trying not to laugh.
Dylan pointed to the sleeping baby. “Blame her. Three o’clock nap.” His brown eyes went soft as they jumped between Laura and Mike, friendly and apologetic. “I’m sorry, Mike.”
“Much better,” Mike said, a sad smile on his face.
“But…?” Dylan and Laura said in unison, drawing out the word like a question.
“Something’s off. I don’t know how to put it in words.” Mike pulled back, leaving Laura frantically scrambling inside, like a gerbil on a wheel. Not knowing how to get off, but getting nowhere by being so panicked.
Dylan looked as worried as she was, which was a comfort. It’s not just me.
“And maybe it is me, but it’s not just me,” Mike said. “We’ve been through so much in what feels like a short time span.” The look he gave Dylan made Laura focus on Mike’s eyes, so dark and conflicted, yet childlike in their openness and blessedly hopeful nature. The churning inside him was coming to the surface and she could taste his fear. What could be the source of this?
“Jill died, then we struggled, we met Laura, we screwed up—”
Her sudden laugh was like a guilty bark, making the baby jolt on Dylan’s shoulder, waking with a start and grousing. No amount of head stroking made a difference, and Dylan gave Mike a sympathetic look.
Mike seemed determined to continue now that he’d given himself permission to really share. “—Laura shut us out, we missed so much of the pregnancy, then the fire…and that’s not even the half of it.”
The fire. That’s right, Laura thought. The fire. Sometimes she blocked it out—needed to forget it—because the implications of what could have happened were too strong. Raising a baby without her mom was hard enough, but remembering how her grandparents died, her own confusion in the flames and smoke in her little apartment, how Dylan preternaturally knew what to do, instinct kicking in for him in a way that it should have for her…ruminating on it was too much.
She felt like a failure. The thought made the smallness return, a tiny ribbon of shame slipping into the cracks of her consciousness, where insecure dragons lurked behind every corner, waiting to attack.
“I can see you pulling away,” Mike said quietly, and she flinched. “It’s not just me.” A storm of emotions bubbled inside her, each feeling flying past as she tried to identify it, too slow and too late. By the time she could even feel anything, the feelings turned into a blur, like a tornado of chaos inside that was so enormous she needed to numb it. Kill it. Cover it.
Feed it.
Pretending it didn’t exist never worked, because the steady spiral of ever-moving tumult inside had a sound of its own, a high-pitched whine that made her vibrate from within. And not in a good way. Leaving her shaky and filled with trepidation, she knew this state only as discomfort.
Mike studied her; she felt his eyes lingering on hers, knew he sought to understand what she was thinking and feeling, and in that moment what she had always felt as extraordinary discomfort turned into a completely different sense.
Authenticity. Vulnerability. A peaceful, if painful, settling in that she could only do with Mike and Dylan. Only.
Ever.
“Hey,” Mike whispered, and then Dylan interrupted as Jillian let out a loud, juicy sound from her diaper region that broke the contemplative moment, shattering the deep resonance she had just begun to feel. Leave it to a baby to strip you bare of any sense of decorum or deep anything. They lived on the very surface of life, all sensation and experience, without any of the baggage adults drag around like anchors weighted with pain.
“Whatever I was thinking has been replaced by a fleeting thought of baby wipes. Do we have enough?” she asked Dylan, who just shook his head with a healthy dose of good humor, waving his hand in front of the stinky baby’s bum.
“We hit Costco last week, so we’d better.” A quick look rippled among the three, an acknowledgement that pragmatics trumped all. And, she hoped, a promise to revisit what had just been a turning point inside her. What it meant, she didn’t know.
Its evolution was more important than its purpose.
“I’m going to go take care of Stinkbug here,” Dylan said quietly, his voice modulated in an attempt to keep the baby calm, though she began to wiggle and fuss, rendering his attempts fairly useless. “I’ll change her and feed her and we’ll go for a nice, long walk,” he declared.
If he’d wiggled his eyebrows and thrown glow-in-the-dark condoms with lit sparklers attached, he couldn’t have been more obvious.
Mike managed to nod, frown, smile and sigh—all at once. “Thanks,” he said. Laura watched Dylan’s back and Jillian’s face as they faded down the hallway, his cooing adorable and Jillian so settled in (one of) her daddy’s arms that she could complain and still be taken care of and l
ove.
That shaky vibration within settled a bit, too, especially when Mike took his hand, large and warm and so assured in its grasp as he reached for her hip and guided her toward the bedroom.
Oh.
Oh.
This was, most definitely, not where she thought their conversation would lead them, and yet it made her breath hitch in a radically different way, her jumbled emotions all convening for a brief meeting to talk amongst themselves, only to emerge twenty seconds later with extraordinary consensus:
Yes.
He wasn’t commanding, but he was clear in his intent, and as Laura felt the familiar need rise up she decided to flip this scenario and focus entirely on him. Maybe she’d taken him a little too for granted when it came to sex and bedroom intimacy, too. Focusing too much on her own newly resurgent sexual needs might have left her a little blind when it came to Mike. Dylan tended to ask openly for what he wanted, more assertive and dominant, while Mike could certainly go alpha when he needed to, but today was an example of how complex he was.
Deep layers and a quiet surface meant that she needed to be more incisive, infer more, when it came to truly being there for him. Right now, what she needed was to give selflessly. Fully. And not take one iota.
Not one bit.
Not even a drop.
Climbing on the bed, she pulled up onto her knees and yanked with more force than she expected, pulling him on to the bed, then straddling him. Without a single word, she untucked his shirt and began to undo his pants.
“Hello there,” he said with a sly purr, hands lacing behind his head, his triceps popping from under his sleeves. The look on his face said, Please, continue.
With a twinkle she hadn’t seen in a while.
“This all right?”
“When is this ever not all right?” he asked, an incredulous tone in his voice, but something unspoken was in the tone. A thank you. A touch of gratitude for knowing what he needed without being asked. Her fingers slid the waistband of his jeans over those carved hips, pulling down, setting him free and unencumbered of the burden of any layers between them. Just what he wanted.
Exactly what she wanted.
“What about you?” he murmured, hands firmly in place beneath his neck, arms stretched up, chest and torso long and elegant, cock at the ready. Winter had dimmed his skin from a burnished gold to a more sedate hue, though his face remained tan from being on the slopes more than one would expect an owner to be.
“It’s your day,” she said without snark or bitterness, a smile tickling her lips. His wary look made her glad, too, the neutral way she spoke coming from a place in her that wanted the world to work in harmony. “Let this be about just you.”
“But—”
“And it will make tonight that much better.”
“Tonight?” His voice went mellow and rich, into a register that made her neck tilt and her belly ache with desire, but no—this was about giving.
Tonight, though, she would take, take, take. The heat between her legs confirmed it.
Mike enjoyed long, dry strokes at first; she’d learned over their time together that everything she thought she knew about blowjobs—and everything that did apply to Dylan—didn’t mean anything when it came to what turned Mike on. Relearning how to give a man this kind of pleasure felt like an advanced seminar in sexuality, the kind of upper-division course you think will be a complete blow-off (no pun intended) but that shakes the core of your knowledge paradigm, making you question the entire framework upon with your expertise hinges.
And that was perfectly fine.
A few strokes and then she clasped the root of him, her fingers closing and squeezing far harder than she would imagine any man would enjoy—but Mike groaned, a sound of ecstasy. Her other hand went under his balls and her thumb pushed against the thick wall of muscle between his scrotum and anus, her mouth covering just the tip of him, his hips thrusting up a few inches, though settling right back down.
Her mouth—her control.
The hand around the base of him let go and she took in his muscled buttock, the thick lines of his powerful ass turning her on more than she wanted, making it so much harder to focus solely on him. Squirming a bit, she wanted his hand—his mouth…hell, her hand—on her own clit for a quick release, but that would have to wait. The steady throb of her own soaking wet self was a reminder that there was no isolation of pleasure. She couldn’t just give, any more than she and Dylan could make love with Mike in the room and not have him react. All sensuality was connected.
The idea of disconnection was the mistake.
There should be no “my day” at all. That was where the three of them had erred.
Time later for philosophical discussions, though—right now she had him in her mouth, her tongue performing a lazy walk around the cock’s cap, one hand on his sac, the other up over his washboard abs and now teasing his nipple, which peaked at her touch. She looked up at him to find closed eyes and a frown of deep concentration and focus. Whatever she could give him now, she hoped, would make him trust her to give a complete release, open and bare to her.
A naked body was fairly easy to share with someone else. A naked self? Damn near impossible.
His inner thighs went tight as a shift in his hips made his glutes rock hard, chest a lovely, hard-cut expanse of man she never tired of watching. The tightness was a sure sign that his release was coming any second now.
Not yet, she thought, wanting to draw this out. A long, slow, wet stroke down, her throat relaxing to take him in, and then a slick suck going back up made him buck and moan “Laura!” through gritted teeth.
“Not yet,” she whispered, blowing air gently on his wet tip, making his body shiver. Hands buried in her hair and he made a sound of gratitude and frustration, twinned forever together in her mind.
Now she pulled both hands back to his base, one stroking him up to the rim, her mouth deep throating him, her other hand rolling his balls. A dip down to suck one into her mouth felt like a guilty pleasure of her own, the harsh hush of his breath sucking in through his teeth followed by a full-body clench, and then—
“Oh!” he gasped, the hot flow of his pleasure into her mouth surprising her, his climax coming sooner than she’d read, her ability to catch and interpret his signals clearly off. Following his movements, she caught it all, and as he twitched and panted, movements slowing, skin rasping against the sheets as he relaxed, she pulled her mouth off his hot, wet cock in a slow, studied movement, keeping her lips together at the end, and then swallowed.
He groaned again, this time with a touch of humor and playfulness. “You look very pleased with yourself.” He chuckled as she sat up and just looked at him, eyes taking in his perfection.
“I am.” The salty fluid tasted a bit like mango and crackers. How odd.
“You should be.” With open arms, he beckoned to her, and as she settled against his bare chest she reveled in the incongruity of her entirely clothed body against his utterly naked one. The balance of power was off.
Kind of fun like this.
Mike took deep belly breaths, Laura fixated on his navel and watching its rise and fall, the tranquility of the moment making her slip into a hypnotic state. If they’d had more time she could have fallen asleep, so peaceful were his breaths.
“Thank you,” he murmured.
“You’re welcome.” She crawled up him, sleek and catlike, and planted a kiss on his lips.
“About tonight,” he added.
“Oh, don’t you worry,” she said in a low, determined voice. “I haven’t forgotten about tonight.”
And then her ass buzzed.
Fucking phone. She looked—voicemail message. Josie. Holding up one finger, she walked out of the room, dialing as she went to the bathroom and shut the door.
“’lo?”
“Josie?” Thank God. She needed a friend. A voice. An ear. Someone sympathetic and empathetic who could just listen. Let her talk and unwind all the tangled thoughts and
feelings that made every part of herself feel so confused.
“Who else would it be? You got Joe programmed in your phone next to my name, too? Because if you’re calling for law school advice—”
“Joe?”
Josie snorted. “Darla’s been sexting me.”
“That’s an interesting relationship you have there,” Laura said, coughing.
“Ha ha. ‘Joe’ and ‘Josie’ are next to each other in the contacts list on her phone. I’m ready to change my name to Zandramander at this rate if it gets her to stop.” Josie’s voice went low. “You wouldn’t believe the pictures they take of each other.”
Laura shuddered, the taste of Mike still sharp in her mouth. She needed to get off the phone, fast. “What’s up? You never call this time of day unless you have a business question.”
Half the time Laura forgot that the dating service even existed. Then she felt tremendous guilt, because the venture was backed by money Mike and Dylan readily gave her, expecting nothing in return and not really caring whether it generated a profit. The unspoken secret between the three was that the two billion plus change that the men had in trust, and the millions they earned every year in income payout, was more than enough money for Laura to spend as she pleased on whatever she wanted, for Dylan to fund his foundation, and to support Mike’s work at the ski resort.
In other words—and this was where she cringed, but gritted her teeth and faced the truth—Good Things Come in Threes was just a pet project. It never had to turn a profit. In truth, it could bleed money forever and all would be well.
“Just calling to say ‘hi’,” Josie said in a voice so friendly Laura almost started crying. She missed her friend.
“I need to meet for coffee.” Laura said the words before she realized it was exactly what she wanted and needed.
“Fake meeting?”
“Yep. But make sure it doesn’t seem like a fake meeting.”
“Gotcha. I can’t today, though. How about tomorrow?”
Laura did a mental scan. Shit. Tomorrow she had a doctor’s appointment for Jillian and a playgroup. “Can’t tomorrow.”
