by Anne Calhoun
“Which is?”
“You have to be there, too. You, me, and Sean.” She stowed the container in her lunch box. Sure, she’d gone there in her dreams, but she never would have considered living out this fantasy. With Ty, it was easy to cross that line and meld dreams with the reality of him. “I’ve always wanted to try a ménage. A guy in his situation deserves a night to remember.”
“Wait a second, that’s not—”
She cut off his backpedaling. “This happens with you, or it doesn’t happen at all. And I want to meet him first. Somewhere neutral.” She pulled out her treat, peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. “Want one?”
He looked at the cookies, then at her.
“I brought extra, for you,” she said, holding out the plastic bag.
With an air of Why the fuck not he took one, ate it. “You make those? They’re good.”
“I did,” she said. “Peanut Butter Sensations. My grandmother’s recipe. Have another one.”
He did, sitting forward, elbows on knees as he ate. The traffic around the lake picked up as noon grew closer. The silence had stretched on long enough for him to look at her. She didn’t need special equipment to measure and sell the play between them. It was off the charts. And if the dark passion between them was all he’d let himself feel, then she’d work with it.
“Why do I have to be there?” he asked.
“I’ll answer that if you tell me why you’re working on the rigs,” she said, and brushed the cookie crumbs to the birds.
“Great pay,” he said without hesitation.
“In security work contracts routinely run hundreds of thousands of dollars and that’s just the retainer to secure the company’s services,” she said mildly. “You don’t need to be a roughneck to make very good money.”
He shook his head, but he didn’t offer another explanation for working as a roughneck.
“Come on, Ty,” she said. “Be curious. Don’t you want to know what it would be like?”
He turned to face her. “I know what it’s like,” he said, and the rough bite to his voice sent a jagged electric shock straight to her clit.
“Well then,” she said. “I guess you’ll be in charge.”
A clear indicator of her trust in him, if he recognized it for what it was. Heat rose up his throat and into his cheeks, but he looked down at the blacktop path for a long time before he spoke. “Let’s go dancing Saturday night.”
“You dance?” she asked with a little laugh.
“Yeah, I dance.”
Curiouser and curiouser. “Where?”
“No Limits. You know it?”
No Limits was the city’s hottest dance club and bar. Dress code was suggestive. Dance moves were provocative. Hookups were expected. She’d have to dig through her closet for something suitable. “I know it.”
“Nine Saturday.” He cut her a look. “I’ll bring Sean.”
If this was the only way he’d relate to her, she’d go with it. After all, she was curious, and she trusted Ty. “Then I’ll be there.”
* * *
Somewhere along the line in the past two weeks, Ty had lost control of his life. In a contest of who could be more casual about sex he was getting one-upped by a petroleum geologist, and the results were driving him out of his fucking mind. She didn’t play by the rules of standard relationships. According to those rules, when he was a rude, insensitive, arrogant asshole who wanted to share her with his friend, she ditched him in a huff. Maybe he’d even get slapped. Southern women still slapped men. It was practically guaranteed in state constitutions. He’d seen it happen in bars.
She wasn’t supposed to call his hand and tell him it was a threesome or nothing at all. He could have said no, walked away. He still could. Introduce Lauren to Sean, get them interested in each other, and bail. Except acid rose in Ty’s throat at the thought of Sean with Lauren, exploring that lean, graceful body. He didn’t want to need Lauren, but he didn’t want anyone else to need her, either.
In the end, he wouldn’t back down. So here he was at No Limits, drinking and dancing hard enough for the background noise of wailing children to nearly fade from his mind. Then he saw Sean shoulder his way through the crowd to the bar, and it all came back. He countered the flood of memories by gripping Lauren’s hips and turned her, back to his front, and nodded Sean’s direction. “That’s him.”
Without breaking rhythm to the dance music Lauren looked at Sean. From his position behind her, his cheek against hers, one hand splayed on her belly and the other just under her breasts, Ty could see her gaze skim the crowd, felt her body pause momentarily when she found the other man. “Tall, blond hair, wearing the dark green button-down?” At his nod she eased back into the dance, swiveling her hips against his erection. “That’s not an academic type,” she said with a laugh.
“He’s a Naval Academy graduate and a Rhodes Scholar,” Ty said. The slow, thumping beat merged with his heartbeat, and he could feel the blood moving through his veins. Both hands lifted to link behind his neck, giving him access to her body and a clear view down her shirt, unbuttoned to the clasp of her bra. Her hips grinding slowly against his cock and the sheen of sweat on her breasts stole his ability to form words.
“Smart doesn’t always equal geeky academic. Either way, he’s really late,” Lauren said. “I was starting to worry.”
Sean was actually ten minutes early. Ty told him to meet them at ten, because maybe she’d have come to her senses between now and then. He’d wanted to give her an out. The desire to have an hour with Lauren by himself, her body rubbing against his, her hair sliding loose over his arms as they danced, was just a side effect. Now that was over. He took her hand to lead her from the dance floor, but she tilted her head in the direction of the restrooms. “Give me a minute?”
He made his way to the bar, exchanged the all-purpose Hey with Sean, and ordered a shot of whiskey. Sean had some kind of fancy beer in a bottle in front of him. He studied the crowd intently, as if searching for someone, then relaxed.
“Where’s your girlfriend?” he asked.
He’d better make things clear before Lauren joined them. “She’s in the head, and Lauren’s not my girlfriend.”
Sean paused in the act of lifting the bottle to his mouth and cut him a glance. Some guys joined the Corps to stay out of jail, get out of a nowhere town, or because they had no other options. That was John. He’d come from less than nothing, wanted to use the Corps to leverage himself up and out of poverty. Some longed for the days of gladiators and knights, when the study of war was an all-consuming, legitimate calling for a man. That was Sean, disciplined and intense, a straight-up warrior in thought, word, and deed.
“Okay, how’d you meet this woman who’s not your girlfriend?”
Ty snapped out of his useless introspection. “She’s a geologist. She logged the well we drilled on my last shift. We hooked up.”
Not true. Something about you made that smart, clear-eyed, sexy woman pick you out, keeps her coming back for more, and she won’t tell you what it is. He signaled the bartender for another shot, and added, “She’s real curious,” tarnishing a simple statement with cynicism to keep the protective instincts at bay. The point of this was to teach her a lesson about trusting him.
“About what?”
“Lots of things, but tonight she’s curious about being with two guys at the same time.” No point in telling Sean he’d baited her into it.
Sean’s eyes widened. “No shit?”
“No shit. That’s her.” He tossed back the shot, felt the burn but no glow.
Sean watched Lauren make her way through the crowd toward them. Her hair, loose around her shoulders and upper arms, glinted silver and brown under the lights, and the crisp white sleeveless blouse clung to her skin.
“You, me, and her.” It wasn’t a question, but Ty nodded anyway. “What happens?”
“That’s on me. Nonnegotiable rule is that nothing happens that she doesn’t want.” Sean rais
ed a brow, as in No shit, Sherlock, so Ty added, “You up for it?”
An uncharacteristic bitterness twisted Sean’s mouth. A part of Ty’s mind he thought he’d eradicated warred between thinking this was a bad idea for Sean, and thinking it was exactly what he needed when Sean said, “Why the fuck not?” more to himself than to Ty. “Has she done this before?”
Good question, one he would have asked in another lifetime. Ty shrugged, as if the thought of Lauren with not one but two other men didn’t ache like newly formed scar tissue. “None of my business.”
“Have you done this before?”
The jaded feeling swamped him again. “Jesus. You’re a lieutenant, not my mother.”
Sean looked at Ty’s empty glass, then at the cluster of glasses on the bar by his elbow. “If this is on you, you might want to ease up on the shots.”
Lauren’s breathless, smiling arrival saved him from a suitably obscenity-laden response, and if he didn’t order another whiskey, it was because he had to introduce Lauren to the man she was going to fuck later. Lauren shook Sean’s hand, her considering look nicely masked by the smile. She got the bartender’s attention and asked for water. “You want one?” she said to Ty.
“Yeah,” he said, and drank it when it came. Then signaled for another glass.
“How do you know Ty?” Lauren asked Sean. Her skin gleamed with sweat, and her eyes were bright, shining with a patina of dancing and alcohol. She was smart to choose water.
“We served together,” he said. “Ty was the guy who held everyone together. Personal problems, girl problems, grudges, whatever. He was magic with the friendlies, too. We’d go through the same villages again and again, trying to form relationships, strengthen ties while we were on patrol, and Ty was the guy who learned Farsi so he could make conversation. I remember this one time—”
Sean had been very careful to deemphasize his officer rank and present Ty in the best possible light, but the sludge inside him crawled up his throat. “Knock it off,” he broke in. “She’s already sleeping with me, and playing nice with the locals has a low CDI factor,” he said, then tried to distract her by wrapping his arm around her shoulders to pull her in for a kiss. She bit his lip hard enough to make him yelp, then gave him an insincere smile.
Sean froze with his beer halfway to his mouth as he watched this. Lauren turned to him and said, “I grew up on Army bases, so I know what CDI means. Chicks Dig It. The average male thinks things that go boom have a higher CDI than the hard work of diplomacy.”
He gave Ty a glance that said You are so in over your head. “You don’t seem like the type to go for that.”
“I’m not, and he knows it. Since you mentioned it, I noticed the same thing on the rig. The other workers looked to him for advice or just a shoulder, but it makes him really uncomfortable when you bring up what he used to be,” she said to Sean in a tone so mildly amused it took Ty a second to realize that she’d just stripped away the illusion that he was hiding anything from her. “Let’s dance instead.”
She took Ty’s hand, but he stayed put. “Kiss that and make it better, first,” he said, tapping his lower lip with his index finger.
“Does it hurt?” she asked, a hint of poor Ty in her voice.
“Yeah.” Everything hurt, especially watching Lauren and knowing he couldn’t risk what she had to offer. Standing in a club full of people who were drinking and dancing their pain away, maybe fucking it away later with a stranger. Grief and despair were everywhere, covered with the thinnest veneer of life.
“We’re even, then,” she said, too low for Sean to hear as she leaned in and flicked her tongue against the edge of his lip. Another slow swipe, then she gently kissed the throbbing spot. Fingers woven with hers, he bent her arm behind her and pressed their clasped hands against her tailbone, pulling her against him for a hot, slow kiss.
It wasn’t an apology, and he knew it.
Sean watched, color high on his cheekbones, not looking away. Lauren broke the kiss, turned to Sean, and tipped her head toward the dance floor. “Shall we?”
Sean looked around once more, and a memory bloomed in Ty’s brain, something about a girl who liked to dance, but Sean just drained his beer and followed them to the dance floor. His hand clasped with Lauren’s, Ty broke a path through the crowd, Sean brought up the rear, and somewhere along the way, his fingers had linked with Lauren’s, too. The DJ spun up Sheena Easton’s “Love Bizarre,” and the rhythmic beat thumped through Ty’s feet and into his chest. He let it pound rational thought in the background and bring the sheer animal lust front and center in his brain. The dance floor was packed with people dancing together, dancing alone, dancing in packs. This was No Limits. The wilder, the dirtier, the more blatantly sexual the better. Ty saw a man hike up his partner’s short skirt to grab her ass, exposing the red thong she wore as he pulled her hard against his thigh. Another woman had her hand down the front of her girlfriend’s black leather shorts, attracting attention from several guys in the vicinity.
Might as well set the mood now. Ty turned Lauren to face Sean, and within a few bars of music they’d found space for hands and legs. She put one hand on his shoulder and the other on his hip, fingers flexing to bring herself in close. Ty watched arousal flare in Sean’s eyes as he got into the swing of things and shifted Lauren so one thigh slipped between hers, his hand at the small of her back to hold her steady, even though Lauren was tall enough to fit perfectly between them. Maybe there was more to Sean than Ty knew.
Ty slid his arms under Lauren’s and flattened his palms on her rib cage, just below the swell of her breasts, aligning his body with hers from chest to hip, and in seconds the three of them grooved to the beat, hips and shoulders shifting and swiveling, as synchronized as a parade ground drill, and a hell of a lot hotter. The position brought his abdomen in close contact with Sean’s hand at the base of Lauren’s spine. He could feel Sean’s fingers flexing and shifting with Lauren’s movements, watched Sean’s mouth soften, the hair at his temples grow damp with sweat.
Moving with the beat, Lauren lifted her arms and broke the hold, then turned to face Ty. A bolt of lust shot down his spine and into his balls at the languid heat in her eyes. Her hair clung to her cheeks and neck; without thinking, he slid his fingertips over her hot face, gathering the hair and gripping it in one fist at her nape before he kissed her, hard and hot and deep. With his other hand he gripped her ass and pulled her tight against him. Her arms looped around his neck, and her pussy snugged up against his thigh. Without hesitation Sean stepped into her back, pushing Lauren firmly against Ty. Sean’s hip joint shifted and worked against Ty’s hand on Lauren’s ass as they swiveled in time to the beat.
Right now everything was making him hot. Everything. The music, the way Sean’s presence was slowly turning Lauren inside out, her rhythmic, uninhibited grind against him.
Sean’s hands moved up Lauren’s rib cage, not stopping until they cupped her breasts. Lauren’s mouth opened on a sigh Ty felt against his jaw. Sean leaned in, murmured something in her ear.
“Very okay,” Lauren said with a low, sexy laugh. Ty kissed her again, felt the aroused resilience of her lips, the languid wet heat of her mouth when his tongue swept inside. Her pussy would feel just as hot and sweet around his cock.
Ty unfisted the hand at Lauren’s nape, gripped the base of her skull, and used his thumb to tip her head. “You like him?” he asked.
She peered at him, hot desire in her eyes and a delighted little smile on her face, and nodded.
“Want to fuck him?”
Maybe Sean heard him, maybe he didn’t. Either way his hands worked over Lauren’s breasts, fingers stroking her nipples. A shudder rippled through Lauren.
She nodded again, then lifted her mouth to his ear. “And you.”
Sean’s gaze met his over the top of Lauren’s head.
“Let’s go,” Ty said.
Chapter Nine
They’d all driven separately and met at No Limits. When
they left Ty walked not to his truck but to her car with her while Sean headed for a gleaming Mustang. One member of the bar’s security staff, a sharp-eyed, off-duty Galveston cop, threw them a quick, assessing glance, a visual sobriety check honed by years of experience, then watched Sean’s car pull in behind hers before returning to a conversation with a group of women waiting behind the velvet rope.
“What about your truck?” she asked Ty as he slid into the passenger seat of her car.
“I’ll get it later.”
The drive to her house took only fifteen minutes on nearly empty streets, the lights from Sean’s car steady in her rearview mirror. Time should have tempered the lust-saturated mood. But when Ty worked his palm under her skirt, then wriggled an index finger under her thong to gently stroke her clit, Lauren swallowed hard.
“I can’t focus when you do that,” she said.
One corner of his mouth lifted briefly, accenting the deep grooves carved into his face. “I’m in charge, right?”
A moment’s consideration was all she needed. She trusted Ty, felt the feedback loop humming between them strengthen with every action, every word spoken or unspoken. She didn’t need to tell him that condoms were mandatory and if she said stop, it stopped. “Yes.”
She pulled into her garage and killed the engine. He wasn’t smiling, his gaze dark and heated with a purely masculine admiration. His damp hair grazed his cheekbones, and the faint scent of sweat rose with the heat simmering off his big body.
She had no idea what was coming. She’d assessed risks and rewards, wondered what it would be like, fantasized about it. But reality was here, in the form of not one but two Marines, and the one sitting in her car, radiating sex and masculinity, didn’t seem to be playing at all. Without hesitation he’d accepted the role as the man in charge, reinforcing Lauren’s growing confidence that he was falling back on his core character.
