Within thirty seconds, she was asleep.
* * * *
“You owe me fifty bucks.”
Evan snorted. “She’s asleep? Already?”
Harden grinned. “Yeah. Just like I predicted. Hand it over.”
“For a billionaire, you’re a tight son of a bitch.”
“And you’re a sore loser.”
Evan grunted, shucked his wallet out of his back pocket, and handed Harden a fifty. As their fingers brushed, both of them froze for a second, then vaulted away from each other like they both had leprosy.
Harden cleared his throat, then asked, “Fancy a whiskey?”
“Yeah. I’ll never sleep otherwise.”
“It’s weird how Bella can fall fast asleep within five minutes, and both of us, who’ve been traveling for far longer, take fucking ages to drift off, right?”
“That’s the sleep of the innocent for you.”
Harden chuckled. “I doubt that. We’ve corrupted her too much.”
“Sexually, yeah,” Evan agreed with a grin. “I’m damned proud of that corruption, too! But no, she’s basically unchanged. Still too much of an innocent for her own good. Maybe naïve is a better word.”
He sighed. “Yeah. Probably a good job, too. She stops us from turning into selfish bastards.”
Harden headed to the drinks tray perched on a chest of drawers, poured himself and Evan a whiskey, then returned to his friend’s side. Both of them sat down as soon as they had the tumblers in hand. Seated opposite one another, as one, they took a deep swallow of the liquor, then tilted their heads back against the sofa cushions with matching, tired sighs.
Staring up at the ceiling, they let the silence embrace them. It wasn’t often they were treated to peace. Their lives weren’t exactly ones of tranquility. Evan had just finished three projects, and after this trip, would be diving headfirst into two more. Harden never really stopped working, and even though this trip was supposed to be “no business allowed,” he’d have to log onto his emails every day. Evan, too.
Crazy thing was, he knew Bella wouldn’t consider that a break of the rules, even though they did. She was used to them disappearing for hours, days, hell, weeks, at a time, used to being left alone in their home on the Puget Sound.
Guilt speared him at the thought, and he drowned it with another sip of whiskey. He had responsibilities, same as Evan...neither of them liked how much time they spent away from Bella, but that was life.
Sighing at the thought, he scrubbed a hand over his face and yawned.
“Tired?”
Harden’s chuckle was gruff. “Fucking exhausted.”
“Same here.”
“Maybe if we went to bed, we’d sleep?”
“Could be. Whereabouts in the bed is she?”
Instead of being offended by that question, which was a subtle way of inquiring whether the two men would have to sleep beside each other, he snorted. “Where do you think? She was dead center, only her legs were over the edge. She must have fallen asleep sitting up. I stripped her down to her panties, tucked her under the sheets. God knows where she is now.”
“Probably down by the foot of the bed.” Evan’s grin was audible in his words—it was a running joke that Bella wandered around the mattress in her sleep—unless, that is, she was pinned down by the pair of them.
“Probably.”
“You want to go to bed or what?” Evan asked, when neither of them made a move toward the waiting mattress and their partner of five years.
“Yeah, I do, but I can’t be bothered moving.”
Evan grunted. “Bull. Spit it out, Harden, you know you’ll never sleep unless you get whatever the hell is on your chest off it.”
That he was right, should have pissed Harden off, but they’d been friends for too goddamn long for them not to know each other well. “I’m concerned,” he eventually got out after another sip of whiskey gave him Dutch courage.
“What about?”
“Bella. This. Us.”
Evan’s head reared up. “What do you mean?”
“She’s pulling away from us. Don’t tell me you can’t feel it, too.”
He shook his head. “No way. Bella loves us.”
“What’s to love?” Harden snapped. “We’re never fucking home. Christ, she probably talks more to Harry and Evie than she does us.”
“We’re busy people. That’s why we have PAs.”
“Busy is one thing, but when your PAs are close friends with the woman who is near as dammit your wife, that’s fucked up, Evan.” He sucked in a breath. “The reason I suggested this trip was to try to reconnect with her. I just feel like she’s pulling away.”
Evan grunted. “You should have hired a jet. That way she wouldn’t have passed out on the bed as soon as we arrived.”
“Fuck that. Anyone hires a private jet, it’s you. The last time I did, she bitched at me for a week about the cost to the environment.” He pulled at the neck of his lightweight cotton T-shirt at the memory.
“I remember that now,” Evan murmured, his head popping up again to nod at him. “You were right. Forty hours of travel time is better than four weeks of her complaining about our scandalous misuse of fossil fuels.”
Grinning because Bella had once accused them of just that and in those exact words, Harden let his gaze study the corniced ceiling once more.
“What do you think we have to do to reconnect with her?”
Harden blew out a breath. “Considering the last time we all slept together was about a month ago, that’s probably a start.”
“I’m certainly game,” Evan retorted with a smirk.
“Don’t be a jackass. I’m being serious.”
“So am I!”
“Stop thinking with your cock—is that all Bella really means to you? Just some willing ass and pussy?”
Evan scowled. “Now who’s being the jackass? I consider the woman my wife, Harden. Of course she means more to me than just a quick shag.”
“Well then, start being productive.”
“How can I come up with a solution when I haven’t noticed anything is wrong?”
“Then you’re fucking blind.”
“I think you’re looking for trouble where there isn’t any.”
“I wish I was, Evan. But I think we’re at fault, too.”
“We are?”
“Ever since that goddamn night in LA, things have been strained between us.”
Evan glared at him. “I thought we said that night wasn’t up for discussion.”
Harden snorted. “That’s a bit I Know What You Did Last Summer, don’t you think?”
“Stop fucking around with me. I don’t want to talk about LA.”
“What we did wasn’t wrong, dammit. Our relationship with Bella is considered to be wrong, me and you...”
“Don’t go there,” he butted in.
“Fuck that, Evan. I’m not a kid and you can’t jinx me into keeping quiet. It would be a natural extension of our relationship if we...”
Evan reared up from the sofa. “If we, what? Had sex?” he hissed, eyes trained on the bedroom door, his tone low enough not to disturb Bella—not that a freight train could have done that. “You think that’s normal when we’ve never been attracted to each other before?”
Harden sighed. “You’re so fucking tetchy on this score. I don’t get it. I’d say you were overcompensating for something, but I don’t think you are. We both had hard-ons, Evan. It wasn’t just a one-way streak.”
“We were pissed out of our skulls.”
“Yet we still managed to get an erection.”
Evan spun on his heel. “I’m going to bed. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“Real mature, Evan, running away. We need to talk about this, before it destroys what really matters here...Bella, and what we have with her.”
Evan glared at him again, but kept silent, shaking his head as he slipped into the bedroom. Harden watched him go, and absentmindedly stud
ied his best friend’s ass.
He could say, in all honesty, that it was damned fine. But then, Evan was a good-looking SOB all round. Harden had actually seen his butt naked, and he could attest to the fact it looked equally as good in clothes as it did out of them.
Harden had experimented in college, unashamedly, too, but he’d decided women were, without doubt, his favorite gender. He’d enjoyed the roughness of sex between two guys, the way the two lovers he’d had, had known exactly what to do to get him off, just like he’d instinctively known, too. But still...it hadn’t been enough to make him want to switch sides. A good fuck didn’t a connection make.
Until Evan and he had kissed four months ago, he’d forgotten about those few experimental nights. Forgotten that he’d enjoyed sex with guys. He could have gone further that evening, had Evan not stopped, and he’d have been happy to brush it under the carpet, chalk it up to an interesting time, if not for Evan’s reaction to it.
The other man didn’t like him to touch him now. It had gone so far that Evan had started taking Bella alone to bed, rarely double-teaming her as they’d done throughout their relationship. It was like he was afraid of being touched by Harden, afraid he’d catch cooties or some fucking thing.
Considering nine times out of ten they’d shared her, Evan’s new habit was definitely causing waves of tsunami proportions. The closeness and togetherness they’d had throughout the duration of their relationship, regardless of all their traveling, was dissipating, and without it, he wasn’t sure if they’d survive.
The idea of no longer being in a threesome with Evan and Bella killed something inside him. When they’d first come together, he’d realized that with them, he’d found his place in the universe. He didn’t know how something so right could be going so wrong.
The thought of going into the bedroom, lying there stiffly at Bella’s side, knowing Evan was awake and wondering if Harden would do something to turn him queer made his guts twist with an impotent rage. Gritting his jaw, he sought the remote on the coffee table, pressed a button, and sighed when the drapes closed. Another remote turned up the air conditioning, and in the semi-darkness, with the air slowly cooling him down, he lay flat out on the sofa.
It didn’t take long for him to drift off, but a discontented and concerned scowl puckered his brow.
Even asleep, he knew all wasn’t right with his world.
* * * *
“Stupid bitch,” Evan grumbled under his breath as he squinted down at his tablet.
Peering over his shoulder, Bella snorted as she realized he was reading his emails, and saw who the “stupid bitch” was. Magdela Toulouse was Hollywood’s current, reigning queen, and had starred in two of Evan’s latest movies.
He hated her. More than he had hated any other of his leading ladies. Which wasn’t saying much, to be honest. Evan tended to hate all of the female stars in his productions...they all got on his nerves with their whining, as he phrased it.
“What’s she done this time?” she asked, unsurprised he was on his email even though it was the first morning of their vacation.
“What hasn’t she done?” he snarled, gulping down some white, sugary coffee—he had so much sugar in his morning drink, she didn’t know why the spoon didn’t stand up. She grimaced at the smell, and reached for her glass of juice.
“Assuming that’s rhetorical, I’d appreciate an answer nonetheless.”
Another growl. “She wants to reshoot the last ten minutes of the film, around thirteen different scenes in all.”
“Why?”
“Because she had two zits, and the ‘incompetent’ makeup team failed to cover it up. Shit, you can barely see anything, and I had to zoom in so far the pixels were bigger than her huge, fucking head.”
“What will you do?”
“I’m going to have to leave Evie in charge of her. I can’t talk to her without wanting to choke her. I’ve dealt with idiots before, but that woman takes the biscuit.” He sucked in a deep, calming breath, let out two smaller exhalations, followed by another deep inhalation—a breathing set his yoga instructor had told him to use when he was having trouble managing his anger.
If anyone was the hothead in their relationship, it was Evan.
“I don’t know why you keep working on Hollywood films,” Bella remarked, undisturbed by his anger as she was used to seeing him so stressed over his latest projects. Be it the cast, the production team or the final movie, directing didn’t make him happy.
He scowled. “What else is there to do?”
Bella rolled her eyes. “Are you being serious? You’ve never looked outside Hollywood?”
“That’s where the big productions are, Bella. You know that.”
“Yeah, but it’s not like you need the money or even want the fame. You hate the scripts, they’re too basic for your tastes, you hate the production companies, you hate the infighting, the egos of the stars… Why the hell do you do something when you dislike it so much?”
He blinked at her, once, then twice. She could tell the idea of never working on another movie again hadn't occurred to him. Not once. It might have surprised her, but she was used to his single-mindedness. Hell, she appreciated it when they were between the sheets.
Some nights, when it felt like an orgasm was farther away than Everest’s summit, Evan’s stubborn resolve would drag her over the edge. Defeat wasn’t a word that belonged in his vocabulary.
“I—I’ve always wanted to direct movies.”
“No,” she corrected. “You’ve always wanted to direct. There’s a difference. Why does it have to be a movie? Why not a documentary? Or, hell, I don’t know...a biography. Why does it have to be a Hollywood production?”
He blinked again. “Because that’s who I am. Movies are what I do.”
“No, they’re one aspect of what you can do. You’re not a one trick pony,” she murmured, throwing the British idiom back at him. Over the length of their relationship, she’d garnered a wealth of his weird and wacky British sayings, and she did like using them.
When he sat there, mouth working, Harden came out onto the balcony, yawning widely. “Why is Evan doing a fish impression?”
Bella quickly shook her head in an attempt to halt his train of questioning, and spying it, Harden raised his brows, but shrugged it off. Heading toward her, he pressed a kiss to her forehead, before continuing on to the breakfast buffet a maid had laid out fifteen minutes before.
She watched as, bare-chested, Harden picked up a fruity Danish, poured himself a cup of the thick, Greek coffee that had her belly churning it was so strong, and leaned an elbow on the steel railing curling around the terrace to stare out over the Mediterranean.
It wasn’t the first time she’d been in this part of the world, but the blueness of the sea was like a punch to the gut. She could tell it dazzled Harden, too, even though he wasn’t one for views. Usually too busy doing something else, he rarely took the time to appreciate his surroundings.
Her eyes drifted over the taut expanse of his back, the muscles tugging and unfurling even in his relaxed pose. She made to stand, ready to circle his waist and embrace him from the back, but Bella realized Evan’s introspection had come to an end, and his gaze was no longer blank, staring inward, but he, too, was watching Harden.
Cocking a brow at that observation, she tilted her head to the side as he continued to take in the pretty picture Harden made from the back. His tight ass displayed rather nicely in a pair of white boxers, his thigh and calf muscles deliciously delineated thanks to his loosely held posture. Crouched over as he was, his biceps were taut, his abs on show. From the back, his golden head of hair sparkled in the sun as it cascaded down to his shoulders. His hair was long not out of rebellion, but out of ease. Making it to the barber, or even arranging for the barber to come to him was too much hassle for him. On the rare occasions he wanted a cut, she’d attacked the soft locks and given him a trim.
In comparison to Harden’s tawny hair, with his golden sk
in, big, bright blue eyes, golden stubble surrounding soft lips and a hawkish nose, Evan was brunet. His hair so dark it made black look translucent, his skin a pale shade of peachy cream. Evan was longer, slimmer, more slender than Harden. Evan practiced yoga, where Harden worked out in the gym. Evan cycled and swam, where Harden preferred to curse as he lifted weights. Their bodies were beautiful, pieces of art, just in completely separate ways.
Evan had the face of a poet. All long black lashes, thick, kissing lips, a slender nose, and green eyes that usually missed nothing. In this case, they really weren’t missing anything. But she didn’t let herself ponder Evan’s lengthy perusal of Harden’s form, because if he caught her staring, she knew, instinctively, he’d be embarrassed.
Deciding to ask Harden later about Evan’s strange study of him, she moved away from the wrought iron and glass table she’d been sitting at for the last hour, before either man had awoken, and did as she’d wanted...wrapped her arms around Harden’s toned belly.
When her arms slipped around his hot, silken flesh, she groaned a little, letting her fingers knead the thick muscles found there.
“At times, I wonder if you remember I’m not Sax.”
She snorted. Sax was their dog. “If you’re complaining about being petted...”
Before she could continue, Harden tutted. “Not complaining, just making a statement. Although, if petting is what you’re doing, I have body parts clamoring for your attention.”
She tilted her head to stare up at him with a grin, seeing the faint lines crinkling at his eyes as he looked down at her, a mischievously cocked brow aimed her way.
“Clamoring, eh?” Bella asked, tone serious. “I’ve obviously been lax in my duty.” Her hand slipped down over the taut line of his stomach, slid beneath the waistband of his shorts, and grasped his cock. She squeezed, hard, enough to make him groan and his shoulders to hunch a little more. The faint look of relief on his face had her sighing.
It wasn’t her fault they’d not had sex in close to a month!
She let her hand shape his shaft, an act she’d done often and never grew tired of. The tip of his dick was flatteringly wet, his pre-cum soaking her fingers as she began to tug back and forth until her hand made a clapping noise with the speed of her motion.
Three's Never a Crowd [The Corsakis Hotel 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 2
