She didn’t give in to her anal side and point out that they would have to endure a lot more tests during the quarantine period. They knew the drill because they were the ones that wrote the damn rules for how Lusty was going to handle this thing.
So instead, she just said, “Good. So now all we have to do is wait it out—this quarantine.” Mary exhaled and looked from one of her fiancés to the other. Looking at them, reading their expressions, she was getting the idea that they had made another call together, one that concerned her.
Rather than wait, she asked, simply, “What?”
“We want to snuggle and sleep with you between us each night,” Toby said. “But it worries us that you might already be sick, and we don’t know it.”
“Or that you may be.” Mary said the words softly.
Anthony nodded. “Yeah, or that we may be.”
“And…”
“And we’re going to eat healthy and get lots of fluids and lots of rest,” Toby said. “So, if we are sick, we’ll be in the best possible shape to beat it.”
It took her just a moment to understand just what it was they were saying. She couldn’t help but let her men know what she thought of what they had come up with. It didn’t matter that she didn’t say a word. She felt the way her face contorted as if she was looking at men who had lost their ever-loving minds. She knew they got the message loud and clear.
“We’ll have a whole lifetime together,” Anthony said. “Once we get through these next three weeks.”
Men and women were entirely different. If that wasn’t something that she’d learned through all her people-studying and the other research she’d done, it was something she would no longer be able to claim ignorance about. Not after today.
And my men are different from most of the ones I’ve met.
“Think of it as delayed gratification,” Anthony said.
“Do you know how I know that you two are perfect for me?” Mary asked. She knew she didn’t add any inflection to her words. But her men knew her well enough that they answered her cautiously.
“Um…because we’re strong and handsome?” Toby asked.
“Because we love you and you love us?” Anthony asked.
“No, because, one, you put others ahead of yourselves, which is something I’ve done most of my life and is a very sexy trait. So we mesh, there. And two, you’ll be able to understand perfectly and have patience with me when I come up with ridiculous, half-baked, lame-brain ideas.”
“Mary…we want you so damn bad we ache with it,” Anthony said. “But we don’t want to take from you when you may need everything to fight this damn thing.”
She’d known that Anthony would try one last argument. She had one, too. “You’re talking physical strength, and I’ve plenty of that. Loving you both—becoming one with you both together—that will bolster my emotional and mental strength. I really, really need to have you both inside me at the same time. Please.”
For one horrible moment she wondered if they were going to hold firm and deny her what she believed with all her heart she needed more than she’d ever needed anything in her life.
Then they sighed, and then they moved.
“One more reason why you’re perfect for us?” Anthony lifted her from the water and turned her so she straddled him. “You can save us from ourselves when we go overboard in protective mode.”
“In the future, I’m certain our children will thank you for that.” The gleam in Toby’s eyes let her know he relished the thought of children.
Wow. I sure didn’t expect my heart to melt at that thought. She reached for his hand. “If they don’t, I’ll let them know they should.”
Mary’s words had the absolute best response, ever. Both the cock she was pressed against and the one inches from her face had just pulsed with hardness.
“Not one minute longer,” Anthony said.
Toby stepped out of the tub and barely dried himself. Then he grabbed another towel and held it out. Anthony stood and handed her over to him.
“I never saw the attraction in being ‘handled’ before,” Mary said.
Sitting on Toby’s lap while he gently and patiently dried her and feeling the fine trembles that racked him, she felt truly cherished. It was a wonderful feeling.
Anthony came over, gently worked the scrunchie out of her hair, and used the towel he held to just as gently sop any water out of her tresses. There wasn’t much, but his doing so showed her he’d listened that time she’d mentioned that she didn’t like being in bed with damp hair.
Then he used a finger to lift her chin. She met his gaze and melted a little more. She didn’t know if she could ever find the words to adequately describe the light of passion in his eyes. What a beautiful, and moving, sight.
“I’ll get the bed ready for us.”
By the time Toby carried her into the bedroom, not only had the bed been stripped of all but the bottom sheet but music played very softly and candles burned. And there, on the mattress, ready for Anthony’s use, lay a towel, a condom, and a tube of lubricant.
The combination of the ethereal and the practical was one of the hottest images she’d ever experienced.
Toby laid her in the center of the bed then loomed over her for a moment. An atmosphere of the sacred surrounded them, and Mary surrendered to it but, more importantly, she surrendered to her men.
Toby placed a gentle kiss on her lips then moved down her body, lips and tongue kissing and tasting in a manner she could only term reverent.
The hot breath of his sigh brushed her feminine folds, and when his mouth settled on her pussy, she shivered and whimpered and felt her arousal begin to burn.
Each moist caress of his lips, each rough rasp of his tongue showed her how much he loved her. The thrill of his intimate kiss arched her back and hardened her nipples. When he kissed his way back up her body, she raised her arms and then wrapped herself around him as he settled between her thighs and impaled her in one solid thrust.
“Kiss me.”
Mary obeyed. She lifted her head and gave him her mouth, receiving back the flavor of them both together. That exciting elixir sent electric tingles through her body. The world turned as Toby rolled them. Now on top of him, she parted her legs and pressed down, ensuring his cock was well and truly captured within her body. Ending their kiss, she rose up, held his gaze, and began to move on him. Never had she felt so sexy, so vibrant—and never had she felt the full scope of her power as a woman as she did in that moment.
Toby’s eyes shone as brightly as Anthony’s had with love and lust. Amazing.
Anthony stroked his hand down her back, a long and loving caress. Then he pressed, and she obeyed his silent command. She lowered her chest onto Toby’s, keeping him deeply seated within her while she offered her ass to Anthony.
The sounds painted an erotic picture. Her lover protected them both with a condom then ensured their pleasure with lube. He caressed her anus with slickened fingers, and Mary couldn’t hold back the urge to press against them.
He leaned in and kissed her shoulder, and in that kiss, she felt his smile. His fingers pushed past her sphincter, sending a heat and a fine, seducing pain through her erogenous parts.
Anthony moved those fingers in and out and in a stretching circle that fanned the flames of her passion and need. When he eased those fingers out of her, she shivered. Anticipation engulfed her. Time slowed. She heard and felt and imagined him, her lover, one half of her heart, using the towel he’d placed to clean his fingers then moving, on his knees, ever closer. The heat of his hands as they landed on each of her ass cheeks shivered through her.
The delicious thrill of his spreading her, opening her, excited.
Mary sighed as the head of his condom-covered cock centered on her rosette. Then Anthony began to press, one solid, unrelenting, determined push that took the heat of burning to new heights. The pain was real as her anus stretched to admit him, but it was more than bearable because that heat became a f
uel to her libidinous desperation.
“Ah…” The sound escaped her throat as Anthony’s cock slid past her sphincter to settle deep into her body.
“Oh, God.”
The two-word curse or prayer came to her in stereo, as both men experienced their own first time sharing her. Our first ménage. Mary had no power of speech and no goal whatsoever—except to come.
“Sweetheart?”
Anthony’s jagged inquiry filled her heart.
“Fuck me. Both of you. Now. Hard. Oh, oh, I need….” Unable to remain compliant, she moved as she needed to move. Tiny, jerky motions that lacked grace but sure as hell began to fill the desperate need clawing at her from the inside out.
“Fuck!”
Again, their epithets came in unison, but Mary was beyond the words and beyond thinking. She moved, taking, giving, sharing the moment, the elevation and the depth, the heart and, yes, the soul. They were one, her mates joined with her and in a way that defied logic, and she understood that this moment melded them, changed them.
Then heat and heart and friction, love and mindless, endless need coalesced into an orgasm so fierce, so powerful, it consumed her—consumed them—completely. They came and came, endless waves of passion, endless clouds of ecstasy.
The rasp of breathing, the drumming of hearts—her own and the two bracketing hers—and the scent of raw and primal sex filled reality.
She felt a floating kind of transition. Having shared a climax with the men she planned to live her life with, their bond had been blessed and sealed. She believed that with all her heart. The inner sanctuary of their love, this, their private bower, now returned to real time and space.
They were changed. They were new. They had the promise and the hope of their private place, their own special holy ground to sustain them.
She needed a moment more and was grateful when neither of her men felt compelled to end this connection too quickly. She still held them both within her, but of course, that couldn’t last.
Finally, “I’ll be right back. Stay still.” Anthony’s words, whispered against her shoulder, warned her, but she missed him the moment he separated from her.
Toby wrapped his arms around her but seemed as loath to speak as she herself was. She sighed and rubbed her cheek against his chest.
Anthony returned, and a warm, damp compress took care of minor discomfort and lubrication overload.
He left them once more and then returned. It took him only a moment to restore the covers to the bed and snuff out the candles. He left the music playing, and that was good.
Soft and soothing sounds of nature and pan flutes, the music was like capturing a wisp from their bower and holding it close.
Her head was on Toby’s chest, and Anthony spooned her. Mary loved these moments so much. Moments when it was just the three of them. She couldn’t explain why this suited her when in the past the idea of sharing anything beyond the most distant kind of relationship with other men had left her…cold.
What Aunt Samantha had told her once must be true. Some women and some men were simply made for this kind of relationship.
“Deep thoughts?” Toby asked.
“More like disparate thoughts,” Mary said. “About us and our place in the universe.”
“Right here,” Anthony said. “This is our place.” He remained quiet for a moment. “My mother used to try and tell me what it was like for her with my dad—what it was like for them both, together. And it’s not that I never believed her. I just didn’t know if maybe her recall wasn’t tempered by the pain of loss. But that didn’t matter, because I wanted it for my own.
“But now I do understand. And I never… I guess I had almost given up on ever finding anything that…enveloping, for myself.”
Mary heard the catch in Anthony’s voice, as she was certain Toby had as well. She leaned into him just slightly and rubbed her hand over his right hand that lay on her hip.
“I didn’t know if I would really get a deep and abiding love,” Toby said, “because I really wasn’t certain it existed. Yeah, I guess my parents fit that bill, but the only other example I had, growing up, was my grandparents. I never heard a hard word between them, and they stuck like glue. There was no wheedling one against the other. But… I just figured they were rare—or from another age. Then I saw Sean and Noah with their Brittany…and I wondered. I’ve said that this was not the reason I came to Lusty, but now…I think maybe my subconscious mind was dragging me here, for this.”
“I really did think I was destined for spinsterhood.” Mary sighed. “I really never imagined that I could crave being with a lover, that I could look to the future and see a husband and kids. But now I know it was because I was looking at the wrong kind of picture. Because I see you both, and those kids I thought I could never want, a future so bright and so precious…”
She stopped, because she didn’t want to go beyond that moment, didn’t want to give words to the tiny tendril of fear that wanted to snake up and wend its way around her shiny new hope.
“We’ll take care to preserve that, baby,” Toby said.
“It’s our duty—and our privilege—to be the guardians of your hope, love.” Anthony kissed her shoulder.
“Sleep now. We’ll build our own world, by our own rules, one step at a time. Together.”
Together. That, right there, was the best word, ever.
Chapter Twenty
Mary couldn’t contain her excitement. It was all she could do not to bounce from foot to foot. Her self-mocking inner voice tried to get a word in, something about her not really being much of a cosmopolitan and chic New Yorker after all.
She squashed that pimple like the zit it was. Mary Kendall was a totally different person than she’d been back in The Big Apple. I like who I am now, so there!
“Hang onto your panties, New York. We’ve got lots of time.”
“But this is exciting, Toby! The entire town is throwing a party for us!”
“Which means we can’t be late, because we’re the guests of honor.” Anthony’s words told her he was aligned lockstep with Toby. And that…yeah, that was how it should be. Mary shrugged and gave them a look she knew they’d get. Sometimes, it was hard for her to conceal her emotions or her excitement or to choose that delayed gratification when it was the right thing for her to do.
Life through their quarantine, just ended the week before, had been amazing good. Well, except for those necessary times that Robert came by in hazmat gear and shoved those long-handled swabs up their noses. She could have sworn the practice thoroughly dusted off her brain. But in the end, none of the three of them had contracted the virus. They’d spent their time really getting to know each other and connecting on a deep level. No topic had been off limits. And all three of them had agreed that, as future parents, this was a very good thing to do.
Sheriff Adam Kendall had tested positive, but fortunately, his symptoms had been fairly mild. He had already tested negative again and had in fact gone into Waco to register so he could donate some of his plasma to help others who were stricken with the disease and showing more worrisome symptoms.
Of everything that had been tried to treat the many people who’d contracted the coronavirus, using plasma from Covid survivors seemed to have the most promising effect so far.
Hope made real. Many had been infected, and tragically, many had died. Her home state of New York had been hardest hit, so far. But even amongst the weeds of all that sadness and tragedy, hope insisted on sprouting and rising up. Small buds of hope, yes, but in time Mary believed they’d bloom and be the most wonderful sight of all.
That was a very Grandma Kate kind of thought.
Mary grinned. Spending time with the nonagenarian was definitely making an impression on her. All things considered, Mary thought she could not have a better role model—or granny.
Ginny Kendall wasn’t quite ready to let her warrior return to work, and for his part, though Adam chafed at the bit to be back on duty, he ch
ose, in this instance, to make his wife happy, first.
Everyone had said that Adam took his duty as sheriff very seriously and believed himself responsible for the safety and well being of everyone under his jurisdiction. Mary thought it showed a kind of unique and mature growth that he had been able to put his duty as husband and father first for once.
Mary had heard bits of their story, of how Adam and Jake had wooed their Ginny. She hoped that, one day soon, she could sit down again with the mother of three and hear the whole thing. She’d bet if it were a book, it would be an amazing read.
“Do we ride or walk?” Anthony asked.
“Do you know what? Even though it’s hot out by my standards, I say we walk,” Mary said. She grinned at her men. “We were indoors long enough, and we’ll get cool in the air conditioning once we get to Lusty Appetites.”
Anthony smiled, and then he kissed her. As usual, when they were headed somewhere, his kiss was shorter than she liked. She thought of it as a down payment. Then she reached for Toby, and he laid his lips on hers. Yeah, that was a definite down payment.
“It’s hot by my standards, too, baby,” Toby said. “We’ll acclimate together.”
“We can do that. And take a vacation, the three of us, in either New York or Wyoming—in the wintertime.”
“I’ve never been in a cold climate,” Anthony said. “What if I find out I like it?”
“Do you want to take that bet?” Toby asked her.
“Nope. I think that’s what’s referred to as a sucker bet.”
It wouldn’t take long to walk the few blocks from their small house to the restaurant. It was just passed seven on this Friday evening near the end of March. Mary took the time to really look at her adopted hometown. There was something about facing the possibility of being sick, of possibly facing a health crisis, that had awakened her sense of appreciation for life.
Love Under Two Detectives Page 18
