The Evolution of Man

by Skye Warren

  Victor the Asshole Prince, that’s what I’m going to call him. He winks at me before tossing in a thousand-dollar marker. “Raise,” he says pleasantly.

  Christopher’s eyes sear me from across the table. I know for sure he sees through my ruse, which means he knows that Sutton’s cards must be actually good. Then he narrows his gaze on my hip, where I feel the warmth of a large hand, where the calluses must surely catch on the silk of my dress. My whole body seems to turn inside out, as if I’m naked for the table. He tosses his cards into the pile. “Fold.”

  The last of the players hem and haw over the increased amount, but in the end they stack up hundred-dollar chips and push them into the pile, where they topple over.

  I clap my hands. “Your turn.”

  Sutton’s breath is warm against my cheek. “Dangerous,” he murmurs.

  Maybe he means the Asshole Prince, who’s bound to be angry that he’s just lost a thousand dollars—more counting his ante and earlier bids. Or maybe he means the dance that’s happening between our bodies, the push and pull, the sensual conversation that doesn’t need a word.

  I’m the one who picks up two chips that say $500 on them and tosses them on the pile. Then I flip over his cards and point at them idly, letting my fingers trail over the diamonds that match the ones faceup on the table. “This is called something, right?”

  Damon gives a low laugh. “It’s called playing poker, darling. And you do it well.”

  Asshole Prince swears rather creatively, which is the most interesting thing he’s said since I got here. He tosses his cards onto the table, revealing three of a kind. Not bad. The other players throw their cards on the table. A pair of kings—lame. And a low straight which isn’t bad but still isn’t enough to win.

  Christopher doesn’t crack a smile, but I feel his amusement. It burns as hot as Sutton’s body beneath me, behind me, around me—making me feel like I’m being embraced from all sides.

  I clap and bounce on Sutton’s lap, making him grunt. “Oooh, you won all these chips?”

  As I stand up to pull the chips toward me, I dip low enough to show my cleavage. There are many nice cleavages in the world, but this one is mine. And I don’t mind showing Asshole Prince what he’s missing. Except it isn’t the wild, reckless eyes I meet, but Christopher’s calculating ones. He saw right through my little ruse. And as I pull back the chips, I have the strange sensation that he’s seeing right through me.

  I sit back down with a sudden thump, and Sutton’s hands grasp my hips hard enough to make me gasp. There’s something else hard down there; an erection that presses against my dress. Oh God, I’d shoved my ass into his face when I gathered the chips. I make neat little piles with them, focusing hard so that I don’t have to look at Christopher or acknowledge the arousal of the man holding me.

  Asshole Prince stands and places his hands flat on the table, and it feels like he’s looming over me even though there’s a table between us and three armed bodyguards around us. “You must think you’re clever, little girl?”

  “I think she’s clever,” Damon Scott says, sounding amused.

  “She does like to watch,” Asshole Prince says, mischief entering his dark eyes. “She lines up the little matchstick men and then lights us on fire.”

  “That’s poetic,” I say archly. “If a little gruesome.”

  “I’m sure we’ll meet again,” he says, giving me a real bow this time. “For now I’m afraid I must take my chips and my bruised ego and live to play another day.”

  His departure seems to signal the end of the game. The other players leave, including Damon, who says in a drawl that we can use the room for as long as we like. It makes me wonder how many dirty things have happened in this velvet-curtained space.

  Then it’s only Christopher and Sutton. And me.

  This is the part where I’m supposed to stand up and walk away. This is the part where I prove to these men—and to myself—that I can be the girl I was before. That I didn’t shatter into a million pieces, suspended in the air, about to fall.

  Instead I whisper, “I don’t want to go home.”

  It’s an admission. A confession to the two men who can most use it against me. There is no home for me anymore. There’s only hospice and Death Plan and the longest goodbye.

  Sutton knows what the problem is immediately. I can sense it in the way he embraces me, the way it turns from seductive to comforting, the way he seems to almost let me go. “Harper,” he says gently. “You’re so strong. It’s okay to need a break.”

  “I want more than a break,” I say, full of grim, self-recriminating guilt.

  It takes me twenty minutes with my eyes squeezed tight, building myself to act normal, act natural, before I can even walk into a room with her. And another twenty minutes muffling my tears into a pillow after I leave. I need one night with these men, because I know they can distract me. Even if they break my heart afterward.

  He turns my hand over and threads his fingers through mine. “You can lean on us.”

  Christopher leans back across the table. “Lean on us?”

  “Yes,” Sutton says, his voice lower now. “We can help her through this.”

  “I’m planning on it.” Christopher gives me a dark stare. “She didn’t come here looking for a shoulder to cry on. For that she would have gone to her friends.”

  Sutton gives a mocking laugh. “As if you know anything about friendship.”

  “I don’t.” A shrug. “But she didn’t wear that dress to talk.”

  A stroke down my side, over the smooth red silk of my dress. Sutton must feel that I’m not wearing a bra. Or panties. He must sense the truth in Christopher’s words. Even if I told myself I only wanted to talk to Sutton, my body knew the truth. I came here to forget.

  “Is that true?” Sutton murmurs against my neck, soft enough so only I can hear. “Do you want this? Because if you don’t, I can make him leave. I can take you home. Whatever you need.”

  “What if I don’t know what that is?” I whisper.

  Christopher stands with an animal grace. “Pretend you don’t want this, if it helps. That goes for the both of you. I’ll be the villain in this story.”

  Every muscle in my body pulls taut as Christopher rounds the table. Sutton holds me tighter, almost painfully. I know he’d protect me if I wanted him to. I could probably cause a fistfight right now, and there’s a kind of power in that. Except maybe Christopher is right.

  Maybe I want the power taken away from me tonight.

  “Her wrists,” Christopher says, all lazy command. “Hold them.”

  Sutton shifts like he might protest, like he might object to holding me in bondage, or maybe he’d only mind Christopher being the one to call the shots. Last time there were three of us in a room like this, it had been Sutton who gave the orders. Sutton who taunted the other man. He’d held me much like this, standing instead of sitting, my body between them, but he had been the one to give orders.

  Large hands close around my wrists, and my eyelids flutter closed. A small sound escapes me, maybe from nerves, maybe relief. I’m already on display on Sutton’s lap. Having my hands behind my back makes it worse. My breasts push against the silk, the folds of my red skirt spilling over Sutton’s black slacks, a startling contrast. I have to pull my arms, only a little, to see if I can get away.

  “You like this?” Sutton murmurs. “I know you can feel me. You like making me so hard for you? You love having two men panting after you?”

  They’re not really panting, though.

  Christopher looks at me the same way he looked at the poker table. Like he’s counting all the cards, effortless, almost clinical. And Sutton makes me feel small and delicate the way he holds me so gently, using only one percent of the muscle mass in his body to keep me still.

  “She loves it,” Christopher says, his voice hard as a diamond.

  Sutton moves my wrists to his left hand, freeing his right to smooth across my hip. Down my thigh. Betwee
n my legs. There are miles of fabric between him and my sex, but it burns up into nothing. It’s as if those calloused hands are brushing right over my clit, the way it feels. His hand looks rough and dark against the expensive silk.

  “Where do you want it?” he asks, cupping me through the dress. “Here?”

  “Oh God,” I mumble, barely resisting the urge to push into his hand.

  Two laughs, masculine and goddamn confident. They know exactly what they’re doing to me. Christopher takes a step closer, so he’s standing only a foot away. Close enough that I can see the rumple in his dress shirt, the invisible scar at the top of his lip. Close enough that I can smell him, the spice and maleness. And arousal. I’m not sure if arousal has a smell, but if it does, we’re awash in it. We’re an ocean of desire, the three of us.

  The silk gathers around my breasts in complicated folds. Christopher runs the back of his hand down my front, making it simple. My nipples turn hard and aching. Then he slips one finger beneath the neckline. He’s only touching an extra inch of skin, one inch that isn’t showing, but it feels momentous. Like crossing the Rubicon.

  He adds another finger, brushing the skin at my collarbone back and forth. He can’t quite reach my nipple like this, and my body tightens everywhere, as if I can make him touch me by will alone.

  “Let me look at her,” Christopher says, and I’m not sure exactly what he means until I feel Sutton’s knuckles against my back, until I hear the rasp of the delicate zipper.

  The bodice falls away from my body, leaving a shadow.

  Christopher tugs the dress away from me, revealing my upthrust breasts, my pink nipples. His swift intake of breath is a small comfort. This is affecting him as much as me.

  “Are you okay?” Sutton asks, and it’s more than a question. It’s an escape. That’s what he’s offering me. All I have to do is say the word and he’ll zip up my dress. He’ll probably drive me home.

  Christopher lifts my chin, forcing me to meet his dark gaze. “What do you want?”

  It’s the same question, wrapped in different packaging.

  What do I want? I want to go back in time, before I ever met Sutton or Christopher. I want to be the kind of woman who doesn’t fall in love. I want the world to be a place where men don’t leave and mothers don’t die, but I can’t say those things. They aren’t the kind of sexy answers that make sense when two handsome men are surrounding you, their bodies taut with desire. They used to be partners, these men. Not anymore.

  “Both of you,” I manage to say, my voice a wisp of smoke.

  That earns me a smile, a cruel kind of smile. “Then spread your legs for Sutton. He’s going to finger fuck you while I play with your tits.”

  The words come harsh enough that I expect Sutton to balk. Except his cock pulses beneath my ass. His hand tightens around my wrists. And I have the sudden awareness that he likes Christopher being in charge—not only of me, but of both of us. That maybe his taunting control in the hotel room six months ago had been an act designed to protect him, as much as my obedience is supposed to protect me.

  I don’t quite spread my legs, but I don’t fight when Sutton pulls my thigh open. His large hand gathers up my skirt with steady deliberation, folds and folds of it, continents of fabric, the anticipation making me wet more than his hand could do. At least that’s how it seems. Until he touches me, the large clasp of his hand holding my sex a jolt to my system.

  I gasp, fighting the hold at my wrists for a second before I subside. “You’re such an asshole,” I say, my voice breaking when Sutton slides his blunt fingertips through my wetness.

  Christopher smiles. “Keep going.”

  One finger inside me. Two. Oh God. “You bastard. You prick. You’re the worst kind of arrogant, entitled, one percenter, first-world problems, my-iPhone-is-too-slow, do-you-know-who-I-am, goddamn designer-suit-wearing asshole.”

  He runs a thumb over my lips, making me shiver. “It’s going to feel so good to fuck this mouth. And what’s wrong with my suits?”

  They’re beautiful. Everything about him is cold and beautiful. “I hate you.”

  His thumb pushes into my mouth. “So fucking good.”

  “If you want me to bite you.”

  He looks unconcerned. “Do you want to fuck her?” he asks Sutton, without taking his dark gaze off my lips. “I think she’s about ready. Past ready, to be honest. Practically begging for it.”

  Sutton places a kiss on the side of my neck, his tenderness a contrast to Christopher. He moves higher, his lips firm. And higher, to the sensitive space beneath my ear. His teeth gently tug my lobe. “Ask me to fuck you, sweetheart. I want to hear you say it.”

  I let my head fall back to Sutton’s shoulder. “Please.”

  “The words,” he says, his voice gentle but uncompromising.

  “I want you to… to fuck me. Oh God. Please, Sutton.”

  “Why do you want me to fuck you?” he asks, his voice terribly gentle, and in that moment I hate him as much as I hate Christopher. More, because he actually has a heart in that broad chest.

  “Because I’m…” His thumb circles my clit, around and around, never hard enough to help. “I’m so turned on, and it’s hurting, and I want you. And God, I’m so empty. And I’m broken.” The honesty slips through the millions of cracks around me. “I’m barely holding it together.”

  That must be what they wanted, all the pain inside me, because Sutton reaches between us to undo his pants. Christopher produces a condom for him, as if this is well coordinated. They work together to keep my hands behind my back while Sutton sheathes himself. He nudges against me, still covered by the galaxy of my dress. And then he’s pushing inside, impossibly large. Maybe it’s the angle we’re using, or the fact that it’s been six months since I was with them, but the stretch makes me gasp. My eyes prick with pain I can’t quite hide.

  “Wait,” Christopher says, proving that maybe he does care.

  “Fuck,” Suttons says, his voice strained. “Can’t.” He pushes deeper, making my hips jerk. His hands are like iron against my legs. “She’s so tight. Too tight. You need to help her.”

  Christopher is pushing aside his clothes, revealing a cock large and throbbing. Almost painful looking, the way it’s reddened. The way it’s wet at the tip. He places the slick head against my lips. “Open.”

  This isn’t the kind of help Sutton meant—or maybe it is. My eyes are wide as I stare up at him. Wide and mutinous. I’m not going to give in easy, not when it feels like I’m being split underneath.

  A pinch to my nipple makes me gasp, and then his cock slides along my tongue. Oh God, I’m doing this. It’s not anything like what I imagined a blowjob would be. There’s no licking or sucking. Instead I’m immobile while his hips move him deep into my mouth, the head butting against my throat. I make a gagging sound, and he pulls back. “Jesus,” Christopher says, and it sounds like an imprecation. A prayer.

  This is what I asked for, isn’t it? Begging for it, that’s what Christopher said, but I could never have imagined this. The strain of it. The fullness that laps against pain like an ocean on the shore.

  In a way I did ask for this, because I wanted to forget. There was something that bothered me, but I can’t possibly remember it now. It ceases to exist in the face of this raw physicality.

  “Not going to last,” Sutton says on a grunt.

  Christopher pushes forward, and I can’t help the gag reflex. He pulls out, and I feel my tongue slide along the slit of his cock as I take in air. His eyes glaze with pleasure. This is the weakest I’ve ever seen him, and he’s mesmerizing like this. Is this how I look to them with my hands behind my back? He looks like he belongs to me, pushing back into my mouth like he can’t imagine leaving.

  Then he does something he’s never done before. He puts his hand on Sutton’s shoulder. To support himself as he struggles with the pleasure of a blowjob? A gesture of camaraderie as they fuck the same woman? I don’t know what it means, but it’s the most
intimate thing that’s happened between us.

  Sutton goes rock-hard beneath me. His cock flexes. His hands tighten, and then he’s groaning his release. He shouts it into my hair, against my skin, biting the place where my shoulder meets my neck.

  In his climax he pinches my clit, and I’m coming, biting down on nothing because there’s no cock in my mouth, clenching hard around a thick cock, feeling rivulets of my arousal slide down my thighs.

  Christopher jerks himself in front of me, hard, punishing, twisting at the end until he throws his head back and comes in a warm spray across my chin, my collarbone, my dress.

  I’m still panting when Sutton gently sets me down on the cushioned chair, the fabric still warm from his body. He straightens his clothes, his hands shaking only a little.

  Christopher produces a monogrammed handkerchief from the pocket of his suit and uses it to wipe my skin clean, but I can still feel him there. I’m branded with his arousal, and with mine. “I’ll get you something to drink,” he says, leaving me alone with the man I was supposed to have drinks with. The man who basically stood me up and got laid for it.

  Only he looks more messed up by the whole thing than me.

  Those strong hands tamed a wild horse, but they don’t look steady now. Sutton can’t quite meet my eyes as he moves a poker chip between his fingers and knocks it against the table. For good luck? Except the game is already over.

  “I can’t do this,” he says, his voice hoarse.

  “It’s already done.” I’m still feeling sore and stretched from where his large cock impaled me. Feeling raw that Sutton would reject me one second after he leaves my body. He was supposed to be the man I could choose. The one who chose me. Instead he seems more shaken than Christopher about what just happened. “And it sure seemed like you enjoyed yourself.”

  That earns me a dark laugh. “Yes, the way an insect enjoys the silk of a spider’s web.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “Am I the spider in this story?”

  His blue gaze takes me in from head to disheveled toe. “You’re the web.”