3. Arlo
“I can’t believe Karris delivered every package on all fours.” Hailey saunters into the third-floor study. I see her freshly showered form in the window’s reflection. “Did you see the way Dobson was watching him?” She sighs. “It’s just a matter of time with those two.”
“That’s complicated.” I stay at the window instead of going to her like I normally would.
“What isn’t?” She shrugs.
Her hair is wet, and a silk robe clings to her chest and accentuates her hips. She sits on my desk and props a foot in my chair while sliding one gorgeous leg over the other. She’s not trying to seduce me. One elbow balances on her knee, and her chin is propped in her palm. She’s deep in thought, as am I.
I’d like to say we’re not complicated, but holy fuck were we. Hell, we still are after what went down this evening.
“Cut the fester and let it out.” My lover is a psychologist. Not so long ago, she was my psychologist. In many ways, she still is.
My eyes stare out across the cityscape of New York, New York, yet I see none of it.
“I can’t believe I didn’t know.” One of my hands rubs at my heart while the other tugs at the hair at my nape. “He slept on the street, Hailey. And that wasn’t the worst of it. I could see it in his eyes. It was bad, really bad, and I didn’t know.”
The scar tissue around my heart pulses with phantom pains. My guts feel like they might rot me from the inside out.
“There are many things you don’t know. Some because you weren’t meant to know. Others because you’re too afraid to ask.”
When I turn, she offers me a barefaced half smile.
“He was always so capable. He is so capable. I never thought…” I never thought he could be vulnerable. I never thought he wanted to go to Harvard with me. Why would he when I put him through hell?
I relied on him for my every breath, then pushed him away with the next. I hid from him until he made me face my uncle. The man helped me kill my tormentor when he was barely more than a boy. He saved me from the devil, and I still couldn’t be what he needed, what he deserved.
“Who is Nate?” As always, Hailey excavates one layer at a time to reach the heart of the matter. And Nate is a layer.
“He’s a guy we were in boarding school with. A guy who wrestled, who had a thing for Hota since year eleven.”
“Were they together?”
I go to her, pick up her legs, sit, and then set her feet on either side of my thighs. Rolling forward, I burrow my face into her belly and hug her.
Her fingers sift through my hair. She massages my scalp and lets me work out my demons. There are so many. She knows most of them. I’ve named each one but haven’t faced them all. Not yet. This one, this one might be bigger and darker than all the rest.
It’s the only one that I created.
My decision gave it life.
It is my greatest regret.
“Hota has always taken care of me. From the first day we met, he had my back. For a long time, I hated him for it.” I breathe Hailey in and hold her deep, taking the strength I need to continue. “I didn’t have anyone, and I was afraid to rely on someone again. That bastard, my uncle, had already stopped me from talking to Blakely. The universe had already taken my family.”
“The only thing scarier than nothing to lose is having something to lose.” Hailey’s words pour over me as she maps the arch of my brows and the line of my jaw. She knows this truth more than most. It’s what made her nearly impossible to reach.
“He was persistent, and for a while, we were happy. I was happy, sneaking into his room every night and sleeping in his bed, never touching him, but just being close and in his presence.”
My hands rove the contour of her waist and hips as I lean against the chair's back. My eyes find hers.
“Hota was always sexual and confident in a way that had been beaten out of me. He and Nate did stuff but not in his dorm room, and they didn’t fuck, not until…” I let that thought fade, needing to start elsewhere. “Do you remember when I said I didn’t have a good canvas for tattoos, but Hota did?”
“Of course.” She toys with the basilisk inked into her side through the silk of her robe.
“Blakely and I had been talking weekly again for months since I was at school. Then one day, her mom called and let me know she was dead. I couldn’t feel anything. No sadness. No loss. Nothing. I locked myself in the bathroom and took a razor to my skin.”
Her gaze drops to the rows of scars along my inner thigh, hidden beneath my slacks. She has seen them. Kissed them. Tongued them.
“That night, Hota broke into the bathroom and…” Tears sting my eyes as the memories wash over me. My lips tremble, and my jaw shakes. “He said, ‘If you hurt yourself, I hurt myself,’ and lifted the blade to his skin. He knew it was the only way to get me to stop, and I knew…I knew then that I loved him.”
I look at Hailey, waiting for the shock or outrage to come, the jealousy. Tears slip down her cheek, but they swoop over the wondrous etches of her smile.
“We crossed a line that night and the next morning. Not all the way, but I touched him, and he touched me.” Longing carves me like a Halloween pumpkin. “We were happy. I was happy despite Blakely and my uncle. We would have been happy together.”
My tears descend in a deluge. I’m not a crier. I’ve only cried a handful of times in my life. I’m shocked to realize most of those times have been with Hota and Hailey.
She presses her legs together, pulls my head to her lap, and welcomes my anguish. More than most, she knows it brings catharsis. Or, at least, it should. It won’t, though.
Not this time.
I retch out my sorrow and remorse until my tears run dry, my abs hurt from contracting, and my lungs smolder. Still, nothing has changed.
“What happened, Arlo?”
“I fucked it up.” I lift my head. Her green gaze is open, and her pink lips are reassuring. “My uncle came that morning to collect me for the holidays. Hota begged me to stay. He begged me to report what my uncle had done to me. He promised to be my witness and be my support.” I shake my head in a slow back and forth, willing the decision away.
“I chose to end my uncle instead of reporting him. Only, I had to endure that visit before I could make a clean break.” A nice euphemism for murder. “I made Hota promise not to follow and not to interfere. And that last visit…” I choke on my own words. “It broke me.”
“That’s why the holidays are so hard for you and him,” Hailey murmurs.
I wipe my eyes on my sleeves and nod. “After that holiday, everything we were shredded against my jagged edges.”
“Not everything.” Hailey cups my chin. “He’s still in your life. You are still in his. You love him, and he loves you.”
I know he’s loyal, and I know he’s my guy, but I don’t know how he could still love me. Not after the hell I’ve put him through. Not after falling in love with Hailey and opening up myself to her when I never could with him.
“I made him fuck Nate.”
Her fingers smooth over my skin.
“Tell me,” she urges.
“I couldn’t allow him to touch me, but I could watch him play with others. It wasn’t enough, but it was all I had. There was a woman, the headmaster’s secretary, and Nate. He would…”
“You can tell me anything, Arlo. It’s okay.”
“He did it for me,” I snarl. “He wanted to touch me and couldn’t. So he would touch them and look at me. Both of us knowing what we wanted.” My chest shakes with a breath. “I thought maybe I’d be able to, eventually, but I was so fucked up back then. My uncle’s face was so real and raw, right over my shoulder.”
I look Hailey in the eyes. “I told him to fuck Nate. I thought it would help, but it…”
“It hurt you both,” she finishes. “But he still loves you, and you still love him.”
“I love you.” I sidestep.
“And I love you.” She leans forward, breathing life into me as she puts her mouth on mine. It’s as if she pours her soul into the kiss. Too soon, she pulls back. “It doesn’t have to be one or the other.”
I search her face for meaning, not understanding.
“Think about it. Your love is not a limited resource. It’s immeasurable. It’s not like if you love me, then you can’t love him. It’s not like if you love him, then you can’t love me.”
My fingers walk up her shins, crest her knees, then part her thighs. The gasp that pours from her lips is the soundtrack of my dreams. I tug the tie holding the side of her robe against her narrow waist.
“Loving and loving.” I separate the edges of the fabric and feast my gaze upon her bare breasts, inked belly, and perfect pink cunt. “They are two very different things.”
“But you have loved him and loved him, and you have loved me and loved me.”
“Not at the same time.” My lips latch onto her nipple and suckle like a man starved.
She bows to me. Her fingers entwine in my hair, and she tugs me forward so that my chest is bracketed by her legs. She rolls her hips. Sighs of appreciation fill the air.
I move to her other breast, knead it, and then lave it.
“You could, though.”
My tongue leaves her pert nipple. The spark in my gaze flies to hers. The pressure of my hands around her milky-white tits firms. “What?”
Hailey licks her now red lips. She is the tinder. Together, our locked eyes start a fire. “You could love both of us, Hota and me, at the same time.”
“You…” I have to swallow and gulp several breaths before I can formulate words again. I’m burning from the inside. “You meant what you said tonight?”
“The best girl gets everything.” She bites her lower lip and then offers a little shrug. “Why shouldn’t the best boy? And Hota is the best boy.”
Inside my head, my demons clang cymbals. They cheer and rejoice at the possibility of me losing everything once again. If I say yes, there’s the major, massive, humongous possibility that I could lose Hailey and Hota.
No matter how much money I have, no matter how many friends or investments or business ventures…
Losing them.
It would end me.
Right now, I have them both. Even if it’s not perfect, it’s pretty fucking close. I had them both on my lap tonight and both in my heart.
I slip two fingers between her lips. “Suck.” My fingers slide over her tongue and around her teeth. “Lick them. Get them good and wet for me.”
The pillow of her lips wraps around the base of my fingers. She does as she’s told. Hailey’s moan vibrates against my hand.
“Perfect.”
At my word, she releases her hold, and I pull from her mouth. A string of saliva dangles from my fingers and snags onto her lips. I gather it up, not wanting to lose a drop, and then I slip them between her folds and inside her.
“This pussy is so wet, I didn’t need your mouth.” I wiggle my fingers wrapped in her heat. “Thinking about taking two cocks excites you, does it?”
Her cry is throaty and unabashed.
“Why did you kiss us tonight?” I think about our lips, all three sets pressed together, and my heart rattles.
“I like to see you happy, both of you.” She rolls her hips and pants while I massage the front wall of her cunt with rhythmic strokes.
“And kissing us, how did that make you feel?” I pull harder along that soft front, and then add my thumb, carefully grazing the distended hood of her clit.
“Happy,” she moans.
“Just happy?” I tilt my head and narrow my gaze. “To have those plush lips against yours and mine. His hips to your hips.”
“His hips to yours too,” she whispers between gasps.
“Answer me, or I’ll stop.” My lips curve into a grin.
“Really fucking happy and…horny.” She grabs my wrist to hold me in place and rides my hand. “It made me horny too.”
“If you need more cock, Hailey, all you have to do is ask for it. I’ll make sure you get it.”
“It’s not like that.” Her head shakes, and her hips pump. “I don’t want random cock.”
“No, you want Hota’s cock.” I pull her to the brink with a smile. “As you should. It’s magical. The things it would do to this pussy.”
“Your pussy,” she corrects.
“My pussy,” I agree.
“I want…” She pants. Her cheeks are red as well as the tops of her breasts. The points of her nipples look like they could do damage. She’s so close. “I want you to have his cock too.”
My brain goes on the fritz. Everything locks up, and I stare at her stunned, completely still. Stunned and fucking tenting my pants even more than I already was, which was a fucking lot. I’m harder and more terrified at the possibilities Hailey lays out before me.
“I want you to have it however you want it.” She pants. The center of her green eyes never waver from my gaze. I recognize a spark in them every time she tells me that she loves me.
I’m beyond caring about whether or not I deserve her. She is mine.
“For this, my siren, you’re going to give me four before I’m inside you.”
“Four?” Those sweet eyes go wild.
“Four for my best girl.”