Chapter Eight #2
She wanted to gulp more wine, but was afraid it would look desperate. Reminding herself that they were just talking, she reached for courage. “It started out as a fantasy,” she admitted. “I was in my last year of college, and I was going through a ménage romance phase.”
Jesse blinked. “What’s a ménage romance?”
More heat flooded into her face. “It’s, um, a romance novel where instead of two main characters who fall in love, there are three or more.”
“Three or more?” Jesse looked at Knox, then at Chloe, his gaze bright with interest. “Is that as hot as it sounds?”
His lusty candor made it easy to laugh, and loosened her tongue. “Yeah. We, um, call them ‘one-handed reads’.”
“One-handed reads. Oh, hell yes. Is there a website I can go to? One-Handed Reads dot com?”
“I don’t think so,” Chloe said, still laughing. “But I could give you a list.”
Jesse rose half out of his seat. “Hang on, let me get something to write with.”
“Easy, Horny Harry.” Knox planted a hand on Jesse’s shoulder to nudge him back down and aimed a look at Chloe. “Don’t encourage him.”
She folded her lips together contritely. “Sorry.”
“You gonna be able to maintain?” Knox asked Jesse.
“No problem.” Jesse grabbed his water glass and gulped, then dipped his fingers in, dug out a piece of ice, and held it to the back of his neck. “No problem at all.”
Knox shook his head, but Chloe could see the amusement lurking at the corners of his mouth. “So it was a fantasy,” he prompted.
“Right.” Forcing herself to focus, Chloe nodded. “For a long time, that’s all it was. But after a while, I started to feel like I was missing out on something by not acting on it.”
“And you never had a boyfriend, a partner, you wanted to act it out with?”
“I brought it up once a couple of years ago, with this guy I’d been dating for about six months.” Through the stab of remembered humiliation, she rolled her eyes. “Ask me how that went.”
“Not well, I take it.”
“He called me a pervert,” she recalled with a grimace. “And a bunch of other things I’d rather not repeat.”
“Asshole,” Jesse muttered, all traces of humor gone.
“To say the least,” Chloe agreed and sighed. “We’d told each other our fantasies, and one of his was a threesome with two women, so I thought it was safe to share mine.”
“Major asshole.”
“After that, I kept it to myself,” she finished.
“But you never forgot it.”
She looked at Knox. “No.”
“Why now?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve been thinking about it, fantasizing about it, for eight years.” He leaned forward, one hand on the table, and his hair fell forward to form a silver curtain around that dreamy face. “Something must have sparked your decision to take this step now.”
“Oh.” She looked down at her plate, empty but for a few smears of sauce, then looked up. “January first is my birthday.”
“New Year’s baby,” Jesse said with a grin. “Happy belated.”
“Thanks.” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, my friends and I—Bailey and Gwen—we always spend the night before our birthdays together, and we always make a birthday wish at midnight. Like a goal for the next year. And this year, well, that was my wish.”
“Great wish,” Jesse said enthusiastically.
“No argument there,” Knox said. “Why us?”
She was blushing so hard it felt like her face was on fire. “You’re both really sexy, and not assholes, and I’m…”
“You’re what, Chloe?” Knox asked, and though his voice was soft, there was a thread of iron in it that told her not answering wouldn’t be an option.
“I’m really attracted to you both.”
“But you didn’t ask us.”
“I couldn’t,” she managed.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re married,” she blurted out. “And I presumed monogamous, and I didn’t want to upset you or offend you, and…well, it just didn’t seem like an option.”
“Oh, it’s an option,” Jesse said fiercely.
Knox’s gaze was just as fierce. “So you went to Sawyer.”
“Not at first,” Chloe admitted. “I thought I should get on some hookup apps—”
Jesse jerked, knocking over the basket of garlic bread. “Tell me you did not do that.”
“No,” she said, looking warily between him and Knox. Knox had let out a sound like a snarl, and he didn’t look happy. “Gwen and Bailey shot that down pretty fast.”
“Good for Gwen and Bailey,” Knox muttered.
Jesse, who had sagged with visible relief, nodded. “That’s when you found Sawyer?”
“No.” She didn’t know why they wanted to know this, but she didn’t mind sharing. “We talked about maybe a swingers club.”
Jesse frowned. “Are there any swingers clubs in Braxton?”
“No, but there’s one in Kenning.”
“Michigan?”
Chloe nodded. “But it felt weird to cross state lines for sex.”
“I’ve crossed state lines for sex,” Jesse mused.
“Then what, Chloe?”
She turned back to Knox, relieved that he looked a little less feral now. “That’s when Bailey found Sawyer. He seemed safer than apps or swingers.”
“Considerably,” Knox agreed.
“I can’t really afford his fee,” Chloe went on, “but Bailey and Gwen offered to chip in.”
Jesse’s grin flashed. “That’s a pal for you.”
“Who was going to be the third?” Knox wanted to know.
“Oh. I was going to ask Sawyer if he had a colleague he could recommend for that.”
Knox closed his eyes, looking pained.
“He seemed fine with it,” Chloe said, anxiety creeping in. “Was that not okay?”
“It’s fine,” Jesse assured her and shot an elbow into Knox’s ribs. “Let’s go back to how we’re sexy.”
Cheeks flushing anew, Chloe fought not to squirm. “You know you are.”
The dimple was out in full force. “Yeah, but I like to hear it.”
She blushed harder. “You’re sexy.”
“That’s my girl. I noticed you, you know, the first time we came into the pub.”
Pleasure spiked. “Really?”
Jesse’s eyes were hot, his voice low. “Those big blue eyes, that pretty mouth. I flirted my ass off to get you to notice me.”
She bit her lip. “You flirt with everybody.”
“A little, sure,” Jesse allowed. “It’s the way I’m built. You flirt, too.”
“A little,” she echoed. “It’s part of the job.”
“Bartenders flirt,” he agreed. “But it was different with me, wasn’t it?”
Her chest felt tight, her face hot. “Yes.”
“And it was different with Knox.”
She looked at him, at those sharp eyes in that sculpted face. He was watching her with such naked need that it stole what was left of her breath. “Yes.”
“Chloe, do you still want to have a threesome with us?”
Oh God, oh shit, oh God. “Yes.”
“Tell us what that looks like.”
What did that mean? “I don’t understand.”
“Do you want us to take turns fucking you?” Jesse asked bluntly, pulling her attention from Knox. God, he was looking at her so intensely, with this wild heat in his eyes that made her thighs tremble. “Double team you?”
She wondered how she didn’t just spontaneously combust. “Yes.”
“Both?” Satisfaction glimmered in his melted chocolate gaze for a moment. “How? Spit roast? DP?”
The terms, ones she’d only heard in porn, should’ve sounded crude. They should’ve made her cringe. They only made her hotter. “Yes.”
“You ever done that? Anal sex?”
“No,” she admitted, her voice hoarse, her body vibrating. “But I want to.”
Jesse groaned. “Baby, you’re killing me.”
Knox made a sound, a rumble deep in his throat, and pushed to his feet. “Stand up, Chloe.”
Heart in her throat, pounding in her ears, she locked her wobbly knees and stood.
He held out a hand. “Come here.”
She stared at his hand, dimly aware that Jesse had also gotten to his feet to stand beside Knox.
But that hand was all she could see. The lines criss-crossing his palm, the blunt, neat fingernails.
He wore a simple wedding band in silver or white gold—hell, maybe it was platinum, she couldn’t tell—and it was cool against her heated flesh when she slid her hand in his.
“Are we doing this now?” Jesse asked, incredulous, and she looked up to see Knox shake his head.
“No,” he said, and she battled twin reactions of disappointment and relief. “We’re not doing this now.”
“Then what?”
Knox smiled into Chloe’s wide eyes. “He’s impatient.”
“I know the feeling,” she muttered and watched Knox’s smile widen.
“We have to get to know each other,” Knox said and, taking a step back, drew Chloe with him. “Figure out what you want, what you need.” Another step back, another step forward. “So we can make sure to give it to you.”
She knew she was walking, following Knox to the living area, but she couldn’t feel her legs. “You’re doing fine so far.”
He shook his head as Jesse fell into step behind her. “Fine isn’t good enough.”
“He’s right,” Jesse rumbled behind her, so close she all but felt the words. “We don’t want to mess this up.”
Knox stopped at one of the sofas, drew her down to sit beside him while Jesse perched on the coffee table in front of them.
“I don’t think you can mess this up.”
Jesse shook his head. “Not taking a chance, beautiful.”
“So you’ll have to tell us what you want.”
She looked at Knox. “Tell you?”
“How you want us to touch you, how you don’t.” He lifted the hand he still held to his mouth, brushing his lips across the tender skin of her wrist. “How you want us to kiss you.”
“How you want us to hold you,” Jesse added, taking her other hand. He lifted it to his mouth, and sank his teeth into the pad of flesh at the base of her thumb.
Her breath caught at the small pain, then again when his tongue slid out to soothe. The bite throbbed faintly, a pulse that echoed deep between her thighs. “Oh, God.”
Jesse’s smile was wide and wicked. “She likes that.”
Chloe’s head bobbed in eager agreement. “I do.”
“What else do you like?” Knox asked.
“I don’t know how you expect me to answer that,” she told him, blinking to bring him in focus. He was watching her, the sharp edge of his gaze softened slightly, but the glitter of lust was bright and unmistakable.
“Honestly,” he answered and licked her wrist.
She jolted at the contact and clenched her thighs at the flood of moisture between them. “You’re killing me.”
“Darling,” Knox murmured against her damp wrist, “we haven’t even started.”