Chapter 33
Juniper
In a light, wraparound skirt and white linen top, I wait at the front door with Aaron to say goodbye to Georgia.
A chauffeured car is pulled up on the driveway, engine humming, with an escort-slash-guard standing at the opened rear door.
The fraternity is making sure she goes where they want her to go. Out of the country and far away.
I’ve never believed in therapy, but here we are, flying Georgia to someone in London.
This is so civil. It’s a normal morning. Crows are cawing. Sky is blue. I’m calling Mr. Loxland by his first name still, and I’m pretty sure that friend of Tomás’s is attracted to Georgia even though he’s staying as distant as he can.
The day we sat in the room at what they called Evil House, discussing what to do, was…
dislocated. The rush from disposing of those men was palpable.
I could kind of taste it in my system and was laughing at times, floating.
Yet I cannot remember much about walking to the car and driving out.
My mind shut down for a few hours while Tomás and Rafael swapped driving.
Those men. I refuse to voluntarily say their names again, until the day I die.
I’m here now, alive and well, I remind myself as Rafael descends the stairway with Georgia, bringing her leather duffel bag. It’s the one Aaron gave her, along with some clothes and whatever she needed for this trip. Lucy is bouncing up and down the hallway with Tomás throwing her ball for her.
The girl has barely told me, or the men, anything about her prior life.
The doctor the fraternity sent stitched and cleaned her finger, gave her antibiotics, and said she was lucky it was on her left hand and nicely severed at the joint, else it would’ve needed more surgery.
Though she cried afterward on her bed, with me sitting there holding her, she said nothing more about the day it was done to her.
Meals, endless scrolling on her new phone, walking on the beach with Lucy and us, and staring across the sea at the horizon while brave seagulls trotted on the sand and begged for food—that’s how she’s coped.
She’s sturdy, like me, now that she’s not being tortured daily, but I fear she may shatter, suddenly.
“Hope you find this is what you need, girl,” I say as she and Rafael arrive at the door.
He hangs back, but she comes in for a hug from me, nods to Aaron. She seems averse to the male touch, which is unsurprising. To even stay in her vicinity, Rafael will need the patience of a saint.
“Me too.” Her hugging arms tighten on me. “I need to get away from where it all happened. You know?”
I do know.
A little bit of scary lightning wriggled through my chest when she said that.
“Yes. I guess I do.” We separate but still hold hands, and smile at each other.
“Therapy?”
“Me? God, no.” I shudder. “However, promise me that one day we are going to chat, and I will get all your history out of you. Where you’ve been. Places you’ve lived. Favorite lipstick color. Stuff like that.”
“Sure,” she says too easily. “I’d better go.” Her hands slip from mine. “Bye, Aaron, Tomás. Thank you for”—she sucks in a long breath “for absolutely everything you have done for me.”
“I’d do it again. Just send up the bat signal,” Aaron assures her, lolling against the other side of the doorway in his chic pants and half-unbuttoned shirt. There’s a fuzz on his unshaven chin for the first time I’ve noticed.
“Ditto. You take care, Georgia.” Tomás is holding onto Lucy’s collar so she doesn’t lick the woman to bits.
She kneels to give Lucy a hug and a pat, gets a boisterous woof and tail wag in return. Us humans get a little wave from Georgia before she trots down the front steps to the car, Rafael obediently following.
I hope my fear that she will shatter doesn’t come true.
When she trips on something on the driveway, Rafael grabs her arm and holds her until she gathers her feet under her. She quickly shrugs off his hand and climbs in the car.
“If he ever hurts her, I hope he knows I will come get him, bat signal or not,” I murmur, just loud enough for Aaron and Tomás to hear.
“Him?” Tomás chuckles. “He would never do that, unless she wanted him to.”
“Wanted?” I raise my eyebrows. “That man looks like he’d spank himself, first, before her.”
“Hmmm.” Tomás barely changes expression, but I get the gist.
“Seriously?” Is he suggesting that man is kinky?
“He is in the fraternity. It was a requirement.”
Well then. I look to Aaron to verify this.
“She’s allergic to men right now, anyway.” Aaron ushers us back inside and shuts the door. “I hope therapy works. Speaking of that…Juniper?”
“You first, Aaron.”
“Me? No.” He grunts. “Our therapy is we’re off to Corfu in a few days. That’s my therapy and yours, unless we change our minds. It’ll be a holiday in the sun.”
He takes my hand, kisses it, then launches into a quick dancing spin with me. I giggle and mess it up. I’ve never been good at dancing, unless I just get to wiggle about to the rhythm. His final dip leaves me suspended over the pair of sofas that live to the right of the foyer.
The sun is slanting in through the large square panel of tinted glass.
“We have the sun here in Australia.” Still upside-down, I incline my head then point toward where the sunlight paints the ivory sofas brighter.
“Not the same.” He tosses me onto the sofa.
My back sinks into the upholstery, and as I prop myself up, with my elbows slipping on the woven fabric, I spy Tomás at the other end.
“Where is Lucy, Tomás? What’s this?” Suspicion colors my words. I scoot along the sofa away from Aaron, but he rounds the armrest and grabs my ankle. From the distant whining, Lucy has been tied to something. She always wants to join in on the fun.
I wonder if my men are thinking of doing the same to me—tying me to something. Excitement sneaks in, and I squeeze my thighs together. Tingles wash quietly outward.
This is how things were before them.
“What do you think it is?” Aaron straddles my waist, kneeling to either side. His weight traps me. It’s a big sofa, so he mostly fits. Carefully he takes my wrists, kisses the inside of both, and pulls them above my head. I feel him give my wrists to Tomás.
He lowers himself.
From a few inches away, he studies me while cupping my face and smoothing away straying hair from my mouth.
I’m breathing deeper already. I need this.
“Hi there, pretty one. Ready to be our fucktoy again? Tell us if this is too soon.”
What a question.
We haven’t had sex since we returned, and I’m not one for making the first move on these two.
Neither do I want to. With his erection pressing into my clit at the apex of my thighs, with my skirt gathered by the violence of the throw, all the scrambling about and being pinned down… This is my favorite scene.
The moment is electric.
I eye him, then look up to see Tomás behind me. His big hands have caught my wrists. I love the look and feel of a man’s fingers wrapped around me there. I suck in my lower lip then nod, slowly. My hair rasps in my ears where it rubs on the sofa.
“You’re certain? This has to be slow. We don’t want to ruin you, because we want this, us, to be a lifelong thing. You know I’m long past just frightening the fuck out of you all the time. Though Tomás will likely just grunt at you and let me do the talking.”
“Heyyy, fuck you, chamos.” Tomás leans in, forcing Aaron to move out of his way.
He kisses me upside down, my mouth, my nose, then my mouth again. Pressing on my lips, pushing them aside, my tongue curls against his as he enters my mouth. The hot breathing, his and mine. Awesome. I’m panting, my heels are pressing into the sofa, and my body into Aaron’s cock.
He pulls away and whispers “You taste so good. I can say the love things, too, poquito.”
“I bet you can.” I lift my head to meet his lips again, inhaling his scent, wallowing in their sexy attention that I realize I truly need to heal. I swallow. “I need you both. I do. Please?”
“She said please? Get out of the fucking way, Tomás. My turn.”
They trade places to kiss and handle me.
My clothing gets dismantled, untied, unclipped, and thrown away, as does theirs, until I’m naked under them both.
When they get frustrated at the lack of room on the sofa, I’m dragged onto the floor.
There’s a tangle of limbs, skin slipping on skin, and desperate breathing and moans.
Some are mine, some theirs. I’m flipped onto my belly, and they kiss and bite my ass, legs, and hips…
god, I love that. Then I’m turned onto my back again to be mauled everywhere else.
I’m folded like a book and mouthed until I’m whimpering, begging for release, then held down and spread open, exactly like a toy they want to fuck, violate, and savor.
Pushed beyond what I can bear, I writhe, gasping as they hold me on my back to laugh at my sobs and play with me at their leisure—my breasts, my pussy. My legs are held above my head while they penetrate me with fingers, tongues, or cocks.
When they’re done messing with me, arousing me almost past sanity, I’m positioned on my knees with one man in my mouth, the other slow-fucking my pussy, for three…brutal…strokes, before getting even rougher, smacking into my ass, until I’m sobbing for more.
“Use words, poquito,” the man in my mouth coaxes, pulling out to the tip. To my shock, it’s Aaron saying that name. Then he uses his hold on my head to jam himself deeper and smiles at my spluttering, with my speech wetly muffled by cock.
Another thrust from behind hits me like an explosion, and I’m blown into a climax, blinded, lost in a storm of euphoric bliss while whoever is back there grunts and crushes fingers into my hips as he serves up a load of come.
“Up.”