Chapter 41 #3
But then Okee gives a slow thrust that near folds me in half, and my forehead drops against Lula’s knee.
She strokes my hair. “You poor thing,” she says, sweet as pie.
Okee laughs under his breath.
Bastards. Both of them.
I lift my head and press my mouth to the inside of Lula’s thigh, partly to make her stop smiling like that, partly because I need something to do with all this wanting before it tears me clean apart. She smells like rose water and warm skin and the soap she keeps wrapped in linen by the washstand.
Supper. Home. Her.
Her fingers tighten in my hair.
There. That settles me some.
Okee may have me half out of my mind, but I know Lula. I know the hitch in her breath when my mouth gets close. Know the little lift of her hips she tries to pretend ain’t a kind of begging.
I kiss her there, slow at first, because I am a gentleman.
Then Okee drives in again, and my mouth loses all patience.
I grip her thighs and hold on, working her with my tongue while Okee works me from behind, and for a minute there ain’t any counting at all.
No fairness to measure. No turns to keep.
Just the three of us tangled in the lamplight, each taking and giving as much as we can stand.
If I can only get her halfway there before I lose my mind, Okee will see to the rest.
That’s one of the blessings of three.
A man can fall apart and trust somebody else to keep loving where he left off.
Lord help me, Lula tastes sweet as cream as she makes this soft little sound above me. Just a tiny broken thing that says I found the right place.
Her fingers have slid into my hair, holding me there like she’s decided she likes me best with no room to run my mouth.
I lick her again, slower this time, and her hips lift off the settee.
That does something stupid to me. Makes me want to grin against her. Makes me want to say, see there? I know you too.
Because I do.
“Boone,” she whimpers.
That’s right. I hum against her.
Her whole body jerks.
Behind me, Okee curses soft under his breath and grips me harder, like feeling her shake through me has done him in too.
With three, pleasure don’t stay where you put it. It passes hand to hand, mouth to mouth, body to body, until I can’t tell if the heat in me belongs to Okee moving behind me, Lula trembling under my tongue, or my own foolish heart trying to bust clean through my ribs.
“Look at me,” she says, breathless.
So I do.
I look up at her from between her legs, and the sight of her near kills me. Our Lula, sharp-tongued and soft-hearted, flushed and open and watching me like I’m not some fool with my trousers tangled around my thighs, but a man she trusts to take her apart.
The way she lets go because she knows we’ll catch her. I slide my hands under her hips and pull her closer. She gasps, then breaks.
Her head tips back, one hand flying to the settee arm while the other fists in my hair hard enough to sting. Her body shudders against my mouth, helpless and pretty and ours, and I hold on through every bit of it, lapping her up, greedy as sin.
Okee drives into me hard just as she cries out.
That’s all it takes.
Lula coming against my mouth, her fingers tight in my hair, Okee buried deep behind me with a sound rough enough to scrape the walls—I don’t stand a chance. My whole body locks up, pleasure tearing through me, sudden and bright.
Okee follows close after, his rhythm breaking, hands clamped tight on my hips as he pulses inside me with his face pressed between my shoulders. For a few breaths, none of us moves. We’re just a tangle of limbs and heat and foolishness in the lamplight, the beans surely ruined in the kitchen.
Lula cups my cheek, thumb brushing over my jaw, and for a second the whole world narrows to that: Okee warm at my back, Lula soft beneath me, the room above the shop glowing gold around us.
Home.
Then a scorched smell drifts in from the kitchen.
Lula goes still.
“The beans,” she says.
By the time we make it off the settee, supper tastes a little smoky and nobody has the gall to complain.
Lula sets three bowls on the table with the air of a woman daring either of us to mention it. Okee, wise man that he is, eats every bite without comment. I do the same, though my legs still feel unreliable beneath the table.
After, Okee carries the bowls down to the washbasin while Lula banks the stove. I sit there another minute, mostly because standing seems ambitious. Eventually Lula takes pity and hooks two fingers in my sleeve.
“Come on, then.”
I let her pull me up.
Lula climbs into bed last and settles between us like the spot was made for her. Okee stretches out behind her, one heavy arm thrown over her waist, his hand finding mine where it rests on her belly.
Outside, the painted sign of Wild Card Apothecary creaks softly in the evening wind. Next door, the Gemini spills piano music and lamplight into the street. Above the shop, our three windows glow gold against the dark.
And over Three Forks, high beyond the smoke and rooftops, the stars rise bright as ever.