STORY EXCERPT

“Can you see her face?”

Curtis looked over his shoulder at Jordi and then focused again out the front window of their new-to-them house. In true former-spy fashion, he lifted the curtain just enough to see her.

“She’s wearing her thought-wandering expression.”

“Ah, that one. I know it well.”

“Yeah. The one where we would stop talking and just wait for her to come back to us.” He’d spoken the words without thought. He let the curtain fall and then turned to face Jordi. Since the sofa was right there, he took a few steps and then leaned against it. “Which, under the circumstances, is kind of appropriate, don’t you think?”

“I do.” Jordi left the kitchen doorway and ventured closer. He leaned against the armchair and slipped his hands into his pockets. “I want to say that, of the three of us, Mayellen is the most unchanged, but…”

“Yeah, but.” Curt turned his head for just a moment, even though he really wasn’t close enough to the window to lift the curtain and peek at her any longer.

He figured the two of them, him and Jordi, had maybe five minutes to finish the long-running conversation they’d been having, off and on all day, before she joined them. “But I have to wonder now, did we really see her or just who we thought she was?” He shrugged. “We were teenaged males, and looking back, I can say that I, for one, wasn’t very observant in those days.”

“Ditto, all the way.” Jordi exhaled. “Did we know back then that she was smart enough to understand now that you and I aren’t quite where we should be yet?”

“I don’t know. But I can tell you that knowing that she is, now? That’s sexy as hell.”

“It is. So…what do you think she’ll make of the decision we made?”

“I think she’ll agree. Because she doesn’t want you and she doesn’t want me. She wants—no, she likely needs us. The both of us, as a single entity.”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought, too.”

“We’re close, Jordi. You and I are close to getting to where we need to be.”

“I know it, Curt. I feel it.” He shrugged.

Curtis read regret in his best friend’s expression. Curtis thought that was a good sign in and of itself. Because if there was one emotion that he felt, looking at Jordi Barnes, it was just that—regret. Not only for the choices he’d made in the past fifteen years but for the ones he hadn’t.

But now he’d made a major choice—to stay here in this house with these people and see what could be built between the three of them. His mind flashed back to his attitude when he came to Lusty to tidy up loose ends from his special ops career. He’d mentally groused about putting off his retirement plans, nebulous though they were. Plans for a cabin in the mountains and a long, ugly beard. And he knew right then that would likely be the last time he even gave that ridiculous half-baked plan a thought.

I never really wanted to be a mountain man, anyway.

Curtis was saved from making another comment when the sound of a car door closing reached him. He met Jordi’s gaze and didn’t even hesitate. He straightened and went over to his best friend and, with him, turned and smiled as the front door opened.

Mayellen stopped her forward progress, one hand on the doorknob, and looked from him to Jordi and then back again. He had no idea what she saw, but her response calmed the nerves he hadn’t let himself acknowledge existed. She smiled, stepped in, and shut the door behind her.

“Welcome home, pretty baby.” The endearment just slipped out, the second time since seeing her again when his pet name for her had passed his lips.

“Welcome home, Mayellen.”

ADULT EXCERPT

Soft caresses that intermingled with tiny nipping tweaks became a woven gossamer sheet that wrapped around her, enveloping her in the most wonderous blanket of sensations. It was physical of course. Her nipples beaded, and she felt her own moisture when they brushed their fingers through her folds. But it was also spiritual. Their hands conveyed their hearts, not just their lusts, and she knew that this, this right here, was a touchingly sacred experience for them all.

“So long.”

Curt’s two words sounded like a prayer that could have been whispered by any of them—and likely had been by all of them, if not aloud.

“Please.” Mayellen didn’t know exactly what she asked for. She could only hope that her men would understand her and fulfill her needs.

Thankfully, their response to her plea was immediate.

Jordi eased back, and then Curt moved in, closer, running his tongue between her breasts and downward, in a very slow and sexy line. He spread her legs with his arms, settled in between her thighs and then covered her cunt with his mouth.

Mayellen couldn’t stop the way her back arched off the mattress or the way her entire body broke out in goose flesh. She shivered, she quivered, and a needy, feral cry emerged from the very depths of her being.

The soft, sweet abrasion of his tongue on her clit and her pussy, along with the slide of his wet lips on the ones between her legs became a golden rope of lust that wrapped around her natural woman, pounding her heart and feathering her nerve endings. His tongue gently speared inside her pussy in a soft and wet in-and-out stroke, and she thought she would explode with the pleasure that drenched her.

Her head tossed from side to side. Her body felt gnawingly empty and yet wildly alive. Something was rushing toward her, but she didn’t know how to reach for it, how to grab it, or how to hold it close.

She very much wanted to hold it close and never let it go.

Motion on the bed didn’t translate to her thoughts until Jordi turned her face toward him and kissed her, giving her a hot and hungry taste of him that instantly made her burn even hotter.

“You are so damn sexy, woman.” Jordi’s breath brushed his words across her face and into her heart.

Then everything stopped, and Mayellen looked down the length of her body to encounter Curt’s searing gaze.

“Ready to fly, pretty baby?”

“Fly?”

His question didn’t make sense, but the sparkle in his eyes drew her with a promise of something sinfully sexy. Mayellen felt held in thrall. Then he raised his right hand, showing just two fingers extended. He put them in his mouth and sucked on them. And then, without his gaze leaving her face, he eased those fingers out of his mouth and slowly inserted them into her pussy. He moved them against the walls of her vagina, almost as if he was looking for someth—

“Oh! I—” Mayellen’s words ended in a scream.

She arched her back as a wave of fierce rapture, of emotional and sensual fireworks exploded over and through her. She couldn’t think, could barely breathe, because the sensations had her, heart and mind, body and soul. Flying. Wave after wave of pleasure pummeled her, and she wanted it never to end. Orgasm. Until this moment, only a word and nothing, nothing at all like the tiny little treats she’d given herself, laying alone in the dark of night under her blankets. A secret revealed.