Menage (16 page)
She made me so mad I ordered Triple Chocolate Torte for dessert, then ate so fast I barely tasted it. My sugar high crashed before the cab dropped us back at the bookshop.
Cursing myself for being so self-destructive, I returned Keith's cheery wave with half my heart. Depression weighted my feet; disillusion, my spirit. I wasn't like Sean and Joe. I didn't have so many friends I could afford to write one off.
I thought of all the things Marianne had done for me since she'd married my brother. Too many times to count, she'd been my sole family ally. At sixteen, she was my role model, then my drinking buddy, and now my business partner. I knew she wasn't perfect, but neither was I. How could I fail to admire a woman who embraced life so fearlessly? Everything considered, her friendship had enriched me more than I could measure.
On the other hand, if she blamed me for all her woes, what sort of friendship did we have?
'Thanks for lunch,’ she said, dropping an airy kiss to my cheek. 'I feel much better.'
I almost told her I'd promoted Keith then, so she could finish the day as crabby as I'd begun it.
The walk home worked off most of my anger and, I hoped, the chocolate torte.
Despite the nip in the air, I arrived sweaty. To my complete befuddlement, a construction crew was tramping through my house.
'Hey!' Joe bounded into the hall with a smile the size of
One of the big hairy guys grunted and tipped his fingers at me. Two others wrestled a board shrouded in bubble-wrap down the hall.
'I can't begin to guess,’1 said.
Joe rose up on his toes. 'It's a exercise room! Or it could be. Sean's Uncle Mike owns a demolition firm. He salvaged this great cherry-wood
panelling
from a condemned mansion. And some fixtures, too. Victorian, I think.' He faltered at my uneasy expression. 'Don't worry, Kate. It's quality goods. You'll love it.'
'It's not that.' I stepped back into the dining room to avoid another pair of panel carriers. Joe joined me. 'I'm just wondering how much this is going to cost me.'
Joe looked hurt. 'Nothing. It's a present from Sean and me. His uncle's crew is bringing the stuff over for free, and Sean and I will install it. Sean knows all about building codes and renovation, and you know I follow orders well.'
That made me smile. 'You're right. It's a wonderful idea,’
'It doesn't have to be a gym,’ he hastened to assure me. 'I just thought we could put a treadmill or something down there and then you won't have to walk outside when it's icy.'
'Very thoughtful.' I linked my arms behind his neck and tipped our hips together.
'You don't mind us, you know, making ourselves at
home?'
His honey-brown eyes shot spears to my heart. I only wished this nesting urge could last.
‘I don't mind.' I brushed his lips with mine. 'Making yourself at home by renovating my basement is much better than leaving the toilet seat up or throwing socks on the floor.'
Joe smiled and rubbed our noses together. 'You throw socks on the floor more often than we do.'
'True enough.' Happiness bubbled through my veins as we swayed by the dining room table - happiness, and a persistent prick of fear.
If my seventeen-year friendship with Marianne couldn't last, why did I think our fragile
menage
would?
Partly because I love learning how things work, and partly out of camaraderie, I joined the renovation effort. From the start, I knew we were constructing an implausibly swanky gym. The cherry-wood
panelling
put me in mind of an exclusive gentlemen's club, as did the acid-etched art nouveau lighting fixtures. Once Sean cleaned and rewired them, their quality shocked me. I asked if he was certain his uncle knew what he'd given away.
Sean set the wire cutters aside. 'If you're worried, send his wife a basket of books. She loves that
Maeve
Binchy
woman.' He scratched his rock-hard belly through his T-shirt. "Course, my uncle will thank you if you include some goodies from the back room. Aunt
Maire
can roll when she's in the mood.'
I frowned. 'A basket of books isn't worth all this.'
'It is if Aunt
Maire
decides to treat my uncle to a hot weekend away from the kids.'
Well, I could see where Sean got his priorities.
He proved a finicky task master over the next few months. I believe Joe and I pleased him, however. We did as we were told and only argued over important things, like meal breaks and sleep. Sean had a tendency to obsess over finishing a task. Then Joe and I would join forces to seduce him. We christened our gym many times before it held a single weight.
After a while, I developed a
Pavlovian
response to the sound of hammer hitting nail. One clanging blow and my pussy was awash.
But the project changed us in deeper ways. As we worked, we talked - about our childhoods, about our loves and hates, even our ambitions. I didn't want to think too hard about my future because I suspected they wouldn't be in it, but I liked hearing them dream. Sean wanted to start his own accountancy firm so he could work six months and play six months. Joe wanted to be the next Andrew Lloyd Webber.
'Only better,' he qualified. 'No one should roll their eyes at my musicals.'
The confession, and our failure to laugh at it, helped him overcome his inhibitions. He began to sing more around the house. The traditional shower-time warble was joined by cookery medleys and ironing arias. Some nights he even sang us to sleep. Fortunately, he had a beautiful tenor, just husky enough to remind me of sexy things like whisky and velvet or, better yet, post-coital hoarseness.
One day, I caught him singing in his room. He still studied and kept his clothes there, though by this time his cologne scented my room more strongly than his own. I watched him from the door. He sat with his broad shoulders bent over the second-hand desk, holding his hair off his face with one hand. He hummed each phrase a few times before scribbling it in a stave-ruled notebook. The pen didn't falter once.
I imagined real artists worked this way, with this furious concentration, I knew I held no part of his thoughts. I knew he inhabited a world entirely of his own making. Nothing but sex or a great book had ever caught me up so completely. I envied him even as a soft pulse of interest
wanned
my loins.
I wanted him, this private Joe, this independent Joe. But I held back and let the feeling simmer.
Finally, he pushed the notebook aside, ran both hands through his hair, and stretched the kinks from his spine. Unable to resist, I padded up behind him and buried my fingers in his gleaming locks. He jumped, then sagged back to enjoy the scalp massage. 'How long were you standing there?'
'A few minutes. I didn't want to interrupt.' I blew lightly in his reddened ear. He rewarded me with a shiver.
'I was just messing around,' he said.
I counted the stack of notebooks that sat on the metal shelving above his desk. There were six altogether, and every one was as dog-eared as the one he'd shoved aside. If they all held musical scores, he'd been 'messing around' a long time.
Smiling, I slid my hands down the front of his crisp blue
Oxford
shirt. 'You smell of starch,' I said into the smooth cord of his neck. His pulse thudded under my
lips. 'Just a little.' His voice was
thready
. 'I like to use it
when I iron.'
'I know.' I let my hands venture farther, down over his hipbones and on to the hard, slim muscle of his thighs. A knife-crease pleat bisected the front of his tan slacks. 'I like the way you iron. It makes me want to dishevel you.'
His laugh escaped on a choked exhalation. A hill was forming between his legs, lifting the neatly pressed cotton. As it rose, I measured it with my thumbs, testing its resilience and size. His legs fell open.
'Close the door,’ he said, and I knew he meant for this to be one of 'our' times.
We hadn't had one in more than a week and I needed it, too. As exciting as our threesomes were, my nature craved the one-on-one intimacy Joe and I shared.
I had my sweater halfway off before the door swung shut.
Joe turned his chair sideways. He stared at my pink satin camisole, at the beaded tips of my breasts, then attacked his collar button. 'We don't have long,’ he said. He watched me push my narrow, knee-length skirt down my legs. He moistened his lips. 'Sean's due home in half an hour.'
'Half an hour will do it for me,’ I kicked my tights away and gestured to my camisole. On or off? asked my silent mime. We had our own shorthand now.
'On,’ he said. His chest muscles flexed as he wrenched out of his shirt. 'But take the bra off, and the panties.'
I did as he asked, then fought a smile when he tripped over his feet trying to get his clothes off and watch me at the same time.
I bent to retrieve his trousers. 'You should fold these,’ I said, but before I could save his ironing job, he scooped me off my feet and tossed me on to his neatly made single bed.
'Don't waste time.' He plummeted on to me wearing briefs and socks and nothing else. He nuzzled my neck. 'Once is not going to be enough for me. I miss having you to myself.'
His words liquefied inside me like sugar over a flame. I squirmed down until his hot, humid crotch met mine. Cursing sweetly, he pressed me into the mattress so hard the springs creaked. His cotton-covered cock delved between my swollen lips, its warmth catching, its firmness a powerful inspiration. Wanting more pressure, I gripped the sides of the bed.
'Mm, Joe.' I heaved my body towards his, my face level with his shoulder. 'This bed makes me feel like I'm seducing a teenager.'
'Does it really?' His hand slid up my silky camisole to capture one breast. He squeezed the nipple between finger and thumb. 'I hope you enjoy making love like a teenager, too, because all the condoms are in your room.'
I groaned in disappointment. 'I could run up quick.'
'No way.' He underscored his refusal with a forward roll of his hips. 'I want my full thirty minutes and not a second less.' Craning his neck, he kissed his way across my collar bones - feathery kisses interspersed with delicate licks that made me shiver with delight. 'Shall I try to remember how it was?'
'How what was?'
To be a teenager, to see a naked woman for the first time.'
"That was so long ago, wasn't it?' I mocked, even as I tangled my hands in the thick, warm silk of his hair.
He hummed against my neck, a snippet of song. The sound vibrated through my nerves, tingling and pooling in the cache between my legs. I hummed back and he laughed. Then he lifted his head. His face, filled with
humour
a second ago, now held a look of tremulous expectation.
My breath caught. I always thought of Joe as vulnerable but this, this was the vulnerability of an adolescent boy, racked by unfamiliar desires, restrained by insecurity. 'Oh, my.' I fanned my cheeks, experiencing my own hormonal surge.
His bulging cotton briefs soaked up the sudden rush of moisture from my sex. The strength of my response embarrassed me. I would have hidden it, but we notched each other too intimately for that. I tensed.
'No,’ he said, his breath puffing hot against my ear. His shaft rocked deep into my vulva and I soaked him again. He kissed my cheek. 'When we're alone, we can play at any fantasy we want. It should turn us on.' He drew back and held my gaze. 'We both know what you would and would not do in real life.'
I locked my ankles behind his hairy,
sinewed
thighs. 'Do we?'
'Yes,’ he said, and slipped into character as easily as woman donning lipstick. He fanned shaky fingers across my upper chest, catching the spaghetti-thin straps, of my camisole on his pinkies. 'May I, Katherine? May I look at your breasts?'
'Where are your parents?' I whispered. He went very still. He must not have
realised
I wanted to play at being the same age. "They'll be gone all night. We have all night, Katie.'
'Then, yes,’ I said, my eyelids heavy with desire, my sex thrumming against his. 'Look at anything you want.' He caught his lower lip between his teeth and eased the lacy bodice down, baring my left breast, then my right. Light as air, he stroked the skin to either side of my nipples. They stood prouder at the touch, crinkling and flushing from areola to tip, so sensitive they hurt.
'Oh, Katie.' His mouth hovered over a lengthening crest. 'You're so pretty. May I kiss you here?'
My heart jolted as he took my nipple between his lips and teased it with the tip of his tongue, a gentle flicker, like a snake testing the air. I slipped my arms around him and cupped his shoulders in my hands, gentling the satiny skin that overlay his bunching muscles. He groaned against my breast and suckled harder, as if my reciprocation truly meant the world to him. His manner was so convincing - his breathless wonder, his hesitation - that I sank into the fantasy like a stone.
He would have been handsome at seventeen, a little skinnier, a little less graceful; sex-crazed, I'm sure, but too considerate to ask the girls he knew for what he wanted so badly. I wished I'd been his first time, his first girl. I stroked his shoulder blades, dreaming of how it might have been.