Three Men and a Woman: Evangeline (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (25 page)

They took a moment to breathe, heads sunk into each other’s shoulder or crook of the neck or whatever. Okay, yeah, so it was sweet, but it was also freaking hot to watch, and Chase’s dick stirred in appreciation. Maybe “stir” was a little too
soft
a description.

He was aware of Briggs beside him, shaking his head. “I don’t get it. She must really like the idiot.”

Chase snorted.

The love bunnies at the door started to move. That was to say, Gio moved, and Evvie perforce went along with him. Without so much as a by-your-leave, he took her to the stairs. He had one arm behind her back and one supporting her ass, humped over just a little to accommodate the way he had her pierced.

It didn’t slow him down at all, and he was halfway up the stairs before Chase glanced over at Briggs. Briggs was watching the show, too, and having the same reaction to it Chase was, judging by the healthy amount of tenting going on. He looked back at Chase and nodded, and the two of them got up and followed the pair going up the stairs.

They formed a little let’s-fuck-Evvie parade.

Gio had gotten distracted along the way by some more kissing, enough that Chase and Briggs had nearly got caught up to them by the time they reached Evvie’s bedroom. And so they were standing right there when the door slammed in their faces.

Briggs nearly had his nose taken off, which, in other circumstances, could have been damn funny. “Hey, dude,” he said, all aggrieved. “That’s not cool.”

It was pretty obvious Gio had to get his tongue out of Evvie’s throat before he spoke. “It’s been ten days. Give me an hour.” Something happened, and Chase suspected it was a hard thrust of cock into hot pussy. “Please.”

Briggs looked at Chase.

“‘Hey, dude’?” Chase mimicked in a girly tone. “‘That’s not cool’?”

Briggs shot him a hard look and took some deep breaths—likely trying to convince his cock to stand down, just as Chase was. “We gonna let him do that?”

“I guess, yeah.”

“Fuck.”

That said it all.

Chase knocked him on the shoulder. At the least, he wasn’t going to stand outside Evvie’s door listening to the soundtrack. He wouldn’t have to strain—Gio wasn’t holding back. “Come on. There’s lunch downstairs.”

Briggs’s expression let him know what little compensation that was.

It wasn’t
that
much more than an hour before Evvie and Gio came downstairs. They’d showered, so they were both squeaky clean, Gio in his jeans only and Evvie wrapped up in a short silk robe. Chase didn’t want to wonder about what nasty activities had dictated the need for a shower.

And didn’t have to, since Gio was seldom quiet about anything he did. And was particularly loud, it turned out, when he was shoving his cock into his woman’s ass. Very soon—almost too soon to believe, physiologically speaking—after he’d got done shoving it into her cunt.

Still, he liked the symbolism behind the shower and that little silk robe.

Like Evvie’s lovely body was entirely available for her other two lovers. Ready. Waiting. Squeaky clean. He caught a glimpse of her little panties beneath her robe, but her idea of underwear had never kept him from getting to home plate. Or the dugout.

Chase was aware of the time, though, and knew the big four-way fuck orgy he and, he was sure, Briggs had been anticipating wasn’t going to happen today. There wasn’t much time left before Maisy’s bus.

And that time was going to be spent in conversation, apparently.

Gio kept Evvie’s hand in his after he brought her into the living room.

Chase and Briggs had filled their plates and sat out on the porch while they ate—an ineffective strategy to avoid the upstairs sound effects. They’d lingered there a little too long, being forced to give lame little waves and make a deal of meeting the interested gazes of the two Victory women—Jane and Charlene—who walked by.

He’d urged them under his breath to keep walking, keep walking, and was exceedingly grateful when they did. Briggs heaved a thankful sigh to match his own, and, without speaking, they both stood and gathered their dishes and hightailed it inside before the women’s curiosity got the better of them.

So Chase was laid out on the couch reading an online medical journal and Briggs was in an easy chair doing his usual stuff in his head when the two lovebirds came down. Though they both sat up with extreme attention when Gio spoke.

“I’m done effing around. I want to commit. I want Evvie to marry me—or one of you, if you two are going to fight me for it.” That stopped an objection from both Chase and Briggs. “But I’m in—for good. And I want to meet Maisy.”

He gave both the other men careful looks. “I’m going to stop flying so much. Evvie doesn’t like it when I’m gone for so long.” He squeezed her hand and gave her this goofy little indulgent look. It was an embarrassment. “Plus, she worries.”

Briggs was on his feet, and Chase stood, too. “You’ve been flying since you were sixteen. Up until now, I’ve never had to worry about you.”

“And you don’t now, either.”

But out of Gio’s line of sight, Evvie nodded her head. Yes, he did. If she had to worry, he had to, also, apparently.

“I’m going to talk to the brothers, see if I can work some around the farm.”

Briggs rolled his eyes. “What? You drive a pickup, so you think you know something about farming?”

Gio lifted a brow. “I can learn. You think there aren’t Diorios growing grapes in Italy?”

“Good point,” Chase granted. “But not really the main concern here, right? Evvie?” He put out his hand. “Why don’t you come sit down?”

She came and took his hand, which pleased him. But Gio kept hold of her other hand and came along, too, which—well, was inevitable, he supposed.

No surprise it was Gio who’d take them to the brink on this.

They had little more than half an hour in which to make a plan that was, very likely, to affect the rest of their lives. Chase would like to say that Gio’s declaration had forced a commitment from him and Briggs, but it wasn’t true. At least, he knew it wasn’t true for him, and suspected it wasn’t for Briggs, either.

They both threw caution to the wind and their hats into the ring. Yes, they, too, were willing to commit to a four-way ménage. They, too, wanted marriage and to meet Maisy.

The marriage thing was the toughest to work out. Gio argued quite correctly, dammit, that he was the first to propose, that Evvie had accepted, and that that ought to count for something. Chase made the relatively weak point that half the Victorys had already met him, which of course caused Briggs to chime in that he’d established his presence on the farm as well. That had Gio pointing out that he planned to work on the farm.

Things started getting heated when Evvie called a halt to it. It didn’t matter, she said. She was going to belong to all of them and vice versa. To her mind, there didn’t have to be a marriage at all.

Which just went to show how women thought, Chase mumbled. It wasn’t a thing he could defend when she raised her brow at him. The guys largely ignored her and fought next over the best way to decide by chance. Chase proposed they shoot for it, odds and evens. Briggs said draw straws. Gio, being Gio, wanted to arm wrestle.

In the end, she tossed all three of them out of the house. Briggs and Chase gave Gio a sour look like it was his fault.

Stay away, she told them. Giving Chase cause for a little smirk, she had to say it twice to Gio, when he tried to play that I’ve-been-gone-for-ten-days card again.

She’d meet them at Chase’s home on Saturday, after dropping Maisy off at the sleepover. She’d stay with them through Sunday morning, which was an inspired notion distracting and enticing enough to significantly mollify three male tempers.

On Sunday, she said, they’d come together to the farm and spend the day with Maisy.

Done deal.

* * * *

By the time she was in the shower with Giovanni, Evangeline was aware that the little bit of cramping she’d noticed that morning really did mean what she thought it might.

She wasn’t pregnant. She was disappointed but not terribly surprised. Her periods were short and light and easy to live with, but her cycles had never been particularly regular. It had been possible that she was ovulating around the time of that first weekend when she’d run into each of the guys, and, more particularly, had sex with each of them. Or, it might have happened the Monday a week later, when she’d made love with all of them that same day.

Most likely her fertile time had occurred on those days in between, though she’d hoped that an egg or two might have hung around long enough to make friends with an eager little sperm on that Monday.

The “or two” was because one of the few things she knew about her mother’s family was that the Charles women seemed to be super ovulators. In a rare moment of disclosure, Fancy had once told Evangeline that she, Fancy, had a twin brother and there was another set of twins three years older. Fancy’s aunt Cindy had two sets of twins also, but had raised the bar by popping out triplets as well. Fancy’s pregnancy with Evangeline had started out as a twin, but there had been an early demise of one.

In fact, Evangeline had been made to feel a bit inferior when it was revealed during her pregnancy that Maisy was a singleton.

Anyway, she was committed to three randy guys now. She was pretty sure it wouldn’t be long before she conceived. It wasn’t like they wouldn’t cooperate—with that part of the deal, anyway.

So it would be another month at least before Chase would feel the need to boss her around about prenatal care and birth plans. It was enough that he was mumbling under his breath about females who thought marriage wasn’t important.

She’d lost patience with the three of them making such a fuss over a thing that really was simple. She loved them. She wanted to be with them. It didn’t matter if she married one or all or none.

What did matter, and she wasn’t even sure they’d gotten it, was that she was ready to share Maisy with them. Nothing would signify the commitment she was making to them more than that. A meeting between them would come soon, and it turned out she was less worried about it than she might have anticipated. The guys were sweet, loving men, and Maisy had an open heart. She wasn’t exactly sure how to frame the relationship for Maisy’s young self, but she was confident it would work itself out.

In the meantime, there was another thing to deal with.

How did a girl dress for a triple fuck?

* * * *

Gio slept late, Briggs wrote, and Chase played a round of golf with two anesthesiologists and a surgeon. Whatever their distraction of choice, it failed each of them by noon. They finished a take-out lunch on Chase’s deck and then had to admit they were doing nothing but waiting for Evvie.

They’d stopped talking about who would marry her after it got to the point where all they could do was argue. She didn’t seem to care, and Briggs and Gio didn’t really give a fuck either way. Chase was the one who thought about the protection marriage would grant for Evvie and Maisy and any other kids—which, it seemed, were inevitable and already likely more possible than theoretical. He was the one who cared, and he thought that was enough of a reason for him to be the one to put a ring on her finger.

Gio balked at that and went back to his lame, I-asked-her-first shit. Apparently, he really could not care about whether any of them married her, but still want it to be him if it was going to happen. Chase knew all Gio really wanted was to secure her in a relationship that included him. His family certainly hadn’t been one to impress upon him the glories of marriage.

Briggs annoyingly and reasonably argued that they could take legal measures that would protect Ev and the kids—that was what they’d invented damn lawyers for, he said. He was right, and that just made Chase more frustrated.

Not finding a solution, they’d agreed to table it. There were more pressing matters in any case. Like using their magical superpowers to beam her into his bedroom.

Gio had less shame than the rest of them, and Chase knew he’d been on the phone with Evvie a couple times already. He’d let Briggs and him know when she was on the road.

That had been an hour and a half ago, and so, any minute—

Bingo.

* * * *

Evangeline drove this time to the back of the house, parking outside the garage. Giovanni was there to open her door and greet her with a hands-groping, tongue-thrusting kind of kiss. He spotted her overnight bag in the backseat, grabbed it, and slung it over his shoulder like a trophy.

Briggs met her midway across the lower deck. “Hi, sweetheart.” More restrained in his greeting, he held her face, gazed into her eyes, and then gently kissed her.

Though it turned gropey and thrusty in the end, too.

Evangeline didn’t object.

Chase waited for her on the upper level of the deck. He wore a dress shirt and pants, and looked so handsome standing there, all lord of the manor, one hand in his pocket. She realized Gio and Briggs were more formally dressed than usual, as well.