Three to Tango (14 page)

Nine

I
t wasn’t a date. Kerry reminded herself of that. Not a date in the traditional sense, anyway. They’d gone to dinner, sure, but that had seemed appropriate, and besides, Jeremy’d had plans tonight, so she’d have been eating alone anyway. And they’d walked along the riverfront, not holding hands or anything romantic like that. And when they got in his car to go back to his place, Brian had held the door open for her, a courtesy she’d forgotten could be so damned sexy.

Now she stood in his living room while he poured them both glasses of wine she wasn’t sure she could drink. “Great place.”

He looked up from the bar separating the kitchen from the living room. “Thanks.”

His place was in one of the buildings that had been trendy a number of years ago, apartments carved from an old shoe factory. Brian’s flat was a nice, big three-bedroom that easily matched the size of her entire house. Too big for one guy, even though it was really nice.

“How long have you lived here?” She took the glass of wine he handed her and sipped it, letting the mouthful rest on her tongue before she swallowed.

“Five years.” Brian looked around the room and set the glass on the coffee table without drinking from it. She noticed that. “They had some sort of financial trouble and were selling apartments for less than what I could’ve spent for a town house, and the maintenance and stuff’s included in the tenant-association fees. So I bought it. Want a tour?”

“Sure.” Kerry put her glass down, too.

Brian showed her the living room and kitchen, both furnished tastefully but sparsely. A separate dining room had only a card table and four folding chairs, and Brian laughed as he showed her. “I don’t have many dinner parties.”

“I can see that. What’s through here?” A short hall led to the first bedroom that had been set up as an exercise room. “Wow. Nice setup.”

The entire far wall had been mirrored. As Kerry stepped forward and Brian followed her, she glanced up to catch him staring at her with a look she wasn’t sure she could interpret. They both stopped, her gaze snaring his in the reflection.

When he moved closer behind her, Kerry was already tilting her head to expose the line of her neck. When he kissed her there, she closed her eyes with a sigh. Brian’s hands fit naturally on her hips, his thumbs settling into the dimples on either side of the base of her spine. His heat covered her. She was glad they hadn’t carried their glasses. It would’ve been tough to find a place to put them down in here.

“Kerry.”

She opened her eyes and watched him mouth her neck and the slope of her shoulder, exposed by the neckline of her sweater. “Hmmm?”

Brian looked up. “You smell good.”

She smiled. “Thanks.”

He turned her to face him. They kissed slow and leisurely, without the frantic pace of the last time. Brian cradled the back of her head, another courtesy Kerry wouldn’t have expected to be so sweet. The height difference meant she had to tip her head back pretty far even though he bent to reach her. That hand on the back of her head, his fingers sinking into her hair, made a huge difference.

Even so, to ease the distance between them, Kerry pushed up onto her toes and slid her arms around Brian’s neck. The kiss ended naturally, both of them taking a breath at the same time. She smiled, looking deep into his eyes.

“Hey,” Kerry said softly.

“Hey.”

“You have other rooms, huh?”

Brian laughed and kissed her again. This time when he scooped her into his arms, Kerry wasn’t as surprised. It was different, feeling so small, and she laughed and kicked her feet as she clung to him. Brian had to turn sideways to get them both through the doorway, but once in the hall he kissed her as he walked, not seeming to mind her weight one bit. Kerry let out a little squeak against his lips, though, as he stopped in a second doorway but didn’t go through.

“Guest room,” he said, tilting her so she could see inside to another sparsely furnished room. Another few steps down the hall, Brian said, “bathroom.”

At the end of the hall he stepped with her through a double doorway, both doors open, and into a large bedroom.

“My room.” He moved easily to the bed, though Kerry could feel his arms beginning to shake, just a little bit.

“I’m impressed,” she said as Brian laid her on the bed. “I thought for sure you were going to drop me.”

“Never.” He made it sound like a promise.

His kiss felt like a promise, too, but one Kerry thought was meant to be broken. Brian kissed her differently than he had the night of the reunion. More confidently. Or maybe the change wasn’t in him, but her. That first night she’d set about getting what she wanted. Tonight, Kerry felt somehow more shy.

They kissed for a long time, longer than she’d have expected. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d just made out with a guy without it leading automatically and swiftly into sex. Every time his hands moved over her, skating along her shoulder or over her belly, Kerry tensed, waiting for him to cup her breast or slide between her legs.

“Tease,” she murmured finally, when Brian had yet again moved his hand over her thigh without even pushing up the hem of her skirt.

He gave her an unapologetic grin. “I thought tonight we could take our time.”

“Here I thought you might be trying to re-create all those horny and unfulfilled days of high school.” Kerry could tease, too.

“Maybe that, too.” Brian moved in to kiss her, but paused a breath away from her mouth. “Back then I’d have been too afraid to touch you. You’d have said no.”

“I wouldn’t have. I won’t now.” She arched a bit, though their mouths still didn’t meet.

His fingers circled lightly on the outside of her skirt. When he kissed her this time, damn if she didn’t feel like they were back in high school, playing “will you, won’t you?” Brian’s fingers curled the hem of her skirt, then brushed the inside of her thigh. Kerry shivered.

“Yes?” he whispered.

“Yes.”

Brian pressed closer. His fingers moved higher. His tongue stroked hers. His knuckles brushed the outside of her panties. “Yes?”

“God, yes.”

It was hard to kiss a smile, but she managed. It was a little harder to keep kissing him when she gasped, which she did when Brian pushed his fingers beneath the waistband of her panties. He found her clit at once, not circling it, just applying steady and gentle pressure.

“Yes,” Kerry whispered as his mouth left hers and found the tender and sensitive spots of her neck and throat. “Fuck. Yes, Brian. Just like that.”

He made a low noise at her words, and Kerry noted the reaction. He liked dirty talk? Good. She liked talking dirty. Jeremy—but she wasn’t thinking of him right now. Everything was here, not there. This man, not that one. Everything now was Brian Jordan, the real thing, not a dream.

He rubbed her clit just the way she did when she was pleasuring herself. Few men had ever touched her that way, with the same amount of pressure, the same pace. He even dipped down inside her to coat his fingertips with her wetness the same way she did.

Pleasure vibrated through her. She rocked her hips in time with his strokes. Brian kissed her harder, deeper, mimicking the thrust of his fingers inside her with that of his tongue. She wanted to tell him to stop, to get naked, or at least to take his cock out and fill her with it, but desire had made her dumb. Within minutes she was so close to coming it was too hard to think straight, much less verbalize. The best she could do was a low, throaty hum of encouragement.

Brian had stopped kissing her, but Kerry, back arched and eyes closed, couldn’t bring herself to reach for him. Everything centered between her legs. The slow stroke-stroke of his fingers inside her, thumb on her clit. She fisted her hand in the front of his shirt, twisted the fabric, while the other reached over her head and found the comfort of the headboard spindles. She gripped it tight, tensing with her impending orgasm.

Calling it waves of pleasure was such a fucking cliché, but that’s exactly what it was. The first wave lifted her and she rode it, cresting and crashing. Tumbling. Head over heels, Kerry plummeted into ecstasy. Then up again, not as high, but the downward plunge was twice as hard. The headboard creaked under her grip. She cried his name, plus some other things she couldn’t have made sense of had she tried. Fuck talk.

Kerry opened her eyes. Brian watched her, his gaze dark, mouth set, brow furrowed. He looked like he was concentrating, hard, but when he saw her looking, he gave her a brilliant smile that forced another last set of ripples through her.

Kerry fell back against the pillows and let go of his shirt and the headboard. Her fingers ached a little from holding so tight. Brian slid his fingers out of her cunt but rested them over her panties.

“Wow,” she said.

“I love to watch you come.”

Kerry swallowed, catching her breath. “A man who likes to watch women come is a good, good man, Brian.”

His smile quirked. “Not women. You.”

The breath she thought she’d caught stuck in her throat. “Brian—”

He shook his head. “Never mind.”

She didn’t want to go there. She did, however, want to go someplace lower. Kerry rolled to face him and cupped his delightfully hard cock through his jeans. “What’s this?”

“Golly, I’m not sure. Maybe you could find out?” The “awshucks” tone suited him perfectly. So did the choir-boy expression—wide eyes, hair falling just so over his forehead.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were totally innocent. Fortunately, I do know better.” Kerry unzipped his fly and slipped a hand inside to find him through the soft fabric of his boxers. “Brian, baby, you have got such a pretty cock. Let me see it.”

There was already heat between them, but at her words Kerry felt a rise in the temperature. She looked at his face. Blushing? Oh God. Too fucking precious.

Brian tugged open the button on his jeans, opening them wider, and pushed them down his hips. Kerry moved back to watch him as he wriggled free of the layers of denim and cotton, then as he reached over his shoulder to pull his shirt up and over his head. Naked, he stretched out next to her, his cock pointing upward.

She didn’t move. She drank her fill of the sight of him. All lean, strong male. Muscles defined but not overexaggerated. Belly flat and taut, hinting at a six-pack but not flaunting one. He used that workout room just right.

“You’re making me nervous,” Brian said.

His cock showed no sign of fear. Kerry leaned to take him in her hand. She stroked him just twice before she tugged her sweater off over her head, leaving her in a pale blue lacy bra. That didn’t last much longer. Nor did her skirt and panties. Naked, she pressed herself against him, offering her mouth. Between them, his cock twitched on her belly.

Brian kissed her. His hands roamed her back, then over her ass. She wasn’t surprised when he rolled her. Brian pushed up on his arms. A shift of his hips just an inch or so lower, and he’d be inside her. First, though, he reached to pull open the nightstand drawer and take out a condom. He held it up.

“Ribbed for her pleasure? Very nice,” Kerry said.

“I’m a nice guy.”

“You”—she cupped his balls before sliding her fist up and over his cock—“are an extremely nice guy.”

Brian knelt, and Kerry helped him roll the rubber down. They both stared at his erection, fully sheathed. Then at each other.

Brian surprised her with the swiftness of his kiss, with how fast he covered her with his body, how quickly he guided himself inside her. Kerry gasped when he pushed into her cunt. Brian pulled away the barest bit, his lips brushing hers with each word.

“Too fast?”

It wasn’t. She answered him with a kiss. She moved her hands down his sides to grip his hips, urging him forward. “Fuck me, Brian. Hard. Right now.”

But he didn’t. He eased in and out of her as carefully as he’d kissed her for that long hour he’d taken before touching her. Brian held his weight on his hands, looking down into her face, adding a roll of his hips that brought his pubic bone directly against her clit. Over and over again he pushed inside her.

Kerry had never come this way—oh, she could push a hand between them and use her fingers to bring herself off at the same time, but this … this was different. This was incredible. Every time she thought certainly he would have to give in to his own desire, fuck faster, finish, Brian only took that extra moment to rub himself exactly where she needed it.

“Brian …” It was all she could manage. She rolled her hips, pulling him in deeper. She needed him, all of him, inside her as far as he’d go.

At last, maybe driven by the sound of his name, Brian fucked faster. Deeper, almost but not quite hard enough to hurt. Kerry hooked her heels over his calves, and they moved together in perfect time.

She came hard, pleasure like a slap. An explosion. Brian shuddered against her. They came together, something so startlingly wonderful Kerry couldn’t breathe.

After, curled in his arms, she felt herself drifting into contented sleep and had to force herself to blink herself awake. Carefully, she sat, thinking he’d fallen asleep. Not wanting to wake him, she crept from the bed to find her clothes.

Brian’s voice stopped her as she stepped into her panties. “I want to see you again.”

Kerry paused. She turned. She calculated schedules, the practicality of juggling this “one night” with the rest of her life. None of that mattered when she went back to the bed to kiss him again. When she whispered against his mouth the only answer she could give.

“Tomorrow. I’ll see you again tomorrow.”

Ten

T
hree weeks.

For three weeks, Brian had been sleeping with Kerry, knowing that every time she left him to go home, she was going back to the other guy. She didn’t pretend otherwise, though Brian did. When he called her and that other guy answered with a casual, “Oh, hey, Brian. Hold on, I’ll get her,” or worse, “She’s in the shower, can she call you back?” something inside Brian tightened like a fist.

“Hey, Brian.” Dennis punched Brian’s shoulder. “We ready to rock and roll, or what?”

Brian shook himself. “Yeah. Right, rock and roll.”

He passed Dennis a key marked with a paper tag and stepped aside to let his friend ogle the sweet little red Volvo convertible he was taking for a test drive. The top was already down, and Dennis was practically rubbing his hands with glee. They both knew it was sort of a joke. Dennis would trade his currently filthy station wagon in for a newer, cleaner model basically just like it. His days of convertible driving were long past, what with the wife and kids and dog and everything Brian envied. Even so, it never hurt to let Dennis take the car for a spin, get people to check it out.

“So,” Dennis said as soon as they’d left the parking lot and had passed across the highway onto some twisty-turny back roads that would take them through the best of Pennsylvania farm country. “What’s up with you? Haven’t seen you at the gym for basketball, nothing. You don’t even answer my Connex posts, you douche.”

“Yeah, not sending you seeds for
Farmtown
, that really makes me the douche, huh?” Brian rolled his eyes and focused on the ribbon of road ahead of them.

Dennis turned off the music. This was a move so unprecedented that Brian turned to him in shock. The look on Dennis’s face was worse. Something bad was up.

“I’m worried about you, man,” Dennis said.

For a moment Brian wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “What?”

Dennis slowed the car, then pulled into a gravel drive leading about a mile back to a big white farmhouse. He put the convertible in park and twisted in the seat to face Brian. “I’m worried about you.”

The day was perfect for riding with the top down, but sitting here in the baking sun wasn’t as good. The heat in Brian’s cheeks didn’t help. He shrugged, not sure where Dennis was going with this but knowing it couldn’t be good.

“I’m fine.”

“You are so not fine. You look like shit.” Dennis reached to flip the end of Brian’s tie. “Doesn’t match. And dude, you always match.”

“I couldn’t care less about my tie, okay?” Brian tucked it back against his shirt, checking it out surreptitiously. Dennis was right. Damn it.

“It’s her, isn’t it? Kerry Grayson. What happened? She dump you?”

“You can’t dump someone you’re not going out with.”

“So … you’re pining for her? She hasn’t called you back? Hey, she won’t send you seeds for
Farmtown
?” Dennis laughed.

Brian didn’t. “Oh, she calls me back.”

Dennis sobered but looked confused. “Huh?”

“Kerry and I have been, as you say, fucking like crazed weasels for the past three weeks.” Saying it that way tasted bad, and Brian swallowed, wishing for a piece of gum or bottle of water.

“The hell you say!” Dennis looked first shocked, then gleeful. “She dump the boyfriend? What, he’s coming after your ass?”

“No. And no. She didn’t dump the boyfriend, and no, he’s not after my ass. Apparently, he’s got some kink about her being with other guys.” Brian grimaced, then looked at his hands, balled into fists on his thighs. He forced them to relax. “He knows everything.”

“Wait a minute. She fucks you, then goes home and tells him every detail? Like, every little thing?”

“Yeah.”

“Hot,” Dennis said so low under his breath it was clear he didn’t mean Brian to hear it.

“Fuck you, Dennis.”

Dennis looked contrite. “Sorry. I mean, what a bitch.”

Brian glared. Dennis held up his hands. Brian twisted the air-conditioning knob onto high, a futile attempt at cooling off.

“Sorry,” Dennis repeated. “But … you’re doing it with her. The sex must be pretty fucking good.”

“It’s stellar,” Brian said sourly. He didn’t mention all the times he and Kerry spent together not fucking. Watching a movie, taking a walk along the riverfront. Talking on the phone. Texting silly catchphrases from high school they both remembered and nobody else did.

“And?”

“And she goes home to her boyfriend when it’s done. She lives with him. I’m just the side piece.” Brian’s lip curled. So did his fingers. This time, he didn’t force them to open.

“And?” Dennis said again, then held up his hands when Brian glared at him harder. “Sorry, man. Sorry. It’s just … what do you want? You’re getting great sex from the girl of your dreams without any of the hang-ups, right? I mean, you don’t have to deal with the shitty parts. Am I right?”

“Maybe I want to,” Brian said.

“Oh, dude. Dude.” Dennis shook his head and looked sorrowful. “Seriously?”

“I like her. I—”

“Don’t even say it.” It was Dennis’s turn to grimace and hold up his hands. “That way lies madness, my friend. And lemme tell you, I mean madness. Not fucking Sparta or some shit. You will lose your damn mind if you keep up that line of thinking.”

“Too late.” Brian shook his head. “She’s … She’s Kerry Grayson, man.”

Dennis looked sad, and this disturbed Brian more than anything else had. So did the hand Dennis clapped onto his shoulder and the sympathetic squeeze of his fingers. “You, my friend, have got yourself into a crock of shit. You should get out of it as fast as you can.”

“I can’t.”

Dennis sighed. “You mean you don’t want to.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Then at least stop tearing yourself up about being the side piece. Take it for what it’s worth. Or something.” Dennis frowned. “I know she’s your dream girl and all that …”

“It’s more than that. She used to be my dream girl. Now she’s my dream woman. Forget it. You don’t understand.” Brian looked out to the green fields beyond. They stank strongly of cow manure, which is why his throat closed and eyes stung. Right.

“And you’re sure her guy doesn’t mind?”

“I told you, he’s into it.”

“Well … have you met him?”

Brian turned. “Hell no.”

Dennis raised both brows. “You haven’t even met him?”

“I just said no!”

“Huh.” Dennis put the car back into drive, but looked over at Brian before pulling out of the driveway and back onto the road. “Don’t you think you should?”