Twice Upon a Blue Moon (21 page)

His gaze found Ward, first, and his features relaxed into a smile at once relieved and exhausted. Then he saw Hazel. He stopped smiling.

Not knowing what to do, Hazel raised her hand in a nominal wave. She had the horrible feeling that if he could, Dylan would have sooner turned back than advance the rest of the way to meet them.

The last time they spoke, Dylan had asked her to take his absence to consider what she wanted—if anything—from a relationship with him. But that was two weeks ago. Men like Dylan could live entire lifetimes in two weeks.

“I almost thought they’d keep you,” Ward taunted in lieu of greeting. “Well, I
hoped
.”

“So you could steal my girl?” Dylan’s eyes darted from Ward to Hazel and back, corners crinkling in amusement.

Hazel winced. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves…”

She hesitated for only an instant before rising on tiptoe and pressing a chaste kiss to Dylan’s cheek. The thirteen hour flight had done nothing to coarsen the baby-smooth texture of his skin. He even smelled good. Hazel suppressed another flood of insecurity for the white peasant dress and the unbound hair. She probably looked like she’d just emerged from Woodstock—and that was fine. That was okay. She wasn’t going to change herself for any guy, let alone two.

“I didn’t expect to see you,” Dylan said. “Here, I mean. I was planning on calling you tonight, of course—”

“Well, now you don’t have to.” Ward stuck his hands in his pockets. “Shall we? I know I have money to throw around, but it irks me to pay extra for parking.” He set out without waiting for confirmation. Seeing as he had the car keys, Hazel judged it wise to follow.

She didn’t expect to feel Dylan slot his hand into hers as they navigated the crowded hall, much less have him lean in to ask, “What’s gotten into him?”

Ward’s shoulders were a perfect horizontal line. His gray suit jacket fluttered unbuttoned against his sides. He was trying very hard to be nonchalant about Dylan’s return. A week ago, Hazel might have believed it. She was starting to get wise to the many faces of Ward Parrish, so she felt confident when she turned to Dylan with the answer.

“He’s being his usual sunny self. What else?”

Dylan rewarded her with a smile, but it was soft and uncertain. The dynamic between him and Ward was completely unlike anything that Hazel had witnessed before. Ward was meant to be the master of ceremonies and Dylan his loyal but long-suffering aide. Not the other way around.

Gloom hung over them until it finally crystallized as they crowded around the BMW.

Ward popped the trunk as Dylan collapsed his trolley suitcase and prepared to slot it in.

“So Ward and I had sex,” Hazel blurted out. She could have couched it in euphemism—spent the night, got to know each other a little better, explored the second story of the loft, tripped and landed with Tab A in Slot B—but none suited her purpose so well.

Ward’s glare could have melted the polar ice caps. He froze with one hand on the hood of the car, his jangling keychain in the other. He suddenly seemed a little pallid too, nostrils flaring as he blew out a long breath.

In the face of his palpable aggravation, Hazel was glad that Dylan stood between them, albeit grunting with effort. He scraped his palms together once he’d successfully levered the suitcase into place. “I thought something was up… How was it?”

“What?” Hazel asked, Ward not far behind.

But Dylan was insouciant. “Did you enjoy it?” He turned slowly to give Hazel his undivided attention. For some ungodly reason, that was more unsettling than if he’d turned red with ill-suppressed rage. “Did he show you a good time?”

Hazel thought back to Ward’s hands digging bruises into her hips, his lips tracing runes into her shoulder. “Yes,” she breathed. She could scent Dylan’s cologne as a sticky, warm current blew through the parking lot. She swayed a little toward him, snared.

“Good.” Dylan reached up and brushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “He can be a little rough.”

“Standing right here,” Ward said and emphatically cleared his throat.

“Yes… And this explains that giant stick up your ass.”

Ward shifted his weight, but his rambling irritation was fast becoming an afterthought. “Don’t get snippy with me, Mr. Five Hundred Dollar Shoes.”

“They’re knock-offs,” Dylan shot back. He was still watching Hazel, the shallow curve of a smile painted on his lips. “Are you okay?”

She knew what he was asking—not about the sex, but their incipient relationship, the odds of venturing into something more complicated than the friends-with-benefits routine he seemed to favor. Hazel had been wondering as much herself ever since he told her about his ‘roommate’. Now she knew firsthand that Ward wasn’t the easiest person to live with. Neither was she.

“We’ll need ground rules,” Hazel said. “But yeah… I want to give it a shot.”

Dylan’s grin was blinding and warm, and liable to make her say and do many stupid things if she didn’t inoculate somehow against its power.

“Then let’s go home. Ward, you’re driving.”

“Yes, sir,” Ward drawled, rolling his eyes. Hazel didn’t know him very well and it might have been a trick of the light, but she had the unshakeable suspicion that he was
relieved
as they all piled together into the BMW.

She sat in the back, the pleats in her white dress billowing in the artificial breeze from the AC. Once in a while, her gaze drifted to the clutch, where Dylan had folded his hand over Ward’s.

Chapter Fifteen

Dylan begged off for a shower as soon as they stepped through the loft door. Hazel watched his suitcase, a solitary rectangle forgotten by the door, and wondered what he’d found in Shanghai, if his trip had been fruitful. She thought about asking Ward, but he was back to brooding as he mixed a cocktail that seemed to involve more gin than tonic.

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Hazel asked, resting one arm on the backrest of the couch.

Ward pivoted to face her, a slice of lime in hand. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

A week ago, Hazel would’ve taken that for an unsubtle threat. It was becoming harder and harder to believe him capable.
Terrible thing, letting your lust play judge of character…

“Share and I won’t be tempted,” Hazel challenged.

“After your performance at the airport, I have trouble believing you know the meaning of discretion.” The rebuke was earned, but it did nothing to stop Hazel from bristling.

“Next time I promise to let you hang yourself like a good little martyr.”

“Good.”

“Fine.”

Ward handed her a cocktail with barely any kick and no lime. Like all high class bullies, he fought his wars through petty shenanigans. Hazel would’ve liked to see him sink or swim in her old high school, particularly when he volleyed, “Don’t you need to get back to waiting tables?”

His barbed remarks were by far the worst thing about him. “You know,” Hazel retorted, “if you weren’t so pretty, you’d be wearing my drink right now.”

“It was a simple question,” Ward defended, but he stepped out of her reach at the threat. He rounded the couch, the setting sun at his back.

“No, it wasn’t. If you don’t want me here—”

“Did I say that?”

Hazel rolled her eyes. “Better make up your mind. Dylan might put up with the passive aggressive crap, but I’m not going to.” It was a chancy threat, but if Dylan wanted her to stick around, then Ward’s fickle moods would have to settle. And fast.

“Here I thought that’s what a good submissive is supposed to do,” Ward said. “Put up. Put out,” he added, smirking at the symmetry.

“Who says I’m a good submissive?” Her hackles raised, Hazel sidestepped the part where she accepted the label in the first place.

“I did,” Dylan replied from the far end of the living room. He was pink from the shower, shiny black hair curling handsomely at his nape. He hadn’t deigned to put pants on, so the V of his hips was all too visible over the edge of a terrycloth towel.

He was a vision, but even handsome and half naked, Dylan couldn’t distract Hazel’s attention from a more immediate problem. “You
discussed
me with him?”

“Not in detail.”

“Christ.” Hazel took a sip of her drink. It was as bitter as she’d feared. The absence of lime to elevate the taste made itself felt.

“I’m sure you discussed me with Sadie—and possibly Ward.”

“That’s not—” She caught herself before she finished uttering the lie. “Okay, fine. It’s true we mentioned you, but—”

“It’s no different,” Dylan insisted. He padded barefoot across the hardwood floor and snagged Ward’s glass out of his hands.

“It’s just soda water,” Ward started to protest. He threw up his hands when Dylan took a sip. “I hate living with a teetotaler.”

“And yet you love living with
me
.” Dylan’s smile was generous and confident, and Hazel knew she’d go far to make him look at her like that.

Ward scoffed, but the barest trace of a grin tensed the corners of his lips, giving away the lie. He recovered his glass when Dylan held it out.

“What’s your deal with alcohol?” Hazel felt compelled to ask.

“I don’t have a ‘deal’ with alcohol,” Dylan countered. The way he stood there, between the glare of sunlight and fully dressed, smirking Ward was very avenging angel—or Abercrombie model. He was limned in gold, his body compact and distracting—almost as much as his voice when he added, “Except before I sleep with someone.”

Hazel gulped.

“Ambitious,” Ward teased. “What happened to the jetlag?”

“I slept on the plane. Besides, I’ll have you there to guide me if I slip up, won’t I? Since you two are already acquainted, it seems only fair not to exclude anyone…”

Both Ward and Hazel sucked in a breath at that. Ward in particular seemed thrown by the suggestion. “Shouldn’t you ask the lady what she wants first?” he deflected.

It took Hazel a long moment to puzzle out the flow of influence between them. She’d mistakenly believed that Ward was pulling Dylan’s strings. Maybe that was true ten years back, when they were still in college and Dylan had something to prove. The balance of power had shifted since.

Dylan palmed Ward’s cheek in a broad, capable hand—Hazel knew just how capable from firsthand experience. Ward leaned into it, his eyes drooping shut. He was by far the most clothed person in the room and yet he shivered visibly when Dylan pulled away.

“What do you think, Hazel?”

The sound of her name broke Hazel from the trance she’d fallen under. “What?”

“Do you want to be with the two of us? Or one…? Or neither…?”

“Yeah.” Hazel scratched absently at her knee, then stopped short when she noticed Dylan’s gaze following the motion of her fingers. She hitched her hem up a little and he smiled. God, he had a smile to make a girl do crazy, crazy things. “But I meant it about the rules.” She darted a glance at Ward, relieved when she didn’t find him smirking, rolling his eyes, or just generally acting derisive.

Dylan rested both hands on the back of the Barcelona chair. “I’m listening.”

She’d never done this pre-emptively. Usually it was a matter of dismissing what she didn’t like as an evening wore on—and most of her one-night stands had been too vanilla to hit hard limits. The ones who
did,
she often got off with hastily then sent on their way. It had been years since she had attempted anything more substantial. And now here she was, faced with the real possibility of going down the rabbit hole again, with both Dylan
and
Ward.

A shiver rippled across her skin in anticipation.

“No blindfolds. No gags.” Hazel took a shuddering breath. The living room was warm and yet she felt chilled all of a sudden, a mixture of anticipation and anxiety roiling in her gut. “If I ask you to stop, you stop.”

“Always,” Dylan promised and though he was smiling softly, his gaze was firm and self-assured. He meant it.

“Your turn.”

Dylan arched an eyebrow. “My rules for you?”

“For both of us,” Hazel corrected. She didn’t know what their relationship was like when she wasn’t around, but Ward certainly lugged his guilt around like a ball and chain.

Dylan took a moment to think. “If you want something, you ask for it.”

“That’s it?”

He shrugged. “That’s all I need.”

“What about letting me tie you up?” Ward interjected. “Is there a rule for that?”

Dylan shook his head. “Not unless you have one…”

“I do, actually.” Ward set his glass down on the coffee table. The gin and tonic swished within, a churning sea in a crystal tumbler. “No recordings of any kind. What happens in this apartment stays here.”

He very pointedly didn’t meet Hazel’s eyes—not even when Dylan frowned in confusion—and she felt a swell of tenderness at the thought that he’d bring that up for her sake.

And it had to be for her sake, because he had nothing to lose from laying out his sexual proclivities for the world to see.

Look at that. The Tin Man has a heart.

“I’d say that settles it.” Hazel rose from the couch. “Don’t you?” She tried to be elegant about it. She tried to be sultry. But with every step that brought her closer to Dylan’s bedroom, she felt her heart pound harshly in her ears. What was she doing? What if this backfired?

What if Dylan and Ward discarded her like Sadie had warned?

Hazel seized the hem of her dress with both hands and yanked it over her head, shivering despite the balmy heat. She knew this room, this bed. Her gaze strayed to the door of the playroom, but she didn’t move toward it. If Dylan wanted her in there, he’d tell her.

She didn’t turn at the sound of bare feet slapping the hardwood floor.

“Now
this
is a sight to come home to,” Dylan breathed softly.

Hazel slid her bra straps down—
in for a penny
—and swiftly discarded the scrap of reinforced silk. She hooked two fingers in the waistband of her panties, intending to get the unveiling over with before she lost her nerve, only to feel Dylan’s hands settle over hers.

“Let me,” he purred.

So Hazel did. She slid her palms over her belly, up the ridges of her ribcage and the swell of her breasts. Her nipples peaked beneath her fingertips. She trembled as Dylan bade her step out of her underwear, but nowhere near as badly as she did when he kissed the swell of her hip or traced his fingertips along the backs of her knees.