Megan Hart: An Erotic Collection Volume 1 Page 13

  As he watched Anne brandish her mug of coffee like it was a shield, he saw something else. Anne wasn’t only angry. She was a little afraid, too.

  He knew how that felt.

  “You don’t like what?”

  “The rules the two of you made.”

  He was on his feet, then, standing close enough to intimidate her, but Anne didn’t back down. He hadn’t made those rules. They’d come from Jamie. But he wasn’t going to say so. It would only make them both look like assholes.

  “Which ones don’t you like?”

  There was really only the one rule. “Don’t fuck her,” Jamie’d said as though it were the simplest thing to avoid. “You can do whatever else you want, but just don’t fuck her.”

  Too bad Jamie didn’t know how many ways there were to fuck a person, some of them having nothing to do with sex.

  He put a hand on the wall beside her head. She smelled good. His cock, which hardly ever could be counted on to respond logically, began to get hard. “Do you not like the rules or the fact you didn’t make them?”

  “You negotiated me like it didn’t matter what I wanted.”

  “You’re right. We should have asked you what you thought. So tell me. What do you think?” He should’ve walked away, but couldn’t make himself move anyplace but closer. “Is it all right if I kiss you? Is it all right if I touch you? Is it all right if I put my mouth on you?”

  Her taste flooded his tongue and he fought a groan at the memory of how hot and wet she’d been. His cock heated, filling, and his head swirled.

  “Anne.” He didn’t trust his voice above anything louder than a whisper. “Is it all right if I fuck you?”

  Please say yes. Irrational thought, led by his cock, leaped into his brain, erasing the rules. Erasing logic. Even, fuck help him, erasing his best friend. Especially erasing Jamie.

  She looked at him, not all of the anger gone from her eyes. “You know it’s not. That’s the one thing he said no to.”

  He had to touch her. No denying it. Her pussy pressed hot to his palm when he cupped her through the thin pajama bottoms. “Then it’s a good thing there are so many other things to do than fuck.”

  And he wanted to do all of them, every single one.

  He lapped at her cunt like a starving man. He drank in the taste and scent of woman and reveled in her softness. Alex often demanded his lovers to look at him, to make that connection with their eyes if nothing stronger than that, but now it was his turn to stare up at Anne. Her face flushed, her hair tumbling over her shoulders, she rocked against his tongue and came on the smile he was unable to hide.

  When she got on her knees for him and took him down her throat, he wanted to shoot right there. He’d had his cock sucked thousands of times, but nothing quite like this. The sound of her breath, the heat of her mouth, tipped him over into orgasm.

  Empty balls gave him a clearer head. This was not just about sex, and he couldn’t convince himself it was. Alex swallowed, still tasting her climax, and held back a shiver. He wanted to kiss her again but did not.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know he hadn’t told you. I thought you knew.”

  The lie washed away the flavor of her desire, but he blinked and gave her no sign of it. He didn’t know why he’d said it, other than just once he wanted not to be the one held responsible for the inevitable fuckup.

  “I’m not sure I’m glad I found out. It’s not nice to find out someone you love hasn’t been truthful.”

  “Jamie’s never been a good liar. He’s not a rascal like me.”

  She had no idea.

  “Maybe not, but he’s not as good as he thinks he is, either. I also didn’t know you’d been in touch after our wedding. As far as I knew, you hadn’t spoken since your big fight in college.”

  She knew? “He told you about that? The fight?”

  “Yes. He told me that, too.”

  “And you’re—” Okay with it, he meant to say. You’re okay with the fact your husband once tried to kiss me when he was drunk and called me a faggot and punched me in the face, and that I knocked him through a glass table when he did.

  But the door opened to admit Anne’s younger sister Claire with a family fire to put out, and the moment for truth, if ever there had been one, was lost.

  * * *

  He fell into her slowly, and deep. There’d be an end to it, of course. Things like this only ever worked because they weren’t meant to last. Alex thought Anne knew it as well as he did, even if Jamie didn’t seem to.

  In the beginning, Alex had tried staying away but now it was Jamie who left the house early and didn’t come back until much later. He said it was work, and Alex didn’t believe his buddy was lying. He also didn’t think Jamie had any sort of fucking clue exactly what he was doing by leaving Anne and Alex alone together so often. Putting a cock inside a cunt was the smallest of small things when set beside the very long list of what else was going on while Jamie was at work.

  “Do you love him?” Anne asked in the bed the three of them shared more often than not.

  “Everyone loves Jamie,” Alex said, which was not a lie.

  “Then why are we doing this?”

  He couldn’t stand the hint of agony in her voice, barely covered by desire. A hundred lies tripped to his tongue, and what would one more be on top of all the others? But it was getting harder to lie to Anne about everything. Harder to lie to himself.

  “Because we can’t stop ourselves.”

  They fucked in every way but that small one, and in the end, it wasn’t cock in cunt that mattered. It was mouth on mouth, skin on skin. Breath on breath. It was the way she curled her fingers in his hair and pulled, just right, and how she cried out his name when he put his mouth on her flesh. It was how she clung to him when she wept about the mess her family had made of their lives. It was how she looked inside him, all the way down, and he wanted her to see what was there.

  “This is more than it was supposed to be,” Anne said when the love had been made, all day long, and both of them were boneless and sated from it.

  Alex couldn’t answer her. Words fought to come out, and he bit them back. Lies or truth, in the end it didn’t matter what he said. He could hardly tell the difference, anymore.

  * * *

  He’d always had a knack for hurting someone who loved him. Something in his makeup let him see what would cut the deepest; something lacking had always let him use it. Until now, though, he’d never much regretted anything he’d ever done.

  It would be better, in the long run, for this to end on Anne’s urging. Jamie wouldn’t do it. Alex knew that as well as he knew that Jamie would always go for paper first when playing rock, paper, scissors. And, as the summer got closer to ending, Alex found he couldn’t do it.

  If he’d had a job to go to, that would have helped, but he’d slacked off in his efforts and finding employment. He could live for years on what they’d paid him to buy out Transcom. He didn’t need to work, but he also had no excuse to leave other than overstaying his welcome, and so far neither of his hosts had started grumbling.

  He knew Anne had doubts. She had to. She couldn’t know the story of the fight and its reasons without wondering if somehow, sometime, Alex might choose Jamie over her. Or if Jamie might choose Alex instead of his wife. She wouldn’t have been human if she didn’t wonder.

  It wasn’t easy to ignore her in favor of Jamie the way it would have been had this never begun, but Alex managed. And if there were times when it would have been easier to lead Jamie to know Anne better, Alex chose to follow his friend, instead, and pretend he didn’t know. She couldn’t know how it stung him to watch her shoulders tense when the pair of men started in on the boyhood jokes, excluding her from the secret club they’d formed so long ago. And Jamie, true to form, didn’t notice a goddamned thing.

  “Why don’t you guys ever touch?” Anne, who’d been prickly for days, demanded of them one night.

  Alex said nothing. Jamie sputtered and
shot him a glance, but Alex wasn’t going to throw him a lifeline. Not on this.

  “Both of you,” Anne said and turned off the TV so they couldn’t ignore her. “Why don’t you ever touch each other when we’re fucking?”

  It had come down to that. The question Alex had never asked because the answer was so blatant he didn’t want to know. Jamie, however, was less than subtle. He’d been casually stretched out next to Alex on the bed, but now he eased away, like cock-sucking was catching.

  “Well?”

  “I’m not queer,” Jamie said, “not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

  That, at least, had changed in his friend’s eyes. If Alex could be grateful for anything, it wasn’t that Jamie wasn’t a homophobe anymore. Once again, the truth and lies had become indistinguishable.

  Alex looked at her. “He’s not queer, Anne.”

  She wasn’t satisfied, not quite. Jamie tried to soothe her and did a bad job of it. Alex could have done it better. He knew what to say. But he didn’t. Instead he got off the bed and made to leave.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Anne’s voice shook. Maybe not with as much rage as she thought. Maybe not with as much grief as he did.

  “Giving you some privacy.” Reminding her he didn’t belong here.

  “Privacy?” She laughed. “You can stick around when it’s time for you to put your prick in my mouth, but when I’m in a bad mood you’re out the door, is that it?”

  “Jesus, Anne. What’s the matter with you?” Jamie sounded stunned.

  “I’m going to go out for a while. Give you two some time alone.” It sounded nice, like a considerate gesture, but that wasn’t how he meant it and it wasn’t how she took it.

  “What are you going to do? Go out clubbing? Pick up some guy and give him a blow job in the back alley?”

  “God, Anne. What the hell?” Jamie looked sick.

  They weren’t broken yet, not entirely, but Alex didn’t try to salvage it. He’d always known how easy it was to hurt someone who loved him, and how easy it was to be hurt by someone he loved. “Is that any of your business?”

  “I think it is, yes, when you’re coming back here to my house, and my bed, and my husband!”

  She shouted so loud her voice cracked. Alex didn’t shout. It wasn’t his style.

  He knew where to cut, and how deep, and he did it.

  “Anne, if you want me to leave, all you have to do is say so. You don’t have to turn into a raging bitch.”

  A good husband would have hauled off and punched the shit out of him, but Jamie only stared at the floor. Anne wavered for a moment before stalking into the bathroom and slamming the door behind her. The silence after she did it was very loud.

  “Christ, you’re an asshole,” Jamie said.

  Alex found a smile that made Jamie flinch. “Later, brother.”

  “Don’t go, man. Not like this.”

  Alex looked at the bathroom door and back to his friend. Two quick steps would have taken him within reach, though what he meant to do if he took them, he didn’t know. Instead he shook his head. “You’d better check on her, Jamie.”

  Jamie sighed and scrubbed at his eyes, face bleak. “Yeah. I guess I should.”

  “Don’t feel bad about it,” Alex said. “I am an asshole.”

  * * *

  Jamie didn’t want him to leave, though Alex had planned to simply pack his shit and go. He could afford a hotel. Fuck, he could afford to buy a hotel.

  “Don’t go, man. She’ll get over it.” This from Jamie in another conversation on the deck after Anne had gone to bed.

  “She shouldn’t have to get over anything.” That Jamie couldn’t see this fact infuriated Alex enough to raise his voice.

  Jamie softened his and put his hand on Alex’s shoulder. “She doesn’t want you to go.”

  Alex drew in the smoke from his cigarette and watched it make patterns against the porch light. “What about you?”

  “Shit, man. I don’t want you to go, either.”

  “But you know I have to. Sometime.”

  “But not before...” Jamie stopped and took his hand away. When Alex looked at him, Jamie seemed to have grown smaller. His mouth turned down at the corners and his shoulders slumped. “Not before the end of the summer, okay? Just stay till then, at least. It’s been a long fucking time without you, that’s all.”

  Alex stubbed out his smoke and stood. “I’m going out. I’ll see you later.”

  Jamie didn’t protest, only shrugged.

  * * *

  Alex could have found a woman at any of the bars he went to. All it would have taken was a smile and a bit of charm, and he’d have been up to his ears in all the pussy he wanted. But he didn’t want. He wanted something harder and different. The curve of a bicep, not a breast. The scratch of a beard. He found what he was looking for, but it wasn’t what he really wanted.

  Stumbling down a dark hall to an empty bed was the right choice, but his feet took him farther. Through the doorway to Anne and Jamie’s room. To her side of the bed.

  Whiskey had blurred his vision and given him fumble fingers that couldn’t quite manage to get his zipper down without the effort of a grunt. Buttons flew off his shirt when he became too impatient to undo them and instead just ripped. Half naked, he stood over Anne in the darkness and waited for her to scream.

  She reached for him, instead, and drew him in. This was forgiveness he didn’t deserve, but he took it. He tightened his fingers in her hair and pulled until she looked up at him.

  “Wake him up.”

  “James,” she said at once. “Wake up.”

  “Jamie,” Alex commanded. “Wake up.”

  Alex told them both what he wanted them to do, and they did it. Anne’s mouth on their cocks. Their hands on her body. Her mouth on Alex’s, then Jamie’s. Effortless pleasure built between them, and it was perfect.

  Anne came first, her body tensing and twitching in the way that had become so familiar. She kissed them both, one and the other. Jamie came next with a grunt and groan, and Alex just after that.

  His hand had slid to the back of Jamie’s neck. Orgasm pushed them closer together. With his eyes closed, it could have been any mouth he sensed close to his lips, but Alex knew it was Jamie’s mouth. Not Anne’s. She was no longer a bridge between them but an open door.

  A door he once more couldn’t go through.

  Alex opened his eyes and let go of Jamie, who looked dazed. Alex pulled away, retreating from the almost-kiss.

  “Alex,” Jamie said.

  Alex pushed them both away. Whiskey rose up, burning his throat and he stumbled for his clothes, heart pounding and stomach churning. He fled down the dark hall to the bathroom where he got in the shower without waiting for the water to get hot.

  Faggot.

  Fucking fairy faggot queer.

  The words echoed in his brain, said in Jamie’s voice. He’d been drunk and angry, but that didn’t matter. Alex had heard worse. It hurt, coming from Jamie, but he understood it. Jamie, at least, knew him.

  What, I’m not good enough for you? You have to get it from some random faggot, is that it? You can fuck some guy up the ass but you can’t be with me?

  Alex hadn’t said then what he could never say now. That no matter what Jamie thought he wanted, it would never be what he would have. A fumbled jerk-off or hesitant cock sucking couldn’t take the place of real, true friendship. It couldn’t take the place of love. And Alex didn’t want it to.

  Anne was the one who came after him. She stepped into the now-hot water and cradled him. He held her tighter than he deserved to.

  “I didn’t know parents could really love their kids until I met the Kinneys,” Alex said. “My old man’s a mean bastard when he’s sober and a nasty fucker when he’s drunk, which is most of the time. He broke a wooden spoon on my ass, once. Then he switched to the belt. I started fucking guys because I knew it was the one thing that would send my old man into a stroke.”

/>   “What did he say when he found out?”

  “Nothing. I never told him.” He looked at her through the veil of falling water.

  “Why not?”

  Alex’s smile hurt his face. “Because I knew he’d hate me. But at Jamie’s house, everyone was nice. All the time. Mrs. Kinney made cookies. Mr. Kinney played ball with us boys. They took me in and made me feel like they loved me, too, because I was Jamie’s friend. They threw birthday parties for me when nobody else remembered. They picked me up from work when it was raining so I didn’t have to ride my bike. I practically fucking lived in their house for four years, until Jamie went away to school. Four years, Anne. And the day after Jamie left, I went over there to see if Mrs. Kinney wanted to me to run any errands for her. I got my first car, see, and I wanted to be able to go to the store for her. If she needed.”

  “She didn’t.”

  He took a long, deep breath. “She opened the door and didn’t let me inside. She told me that James wasn’t at home, and I should come back when he was. And she shut the door in my face.”

  “What a...” Anne bit off the sentence.

  “I never told Jamie. When he came home, I went over there like nothing was wrong. But when he went back to school, I forgot they even existed. If I saw them around town, and I did, I looked the other way. Jamie never knew. I never told him.”

  “I’m sorry, Alex.”

  “Jamie’s the only person in my whole fucking miserable life who ever made me feel like I was worth a goddamned thing. When you asked me if I love him...how could I not love him? Jamie’s the only person who ever made me understand what it was like to love someone. From the first time I saw him in that fucking pink alligator shirt with the collar up, I think I loved him.”

  Alex got up and turned off the water. He grabbed two towels and they got out of the shower, clothes dripping. He sat on the toilet while she wrapped one around herself.

  “When I went to see him in college to tell him I was leaving the country, I wanted him to ask me to stay, you know? To have one person want me not to go. But he was excited for me. Told me he was proud, thought this would be a great chance for me to make something of myself. We both knew I’d never be anything in Sandusky. Never get a good job. But I still wanted him to ask me to stay here. So I told him the truth, all of it. That the guy giving me the job wasn’t just somebody I met, but somebody I was fucking.”