Happenstance(21)

No one moves for long moments as that confession settles over the room.

Banks reaches out and tips my chin up. “Why didn’t using him feel right?”

I look at Gabe and find him watching me steadily. Maybe a tad warily—and I can’t blame him, but the wariness hurts. More than it should.

“Did it feel like you were betraying him?” Tobias asks.

I’m distracted by the intensity in Gabe’s expression, which is why this next part slips out. “Yes. And it felt like I was betraying the group.” Which is something I had no idea was true until the words are hanging in the air between the four of us, leaving me shaken down to my toes.

“It’s the Tram Fam effect,” Tobias murmurs.

We all roll our eyes at him.

“Elise,” Banks says, an underlying sense of urgency in his tone. That finger is still tipping up my chin, making me feel very vulnerable. And God help me, extremely turned on. I’m standing before three very interested men who appear to be poised to pounce if given a single word of encouragement. “I understand why you’re hesitant. This whole thing is…unexpected. The kind of thing other people do.” He presses his thumb into the center of my chin and drags my mouth open, allowing a soft whimper to escape past my defenses. “Let’s try it on for size, anyway. You can back out at any time.”

I’m exposed. My head is spinning. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t…attaching myself to these three men in this moment. It’s happening whether I like it or not. Or maybe it happened last night over the East River. Whatever the reason, I find myself confiding in them. Opening myself in ways I’ve rarely done with anyone. “I do everything halfway. I’m afraid to do the work and have it mean nothing, so I look for shortcuts. I’m…this…you are going to require too much of me.”

Tobias props a forearm on the door above my head, his mouth dropping to the space just above the curve of my neck. “Say yes, anyway,” he implores me hoarsely. “If any of us leave socks on your floor, you get a free dick punch.”

I laugh. It’s a breathless, tinkling sound I don’t recognize, almost a little hysterical. And why wouldn’t I be hysterical when Gabe is staring at my breasts while wetting his lips, Banks’s fingers leave my chin and slide into my hair, tugging the strands at the roots and releasing a delicious rush of endorphins that twist my nipples into hard spikes. Then there is Tobias mouthing the words chocolate cake at me.

God, I hate him.

Don’t I?

“I can’t do this here,” I whisper, voice trembling.

Three sets of eyes zip to my face. “But you can do it?” Gabe asks, low, urgently.

The universe seems to hold its breath. I’m poised on the edge of the unknown.

What am I thinking?

“One time,” I breathe. “One time, yes.”

The word “yes” is like a gun firing at the start of a race.

Banks uses his grip on my hair to turn my head to the right, just in time for Gabe’s mouth to swoop down and claim mine. It’s like unspoken choreography. Poetic. I don’t get a breath in before it’s happening, before Gabe is wrapping me in some kind of euphoric spell, hard, desperate lips working mine over like he hasn’t experienced anything pleasure-related in a long time. Maybe he hasn’t. Isn’t that what he implied earlier?

I’m caught up in the give and take, the stroke for stroke rhythm of his tongue in my mouth, the bristle of his beard on my chin and cheeks, when Banks begins unfastening my apron, tugging down the top half so he can palm my breasts. As soon as Gabe releases me to come up for air, Banks arrows toward my neck, razing me with his teeth from shoulder to the patch behind my ear. It’s so raw and sensitizing that I cry out, reaching out, desperate for purchase. One of them. All of them. I don’t know. All I know is I get my fists wrapped in Banks’s shirt and Tobias’s hair and they love it. They groan over being touched by me.

Tobias moves in to claim the other side of my neck, licking me in a bold claim, before his lips press in tight to my ear. “Been dreaming of getting my fingers up that skirt since last night. Are you going to set me loose on it, love?”

I think we all know the it he’s referring to. It knows. It clenches in response.

The next words out of my mouth need to be no. Later. Stop.

But while I was perusing—okay, devouring—his Wikipedia page earlier, I returned to the moment on the tram a hundred times. The moment when he said he was going to tend to me.

So perhaps quite unwisely, I eek out the word, “Yes.”

Tobias smiles against my ear.

All three men suspend in animation, watching Tobias’s fingertips trail slowly up my knee, my inner thigh, disappearing beneath my skirt. I’m not a lip biter, but there is no choice but to bite down hard or scream at him to go faster. He knows that’s what I want, because he’s chuckling against my ear. At least until his fingers reach the cotton of my panties and he releases a slow hiss, two very knowledgeable fingers pressing lengthways into my slit through the thin material, gently sawing back and forth, seizing the air in my lungs.

“What does she feel like?” Gabe asks in a hoarse voice, stroking a hand down the front of his jeans. “I need to know.”

“Tell us,” Banks demands, still using his lips and teeth on my neck, his fingers unfastening the buttons of my shirt one by one.