Misadventures of a Curvy Girl (Misadventures #18)(16)

“You were going to lie about it,” I murmur. I reach up, wind one of her damp tresses around my finger, and give it a tug. Nothing too hard, not yet, but enough for her to know that when I’m here, I’m in charge. The other side of Caleb’s sunny, happy coin. The daddy to our fucked-up little family.

She opens her mouth, and I tug on her hair again. “No lies to us, Ireland. Not now, not ever. Got it?”

“Got it,” she whispers.

“Good.” My hand still in her hair, I walk her back until her ass hits the edge of Caleb’s desk. “Did you come?”

“Wh-What?”

“When you were playing with your pussy. Did you come? Did seeing Caleb jerk that cock make you clench around your fingers, wishing one of us were inside you instead?”

Another swallow. I’m beginning to grow addicted to the sight of them—how they move through her beautiful neck, how nervousness flits across her face right before she decides to be bold. “I didn’t come,” she says. She bites her lip for bravery and then adds, “But I did wish what you said. That one of you was inside me.”

“Or both?”

She lets out a breath. “Or both.”

Caleb steps up to her, his own face still flushed but his dick growing hard against his jeans again. “Can we touch you? For real touch you?”

“Oh God, please touch me,” she half laughs, half begs. Then another small laugh of shock at her own boldness. “I can’t believe I just said that.”

I’ve known her for less than five minutes, and I can believe it. I can see the restless bird inside her fluttering to be free. I’ve always been good at seeing inside people. Letting them see inside me, however, not so much, but I try not to worry about that right now. I focus on the goddess in front of me with the red flush across her chest and the thighs unconsciously rubbing together.

I tug at Ireland’s already-opened jeans just enough to slide my hand inside, pleased to feel the damp tickle of her intimate curls against my fingers. Caleb likes bare pussies, just like in the old paintings that had aroused him so much as a boy, but I like the secret of a woman’s hair down there. A private thing, only for lovers to know the feel of. And hers feels amazing, soft and not wiry, gloriously silky. I run my fingertips over her mound, my other hand braced beside her on the desk and my feet crowding hers so she’s effectively trapped between me, the desk, and the hulk of Caleb at her side. He runs his nose along the edge of her jaw, teasing her into letting out little huffs of anticipation, cajoling her into opening up to us.

We’ve done this so many times that the choreography is automatic, effortless, but the difference is that this time Caleb and I aren’t just willing participants in some woman’s search for a good story, and we aren’t merely looking for the nearest consenting body to take the edge off our loneliness.

No, this time we are both shaking with the wanting of this woman. This time, the need to make her ours is exactly that; this isn’t about fucking and then waking up alone again.

This is important. This is real. I survived four tours relying on my instincts, my ability to just know things, and I believe my instincts now.

Ireland belongs to us.

The moment my middle finger grazes her clit, she lets out a low moan and her head drops against my chest, something I like the feeling of immensely. Caleb is usually the one women go to for affection, the one they inherently trust, and it never bothers me. But for some reason, I want Ireland to be different. I want her to see past the parts of me that are cold or intimidating and trust me anyway. Trust I’ll take care of her, keep her safe. That there’s always gentleness behind the little cruelties I invariably want to give in bed.

I brush my lips against the crown of her head, smelling rain and something expensive, maybe the kind of shampoo you can only buy at salons, or perhaps some other, more mysterious product only those initiated into certain levels of beauty care know about. Either way, the combination of expensive and natural makes me want to kiss her skin until she’s a wet, shivering wreck, but I settle for keeping my nose in her hair as my fingers go lower.

Wet.

She’s so wet. The pleasing plumpness of her mound and thighs have kept all that wet heat trapped right inside her seam, and the moment I part her lips, there’s slickness everywhere. The kind of slick that means a man could slide on in and have her coming in under a minute.

The kind of slick I like.

“Shit,” she mumbles against my chest. Caleb kisses her neck and then raises his face to offer me a smile. A real Caleb smile, with a dimple deep enough to show even under his beard and with crinkles around his bright-green eyes.

My heart squeezes hard. The loneliness has been hard on both of us, but maybe on Caleb most of all. I can use loneliness like an armor, but Caleb’s different—for him, loneliness will only ever be a cold dagger between his ribs, a slow poison swimming in his veins. We’ve known since college that whatever’s between us only works with a third, but the years since Mackenna’s departure have proved it time and again.

We need Ireland. Caleb needs her, and I need Caleb.

I just hope she needs us too.

It takes almost nothing to send her over the edge. I can’t even imagine how strung tight she must have been from watching Caleb earlier, because it only takes sliding a finger inside her tight box to make her tense against me and then only a few rolls of my palm against her clit to send her fluttering around my touch. She cries out against my chest, and her hands come up to search for us. One hand fists in my shirt and the other hand fists in Caleb’s, and my heart clenches again at the perfect symmetry of it. Her holding on to both of us, both of us surrounding her and keeping her upright as she rides out her ecstasy with my hand down her jeans.