Naughty Wishes 4: Soul (14 page)

Geoff took a seat on the arm of the occasional chair, stretching out his legs so his shoes weren’t far from her slim foot in its wedge heel. Her toenails were painted a pretty lavender. He let his gaze travel leisurely over her, another message. He was in the here and now, the events of the club having no hold on his desire for her. She got the message, because when he reached her face, her lips had parted, her gray eyes riveted on him.

“There was nothing earth-shattering about that moment,” he said. Glancing toward Chris, he found his friend’s expression harder to read. “It was just one out of the thousand moments accumulating since we intercepted Anthony that day, but it was the click point. I saw it happen in his eyes. When he came to the sink to wet a paper towel to collect the bugs, he nudged you with his leg. You pushed at him, playful, but when he squatted beside you, you used his shoulder to get back on your feet. The casual intimacy was already there, easy as that. He looked toward his shoulder when you let go of him as if he was thinking about how it felt, having you touch him. And how he wanted you to do it again.”

Geoff paused as Sam turned her gaze to Chris. He’d still said nothing, but his expression didn’t deny it. “What you didn’t see,” Geoff addressed the other man, “was that was the exact moment it happened for Sam too. Even though she might not be aware of it.”

Chris’s attention snapped to Geoff, but swiveled just as quickly back to Sam. From how she swallowed, Geoff though she might have been aware of it after all.

“When you left the kitchen, Chris, she started putting things back under the sink.” Geoff shifted on his seat. “She got an itch and rubbed her chin on her shoulder. Then she pressed her nose into the fabric so she could inhale it. Like she was smelling your scent, learning it, taking it inside her. She’d forgotten I was watching her, but when she noticed, she flushed and went back to cleaning. She could have passed it off with a joke, like the shirt smelling like paint or some such nonsense, but she didn’t. She just tucked her head down and didn’t say anything.”

Sam sank down in the chair. Geoff stroked a lock of her hair from her face and she pressed her face into his palm. He bent over her, dropping a kiss on her crown.

Straightening, Geoff looked between them. “So, back to my original point. How many people have a relationship this long
without
starting to think about marriage and kids?” He nudged Sam. “You analyze things to death. I’m pretty sure you thought of it even before we did, so what conclusions did you reach?”

“I was trying not to go there.” She lifted her chin. “The feelings might not be new, but expressing them this way . . . that
is
new. It was nice to enjoy it without making it complicated like that yet.”

His heart tightened with regret, and he spoke in a gentler tone. “You’re absolutely right. We don’t have to rush into all of that. My point is, whatever this is, it’s stronger than some stupid thing that happened at a nightclub.”

“Way stronger,” she said resolutely.

“Good.” Geoff tugged her hair. “So we’re not a fling you’re having before you hook up with some rich banker.”

“I don’t know.” She pursed her lips. “Depends on how rich he is. And if he’s not too old and yucky-looking.”

Geoff looked deliberately over his shoulder. “They have a wide variety of flat kitchen utensils in here. A few metal ones. They’d probably leave some nice imprints on your ass.”

“You’d have to catch me first.”

He gave her a look that informed her that wouldn’t be a problem and was gratified to see that pretty flush on her cheeks which said she’d conjured some blatant end results of him chasing her down. It worked for him, but they weren’t quite ready to shift those gears yet. Sobering, he extended a hand. When she put hers into his palm, he closed his fingers on it, and adjusted so he could look at her and Chris at the same time.

Chris was far from relaxed yet, but he’d shifted onto the sofa instead of perching on the arm, a good sign. Sam took a breath. “Geoff . . . will you tell me when it happened for you?”

“You might not appreciate it.”

She studied him. “It was the night you went out with Tally Winters.”

She never failed to surprise him, in so many arresting and not always comfortable ways. He did his best not to squirm as Chris gave him a look. Yeah, that gate worked both ways for them. Chris had known when it happened for Geoff as much as he had for Chris.

Geoff moved to sit on the coffee table so he was sitting in profile to Chris. He drew Sam close to plant his shoes on either side of her feet and hem her in between his knees. He gripped her hips, sliding his hands around to cup her buttocks in casual possession. “Is that right?” he said mildly.

She tried to cross her arms and look miffed, but he shook his head. “Leave your hands down at your sides and tell me why you think it was then.”

Using the right words to bring forth those lovely submissive reactions of hers was a potent magic. The pulse jumping in her throat, her gaze centering on his face. The nervous little tremor that went through her body made her vibrate under his hands.

She took a breath. “You came home from the date early. Way early. You smelled like her perfume, but you went into your room and took a shower. You’d taken a shower before the date, so I thought it was peculiar, but when you came back out in your pajama bottoms, you smelled like you, not a trace of her on your skin. You sat down on the couch with me, gave me this look and asked, “Better?”

She forgot his mandate about leaving her arm at her side, her finger picking at some invisible lint on his shoulder. Reaching up, he clasped her wrist, but her words held them there. Her gray eyes slid to meet his. “I realized you’d had sex with her, which I hated. Yet you’d taken a shower before touching me. And asked me if that made things better. It confused me, but it also felt . . . wonderful. Hopeful. I nodded and you put your arm around me. We watched
Justified
, and I fell asleep with my head on your shoulder. When I woke up later, my head was in your lap and you’d put a blanket over me. Chris had come in to make a snack, and the two of you were talking. You mentioned your leg was asleep, but when Chris offered to carry me to bed you said no, you didn’t mind.”

She moistened her lips. “So I know when it happened, but I’d like to know how and why.”

Geoff cleared his throat. Hearing all the details she’d recalled had touched him far more deeply than he’d expected. Chris leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees, and Geoff was conscious of his hands being close enough to touch Geoff’s hip.

He was reluctant to say the next words, but if he demanded honesty from her, he had to give the same in return. “Yes, we had sex at her place. While I was inside her, looking down at her, all I could see and think about was you.”

Her suddenly fixed neutral expression made him wince. How many men said that kind of shit?
While I was screwing someone else, all I was thinking about was you.
She needed more than that.
You started this line of inquiry, counselor
, he reminded himself, and forged on. Chris’s subtle shift was as clear as a held-up sign:
You need to do better than that, dumbass.

“I’m not proud of it, Sam, but I realized somewhere in the middle of it that I was actually using thoughts of you to treat her properly and leave her satisfied. Yet all I wanted to do was come home to you. You and Chris. I took the shower because I didn’t want to touch you until I had her scent off of me. And that was the last time I was with a woman, until you.”

Sam studied him. “I’m not sure I’ve ever been used as an aid to—”

“Don’t.” He squeezed her wrist, a little harder than he’d intended. “I told you that you probably wouldn’t appreciate it. But that is the true answer to when and how I knew.”

She shook her head. “You know, it’s weird. When I think of the three of us, it’s like we each have roles that make us a whole. You’re the intellectual and planner, which is why you’re the one who put what happened at the club back in perspective. Whereas Chris is still working through his emotions on it, because he’s all about harmony and truth.” She looked toward him with a gentle smile. Chris gave her a nod. He looked more broody than Geoff would have liked, but she was right. Chris was working it out.

“I fit,” she said with a sigh, “but I can’t figure out what my side of the triangle is.”

Geoff took both her hands. “You’re Woman, capital
W
. You close the triangle. It’s a quality neither Chris nor I can bring to this, but it’s vital to both of us. You see the full picture, Sam. All of it. What’s beyond harmony or intellect, what’s important in all of it. Which is why I specifically wanted to know what your long-term thoughts about us are. I respect that you just wanted to enjoy it without getting too much into serious thoughts of the future, but share those thoughts with us anyway.” He threaded his fingers through her hair, slid them along her throat to her shoulder. “Tell us. Unless I’ve upset you, telling you about Tally, and you need something else first.”

“No. It wasn’t great to hear, but . . .” She put her hand over his. “It’s funny, with two people falling in love, there are already so many norms that tell you how to handle it, what to do, what the potential pitfalls are. If it had been just two of us, me and you, Chris and me or you and Chris, we probably already would have moved on those feelings long ago, right? It was this that held us back. That and the two of you thinking I needed decades to heal from one asshole.”

She smirked as Geoff narrowed his eyes at her, and she tossed a smile to Chris. He shook his head at her. “Try to give a girl space and she complains. Rush her and she fusses. Damned if you do—”

“Damned if you don’t,” Geoff finished. She swatted him and he captured her hand. “Keep going,” he encouraged her.

She lifted a shoulder. “Those norms give you a framework, time to enjoy it. If everything feels right, talking about commitment evolves gradually, because you sense that some of that is already handled, intuitive, if that makes sense. Those guys took me off guard tonight because the way I feel for both of you, it already seems like that, you know? When you’re so in your head and heart with the people you love, you forget that other people maybe can’t see what’s so clear to you.” She grimaced. “Which is just a complicated way of saying I wasn’t ready to handle people’s reaction to us.”

“I thought you handled it pretty brilliantly,” Geoff disagreed. “You were honest with them. Brutally honest. Despite Mr. Homophobe, who was obsessed with the idea that dicks are magnetized toward each other during a threesome, you defused things with the truth. And you humbled me with your feelings, Sam. You gave us both a gift there. Thank you.”

Chris ran a hand down her back, a reinforcement of that truth and she gave them both a grateful look. Sinking to her knees, she put her cheek on Geoff’s leg. The position gave her comfort, he knew. Whereas for him, her seeking reassurance that way steadied him as much.

Geoff reached out and touched Chris’s shoulder. “You okay?”

Chris shook his head. “I hate it when people treat other people like that,” he said. “But especially when someone treats either of you that way.”

He pushed up off the couch, his knee hitting the coffee table with a jarring
thump
that revealed how volatile his emotions still were. Sam jumped but Geoff tightened his hand on her shoulder, keeping her in place. Chris moved out from behind the table. “I can let most things roll off. I see bullshit every day and just go along, do my thing and don’t let any of it touch me. But we were having fun. You were relaxed and Sam was happy. It all felt right.”

He sighed, looking out the windows into the dark. “I don’t know why people have to suck so much of the time.”

Pivoting, he moved toward the kitchen. Going outside was what Chris usually did when he was out of sorts, so Geoff was sure they both guessed the sliding glass doors leading out to the deck were his destination. However, when Sam met Geoff’s gaze, he dipped his head in agreement. She quickly rose to intercept Chris, sliding her arms around him.

“They can be jerks all they want,” she said. “I still know at the end of the day, I’m here with you.”

He came to a halt as she leaned against him, framing his face in both hands. “Do you think I’m that delicate? My feelings might get hurt, but it’s just a moment, like a shot at the doctor’s. It’s gone. Over and done with.”

“I do think you’re delicate. And strong. And . . .” He shook his head, and Sam’s hands tightened on him.

“It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t.” Her expression warmed, eyes dancing. “Remember
Meatballs
?
‘Even if we play so far above our heads that our noses bleed for a week to ten days . . . it just wouldn’t matter because . . .’
”

“‘All the really good-looking girls would still go out with the guys from Mohawk because they’ve got all the money,’”
Chris finished. His lips tugged in a rueful smile, and he repeated her words. “It just doesn’t matter.”

Curling his fingers in her hair and at her waist, he drew her up to her toes. “But you matter,” he said, a fierce light in his expression. “I want to destroy anything that thinks it has the right to hurt you. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, inside and out.”

There were plenty of perks to being in a three-way relationship, one of them being the chance to be both audience and participant. Sitting on the sidelines and seeing Sam bloom like a rose at such an unexpected and raw compliment ranked high on Geoff’s list of perks. She rallied, though, giving Chris a little shove that didn’t move him even a millimeter, fucking tank that he was.

“You say that because you love me. But I’m a skinny, gawky girl who’s in love with two wonderful men who make me feel beautiful every time you look at me.
That’s
all that matters.”

Drawing a deep breath, she turned toward Geoff. “Not that I want you to get all bigheaded about it. I know just how much of a pain in the ass you both can be.”

Pasting a blank look on his face, Geoff looked at Chris.” I think we’re very easy to get along with.”