The Strength of Three (8 page)

Chris arched her back and hissed at the contact. She reached behind her and gripped his ass with her fingernails to anchor herself. TJ went for the nipple closest to his mouth and sucked it deep into his mouth.

“Shit.” She thrashed between them, unable to prevent the sensual attack to her body.

Within minutes they’d brought her to a quick peak and threw her over the edge. She gasped for breath as TJ flicked at her turgid nipple and Jon’s fingers slowed in her pussy.

“Oh my God.” She sank, boneless, into the mattress. “No more. Mercy. White flag. I surrender.”

“The surrender I’ll take. There is no mercy though,” TJ whispered in her ear. “You’re ours. You can forget about all those other men.”

She snorted. “What other men?”

“Exactly.”

Jon drew the sheet over the three of them and he and TJ both wrapped an arm around the woman meant to be theirs.

Chapter Four

“What the fuck?” Jon glared at the red numbers on his clock. Three thirty-four. He’d only gotten about an hour’s sleep since their last go-round. What had woken him?

There. Music—bells—something ringing. Not close, so where the hell was it coming from? He glanced at Christina, dead asleep and snuggled up next to TJ. He was awake and staring back at him in confusion as well.

“What is that?” he whispered, careful not to wake their lover.

Jon looked at TJ. “She bring her cell in?” He stood and headed for the door.

“Not in hand. I think she had it in her pocket, didn’t she?”

By the time Jon found the skirt, the damn phone had stopped ringing. He grabbed it from the outer pocket. Anyone calling at three thirty in the morning didn’t want to chat. Maybe it was Aislinn, making sure she was okay, though why she would do that, he couldn’t fathom. Kyle wouldn’t have let her not trust them anyway.

The Caller ID screen displayed “1 Message”. Should he wake her? He stumbled to the bathroom to take a leak before climbing back into bed with the woman of his dreams and his best friend. The second his knee hit the bed, the phone jangled in his hand, screaming its ring now that it was out in the open instead of hidden in the folds of fabric.

Christina bolted upright and stared straight ahead. Her head swiveled from side to side, taking in her surroundings. The phone rang again and her head whipped toward his hand.

She snatched it from him. “You scared the hell out of me.” Her hair fell in disarray around her beautiful face, tangled from being taken three times in the past five hours, and she clutched the sheet over her breasts.

Jon snorted as she flipped open the phone. “That sheet won’t save you, baby.” He gave it a tug and she stuck her tongue out at him.

“Hello?” Her voice cracked with sleepiness.

Jon stroked his hands over her naked back, and TJ did the same as she sat between them. She shivered between them and hugged her knees to her chest. Her breasts flattened against her thighs. Jon reached in and lifted the one closest to him.

“What?” Her voice whispered in eerie intonation, her knees fell to the bed, her hand shook. “No.”

The strangled desperation Jon heard in her voice baffled him. TJ sensed the same thing. He sat up, tucking her into the V of his thighs, and ran his fingers through her hair. The look he gave Jon asked the question he wanted to know too.
What the hell had happened?

“When?” Tears filled her eyes and spilled over the lower lids. She sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

“What’s goin’ on, baby?” TJ demanded.

“How did this happen?” she shouted, making both of them jump.

“Oh God.” Her wail cut into his heart. The phone slipped from her ear and landed with a soft thud on the mattress between her legs. Chris leaned into TJ with a soulful keening sound.

Jon picked up the phone, anger roiling through him at whoever had upset their woman.

“Shh,” TJ consoled.

The line was dead. Motherfucker. What had he done by bringing the damn thing into their bed?

“Talk to us, sugar.” TJ’s words seemed to echo in the thick atmosphere of the room.

“He killed her.”

Oh God, he’d done it. After all this time, her father had finally succeeded in going too far and now her mother was dead. Her heart split in two. If it weren’t for the constant touch of TJ’s fingers grounding her, she might have lost it. More so than she’d already done.

It couldn’t be true. Her aunt had to be wrong, misled somehow. Maybe her mother was unconscious, hurt like every time before but not dead. She couldn’t be dead. Oh God, oh God, oh God. She hummed and felt her body sway. Her stomach lurched.

“Christina.” Jon’s sharp voice jerked her back.

She searched his face, seeing the worry lining his eyes, the bunching of his jaw.

“What happened?” he asked, reaching up to flip a lock of hair that covered her eye.

“He killed my mother.” She nearly choked on the words. Somehow she’d known, deep in her subconscious, this day would come. She just hadn’t expected it would be this soon.

TJ turned her face to his with a finger under her chin. Tears threatened to spill. She could hardly hold them back and didn’t want to. Let them see her in all her glory. If they couldn’t handle this then she would know once and for all that tonight really had been a fling for them, despite what they’d said earlier.

A small amount of light illuminated the room. Since she didn’t believe for a minute either one of them slept with a light on, she could only think they’d left it on in deference to her being there. She was grateful for it. Those kinds of little things were the ones that made all the difference, made her feel special and not just like the next woman in a lineup of women.

“Who did?” TJ growled.

Shit. For a second it had gone away. “My father,” Chris breathed.

How many times had she watched him beat her mother, only to wake up the next morning begging for forgiveness for what he’d done? How many times had her mother accepted those pathetic excuses and apologies? Despite the love she had for her mother, she was just one of the reasons Chris had had to leave. Watching your mother deny day after day the problem so obviously staring her in the face had torn Chris apart.

“What do you know, Chris? Who was on the phone?”

“My aunt.” She shook her head, dispelling the image of her mother laying motionless at the bottom of the staircase leading to the second floor of the home she’d grown up in. “They found her at the…the foot…of the stairs.” She sobbed and turned into TJ’s chest. His arms wrapped her in a warmth she’d never felt before. At her back, Jon added his extra strength. Who’d have thought she’d ever find herself seeking comfort from one man, let alone two? Still, even sandwiched between the two men who’d shown her so much pleasure throughout the night, her skin was cold and clammy.

“I know he did it.” Her mother may have been many things Chris never wished to be, but clumsy or suicidal weren’t two of them.

“What do the police say?” Jon tried to warm her by rubbing her arms, TJ started in on her legs. The shaking began almost immediately, racking her body with enough force to make her teeth ache.

“I don’t know.” What could they say? What had they ever said when she’d called them?
There’s nothing we can do until your mother files charges.
Stupid!

She sniffed and felt the claustrophobia setting in. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. “I…I have to go. I have to be with her. She’s all alone.” Chris fought her way out of their embrace, irrational thoughts clouding her mind.

“No fucking way. You can fight us ’til you’re blue in the face, but no goddamn way are you going there alone,” Jon snarled.

She gasped and spun to face the vehement face he presented.

“Don’t even think about it. We’ll get up, take a shower, get dressed and then we’ll get underway.”

“Listen to him, baby. No matter what you thought would happen tonight with us, we aren’t ready to let you go.” TJ’s lips caressed the back of her neck. “We’re here for you. Don’t shut us out.”

She couldn’t handle this right now. A fling. A fling was what she’d been semi-prepared for, not shoving her sordid life down their throats and having them accept her, flaws and all. Her heart pounded against her ribs. Her brain screamed not to put her faith in them, but her body demanded she do the opposite. It all boiled down to trust, because trusting them not only affected her mind, but her heart.

The last thing she wanted was for them to stomp all over her when they were ready to move on, leaving her in tatters the way her father had done too many times to count.

Chapter Five

What exactly was it with the clichéd funeral in the rain? Chris stared at her mother’s casket. The flowers covering the silver box were beautiful, so unlike the life she’d led, one fraught with turmoil with a man she refused to stop loving no matter how many times he belittled her or beat her.

Chris shivered. The rain had put a chill in the air. Then again, it could be the two men still standing at her back, their mere presence lending strength. The small gathering who’d come to Lana Marshall’s final resting place had long since disbanded but Chris could not find the strength to move. Yet not once had TJ or Jon tried to get her to. Each had a hand on her shoulders where their fingers gave her a continual massage.

She should be crying. She should be bawling uncontrollably and asking God why he’d allowed this. Would it help? No. God hadn’t killed her mother. Maybe he’d saved her instead since she hadn’t seemed able to save herself.

Chris had cut all ties to her father a few years ago, but in doing so she’d been severed from her mother as well. Not so her younger brother. Somehow she must have done all her crying in the past and over the last couple of days because now she was dry.

She sucked in a breath and held it, inhaling the smells of the rain and the fresh flowers and the damp earth her mother would be lowered into as soon as she moved away. Off to her left, trying to be discreet, were two men dressed in grey jumpsuits waiting for her to leave so they could do their job.

Jon’s hand sifted through her hair and she dropped her shoulders.

“You okay, baby?” TJ’s lips caught on her ear.

She nodded. “Yes.”

He came to the front and kneeled before her, taking her hands in his. “Is there anything we can do for you?”

“No.” She gave a short laugh. “You’ve already done way too much.”

Jon sat in the chair next to her. “We haven’t done anything.”

“Are you kidding me? You brought me all the way out here, in your personal airplane no less, listened to me cry for hours on end and came to a funeral for a woman you’ve never met. You call that doing nothing?”

Jon’s lips quirked into a smile. It made her tummy flip and sent an arrow of hunger to her clit. She jerked her gaze away only to have it fall on TJ, whose face mirrored Jon’s. She should not be feeling like this right now. Not in the midst of burying her mother. Yet the hardening of her nipples told her that her body didn’t care where the hell she was.

“What’s next, baby?” TJ put a hand on her bare knee. His thumb caressed her skin and she had to swallow and lick her lips to keep herself from tackling him to the ground.

This is wrong.
It took a Herculean effort but Chris managed to push his hand off.

One of his eyebrows rose. “Too much help in taking your mind off things?”

“I’m supposed to be in mourning,” she murmured.

Jon’s lips brushed her ear. “I don’t think you have any tears left in you, sugar. No one can say you haven’t done any mourning.”

“It just doesn’t seem right to be sitting here thinking about anything other than the fact that my mother is dead.”

TJ sighed. “No one is judging you, sweetheart. Everyone grieves in their own way at their own pace.”

She sniffed and nodded. He was right but it still felt wrong. Like she was betraying her own mother. “She always chose my father over my brother and me. I never understood why she liked getting the shit kicked out of her. Still, she is…was my mother. She gave birth to me and at least had some input in raising me.” So why couldn’t she drum up more sympathy?

“You want to go home?” Jon settled his hand on the back of her neck and massaged.

Yes. “No.” She couldn’t just leave. Not without going to the house to be there for her brother one last time before she left for good. The only reason she would ever come home was gone now.

Carter would be there and she’d have to deal with his pathetic attempts at demanding she loan him money to support his habit. He was as big as their dad and just as ugly with his alcohol.

Maybe she shouldn’t go to the house. It might be safer, body and mind, to leave and never look back.

“No. No, I need to do this. I need to say goodbye.”

Jon nodded and slapped his thighs before he stood and they both helped her up.

“Then let’s get it over with so we can get back home.” TJ wrapped her long hair in his hand and brushed his lips against hers.

He tasted so good. Jon pressed himself along her back. His erection prodded her bottom and she whimpered in need. How long had it been since she felt their cocks inside her? Two days? Her brain was completely befuddled. The last she really remembered was waking up in Jon’s bed with the initial phone call from her aunt.