He smiled. He was pretty sure Sam had a drop of Fae blood deep in her soul. She surely had the willowy look and fine features.
Chris straightened, cracking his back, and surveyed the yard with a critical eye. Over by the patio, the pond from which he'd obtained the berm soil was complete, a fountain gurgling in the middle, a couple of white-petaled lilies floating around in it.
While he liked spending his time outdoors, he knew that wasn't why he was lingering there now. She'd been gone less than twelve hours. He could sleep out here, in the tree house he'd built in the woods a few yards beyond the back fence. Yeah, right. He was being stupid.
He didn't know what he was avoiding. Geoff was giving him space, wasn't pushing at all. But that just made him feel twitchier, especially with Geoff right here, right now, just the two of them. Any other time, Geoff would be working until half past the ass crack of dawn, yet today he'd pulled in the driveway at half past five, better than a guy who punched a clock.
Sam's trip wasn't the first time one of them had to travel on business. Chris himself had just returned from doing some storm damage work down in the Gulf, and sometimes Geoff flew out at a moment's notice for a case. Sam traveled the least of the three of them, but she had a couple of trips a year with girlfriends or banking powwows like this one. He and Geoff always felt out of sorts when she was gone, like a three-legged stool with one leg gone, but this time there was a different quality to it. An anticipatory tension, something waiting to be resolved.
Chris went to the pond and sat down in the Adirondack chair Sam liked to use for reading. He thought about her shapely ass pressed against the boards, her knees pulled up to her chest and scarlet-painted toes curved over the edge of the seat. One Halloween she'd had a pedicure with tiny bats painted on her big toes, B-O-O painted on the three others of each foot, the tiny pinkie toenail done in a touch of bright orange for contrast.
He thought about her body straining against his in her bed, in his bed. Her fingers had flexed in the grip of his, her lips parting and frantic eyes staring up at his face as he knelt by Geoff's bed, his hand on her clit and Geoff's cock thrusting into her from behind bringing her to a climax.
He thought of stroking her pussy, soft as a lamb's ear. The thick base of Geoff's dick sliding in and out along Chris's fingers. He had deliberately not looked at Geoff when that happened, but he'd heard the breath clog in Geoff's throat, seen his hand on Sam's hip tighten further. Geoff had reacted to Chris's touch. Knowing that, Chris had hardened more, though his dick had already been capable of jackhammering concrete.
Since the night they'd spent in Geoff's room, they hadn't gotten that close to a three-way in the bedroom again. Throughout the workweek, however, neither he nor Geoff had restrained themselves from touching her. Sam herself encouraged that.
Like when they were keeping Chris company in the kitchen on the night he was in charge of dinner. She'd slid into Geoff's lap, talking and teasing them while her fingers curved over his nape, her body pressed against his, his arms loosely holding her. When Chris had come to give her a taste of the stroganoff, Geoff had dropped her backward in his arms, making her laugh as Chris tipped it into her mouth. Later, on the couch watching TV, she'd curled up next to Chris, pillowing her head on his thigh as she read. He'd laid his hand on her hip and thigh. And when it was time to go to bed, she'd come to bed with Chris. The next night, she'd gone with Geoff.
Since both men were keeping their bedroom doors open, listening to her soft gasps and breathy moans as Geoff brought her to climax on "Geoff's night" had forced Chris to put a choke hold on his own cock. He steadfastly refused to whack off while listening to that, for reasons he refused to discuss with himself.
However, the following night, when it was "his turn," he'd taken her up against the wall with animal need. She'd clung to him, her crystal eyes full of desire, love and hope. As he pushed her over into orgasm with him, that last one had haunted him. Watching, waiting, hoping.
As he said, she usually provided him the space to work things out. While she was more impatient about this, he expected Geoff had exercised that Dom/sub thing he and Sam had going to compel her to give Chris even more room. So they hadn't talked further about it, not yet, but it was clear enough to Chris she was letting them all get familiar with intimacy with her, and trying her best to wait and see what the two of them might do to take that intimacy even further. She'd kept things in the "public areas" of the house affectionate but not overtly sexual.
Until right before she left on her banking trip.
*
Her friend Flo was driving Sam and a couple of other ladies up to the conference. When Flo's white Crown Vic pulled into the driveway, Sam waved at her frie
nd out the side door, then stepped back inside the kitchen to get her rolling tote. Her silver-gray eyes touched both of them.
Giving them a measured look, she made a beeline to where Geoff leaned against the counter with his cup of coffee. He set it aside just in time as she twined her arms around his neck and went up on her toes to put her mouth on his. Geoff took over the kiss pretty immediately. That was the thing with Geoff. Never any confusion about who was in charge. He delved deep into her mouth, his hand dropping to her ass to hold her hard against him, so she let out a little moan.
She reached out toward Chris with fluttering fingertips, questing, and Chris couldn't refuse her. He closed the distance and squeezed her hand tighter than he probably should have. When Geoff let her down, she turned right into Chris's arms and gave him the same kind of kiss. The desire that gripped him was likely the same as what had seized Geoff. Her full-body message of I will miss you was impossible to answer any other way than with the same yearning.
Geoff gripped her hips below Chris's hold, the two of them sandwiching her between their bodies. When she drew back, she laid her head on Geoff's shoulder and caressed his jaw while she slid her fingertips along Chris's face. "It's like leaving the Garden of Eden," she said. The twinkle in her eye contrasted with a somber set to her mouth and a tremor in her touch that made Chris's brow crease.
"We'll be here when you get back," he promised.
"That's what makes it even harder to leave," she responded. Sliding away reluctantly, she moved back toward the door. Her tote trundled across the linoleum behind her, a poignant noise that reminded him of a little girl trudging up her driveway with a painted wagon. Though the person who stopped at the door and looked back at them was all woman, sexy and mysterious, her eyes liquid pools.
"I love you," she said, and then she was gone. Silently, he and Geoff moved to the window to watch her greet Flo and the other two ladies in the car. They chatted in that way women did, like a cheerful congregation of birds in a birdbath. Their laughter was like the fluttering of their wings, the words the bright droplets scattering about them.
"You know Flo's a Mistress?" Geoff asked casually, keeping his eyes on the women. "Sam went to a couple of parties with her. That's how she's been exploring some of this. She told me that the other night."
Chris made a noncommittal grunt. They'd talked about Geoff's Dom side several times before, Chris indulging his curiosity about it as a spectator and intrigued friend. Never in a way that would affect him, at least not consciously.
Which was maybe why he made some vague comment and escaped to the yard, rather than encouraging further dialogue.
*
Returning to the present moment, Chris closed his eyes and turned his face up to the dying sun. Sam was with both of them. Sleeping with both of them, having sex with both of them. Ever since that first night, the significance of it had hit him at unexpected moments. While working with Esteban's crew, while brushing his teeth, while lying with her in his arms or while she was sleeping way too far away in Geoff's. No matter when or how he thought about it, it brought him a sweet, tight pleasure.
What if that was all he wanted? What if he didn't want to take it further? Sam had made it clear she would accept that, but there was an unspoken caveat. She could accept it as long as his insistence that that was all he wanted didn't trip her bullshit meter. And he couldn't even say it to himself without tripping his own.
This was just the starting gate. While there was a whole territory to explore with her, it could crash and burn as quickly as it started if he and Geoff didn't figure out how to relate to each other over it. He saw the worry about that in her face. However, unlike her, he knew he and Geoff were more worried about how a crash would impact her than the two of them. He and Geoff had had plenty of ups and downs as friends, yet there was a constancy to their relationship that would endure everything. Well, as long as they kept it in the lines where that constancy wasn't challenged to become something else.