Boston Avant-Garde 4: Encore (3 page)

Dante grabbed her hips, grinding against her as he felt his balls tighten. He counted his breaths, steadying his pace but not pushing himself back from the ledge. He needed to come, wanted it with every fiber of his being.

She trembled around him, heat searing his skin as she tumbled into orgasm with a cry. Below them, Jericho shouted something in Welsh and thrust upward into Suri’s mouth. Even as she swallowed Jericho’s seed, Dante convulsed. His cock pulsed, filling the condom with cum while he wished he could spend himself inside her warm body instead.

JERICHO WAS TOO satisfied to give in to his anger and uncertainty. Suri had collapsed onto his chest not long after her orgasm left her weak and trembling. Dante got up and disappeared into the bathroom, probably to dispose of the condom.

As the sweat dried on Jericho’s skin, he became aware of the cool temperature in the room. He groped around until he found the edge of the duvet. Grabbing a corner, he pulled it over their bodies.

His head was spinning. He’d had no idea what he’d been walking into when he went in search of Suri. Another dancer had asked him to find her. She’d said Suri was very upset. She hadn’t even been on the schedule for that night. How had she wound up in this suite with Dante of all people?

“I’m sorry.” Her breath whispered across his bare chest.

“For what?”

“For making you do something you didn’t really want to do.”

As if she could. As if he hadn’t dreamed of feeling her naked body beside his for the last eighteen months. “I never do anything I don’t want to do.”

Dante reappeared, sliding beneath the duvet until Jericho could feel his heat only inches away. The sensation left him torn. Part of him wanted to move away. A larger part wanted to snuggle closer. He shifted Suri’s body to the mattress between them instead. Her feminine curves somehow provided a comfortable barrier.

She rolled to her side, putting her back to Jericho and turning toward Dante. “When are you going to fire me?”

He reached out and cupped her face. “Never, princess.”

“Never?”

Jericho brushed his fingers down her spine. “He never would have.”

She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “Well, this is awkward.”

You’re telling me.

Suri should have been thrilled. So why did she have a twisted sense of dread in her gut? She’d spent half the night curled up between two sexy men after they’d given her the three best orgasms of her life. Granted, she’d taken the coward’s way out and sneaked out after they’d fallen asleep, but still.

What was I thinking?

Duh, she’d been thinking it’d been over a year since she’d gotten laid, and several years since she’d had a decent experience. Even when she’d been having regular sex, she hadn’t been with men like Dante or Jericho. In fact, she suspected nobody on the planet packed that kind of sensual punch. They were like sex candy, the kind she was hardwired to be addicted to. Just like she’d already become addicted to the orgasms they seemed so willing to give her.

“You had sex with two near strangers at work. You weren’t even supposed to be there.” She glared at her reflection in the mirror. “Oh, and if that wasn’t bad enough, one of them is your friggin’ boss!”

Tossing the brush aside, she made a disgusted noise and tried to draw on her eyeliner without making herself look like a clown. Putting on makeup when feeling just generally pissy did not give good results.

She carefully wiped away a smudge. The poor lighting in the dingy bathroom didn’t help much either. Normally, she’d head for the kitchen where the light was slightly better, but her sister, Kim, and her current asshole boyfriend were camped out on the couch. With only one bedroom in the apartment, Suri had a firm “no assholes in the bedroom” rule. So when Kim wanted to bring her losers home, she had to sleep on the couch. Suri made a mental note to buy a can of disinfectant to spray down the cushions.

The doorbell rang, more of a thunking noise than a chime, making Suri curse and give up on the makeup. At this rate, she’d never make her first class at the Boston School for the Arts. She’d been teaching there for nearly five years, and in that time, she could count her tardies on one hand.

Suri grabbed the door and wrenched it open. Two emaciated teenagers waited on the other side. They were dressed in scruffy jeans and holey T-shirts, with cast-off military jackets their only defense against Boston’s frigid fall air.

“What do you want?” She prayed to God she was wrong about their answer.

The boy on the right fidgeted from one foot to the other, his gaze darting into the apartment. “Is Frankie here?”

She hated being right. “Why?”

“He said we could find him here this morning,” the other kid piped up. “We gotta score. I can’t take another day.”

It felt as if her heart were locked in a vise. She wanted to help them, but you couldn’t help people who didn’t want it. Not like these anyway. “Go home and ask your parents to send you to rehab. Seriously.”

The first kid now looked desperate. “C’mon, lady! We need to score some stuff. Where’s Frankie?”

“Frankie doesn’t live here.” That was true. “And if you don’t get the hell out of here, I’m going to call the cops.” Also true, even if she’d feel bad about doing it.

It didn’t take any more than that. They bounded back up the steps and hit the sidewalk running. Within seconds, she couldn’t see them anymore through the thick morning fog. Her ancient building was on a narrow side street, squatting between equally ancient neighboring structures. It had once been a single-family home, eventually chopped into six miniscule units. Jen and Kim occupied half of what had once been the basement.

“Frankie!” She was so done with her sister’s asshole of the month. The wannabe MMA fighter sprawled across the cushions, her petite sister lodged between his bulk and the back of the couch. Suri crossed the short distance from front door to living room and tried again. “Frankie!”

Taking off her shoe, she whapped him hard across the knees. He roared to life like a diesel engine. “What the fuck!”

“Yeah, that’s what I want to know! Are you trying to deal drugs out of my apartment?” She hopped a little to put her shoe back on.

What did her sister see in this guy? Suri had never understood Kim’s sad, sorry taste. Frankie was muscular but had a mean expression permanently pasted on his gorilla face and a personality to match. His beady eyes shifted around the room. “It’s Kim’s apartment too.”

“The hell it is! She doesn’t pay rent, and you’ve been sponging for like three weeks. I’ve had it with your worthless ass. The dealing puts it over the top. So get the fuck out, and don’t come back!” Suri had the presence of mind to note that she was totally taking out her love-life frustrations on her sister’s loser boyfriend. She just didn’t care.

“Kim.” He poked her sister with no result. “Kim!”

She could’ve told him her sister never opened her eyes until at least noon.

“Your bitch sister is throwing me out.”

Kim cracked one eyelid. “It’s her apartment. Better do what she says.”

Frankie whined and pouted like a three-year-old, stomping around to collect his shoes and the other random bits of clothing he’d left lying around. “This is bullshit.”

“Blah, blah, blah, now get out so I can go to work.” Suri pushed him out the door in front of her. Kim might not care right now, but this was worth at least an hour’s rant once her sister was coherent. Maybe it was a good thing she had to put in a shift at Asylum after her teaching job.

Frankie was still standing on the curb digging in his pockets for bus fare when Suri climbed aboard, put her tokens in the slot, and found a seat. She didn’t care if the bastard got run over. It’d save the next victim from falling “in love” with him.

Ugh! Love. It’s nothing but hormones and idiocy made socially acceptable by humanity’s need for companionship.

South Boston spooled by outside the window. The last of the fall leaves were gone. Soon it would be Thanksgiving and then Christmas. There would be tons of bookings for the string trio, which meant great money.

Suri’s friend, Leslie Hampstead, had put Trio Dolce together four years ago. Two years past, Suri had replaced the original cellist, and she and Leslie had become the closest thing to real friends Suri had ever known.

The bus drove into a pothole the size of Fenway Park, and Suri nearly lost her seat on the bounce. Grabbing hold of the railing, she paused to be thankful she wasn’t lugging her cello along for the jolting ride. She’d kept the instrument at school since the first time Kim had gone behind her back and tried to pawn it in order to bail some idiot out of jail.

She shoved that memory right out of her head. This was not the time to curl into the fetal position and try to sort through her life issues. In fact, if she paused to contemplate her life, there was a distinct possibility she’d go stark raving mad.

A mental image of meeting Dante’s compelling, dark eyes while they both sucked Jericho’s thick cock danced through her mind. Desperate for distraction, she latched on to the thought. As nuts as it might seem, entangling herself in a threesome with her boss and his head of security was a distraction that might make the holidays just about bearable.

* * * *

Dante turned in the oversized bed, his arm striking empty space. Images from the night before lingered, making him ache in a way he’d never thought he would again. He blinked, opening his eyes to discover that he was alone. No Suri. No Jericho. He wasn’t surprised, but he wasn’t happy either.

Giving up on sleep, he rolled to his back and stared at the coffered ceiling. As always, he lingered over the Aladdin scenes from
Arabian Nights
. The streetwise thief had pretended to be a prince. Dante wasn’t trying to pull one over on a princess, but he figured swapping nationalities put him in pretty much the same category. Aladdin wanted to be the prince of Persia. Dante didn’t. Same dif.

He’d spared no expense when he’d built the club. The contractor hadn’t made it any secret that he thought Dante was nuts to rehab an old South Dorchester warehouse. It would have made more sense to put an upscale club in a better area of the city. Dante didn’t give a shit. He’d had his own reasons for burying himself in the Lower Mills district of Dorchester.

The old building had charm. It’d been a factory in the late 1800s and had already possessed a sort of atrium-like construction that had given Dante the initial idea for the club layout. It was twice as long as it was wide, with four floors, including a first level that was partially submerged in the rock surrounding the Neponset River. With the already narrow iron staircases and warren of corridors connecting various spaces on each floor, Dante had never had a desire to move anywhere else.

He stretched his stiff muscles. It’d been too long since he’d gotten laid. When had sex become something he’d lost interest in? The erection pushing against the soft cotton sheets wanted to know the same thing. One night wasn’t enough. He hadn’t been that satisfied with a lover in ages, and last night he’d had two.

The memory of Suri’s soft skin and Jericho’s spicy taste tormented him. His cock was painfully hard, the skin so taut he thought it might burst. Reaching beneath the covers, he wrapped his hand around his shaft and gently squeezed. It throbbed right back at him, angry at the loss of the woman and man who’d shared his bed for the first half of the night. He shouldn’t have allowed himself to sleep and miss out on the chance to instigate round two.

He thrust his hips against his hand and shivered at the sensation. Sliding his fingers through the fluid leaking from the hole in the tip of his head, he brushed the warmth over his already sensitive skin. His eyes drifted shut, and the memories came back full force.

He pictured his princess with her long blonde hair and bright blue eyes, taking his cock in her hand as she stared into his eyes. Those soft lips kissing a trail of fire down his belly. The anticipation of watching Jericho thrust into her pussy while she sucked Dante to completion. He clenched his fist, pumping it up and down as he remembered the feel of their bodies next to his.

Her pink lips closed over the head of his cock as she sucked precum from the tip. Tongue like satin gliding across his skin, licking, teasing, until his balls were ready to burst.

Dante groaned, his ass clenching tight as his climax built into a wall of need inside his body. He wanted Suri like he’d never wanted another woman. More than that, he wanted to share her with Jericho, to enjoy his friend’s hard body and thick cock. He wanted to feel the suction of Jericho’s mouth, the tight embrace of Suri’s pussy before his body came undone.

Dante trembled, his cock spewing a thick stream of cum that scorched his belly. He groaned, sated and frustrated all at once. It wasn’t enough to relieve himself. He had to find a way to scratch this itch before he lost his mind. Asylum wasn’t the kind of place to run when you were distracted. One wrong move could bring the whole thing crashing down.

“You’re playing as if you hate your instrument, Abby.” Suri cradled her own cello in her arms. “Make friends with the thing. You should hold it like you would a lover.”

“As if I know what
that’s
like.” Abby’s grumble brought Suri to the realization that using sexual references while teaching a music lesson probably wasn’t a great choice.

“Then think about how you hug your mom or dad.”

The teenager wrinkled her nose. “I don’t typically put my mom between my knees for a hug, Ms. Robertson.”

“Okay, forget the hugging.” Suri was reaching the boiling point at a much faster rate than usual. Either her students were twice as annoying, or her sexual frustration was off the charts. “Just be nice to it. You’re so tense your arms can barely move. Technique can’t be forced. You’ve got to feel it. If you can get in touch with the music, the technique will come.”

Abby was her last private lesson for the afternoon. Suri liked the kid more than she did her other students. Abby had a bigger build that gave her an easier time with her playing stance, and her curly, dark ponytail and hazel eyes hinted at her witty sense of humor. It was just too bad she suffered from the vestiges of teenage drama.