Naughty Wishes Part I (16 page)

Sam slipped past Geoff’s elbow. Without thought, Geoff reached out and caught her arm so she wasn’t in between them. Right on the heels of her startled glance was Chris’s incredulous expression, making Geoff wish he could recall the gesture.

“Really?” his friend said, his voice tight. “You really think I’d ever raise a hand against her?”

No. He wouldn’t. Maybe it was the power of the things rolling off Chris that had made Geoff grab her, as if he knew other ways Chris could hurt her right now. This was his fault. He should have waited, no matter what Sam had thought. No matter that he’d found her eagerness to embrace her submissive side too irresistible. He’d been weak.

Sam was wearing the robe he’d left on the end of her bed, a silky thing that clung to her in patches because she’d dried off hastily. It was barely tied, so the neckline was revealing the curves of her breasts. She looked irresistible still, especially if he thought of where she’d been moments ago, how he’d taken her in the shower and then on her knees.

But she wasn’t aware of her appeal. When either of them told her she was beautiful or hot, it flustered and pleased her in a surprised way that wasn’t artifice. So it wasn’t vanity that made her do what she did next. Far from it. Maybe it was all those feelings that had been bouncing between them too long, the braveness of her submissive nature, or her womanly intuition, but whatever combination it was made her risk herself now, in a way he didn’t anticipate until the move was made.

Chris was still staring daggers at Geoff, so when Sam moved her hand to the tie of her robe, neither of them was overtly focused on what she was doing. She loosened the tie and opened the garment, sliding it off her shoulders so it whispered to the floor in a pool of thin fabric.

Chris’s gaze snapped to her. With her back to him, Geoff saw the quick rise and fall of Sam’s shoulders, her slim fingers curling next to her thighs, all signs of nerves as she stood before their roommate, letting him have a good, long look.

Geoff had meant what he’d said last night, about how he thought of her as theirs, not just his. However, if he’d ever needed direct proof of it, he had it now. As she stood naked between them, he wasn’t jealous. Instead, he wanted Chris to feel everything he’d felt last night, an experience he wanted to share with Chris as much as Sam did.

She said nothing at first, and he wondered if she was building on what they’d done last night, giving Chris a chance to look his fill without interruption. For Geoff’s part, he couldn’t take his eyes off the lingering impression of his teeth on her shoulder, evidence of how he’d claimed her last night. It was probably good her hair was spilling forward over that side, because seeing that might be a little over-the-top for all the emotions Chris was handling right now.

Though it was difficult not to interfere, Geoff stayed motionless, watching the two people he cared about most in the world face each other.

“This is yours,” Sam said to Chris. “I belong to both of you. You understand that. You know it.” Her voice broke, a little tremor, and she moved a step forward. Then another.

He and Chris were both taller than Sam, though Chris’s burlier build dwarfed her. When she reached him, she hesitated before she put her hands on his chest. Once the contact was made, she slid her arms around his neck, fingers briefly outlining his shoulders before she stretched up even higher, pressing herself full against him. Geoff well knew the bliss of that. His cock twitched, recalling how her small breasts and slim thighs felt against him, her sex rubbing against his length.

Chris’s arms moved, stiff, undecided, a reflection of the conflict on his rugged face. When he put his hands on her hips, fingers closing over pale skin, she lifted higher on her toes, tugging on his hair to bring his head down to her, to her mouth.

They almost made it. But a breath before the distance would have closed into a kiss, Chris drew back. He stared down at her, then he gently clasped her wrists and slid them off his neck, pushing her back a step. From the flicker in his eyes, the tensing of her shoulders, Geoff could only imagine the hurt in her face. He wanted to move forward, to intervene, but something held him where he was.

Clearing his throat, Chris stepped around her and picked up her robe. He returned to face her as he threaded her hands through it and belted it securely. He wouldn’t leave her standing there naked, vulnerable. A hard knife of guilt twisted through Geoff’s chest. If he’d been in Chris’s shoes, he wasn’t sure he would have thought past his feelings on the matter to hers. But in the same breath he realized this wasn’t about Sam. Not to Chris. This was about him and Geoff.

He’d wanted Chris to feel everything he’d felt with Sam last night. Which he could have, if he’d been there. Yet Geoff had acted on his feelings. He hadn’t waited. How would he have felt if Chris had been the one here instead of himself? He might have not only punched him in the face, but gotten in a few kicks while he was on the ground.

“No,” Chris told her, not unkindly. Geoff knew the pain in his friend’s face would still tear her heart to shreds. Chris lifted his gaze to Geoff, and his expression became far cooler. “Not like this.”

Turning away, he opened the kitchen door and left the house.

Look for
Naughty Wishes Part II: Heart
, available from InterMix February 2016. Keep reading for a special preview.

Geoff knew he couldn’t miss his client meeting. Yet if he thought it would help Chris’s state of mind, he’d say to hell with it and stay. The problem was, he knew it wouldn’t.

Geoff latched on to Sam’s arm, keeping her from following Chris when he stormed out of the kitchen and went into the backyard. Her body was vibrating with tension, the need to soothe, to fix. She was good at those things, but Geoff knew Chris in this mood better than she did. It didn’t tear his heart out of his chest any less than it did hers, but Chris had to have his space when he was dealing with a surfeit of emotional shit. Finding the two of them naked and in the shower together qualified as a dump truck load.

“He needs some time to settle, Sam,” Geoff told her. He put both hands on her shoulders so she had to face him square and pay attention to what he was saying. “Give him some breathing room, then we can talk it out.”

She wasn’t going to do that. Her gray eyes were filled with pain, her mouth taut with worry. He bit back a sigh. “You’re not scheduled to work today. Why don’t you come with me? The client meet is at a restaurant near Southpark Mall. You can go wander around there, and come back to my office after. Read a book on my couch, whatever. If it gets late, you can take my car home and I’ll catch the bus.”

She shook her head. “I won’t leave him alone, even if he doesn’t want to talk. One of us needs to be here.”

Geoff’s fingers tightened on her. “Don’t push him, Sam.”

“I’ll just follow my intuition,” she said. “Like I did with you.”

“And that worked out so well, didn’t it?”

Shit, had he really just said that? He grabbed her hand when she recoiled, and gathered her to him as she started to struggle. “Stop. Ow.” She slapped at him and hit his jaw, which was still sore thanks to Chris’s much larger fist. He caught her wrist and gave her a little shake.

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it. What happened between you and me wasn’t wrong. It was everything I imagined, Sam. And a whole lot more than that.”

She stopped struggling but glared at him out of steely gray eyes. “Why do you have to be so mean sometimes?”

“Because I open my damn mouth before I think about what’s coming out of it,” he said wearily.

At home, not at work. At work, doing the right thing at the right moment was second nature to him, but with her and Chris, he wasn’t always as sure of his way. He could become the best orator in the history of the legal profession, and he still wouldn’t know how to put together the right words to tell them exactly how much they meant to him. Case in point: he was pretty sure Chris had an altogether different impression of how much Geoff valued their friendship at the moment.

She was watching his face and seeing too much. “You meant we should have waited,” she said brokenly. “
I
should have waited.”

“No.” He cupped her jaw. “Sam, this is on me. Yeah, maybe we should have, but you weren’t wrong. We’ve been dragging our feet for months, even knowing we all felt something, and you were the one who realized something had to give.”

“But you told me from the beginning, just wait until he gets back . . .”

“Yes, I did. But I didn’t, either, did I?” The consequences of that speared him through the chest as much as he was sure they did her, but hell if he was going to let her shoulder them. From that parting cold look Chris had given him, his friend wasn’t putting it on her, either. On that, at least, they were in agreement.

Despite the ache in his chest, he pulled his shit together. “Sam, I told you, this is new for me,” he said steadily. “Not the wanting-to-be-a-Dom part, but doing that, and this, all of it, with someone as close to me as you are? You’re my first.”

Truth, he felt like she was the only one he wanted that way, now or forever, but he wasn’t sure if this was the best time to tell her that. Some great and powerful Dom he was. He felt like a complete idiot. He needed to go to work, where he felt on far more solid ground, but that wasn’t the answer, either. Fuck it. If he was late, he was late. Mike was going to be at the meeting, and Geoff could text and tell him to get it started.

Sam was still staring a hole in his chest, her body stiff. Geoff ran his hands over her thin, silky robe, feeling the slim bones of her shoulders. He moved down to her elbows and back again. “I know it hurt like hell, him pulling away. But trust me, he just has to think it through. He wouldn’t have reacted that way if he weren’t so crazy about you he can’t walk a straight line. He walks in on that, he’s not sure where he fits. And then you put your arms around him, offer yourself to him.
Oh well, look, Chris is here, let’s just throw him into the mix.
”

She parted her lips on a protest, but he shook his head. “I know it’s not that way. We both do. The timing just went screwy on us. If he’d gotten home later today, we could have sat down and talked about it, fully clothed. It would have gone better.” He hoped.

His fucking phone buzzed on the kitchen table—probably fucking Mike trying to see if he was on his fucking way.

“You have to go,” Sam said.

“I know. I don’t want to. Not unless you come with me so I know I’m not leaving you in the middle of this.”

“No, I really feel I need to stay. Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out.” She put on a far-too-bright smile. “It’s going to be okay. Go to work. I’m going to get dressed.”

“Sam, this isn’t on you to fix. You get that, right?”

Of course she didn’t. She was a Type A personality and a submissive, and thought every damn thing in the world that went wrong was either her fault, or her responsibility to fix. She was a smart woman, but she was also a creature of the heart. Between heart and mind, her heart usually won. Maybe that was how he needed to approach it.

Taking her hand, he drew her over to the kitchen table and took a seat in one of the chairs, pulling her to stand between his knees. Her brow furrowed. “You need to go—”

“I’ll go when I’m done here.” He slipped the tie of her robe, letting it fall open so her lovely torso was visible to him, the pink-tipped breasts, the pale skin, the shaved mound and slim thighs. As he returned his attention to her face, he shifted both hands to her waist inside the robe, and gripped her firmly. He liked the way his hands looked pressed against her skin and, from the little tremor of reaction, he knew she liked how they felt.

“You can’t imagine what it does to a man, to see you open yourself to him like this. He may be out in the yard fuming, but I guarantee what’s branded in his brain is you standing before him naked, your mouth soft and your eyes asking for everything from him. I can’t stop you from trying to talk with him while I’m gone, but I am going to tell you this: Put aside any strategies to solve this and go with your heart. Only your heart. There’s nothing you need to fix. Nothing. Say it.”

He pinned her with a hard look, and tried not to let the light tinge that came to her cheeks, the shift of her gaze and nervous moistening of her lips, all classic signs of submission, distract him from his purpose.

“I don’t know . . .”

“You say it and mean it, or you go to work with me. I’ll throw you over my shoulder to do it if I have to. I won’t let you stay here and punish yourself for something that not your fault, or set yourself up that way in front of Chris. He’s not at the point he’d know how to deal with that the right way.”

“And how is that?” At her mutinous look, he almost smiled, because it was the reaction he wanted.

“Cut a switch and beat your ass with it until you were saying you were sorry for the right things.”

“He’d have to catch me first,” she said decisively, but he was watching her pulse rate increase in her lovely throat. Pain for pleasure didn’t turn her off, and Christ, that was way too much of a turn-on for him.

He drew her closer and kissed a nipple, giving it the edge of his teeth and a swirl of tongue that had her shivering again. “I could catch you,” he promised. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Chris punishing you while I watched.”

“Stop it,” she said, trying halfheartedly to pull away. “I don’t want to get all . . . you know . . . while he’s upset.”

“I know.” He softened his tone. “I have no problem with reassuring him on how you feel about him, Sam.” Geoff met her gaze, making sure she was listening closely to what he was saying. How he was saying it. “But you won’t accept any blame. That’s going to be between him and me.”

“But I . . .”

“Do you trust me?”

She fidgeted. “On most things.”

He suppressed the desire to shake her. “If you want me to be your Master, you have to figure out which areas are yours and which are mine to handle.”

“And how will I know that?”

“Because I’ll tell you.” Dropping his hand to her ass, he squeezed it hard enough to make her jump. “Anything related to vacuuming or washing dishes is totally your area. My area is to stand around, issue orders and look commanding.”

He saw her move from worry to exasperation and amusement. Though it looked like an uphill battle, he thought he’d made her feel a little better. She spread her hands out in a helpless gesture. “Geoff, the last thing I wanted to do was hurt him. It’s killing me that he’s out there, mad and unhappy, and somehow thinking he’s outside of this.”

“I know. We’ll figure it out.” He pursed his lips. “Hand me a Sharpie.”

They kept assorted notepads, pens and markers in a big fruit bowl on the table. She reached over to it to get a marker, the robe sliding away from her naked body in a way that had him stifling a groan. Without her saying it, he knew she hadn’t made any move to cover herself because he was the one who’d opened the robe, and it was up to him to decide when he wanted her covered.

Forcing himself to focus, he turned her around. “Drop the robe off your shoulders. Don’t take it all the way off.”

She complied. It was unspeakably provocative, the baring of her shoulders at his command, him standing behind her, his breath stirring her hair. He slid the straight brown strands over her shoulder so they tumbled over her right breast. She stood, a bemused look to her profile as he began to write between her shoulder blades. He blew on the print, making sure it was dry before he pulled the robe back up on her shoulders. Turning her around, he overlapped the panels of her robe and tied it, wrapping the ends around his hands to hold her to him.

“You’re not allowed to see what I wrote until after he sees it. If he pulls a single tear out of you, you show it to him. You hear me?”

“Chris won’t make me cry.”

He gave her a patient look. “Not on purpose, but if he does, promise me.”

“I promise.”

He touched her nose. “You were brave enough to kick me in the ass to get this moving. Now I need you to throttle back. Focus on what you do best for us.”

“What’s that? And if you say ironing your shirts or cleaning toilets, I will kick you in the balls.”

He chuckled at that, at the flash in her gray eyes, and folded her against him. She let out a frustrated little sigh, but looped her arms around his waist and back and pressed her cheek to his chest. He leaned down and spoke in her ear, giving her the truth in two words.

“Loving us.”