The Flame (6 page)

Waiting,
Andrew thinks.
Whoever,
whatever,
he is, he’s waiting for my permission.

“Yes,” Andrew whispers.

Instantly, the golden ghost touches one finger to the water. Andrew watches in astonishment as two glittering snakes of light travel under the surface of the pool.

The nearer they come, the more his cock hardens. Then suddenly he feels himself lifted as if a whale is passing directly under him. Pleasure courses through his body from head to toe. The smells of Cassidy and Shane fill his nostrils; they bathe the back of his throat.

Andrew realizes the sparkling gold tide hasn’t moved around him and that can only mean one thing.

No, not possible,
he thinks.
I’d be in pain, terrible pain. At least, at first. Cassidy’s never even put a finger down there.
And it was so fast, and there was no resistance. But the shimmering gold waves are gone now, and there’s nothing outside of him that could be sending these waves of radiant pleasure through his limbs. It feels like he’s being massaged by several sets of hands. Two sets of hands. But the pressure inside of him is something else altogether; it moves to a different, more powerful rhythm. It was outside of him before, but now it’s inside. His balls have drawn up so tightly he knows exactly what’s coming next, but he can’t believe it. Only one person’s ever been able to do this to him with the touch of her hand. Well, two people, if you count
him
. But never, not once, has he ever been able to do what’s about to happen without touching—

His seed jets from him. He’s so dumbfounded he looks down into the water, tries to watch it happen with his own two eyes. But it’s too dark and the orgasm is so powerful it knocks his knees out from under him. When he throws his head back, his scalp touches the water’s surface. Will the pleasure literally drown him if he doesn’t get control? He flails madly to right himself. But even as he tries to stand firm in waist-deep water, he bellows.

And then, when his breath returns, he gasps the word that was on his lips that night at The Roquelaure House, that word he didn’t have the courage to voice then as he watched his wife and her best friend kiss passionately for the first time, a word that filled him with excitement and arousal and satisfaction as he beheld the oneness, the beauty of Cassidy and Shane together at last.

“Mine,” Andrew whispers.

6

SHANE

“Are you out of your goddamn mind, Shane Cortland?”

“Easy!” Shane hisses.

“Easy,
nothing
.”

Samantha Scott glances around the restaurant to see if her outburst attracted attention from any of the other diners. It did, but she doesn’t seem to care. Before Shane can catch his breath, she’s back to glaring at him as if he just informed her, a few bites too late, that her shrimp remoulade has magic mushrooms in it.

The wall behind her is covered in antebellum portrait paintings, Civil War muskets, and a succession of gilt-frame mirrors reflecting the crowded dining room. It’s certainly an ironic image; the sight of his black transgender friend, decked out in a banded plunge-V Donna Karan dress the color of Merlot, sitting before a collage of artifacts from the slave days. On any other night, Shane would get a kick out of it. But right now, he’s so surprised by Samantha’s anger he can barely look her in the eye.

Perry’s occupies both floors of an old French Quarter carriage house and its expansive courtyard. The most popular tables are outside next to the fountain. But they’re sitting inside because he wanted to talk over things with Samantha in peace. He didn’t expect the place to be quite so packed. It’s a weeknight, after all. He also didn’t expect Samantha to pitch an epic fit when he told her about a wayward moment of sexual fluidity with Cassidy and Andrew.

His veal cutlets swim in some of the finest beurre blanc he’s ever tasted. But the slow burn of Samantha’s anger incinerates his appetite. She’s crossed her hands over her lap like a prim schoolteacher. She’s shaking her head and taking deep, dramatic breaths through both nostrils. The only thing she’s missing is a Bible and a fan.

“Lord, girl,” he mutters. “Calm down.”

“She is your
best
friend,” Samantha whispers.

“Yeah, well, maybe
you’ll
replace her.”

“He’s her husband.”

“Yeah, and
he
started it. Not me. So lighten up already.”

“Dark and proud, thank you. It’s the one thing God got right the first time.”

“Samantha, of all people, I didn’t think you would be so judgmental.”

“Oh, what? You think ‘cause I’m your trans friend that I’m just gonna sit back quietly while you juggle knives? Listen here, Shane. Secrecy is not how the heart operates. Take it from someone who used to wait just a
little
too long to tell a boyfriend my birth certificate said
Stanley
Scott!”

“Wait. What
secrecy
?”

“You telling me you never made a move on Cassidy’s husband?”

“
Never.
Oh my God! Andrew? Are you kidding? He’s her husband.”

“He’s also
fine
!”

“Yes, and I love Cassidy and I have a conscience, thank you very much.”

“So it just came out of the blue? Andrew has too much to drink and suddenly all three of y’all are making out together at some party?”

“Basically.”

“
Basically
?”

How can Shane answer this?
Out of the blue…
They’re his best friends, for Christ’s sake. He can’t think of any two people in the world he’s closer to, can’t think of anyone who knows more of his secrets than Cassidy
and
Andrew. But there was one secret they didn’t know. Samantha didn’t know it either. Because no one knew. No one except for the couple he’d shared that furtive afternoon with, on the carpeted floor of the penthouse he’d just sold them. Because they hadn’t just been a couple. They’d been his clients, for God’s sake. And the three of them had done a helluva lot more than make out for a few minutes on some garden bench.

His cheeks are so hot he contemplates pressing some ice cubes from his water glass to his face. Now he’s struggling to sift through a decade’s worth of memories looking for signs that this—he still doesn’t have a name for it; they’re all too scary—was always in the making, the eruption of a long-denied passion that’s simmered just below the surface for years.

But Shane is sure of one thing -- Andrew Burke isn’t gay.

He’s known his fair share of closet cases. Cassidy’s husband isn’t one of them. No man can fake the adoration and desire Shane sees in Andrew’s dark eyes every time he looks at his wife. There’s nothing hesitant or forced about the way Andrew grabs Cassidy right in front of him, tickles her on the hips until she collapses in hysterics onto the sofa and smothers her with kisses until she blushes fiercely and asks him to stop because Shane is still in the room.

Did Andrew shoot him a look in those moments Shane didn’t read properly? An invitation Shane read as a dismissal?

Hell, maybe that was Andrew’s real motive the other night. He wanted Cassidy right then in the middle of the party, and he couldn’t be bothered to get rid of Shane first.

But that’s absurd! Andrew had been focused on something else entirely during those feverish moments; Cassidy and Shane together, in front of him, under
his
direction. Andrew had wanted those things badly enough to risk the closeness and connection the three of them had built together over the years.

And where had Shane’s focus been? On Cassidy, on the feel of her opening, on her racing heart as she offered him the one thing she’s never given him, and on Andrew’s firm, forbidden grip on the back of his neck.

And maybe that’s where he should be looking for signs. Not with Andrew, with Cassidy. Forget Mardi Gras and The Roquelaure House. Try that afternoon last year, when he and Cassidy had been snuggling together on her bed, marathoning reruns of
The Golden Girls
, and suddenly the supple curve of her bare foot had seemed so inviting he dragged one finger across it.

When she squealed and drove her body back against his, something about her vulnerability and frenzied pleasure had started an engine inside of him, an engine that drove him to take her in his arms and flip her onto her back. But once he got her there, once he had her squealing and panting and trying to bat his hands away, a voice in his head had said,
Stop
. The same voice he’d heard that day freshman year of high school, when the sight of Brent Parker running sprints on the football field, his tan skin glistening with sweat, had made Shane feel hungry and tingly and sad all at the same time, a voice that had said,
It’s wrong. You don’t like any of the names for that feeling. So quit it!

Years later, he didn’t release Cassidy as quickly as he’d looked away from Brent Parker that day. But Shane had been just as startled, just as frightened. It felt like he’d stumbled across a deeper current of desire. But that wasn’t right either; it had swept him up without warning. There were unexpected consequences to touching Cassidy in certain ways. How could that be? There was more there, it seemed. And he thought he’d reached a point in his life where if it seemed like there was
more
there with someone, you leaned into it, you didn’t pull away. But this was Cassidy. This was different.

“Order a drink,” Samantha says and slams her own down onto the table to get his attention back.

“I don’t drink during the week.”

“Start. It’ll clear your head.”

“Is this your way of apologizing?”

“For what?”

“For accusing me of trying to break up my best friend’s marriage.”

Samantha rolls her eyes, lifts a bite of shrimp to her mouth and chews delicately while she considers her response.

Shane’s appetite has yet to return.

“You remember Jonathan Claiborne? Used to be a waiter here?”

“Of course I do.”

“You hooked up with him, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

In the past, Shane would have enjoyed remembering his no-strings-attached assignation with one of the hottest guys in New Orleans. Jonathan’s smooth, rock-hard body bearing down on his, the man’s skillful tongue swirling down the length of Shane’s cock, suckling his balls before tickling the edge of his taint while he looked up to gauge the depth of Shane’s blissful response with a broad, bright-eyed smile. But now these lustful remembrances do nothing to lighten Shane’s current mood.

Or maybe it’s something else, he wonders.

When compared to the raw passion he unleashed with Cassidy and Andrew, his hookup with a notorious local hottie seems sort of sweet, but not all that appetizing. Like taking a bite of hard candy and realizing you’re chewing more plastic wrap than sugar.

“He’s missing,” Samantha announces.

“Jonathan?”

“Yep. No one’s heard from him for weeks.”

“I thought he quit.”

“He did and rumor has it he got another job. As a call boy.”

“Are you joking?”

“Nope. Quits his job here, starts selling what he’s got, suddenly no one knows where he is.”

“And you think something bad happened to him?”

“I think he needed to be
special
. I think it wasn’t enough for him to just be gorgeous and get up every morning and go to work. He had to wring every last dollar out of what God gave him because being Jonathan Claiborne wasn’t enough. He had to go turn himself into the spice in someone’s cocktail. And now who knows what happened to him ‘cause of it?”

“You’re losing me here, Sam.”

“Fine. Let me put it this way. I didn’t transition so that I could be some magical drag queen people hire for parties. I wanted a foundation of truth under me, Shane. And you deserve the same. What is it those two call you again? The twist of lemon in their Diet Coke?”

Those two,
he wants to say.
These are my
best friends
we’re talking about.
But instead he says, “Don’t be their little experiment. Is that what you’re saying?” he asks.

“Exactly. ‘Cause when they’re done with you, they’ll have each other. And you’ll have no one.”

As usual, Samantha’s given eloquent voice to an internal monologue that’s tortured him for days. But her logic crashes up against the fevered memories of those few minutes of shocking intimacy like waves hitting a seawall.

Of course everything Samantha has said makes sense.

But for Christ’s sake, he’s not some random gay dude Cassidy and Andrew met in a bar on vacation and tried fooling around with just to, you know,
see
.

He’s their… He is their… Has there ever been a name for what the three of them share?

Third wheel
is an insult, and it does nothing to describe their evident love for him.
Friend
is too safe and it barely suggests the amount of time they spend together. And
best friend to a couple
doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue.

What’s the word for two friends who show up on your doorstep at a moment’s notice when the guy you’ve been dating for a few weeks freaks out on you because he’s been sneaking shots of GHB behind your back and you were too dumb to notice? What’s the word for the couple who doesn’t ask a single question when you call them in a terror, your voice shaking, because you just made the guy leave and on his way out he turned over a lamp, kicked the door frame a few times, and then after you slammed the door behind him, he punched it not once, but twice, and shouted,
I’ll be back, you little bitch
?

What do you call the sense of total safety Shane felt as Cassidy sat with him on the sofa, her hand in his, while Andrew checked all the windows and locks in his apartment? How can he describe the feeling in his heart—a lightness, an openness, a kind of lift—when neither one of them rushed out the door that night, when they offered to stay with him until he managed to relax? And when he woke up the next morning entwined in their arms, his nose resting in the nape of Andrew’s neck while Cassidy’s head rested on his chest, the early morning news playing on a television they’d all fallen asleep watching—what should he have called the combination of hunger and satisfaction the dual press of their bodies awakened in him?