Uncommon Pleasure (11 page)

“We served together,” he said. “Ty was the guy who held everyone together. Personal problems, girl problems, grudges, whatever. He was magic with the friendlies, too. We’d go through the same villages again and again, trying to form relationships, strengthen ties while we were on patrol, and Ty was the guy who learned Farsi so he could make conversation. I remember this one time—”

Sean had been very careful to deemphasize his officer rank and present Ty in the best possible light, but the sludge inside him crawled up his throat. “Knock it off,” he broke in. “She’s already sleeping with me, and playing nice with the locals has a low CDI factor,” he said, then tried to distract her by wrapping his arm around her shoulders to pull her in for a kiss. She bit his lip hard enough to make him yelp, then gave him an insincere smile.

Sean froze with his beer halfway to his mouth as he watched this. Lauren turned to him and said, “I grew up on Army bases, so I know what CDI means. Chicks Dig It. The average male thinks things that go boom have a higher CDI than the hard work of diplomacy.”

He gave Ty a glance that said
You are so in over your head
. “You don’t seem like the type to go for that.”

“I’m not, and he knows it. Since you mentioned it, I noticed the same thing on the rig. The other workers looked to him for advice or just a shoulder, but it makes him really uncomfortable when you
bring up what he used to be,” she said to Sean in a tone so mildly amused it took Ty a second to realize that she’d just stripped away the illusion that he was hiding anything from her. “Let’s dance instead.”

She took Ty’s hand, but he stayed put. “Kiss that and make it better, first,” he said, tapping his lower lip with his index finger.

“Does it hurt?” she asked, a hint of
poor Ty
in her voice.

“Yeah.” Everything hurt, especially watching Lauren and knowing he couldn’t risk what she had to offer. Standing in a club full of people who were drinking and dancing their pain away, maybe fucking it away later with a stranger. Grief and despair were everywhere, covered with the thinnest veneer of life.

“We’re even, then,” she said, too low for Sean to hear as she leaned in and flicked her tongue against the edge of his lip. Another slow swipe, then she gently kissed the throbbing spot. Fingers woven with hers, he bent her arm behind her and pressed their clasped hands against her tailbone, pulling her against him for a hot, slow kiss.

It wasn’t an apology, and he knew it.

Sean watched, color high on his cheekbones, not looking away. Lauren broke the kiss, turned to Sean, and tipped her head toward the dance floor. “Shall we?”

Sean looked around once more, and a memory bloomed in Ty’s brain, something about a girl who liked to dance, but Sean just drained his beer and followed them to the dance floor. His hand clasped with Lauren’s, Ty broke a path through the crowd, Sean brought up the rear, and somewhere along the way, his fingers had linked with Lauren’s, too. The DJ spun up Sheena Easton’s “Love Bizarre,” and the rhythmic beat thumped through Ty’s feet and into his chest. He let it pound rational thought in the background and bring the sheer animal lust front and center in his brain. The dance floor was packed with people dancing together, dancing alone,
dancing in packs. This was No Limits. The wilder, the dirtier, the more blatantly sexual the better. Ty saw a man hike up his partner’s short skirt to grab her ass, exposing the red thong she wore as he pulled her hard against his thigh. Another woman had her hand down the front of her girlfriend’s black leather shorts, attracting attention from several guys in the vicinity.

Might as well set the mood now. Ty turned Lauren to face Sean, and within a few bars of music they’d found space for hands and legs. She put one hand on his shoulder and the other on his hip, fingers flexing to bring herself in close. Ty watched arousal flare in Sean’s eyes as he got into the swing of things and shifted Lauren so one thigh slipped between hers, his hand at the small of her back to hold her steady, even though Lauren was tall enough to fit perfectly between them. Maybe there was more to Sean than Ty knew.

Ty slid his arms under Lauren’s and flattened his palms on her rib cage, just below the swell of her breasts, aligning his body with hers from chest to hip, and in seconds the three of them grooved to the beat, hips and shoulders shifting and swiveling, as synchronized as a parade ground drill, and a hell of a lot hotter. The position brought his abdomen in close contact with Sean’s hand at the base of Lauren’s spine. He could feel Sean’s fingers flexing and shifting with Lauren’s movements, watched Sean’s mouth soften, the hair at his temples grow damp with sweat.

Moving with the beat, Lauren lifted her arms and broke the hold, then turned to face Ty. A bolt of lust shot down his spine and into his balls at the languid heat in her eyes. Her hair clung to her cheeks and neck; without thinking, he slid his fingertips over her hot face, gathering the hair and gripping it in one fist at her nape before he kissed her, hard and hot and deep. With his other hand he gripped her ass and pulled her tight against him. Her arms looped around his neck, and her pussy snugged up against his thigh. Without hesitation Sean stepped into her back, pushing Lauren firmly
against Ty. Sean’s hip joint shifted and worked against Ty’s hand on Lauren’s ass as they swiveled in time to the beat.

Right now everything was making him hot. Everything. The music, the way Sean’s presence was slowly turning Lauren inside out, her rhythmic, uninhibited grind against him.

Sean’s hands moved up Lauren’s rib cage, not stopping until they cupped her breasts. Lauren’s mouth opened on a sigh Ty felt against his jaw. Sean leaned in, murmured something in her ear.

“Very okay,” Lauren said with a low, sexy laugh. Ty kissed her again, felt the aroused resilience of her lips, the languid wet heat of her mouth when his tongue swept inside. Her pussy would feel just as hot and sweet around his cock.

Ty unfisted the hand at Lauren’s nape, gripped the base of her skull, and used his thumb to tip her head. “You like him?” he asked.

She peered at him, hot desire in her eyes and a delighted little smile on her face, and nodded.

“Want to fuck him?”

Maybe Sean heard him, maybe he didn’t. Either way his hands worked over Lauren’s breasts, fingers stroking her nipples. A shudder rippled through Lauren.

She nodded again, then lifted her mouth to his ear. “And you.”

Sean’s gaze met his over the top of Lauren’s head.

“Let’s go,” Ty said.

They’d all driven separately and met at No Limits. When they left
Ty walked not to his truck but to her car with her while Sean headed for a gleaming Mustang. One member of the bar’s security staff, a sharp-eyed, off-duty Galveston cop, threw them a quick, assessing glance, a visual sobriety check honed by years of experience, then watched Sean’s car pull in behind hers before returning to a conversation with a group of women waiting behind the velvet rope.

“What about your truck?” she asked Ty as he slid into the passenger seat of her car.

“I’ll get it later.”

The drive to her house took only fifteen minutes on nearly empty streets, the lights from Sean’s car steady in her rearview mirror. Time should have tempered the lust-saturated mood. But when Ty worked his palm under her skirt, then wriggled an index finger under her thong to gently stroke her clit, Lauren swallowed hard.

“I can’t focus when you do that,” she said.

One corner of his mouth lifted briefly, accenting the deep grooves carved into his face. “I’m in charge, right?”

A moment’s consideration was all she needed. She trusted Ty, felt the feedback loop humming between them strengthen with every action, every word spoken or unspoken. She didn’t need to tell him that condoms were mandatory and if she said stop, it stopped. “Yes.”

She pulled into her garage and killed the engine. He wasn’t smiling, his gaze dark and heated with a purely masculine admiration. His damp hair grazed his cheekbones, and the faint scent of sweat rose with the heat simmering off his big body.

She had no idea what was coming. She’d assessed risks and rewards, wondered what it would be like, fantasized about it. But reality was here, in the form of not one but two Marines, and the one sitting in her car, radiating sex and masculinity, didn’t seem to be playing at all. Without hesitation he’d accepted the role as the man in charge, reinforcing Lauren’s growing confidence that he was falling back on his core character.

Sean’s car pulled into the driveway, and the engine shut off. Lauren opened her door and slid out, then crossed the garage to the door leading into her kitchen. She cut Sean a glance. He moved with an easy grace as he got out of his car and braced either arm on the car’s roof and driver’s door, and a hot little flutter flared low in her belly.

Sexual attraction, however potent, didn’t outweigh common sense. “Up to date on your physicals, Sean?” she asked, clear and calm.

He met her gaze without blinking. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“Anything I need to know about before we go any further?”

“No, ma’am.”

Honor and integrity radiated from the other man, confirming Lauren’s belief that Ty’s personnel skills were wasted on the rigs.
She looked at Ty and nodded. One corner of his beautiful mouth curled up in amused respect. “Go inside, get your dog settled.”

Gretchen greeted her at the door, tail whipping back and forth, paw lifted in anticipation. Lauren let her out the sliding doors into the yard, kept a close eye on her as she sniffed bushes and explored the vegetable garden for rabbits. Sean wasn’t here to round up her escape artist dog. When she bounded up to the door, Lauren coaxed her into the laundry room, gave her a treat, and closed the door on the bewildered brown eyes.

Just outside the door to the garage Ty murmured to Sean in a low tone. His drawl slid like hot honey along her nerves. The interior of her house was cool, dark, and silent, the furniture shadowy shapes under the moonlight streaming through the big windows lining the backyard. She felt like a stranger in her own home, listening to Sean’s softer, brisker tones ask a question, then give assent.

Ty was running this show. Sean would follow his instructions. She’d obey them both.

The garage door began to lumber closed. She dropped her keys and ID on the counter and walked down the hallway to her bedroom. Dark floors, braided rugs, the chenille spread covering both bed and pillows, and moonlight draped in swaths over bed, floor. She tugged the sheer curtains closed, muting the moonlight but giving her a measure of privacy.

At the sound of boots on hardwood Gretchen’s disappointed whines cut off, and Lauren heard her scamper for the safety of her bed in the laundry room. Lauren turned to face the doorway, her heart pounding in her throat. The two men filled it, Ty taller and broader through the shoulders, Sean with hair the color of moonlight, his deceptively lean body masking potent strength. Despite the difference in size, he was as strong as Ty, and as they both moved into her bedroom, Ty hanging back while Sean continued toward her, she went still. They’d divided her attention, and she looked
from Sean to Ty and back again before Sean wrapped his long fingers around her upper arm and guided her away from the window, toward the bare wall. A very primitive tension heated the cool air around their bodies, and she felt very keenly the thin cotton of her blouse, the thong she wore under her skirt, the fact that she was barefoot to their boots, the fact that they both outweighed her by sixty pounds or more. Then she was no longer thinking, just observing like prey in the wild, and her heart tripped into double time as sensations registered.

“Hold her,” Ty said, his voice low, even, and crisp in her soft, feminine bedroom.

She recognized the voice, brusque, commanding, ensuring there would be no doubt or hesitation. It took all responsibility on the speaker.

In one smooth move Sean wove his right arm between her shoulder blades and her upper arms, gripped her left upper arm with his right hand, and backed into the wall. The action restrained her hands and arms, pinned her tight against his body, and left her breathless as she looked up into Ty’s face. She arched away from Sean, writhed to test his strength, his resolve.

He didn’t flinch. He gripped her arm harder, pulled her shoulders farther back and at the same time crossed his other arm over her collarbone, effectively controlling her movements and arching her breasts toward Ty.

Dark brown eyes met hers, then flicked over her parted lips. Her nipples thrust against her top as Ty considered the vulnerable front length of her body. She was tall enough that the balls of both feet were still on the floor, but barely. Sean was securely braced, his rubber-soled, sturdy Doc Martens gripping her floor and keeping her off balance. Her breasts rose and fell rapidly. Sean exerted little effort to hold her, his breathing even, if a bit shallow. Like the
dancing earlier, movement felt good. The shift and press against a harder male body felt good.

The inability to break free felt even better.

Ty’s gaze focused on the gap in her sleeveless blouse as he reached for the buttons and slipped them through the buttonholes. She’d half expected him to rip it open, but as the seconds passed the deft, negligent touch of his rough fingers sank into her consciousness. She wasn’t going anywhere. He didn’t have to be rough to do exactly as he pleased for as long as he pleased.

He parted the white cotton, draping it over her shoulders, exposing her torso from throat to the waistband of her skirt. He slid one rough fingertip along her bra strap, then tugged it down, his face a study in concentration as he repeated the maneuver with the other strap. Her silk bra cups snagged on her nipples before he arranged the fabric under her breasts, lifting them. Her nipples were taut, dark pink, more exposed than if she were naked.

Their breathing wasn’t synchronized. Her own inhales were sharp gasps for air as her rational mind battled her reptilian brain’s response to Ty and Sean. Strong and solid behind her, Sean breathed a little rapidly, but steadily. Ty was breathing slowly and deeply. Only his pulse, visible at the base of his neck, and the thick thrust of his cock in his pants gave any indication the circumstances affected him.