Uncommon Pleasure (30 page)

This wasn’t in his plan. None of this was in his plan, but when it came right down to it, the squared up, black lines and white squares of his strategy were disappearing into the complex, difficult, edgy, confident woman Abby had become. Last year she’d been fun. Sweet. Uncomplicated. Now…now he could spend a lifetime exploring Abby, and never get to the end of her.

“I’ll do it,” he said.

*   *   *

Sean took the stairs two at a time. The sounds of a football game
came through the door. He knocked twice and waited through a couple of seconds of nearly inaudible breathing behind the peephole. When the door opened he was looking right into Ben’s eyes. His first impression wasn’t far off—the vest added to his bulk, but not by much. His second impression was that Ben had worked the street long enough to learn the art of not reacting. He went physically still even as his gaze flickered over Sean, assessing details. Expression, hands, stance, back to expression.

“You get new stickers for your plates?”

“Yeah. Sean Winthrop,” he said by way of introduction.

“I know.” Ben must have decided Sean wasn’t any more of a threat
than Sean thought Ben was, because he stepped back and gestured Sean into his apartment with the hand holding a bottle of beer. Sean stepped onto the tile square doubling as a foyer and looked around. A flat-screen TV on a black stand faced a brown leather sofa. A glass coffee table strewn with paperwork and a bowl of half-eaten macaroni and cheese occupied the space between the TV and the couch.

“She’s not here,” Ben said. “Hasn’t been since that night. And for the record, she said she wasn’t seeing anyone.”

Set the tone up front. “She wasn’t. And she’s been with me since then,” Sean said.

Ben shot him a glance, then tipped the bottle to his mouth. “If you’re here to gloat, don’t bother. We were never exclusive.”

“I’m not here to gloat,” Sean said.

The crowd noise rose to a roar, and they both glanced at the television. The opposing team’s corner sprinted down the sidelines, ball tucked securely between his arm and side, offensive linemen lumbering after him. The beaten wide receiver fought off the corner’s stiff-arm and shoved him into the sidelines, preventing the pick-six. Jeers rained down on them both.

“I don’t know who we have to fuck in this league to get a decent offensive coordinator, but whoever it is is playing hard to get,” Ben observed without heat.

Sean huffed in agreement. “This is last week’s game,” he said.

“I know. I miss the games most weeks because I’m working. Too many cop, ME, and lawyer shows on these days. I DVR games for background noise when I’m prepping for trial.” He swallowed the last of his beer, looked at the empty bottle, then at Sean. “If you’re not here looking for Abby, why are you here?”

“Got another one of those?” Sean asked with a nod at the bottle.

To Sean’s amusement, Ben actually looked abashed at the lapse in manners. “Yeah. Sure.” He went into the kitchen and returned with two bottles. Sean perched on the arm of a matching leather
chair, followed Ben’s lead and tossed the bottle top on the coffee table, then swallowed some liquid courage.

Ben just looked at him. “What’s this all about?”

“Abby wants to have a threesome,” Sean said bluntly. “With you,” he added, in case Ben thought he was gloating again.

Ben’s dark eyebrows rose. “Abby does, or you do?”

“Abby,” Sean said patiently. “If this were my deal I wouldn’t be asking you.”

The eyebrows took on a faintly amused air. “One ménage wasn’t enough for you?”

Clearly Ben knew about him, Ty, and Lauren. “You saw me leave No Limits with another couple,” Sean said.

“I did. Heard about it, too.”

“You didn’t tell Abby.”

“None of my business,” Ben said with a shrug. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

He didn’t need Ty’s radar to get the
I don’t give a fuck
vibe loud and clear. “This is her deal. Ask her yourself,” Sean said.

“Oh, I will. Be sure of that,” Ben replied. A faint smile quirked the corners of his mouth. “Why me?”

“Ladies’ choice,” Sean said ironically.

“You’re local,” Ben said, but again, he wasn’t asking. Sean’s vanity plates were easy to remember, and Ben probably hadn’t been in his car five minutes before he knew all about Sean Winthrop. “You don’t have a friend to ask?”

The goal was to win Abby back. If they were going to do this, the other guy needed to be someone she knew, trusted, and could avoid for the rest of her life if she had any regrets.

Except Abby wouldn’t have regrets. The new Abby was living life balls to the wall.

“Abby wanted you.”

“And what Abby wants, Abby gets?”

“In this situation, yes.”

Ben looked at the television, then back at Sean. “When?”

“You working Sunday night?” When Ben shook his head, Sean picked up a pen and a notepad from the pile of paperwork on the coffee table and said, “DVR the game and come over to my place.”

Ben waited until Sean wrote out the address, then said, “Why?”

“Because Abby still lives with her father, and we’re not doing this here,” he said brusquely. His girl, his turf, no exceptions.

“Interesting,” Ben said lightly, and Sean kicked himself, “but not what I was asking. Why does Abby want a ménage?”

Because I told her I had one. Because I’m in love with her, and God help me, I want her to have what she wants.

“Abby’s feeling adventurous these days.”

Ben’s gaze returned to the TV. “I don’t get her adventurous,” he said evenly. “I get her frantic. Once a month or so. She’s so tightly wound when she comes over here she goes off like a rocket. And then she’s asleep in seconds. That girl’s under enough stress to snap steel. You fuck her up, and I’ll find you and fuck you up.”

“Is this where I tell you I’m only going to Virginia, not deploying again, so if I hear word one that
you’ve
fucked her up, I’ll be back to teach you how a Marine fucks someone up?” He bared his teeth in something that might pass for a smile. “Or can we end the pissing contest now?”

Ben eyed him judiciously. “Yeah, we’re good. See you Sunday.”

Sean let himself out and went home, his brain turning over this new information. She was in Ben’s bed once a month? She’d been with him fourteen nights out of the last twenty. What did that mean?

She showed up on his doorstep five hours later, at one in the morning. Half-asleep and wearing only his boxers, customary condom in hand, he unlocked the door and let her in, but before he could ask her about her arrangement with Ben, she dropped her
purse and stepped into his body, rocking him off-balance. In her No Limits heels she was tall enough to rub against him, hip to hip, breasts pressed to his bare chest, mouth tipped open and wet to his. To regain balance he shifted his weight forward, fisted his hands in her hair, and drove her into the wall. Air rushed from her lungs, and she inhaled sharply when he ground his hardening shaft against her belly. She pushed him back just enough to yank his boxers down and free his erection. Skirt up, sexy cheeky panties down to the floor, lift her knee, and find wet heat.

He groaned. Her nails stung his shoulders as she gripped for balance on her heels. “Jesus, Abby.”

“Been thinking about you,” she gasped. “All. Night.”

The soft exhalation deepened into a moan as he pushed inside. He’d never been so hard, because he’d been thinking about her all night, too. His heart rate shot into the stratosphere, and his balls tightened almost unbearably. Hot sparks streamed down his spine as she whimpered and shimmied. He couldn’t take the movement. He tightened his grip on her hair and pulled her head back hard enough to rap against the wall, then shoved his hips forward. Pinning her. Holding her helpless against him, mouth open to his, breasts flattened against his chest, legs spread for his hips, his cock. He began to move, short, hard thrusts that rammed her tailbone to the wall, his pelvis against hers, and drove sharp cry after sharp cry from her arched throat.

It wasn’t pain. Her closed eyes, the nails in his shoulders, the way her thigh trembled against his forearm sent all the right subconscious signals to
keep going don’t stop more more more
. In response he ravaged her mouth, then dragged lips and teeth and tongue along her jaw to her ear.

“You like it?” he growled. “You like taking it?”

A sharp, helpless cry was his answer. A blood flush swept up her
throat, heating the cheek pressed to his, and she came. He slowed, the better to feel the tight, slick contractions around his cock, then pulled out.

“What?” she gasped.

He gripped her arm and dragged her down the hallway to the bedroom, then shoved her face forward on the bed. He covered her before she could do more than get to hands and knees, and her desperate cry of surrender shot straight to his balls. She dropped forward, braced on her forearms and spread knees while he flipped her skirt up over her ass and plunged roughly inside. Then he hooked an arm around her torso and hauled her upright against his chest.

“What were you thinking about?” he growled as he made swift work of her shirt buttons. Two quick jerks and he tossed it toward the floor, then unfastened her bra and pulled it off. His movements were rough, demanding, careless. His purpose was anything but.

“This,” she gasped as he flattened one palm between her shoulder blades and pushed her forward again. The sheets, still warm from his body, muffled her next words. “You. You make me so hot. You make me want you so much.”

She didn’t sound happy about it. He pulled out slowly, pushed back into the clinging, slick walls even more slowly. “Good,” he said. A pause, totally inside her, every inch of her tight pussy gripping his cock, then he pulled out again. “Were you thinking about Ben?”

A pause. He thought she’d lie to him, but she didn’t. “Yes.”

Glide in. “That’s what got you hot?”

She looked over her shoulder, up at him, her eyes glazed with awakening lust. “You, me, and Ben,” she admitted. “Him watching you and me…you watching him and me…”

Looking into Abby’s eyes while he was balls deep inside her electrified every cell in his body. “Want to know what he said?”

“Later,” she gasped. “Now…fuck me.”

He braced his fists on the bed in front of her thighs, holding her still for his pounding thrusts, and hunched over to set his teeth to the sensitive curve between nape and shoulder. She writhed under him, but he used his whole body to keep her in place. His legs controlled hers, his arms trapped her, his mouth on her nape and his cock inside her reminded her in the most primitive way possible that right now, she was his. Only his. It was hot and wet and frantic, slippery with sweat in the darkened, still room.

Orgasm hit him like a freight train. Only dimly aware of Abby’s ecstatic cries, colored fireworks went off behind his clenched-shut eyelids. He jetted into her trembling body with enough force to obliterate all thought from his mind.

Reality returned, but slowly. He pulled out and eased onto his back while Abby just lay down on her stomach beside him.

“Why’d you yank me down the hall?” she said sleepily. “Against the wall was plenty hot.”

That’s not the question he’d thought she would ask. “After sex you fall asleep in seconds,” he said. “I didn’t think I could get you to bed without bumping your head again.”

“Oh,” she said. Still on her stomach she reached for the button and zipper of her skirt, unfastened them, and lifted her ass to get the skirt off. He disentangled the sheet under their bodies and covered her. “What did Ben say?”

“We’re on for Sunday.” Like they’d made plans to go to the movies with a friend. “You knew he’d say yes.”

Her heard her smile in her sleepy voice. “Ben’s got quite the reputation,” she murmured.

Sean gathered her in, one arm around her waist, the other under his head. She said something indistinct and cuddled into him, but her body was lax with sleep long before he was even able to close his eyes.

Sunday evening the shower shut off, the pipes thunking in the
wall as the pressure eased. A few minutes later Abby emerged from the bedroom wearing a pair of jeans and a hip-length sleeveless blouse in a soft jade green with a standing collar. She’d dried her hair and parted it on the side hanging mane-straight to just below her jaw. A hint of mascara darkened her lashes, but otherwise her face was bare. The effect was sophisticated and simple, far from the college girl she’d been when they met at No Limits.

His heart began a slow, thudding rhythm against his breastbone. She looked at him, ducked her head, and tucked her hair behind her ear. “Do I look okay?”

He rose from the sofa and beckoned her over. When she stood in front of him he lifted one hand to her jaw and stroked her cheekbone with his thumb. Her freckles stood out against the pale skin. Absently he remembered how the blood flush of arousal consumed the freckles like dawn overtaking the starry night sky. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he said.

Her eyes softened, green going mossy, then a sharp rap on the door, and she stepped out of his caress. “Even off-duty he knocks like a cop,” she said.

Sean got up to answer the door. Ben stood on the other side, dressed in jeans and a Western shirt. They looked at each other for a long moment, then Sean stepped back to admit him. Abby had seated herself on the short, square leather ottoman, her legs spread, heels of her hands braced between her thighs as she looked first at Ben, then at Sean. The movement sent her hair sliding forward to cover one eye.

“Hey,” Ben said. He gave Abby a slow smile that didn’t quite mask the tension implied by the way he flipped his key ring around his index finger to thud against his palm.

“Hi, Ben,” she said. “Thanks for coming over.”

Flip-thud. “He said this was your idea,” Ben said, jerking his chin toward Sean.

“He’s telling the truth.”

A beat passed, another flip-thud, then Ben said, “Fair enough,” and shoved his keys in his pocket.

More than a beat passed. But still he waited, watching Abby look up at the two of them, facing her across the room. Patience was a virtue, even in circumstances that dripped vice.