“About the same.”
They sat uncomfortably, failing to make eye contact for a moment or two.
“Likes to keep busy, doesn’t he?”
“Sex is the one thing he’s sure of. To Kit, at least, it’s straightforward. He sets boundaries and he never crosses them. Shame the rest of life can’t be boxed up in the same way.”
Evie was still trying to figure out where the hell Kit’s sexual boundaries were supposed to lie exactly when Ross teasingly pinched her nose.
“Ow! What was that for?”
“Want to head home and limber up a bit for tonight?”
Actually, considering how much they both stunk of sex and just how wet they’d got her, she was in more of a hurry to get home and shower. “We need practice?” She rolled her eyes and ended the expression with a mocking tilt of her head.
Ross blew a warm zephyr across her nipples. “Absolutely.”
“You’re positive he’s going to come back.”
“Seven-thirty, prompt. I guarantee it.”
She missed him maniacally texting, while she hunted down their clothes.
Kit got halfway to the ruins before he realized that he was without a T-shirt or jacket, and by then he didn’t care to go back, regardless of the blossoming gooseflesh. Best he left them to work things out a bit. Besides, he knew that while he should feel ecstatic over what had just occurred—it was what he’d been trying to engineer—he didn’t really know what do to next.
Seduction came naturally to him, and he’d had his skills honed by years as a host. It was hanging on to them after the third or fourth shag that proved difficult. Inevitably his lovers seemed to have different expectations of the future than he did, and off they slipped like phantoms into the fog of life.
Of course, the fact that they’d always had to share space in his heart with Ross perhaps hadn’t helped. And
they
had stood the test of time. The pull between him and Ross was just as potent now as it had been that day six years ago when a snap decision had turned his life upside down.
Ross and Evie seemed stable too, which boded well. There weren’t many women who stuck around after they walked in on their boyfriend having sex with another man. Most of them probably screamed or stood gaping in horrified silence.
The ruins were more overgrown than he remembered, particularly given the season. Kit guessed they’d seen little love over the years, what with folks associating the place with him. Brambles littered the base of the rocks along with an assortment of beer cans and fag ends. Kit fought his way up and between the jagged teeth that formed the remains of the ancient lookout tower. In the crawlspace beyond, he perched and rubbed the goose bumps from his arms. It might not be entirely comfortable up here anymore, but at least it was out of the wind, and he’d always done his best thinking here. That and it was in this spot that he’d first kissed Ross. Okay, he’d more than kissed him. He’d given him a darned superb blowjob. The memory made him smile, along with others, of trysts with several of the village girls.
Kit bowed his head and hugged his thighs. He hoped his absence was giving Ross and Evie time to work out any awkwardness. That way, hopefully they could have fun tonight instead of getting hung up on the seriousness of what they were doing.
Yes, he wanted a permanent place in their lives, but he didn’t want anyone to get too obsessed with that detail just yet. It was more important to have things seem to flow in that direction naturally.
The sound of someone struggling up the hill made him hold his breath. Hopefully, it’d be a rambler, and they’d pass by without intruding upon him. However, the footsteps came right up to the wall and stopped level with him on the other side.
“Coat…ciggy?” the intruder offered.
He guessed thinking time wasn’t on the agenda.
“And are you coming out or am I coming in?” She didn’t give him the chance to make a decision, a pair of snow-leopard skin boots swung over the wall, followed by two black satin clad legs and a frilly black smock. Lillianna beamed at him, swinging a jacket from her fingertip, an already lit rollup clamped between her teeth.
Kit accepted the jacket, which turned out to be far too narrow across the back, so he draped it around his shoulders like an old fashioned pelisse. He pulled a face at the noxious puffs of smoke.
“Sorry, forgot.” Lillianna stubbed the cigarette out against the rocks. “I saw you head up here, and figured you might appreciate a coat. Probably about time we had a little catch up too.”
I’m not having sex with you.
He squinted uneasily at her. “Do we have anything to catch up upon?”
“Well, you know.” She edged a fraction closer. “We used to get on so well in the past. Where’ve you been off to all these years? Evie said something about Japan.”
He doubted Evie had said anything, but there were plenty of rumours about his exploits circulating the village. What seemed more miraculous was that Evie hadn’t cottoned on to any of them. Wary, he glanced at Lillianna from beneath his eyelashes, and then with a sigh, closed his eyes. She hadn’t changed. Still the same bitchy vampire bat of old, although her bust had filled out a bit, and her makeup was somewhat less garish.
Lillianna seized the opportunity offered by his apparent repose to straddle the rock behind him and casually start working out the knots in his shoulders, immediately dislodging the jacket she’d just provided. “It must be frustrating for you, coming home and finding Ross shacked up with Evie, especially seeing how determined she is to get settled and start replicating.”
He remembered Lillianna’s loathing of old of anything small and helpless. Babies were firmly in that category.
“Why would that be frustrating?”
She continued kneading, determinedly annihilating the tension just in time to cause him to stiffen up again.
“I could help relieve the tension.”
No point pretending that she was talking about pummelling his shoulders. It hadn’t taken her long to get to the point of this impromptu reunion.
“It’s not happening, Lillianna. So drop it.” He shrugged her off and stood. “I’ve nothing at all against Evie. Actually, I find her quite enthralling.” There, let her chew over that one. It’d kill her that she’d have to swallow her own catty gossip for once. “But hey, you must know that already, seeing as you’re the one spreading rumours of tawdry threesomes and naughty night time shenanigans.”
Her face grew hard and vicious. “I don’t suppose you’ve mentioned the last girl you got involved with in this village.”
“Why would I?” He eyed her through narrowed lids. “What does she need to know? That in the dim and distant past I had a girlfriend. Well, whoop-de-fucking-do! I hardly think that’s a big shocker. And there isn’t actually anything else to say about it, is there? It’s not as if I know anymore about what happened than you do.”
He turned his back on her and pulled himself up onto the top of the wall.
“Were you shagging Ross when you let her walk home alone?”
Crouched, he sneered back at her. Bingo! Her face lit up in triumph, she’d obviously confirmed a suspicion. “Did you think no one knew? Sammie knew. We all knew. God, it was sickening the way you two were always gawping at one another. Sammie told me all about how you used to have Ross watching you when you made out. That’s really fucking sick and twisted, Kit.”
“But nowhere near on the same scale as you and dear George.”
She awkwardly back stepped at the mention of the Satyr statue on the Melton estate, and rightly too. Oh, there were plenty of pictures out there of assorted ladies, young and old, wrapping their lips around the old goat’s staff, but what Lillianna had done with satyr George beggared belief.
Her bangles fell down her arms in a peal of discordant chimes. Thunderous, she sneered up at Kit, who sat framed against the sky. “She’d have done anything for you, and you only kept her around as piece of fluff entertainment. She told me how when you fucked, you used to be looking over her shoulder at Ross to see if he was wanking.” She shook her head, so the red mass of curls flapped around her face. “There she was, confident girl, full of life and you bollocks it for her. You broke her fucking heart.”
“Fuck off, Lilli.”
His ex had been many things, but she’d been no saint. Okay, so maybe he could have been more considerate about Ross. Actually, scratch that. Sammie had got off on it. She’d been a total exhibitionist, not satisfied unless at least two people were watching her at all times, and preferably more.
“Or else what—you’ll get me too?”
“Don’t be such a cow.”
“I’m simply looking out for my friend.”
“You’re stirring shit is what you’re doing.”
She breathed a huge sigh and planted her hands upon her hips. “For fuck's sake, Kit. You know what I want, do we still have to play this cat and mouse game? It’s not as if you haven’t been giving it out plenty while you’ve been abroad from what I’ve heard.”
He stretched, scrunching his hair into clumps. “I’m not for hire anymore.”
“Make it a freebie.”
The rapid come back startled a smile from him. He sat down on the rock wall, so his legs dangled over the edge. Not remotely tempted but cured of any tetchiness. Guess he’d proved one thing to himself in this. He felt committed. And he did like to fuck out-of-doors once in a while. “What’s up, Lilli, can’t you find anyone else to treat you rough? I can’t believe you’ve been hankering after my arse all this time.”
“None of them bite hard enough.” She sighed. “And it ain’t your arse I’m after. If you want fingering up the jacksie you can get some bugger else to do it. I’m not wrecking my nails.”
Kit laughed.
“Truce.” She climbed up to sit beside him and offered a hand.
Kit warily accepted.
“So, you really are screwing Rolf Harris and Emu?”
“I thought you and Evie were friends.”
“We are. That’s why I’m allowed to be bitchy. I didn’t think she was your type though. Guess it proves what I know.”
“Nothing,” he drawled.
“Fancy a cupper?”
Kit nodded, and accepted her jacket as a windshield again. “Matter of fact, I do. Thought I might head over to Doris’s.”
“Doris!” Lillianna’s nails tapped briefly against his thigh like a drum roll. “Jeez! You’re going to crash their knitting circle dressed like that!” She sniffed suspiciously at him and her eyes widened into two hazel pools. “Maybe we should stop by my place on the way and give you a hose down in the shower first.”
Kit laughed and shook his head. He couldn’t fault her for trying, but he wasn’t setting foot in her place. He wasn’t sure he’d get out again alive. Beside, the fact that he reeked of three sets of pheromones just added outlandish eccentricity to the appeal of visiting the old biddies. He was sure they’d forgive his oversight in the dress code department and his obvious post-coital scent. He certainly wasn’t heading home to either Rose Cottage or Ross and Evie’s place to wash it off until he was absolutely sure he was welcome.
Beside him Lillianna cackled with glee. Her pale face creased into laughter lines and her watering eyes threatening the integrity of her inch-thick mascara. “This is going to be brilliant. I am
so
coming too. I can just picture their faces.”
Chapter Twelve
The jury remained out on whether the visit was actually brilliant as Kit wound his way home in the moonlight. It’d certainly been fun and novel to be ogled by six octogenarians. Laura, Doris’s granddaughter, had nearly wet herself when she’d nipped over to deliver more teabags and found him posed half-naked on a pouffe in the middle of the knitting circle. The exchange between himself and Doris about how long the willy warmer she intended to knit him should be, rapidly sent the poor girl running for home.
He had the promised woollen pouch, navy with a bright red K emblazoned on the end, clasped within his hand when he bounded up the back steps to Ross and Evie’s place and let himself in.
The only downside of the visit was that there were almost certainly rumours circulating the village that he was banging Lillianna by now, a few of them probably started by her in the hope of them actually coming true.
“And where have you been, lover boy?” Ross asked. He stood poised by the sink, dressed in a striped butcher’s apron, brandishing a whisk, which he waved menacingly in Kit’s direction.
“Tea?” asked Kit, hoping the theatrics related to something culinary and not some sort of exotic vengeance.
Ross broke into a lopsided smile, which caused intriguing little crow’s feet to appear at the very corners of his eyes. “Nah, we went over to the pub to eat. If you’re hungry you’ll have to fend for yourself.”
“I meant that’s where I’ve been.” Kit unconsciously patted his stomach, while he grinned back at Ross, aware that the sugar from the five…or maybe six cakes he’d had forced upon him was busy zinging around his body lending an extra bounce to his stride. “I went over to Doris’s to catch up with her and the girls.”
Ross dropped the whisk, which landed in the sink with an ungodly clatter, and brought Evie running into the room.
“You went for afternoon tea dressed like that!”
“He’s been where? Where’ve you been?” Evie asked while her eyebrows furrowed in an expression much like Ross’s.
Kit regarded them both with a shrug, and observing no unnatural tension between any of them, turned primly on the spot. “Is there something wrong with my outfit?” He looked over his shoulder at them and fluttered his eyelashes.
“Uh, you forgot half of it,” said Ross.
Evie chucked him a T-shirt off the radiator, one of Ross’s, which Kit shook out but didn’t put on. Instead, he laid it upon the table.
“I think you should lose half of yours too. Chuck the bottoms, but keep the apron,” he said to Ross. Not finished, he turned to Evie and sidled up to her wearing a smile. “Truth or dare?” Time they got this party started before any awkwardness developed.
Her expression clouded a moment, wariness bringing out the silver flecks in her grey-blue eyes. “Truth or dare?” she repeated and glanced hesitantly across at Ross.
“Truth.” Ross gave a shrug.
“Dare,” said Evie.
“I knew you’d be brave.” Kit leaned closer to her, slipping a hand around the back of her neck to bring their foreheads together. He kept his voice low so that Ross wouldn’t hear. “I dare you to give us simultaneous blowjobs.”
“Have you had a shower yet?”
Kit gave a tut at her sensibilities. “No shower, but I gave him a nice flannel bath with some of Doris’s rose and lavender soap.”
“Both together?” She gave Ross another sidelong glance. “You’re pretty big on togethers.”
“One hundred percent.”
She nudged Kit in the direction of the lounge and held her hand out for Ross. “I’m not kneeling on the kitchen floor. It hasn’t been cleaned for about a century.”
With the curtains tightly closed, and only the glow of the coal fire lighting the room, Evie knelt before the two men and reached up to unfasten their zips. Kit’s fly fell, revealing his already half-hard cock. He kicked off his boots and trousers and stood before her naked without a shred of embarrassment. Ross, who was actually fully clothed, took a bit more manipulation to expose. Interestingly, he chose to leave his clothes on with the exception of the apron which he’d worn to keep clean while laying the fire.
Evie kissed him first, despite her desperate curiosity to study the contours of Kit’s cock in intimate detail. She felt like a child with a new toy, still clutching the old one, unable to give up its familiar comfort but excited by the novelty of a new treasure.
Ross made no protest. He stroked a hand through her hair and let her mouth work its magic. She knew just the way to work him to make him purr—a little pressure just below the delicate slitted eye, a gentle caress beneath his balls. He clung to her, but aware of Kit’s gaze burning holes into her back, Evie reached out her hand and wrapped a palm around the base of Kit’s shaft.
The guys edged closer together.
Evie risked a glance up. They were staring at each other as she left Ross’s cock glistening with saliva and formed an O around the head of Kit’s cock instead.
He did indeed smell and taste of lavender soap. Thankfully, the floral miasma wore off quickly as a few beads of pre-come leaked onto her tongue. “Mmm,” he sighed and shuffled even closer to Ross. Another glance up showed that they were kissing. Resisting the urge to stop and watch, Evie continued to alternate her attention between them, licking and sucking and using her fingers to drive them wild.
“Enough!” Ross backed away first, leaving her almost deep-throating Kit.
The temptation was there to keep on sucking, to hold him captive until he spilled his seed on her tongue, but the evening was still young, and her jaws, much as she wished otherwise, weren’t made of steel.
“Truth or dare?” she asked Ross from her knees while she still played with Kit’s cock.
Ross turned his back on them a moment while he stripped off his clothes. He folded them all neatly and laid them on the sofa, making her giggle and provoking a smirk of despair from Kit, who eventually barrelled into Ross while he was folding his socks and wrestled him onto the sofa scattering the pile of clothes. “Come on, Ross. Answer the lady.”
Evie watched him look right up into Kit’s eyes. The two of them were so perfectly matched, all toned muscle and masculine symmetry that she wanted to dive on top of them, and lie there pressed to Kit as the pair of them drove their cocks together, and she already knew what she’d be asking them to do the next time one of them agreed to a dare. She was going to have them sit side by side and stroke one another’s cocks, and she was going to turn the TV on and pick up a magazine and pretend not to watch.
“Truth,” said Ross.
“Is Kit really the only guy you’ve ever kissed?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Boring,” muttered Kit, still holding Ross pinned along the length of the sofa.
“Fine,” she snarled and drew a finger up the length of his spine that made him shiver and squeak. “Is Ross the only guy you’ve ever kissed?”
“No.” He gave her a butter-wouldn’t-melt grin and dug his teeth into his lower lip. “Nor is he the only guy I’ve ever screwed.”
“You always were a regular bloody alley cat. I daren’t ask how many.” Ross managed to extract an arm and throw Kit off. He rolled onto the carpet and landed at Evie’s feet, which he laughingly kissed.
“Ross, it’s your go,” she said, realizing that yet again she was still fully clothed while they were both naked. He wound his arm around her leg and began kissing his way up her calf.
“Truth or dare?” The look in his eyes made her pause before answering. “Truth.” Her hesitancy rang her voice, but Ross smiled.
“Is it true that really you’re as excited by the prospect of having Kit watch us fuck as your body suggests?”
He got to his feet as he spoke and stroked his thumb tip over one of her excited nipples. A tremor of fear and longing stabbed through her insides. Evie began to shake her head. She hated being watched. It’s why she re-routed Ross’s passion for fucking in the rain to making out in the shower. There were no stray observers in the bathroom. Leastways, there hadn’t been until Kit moved in. Not that she suspected Kit would stand back and merely observe anymore.
“Nnnn…yes.” The confession left her feeling rather freaked out. A vivid blush burned her cheeks. “My turn,” she gasped before Kit had a chance to say otherwise. He still lay stretched along the settee, perfectly nude. Given a black and white film and a camera, she could make thousands selling shots of him lying like that, particularly when he glanced up, and those dark eyes of his swam with secrets and zeal. “Dare?”
He nodded.
“I dare you to masturbate for me.”
Kit swung his legs around into a sitting position. “Uh, uh!” He shook his head, his eyes narrowed, but a smile still playing on his lips. “Not that one.”
Outraged, she squealed, jumping up and down on the spot. “Forfeit, forfeit…”
“Okay, I forfeit.” Kit raised his hands in idle surrender.
“Tie him down, Ross.”
“To what?” Ross’s gaze darted between her, Kit and the furnishings. With the exception of the ancient radiator, there wasn’t anything to tie Kit to.
Vexed by the realization, but unprepared to be thwarted, Evie scrunched up her mouth and thought. “Upstairs. Strap him to the bed.” They’d all be more comfortable up there anyway and it simplified the logistics of how they were going to manage inviting him into their bedroom.
Ross saluted. “You got it.” He tugged Kit up off the sofa, and planted a hand on his arse. “Come on, buddy. Let’s get you looking pretty. You know you’ll enjoy this.”
Ross rummaged in the bottom of the wardrobe and dug out a roll of years old bondage tape he’d bought at an erotic torment fair. He used the tape to fasten Kit to the bed. Kit refused to lie down. He sat amongst the pillows at the head end, both arms bent at the elbows and his wrists flopped outwards, barely maintaining the façade of outraged disinterest he was trying to pull off. Ross wasn’t fooled. While his friend might not specifically get off on being restrained, he was intrigued by Evie’s determination to take the top role in the bedroom.
Ross straddled his legs as he wound the tape around Kit’s wrists, securing him to the ironwork headboard. “You can always yell if you want out.”
Kit grinned and snapped his teeth. “What do you reckon she’s got planned for me?”
“No idea.”
Snake-like, Kit’s tongue pressed briefly to his top lip. “What shall I shout?”
“Don’t shout, Kit. Let her have her way for a bit. We’re walking a knife’s edge here. It won’t take much to screw it all up, and I’d rather we let things settled down naturally.”
Kit tilted his head as if in consideration of the point. The way he pursed his lips together just made Ross long to kiss him, but tonight wasn’t really about him and Kit. It was about the three of them finding a way to knit themselves together without setting off unwanted sparks.
“And if I don’t like it?”
“Grit your teeth.” Finished with the tape, Ross patted Kit’s thigh. “You’re a big boy, and I’m sure you’ve done worse for money.”
“Why is it that everyone in this village thinks I’m a whore?”
Ross raised his brows, but held Kit’s gaze. “The line about other men didn’t help.”
Kit tugged against his bonds but couldn’t break free to reach out to Ross. “Is that all you’re worried about?”
“Guess I thought I was unique.” He traced his fingers over the curve of Kit’s jaw.
“Ross, you oaf! You’ve always been that. Always will be.”
“Don’t muck this up.”
“I won’t.”
The bedroom door creaked open. Ross shimmied off Kit’s lap in order to see Evie come in. She’d rearranged her hair since they’d left her downstairs, and had pulled it up into a messy high ponytail, from which bits stuck out and hung down to frame her merry face. She’d stripped too, down to a teeny tiny polka dot thong, a pair of patent leather stilettos and the butcher’s apron he’d recently taken off. She was holding the whisk he’d left in the kitchen sink.
Part of him wanted to laugh at the vision of domestic goddesshood as she dipped one knee and flashed them both a glimpse of her sumptuous rear. Kit did laugh, but his mirth quickly died when she sashayed over to the bed and rapped his thigh with the springy metal. “This is a serious matter, Mr. Skye. I’m bitterly disappointed in you. Forfeiting in the first round, what sort of wussy behaviour is that?”
“Climb aboard, babe. I promise you won’t be disappointed.”
“Humph!” she snorted. “The jury’s still out on that. What gets him off, Ross?”
“Pretty much anything.”
Kit groaned.
“Yeah. How about you sucking his cock?”
“It’s been known to work.” Ross crawled to Kit again and watched the muscles in Kit’s stomach jump as he wrapped his large hand around his friend’s cock. Already swollen from Evie’s earlier attention, the thick stem stood out from Kit’s bare skin, the tip vivid red and dripping the odd bead of precome. Up close, so close that he caught a hint of floral fragrance before he bestowed a gentle kiss, Ross spared a thought to how well his own stamina would hold.
“You know you’ll crack first,” Kit whispered.
“And if I do, I’ll leave you weeping. Who exactly is the loser then?” Teasingly, he ran his tongue around the tip of Kit’s glans. “Besides, who said this is all the lady has planned for you?”