Dylan wasn’t surprised she’d picked up on that—Aidan didn’t exactly take a subtle approach when he was attracted to someone.
“Yeah, he does.”
“Are you worried he’ll be upset that you and I hooked up? You don’t want me to be stuck in the middle between you two?”
A laugh burst out of his chest. “The exact opposite, actually.”
Her eyebrows furrowed. “What does that mean?”
“It means I want you to be in the middle.”
Several seconds ticked by before understanding dawned in her brown eyes, which widened in a flash. “You mean…you want me…and you…and…”
“Aidan,” he supplied.
“You want me to sleep with both of you? At the same time?”
Her red cheeks revealed her embarrassment, but Dylan also didn’t miss the brief flash of interest in her eyes.
Shit, she was intrigued by it. She was honest-to-God intrigued.
Unfortunately, Claire’s next words stuck a pin in the balloon of hope floating around in his chest.
“That’s insane,” she sputtered. “I’m not…I can’t…that’s not an option, Dylan.” She shook her head in dismay. “Do you guys do that often? Have sex with the same woman?”
“Yes.”
When she didn’t say a word, Dylan took another breath and exhaled in a rush. “Aidan and I are bi, honey. And yeah, we’re into the one-on-one stuff, but we like having a woman in our bed. We need a woman in our bed.”
Her continued silence spurred his frustration. “I don’t know how to explain it in a way you’d understand, but Aidan and I aren’t enough for each other. It fucking sucks, okay? But we both know it, and we’ve accepted it. Eventually one or both of us gets an itch that only a chick can scratch.”
“An itch,” she echoed dully. “Do you realize how messed-up that sounds?”
“What can I say? It’s the truth.” He briefly closed his eyes, knowing he was screwing this up but unsure of how to express his muddled emotions. “Look, I care about Aidan. He’s…” Dylan gave a helpless shrug. “He’s important to me, and, well, he’s part of the package.”
“The package being you?”
“Yes. Well, no. What I’m trying to say is, he and I are a package deal, Claire.” He met her baffled gaze, deciding not to pull any punches. “You either sleep with both of us, or you sleep with neither of us.”
Chapter Nine
Claire sat there in stunned silence. A package deal? She either fucked them both, or she didn’t fuck them at all?
Was he for real?
“Are you for real?” she blurted out.
Dylan had the decency to look contrite. “That didn’t come out the way I wanted it to.”
“I don’t care how it came out,” she huffed. “The question is, did you mean it?”
He didn’t respond for a few seconds.
Then he nodded.
“So you won’t sleep with me again unless Aidan is there too?” Disbelief continued to spiral through her.
“Is the idea so unappealing?” he asked quietly.
She faltered. At a complete loss for words.
“Just picture it, Claire. You, me, Aidan. In bed together.” His voice lowered to a seductive, almost hypnotic pitch. “Picture our hands on your body…our mouths and our tongues and our cocks…touching you, kissing you, fucking you.”
Her pussy clenched so hard it hurt. The naughty images he conjured succeeded in making her even wetter than she’d been before, and the humiliating response had her scrambling off the bed in search of her clothes.
Jesus. What was the matter with her? Why didn’t the idea disgust her? Horrify her? Insult her? That he could even ask her this was so…disrespectful.
And yet she didn’t feel disrespected.
And she didn’t feel disgusted. Or horrified. Or insulted.
Her mind was working a million miles a second as she hastily put on her clothes. She might have slept with Dylan just now, but she’d been attracted to Aidan from the second she’d laid eyes on him, and she got the feeling if the situation were reversed and she’d been locked in here with Aidan? She would have slept with him too.
What the hell did that say about her? Lusting over two men? Entertaining the idea of having sex with both of them?
“You liked what you saw in September, remember?” Dylan kept talking, kept tormenting her. “Now imagine getting to see that again, but not just a kiss, Claire. Picture me and Aidan sucking each other off, fucking each other.”
She could barely breathe. Her face felt hot, tight, and her throat had closed up to the point of suffocation.
From arousal.
Because she was aroused.
Oh God, what was wrong with her?
“Imagine all the dirty, dirty things we could all do to each other,” he said in a raspy voice. “Just imagine it, Claire.”
Her pussy damn near convulsed. She couldn’t look at Dylan, not when he was still sitting there naked as the day he was born.
“Would you…can you put on some clothes?” she stammered, keeping her gaze on her feet. “Please?”
A regretful sigh echoed in the bedroom.
She heard the mattress squeak, and quickly stepped out of the way so Dylan could pick up his discarded clothes. Only when he was dressed did she find the courage to look at him.
“I…” She took a breath. “I’m not that kind of woman, Dylan.”
He raised a brow. “You mean the kind of woman who’s looking for passion? The kind of woman who fingers herself after watching two men make out? You said so yourself, honey, you realized you were lacking something in your life.” A pause. “Maybe this was it.”
Amazed laughter bubbled in her throat. “So I was lacking two cocks filling my various orifices? Is that what I need?”
“Passion,” he said again.
“There might be such a thing as too much passion.”
“Impossible.” He stepped closer, those magnetic green eyes focused so intensely on her face she felt like he was peering into her soul. “Just think about it, Claire. Keep an open mind. You know, threesomes are more common than you think.”
“Yeah, maybe in your circle. But I told you about the way I was raised. I was lucky to even lose my virginity considering how strict my dad is, and the only friend I have who comes close to being sexually promiscuous is Natasha, at least when she’s not working double shifts at the hospital, and even then, she usually only has sex with one person at a time!”
“Usually?” Dylan’s lips twitched.
Claire let out an exasperated breath. “I know she fooled around with a couple of girls in college, but I don’t know if it was an official, quote unquote, three-way.”
“What exactly is an official three-way?”
“You’re making fun of me again,” she muttered.
“Only because I love seeing your face turn all pink like that.” He moved even closer, both his rough-skinned hands coming up to cup her chin. “You don’t have to be embarrassed that the idea turns you on. And you don’t have to give a definitive answer right this second. Just…think about it.”
She gazed into his earnest green eyes, feeling like she was in a daze. “Think about it,” she echoed.
“Yes. Just promise me you will, okay?”
“I…” She cleared her throat, tried to make sense of this craziness. “I don’t know if—”
A knock on the door interrupted her.
“Yoo-hoo!” Aidan’s voice, cheery and smug. “I just got back from my run. Decided to be nice and let you out early.”
“Wow, what a prince,” Dylan called out.
“Everything okay in there?”
“Everything is just fine. Now open the door, you asshole.”
“Sure thing, let me just carry our glass angel to safety first.”
As Aidan’s footsteps receded, Dylan feathered his thumbs over Claire’s cheeks and searched her face. “You okay, honey?”
Swallowing, she nodde
d.
“Good.”
Just as the doorknob began to turn, Dylan gave her one last meaningful look and mouthed the words, “Think about it.”
Claire choked down a hysterical laugh.
Right.
Like it was even remotely possible for her to think about anything else.
For the tenth time in less than a minute, Aidan checked the alarm clock on the bedside table and confirmed that, yes, it was still 12:21 a.m. Annnnnd wait, the one in the minute column switched to a two, officially making it 12:22.
Son of a bitch.
Apparently he was not destined to fall asleep tonight.
He glanced over at Dylan’s sleeping body, unable to stop the grin that sprang to his lips. As usual, Dylan had monopolized the comforter and it was now tangled between his legs. He lay on his side, providing Aidan with a perfect view of his bare ass. The SEAL slept in the nude, a habit that Aidan wholly approved of. Because damn, the man looked pretty fucking spectacular naked.
Aidan’s groin stirred as he admired the sleek lines of Dylan’s body, the strong sinew of his back, the taut ass you could bounce quarters off.
“I can feel you watching me.” Dylan’s sleepy voice echoed in the darkness of the bedroom.
Aidan had to laugh. “Man, you SEALs really do have eyes in the back of your head, huh?”
“Yep. So let’s hear it.”
“Hear what?”
Dylan rolled over, twisting the blanket even further and stealing the remaining square inches that had been covering Aidan’s right leg.
“You barely blinked after I told you what happened between me and Claire today,” Dylan said quietly. “I’m still waiting for you to yell at me or call me an ass for taking what you wanted.”
“What we both wanted.”
“Yeah, but you wanted her first.”
Aidan couldn’t argue with that, but he also couldn’t fault Dylan for succumbing to the same temptation that had been plaguing him for days. When he’d come home earlier, he’d immediately known that the couple had slept together. Not only had the animosity between them disappeared, but the second he’d looked at Claire, her face had turned into a tomato, a telltale sign something naughty had gone down.
He wasn’t going to lie—he had experienced a pang of jealousy when he’d learned that Dylan had gotten the taste of her that Aidan had been denied, but he knew the blame was solely on his own shoulders. He’d locked them in a room with a bed and a box of condoms, for Pete’s sake. Of course they’d make good use of both once they hashed everything out.
And no matter how he felt about them hooking up, he was happy they’d finally cleared the air and worked through their crap.
Of course, he hadn’t been expecting an aching cock as a reward for his efforts.
“She wants you too, you know.” Dylan’s gruff voice interrupted his thoughts.
“I know.” Aidan sat up and ran a hand through his rumpled hair. “But she won’t be on board for this, man.”
“I think she will,” Dylan disagreed.
“She hid in your room all day and night—I’m pretty sure that’s a clear sign she’s not into it. Besides, you heard the way she described her childhood. It was all about right and wrong, Dyl. In her mind, having sex with two men isn’t right.”
There was a long beat. “Are you sure you’re not pissed at me?”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m not pissed at you.”
“Good, because you know I’d never do anything to intentionally hurt you.”
The emotion thickening Dylan’s voice caught him off-guard, elicited a rush of discomfort. He wasn’t into deep, emotional discussions, never had been, never would be. They reminded him too much of the shrink he and his father had seen for a couple of years following his mother’s death, after one of Aidan’s teachers had notified the school counselor of how withdrawn he was in school.
Fuck, he’d hated talking to that shrink. She was always prying into his head, always asking him how he “felt” about this or how he “felt” about that.
“Aid? You do know that, right?”
Even in the dark, he could see the worry glimmering in Dylan’s eyes. “Yeah, I know.”
“And I still think Claire will come around. But until then…” The mattress shifted as Dylan bridged the distance between them.
Since Aidan was sitting up, Dylan’s head was perfectly level with his crotch, and his cock instantly reacted to the other man’s proximity, thickening beneath his cotton boxers. Unlike Dylan, he didn’t sleep naked, but it wasn’t long before he wound up that way.
With his boxers out of the way, Aidan cupped the back of Dylan’s head and guided that sexy male mouth to his cock.
The first lick made him shudder.
Dylan peered up at him with a grin, his straight white teeth shining in the darkness. “Everything okay?”
“Mmm-hmmm.”
The second lick made him moan. Closing his eyes, he leaned back on the oak headboard and enjoyed the incredible sensations created by Dylan’s tongue gliding along the length of his shaft.
Dylan brought his hand into play, curling it around Aidan’s cock and pulling the skin back to expose the head, which he promptly drew into his mouth and sucked gently on.
“Mmmm. I like that,” Aidan mumbled. “Keep going slow for a bit.”
His fingers tangled in Dylan’s short hair, hips rocking restlessly as Dylan’s tongue laved his cock with long, teasing strokes. Pressure built in his balls, and he knew he wouldn’t last long at all. He’d been hard-up all week, drooling over Claire’s sweet curves with no results, and longing for Dylan’s hard muscles, also with no results. Now that his dick was finally getting some attention, the big guy was overly eager and ready to blow.
“Fuck, I love sucking your dick, man.” Dylan’s growl of pleasure vibrated through Aidan’s body, sending a jolt of electricity right to the tip of his cock.
“Okay, forget slow.” The words squeezed out of his chest. “Fast, I need it fa—”
A cell phone rang.
They both froze, then relaxed when they realized it was Aidan’s ring tone and not the one that would signal Dylan to report to the base.
“Hold that thought,” he said with a groan.
Licking his lips, Dylan lifted his head and grinned. “I dunno…I might decide I’m too tired to finish the job…”
“Hold that fucking thought.”
Ignoring Dylan’s mocking laughter, he grabbed his phone and glanced at the display. His stomach went rigid.
“Who is it?” Dylan asked.
“My dad.”
“Isn’t it like three in the morning in Chicago?”
“Yes.” Without giving Dylan a chance to respond, he clicked the talk button and raised the phone to his ear.
“What’s wrong?” he asked in lieu of greeting.
A tired laugh rippled over the line, easing some of his panic. “Nothing’s wrong. I know it’s late, but I had something to discuss with you. Did I wake you?”
“No, I was up.” Aidan slid off the bed and reached for his boxers. He balanced the phone on his shoulder so he could slip them on, then signaled to Dylan that he’d be right back.
The SEAL rolled onto his back with a resigned look in his eyes.
Aidan knew it bugged his roommate that he took his father’s calls in private, but his relationship with his dad was weighed down with so much past sorrow that he preferred to keep that part of his life to himself.
He drifted into the living room and sank onto the couch. “What’s going on?” he asked his father.
“I wanted to talk to you about the holidays.”
“At three o’clock in the morning?”
“I couldn’t sleep. The firm’s trying to land the commission to design the new World Bank headquarters. I’ve been pulling quite a few all-nighters working on the proposal.”
“I’m sure they’ll love whatever you show them.” And he totally meant that—the shadows that surrounded Tim Rhod
es had never tainted his professional life, and Aidan’s father was one of the most prominent architects in the country.
“I hope so.” His dad sounded distracted for a moment, and there was a shuffling of papers on the line. “Anyway, I wanted to let you know that I’ll be out of town from the twenty-third until January fourth. Ronnie and I decided to fly to Switzerland to do some skiing.”
Aidan swallowed his disappointment. How shocking. His dad was bailing on the holidays, the way he did every year.
At the same time, he couldn’t bring himself to begrudge his father’s decision to run away. Ever since Aidan’s mom died, Christmas in the Rhodes household had been a wretched, miserable affair. Besides, it was nice to hear that Tim was still dating the same woman Aidan had met when he’d flown in for a visit in the spring.
“So you’re still seeing Veronica, huh? How’s that going?”
“It’s good,” his father admitted. “It’s…easy. Comfortable.”
“That’s the way relationships should be, no?”
“Yes. Yes, they should.” Tim cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to do this to you last-minute, son. Do you have friends you can spend the holidays with? Your roommate’s family, maybe?”
“Yeah, I’ve got options,” he said vaguely. “Don’t worry about it. Just go on your trip and have fun on the slopes.”
“I plan to.” His father sounded relieved. “You’re not upset?”
“No, of course not.” The lie slid out smooth as cream, having been perfected over the years.
“All right, good. Well… I’ll let you get to sleep. I’ll email you from Zurich if I get the chance. Happy holidays, Aidan.”
“Happy holidays, Dad.”
He hung up and dropped the phone on the cushion beside him, breathing through the overwhelming sadness that clogged his throat.
“Your dad is ditching you for the holidays, huh?”
He jumped at the sound of Claire’s voice, swiveling his head in the direction it had come from. Sure enough, she was standing behind the large opening in the wall separating the living room from the kitchen.
“What are you doing up?” he asked, getting to his feet.
“I was hungry.”
He headed into the kitchen and spotted the sandwich fixings on the counter. “Well, of course you are,” he said pointedly. “You didn’t join us for dinner.”