Fury and a dispiriting frustration seized her, and her voice trembled with both. “You’re the one who invited him!”
He whirled. “Like hell I did!” he roared, his scowl ominous.
“You did, Grey!” she cried, as confused and hurt as he was. She wanted to slap him. She wanted to hug him. She wanted him to understand.“You planned the trip, you took my sash to dinner.You thought it would go away just like that? What do you think everything you told me about him felt like? Foreplay, Grey.You wanted me to like him, to accept him, to want him—you even wanted me to fuck him to rid yourself of that guilt of having it all while he had shit.You wanted me to care, and guess what. It worked!”
“I wanted you to appreciate a man whom I appreciate and nobody else seems to—that’s far from wanting you to screw him behind my back!” He was shaking, the ice melting within hot, volcanic anger, and Toni felt his pain like a suicide, like driving a dagger into her chest that she was twisting herself.
“Grey, I promise you we’re not doing anything behind your back.You thought I would have sex with him that day I went to say good-bye, and you let me.”
He was breathing for control, fighting for it as he advanced. “He’s been like a brother to me.The most important person in my world, until you came along. You wanted him, Toni. You wanted him, and I gave him to you.”
“Why, how generous of you! You, the Almighty Grey Richards, took pity on us both and let us fuck! And for your information, he gave himself to me!”
He slammed a fist to his chest. “I gave myself to you! I am . . . I am humbled with you. I’ve stripped my soul bare for you! Does that even matter to you?”
Her eyes stung and a tear leaked. She brushed it off with a hand that shook violently, her words strangling her. “It means the world to me. At first I lived to live, and now I live for you to love me and for me to love you.”
He put a halting hand up.“Don’t.” The torment in his eyes was unbearable to her. He didn’t want to believe that she loved him. He didn’t want to love her. She could see it hurt him, and she wanted to choke in her pain.
“I didn’t ask to feel this,” she said brokenly, dropping in a heap of misery on the edge of the bed.
“What do you want, Toni?” Leaning a casual outstretched arm on the bookshelves, he delivered the words without inflection, as if he were tired of everything, tired of her. “A ménage every Christmas? Do you think that’s fair to him?”
“Grey, I’ve been reading about relationships with more than two people. Permanent ones. We could make it work. You and Heath are amazing together and—”
“You’re mine!” He closed the distance between them, the possessive red sparks in his eyes skinning her alive. “I’d give my life for him, but not my girl.You’re mine, Antonia Kearny. I’m not a man who shares. I’m not a fool.” He caught her arm and hauled her up from the bed. “I take back every good word I ever said about him.”
“You can’t take them back. You can’t take Cabo back—not even you can!” Impulsively, she tore the towel from his waist and grabbed his cock, the stalk rigid and standing impressively tall in her hand. Her throat dried, a surging heat instantly spreading through her as she fondled him. “You’re excited,” she said in a hoarse purr.“It excites you that I get hot when I talk about him. It excites you that I want him and get aroused wanting to have you both again. Your cock is wet, Grey. You’re ready to explode right here in my hand.”
He grabbed her face. “My cock knows shit,Toni. I haven’t been myself since Cabo, and my life has gone upside down. I feel out of control, and just the thought that I may be losing you is driving me insane.”
“Never, Grey. Never. Oh, baby, you know I can’t even breathe when we fight. You’re my rock; my first thought in the morning and my last thought at night. Grey, please. The idea is strange to you, but if you wrap your mind around it a little, Heath belongs with us. He’s so loyal and truthful and so lonely.”
“Setting up a charity foundation,Toni?”
“It is not charity. I want . . . I want him. I need him, too. I need you both. If I could have you both, I would! The three of us, close, so close.”
His voice changed as she fondled his erection to a straining point, almost giving the impression he was subdued by his desire. Tamed by it. “I don’t want him close, and I don’t want him near you,” he said gutturally.
She lightened her caresses along his cock, letting her voice fade to a whisper. “Why? Because of what others would think? You liked sharing me with him. You loved watching us together, and you loved playing with him, too.You liked giving him to me, and giving me to him, and enjoying our bodies between the three of us.You want to come, don’t you, just listening to me? Remembering what he did to you, what he did to me. I feel like that when I remember, too. I get so excited, and in my chest it hurts because I need it. I know you need it, too.”
His cock was leaking in her hand, twitching at each stroke, and his neck was flushed and strained as he tried to fight it. “You want it, and you feel restless and out of control.... But what if you gave in, Grey? What if you gave in like you do when you come? Doesn’t it feel good? To come? To let go and find that you won’t lose me after all, that I’ll be right here, still wildly, desperately in love with you . . .”
“Arghhh. Goddammit.”
“That’s all right, baby. Come for me, Grey.”
“Grab my balls.”
“Like this?”
“Squeeze. Damn it.Yes.”
“A little harder, Grey? Did Heath fist you like this? What if I squeeze the head just like this and twist my hand around your balls just . . . like . . .”
When he recovered from a powerful racking tremor, he clamped his teeth together and snared her wrist in his hand. He’d regained himself. His control.
Trembling from frustration and lust, Toni leaned to flick her tongue across a taut brown nipple. A muffled sound wrenched up his throat at her hungry suckling, but then he took her in his grip and dragged her to the bed.
He deposited her there and walked to the nightstand, his stance a warrior’s challenge, demanding submission. His voice was a dry rasp as he pulled something out of a drawer. “You know what I think? I think you just want to be full. Every little crevice in you.” She sensed his need to control something, to control her, her lust, and she appeased. Appeased him, appeased her own need and turmoil.
She lifted her embroidered dress up to her ribs and waited on the bed on all fours, ready, so ready, totally open to him. Grey came over to slip the dildo into her panties, and she gasped as he pushed it inside her pussy. How easily it went right in. How cruelly he smiled, mocking her shivers of bliss when he slapped the panty back in place. The fabric held it inside her. The silicone balls of the toy were upside down and nestled against her clit, and then Grey aligned himself behind her and shoved aside her panties at the back.
“I keep forgetting you want this all day, every day. If you want cock, sweetheart, that’s what you’re going to get. Every minute of the day, I’m going to give you cock.”
She wrapped her arms around her pillow, opened her mouth on it, licking it as though it were something else as she waited for him to take her.Then he was there; hot, hard, long. Opening her.
“Take it up your ass,Toni—and screw that dick in your pussy.”
She made an mmm sound, because his flesh tearing through her felt so good. Good pain. Delicious, straining pain. Her breath grew choppy, his grip tightened on her hips as he pushed, but his turgid flesh left her all too soon.
“Don’t!” she protested.
When he burrowed in again, he advanced through the tightness with ruthless purpose, wrenching a yelp from her that was part pain, part ecstasy.
“Tell me whose stick you have in your pretty derriere,Toni.”
Pain ricocheted through her body, spiraling a million other sensations of pleasure in her. She panted, the silicone balls giving delicious ease to her clit as she wormed back her hips to take more of him
, more in her ass, more pain, more of his punishment.“It’s yours, Grey.You’re inside me.”
He thrust all the way in. Her pillow muffled her scream, a scream of rapture and agony, and it made him pause.
“Am I hurting you?”
Her body hugged every inch of his—it squeezed, clamped, sucked greedily at his flesh. It made him jerk inside her. It made her want to explode with heat.
“I want it,” she sobbed, clutching the pillow tighter to her neck and face. “I need this from you.” She was wild for it, craved this tearing pain from him, for it brought the sharpest pleasure.
“Then squeal for me.” He withdrew, stabbed her fast and deep, and a whimper tore out of her.
He eased up a little, retreating to the head. “I wanted to be here.” His voice was like ice on sandpaper, his hands warm, slipping downward and kneading her ass cheeks.“I desperately wanted to be here. In this hot, tight, sweet little ass.”
She had wanted him here. She’d been frightened out of her wits, but Heath had taken care of that, too. And now she enjoyed feeling crammed up to her throat, gloried in the blinding, deafening pressure of him moving along the tight passage. “Grey—oh, god!” she cried as he rammed her hips with his. They both jolted with pleasure, their heads rolling helplessly; his went forward to hers, hers went back to him.
Making a grating sound of ecstasy, he swiveled his hips, extracting himself. He plunged next with a growl, making her scream as he plugged her with his long, rigid extension so thoroughly she thought he’d embedded himself inside her forever. But then he moved—in and out, in and out.
They had never made so much noise.
They were drowning in pleasure; both of them in pain, both of them experiencing excruciating pleasure, both of them torn in two by this mating and by their changing circumstances.
Grey needed it; she needed it. A pain of the body that matched their insides.
He splayed his hands over her ass cheeks and pushed the flesh closed around his erection as he slid and slipped and worked himself in. And when he wanted to make her scream, he fucked in so hard that a shout of pleasure would explode from him as well as her. His shouts were so agonized, hers so deep and wrenching, it felt like they each wanted to be killed by the other.
Shuddering, feverish with heat in a way that frightened her, suspended in the pinnacle of orgasm while she creamed all over the dildo, she panted, “I want Heath to fuck me, too. I want his dick inside me. I love it; I love him there.”
Grey groaned. She bit at the pillow, her face rolling against it in delirium. Her vagina rippled around the silicone shaft, but the pain, the pleasure, the torture, came from Grey, and the slow, hard way he mated her. And Heath. Heath was somewhere right now, slick and wet from coming for her. No. No. He was here. Inside her. He and Grey were inside her. And it felt so right—so, so right. Bone-deep good, the pleasure seeped into her marrow, whacking away at bone, turning her flesh liquid. And she was licking Heath’s mouth and whimpering and thinking, Don’t go away again. Don’t leave me again. “Call him back, Grey. Give me Heath.”
Grey was thundering to the brink, body taut as he stabbed her body erratically now, his fingers digging into her hips.
“Give us Heath, Grey. Let him be with us.”
“Ahh, god!”
“Grey, please.”
“Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”
He roared, and she felt the hot jerk of his penis inside her, the spurts triggering her orgasm.They shuddered together, her scream and his bellow of ecstasy coming one atop the other. And with his heart thundering against her back, her own breaths still a roar, she whispered, “I love you.” She sagged into the mattress and turned her cheek into the pillow. “I love Heath, too.”
I love Heath, too.
No, she did not, could not, love Heath, too. Goddammit.
Toni. She was like holding water in your hands; it slipped through your fingers. He could feel her slipping, ebbing and flowing away from him, his hands, his order. He was torn between wanting to flow with her and wanting to contain her; to keep her where he was comfortable.
Driving to work the next morning, he tried assimilating everything she’d said to him, some words striking a chord more than others, but all he could really focus on was her feelings for Heath.
This was all Grey’s doing. Building up his character, letting him into their bed because he trusted him. Foolishly, stupidly trusted him. Had he thought he could control their attraction by yielding to it and keep it at that? How wrong he was. How stupid. How fucked.
With this . . . with this, Heath had his fucking dick up Grey’s ass, and as long as Toni professed her devotion to him, Grey was utterly, supremely screwed by them both.
Pulling into his front slot at the basement parking lot of their building, he yanked the gear into park and punched Heath’s hotel number.The bastard answered at the first ring.
“Asshole.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“Mind telling me what the fuck I’m doing in Oaxaca?”
“Doing what I told you to do.”
“The business is shit.You cannot tear it apart and sell the pieces. It’s not good enough to burn.”
“Then see the sights, Heath.You’re staying put until something new comes up.”
“I’ve seen the mummies, which, incidentally, look like you, you fucking bastard. I’m coming back to Chicago.”
“You’re staying put. Do your job.”
“You sent me to the only place I have no cell phone signal. I know what you’re trying to do.”
“Leave Toni alone. Understand?”
“She doesn’t want me to leave her alone, damn you.”
“Why do you want her, Heath? Because she’s mine?”
“I want her.” He dropped his voice to a menacing whisper. “I either take you with her, or I take you down if I have to.”
“Try it, Heathcliff. Just try it.” Ending the call with a press of a button, he pitched the phone into the backseat, gritted his teeth, and shouted, “Son of a bitch!”
He didn’t know how long he sat there, his fingers digging into the wheel, and he didn’t know how long the phone’s rhythmic vibrations took to filter through his fury. Irately registering the call, he flung himself across the back and grabbed the phone, ready to crack it in two. Ready to take the call and tell Heathcliff all the nasty things Grey planned to do to him. But the name of the caller blinking on the display screen was someone else entirely.
Lucien Grey Richards.
Grey did not answer. Could not, would not, deal with his father right now. On each of the phone’s subsequent vibrations, he crammed the device in his fist until its motion ceased. By the fourth attempt, he cursed and turned the damned thing off.
The entire nineteenth floor stumbled into silence when he stepped out of the elevators. He stalked down the hall directly toward the tall rosewood doors of his office, barking for his messages as he passed Louisa. Behind her desk, she raised a halting hand and quickly pressed a button on the phone, holding the receiver away from her ear. “Your father. It’s the third time he’s called.”
Damn him.What did he want?
“Put him through,” he snapped, slamming the double doors behind him.
He fell into his chair, picked up, and easily said, “Father.”
“Explain.”
“Explain what?”
Tiptoeing inside with the expression of someone about to be hanged, Louisa held out the day’s paper. Grey homed in on the social column headline as she set it on the surface of his desk.
GLACIER TOO COLD FOR THE SUN?
Spotted vacationing in Cabo San Lucas recently, sexy “ice” millionaire Grey Richards showed no signs of thawing as longtime girlfriend, Antonia Kearny, got cozy with a dark-haired stranger on the beach.
Icicles pricked him on the inside.The chills of Antarctica paled in comparison to the sweeping cold that spread through him. He didn’t continue reading. The picture said it all. Toni smilin
g, Heath crowding her with his body, cupping her breasts from behind, whispering something in her ear. And Grey. Nonchalant as could be, and right behind them, speaking to the Mexican with the dresses.
“I said explain.”
His father’s angry voice snapped him back. With characteristic remoteness, Grey waved Louisa off, and only when he was sealed inside his office—alone—did he put his forehead in his hand and rub. His thoughts tumbled one after the other—one in particular, one that prevailed. Toni. His baby. His lively, mischievous little imp. In the eye of the storm. Subjected to public speculation and scorn.
“I don’t know what you’re looking for, or what you want to hear,” Grey said levelly.
“I want to hear that my son, with my name, isn’t engaged in some strange type of business. I warned you against men like that one. I know who that good-for-nothing is. How do you expect your mother to face her friends at the function today?”
The function.Yes. Of course. How inconsiderate of Grey. “Just like she always does, smiling wide and bright. Dad.”
“If you can’t control your own woman, you’re not the man I thought you were.”
The anger he felt was sweeping, blinding, cramming his mouth with poison he wanted to spit, but even then his voice remained passive. “Like you control your wife? Who’s she sleeping with now, the gardener? I have another call. Have a good day, Dad.”
“. . . Now, your father and I are very certain there’s a good explanation, so I propose you both come over for dinner and talk to us.”
Toni was so stunned by the article she could barely make sense of her mother’s words. A rabid, vehement anger flared up in her, then a profound, wrenching hurt. It seemed she wasn’t even breathing, nor her heart beating, while a single thought slammed into her brain—Grey.
She was portrayed as the harlot and he like the . . . the fool. How many people bought this paper? Exactly how many people would read this? What was this paper’s circulation? He would be crushed. He would be. Oh, god. She stuck the phone between her shoulder and ear and fell on her knees, frantically spreading the paper on the coffee table and flipping the page, where the words continued. More words. Malicious, cruel words. Hurtful words about them. And her mother’s voice droned on in her ear like an annoying noise that never stopped.That made you want to scream and scream and scream.