“Can I ask you something personal?”
My gut balls up again. I want to scream “hell, no,” but I know that’s not the right answer to give the woman I’m sleeping with. I unclench my jaw and manage a tight reply. “Sure.”
She bites the corner of her lip. “Have you ever had a threesome?”
On the big list of questions I didn’t want her to ask, this hardly ranks at all. Still, I hesitate. “You really want to know?”
“Yes.” She picks up another slice of pizza and bites into it, then licks a crumb off the edge of her lip. That gorgeous mouth gets me every time, and I forget for a moment what we’re talking about.
Threesomes. Right.
“Two women at once,” I say. “Yes. I’ve done it. Once.”
I wait to see how she reacts to that. Some women ask questions like this, but don’t really want the answer. I sense Cassie might be different. I hope Cassie is different. She certainly is in most ways that matter.
“I don’t know why, but that kind of turns me on.” She grins at me. “I like picturing you with other women. Is that weird?”
“Nope. I think it’s actually called troilism.”
She blinks. “There’s a word for it?”
“Yep.” I grab another piece of pizza, deliberately grazing Cassie’s fingers as I do. I can’t seem to stop touching her, even when it really shouldn’t be a turn-on. “When a guy gets off imagining his partner with someone else, it’s called cuckold fantasy,” I tell her. “When a woman does it, it’s sometimes called cuckqueaning, but I think troilism is the more common term.”
“Jeez,” Cassie says. “What are you, some kind of sex dictionary?”
I laugh. “You had no idea what you were getting when you chose me as your frivolous sex toy.”
She grins, and I wonder if she remembers calling me that back at Olive or Twist. It seems like years ago. “You’ve been a most excellent frivolous sex toy.” She smiles and leans back against the sofa, her knee bumping mine softly. “Okay, so tell me about your threesome.”
I can tell this is turning her on, and I’m fascinated. I might have read about troilism fantasies in Playboy, but I’ve never dated a girl who had them.
You’re not dating, I remind myself. It’s only sex. That’s what you both wanted.
I finish chewing a bite of pizza and pick up my wineglass. “Well, I’d been dating this girl pretty casually for a couple months,” I tell her. “I guess I thought of her as my girlfriend, but she wasn’t that serious about me. She made it clear she was seeing other people, one of whom happened to be a woman.”
“How very enlightened of her,” Cassie says. “Did that bother you?”
“The fact that she was bi?”
“Yes.”
“Hell, no.” I clear my throat, wondering if I’m supposed to be playing it cool. Then again, Cassie’s seen my nuts shrink up in a snowy forest. We’re beyond the pretense of cool. “I guess a lot of guys get turned on thinking about two women together.”
“That’s why you got so hot and bothered at Casa Diablo the other night?”
I laugh. “One of many reasons.”
I wait to see if she’s going to ask about the other reasons, but she doesn’t, so I continue my story. “Anyway, I got invited to a party one night, and it turned out to be at the home of the other woman. The one my not-girlfriend was dating.”
“I’m already getting lost.”
I grin. “Want me to make you some cue cards?”
“I think I’m good.” Cassie picks up her wineglass and takes a small sip.
“So anyway, it got later and later at the party,” I continue. “Before I knew it, it was only the three of us alone together. My not-girlfriend and her sorta-girlfriend in the sorta-girlfriend’s apartment.”
“You think they planned it?”
