Graeme’s jaw dropped and his face went red, but Ryan laughed. “You really are a whore, aren’t you,” he said.
“I like sex,” Art said with a shrug. “Frankly, this arrangement is perfect for me, because I can’t see myself committing to just one man for the rest of my life.”
“Are you saying you could commit to two?” Ryan asked, one eyebrow arched.
There were two questions there, were they committing and did Art want an open relationship? The answer to both questions surprised him. Yes, he was absolutely ready to commit, wild though that seemed. And yeah, he was thirty-three now. The idea of hooking up with someone new every night was as tired as he was sometimes. He’d done the indiscriminate whore thing, and now he wanted to be a discriminate one.
“I’m game if you are,” he answered with a shrug.
“Wait, wait, slow down,” Graeme said breathlessly, holding up his hands. “What are we talking about here?”
Ryan still held one of his hands and squeezed it, an affectionate look making him go all doe-eyed. “We’re talking about the three of us making it official,” Ryan said.
“It?” Graeme looked even more wide-eyed and innocent than ever, if that was possible.
“The three of us,” Art answered, grinning. “The great throuple. The spit-roast of destiny.”
“What’s a spit-roast of destiny?” Graeme asked, shrinking in on himself slightly. Before either Art or Ryan could tell him, he figured it out with a quick, “Oh! You mean…with the front and the back…three of us.” He looked at Art in complete awe and said, “People actually do that? I mean, outside of porn?”
Art burst into laughter. “Yes, and I love it,” he said. “When I’m in the right headspace. It’s a little overwhelming if you’re not.”
“Okay…um…yeah.” Graeme was still as lost as a cloud flitting through the sky, but he didn’t look as wrecked as he had the other day at his flat.
“Ryan?” Art asked. “Are you ready to take the triple plunge?”
“I already said I was,” Ryan said, laughing and reaching for Art’s hand with his free one.
Art grabbed his hand and Graeme’s free one as well. “It’s settled then,” he said with a nod, even though he felt like it was in no way settled and they still had a mountain of things to work out between them about how it would all fit together. Literally and figuratively. That wasn’t the point of the exercise, though. The point was to get Ryan and Graeme out of their heads so they could dive back into their work with extra creativity. “And now, it’s orgy time!”
“Wait, what?” Graeme squeaked, leaning away from Art, like the very mention of spit-roasting earlier meant he was going to end up as the roast right now.
“He’s not serious,” Ryan laughed. “He’s just trying to get a rise out of you.”
“Indeed, I am,” Art said, wiggling his eyebrows. “Although if you want a BJ right now, I’d be glad to oblige.”
“Right here?” Graeme’s voice went even higher. “In the attic?”
Art might have taken things further. He might have even maneuvered things so he ended up bent over one of the old chests in a repeat of Ryan’s studio the other day. But a knock on the door and Janice Hawthorne’s call of, “Yoohoo. Everybody decent?” stopped him.
“Yes, Mum,” Ryan said, pushing himself to his feet as if she’d caught them doing something naughty.
“Good,” Janice said, coming the rest of the way into the room. “Because you have a visitor, dear.”
“A visitor?” Ryan asked with a frown.
“Yes,” Janice went on. “He’s a rather attractive, silver-haired Italian man, actually, but there’s something decidedly off about him. I don’t like him, so shoo him along as quickly as you can, if you please.”
The mood in the attic changed at once. “Giorgio,” Ryan said with a scowl and started toward the door.
Art scrambled to his feet, helping Graeme up with him, and they followed after him. It looked like their great moment of coming together would have to wait once again.
SIXTEEN
Ryan would have been surprisedby the fierce determination that coursed through his whole body as he descended the attic stairs with his mum, Art, and Graeme right behind him, and as the four of them strode through the halls of Hawthorne House like some sort of heist team from a Hollywood blockbuster, but the conversation he, Art, and Graeme had had up in the attic had changed things within him, as awkward as it’d been.
“I’m not going to let Giorgio get away with this,” he said to no one in particular.
“Get away with what, dear?” his mum asked. “I wouldn’t mind a concrete reason to dislike the man.”
