“You said he wanted you to come back to stay with him, didn’t you?” Everett asked. “What better way than to convince you there was a threat?”
Her heart sank. “That…makes…sense, I suppose,” she admitted slowly. “God’s teeth, I hope you’re wrong.”
“You’d rather have it be a stranger who truly wants you dead?” Marcus asked.
She nodded. “Than my family murdering for me in the name of some twisted love? Taking the lives of three men who didn’t deserve their fate? Yes, actually.”
Marcus reached out and took her hand, his fingers stroking hers gently. “It’s only a theory. Don’t tie yourself in knots over it until we know the truth.”
“I’ll try. This situation is…it’s very difficult.”
For a moment, everyone at the table was quiet. The servants came and replaced the first course for a second.
Once they were gone, Everett cleared his throat. “Perhaps this is a good time, then, to discuss ourothersituation.”
Marcus’s eyes went wide and he stared. “Everett.”
Naomi looked between them and the tension was palpable. “The other situation meaning…what happened between each of us?” she squeaked.
Everett nodded slowly. “Will you deny that there is desire here? For all of us?”
Naomi hesitated. Although she had come to accept her desires, talking about them was still…strange. She’d always been told to hide them. And yet…
“I can’t deny it,” she admitted. “I haven’t denied it, at any rate, considering what has happened both last night and today.”
“Do you feel it isn’t right?” Marcus encouraged her gently, retaking her hand.
“Society would say it isn’t,” she responded.
Everett now reached out and took her opposite hand. She shuddered at the connection between the three of them. A desire that seemed to flow up and down her body, back and forth between them all.
“Seems to me that following Society’s rules isn’t always best,” Everett said.
Marcus shifted, as if that statement made him uncomfortable. But he continued to stroke her hand as he said, “And it would be private, Naomi. Just between us. When you told us about going to the Donville Masquerade yesterday, what stood out to me is that your husband took you there not to train you in your own pleasure, but to train you in his. Was that always the way?”
“With him…yes,” she whispered. “He stopped touching me at all once he realized I would go and watch him with the lightskirts. With my second husband there was more pleasure, but we didn’t talk about my wants or his. My first was more traditional. He was my husband, I his wife. What we did in the dark had pleasure, but that wasn’t its purpose.”
Marcus shook his head. “Idiots, the lot of them.”
“Soneverwas any of it about your pleasure,” Everett reiterated. “What if this time with us…was?”
A shudder worked through her from head to toe as the erotic implications of that question sank through to her very soul. “Oh God,” she squeaked out without meaning to.
Everett smiled. On his normally serious face, it was a sensual, knowing expression. “Is that a yes?”
She nodded slowly, fighting to find the words these men and this situation required. “Yes,” she managed at last, her voice breathless and shaky. “But I don’t know…how.”
Marcus leaned forward and cupped her cheek, his thumb stroking across her lips. “Let us teach you.”
Chapter 7
Everett leaned against the door in Marcus’s chamber, watching as his friend led Naomi toward the bed. It had been a long time since he was here. Months, perhaps a year. But it felt like home, this big chamber with the huge bed along the back wall. The roaring fire both warmed and brightened the room—and gave him the perfect view as Marcus turned Naomi toward him and leaned in to kiss her.
Everett shifted as he stared, watching the kiss transform from something comforting to something deeper, then more passionate. Their tongues tangled, she made a soft sound deep in her throat, Marcus put his hands on her hips and drew her up harder against him.
It was like magic as Naomi’s posture changed. She’d been tense after her acquiescence to this arrangement, nervous. But now, as Marcus continued to kiss her, stroked his hands up and down her sides, she relaxed into him and Everett watched her transformation to utter surrender.
With all their history, he hadn’t been certain Marcus would truly give in to what Everett asked for. And yet here he was, surrendering as sure as Naomi was. Everett was rock hard already, trembling at the idea that tonight he could have everything he wanted. That was so very rare to him. So precious.
