“Fair enough,” Elliot said. “So whatdidyou do?”
“Watched you,” Peter admitted, and his tone went rough. “Kept out of your sight while you took in the entertainments. While I tracked how Merry touched you, how you couldn’t keep your mouth off of her skin. You went into one of the back rooms and I went my own way and had a very good time.”
“Can you imagine if you had approached us?” Elliot asked, and shivered. “Joined us back then?”
“Would you have been ready for such a thing?” Peter asked. “I think you hated me a little back then.”
“Hated him?” Merritt repeated, and looked at Elliot. “Did you hate Peter even though you were his patron?”
He tilted his head. “Not hated,” he said softly. Only what he’d felt back then was very similar to hate. Jealousy. So perhaps Peter was correct that he wouldn’t have been ready to welcome the other man into their bed.
To share Merritt. To share himself.
“So you saw us at the hell,” Elliot said, clearing his throat. “That isn’t much of a secret, my friend.”
Peter lifted his brows. “I wasn’t finished. I saw you again, many times, after that. I always kept myself in the shadows, watching. Until one night, about a year ago, when I followed you to the back.”
Elliot straightened up. The Donville Masquerade’s back rooms were made for assignations, passionate joinings. But they were also built for those who wished to watch and be watched. There were little doors on panels in the wall of each chamber. If they were left open, someone in the passageway behind could watch.
And Merritt had always liked being watched.
“You stood in the passageway and observed us?” she whispered.
“I watched you fuck,” Peter corrected gently. “Watched you move together like you’d been built to do so, watched you come, Merry, until the tears were streaming down your face. Watched him fill you up and then start all over again. I watched you and I pleasured myself. And I fantasized about it over and over again until that moment when all…almost all of the fantasies came true.”
Merritt and Elliot were each stock-still a moment, then Merritt crawled across the blanket and cupped Peter’s cheeks. She pressed her mouth to his, licking and stroking and teasing until his arms came around her waist and he tugged her flat against his chest.
Only then did she pull away and smile up at him. “That makes me wild, you know. Knowing you were watching us.” She glanced back at Elliot. “I know it drivesyouwild.”
Elliot kept his gaze on Peter. His wife was not wrong that the idea that Peter had watched them together was arousing beyond measure. But he had other thoughts, as well. “You saidalmostevery fantasy. What did you picture in that wicked mind of yours as you stroked your cock and thought of us?”
Now Peter pushed away from Merritt and eased his way across the blanket toward Elliot. When he reached him, he pressed a hand into his thigh. He leaned in but didn’t allow Elliot his mouth. He teased his lips along Elliot’s jaw, just brushing there, never enough pressure.
“I used to imagine you fucking me like you fucked her,” he murmured. “While I did the same to her. You stretching me with that wonderful cock, Elliot.That’swhat I pictured.”
He drew back then and Merritt made a ragged sigh from behind them.
Elliot swallowed. This was the next step to all of this. Penetrating this man and his cock twitched at the thought of taking him.
“You didn’t imagine taking me?” he whispered, speaking out loud the thing he wanted.
Peter smirked. “Oh yes. I definitely pictured myself perched behind you, using that arse while I stroked you to completion and she fingered herself. But you, my lord, are the only one of the three of us who hasn’t already engaged in arseplay. Or am I wrong?”
“You are not wrong,” Elliot managed to whisper.Whimper.
“So you must be readied so that it will be a pleasure, not a pain,” Peter said. “In the meantime, would you like to fuck me?”
As he said it, he cupped Elliot’s cock through his trousers. He was rock hard, he knew it, and it was the answer he managed to choke out. “Yes.”
Peter kissed him at last, his tongue stroking and thrusting the way Elliot would soon do to him, with his cock. Then he pulled away and got up, offering first a hand to help Merritt and then Elliot.
“Then I suggest we go back. Because I cannot wait one more moment.”
CHAPTER10
Merritt
The cottage was empty as they entered it, but it was obvious the servants had done their duties. Every room was spotless. Even the bannisters shone as Merritt followed Elliot up the stairs, Peter trailing behind her, his hand on her lower back.
