* * *
Merritt
Merritt sat curled up in the big bed, covers wrapped around her and a book dangling unread from her fingertips. How could she concentrate on anything after the last few days? Since the first time Elliot had taken Peter, there had only been building pleasure between them all. They shared in her and each other, and together Peter and Merritt trained Elliot so that he would be ready for Peter’s cock. They watched each other, they learned each other, and the power of all of it only seemed to grow.
But as their time together was beginning to wane—Merritt and Elliot were meant to return to London the next day—more questions were being raised than answers. Only none of them had posed those questions yet. None of them had dared to raise their hand and say they wanted more. Because how? How could it work?
She could feel Elliot’s reaction to the truth. He’d begun to withdraw the morning. He’d left the bed first, saying he was going to make breakfast. When he hadn’t returned in a reasonable time, Merritt had known he was in an ill humor. Brooding. Peter had gone after him and she had decided to pretend to read so she wouldn’t fret.
Reality felt like it was creeping into her fantasy. And it was all too soon.
“Merry?”
She looked up to find Peter standing in the chamber entryway, an overladen tray in his hands. She smiled at him and got up to help as he set the tray on the table. She wrapped a robe around herself and looked at the wide variety of options laid out before her.
“He does think of everything. Down to the way he places a flower along the edge of my plate.” She looked behind Peter, but Elliot didn’t appear. Her heart sank. “He…he left?”
Peter glanced down at her. “How did you know?”
“That faraway look in his eyes this morning. He’s already starting to count the hoof falls back to London.” She shook her head.
“He was…angry, I think,” Peter said softly.
She pursed her lips. It seemed she was not alone in her observation of Elliot. “He wasn’t angry,” she said. “When he is angry, you don’t have to question. He’s…withdrawing.”
“Because this week is coming to an end.”
She nodded. “He’ll distance himself. He’ll try to make himself believe that it didn’t mean anything. But I know him after all this time. I know it meanteverything.”
“It did to me,” Peter said. He looked at her for a long, charged moment and there was something that lit in his stare. Not desire. Well, not only desire, for that was always there when he looked at her. Something…deeper.
He took her hand and threaded their fingers together. “I have to say something, even though I perhaps shouldn’t. But I already know regret when it comes to you and I won’t live through it again.”
“What is it?” she asked, even though she knew. She knew what he would say.
“I still love you, Merritt,” he said.
It was so matter of fact. So easy for him to confess those wonderful and painful words. She blinked at the tears that stung her eyes and nodded. “And I still love you, too.”
Peter’s expression softened. He cupped her face and leaned in to kiss her. She opened to him, gripping his wrist with one hand, placing the other on his chest. Together they sighed, this physical connection different than any they had shared in the past week…different because they had finally said those words that had hung between them for what felt like a lifetime.
He wrapped an arm around her waist and drew her closer, even as he backed her toward the bed. She threaded her fingers through his hair and lifted into him, as if she could get close enough that they wouldn’t be parted again.
Perhaps they would have made love then, tangled together on the bed, love pulsing between them with as much power as desire. But before they could go so far, Merritt looked up and gasped.
Elliot was standing in the doorway, watching them. And not watching them with desire, like he had every other time he’d seen them so involved with each other. Not even watching them with the jealousy that sometimes flared in his expression when they touched.
No, he was watching them with an expression of…devastation. Hurt. Betrayal.
She pushed away from Peter, and he looked over his shoulder to see the same thing she did. They rose together, each smoothing their clothing like it could erase how they’d become wrinkled.
“Elliot,” Merritt whispered, and moved toward him.
He shook his head but said nothing. He just backed from the room and closed the door behind himself. She stared, gape-mouthed, at the barrier he had put between them. At the pain she had felt coursing from him like waves.
She had hurt him. And she hated herself for it. She bent her head and whispered, “Oh God.” She turned toward Peter. “We must talk to him.”
Peter’s mouth pursed and he slowly shook his head. He looked as sick as she felt. “Not we,” he said.
