“Almost,” I mouthed at Theo.
Instead of firing some silent insult back at me, he drank me in from head to toe as the last of his buttons slid free. I braced myself for some horrible comment. For him to say he preferred partners with some meat on their bones—a common refrain from my past partners—but his eyes heated as they rose back to mine.
“No one’s as pretty as Stella.”
I nearly fell over dead.
His shirt fluttered to the floor, his pants and boxers following soon after, and then he was standing there, fully naked, and I didn’t know where to look.Anywhere else,would have been ideal, but I couldn’t seem to tear my eyes away. He was a work of art. Raw masculinity. Brutal power. The Renaissance masters would have wept to see him. I could fill notepads with sketches of his nude form, whole pages taken up by the swell of his pecs, the hollow at the base of his throat, the deep V of his hip flexors.
He wrapped his fingers around the base of his cock and squeezed, and I jerked my head up to find his eyes boring into mine.
Look away, I begged myself, but I was like a deer trapped in headlights. Did Theo really want this? Had I been right all those weeks ago, and some part of him enjoyed our constant bickering and barbed insults?
Oh, no.Did I?
Mentally, I shook myself. The answer was no, definitely not. Half the time I lashed out, I felt like a kitten facing down a Doberman, trying to appear bigger and tougher than I was. The other times, my goal was to keep Theo from getting the upper hand. And okay, fine, maybe like one percent of the time, I was trying to make him laugh, but that had more to do with my own sick need to be funny than it did anything else.
Theo looked me over, slowly, his hand working his cock, eyes dark with some hidden emotion I couldn’t interpret. It made me wonder if I was reading too much into things. Was he secretly laughing at me, and this was all just for show? He could be such a convincing actor that it was impossible to tell how he really felt.
I faced the bed and the much simpler sight of AJ sprawled atop the covers. He reached out and lowered the dimmer on a switch, and the room was dropped into warm shadows, not too dark to see, just bright enough to be intimate and inviting.
I approached the right side of the bed, Theo, the left, and we paused for one last staring match.
Leave,I told him with my eyes.
You leave,he shot back.
In answer, I climbed onto the bed beside AJ.
The other side of the mattress bowed beneath Theo’s weight as he copied me.
This is your last chance,I thought at him, shifting lower and sliding into AJ’s waiting arms.
If you’re staying, I’m staying, he seemed to say, moving into place on AJ’s other side and dropping a kiss to his shoulder, eyes smoldering at me out of the shadows.
There was no turning back.
This was going to happen.
I was about to have a threesome with a man I absolutelyhated.
21
Tyler
Stella still had her thongon, and it was bugging the shit out of me. Because quid pro quo. AJ and I were naked, so she should be, too.
It was only fair.
She turned toward the man between us, mirroring me, kissing his other shoulder as her eyes blazed with challenge. There was no fucking way I was backing down, and I could tell from the stubborn look on Stella’s face that she wouldn’t either.
I grabbed AJ’s chin, leaning him my way. His gaze immediately dropped to my mouth, tongue peeking out to wet his full lower lip. Fuck, he was hot. I’d thought so since I’d first clapped eyes on him. Tousled curls, sun-darkened skin, bright green eyes.
He closed the distance between us, wrapping a hand around the back of my head and pulling me in. Our lips met. I parted mine, and he followed my lead, and then my tongue was in his mouth, working against his. I rose onto an elbow and deepened the kiss, opening my eyes to throw Stella a taunting look, but I found her staring at me and AJ with the first unguarded expression I’d ever seen on her face.
Need. Lust. Anticipation.
My dick stiffened against AJ’s thigh. Stellawantedthis. And now that I knew it, there was no way I’d let her pretend otherwise. No more using AJ like a shield, no more silently daring each other to back down. If we were going to do it, we were going to fucking do it. Full send.
