"Like my hands don't know what to do."
"Good. Now you know how I felt." Her voice drops. "Lying in the spare room. Hearing everything through the wall. Your breathing. His voice. The headboard. Knowing what was happening twelve feet away and pressing my hand against the mattress because I couldn't press it against either of you."
My hand locks around the doorframe. Maya in the spare room. Three weeks. The sounds through the wall. Her hand on the mattress while Cole's mouth was on mine and the headboard hit plaster twelve feet from her ear. She carried it alone, with her palm pressed into a mattress twelve feet away.
Cole's mouth works down her neck. His palms slide from her hips to her stomach, flat, fingers spread. Maya's breathing changes, shallow and faster, and she reaches back to find the back of Cole's neck.
I cross the room. Six feet. By the time I reach her, the doorframe has left a mark in my palm.
My hand finds her jaw. My thumb traces her cheekbone. Her lips part.
I kiss her.
My mouth on Maya Maddox's mouth, and the taste of her, warm, the faint salt of everything she's been carrying, knocks the next breath out of order. She kisses back without hesitation, fisting the front of my shirt and pulling. The pull is demand.
Behind her, Cole goes still.
I pull back. Maya's eyes are dark. Blown. Her hand stays locked in my shirt like she forgot to let go.
"Bed," I say.
She moves toward me instead. Her hands catch my shirt and pull it over my head, her fingers landing on my chest the moment the fabric clears. The touch from the kitchen, now on skin. My spine locks, and my breath stops under her palm.
"You too," she says to Cole over her shoulder.
Cole strips his shirt. The three of us stand at the foot of the bed, two men shirtless, Maya in a bra and jeans, the lamplight catching on shoulders, throats, the hard lines of breath. She looks between us, and my hand curls at my side before I can stop it. Undisguised want.
"You've been patient," she says. "I'm done making you wait."
I pick her up, palms under her thighs. Her legs wrap around my waist on reflex, and she gasps, sharp and unguarded. I carry her to the bed and set her down on the edge. She looks up at me from the gray sheets, dark hair behind her, bare stomach rising with each breath. The thin white lines on her forearms and ribs are visible. She doesn't cover them. She lets us look with the lights on.
Cole is beside me, and both of us look down at her.
"Both of you," she says. "At the same time. Don't take turns."
Cole gets on the bed and kneels beside her. His hand slides over her stomach, up over her ribs, cupping her breast through the bra. His thumb drags across the nipple, and her back arches, hips lifting off the mattress.
I take her jeans off. Button, zipper, denim peeled down her legs inch by inch while I keep steady. She lifts her hips. The jeans come off. She's in a bra and underwear on my gray sheets with Cole touching her, and I'm standing at the foot of the bed with six months of want pressing against my ribs, my jaw, the backs of my hands.
I put my hands on her knees and spread them one inch at a time. Then I kneel between her legs and put my mouth against her inner thigh.
The sound she makes is the one from her apartment, the high, involuntary sound from the afternoon she rode my face and left me on my back. My mouth traces up her thigh slowly, over thin, sensitive skin and trembling muscle. Cole kisses her,and I can hear the wet sound of mouths together, her breathing fragmenting against his mouth.
I reach her underwear. Dark fabric. Already wet. I press my mouth against her through the fabric, one firm press, and her hips jolt. Cole catches the moan in his mouth.
"Off," she says. Directed down at me. A command. "Take them off."
I hook my fingers in the waistband and pull them down. She lifts, the fabric slides, and then she's bare and my face is between her legs. I grip her thighs hard enough that she'll feel it tomorrow.
Cole unclasps her bra and draws it away, the last barrier gone. She's naked on my bed with Cole's hands on her breasts and my mouth inches from where she's wet and wanting.
I put my mouth on her.
The first stroke of my tongue is flat and slow from her entrance to her clit, and it makes her body arch off the mattress. Cole's grip moves to her shoulders, pressing her into the sheets, and the combined sensation of him restraining her while my mouth works her makes her cry out. The sound hits the base of my spine.
I work her with my mouth, slow and methodical, reading every response the way I read a shift on the ice. Her hips buck when I flatten my tongue. When I slow down, her thighs clamp. Her sounds sharpen when I close my lips around her clit and suck, and then her hand fists in my hair with the same ruthless grip Cole uses when I do this to him. Two people hold me the same way when I'm on my knees, and it fucking undoes me.
"Dante, don't stop—"
