Page 208 of Breathe Like Hell

I shook my head.

He looked it up, too. He loves me.

“I’m not going to take your underwear off or put anything inside of you. I’ve got you. I’m here with you.”

“Okay,” I said quietly. “I trust you.”

Micah glanced away and I watched the motion of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed. How can I trust you? He shut his eyes for a brief second, then turned his gaze back on my face, his focus completely dialed in to me. The torment that’d momentarily claimed his mind was pushed off in the pursuit of making me feel good now.

Micah put his hand between my thighs, his fingertips brushing over my cotton underwear. He rubbed back and forth over my swelling clit, gentle but insistent enough to make me squirm.

Mason was close behind me, his hands lingering on my hips, the bottom of my stomach. His fingers inched lower, seeking the place Micah was idly petting me. Their knuckles brushed together, and I could feel the tension in both of them, could see the way they kept glancing quickly at each other while their hands grazed on my body.

Yeah, I hadn’t seen Micah at all this week until now. But neither had Mason.

I thought about the shower.

The things I’d seen that we’d barely discussed since then.

I hadn’t brought up any other questions since that morning, and neither of them had offered any information voluntarily. The pregnancy had been a distraction, but distractions didn’t erase my memories…and I had a lot of memories. A lot of moments where it felt as though Mason and Micah had an additional layer of their own sexual tension while they touched me.

Seemingly, my feelings and suspicions about that had been correct.

A while.

Mason’s words, his response to my question when I asked how long they’d been doing this behind my back. I still didn’t know exactly what that meant. Exactly how long was a while?

I brushed Micah’s hand off of me, directing him silently to Mason.

He hesitated, and I felt him looking down at my face. Mason, too.

But I guided his hand farther, his fingertips on Mason’s collarbone, skimming the cotton of his t-shirt. Mason’s hand had fallen limp between my thighs, distracted by Micah’s touch on his chest.

Nobody spoke.

Everything else in the world diminished, the glow of the TV dimming, the voices coming out of the speakers smearing into a dull hum of noise I wasn’t paying any attention to. Even the coldness of the air seeped away. The three of us were in our own bubble. Warm and quiet and dark, made of hitched inhales and seeking fingers.

And nobody else on Earth had to understand it except us.

I loved both of them. Equally. Always. Forever.

No matter what happened.

No matter how much pain the universe tied around us, threaded through us. This was at the very core of me. The most essential, vital part of my heart. I couldn’t imagine anything else would ever make me feel as deeply as this.

Micah skimmed his knuckles down Mason’s chest, then extended his fingers to brush down the rest of the way to Mason’s waistband, lifting his shirt to trace his abs and the slanted line of muscle over his hip. Micah hooked his fingers in the elastic waistband and pulled it down without further ceremony.

My breath caught in my throat as Micah took Mason’s cock out, tugging his boxers down far enough to expose his balls too. Heat rushed to my face, pooled low in my belly.

I watched Micah’s hand, transfixed as he shifted his grip to wrap around his shaft, and started to stroke him. Slowly, at first. Not really teasing, but testing. Rubbing his thumb along the underside of the tip, circling his fingers tighter, watching all of Mason’s reactions almost like he expected them.

Mason was breathing harder now, but he wasn’t watching Micah’s veined hand stroke him like I was. He was watching Micah’s face.

His eyebrows pushed together, his lips pressed in a line, a look of angry desperation in his brown eyes as his chest rose and fell more rapidly.

Whatever feelings he hid in the depths of his irises weren’t the sort of feelings borne of meaningless hookups. I could see that. I felt it twisting the knife in my chest, gutting me tenderly. I wished I knew everything that existed between them, every knot in their rope, but I didn’t. I was too scared to ask, and they were too deceitful to tell me.

So, I watched without speaking. The blade in my lungs almost made me like it even more. I’d made Micah touch him, after all. I wanted to see them together, no matter the internal bleeding it caused me.