A New Resolution (18 page)

“So, what’s for breakfast?” she asked.

“A Lore sandwich,” Nolan rumbled, kissing her neck and making her laugh.

“No, I need real food if I’m to expect that sort of activity in the mornings I’m with you…” She wagged her finger between them in mock seriousness, her face scrunching and mouth pursing. “And I
will
expect it.”

Kieran smoothed out the wrinkles between her eyebrows with his forefinger, easing her face back into its normal state. “So demanding.”

She wiggled her eyebrows. “You bet your well-fucked ass, I am.” Who was this relaxed and open woman? Maybe all she needed was sex. Maybe Kieran could use her tranquil state to get some answers to questions he had.

“Well, Miss Sexy and Demanding,” Kieran said, taking his turn with a kiss on her neck. “Maybe you can tell me why you were you so frazzled last night when we came to your house?”

“Oh.” She looked surprised at the direction he’d steered the conversation in. “It’s my parents’ house and— It was nothing. I was having a moment.”

“Lore—”

“Nothing. It was nothing,” she said shortly, interrupting Nolan and moving to get up out of bed. No way in hell was Kieran letting her run away again, and Nolan clearly felt the same way. In perfect synchronicity, Kieran and Nolan pressed her back down to the bed by her shoulders, ignoring her annoyed glare.

“I need to get up and go to the bathroom,” she huffed, avoiding eye contact with them.

“No, you don’t,” said Nolan. “You’re avoiding the subject.”

“You’ll get up, go to the bathroom, and figure out some excuse for why you have to leave—”

“And then dash out of here like a madwoman with her ass on fire. It’s not happening, sweetheart,” Nolan said in his observational and authoritative, lawyerly way. It was hot.

“You’re both annoying.”

“Tell us, please,” Kieran whispered, seeing she was trying not to laugh at their antics. “Let us in.”

“I thought…” she said with a sigh after a moment of tense contemplation. “This is stupid and paranoid, but I thought I was followed back to my folks’ house last night. Then there was this—this letter…”

“Letter?” Nolan asked gently.

“It’s hard to explain. It has to do with my dad. He was sort of…infamous. I don’t want to get into that right now—” She held up her hand, halting any objections Nolan would have interjected. “But I promise, when I’m ready, I’ll tell you everything about my family and my past…and the letter. When I’m ready.”

“You think someone followed you home, and you refuse to tell us anything about a situation that may or may not be putting you in danger?” Nolan asked incredulously, and Kieran could see his anger begin to rise. Nolan wasn’t the only one put out by Lore’s complete refusal to open up about something that could become dangerous if she was in any real trouble. But he knew attacking and crowding her would get them nowhere.

“Okay,” Kieran said before she could argue with Nolan further. “We’ll hold you to that.”

“What now?” she asked hesitantly.

Kieran rested his hand on her belly once more, enjoying the uninhibited view of her naked body, and began to draw small circles around her belly button.

“Now, we get up, refuel, and start our day.”

“That wasn’t the kind of answer I was looking for.”

“I know, but that’s the one I’m giving. There’s no step-by-step guidebook for this kind of thing, Lore.” He kissed the tip of her nose, wanting to erase any hint of trepidation she felt about their relationship. At least she hadn’t bolted from the room…even though she’d tried. “If we want to do this, and I know I want to do this.”

“I definitely want to do this,” Nolan said, brushing her hair back with his long fingers, his anger having melted into something hotter.

Lore pursed her lips and said, almost stubbornly, “I want to do this.”

“Then we just do it, and we live our lives and be with each other as you would in any other relationship.”

She looked up past them at the ceiling for a second before taking a deep breath. “I’ve never really been in a relationship before, nothing long-term at least.”

Such innocence for a woman with such an old soul. “That’s all right.” Nolan smiled, kissing her cheek and making her sigh. “This will be better than any relationships you would have had anyway.”

She laughed, slapping Nolan playfully on his shoulder. “Oh, is that right?”

“Yep. We’re kind of awesome.”

“And modest.”

“It comes with being awesome.”

Kieran laughed, enjoying this new and sweet moment, knowing he would remember it for a long, long time.

Chapter Twelve

Two weeks later

Lore finished taping up the box before sitting back on her heels and glancing around the room at her progress…or lack of. It was infuriating how long this whole process was taking, how each new item revealed to her the falsity of her parents’ marriage, and every opened closet door only delved deeper into the hollowness of their lives. At least their lives represented in the sum of their possessions.

“Lore, where should I put this weird band thingy?”

She smiled at Nolan’s eloquent description of the rubber workout band that had been attached to some machine her grandmother owned back in the day. The process might have been tedious, but at least she didn’t have to go through it alone anymore. The men had all but jumped at the chance to help her complete the mammoth task.

“You can put it in the garbage pile; no one will want that. Went along with some workout machine from the fifties or something.”

“I dunno,” Kieran muttered with a lascivious grin as he entered the room, taking it from Nolan’s hands and stretching it wide. “Looks kind of kinky. I can probably think of a use or two for it.”

Nolan snorted, bumping his hip into Kieran’s. “You could probably turn any item in this house into some sort of sex toy.”

Kieran conceded the point without shame. “I could. I like sex, so sue me. I particularly like it with you two sexy beasts.”

“Are you calling me a beast?” Lore asked, pointing at her chest incredulously.

“Oh, yes.” Kieran advanced on her, gracefully maneuvering around the cluttered room. She shrieked, backing away from him, then tripping over the boxes for her trouble. “You’re the sexiest beast of them all,” he growled, coming down on top of her and tickling her belly. “What is this? Laughter? Impossible. Not from the laconic Lore Beyer!” She shrieked again and giggled like a little schoolgirl as his relentless tickle attack persisted.

“Please. I surrender. I’ll be your sex beast, just no more tickling.” He stopped, lifting up her shirt and kissing and soothing the red marks he’d left from his ministrations.

“Oh!” Nolan said, his grinning face turning into an expression of embarrassment. “I keep forgetting, Lore. Wayne wanted me to tell you that guy called with another offer on the house.”

“The same guy?” she asked, perplexed that some random stranger was so intent on buying a house that wasn’t even for sale yet. “What, is this house sitting on an oil well?”

“Who knows? Should I have Wayne tell him to fuck off?”

“Just tell him that we’ll contact him once the house has officially been cleaned out, and I personally guarantee he can have first dibs on the trash heap.”

“I think we should just tell him to stop calling.” Nolan grunted. He’d told her the second time the man had called the office that he didn’t appreciate this man harassing her like this, not that she saw it that way. Nolan was just being a tad overprotective, something she’d come to realize the past couple of weeks he did fairly often. “He says he’s so keen to buy the house that he’ll take it with all this crap still in it and do the sorting for you.”

She shook her head with an impish smile. “Everyone wants a piece of me.”

“Let them go on wanting, as long as you’re our sexy beast and no one else’s.” Kieran let her go with a sweet kiss, moving over to a large stack of papers that needed sorting.

“Yes, yes, I get it. You’re both terribly territorial of your female third.” At their surprised looks, she grinned coyly, knelt back down on the floor to continue taping. “I read up on some stuff about ménage relationships.”

“And what did you learn about thirds?” Nolan asked, carting in a large basket of questionable items to set on the living room floor next to the basket of questionable items that had preceded it.

Lore shrugged, leaning her elbow on the box. “I learned that thirds are usually outside of the relationship inner circle; they’re not considered a permanent part of the core duo.” She washed her gaze over the men quickly before turning back to her task, not wanting them to see what the information had evoked in her and how she worried about her status in the odd arrangement. She didn’t regret her choice to become a part of them, to tangle with the two intelligent men and allow them to stay in her bed as they crept inside her heart. She just could never be positive if she had any staying power. “A third can be interchangeable.”

Kieran reached out, coming to kneel by her side and stopping her midtape. “You know that’s not how we see you, right?”

“It’s not?” Lore asked, feigning innocence as if it didn’t matter. “Haven’t you done this in the past? Those women were thirds.”

“We told you, Lore, you’re different,” Nolan said, sitting on a box in front of the two, his hazel eyes darker than usual, stormy with concern for her. “You’re more than that. Believe us. Trust us.”

She wanted to believe them, but it had been so long since she’d let anything or anyone penetrate her heart. It wasn’t in her nature. No, that wasn’t true. It was no longer in her nature. At one time she’d been a loving person; she’d had friends. Lore looked around the living room, thinking back to the night it had been flooded with FBI agents. Her eyes found the exact spot her mother had been huddled, tears streaming down her ruined face as she listened to the crimes the agents accused her husband of.

To have the person you trusted and looked up to the most ripped away from your life, not by the police, but by learning he had never been who you thought he was, that he was, in essence, a lie himself, was the worst sort of betrayal. Lore was amazed her mother had stayed in the house, with the neighbors’ accusing glares and belief she had known what her husband had been doing. After the televised trial, it had gotten better. Her mother had given countless interviews to prove she had no clue of her husband’s business, and the general public had believed. But they’d also called her an ignorant idiot for being so blind. Her mother’s answer to that accusation? “We’re all blind when in love.”

Could Lore’s need for these two men blind her to the extent her mother had been blinded? Would she come to be defined by her relationship with them and that alone? Would she lose herself? The prospect was too terrifying to consider, and her willingness to participate in this relationship broke every single vow she’d made herself to never get close to anyone ever again. It was all part of that last resolution.

But then there was the other side of the coin, and this was something it had taken her a long time to admit to herself. She missed the camaraderie that came with friendship beyond acquaintances. She missed intimacy of a nonsexual nature. Hell, she missed intimacy that was of a sexual nature. She missed little moments of joy and laughter. She missed New Year’s Eve and making resolutions. She’d taken everything she loved about life and put it in a little box. And for what? So she couldn’t get hurt? How was that even living?

It wasn’t.

She turned back to the two men with hearts so big they’d left their own wide-open and waiting for her. They’d done everything the past few weeks to prove they were capable of being beyond perfect. They were silly yet intelligent, understanding when she needed a night in her own home or when after a night out she just wanted to hold them, no sex involved. Which currently had only happened once since they first slept together. Who wouldn’t want to make love with these gorgeous men? More importantly, when would she ever find what they were offering her again in her life? She wouldn’t, and she didn’t want to.

“I believe you. And you’re both more than just two men I’m sleeping with. You’re much more.” She took a deep breath and dived in. “I trust you.”

Kieran was there before she could finish, his body so hard, pressing her to the floor, stripping her clothes piece by piece. First her T-shirt, shimmied over her head and accompanied by hair-raising licks and kisses. She felt him on her stomach, on the underside of her breast, and nipping her nipple with his teeth.

Lore cried out, grasping his shoulders, she wanted something her lips could hold on to. Then Nolan was there, whispering soft and tempting encouragements in her ear. Nolan turned her head to meet his kiss, slow and carnal. She felt the men’s attention shoot from her skin all the way down to her core, the walls of her cunt contracting, cream dripping down her thighs. It was so much; it was everything.

“I can smell you,” Kieran moaned around her nipple, his tongue flicking out to tease and torture her. His hands tugged her sweatpants and panties down and off her body, leaving her completely bare while they remained dressed. There was something to be said for putting her naked body on display to two fully dressed men that spoke of a new kind of surrender. It wasn’t just her body she was giving them, but also her trust.

Kieran moved down her stomach and lifted her legs to rest on top of his shoulders. He gave her a devilish smile before leaning toward her pussy and licking it from base to clit.

“Kieran,” she whimpered into Nolan’s mouth, writhing her body farther onto Kieran’s. The man had a gifted tongue.

“Tell us what you want tonight, baby,” Nolan whispered, coming away from the kiss.

Lore didn’t need to think twice before she gave her answer. “I want Kieran to fuck me while you fuck him.” They’d been very careful with their lovemaking the past couple of weeks, showing her little hints here and there of the men’s physical relationship. But she didn’t want hints, she wanted the full monty. Their being together was part of the reason she’d wanted them in the first place.

“Nolan, I want to see you fuck Kieran so hard he can’t concentrate on what he’s doing to me. Don’t ask me if I’m sure, just do it.”