Daye, Rainey - An Unconventional Love (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (6 page)

“What do you want?” Jess asked softly, suddenly concerned.

“Well, we never really discussed how exactly a girlfriend would fit into our lives. And neither of us has had a girlfriend since we got together. Just one-night stands since then. So I think we need to clarify between us what we want with a girlfriend and how she’ll fit into our dynamic.”

“Okay,” Jess said slowly, trying to follow along. “You clarify what you want, and I’ll decide if I can want it also.”

Alex shot him a grateful look for understanding his ramblings before he took a seat in the deep green armchair by the door.

“I don’t want to lose
us
to a girlfriend. You are the love of my life, and I’ll be damned if I lose you,” Alex was firm on this point.

Jess came over and knelt next to his chair. “Ditto, bud, ditto,” he said softly as he stroked Alex’s arm.

Alex took a deep breath and squeezed his hand before continuing. “I’m in love with her, Jess,” he confessed.

“What?” Jess asked, confused.

“You heard me,” Alex said miserably.

“You love her. So do I. She’s a great girl, a great roommate, is smoking hot, and will make a great girlfriend.”

“No,” Alex said slowly and distinctly. “You heard me the first time. Everything you just said about her is true, but I’m
in
love with Maggie.”

He looked at Jesse with real fear in his eyes. “You are the only other person I’ve ever been in love with, and I’m terrified that I’ll lose you over these feelings I have for her. But I’m equally terrified of losing her. However, if I have to keep her strictly as a platonic roommate so I don’t run the risk of losing you, then we need to end this game with her right now.”

“Game?” Jess asked.

“Yeah. Game. It’s all a game to you. I told you I was tired of picking up random women in bars and taking them to no-tell motels or sneaking out of their place in the middle of the night so they couldn’t try to worm a phone number or false promise out of me. So you were the one who suggested that we find a serious girlfriend for ourselves. ‘One we could share,’ you said.”

“Are you saying that you no longer want to share Maggie with me?” Jess asked with a dangerous edge to his voice.

“No, what I’m saying is that I won’t tolerate you viewing Maggie as nothing more than a sex doll.”

“A sex doll?” he sputtered.

“Yeah, someone you pull out when you’re craving a nice, safe, easy piece of pussy and then push away and forget about until the mood strikes you again.”

“Is that how you think I view her?” Jess asked, sounding appalled.

“Well, how
do
you view her then?” Alex asked, confused.

“Alex,” Jess said with a small chuckle. “Why do you think I chose Maggie for us but kept you from meeting her for almost a year?”

“Because you were laying the groundwork.” Alex tonelessly repeated his words from earlier that day.

“No, bud,” Jess replied with a soft smile. “It’s because I fell hard for her from almost the first moment I met her, and I was afraid that if you weren’t okay with my feelings for her, then
I
would lose
you,
and I couldn’t bring myself to chance that.”

“What are you saying?” Alex whispered, almost afraid to hope.

“I’m saying that I’m in love with her also,” Jess admitted.

Alex breathed a sigh of relief, which was almost immediately followed by a string of swear words as he got up and began to pace again.

“Now what’s wrong?” Jess asked.

“What if she doesn’t feel the same way about us? Or what if she’s only interested in one of us? What do we do then? We’ve already lost our own hearts to her. Do we allow the other to be eaten up by jealousy if she doesn’t want both of us?”

“No,” Jess answered firmly. “We come as a package deal. If she can’t accept both of us as her boyfriends, then she doesn’t get either of us.”

“Serious?”

“As the grave. Like you said earlier, you are the love of my life, and I won’t lose you to someone else or let that person come between us. I will fight so hard for you that you will never harbor any doubts about my love.”

Alex drew Jesse to him for a deep kiss as the only way he could express just how much his heartfelt declaration had affected him.

Pulling back with a sigh, Alex said, “So what do we do now? Pull back and leave the status quo alone?”

“Oh, hell no,” Jesse growled. “I am equally willing to go full guns into wooing and winning Maggie to us. Did you see her in there? We were really getting her all excited.”

“Sexual attraction is one thing. If that were our only obstacle, then her seduction would already be a done deal,” Alex stated without ego.

“So…what?” Jess didn’t seem to understand what the problem was.

“We need to define our goals where Maggie is concerned.”

“We already have. We want her as our girlfriend.”

“But we didn’t define what a girlfriend is exactly, when we started on this path,” Alex pointed out.

“Sure we did. Didn’t we?” he asked.

“No. We both just agreed that we wanted to fuck the same girl for the long term and assumed that we could share her between us. We didn’t take into account the possibility we would both fall in love with her, that she might prefer one of us over the other, or that she wouldn’t be open to a polygamous relationship with us.”

“Shit,” Jess breathed after he considered Alex’s words.

“So what do we do?” Alex asked. “We’ve fallen in love with her. Don’t you want her to love us in return?”

“Of course I do,” Jess said, and it was his turn to pace while Alex stood there brooding at the thought of losing Maggie before they had ever had her.

“We proceed as we have been doing,” Jess finally announced.

“What do you mean? We already agreed that we hadn’t adequately defined our goals coming into this.”

“And now we have. We’ve both fallen in love with the woman of our choice. So that’s one obstacle overcome. She already has a ‘friendship’ love for us,” he said, using air quotes, “so it shouldn’t take too much effort on our part to turn it into romantic love. We’re working on seducing her, and by her reactions so far, I’d have to say that we are making good progress toward a sexual relationship with her. So it seems that we are already on the right path, so why alter it now?” Alex considered his words carefully before he nodded. “You’re right. Let’s continue, and if it seems to head south, we’ll regroup and either come up with something else or scrap the idea altogether.”

“Agreed,” Jess replied.

But when they returned to the living room, Maggie was no longer there.

“Next time you have a crisis of conscience, can you at least wait until you’re alone?” Jess grumbled.

Chapter 5

A little over a week passed since the conversation in the living room had taken place. Both men fully expected Maggie to want to resume it, but after a few days had passed with no mention about it from her, they began to grow frustrated.

“What is wrong with Maggie?” Jess groused to Alex. “I thought women were supposed to be inquisitive by nature and drive a guy crazy with their insistent need to talk an issue to death.”

Alex laughed. “Maybe that’s why we fell in love with her in the first place. She broke the mold and isn’t like other women.”

“Maybe,” Jess grumbled, “but I’m starting to get real impatient here.”

“Well, she hasn’t walked out of the room whenever she’s caught us kissing, has she?”

“No, but she doesn’t even seem to notice that we’re there, either. She simply sits down and flips on the TV or opens one of her textbooks and reads, ignoring us,” he pointed out petulantly.

Alex sighed as he began to mirror Jess’s frustration. “So how do you suggest that we move along our seducing her into falling in love with us?”

“I’m thinking, I’m thinking,” Jess muttered as he stalked out of the room.

It wasn’t until two days later when they were both lounging in bed and not thinking about Maggie’s seduction when the perfect opportunity presented itself to them.

When Maggie had first moved in, the three roommates had agreed on one major rule that they all agreed to follow to the letter. A closed door meant no interruptions, no exceptions, while an open door was always to be construed as an invitation to enter without needing to announce oneself. Jess had been propped up in bed, studying for an upcoming test while Alex napped following his so-called volunteer work, which was actually a course requirement for his sociology class. Those little kids had worn him out on the ball field that afternoon, and he had stumbled into their bedroom with a request that Jess wake him in an hour, which was why Jess was currently lying on their bed, studying.

The alarm on his cell phone gave a soft chime, causing his brow to twitch in protest at being disturbed so soon. It went blessedly silent as Jess, who had suffered Alex’s anger before when he let him sleep in, must have switched it off before he shook Alex’s shoulder.

With a groan, Alex rolled over and pulled the pillow over his head. Undeterred, Jess leaned over and nipped his shoulder. Alex slapped at him and burrowed deeper into the bed.

Laughing, Jess pulled the blanket off him and slapped him playfully on his ass.

Alex growled and rolled over.

Jess leaned down and nibbled on his throat. “Get up, sleepyhead,” he breathed in his ear before he sucked on the lobe.

Groaning, Alex rasped, “I am up.”

“No, you’re not,” Jess teased.

“Yes, I am,” Alex replied, taking Jess’s hand and leading it to his groin.

With an appreciative moan, Jess began massaging him through his shorts while Alex reached up and pulled his head down to his for a seeking kiss.

Jess had just slipped his hand inside Alex’s shorts when they both heard the feminine gasp coming from their open bedroom door.

Quickly pulling away from each other in surprise, they adjusted their clothing while they turned to see Maggie standing in the doorway, staring at them with a glazed look in her eyes.

“You need something, Mags?” Alex asked after clearing his throat.

“What? Oh, uh, yeah,” she said, shaking her head to clear it. “I was just about to throw in a load of whites and thought I would come up to see if you had anything to go in it.”

Jess jumped off the bed, frantically adjusting his erection as he headed toward their bathroom. “I’ll go check the hamper,” he announced as he hurried out of the room.

Alex watched Maggie lick her lips while she watched Jess leave the room before she turned back toward him, and his embarrassment at having been walked in on when they weren’t actually expecting it left him abruptly.

Suppressing his grin, he said softly, “I’m sorry if we embarrassed you, Maggie. We hadn’t intended to fool around when we came in here, or we would have closed the door.”

“I know,” Maggie replied as she took a tentative step forward. “I should have just backed out without interrupting, but I was so stunned that I froze on the spot instead.”

“Stunned? Not offended?” Alex asked, seeking clarification.

Maggie frowned at him. “Why would I be offended?”

“Because some people would say that Jess and I are freaks.”