Emma Holly (27 page)

He shuddered as Eric instructed Charity on the proper lubrication of the toy.

"The key is to go slow," he said. "That jade can't sense where it's going, so you need to give him plenty of time to relax. Don't push against resistance. Wait until the shaft slides in naturally."

The words alone elicited a gasp of desire. Charity kissed B.G.'s nape before she started, a tender press she followed with a nip. The way the bite streaked through him had him bowing his head.

Nothing in him resisted her. It seemed as if nothing could. The jade slid into him inch by inch and then was still. The pressure felt good. Too good. He wanted to groan, but the sound stuck in his throat.

"Good," Eric said. "Now, remember, the first inch is loaded with nerves and, after that, he'll feel the friction most over his prostate, which is toward the front. Don't overdo it, though. The longer this lasts, the better his climax will be."

"Can I move it now?" she asked, the question hushed.

"Not yet," Eric said. "Wait until I start."

His words revealed an important truth: Charity wasn't completely in charge; they really were doing this together. Physically, Eric could have overwhelmed B.G. at any time. Emotionally, neither he nor Charity could succeed alone.

As B.G. tried to absorb this, Eric came back around him, sitting on his heels with his knees spread in a V. He was close enough that B.G. could feel his breath on his groin.

"Sh," he said, rubbing B.G.'s hip as he shivered. "You're not still cold, are you?"

"No," B.G. gasped, all he could get out.

He wasn't cold, but he was glad when Charity wrapped her warm, soft body against his side. He needed the extra bracing when Eric lowered his head to his cock. Eric's mouth was wet and strong, the drag of lips and tongue a very welcome pressure.

He'd believed nothing could surpass it, but then the smooth jade form pulled back inside him, and everything came clear. This was what he had been waiting for, what he had feared: when pleasure stole his very will. His head fell back on Charity's shoulder as his fingers twisted uncontrollably in his bonds.

Without even thinking, he wound the slack in the ties around his wrists. He was lifting his knees off the bolster, the effort as necessary as breath. The beams of the canopy creaked as he swayed.

"That's it," she said into his ear as she pushed the toy back in. "Show me how you fight."

Maybe he was fighting. Maybe this was the best he could do. Eric was taking him deeper into his mouth, his hand coming around to help Charity. With his guidance, her handling of the dildo became more deft, the sensations it roused more intense. Whether she knew it or not, she was catching his prostate with every slide. B.G. made a sound, a half-swallowed cry. Her legs straddled his hip, parting the front of her robe. He could feel how wet she was, how soft and feminine. Her nipples pressed him through the silk.

He should have come. His balls were tight with it, his cock aching in surges with his pulse.

Someone pinched his nipple, and he didn't know who it was.

"Twist it," Eric's voice buzzed against his crown. "He likes that."

The twist made him gulp for air, made him twitch and jolt inside Eric's mouth. He swayed, but it was the world that seemed to tilt. Charity was kissing her way down his side, bending farther and farther forward, sucking hard enough to leave marks. He cried out as the dildo moved faster.

When she fit her head next to Eric's, he knew he was gone. She didn't even have to suck the side of his scrotum that she could reach. When she did, though, when she did, she caught the first burst of lightning that was his climax and sent it supernova. The orgasm literally blinded him, light exploding behind his eyes as ecstasy tried to turn his body inside out. He came so hard he couldn't breathe until it was over, his ribs squeezing far too hard against his lungs.

"Lord," he said when he finally could draw in air.

Eric had released him, and Charity sat back as well, grinning up at him in a manner that was both bashful and pleased. He couldn't resist the combination. He twisted around to kiss her until he had to stop for breath again. When he let her go, Eric was holding her hand.

B.G.
looked, well,
dazed
was the only word Eric could think of—not unhappy, but as if he wasn't sure what had happened.

"You okay?" Eric said.

B.G. was staring at his hand. Until that moment, Eric hadn't realized he'd reached for Charity. The gesture had been too natural to think about.

Now he dropped her fingers. That, oddly enough, felt awkward.

"Let me get you out of these cuffs," Eric said, rising to cover the strangeness. The ties were hard to undo. The pressure B.G. had exerted had pulled them tight, reminding Eric how unaccustomed he was to being on the receiving end of bondage. When his friend rolled his head around his shoulders, Eric worried he'd grown uncomfortable with the delay.

"I could cut them," he offered.

"No need," B.G. said with a cryptic smile that was more like his usual. "I can wait."

He rubbed his wrists when he was finally free. Eric's brows went up at the welts. "You chafed yourself."

"It's all right," B.G. said, then grinned full out. "You could say I wasn't thinking."

Eric was already swinging off the bed. "I'll get something to put on that. Something cool."

As he rummaged through the bathroom cabinet, he heard Charity speak to B.G.

"
Are
you okay?"

"Yes," he said, warmth and indulgence coloring his voice.

"If we freaked you out…"

"Only in a good way."

When Eric returned with the antiseptic, Charity was sitting on the bed while B.G. stood beside it. B.G.

was squeezing her shoulder reassuringly. She looked past him to Eric, and his steps faltered. Her expression was just a smile, but something in it made him stop.

She loves me
, Eric thought, too stunned to react. She might not know it herself, and who knew how long it would last, but in that instant, she loved him.

He'd known there was a chance this might happen, but he'd never guessed it would strike him like a thunderbolt.

"I… found a spray," he said, holding it out.

Charity hopped up to take it from him. "I'll do it. This kind of thing is girls' work."

B.G. offered her his hands as trustingly as he had before, but Eric could tell he'd mastered himself again.

He watched the top of Charity's head as she fixed him up.

"Should we stay?" she asked.

"Stay?" This startled B.G. The hand she'd just finished spraying jerked back.

"Yeah," she said. "Like a sleepover."

B.G. touched her hair, then met her gaze when it rose. In that moment, Eric saw his friend as if he were a stranger—a dignified, supremely isolated stranger. Eric wondered if anyone had ever related to him as easily as Charity.

He hadn't himself. He'd always been in awe of the great genius, always slightly subordinate. All at once, that seemed a terrible mistake.

"We'd like to stay," he said as he stepped forward.

Only B.G.'s head turned. The light from the fire played over the planes of his face, his inscrutable eyes as dark as ink. Eric sensed the turning of his inner wheels, though what B.G. was thinking he alone knew.

"You should then," he said after the slightest hesitation. "Both of you should stay."

They
had a second round, sort of. Eric rolled her beneath him on B.G.'s bed, thrusting slowly and smoothly into her. He was steel-hard from waiting, from the things they'd seen and done to B.G., and Charity almost melted at the feel of him gliding in. She supposed the straightforward, missionary-style lovemaking was all his body could handle. She could tell he was into it. His jaw was bunched, and his gaze never left hers. Those gray eyes of his were intense, their focus as arousing as anything that came before. Despite the attention, she knew he was far from oblivious to his friend.

B.G. stretched out beside them with his head propped on one hand—lazy, catlike, and more than close enough to touch. Somehow she knew he wouldn't, an understanding Eric seemed to share.

B.G. was there to watch.

The arrangement was strange but sexy. B.G. appeared to be memorizing what Eric did, maybe figuring out what Eric had found she liked. The tempting conclusion was that he meant to use the knowledge to take back the advantage some people might have said he'd lost.

Except he didn't act disadvantaged. He acted interested.

When Eric made her come strongly enough to arch up, all he did was smile.

The vulnerability she'd seen in him before seemed as much a dream as Mosswood's ghosts.

He waited until Eric shuddered in climax, then touched the curve of his lower back. "Sleep," he said, sliding a hand to his flank.

Eric hung over her on his elbows, trembling from the force of his long-delayed release. A bead of sweat rolled off the tip of his nose. "I'm awake," he said, but his eyes were drifting even then.

"It's all right," B.G. assured him. "I'll handle the post-coital cuddle and chat."

"I knew it!" Charity snickered. "It does take two men to treat a woman right."

Eric mumbled something and withdrew, already so relaxed he had to secure the rubber with one hand.

He tossed it into a trash container whose location he must have been familiar with.

"Thanks," he said, perhaps to them both, after which he kissed her crookedly on the cheek. Then, as only a man would, he rolled over and conked out, without—so far as she could tell—even thinking about a shower.

Charity thought about it, and settled for a quick turn under the spray and a rubdown with a steaming towel. B.G.'s bathroom was luxurious. He'd abandoned his French theme for a more monolithic, modern style. The same rammed earth walls that graced her bedroom were present here. The floors were sealed concrete, allowing the multi-headed shower to remain open. Intrigued by this glimpse of B.G.'s most private retreat, she poked around enough to find doors leading to a sauna and a Jacuzzi.

Apparently, living the high life kept you clean.

Despite her dawdling, her host was sitting up when she returned. He lifted an arm for her and smiled, making it impossible to do anything but snuggle into his hold. Not that she had any particular urge to resist. Eric was on the other side, sleeping like a baby. B.G. had pulled the sheet over him, and now he pulled it over her. The pillows behind them were soft as clouds.

As if they'd done this every night for years, his fingers combed gently, soothingly through her hair.

"This is nice," she said, feeling both peaceful and oddly alert.

"Yes, it is," B.G. agreed. "Almost nice enough to make a man believe other people can make him happy."

Charity craned her head up from his chest. "Are you saying they can't?"

"Strictly speaking, as emotional entities, human beings are self-contained. We believe other people's actions cause us to be happy—or miserable, as the case may be—but it is our thoughts about their actions that create the hormonal responses we interpret as happiness."

This mouthful made Charity think she and Eric really had rattled him—either that or put him too much at ease. B.G. hadn't brought out his geek-speak for a while.

"So every man is an island?" she tried to ask intelligently.

"Only from a Newtonian perspective, where people are viewed as discrete objects. The quantum view would say we exist in a continuous energy soup, where people—indeed, all forms of matter—are merely areas of higher vibrational concentration that act and are acted upon as would be expected of solid things. Because this solidity is an illusion, our brain waves have no trouble radiating outward, thus conveying our thoughts to the universe. We seem as though we're separate, but we are not."

Charity couldn't help laughing. "B.G., either man is an island or a soup. You can't have it both ways."

"Yes, I can. Both views are valid within their own context. Moreover, they lead to the same conclusion.

If we are self-contained, no one can 'make' us happy. If we are concentrations of waves within a continuum, then we attract happiness-inspiring events by strengthening our focus on that emotion. Joy draws joy, and misery more cause for the same. Either way, we are responsible for our own state."

If she hadn't been lying against him, she was convinced he would have crossed his arms. Then again, with a philosophy like that, he needed to be tough. To take his premise to its logical conclusion, every experience he encountered would be of his own making. He'd have no one to blame for anything but himself—which seemed pretty harsh, if you asked her.

Amused by such extremism, she patted the hard, flat muscle of his right pec. "All right, Mr. Genius, have it both ways. But if one person could make another person happy, I'd be honored to have given it a shot for you."

She'd actually rendered him speechless. His mouth gaped slightly, and he stared at her with suspiciously tear-bright eyes.