The Pairing(57)

“As long as you do the same,” I say. I feel something here, something dangerous. I wonder if Kit feels it too.

“And if he wants us both?” Kit asks.

Well . . . then I guess I’m having sex with Kit today.

“We’ll do thumbs,” I say, meaning the system we used when we were fooling around somewhere too quiet or too loud for verbal check-ins. Thumb on the chin for green light, thumb on the earlobe for red. Kit nods.

“Okay. How do we keep score?”

“Well, if we all have sex together, I think it cancels out,” I say. “PEMDAS.”

“Sure, no points, then,” Kit says, charitably allowing this reasoning. “But if it’s just one of us, there should be a bonus. Double points.”

“I’ll take that action,” I say.


Up on the private deck, émile uncorks a bottle of two-thousand-euro champagne, and we discover that he’s surprisingly good company. He’s interesting in the way only a very wealthy man can be, full of stories of impossible views and spiritual yurt retreats and five-digit tasting menus on private islands accessible only by boat. For a long time, we just talk—about art and wine and travel, about Malibu, about the horse ranch in the Dolomites he built with his own hands.

To me, he gets sexier by the second. I’ve been around plenty of rich fucks, and few of them take the pride émile does in doing things for himself. He can filet a fish and sear a steak, saddle a horse and mix a mean old-fashioned. I catch Kit’s eye and think he’s fallen under the spell too. In a way, émile almost reminds me of an older Kit, a collector of the finest things and richest experiences.

Actually, now that I’m considering it, I see an older me in him, too.

“What is the point of having everything,” émile asks us, luxuriantly sweeping his gaze over us, “if you’re not open to everything?”

There it is. The reason we’re really here.

We glide easily through the preamble, the feeling each other out, the flirting. It’s nobody’s first time, and all three of us are loose-limbed and quick to confidence. Then émile calls us a beautiful couple, and Kit says, “Oh, we’re not together.”

I shoot him a glare, and he quickly recovers.

“I mean, we’re not exclusively together.”

“I am glad to hear that,” émile says. “I wonder if you would let me watch.”

Of all the scenarios discussed, I didn’t consider the possibility of émile simply wanting to watch us together. I glance at Kit, wondering if he’ll back down, but he looks calm, so I decide to be calm. I reach down to the platter of fruit laid on the table between the canvas-cushioned daybed where Kit and I sit and émile’s deep leather chair.

“What would you like to see?” Kit asks.

The grape I’m grasping nearly slips out of my fingers.

émile shifts the ice in his cocktail glass. He turns his gaze to me.

“Does he know how to show you pleasure?”

What a fucking question.

I look at Kit as I answer, daring him to keep his composure. “Yes.”

“Will you show me?” émile asks Kit.

Kit’s eyes search my face. He’s deferring to me, letting me decide what happens next. If this is a game of chicken, I won’t lose. But I also won’t beg.

“I’d rather him teach you,” I say to émile.

I watch as émile climbs to his feet and takes off his shirt, revealing sculpted, tanned muscles, including what could undeniably be described as cum gutters. He tosses the fine linen over his chair and turns to me with his hand offered, his manicure pristine but his palms meaty with a working man’s muscle.

I’m tracking Kit’s reaction as I let émile pull me to my feet. I see the way he leans forward, how he sucks on the rim of his champagne flute.

When émile presses his lips to mine, I taste custom leather interiors and syrup-soaked fruit. He kisses with the directness of a man who has fucked more people than I’ve ever met and the thoroughness of a lover who still cares about making it good. I find myself looking forward to when he’s kissed Kit and we can compare notes.

Kit watches it all.

He parts his thighs at an instruction from émile, and I have to stop my reflex to praise him for how well he takes directions. Like this, his little gold swim trunks leave nothing to the imagination, and I can see just how much he’s into this. My eyes skim over his taut stomach, up the graceful planes of his chest and the gentle curves of his biceps and shoulders, to his mouth, slack with anticipation, and his dark eyes, which are fixed on my face.

I touch my chin with my thumb. Kit does it back. Green light.

“Good,” émile says, unaware of this little conversation. He guides me down between Kit’s splayed legs on the daybed, my back to Kit’s bare chest, my legs falling open against the sun-warmed insides of Kit’s thighs. While my senses are overwhelmed with all of that, he leans in and kisses Kit.

It’s happening inches from my face, so close that I can feel the vibration of Kit’s moan in my own chest and see the pink flash of Kit’s tongue as it slips into émile’s mouth. I’m so thankful for champagne, for reckless spite and the rush of salt water, because watching them doesn’t sting like it might have yesterday. It makes me wet.