I clench my molars as I look at him. There’s sincerity in those dark eyes, haunting me with how deep they are, as if I could lose myself in them.
“I don’t think you understand what I’m saying, Drake. We want you to stay. Next time, please…stay.”
My brow furrows as I glare at him. He wants me to stay to watch him have sex with Isabel? It doesn’t make any sense. I thought for sure he’d appreciate me leaving, so this is not the reaction I expected at all.
“Next time?” I ask, watching his expression.
His hand is still on my shoulder, his fingers still pressing into my neck, and he squeezes gently as he lets out a sigh. “Tell me you want to do that again.”
There’s something loaded in his request, something more I’m not totally grasping, but I’m too eager to answer his question before he thinks I’m hesitating and rescinds his offer. “I want to do it again,” I reply.
Finally, he pulls his hand away, and my shoulders deflate. I don’t let it show as I turn toward my drink and pick it up. He’s swirling what’s left of his bourbon in the ice-filled glass. “That wasn’t weird to you? Seeing me with her?”
“Strangely…no.”
“Or hearing me say how much I liked it. How much I liked her.”
He chuckles. “Stop trying to scare me away, Drake. It didn’t bother me.”
“I don’t get it, man. If I thought about another man touching her…” My fists clench just thinking about it.
“But you’re not just another man.”
“You know she and I talked about some rules today,” I say, glancing at him.
“She told me.”
“And we’re never going to do anything when you’re not around.”
“I know.”
He turns toward me again, but this time, his hand stays away from my shoulder. “Drake, it’s not about you being with her. It’s about me watching. That part didn’t bother you?”
I think it over for a moment, but it’s an easy answer. I’m not quite sure if he’s ready to hear it, though. Oh well…fuck it. “It didn’t bother me at all. I really fucking liked you watching.”
He swallows, his eyes staying on my face. “Good.”
It’s true. I loved him watching, but what I can’t say is that I wish he’d do more than watch. He’s definitely not ready for that. Because once he gets involved, then it’s not just a simple fantasy fulfilled anymore. Then it’s something else entirely.
Rule #18: The good ones always remember the coconuts.
Isabel
“Where are we?” I ask groggily as I wake up from a nap, stretched across the back seat, using Hunter’s sweatshirt as a makeshift pillow.
“Somewhere in Kentucky,” Drake replies. Hunter is behind the wheel, which is funny because he was definitely in the passenger seat when I fell asleep. I must have really been out of it. Sleeping with two men really takes it out of you, I guess.
Who am I?
If my parents could see me now, I think with a laugh, blushing for the tenth time today as I relive the memory of last night. I didn’t even know I was the two-guys-in-one-night kind of girl. Or is that just how people perceive me? Was I just conditioned to think of myself as modest and quiet because that’s how I was raised?
My parents were modest upper-middle-class accountants, and I was their only child. But I think even I was a regretful incident because my childhood was spent feeling mostly ignored and brushed off. Never overly affectionate or attentive, I found my role models of love and affection in novels. What started as Little Women and Emma, quickly became Flowers in the Attic and The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty. Every wicked curiosity and dirty thought I had stayed buried deep inside me and the space between my bed and my mattress hid more smutty romance novels than I can count.
Everyone thought I was so knowledgeable and astute because of my countless trips to the library and second-hand bookstores, but only the librarian knew the truth. Oh, I was knowledgeable all right. Knowledgeable in the many eclectic terms used to describe an erect penis.
On the day I passed Hunter and Drake for the first time, I was returning books three through seven of a popular romance series in hopes they would have any of books eight through sixteen. I was like an addict in desperate need of a hit.
Then, I met my own alpha. A man who could show me everything I had ever wanted to explore while never making me feel like a deviant for what I wanted. Even if he did act annoyingly like a gentleman in the early days. I was only seventeen when we met and although he started talking to me at that time, he made me wait the four months between then and my eighteenth birthday before he would touch me.