“There you are!”
The voice startled him silent, as did the appearance of Paige, topless, next to him. She slapped her hand down on his shoulder.
“I’ve been looking all over for you!” she said, making eye contact with Amanda. She hooked her hands under his arms and stood him up. The room spun, and he tried to remember if he’d spoken to Paige tonight. Or at all since the incident, for that matter.
“What are you doing here?” he asked and watched her make an apologetic expression at Amanda, who’d crossed her arms.
“Rescuing you,” said Paige, a terse edge to her own voice.
He pulled away from her. “I don’t need rescuing.”
“Oh, god, you do.”
Amanda leaned forward across the bar. “I think it’s time for him to—”
“Sorry, Mandy,” said Jennifer. “I promise I’ll take care of this.”
When she grabbed him again, it was by the wrist, and her grip felt rough. Her nails, painted purple, he noticed, dug into the underside of his wrist.
“I was doing just fine,” he said as she pulled him toward the stairs.
“Yeah, but you weren’t,” she said, yanking him up.
They emerged from the basement into the hallway off the kitchen, empty just now. Paige shoved him out of the staircase and he hit the wall, then spun to face her. “I don’t even fucking know where Jennifer is.”
Paige clapped her hand to her face and shook her head, marveling at him. “Good lord, you’re far gone.”
She shoved him farther into the empty kitchen, leaning him against the island in the center. He watched her glance around.
This woman who had cut them off.
Time to give her a piece of his mind, now that his censor had abandoned him. “It’s all so easy for—”
He saw stars. Purple and blue blotches. A ringing in his ear. He looked back and she leaned close, looking into his eyes. The ringing got louder before it subsided, and Ryan realized what had happened. Paige had slapped him. “What the fu—”
His head swung the opposite way, and now his left ear rang to match his right. The purple bloomed all over the stark white kitchen. He put both of his hands on the island behind him to keep from falling over. He didn’t want to be that guy at the party.
Ryan took a deep breath and glared up at Paige.
“You need to snap out of whatever the fuck that was downstairs,” she said. She reached out and grabbed his cheeks, pointing his face directly at hers. “Now you listen to me very carefully. You are at someone else’s house. They invited you into their home—”
“You invited us,” he replied, bitterly.
She looked at him for a moment, sadness on her face. “Yes. We did.” The anger returned. “We vouched for you! These are our friends! You can’t just come into this world and behave like—”
“I thought we were your friends.”
“Ryan,” she sighed, sounding defeated.
“You don’t call us back.”
Paige folded her arms across her chest, looking suddenly self-conscious about her lack of clothing. “I don’t,” she said, then looked away. “Look, we…” Her expression hardened again and she turned back to him. “You just showed up at our house! We never got to see those two, so we wanted one night to ourselves with— And then you freaked out!”
Ryan slid down the island to the ground. He let his insides spill out. “It got so lonely so quickly.”
“What?”
“Here. When Jennifer left.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Like I wasn’t worth anything else, without her.” He turned away when he felt tears in his eyes. Didn’t want to give her one more thing, one more reason to think he wasn’t good enough. He steeled himself and stood back up, taking deep breaths. “And now she’s off fucking Glen.”
“Jennifer?” asked Paige.
“Yeah.”
“Jennifer’s with Bruce.”
He blinked and turned to look at her finally. Her expression had moved from anger to concern. But it had come too late, hadn’t it? All of this, too late.
The center didn’t hold.
41
Ryan always liked to rib her about enjoying “mustache rides” when Bruce went down on her. Jennifer had to admit that she really did enjoy the extra tickle that Bruce’s mustache gave her clitoral hood. He moved lower to slide his tongue all the way in and she could feel the bristly mustache itself against her lips and clit.
While she had missed that sensation since they’d stopped seeing each other, what she wanted more than anything else right now was to feel Bruce’s body on top of hers, his legs between her thighs, his cock moving in and out of her. She tore open a condom sitting on the bedside table and pulled out the latex sheath.
She reached down with her other hand and tapped him on the head. He paused and tilted his head up so just his nose and eyes were above her bare mound. The crinkles at the corners of his eyes suggested a smile on his face. She made a “come hither” gesture and showed him the condom.
“You sure?” he asked.
Jennifer nodded.
Bruce moved his body up hers, crawling and kissing as he went, around her belly button, below her breasts, one nipple, then the other, her sternum, her neck, her chin, her lips. He lifted himself so he could see her face. “We did miss you,” he said.
“Shut up and fuck me,” she said with a wink. She reached down, pinching the tip of the condom, and slid it down the length of his shaft. He watched her do it, and then watched her take his cock in her hand and press it between her labia until it disappeared inside.
Jennifer leaned her head back and closed her eyes. She tried to experience the moment fully, focusing only on this set of sensations. Just the sound of his breathing, the occasional grunt of pleasure, the smell of his musk, the sliding and filling inside her, the tingles his cock sent up her labia to her clit, the deeper feeling inside when the large head of his cock slid against her g-spot.
For a moment, she felt everything could be as it had been before. The four of them. A team of lovers. The best of friends. Without the unsettling overshadowing of what had—
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“Whoa, Ryan! What’s wrong?”
Jennifer’s eyes snapped open as Bruce pulled back. She felt the pop and vacuum sensation as his engorged head pulled out of her. The overhead light snapped on, flooding the room. She squinted at the brightness. Her dress hit her in the face, and she realized Ryan had thrown it at her.
“Get dressed.”
“What’s going on, Ryan? Paige?”
Paige is here? Jennifer opened her eyes again and saw Ryan, his button-down shirt over his shoulders but open at the front. Pants on, belt unbuckled. Paige stood behind him, a look of horror on her face. What had happened?
A pall of shame settled down around Jennifer. Her enjoyment, had it been too much? Was she not supposed to actually get what she wanted?
“Jennifer,” said Ryan, snapping his fingers in front of her face.
She focused on his hand and then his face. Fury there. Fury she didn’t understand. What had happened?
“We’re leaving,” he said.
“Ryan,” Bruce put his hands on Ryan’s shoulders. She saw him throw them off. He whirled around to face Bruce as Jennifer stood up. She tried to sort out which end of her dress was the top and which was the bottom.
“Real nice. Won’t answer a single phone call, but will fuck my wife at the first opportunity?”
Jennifer pulled the dress over her head and stood to adjust. She’d just pushed her arms through when she felt Ryan grab her wrist and yank. “Let’s go.”