“Why?” I asked in a hoarse whisper. “Why’d you do this?”
Simultaneously, the men got off the bed and stood up, one on each side. “We thought it time to move our relationship to another level,” Jeff said as they moved toward me.
“We need more of you than once a month. It’s not enough,” Steve
added. “We want a relationship outside of Inferno with you. And we wanted to show you that there’s more here than just…” He shrugged.
Both men drew up close to me, but didn’t reach out to touch me.
Part of me wanted their touch, the connection. The other part of me, the bigger part I prayed, was glad for the small distance.
“More than just dicks and cum,” I finished for him, looking him straight in those gorgeous blue eyes.
He nodded.
“We can do twice a month,” I offered. “Once a week if you’re available. I wouldn’t mind more time with you, either, but I didn’t ask for…for what you did tonight. That’s not what I need.” I looked at Jeff.
“Though, it felt good, I prefer when you just do what you want to do and fuck me into oblivion.”
“I was doing what I wanted to do,” Jeff said. “I’ve wanted to do it for over a year.” His firm jaw seemed made of stone. His dark as night eyes glittered with a dangerous fire. “And what I want is this side of it, too. We want all of you, not just the tie‐me, flay‐me, fuck‐me side of you.”
“You don’t know me. I don’t know you. Sex doesn’t make a relationship.” Didn’t I tell my clients this on a daily basis? Sex was important, but it was only one‐tenth of a real, fulfilling relationship. An important part, but there was so very much more.
“What would make a relationship between us, then?” Steve asked,
drawing my attention back to him.
“How will you ever know if we are relationship material if you don’t give it a try?” Jeff asked.
I shook my head. “How can we have a relationship when I don’t know anything about you?” I nearly cried, then wrapped my arms around myself, a defensive move because suddenly, standing there naked having this conversation unnerved me.
Steve began unbuttoning his flannel shirt. I forced myself not to move, told myself he wasn’t about to attack me even as a tiny bit of fear trickled down my spine, tightening my scalp.
“My name’s Jeff Harding. I’m a chiropractor with a private practice in the Chandler Building downtown. I’m thirty‐eight years old, never been married, no kids, no STDs, and own a house with Steve in Blaire Estates.”
My mouth fell open. Blaire Estates was too pricy even for my not‐so‐modest income.
Steve swept off his shirt and wrapped it around my shoulders. “My name’s Steve Harding, Jeff’s cousin on our fathers’ side. I’m a lapidary.”
“Besides his skill with semi‐precious stones, he’s a damn fine metal sculptor, too, but he hates to admit to that,” Jeff threw out.
“Now you know us,” Steve said.
I put my arms through the sleeves of Steve’s shirt and wrapped it around me like a robe. It was nearly long enough, falling to my mid thigh.
It was warm and held that sweet, musky scent I knew as uniquely Steve’s.
I forced myself not to breathe deep.
“We’re probably not even compatible out of bed,” I said in futile effort to maintain the emotional distance for which I strove, but I felt it slipping. Steve’s bare chest, with its light sprinkling of curly hair over his pecs, drew my gaze. They were such perfectly, beautifully sculpted men.
“You’re a sex therapist,” Jeff said, snaring my gaze onto him.
“What’s your hang‐up?”
Fear of intimacy.
I knew the answer. I’d been married in the past…briefly, and it hadn’t been all my ex’s fault the marriage didn’t work. Besides the difference in our sexual needs and wants, we’d never talked, never communicated. I felt that surviving a bad marriage had helped me become a better therapist. I knew the stuff that went on in a marriage that fucked everything else up. I might have been a sex therapist, but a good portion of the counseling I gave was marriage and relationship, not sexual. To be sexually intimate, in that deep, loving way that couples craved, all the other shit needed to be dealt with first, because sex didn’t solve problems.
Steve cleared his throat. I looked at him. There was no glint of lust in his eyes. No, he was filled with tenderness, and God damn me, I wanted to fall against that hard chest and bury myself in forever.
Instead, I stood up straight and tried not to think about the fact I wore his shirt and nothing else. “I don’t come here for therapy. Not the mind‐fuck kind. If you two can’t take what I have to offer, then I guess it’s over.”
Jeff moved with the speed of a striking cobra. He grabbed my shoulders and pulled me against his hard, lean body and ground his mouth against mine. I gasped in shock, and he swept his tongue into my mouth. I groaned in response to the seductive invasion and grabbed the front of his shirt so I didn’t land on my ass when my knees gave way. Just as fast as it started, he pulled away and turned me. Steve was there, wrapped me in a huge bear hug, and kissed me with just as much passion and Jeff had. My knees did give out then, and he held me up, against him, as he tasted me.
Passion coursed through me from just the feel of his arms and mouth, the solid thickness of his chest trapping my arms between us, and the length of his cock pressed hard against my abdomen.
When he pulled his head back, he looked into my eyes. Dazed, I stared back at him.
Then Jeff was there, behind me, pressed against me, his warm breath teasing my ear. “Do you want this to be over, Chloe? Do you want to walk out of here tonight alone? Or will you give us a chance to prove to you we’d make you good companions?”
I dropped my head forward against Steve’s shoulder.
“We’ll still fuck you stupid anytime you want,” Steve said softly.
Jeff chuckled a little, but it sounded a slightly pained. “We’re definitely not opposed to that.”
Steve sighed. “We’re not asking for commitment…yet.”
“We just need more. Don’t you sometimes go home empty inside after a night here with us? Feel as though there’s something missing?”
I wanted to deny it. In fact, in direct answer to the question, no. I didn’t go home feeling that way. I always felt renewed and revived after a night with them. It was the next day, or sometimes several days after, that I felt empty, lonely, filled with longing I refused to give into and admit.
Jeff petted my hair as if I were a child. “We’ve searched our whole lives for a woman as free with her body as you are. One who craves what we like to give. To give what we desire to take.”
“We’ve searched together and alone for someone,” Steve said softly, “and now we’ve found her, and she’s sexually everything we’ve always dreamed of, but we need more than her body.”
“We need her heart.”
I started to shake my head again in denial, but Steve squeezed me, and Jeff tugged a lock of my hair.
“You have a heart in there, Chloe. We know you do,” Jeff said.
“Why not take it out for a spin? Let us in for a little while, give us a shot. If we don’t fulfill you, all of you, then you walk. Easy as that. We don’t want to trap you or hurt you in any way.”
“Give us a chance,” Steve whispered against the crown of my head.
“Just a little one.”
It hurt to even contemplate unlocking those barriers I’d put into place years earlier. Closed for business. But their offer was so seductive, and if I refused and let them go, walked away from them, I might not find anyone who could fulfill any part of me, sexually, emotionally, spiritually.