Now he was done, and as Joe took his place on her left side, Trevor on her right, the three settled into what he’d come to think of as The Movie Shot. Imagining them from above, suspended in space, he figured they looked like a group of twenty-somethings who were well f**ked and damn pleased with themselves.
As they should be.
And yet Joe never was.
“That was amazing,” Trevor said preemptively, as if he could control the mood by saying something first that would be positive. Like starting conversation on a good note would neutralize anything negative that Joe might say.
Didn’t work.
“That’s what you get all the time while I’m in Philly.” The words felt like a cold bucket of ice water all over Trevor’s body, and he hadn’t signed up to take the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.
Darla squeezed Trevor’s thigh with a warning, but also a tacit statement of agreement that Joe was being an ass**le.
“Whenever you come home, we’re here,” she whispered in Joe’s ear, loud enough for Trevor to hear, but it was too late. His entire body had gone rigid with suppressed rage. Way to ruin a nice moment, he thought. Then again, Joe was good at that.
He was pretty much the expert, in fact.
“‘Home’? This shithole is home?”
“You lived in this shithole before, so what happened? It doesn’t meet your new, snooty Philly standards?” The words ripped out of Trevor’s mouth before he could help it. And Darla’s hand on his thigh couldn’t stop him, either.
Joe just snorted and snuggled in with Darla more. Trevor didn’t feel jealousy the way Joe seemed to, but the combination of the sneering words and taking casual advantage of her nice, wet, warm body made Trevor sit up and slice the air with quick movement, eyes burning a hole through Joe’s head.
“C’mon. You can’t take a joke?” Joe’s taunt raised Trevor’s anger level from rage to explosive, and he didn’t do explosive. Darla could sense it, too—he knew from the way the corners of her mouth turned down, and how her green eyes went stormy, that this was as bad as he thought.
He couldn’t calm down. Couldn’t chill, couldn’t back off, either. Always the appeaser, and generally willing to give himself a few seconds of distance between hearing one of Joe’s wisecracks and reacting to it, he was out of patience.
Finally.
“Fuck you, Joe,” Trevor ground out like he was chewing rusty nails. There went the shine off the afterglow. Pfft. Gone in one quick sentence.
“Nope. Sorry. All f**ked out. Darla took care of that.”
Trevor’s breathing was labored, the whoosh of air being pushed in and out by fury as loud as a tornado rushing through his ears. Darla peeled Joe off her and sat up, eyes wide with alarm. He could feel the hair on his body stand on end, as if that same electrical current that had just fueled so much passion moments ago had gone rogue, now turning dangerous. Destructive.
Lethal.
He wasn’t going to really kill Joe, of course. But if he could murder that f**ker’s sense of entitlement, self-importance, and most of all, the little troll of extraordinary negativity that inhabited Joe like a parasite, then maybe he’d get somewhere.
Because he just couldn’t take it anymore.
“How in the hell are you so jealous?” he spat out, knowing it would make Joe take the bait. “We share. We’re a threesome. That comes with the territory of what we are, together. You’re not supposed to be like this when you choose to be with me and Darla, you ass**le.”
A few beats of silence. Trevor stared, hard, at Joe’s face, searching for a crack. A fissure. Some hint that Joe felt something.
“Not jealous. Just stating the facts,” Joe said, calmly stretching his carved abs, arms reaching up for the pillow beneath his head, Darla involuntarily turning to watch. Joe was dark and tanned, compact and marbled, while Trevor was tall and blond, with more bulk on him. Darla said she loved having her yin and yang, her men as different as could be, giving her everything she needed.
And Trevor had to agree that the three of them worked well together, like puzzle pieces that fit perfectly, but there was a fourth person in the room right now. Joe’s negativity was an unwanted, interfering stalker, like an ex who can’t let go.
The blasé attitude Joe exuded was completely manufactured, Trevor knew. He was faking it.
Joe faked lots of things.
Trevor knew how to make him be real, though. And that was the most dangerous thing he could do right now—make Joe emotionally vulnerable. Being in an intimate relationship with someone meant you knew every single one of their soft spots, and there was a tacit agreement that you just do not—ever—poke those spots with anything sharp.
Joe had broken that agreement, except the sharp thing he poked with was his tongue. And not in the good kind of way.
“Hey, guys, don’t do this,” Darla pleaded. Her voice held a gentle tone that made two layers of anger melt off Trevor’s body. Unfortunately, Joe had made seventeen more appear.
“Don’t do what? I’m not doing anything,” Joe replied. “Trevor’s the one doing it. I’m sitting here enjoying my first weekend with you guys in three weeks and he’s being an ass**le.”
“I’m the ass**le?” Trevor shouted, arms flying forward, hands clenched, an instinctive response. Joe just stretched again, the gesture a little too practiced. Trevor knew Joe was just as on alert, as primed for a ripping fight, and that knowledge made him unleash.
“Yep,” Joe said.
Darla put one hot, dry palm on Trevor’s chest, her sweet pressure making him tingle all over, but it wasn’t enough. “Let’s go out for coffee and talk,” she declared, as if it were a done deal, as if she could paper over the fact that—
“You want out?” Trevor challenged. “You want to break this up?”
The room turned to ice. Darla’s jaw dropped and her mouth made a little O of shock that made Trevor’s balls crawl up into his groin.
Shit. He’d said it.
He’d finally f**king said it.
And man, did he wish he could take it back.
Because Joe suddenly wasn’t so casual anymore. All the color had drained from Joe’s face, and it gave him a sickly, nothing-to-lose look, his face all hard angles and his lips tight with steely fury.
Whatever came out of his mouth next would change life as they knew it.
Leave it to Darla to interrupt, of course. “Don’t you dare say one word, Joe!” she said in a harsh voice, her tone high and thin, panicked and desperate. “You two are insufferable, and I won’t let you keep doing this. You’re going with me to lunch tomorrow and talking to Mike and Dylan about—”