“What?” he and Joe shouted in unison, the first time they’d had the same reaction to anything since, well…since they’d met Darla.
She wasn’t backing down, though. Her br**sts bobbed hypnotically as she gestured wildly, and all Trevor could think about, suddenly, was how those ni**les tightened with the lightest whisper of touches, how the heft of those globes filled his hands—overfilled them—as if they were made for holding. Like an ornament, but one that was warm and willing. An image of a baby snuggled up tight against her chest flashed through his mind, and he shook his head like a dog that got wet, banishing the unexpected intrusion.
What the f**k? Where did that thought come from?
“You two are like old Boyd and Jersey back home,” she spat out with disgust. Trevor was only half paying attention, his brain buzzing from what he’d just been thinking.
“Oh, great,” Joe drawled in a fake Southern accent that sounded more like a drunk German pretending to speak Chinese. “We git ourselves zome hometown good-ole-boy ztories!”
Darla’s face fell into a mask of cold anger. “You sound like Hitler on acid when you do that. I do not sound like that.”
“You sound close enough.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Trevor added, coming to her defense. Her accent was slight. Not as broad as it had been when she’d moved to Boston to join them. It wasn’t even that there was a strong difference in how they pronounced words, but more her lazy use of grammar, her little colloquial sayings, and the tendency to drop the “g” at the ends of words when she got excited or upset.
As her voice became more cultured he found himself wistful for the broad, open mouth she’d had when they met.
Except right now that mouth was aimed at him and Joe, and boy was she letting ’er rip.
“Yes, she does.” Joe stood abruptly and threw on a pair of jeans, tucking his junk down so he didn’t pull a There’s Something About Mary moment and zip himself in pain.
“No, she—wait!” Trevor barked, eyes on Darla’s face this time, tempting as her tits were. “We’re not sitting at a table across from Thor and Angry Firefighter and pouring out our feelings and shit.”
“I never said that’s what you’d—”
Joe and Trevor snorted at the same time, the sound like melody and harmony, in perfect tune. Darla was outnumbered here. Whatever plan she was hatching was so outrageous that Trevor couldn’t even fathom why she’d want him and Joe to get together with—
Ah. Got it.
“You think because they’re in a threesome we need to have a therapy session with some old dudes who have been there, done that, fallen off the bed during DP and have the scars to prove it?”
This time Joe snorted alone.
“Because I am not talking about what we do with anyone. This is us. This is private. This is”—Trevor’s hands twitched and curled into questioning fists—“this is whatever it is, but it’s not something anyone else has. It doesn’t need to be analyzed or dissected or picked apart, damn it.” His voice went low. “And besides, why the hell would two billionaires give a f**king shit about what their employee’s boyfriends do?”
He expected Darla to pause, to be shocked into silence, to do anything but what she did next. “See? See there? Right there? Boyfriends. Zzzzz. With an ‘s.’ Who in the ever-loving hell has boyfriends? And I don’t mean the women who f**k two men in serial—I mean who f**ks men in parallel and has a relationship that’s all about balance and meeting two men’s needs while—” Her voice hitched and she stopped, eyes shining with unspilled tears, and Trevor’s heart folded in on itself in that moment.
Fuck.
“So”—she sniffed, a sob in her throat so loud it made Joe and Trevor share a look of worry—“forgive me for wanting you to talk to the only two f**king human beings on the planet who might have a goddamned clue what to do and how to be like this. It ain’t working right now with Joe’s jealousy.”
“I’m not—”
“And quit denying you’re jealous, because you walk around like a puckered butthole that just got bleached and treated to road rash,” she added.
Trevor’s anus clenched involuntarily at her words. The woman could use vocabulary the way martial artists used nunchucks—with great skill, well-honed instinct, and ruthless efficiency.
Joe’s look almost made Trevor laugh, and he would have if he weren’t filled with a swirl of emotion. Too many things were being thrown out there like emotional debris after a wrecking ball hit the wrong building, and being na**d and watching Darla’s lush, creamy nude body in the middle of the chaos didn’t help either. Trevor had a limit, and it had been reached in every possible way—emotionally, sexually, physically.
Joe spoke. “You can be such a—” The room turned to a freezer. Joe was about to call Darla a name, and Trevor jumped in front of her as if he needed to physically shield her, protect her from the B-word, as if he could take it into his own chest and let his body act as armor against what he knew Joe was about to unleash and could never, ever take back.
“—busybody!” Joe ground out. He flinched as Trevor appeared in front of him, and Darla’s hand on Trevor’s back was shaking. She squeezed. Did she expect it, too? When had the world become so charged, so unsafe? They were each other’s sanctuary, the three of them, and somehow everything spiraled out of control within minutes of sharing their bodies and hearts.
Weren’t you supposed to be able to share until the outer limits of what defined you were stretched beyond recognition, yet still come back more whole than ever before? Wasn’t that the entire point of love?
“Why are you jumping in front of her like a spider monkey on crack?” Joe snapped. “You’re acting like I’m some sort of…like I was going to…” His brows knitted in confusion and pain. “What the f**k did you think I was about to do, Trev?” He planted his hands on his h*ps and took a deep breath, the power of his chest expanding in a way that felt threatening suddenly.
Trevor moved closer, eyes boring into Joe’s. “I thought you were about to lash out at her and do something you’d regret.”
All the anger in Joe drained out of him, leaving eyes that were bleak and vulnerable. It made Trevor go cold with regret.
“Darla,” Joe said softly, “do you think I’d…do that? Hurt you?”