“No! You’re perfect. I love you.” She dared to step up to him and rise on tiptoe to kiss him. She’d never felt such unmoving lips under hers. She tried coaxing them open with feathery movements of her mouth, catching his lower lip between hers, giving hot little tugs. She slid her hands around his strong neck, caressed the damp hairs at his nape. “Grey, I love you.”
“Do you?”
“I’m passionately in love with you.”
“I used to believe you were.” He extracted her arms from his neck and set them at her sides before walking to the window to peer out through the blinds.
The muscled back he revealed to her was so taut and rocklike that it proved successful in keeping her from approaching, from reaching him. She wrung her hands, tried to explain. “Grey, somehow it’s as though he’s always been a part of us. Like a ghost, but he’s alive.”
He stroked the back of his head with one hand, his frustration so tangible it caused her throat to squeeze. “One weekend, Toni. It was supposed to be just that. But it’s not enough for you, is it, princess? Nothing’s enough for you. I can’t fill you. I can’t make you happy. I can’t—”
“That’s not true!”
“You call to him. In your sleep, you say our names, you say my name, his name.” At his sides, his knuckles jutted out of his fists. “You’ve been . . . god, you’ve been pining away for him.”
Fury and a dispiriting frustration seized her, and her voice trembled with both. “You’re the one who invited him!”
He whirled. “Like hell I did!” he roared, his scowl ominous.
“You did, Grey!” she cried, as confused and hurt as he was. She wanted to slap him. She wanted to hug him. She wanted him to understand.“You planned the trip, you took my sash to dinner.You thought it would go away just like that? What do you think everything you told me about him felt like? Foreplay, Grey.You wanted me to like him, to accept him, to want him—you even wanted me to fuck him to rid yourself of that guilt of having it all while he had shit.You wanted me to care, and guess what. It worked!”
“I wanted you to appreciate a man whom I appreciate and nobody else seems to—that’s far from wanting you to screw him behind my back!” He was shaking, the ice melting within hot, volcanic anger, and Toni felt his pain like a suicide, like driving a dagger into her chest that she was twisting herself.
“Grey, I promise you we’re not doing anything behind your back.You thought I would have sex with him that day I went to say good-bye, and you let me.”
He was breathing for control, fighting for it as he advanced. “He’s been like a brother to me.The most important person in my world, until you came along. You wanted him, Toni. You wanted him, and I gave him to you.”
“Why, how generous of you! You, the Almighty Grey Richards, took pity on us both and let us fuck! And for your information, he gave himself to me!”
He slammed a fist to his chest. “I gave myself to you! I am . . . I am humbled with you. I’ve stripped my soul bare for you! Does that even matter to you?”
Her eyes stung and a tear leaked. She brushed it off with a hand that shook violently, her words strangling her. “It means the world to me. At first I lived to live, and now I live for you to love me and for me to love you.”
He put a halting hand up.“Don’t.” The torment in his eyes was unbearable to her. He didn’t want to believe that she loved him. He didn’t want to love her. She could see it hurt him, and she wanted to choke in her pain.
“I didn’t ask to feel this,” she said brokenly, dropping in a heap of misery on the edge of the bed.
“What do you want, Toni?” Leaning a casual outstretched arm on the bookshelves, he delivered the words without inflection, as if he were tired of everything, tired of her. “A ménage every Christmas? Do you think that’s fair to him?”
“Grey, I’ve been reading about relationships with more than two people. Permanent ones. We could make it work. You and Heath are amazing together and—”
“You’re mine!” He closed the distance between them, the possessive red sparks in his eyes skinning her alive. “I’d give my life for him, but not my girl.You’re mine, Antonia Kearny. I’m not a man who shares. I’m not a fool.” He caught her arm and hauled her up from the bed. “I take back every good word I ever said about him.”
“You can’t take them back. You can’t take Cabo back—not even you can!” Impulsively, she tore the towel from his waist and grabbed his cock, the stalk rigid and standing impressively tall in her hand. Her throat dried, a surging heat instantly spreading through her as she fondled him. “You’re excited,” she said in a hoarse purr.“It excites you that I get hot when I talk about him. It excites you that I want him and get aroused wanting to have you both again. Your cock is wet, Grey. You’re ready to explode right here in my hand.”
He grabbed her face. “My cock knows shit,Toni. I haven’t been myself since Cabo, and my life has gone upside down. I feel out of control, and just the thought that I may be losing you is driving me insane.”
“Never, Grey. Never. Oh, baby, you know I can’t even breathe when we fight. You’re my rock; my first thought in the morning and my last thought at night. Grey, please. The idea is strange to you, but if you wrap your mind around it a little, Heath belongs with us. He’s so loyal and truthful and so lonely.”
“Setting up a charity foundation,Toni?”
“It is not charity. I want . . . I want him. I need him, too. I need you both. If I could have you both, I would! The three of us, close, so close.”
His voice changed as she fondled his erection to a straining point, almost giving the impression he was subdued by his desire. Tamed by it. “I don’t want him close, and I don’t want him near you,” he said gutturally.
She lightened her caresses along his cock, letting her voice fade to a whisper. “Why? Because of what others would think? You liked sharing me with him. You loved watching us together, and you loved playing with him, too.You liked giving him to me, and giving me to him, and enjoying our bodies between the three of us.You want to come, don’t you, just listening to me? Remembering what he did to you, what he did to me. I feel like that when I remember, too. I get so excited, and in my chest it hurts because I need it. I know you need it, too.”
His cock was leaking in her hand, twitching at each stroke, and his neck was flushed and strained as he tried to fight it. “You want it, and you feel restless and out of control.... But what if you gave in, Grey? What if you gave in like you do when you come? Doesn’t it feel good? To come? To let go and find that you won’t lose me after all, that I’ll be right here, still wildly, desperately in love with you . . .”