Stitches

Her confidence is unwavering. “He wouldn’t.”

“What if he hurt someone?”

She hesitates. “Did he hurt you?”

“No, I’m just… hypothetically.”

Raising her hand and gesturing individually to the four walls surrounding us, she says, “The people inside this house are my top priority. Was he protecting one of them? If he was, then it’s unfortunate that happened, but I trust he did what he felt was right.”

“What if he killed someone?” I ask.

Now her gaze shifts to my chest. I’m not sure if I’ve upset her, but I know I’ve at least annoyed her. When her gaze returns to mine, her eyes are clearer, her face more open, but I can’t shake the feeling she closed some part of her off. She moves her body closer, sliding one smooth leg between mine.

My stupid dick falls right into her trap, hardening almost instantly. Then she touches it and I’m gone. Her soft hand grips me and she brushes her sweet lips against mine. Her teeth come down lightly on my bottom lip and she tugs. My heartbeat kicks up, my stomach tightens with need, and suddenly the only important thing in the world is getting inside Moira.

“I love you, Griff,” she tells me, dragging her lips along my jawline. “I just want to make you happy. I just want all of us to be happy together.”

“I want that, too,” I say, struggling to focus with her fingers working magic between my legs.

“Good,” she says, her blue eyes twinkling with approval. “That makes me so happy. I want us to be a family.” Leaning lower, pressing the soft mounds of her breasts against my chest, she says, “I do want you to put a baby in me, Griff.”

My caveman instincts flare up. I reach for her neck, yanking her down so I can kiss her some more. “Yeah?” I murmur.

“Yes,” she says, one hand still working my dick, one running up and down my neck. “Someday, when it’s time. But we’ll never get there if you and Sebastian can’t play nicely together. I adore you both. You love each other. People in relationships fight and that’s okay, but please don’t let stupid shit come between us. You know Sebastian can’t cope with that. He needs to know we’re always in his corner, even when we fight.”

That pulls me halfway out of the lust fog she has me shrouded in. “Stupid shit? You think I’m overreacting? Blowing shit out of proportion? You think Ashley, the vainest woman either of us has ever met, shot a hole through the back of her skull?”

Running a calming hand up my chest and across my bicep, she leans in and places a series of kisses on my pecs. “Of course I don’t think your feelings are unwarranted. You feel however you feel—with me. If you’re in pain, feel it. If you’re angry, feel it. If you need to vent it, please do. I don’t want you to live a lie or hold anything back. But you’re gonna have to let this one go, Griff. Ashley was poison. She was horrible to you while you were married, and even worse when you split up. She tried to hurt each and every one of us after destroying her own marriage. I absolutely feel for you, and if there’s some part of you that still loves or misses or mourns her, I completely get that. I support you no matter what. I want to be there for you. But we need to agree that Ashley was a troubled woman who got involved with some bad people, and if anything sinister happened to her, it was her own doing—not Sebastian’s.”

“Even if it’s a lie?” I challenge, boldly.

Her lips curve upward, but there’s not much humor there. “Especially if it’s a lie.”

My stomach drops with her words, but then she lavishes more attention on my dick, grinding against me and moaning into my mouth until all sense of logic flees. Seb’s sweet little wife turns my brain right off, and by the time she’s done fucking me, I’m too tired and satisfied to think about anything but the feel of her warm body nestled against my side as she sleeps.

31

Moira

I hum a little tune from the musical Annie as I reach into the refrigerator and gather the ingredients I need to make breakfast. I spread them all out across the granite surface, swaying over to the cupboard and grabbing my trusty chopping board.

If Griff were up, he would help me chop the vegetables. I like doing it myself, but I enjoy doing it with his help, too. I don’t think I would take pleasure in Sebastian helping, even if he offered. They have very different roles for me, and while I love and appreciate Griff for every noble thing that he is, I don’t want my husband to be like him. I love Sebastian exactly the way he is.

As I grab the knife and start to chop, I feel the powerful presence of my husband come up behind me. I feel him like a physical force, and even in this kitchen preparing breakfast, all of our clothing on, our bodies not even touching, he intoxicates me. The part of me that craves him every moment of every day comes alive and wordlessly beckons him nearer.

He answers the call, his heat intensifying as he stops a mere inch from my back. Whether it’s more alive in him this morning, or just my imagination because of the things Griff and I discussed last night, I feel his edge of danger more keenly today. Strangely, it makes me feel safer.

“Tomorrow, huh?” he murmurs, referencing the song I was just humming. Normally he lets me cook in peace, but I know he was a little tense about my spending the night with Griff last night, so he probably needs to check in. There’s nothing tentative in him, though, so he doesn’t test the waters like a normal man. He locks an arm around my waist and pulls me close. “Will tomorrow be a better day?”

I lean back against him, soaking up his presence. “I hope so. Tomorrow I plan to wake up naked between my two favorite men, and that’s a hell of a way to start the day.”

“Oh yeah?” he asks, with interest. “You talked to him, then?”

I nod my head, bringing my knife down on the white head of cauliflower. “Yep. I’ve got a handle on everything. Don’t worry. He just needs a little time. He’ll be fine.”

“Mm, you’re the best wife a man could ever hope for.” Sebastian leans in and kisses my cheek appreciatively. The scent of him—his innate smell, the spice of his aftershave—fills me with longing. Food be damned, I drop the knife and push back the board, turning in his arms.

Sebastian was the most handsome man I had ever seen when we first met, and as I got to know the incredible man that he is, my attraction to him only intensified. I don’t know if it’s because I spent a night away from him for the first time since we first moved in together, but he’s never looked sexier to me than he does right now. The unapologetically confident curve of his perfect lips, the tender sense of ownership in his gorgeous blue eyes as he looks at me, the way his black suit jacket falls, the way his muted blue shirt hugs his muscular body—everything about this man is my picture of pe