Up and down. Up and down.
The pace never increased even as Scarlet got closer and closer to her climax.
Her expressive, beautiful face was flushed red, as was her upper chest. The name Scarlet was suddenly quite fitting. Her body had begun to gyrate in time with Tate’s tongue, with the beat of his fingers inside her. She thrashed her head from side to side, drawing his attention to her long auburn hair. He longed to reach over for a handful of it, desperate to see if it was as soft, as silky as it appeared.
The power of this moment was not lost on Roman. Scarlet had asked Tate during the game if he’d been “practicing his ménages.” Tate answered affirmatively. If she’d asked the same of Roman, his response would have been different. And perhaps that would have surprised both of them.
After all, he was a legacy of the Trinity Masters. He’d known what his future would hold in terms of how many people would be in his bed since his initiation when he was just twenty years old.
And if they’d questioned his reasons for not engaging in threesome sex before today, his answer would have been simple.
Time and opportunity.
He’d had neither.
Roman was what charitable-minded friends would call driven. Those who didn’t feel the need to be as kind about it—like his mother who worried about him constantly—would have said he was a workaholic. He’d spent the last fifteen years of his life focused solely on his career because he could.
Being a member of the Trinity Masters freed him up from the pressure of actively seeking a life partner, of having to date, of having to divide his focus between his personal and his professional lives. He’d climbed the ladder at work quickly because, unlike his colleagues, every bit of his attention was on the job.
However, as he knelt on the edge of this mattress, watching Tate and Scarlet, he wondered if perhaps his reasons for not “practicing” were actually the result of fate intervening, distracting him until this moment in time when so many pieces finally started to feel like they were falling into place.
It was a romantical, fantastical explanation, and Roman internally shook his head at himself for even thinking it. He was a numbers man, the type of person who went through life with both feet planted firmly on the ground. He believed in things he could prove through mathematics, through logic, and he had never—never—used destiny or fate to explain anything.
But as he looked at Scarlet and Tate, it seemed very much as if he was staring his destiny right in the face. And some of the annoyance he’d been feeling toward his cousin for trapping him in this room, torturing him with this horrific song, started to melt away.
Was this what she’d felt the first time she’d seen Luca and Oscar?
Scarlet’s back arched as a low, keening cry escaped her lips. Her eyes were closed tightly, and for a moment, it looked as if every bit of the air in her body had been drawn inward, unable to escape, much like a black hole pulling in light. And then, it exploded in one loud expulsion as she came.
Roman had lived a privileged life. He’d seen the Northern Lights, witnessed the sun setting over the brilliant blue-green water of the Caribbean Sea. He’d been surrounded by a million vividly costumed performers, his world awash in color, as he danced on the streets of Rio de Janeiro during Carnaval.
None of that held a candle to Scarlet in the throes of an orgasm.
Then Tate lifted his head, his mouth and chin shiny from Scarlet’s arousal, and Roman realized there was no end to the beauty in this bed.
Roman shifted without thought, his actions driven as if by rote, though this was something he’d never done before. He grasped the back of Tate’s neck, propelling the other man forward, desperate to kiss, to taste.
Tate admitted to taking part in threesomes before, and given his lack of reticence and the way he moved closer to Roman, gripping his hips to pull their lower bodies closer, it was obvious this wasn’t the first kiss the former Marine had shared with a man.
Yet it was another first for Roman.
This time, his excuses had nothing to do with time and opportunity but rather attraction. He’d never met a man he had wanted to kiss. And that fact had caused Roman more than a few sleepless nights as he considered what might happen if the Grand Master had placed him with a man and a woman.
He tried to console himself with the fact his own parents consisted of two hetero men who shared a wife. He’d never seen his fathers kiss and suspected they’d never had sex with one another. Rather they were best friends—practically brothers after so many years of marriage—who shared, who loved, the same woman. Roman would have been perfectly fine in that type of marriage, but he’d been cognizant of the fact there was always a chance he would be paired up with a bisexual man, one who would want more from their marriage.
He’d feared that because he’d never experienced any desire for another man.
Until now.
Until Tate.
Tate’s mouth opened and Roman accepted the invitation, the taste of Scarlet on the other man’s lips. It was heady, delicious, and it awakened something almost wild, feral, primal inside Roman.
In the past, sex had been about meeting certain goals and outcomes, and all his actions were precise, calculated to achieve that end goal.
There was none of that now.
Now, there was just a need to take and be taken.
He sank his teeth into Tate’s lower lip, swallowing down his lover’s hiss of pain before caressing it away with his tongue. Tate responded to the roughness in kind, digging his fingers into Roman’s ass hard enough to bruise.
Several minutes passed as he and Tate fought for dominance during the kiss. Though perhaps fighting was the wrong word. They weren’t opposing factions, squaring off against each other, rather they were on the same side of the battle, marching together, a band of brothers, working toward the same goal.
Roman pulled away first when he felt a slight shift on the mattress, his attention drawn to Scarlet.
She remained on her back, but she had lifted her upper body up, her weight supported by her elbows. Her gaze was locked on him, on them, watching intently, her eyes missing nothing. It was one of the things that had attracted Roman to her in their very first meeting. She, like him, had an eye for detail.
He’d been touched by how much thought, how much care, she’d put into planning his cousin’s wedding, a wedding for three people who were strangers to Scarlet.
“So hot,” she whispered as she looked at them.
Tate’s charming grin reminded him of the friendly, laid-back guy Roman had met in Boston. One night over dinner, Tate had explained the purpose of the Warrior Scholars and his role within the group. And while Tate had also shared some stories of his experiences as a Marine sniper, Roman hadn’t been able to see the soldier beneath the good-natured, gentle man kicked back in the booth at the Hawthorne, drinking a glass of Scotch.
That impression had changed when they’d arrived in Charleston and Oscar had emerged with the stun gun. Since then, Tate, the warrior, had shown up and taken control of the mission—attempting to break them out of the room, deadening the sound of the music as much as possible, talking them through SERE.
And now...as the three of them crossed the line from friendly acquaintances to lovers, he was seeing yet another side to the man—sensual, confident.
“Lay back down,” Tate said to Scarlet. There was no mistaking the commanding—demanding—tone of his voice. It was dark, sexy, almost sinister, and Scarlet wasn’t the only one affected by it. Her nipples budded and if Tate weren’t still kneeling between her legs, Roman suspected she would have squirmed, would have pressed them together in an attempt to calm the fire he’d stoked.