“This late on a Thursday?” Tobias asks, arching a dark brow. “Very dedicated.”
“Yes. I am.”
Gabe’s boots scuff the floor as he stands. “I can help you with that. If you want. I’ve been working on it since the beginning and I know every corner of it.”
“I’d like that,” I say, guilt making my throat dry. Best to see the deception through before I lose my nerve. “Maybe we can meet over coffee. Are you doing anything Saturday night?”
Those words cause a silent commotion in the tram car.
I’m pinned by three different sets of eyes, that jealous energy I thought I imagined earlier now coming from both Tobias and Banks. It creates a disturbance in the air.
Too bad.
I’m not getting a boyfriend out of this wacky turn of events. I’m getting a point of contact for the exposé I’m writing. The one that is going to land me a staff writer position. I decided to pursue a career in journalism and I have to see my journey through this time. I’ve done too many things halfway and not only have my parents lost faith in me…
I’ve completely lost faith in myself.
I need it back. I don’t know who I am without my confidence.
“Saturday night? Oh yeah. I’ve got this fancy party. For work.” Gabe looks like he’s waiting for the punch line. “Wait…you’re not asking me out, are you?”
I’m smiling, but it wavers. He’s a nice guy and he’s been through a lot. Why couldn’t it be Tobias or Banks that had a potential inside track on Jameson Crouch?
I realize I wouldn’t like that either and feel a flash of impatience with myself.
Something is very wrong with me.
“Yes, Elise,” Tobias clips, smiling once again in that way that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Are you asking out the one with the erection?”
Over Tobias’s shoulder, Banks tilts his head, expression questioning.
“Maybe I am.” I wet my lips. “And that’s between me and Gabe.”
“Is that to say there’s nothing between us?” Tobias asks. And then with a wink and a nod in Banks’s direction, he adds, “Or you and him? Let’s not pretend something isn’t happening here. All of us feel it.”
If I thought the air was charged before, nothing compares to the way it crackles with electricity now. With those words, the odd attraction between me and these three men has been acknowledged. I haven’t been hiding it, as I assumed I was. Maybe I was too surprised by my reaction to them to play it cool. I don’t know. But they’re all coming closer to me now, at the same time. They are circling me. Tobias in front, Gabe behind, Banks to my left.
Our breaths are white in the air and the puffs of condensation come quicker, quicker.
I’m getting blasted with heat now from all sides. My pulse is haywire.
They’re all taller than me, even in my heels, and I’m shocked to find I’m turned on by being the shortest. By being the object of their attraction. All three of them? How?
“Is Gabe your choice then, love?” Tobias asks, tipping up my chin. Studying my face.
“If you want him to stop touching you, say the word, Elise,” Banks says. “If you want any of this to stop, I’ll make it happen.”
Gratitude floods me and I nod, my hand reaching out before I think twice, my fingers threading through the longer ones of Banks.
“Yes,” Tobias says, jaw flexing. His hand sliding feather light from my chin down to my throat, his knuckle stroking downward over the slight lump, his grip circling the entirety of my throat loosely. “Tell us if you want to stop.”
“We will listen,” Gabe says gruffly, his mouth buried in the back of my hair now.
I’m touching all three of them at once. It’s like having a triple-pronged electrical current running through my body. My nipples are in points, my skin is hypersensitive. And then Tobias squeezes my throat, just barely, and I whimper—bringing all three of them forward in a heated rush, their hard bodies converging on me from three different sides.
Oh holy shit. Holy shit.
I start to shake, their muscles flexing against me in response. Almost like a protective move that they can’t help. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Join the club,” Banks says through his teeth.
“Me either.” This from Gabe, who unexpectedly wraps his forearm around my waist and draws me back tightly to his chest. “But I’m the one she asked out.”
There’s a flash of something dangerous in Tobias’s expression. “Allow us the opportunity to change her mind. It’s only sporting.”
Banks brings my hand to his mouth and exhales roughly against the small of my wrist, razing the sensitive region with his teeth. I suck down a greedy inhale, my right knee jerking up in response to the intense pull between my thighs. Tobias catches my knee in his left hand without looking, proving he’s an expert at his trade. He yanks my knee up to his hip so suddenly that I gasp, powerless to do anything but reel while he balances it there, his exploratory hand sliding higher on my hip, just beneath the hem of my skirt. Squeezing until I cry out.
At the same time, Gabe fists my hair and brings it to one side, his open mouth on the nape of my neck, Banks taking my hand and placing it inside his buttoned shirt. He pauses with my palm over his heart and it’s rioting out of control. Mine is doing the same.
“Are you hot for all three of us, Elise?” Tobias asks, his thumb pressing into my hip abductor in such a knowing and skilled way that a sort of languidness rolls through me. As though he’s hit a pressure point to rob me of tension. “There’s no shame in it.”
Logically, I already know that. But I welcome hearing it out loud. “I know. I’ve just never been with…” I’m breathless. “I can barely tolerate one man, let alone three.”
I’ve never been the recipient of a more heated look. “If you want this, tell me. I’ll guide us.” He wets his sensual bottom lip. “Free of charge.”
Am I crazy to nod in the face of such arrogance? To say, “Yes”?
Maybe. But I do it anyway. I don’t want to break free of their hold. Not yet.
A little more.
“Good girl. Now kiss him,” Tobias rasps, framing my jaw in his hand and turning me toward Banks. “Kiss him while my hand is up your fucking skirt.”
I’ve never experienced this painfully wonderful kind of clench before, the one that makes my panties feel like they’ve melted onto my body like hot wax. I’m wet. I’m wet and trembling and my lust is directed full circle, three times as potent because there are more places for it to go. To land and flourish.
Banks crowds in closer, his lips drawing back from his teeth like he’s in pain, brow furrowed. A hot breath later, his mouth moves over mine and we moan into a kiss. A bolt turns in the dead center of my stomach, wild colors and patterns splattering on the insides of my eyelids. I’ve never kissed or been kissed back with so much urgency.
“Gabe would like to get his dirty hands on your tits, Elise,” Tobias murmurs with his forehead nuzzling my temple, his grip still around my throat, somehow keeping me anchored, instead of alarming me whatsoever. Maybe because I believe them when they reassure me that we can stop at any time. “Do you allow that, love?”