Chapter 16: Chapter 16

The morning dawns with skies clear of clouds. It’s beautiful and makes my chest ache for what it means.

Our holiday is over.

So is our Christmas fling with Derek.

It feels strange to stand in the kitchen and drink my coffee while the men make phone calls that will take us off this mountain and back to the real world. I have to hold perfectly still to contain my impulsive need to beg them to hang up and let us linger in this place a little while longer. It won’t help. Derek’s made up his mind about the future, and it’s cruel to hold us in this purgatory any longer than necessary.

I don’t know if Grayson told him about our conversation last night. I don’t know if want to tell him. It doesn’t matter if Grayson gave permission, that he’s lobbing me at his best friend in a last ditch effort to keep the precarious balance between the three of us; it feels like continuing to want Derek makes me a horrible wife. I love my husband desperately. I never want a life without him in it. But the last few days have only stoked my desire for Derek—my love for him—higher.

What a mess.

I escape to the bedroom to pack. Anything to dodge the growing tension between the three of us, thick with things left unsaid. Except that’s not the problem, is it? We’ve said everything there is to say and it’s still not enough. Some hurdles even love and sex and decent communication can’t overcome. That’s just life. It sucks and I hate it, but there’s nothing I can do to change it.

I pull on a floral dress that buttons down the front and am searching for a pair of fleece leggings when I hear footsteps behind me. I turn to find Derek standing in the doorway. He’s wearing jeans and one of those flannel shirts that make him look like a sexy lumberjack.

His gaze drags over me, starting at my bright red toes and ending at my eyes. “Emma.”

It’s like his presence sucks the very air out of the room. “Yes?”

He takes a step toward me, and then another. “I like the dress.”

“Thanks?” I shake my head slowly, trying to focus past the desire that instantly surges in his presence. “Is that what you came in here to say?”

He opens his mouth, seems to reconsider, and gives a rueful grin that sinks a hook right into my heart and tugs. “We haven’t left the cabin yet.”

My body goes scorching hot. “We have to leave soon in order to make the rescheduled flights.”

“Grayson says we have an hour.”

A small eternity and not nearly enough time at all. I know what my husband is doing, recognize his method of paving the way to the future he wants. If he can’t have Derek, then he figures me having Derek is the next best thing. I want to yell, to shake Derek, to convince him that he’s making a mistake by turning away from this without even trying. But if I push him, I might push him right out of our lives completely. It would hurt me. It would destroy Grayson.

So I don’t say all the words bubbling up in my chest. I simply nod. “Then I suppose we better hurry.”

Derek moves closer, leaving the door open behind him. “Unbutton that cute little dress, Emma. Let me see what I’m going to be missing.”

Again, I almost tell him what Grayson and I talked about. Again, I hold back. I don’t have to make a decision now. It’s possible my husband made that offer and he’ll regret it later. It’s possible regret it later if I take him up on it.

But Derek’s right; we’re still in the cabin, still within the parameters of our extended Christmas.

I slowly unbutton the front of my dress to my waist and then tug the fabric aside. Derek hisses out a breath. “No bra, Emma?” He moves closer yet, until he’s almost touching me. “If I pull up your skirt, am I going to have your pussy bare, too?”

“Only one way to find out,” I murmur.

He sinks to his knees in front of me. He’s tall enough that his face is nearly level with my bared breasts in his position. I reach out and dig my fingers into his hair, pulling him closer until his mouth is on me. “I’ll tell you a secret if you want.”

“I want,” he growls against the curve of my left breast.

“I never wear anything under my sundresses.” I gasp as he pulls my nipple into his mouth, but force myself to keep talking. “Grayson loves to fuck me whenever the mood strikes and panties just get in the way. We fuck in the bathroom at parties, in the car on the way home.” He moves to my other nipple and I moan and tighten my grip on his hair. “We fuck in your parking garage nearly every time we visit.”

Derek moves down my body, kissing his way over my stomach. “You walk into my apartment all filled with his come.”

“Yes.” I shiver. He nips my lower stomach but doesn’t move from there. I take a slow breath. “It feels particularly dirty to be having a conversation with you while he drips down my thighs.”

He presses his head to my stomach. “Fuck, Emma. What am I supposed to do with that?” He curses. “Every time I see you, I’m going to wonder if he’s just been inside you.”

“You could always check so you know for sure.”

Derek doesn’t hesitate. He runs his hands up my legs, barely pausing where the hem of my dress brushes my upper thighs before he shoves it up around my waist. He pushes me back onto the bed and spreads my thighs. One thorough lick later and he lifts his head. “I don’t taste him on you.”

“Then you have your answer, don’t you?”

“Guess I do.” He looks down at me, and I try to see myself from his perspective. My dress does a better job of framing my nakedness in our current position than covering anything. My skin is flushed and I’m breathing hard despite the fact that we’ve barely done anything. My entire body is shaking with a pure bolt of need. Derek strokes up my thighs and uses his thumbs to part my pussy. “Show me.”

“What?”

“At some point, you’re going to start remembering how good it felt to fuck me and you’re going to touch yourself. Show me.”

I don’t hesitate to reach between my thighs and stroke my clit. He’s kneeling next to the bed, getting a close up view of me masturbating, and the look on his face only makes this hotter. So I double down. “I’m going to think about how you ate my pussy on the couch that first time. You fucking me, and then Grayson caught us and joined in and…” I moan.

“I always peek at my presents ahead of time.” His breath ghosts against my thighs. “Grayson knows that. He sent you to me on purpose.”

I slow down my touch, wanting to make this last. “And then when we played out that fantasy on the couch. When I rubbed my pussy all over your cock and took you deep.” I inhale sharply at the bite of pleasure. I have to be careful or I’m going to come and then it ends. “You felt incredible inside me, Derek. Your giant cock fills me so good.”

His lips brush my knuckles and then his tongue is sliding between my fingers licking me. He winds me tighter and tighter…and then lifts his head. Derek looks almost angry as he shoves to his feet and his hands go to the fronts of his pants. “Your husband told me the damnedest thing just now.”

I freeze, watching him draw out his cock. “Did he?”

“Yeah, he did.” He grabs my hips and yanks me to the very edge of the mattress. “He told me to help myself to your pussy whenever I feel like it.” Derek guides his cock into me in a rough thrust. Again and again, until I’m trying to clutch him closer. He takes my hands and pins me to the bed, fucking me hard and deep. “I know what you’re doing.”

I moan. “Let me touch you.”

“No.” He strokes deep and stays there. He’s still wearing all his clothes, his jeans shoved down barely enough to get at me. I can feel the denim against my ass, his flannel rubbing my breasts with every shaky breath we take. Derek glares down at me. “You don’t get to seduce me with your tight pussy, wet just for me, and your perfect fucking breasts and that mouth that likes to spin out dirty fantasies no good girl would admit to.”

Just like that, I’m as angry as he is. I lean up and catch his bottom lip, biting down just hard enough to make him flinch. I lick the spot and sink back to the mattress. “You are choosing to walk away, Derek. Not me. Not Grayson.” I unwrap my legs from his waist, not quite sure when I linked my ankles at the small of his back. “You like it when I play the little slut, and you’d fucking love it if I showed up at your apartment and told you not to tell my husband but I need your thick cock too much to go another night without it.” I hold his gaze. “That’s just pretend, and we both know it. Just like we both know that I’d go straight back to him and describe exactly how hard you made me come while he licked all evidence of you away.”

He stares down at me. “He wouldn’t.”

“You damn well know he would.” I yank my hands free and shove at his shoulders. He lets me roll us, ending up on his back with me still on his cock. I brace my hands on his chest and start riding him. “You’re the one who wants to deny Grayson what he wants, Derek. Not me. Never me. And if what he wants is for me to fuck you, then that’s what I’ll do.” I lean down until my lips brush his ear. His hands go to my ass, gripping me tightly as he guides my strokes. I let him have this because it feels good to be held by him, because I have more to say. “You could have both of us; morning, noon, and night. In every fantasy you’ve ever wanted to play out, in every position and place you can think of.” My breath comes out in something resembling a sob. “Just like you could have the nights with Grayson cooking one of those fancy meals of his, and late nights reading with me, and lazy Sundays, and .”

“Emma, stop.”

I lean back and hold his gaze. “You are the one choosing not to, Derek. So forgive us if we’re willing to take you however you’ll let us.”

He hooks my neck and pulls me down to meet his mouth. I know it’s just to shut me up, but I don’t care. I’ve said what I needed to say. It won’t change anything, so I grab the pleasure he offers now with both hands. We devolve into grasping hands and moans and pure animal fucking. I come hard and Derek follows me over the edge, fucking up into me hard enough to extend my orgasm and have me shrieking. I collapse on his chest and turn my face toward the door.

Grayson stands there, his expression the pure agony of seeing something he desperately wants but no longer has access to. He spares me a brief smile that fails almost as soon as his lips curve and then he walks out of the room without looking back.

I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know if it’s possible, if I should even try.

So I simply press a kiss to Derek’s lips and climb off him. I button up my dress without another word and duck into the bathroom to clean up as best as I can. I expect him gone when I return to the bedroom, but he’s still sitting on the edge of the bed, his clothing now righted.

He watches me pull on my leggings, his expression just as tormented as Grayson’s was early. “I don’t want to lose either of you.”

“Then we never should have crossed this line.” I can see that now, even if I couldn’t in the midst of Christmas Eve, with lust clogging my senses. We had no business going there unless we were willing to go the rest of the way. I it wasn’t as simple as playing out a sexy fantasy, that Grayson wanted Derek even more than I did.

It’s too late for regrets.

I grab a hair tie from my suitcase and pull my hair back into a ponytail. “

offer stands, Derek. Our door and our hearts are open to you.” I glance at the doorway. “But I’m not going to hurt Grayson. He thinks he wants me to fuck you if he can’t, but I won’t do that to either of us. This is the last time.”

“You said—”

“I know what I said.” I give a mirthless smile. “You should know better than anyone things said in the heat of the moment are to spike the pleasure. I want you. I’m never going to want you. But you only want to fuck me, and he’s my husband. He isn’t afraid to admit that he loves me.”

His brows draw together. “That’s not fair.”

“I know.” My throat feels tight. “Just… Just think about it, okay? Can you promise me that?”

He nods slowly. “I wish I could say I’m going to think about anything else for the foreseeable future.”