Boston Avant-Garde 6: Chiaroscuro (20 page)

“Lube,” Lars reminded him.

The distance to the nightstand might as well have been a mile. In his haste, Owen left the drawer hanging open. He popped the cap open on his way back to the foot of the bed, but when he made a move to dispense the slippery fluid onto his shaft, Lars shook his head.

Lars’s gaze burned with determination. “Not you. Me.”

Owen’s brain stutter-stepped as he processed the request. He wasn’t about to deny Lars the pleasure of sliding balls-deep into Mattie’s tight little asshole. His lover well deserved that privilege. It was more that Owen had never known Lars to want that with anyone.

Lars seemed to guess Owen’s thoughts. “Help me?” he asked.

The request opened a vein to that part of Owen hardwired to protect and nurture. He said nothing, but he went into immediate action. He squeezed the lube into his hand and reached around Mattie to slick the stuff onto Lars’s cock.

She opened her eyes when he moved in close to give Lars’s erection a thorough coating of the gel. Her pupils were dilated so wide that only a narrow ring of color remained. “What are you doing?”

“I’m getting Lars’s cock ready to slide into your sweet ass, baby.” Owen brushed his lips over hers. “You’re way past ready for us both, aren’t you?”

She might have tried to answer, but Owen slid his fingers through her slit when he pulled his hand away from Lars’s cock. Her creamy juices made him desperate to be inside her. She was so ready he had a feeling she’d come as soon as he breached her.

“Back up,” Owen told Lars.

Lars moved away, tugging Mattie across the bed with him. Owen climbed up and settled onto his knees. He spread his stance, intending to keep Mattie that wide as well.

Reaching toward her, Owen smiled. “Come get on my dick, baby. I’m going to make you come to loosen you up a little.”

He didn’t have to tell her twice. She scrambled forward and mounted him in one motion. He fit the head of his erection to her swollen opening as she settled into position. It was agony and ecstasy. She slid onto him as though she’d been born to be there. He wiggled his hips, getting her exactly where he wanted her. The tiny friction was all it took to unlock her passion.

She screamed his name when she climaxed. Lars groaned and moved closer, bracketing her hips in his hands and helping her grind against Owen’s shaft. Owen forced his body to back away from orgasm. It was no small feat with Mattie’s pussy melting around his rigid flesh. Her inner muscles caressed him, welcoming him deeper as the tip of his cock kissed the sweet spot inside her.

Owen’s balls clenched, but he fought back the tide of ejaculation. There was time enough for that later. For now, he used both hands to spread Mattie’s ass cheeks wide open.

He gazed over her shoulder at Lars. “Lube up her hole.”

Owen could feel Lars stroking Mattie’s puckered entrance. She clenched even more tightly around Owen’s cock as the increased stimulation sent her recklessly close to the edge once again.

“I’ll hold her open,” Owen instructed. “Just go slow, and you’ll be fine.”

The apprehension on Lars’s face said it all. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he desperately wanted to be inside her like this. Owen wondered if Lars would ever do the same to him. Owen’s emotions were mixed. He was glad Lars wanted to fuck Mattie’s ass. It was hot as hell, but it would also help her work through the feeling of being unnecessary. She needed to feel that connection to the two of them. She needed to trust them to take care of her. It was asking a lot, but Owen wanted the chance for him and Lars to prove they were what she needed in and out of the bedroom.

Owen could feel the exact moment Lars pushed his cock past the ring of muscle in Mattie’s ass. She wasn’t a hard fuck. She was eager and experienced. Her tight anal passage was welcoming when you tunneled inside her. Owen’s cock pulsed as he tried not to think about just how good her asshole felt.

Every inch Lars gained inside Mattie’s ass, Owen felt from his place deep in her pussy. Such a thin membrane separating them, Mattie bridging the gap once again as she welcomed them both until Lars was finally buried to the base inside her.

“I can’t believe I’ve been missing this,” Lars grunted. “It feels so good.”

“Fuck her,” Owen urged. “She loves it.” He let go of Mattie’s bottom and held her close. “Don’t you, baby?”

She blinked up at him, blue-gray eyes intense in her pale face. “I need you both so bad I can’t think of anything else. Just take me. Please.”

Lars shuddered as though something had snapped inside him. He tangled one hand in her ponytail and grabbed Owen’s left arm with the other. Owen flexed forward into Mattie just as Lars did the same from behind. The two of them settled into rhythm, surging into their female counterpart in perfect alignment.

Owen’s senses heightened to a point of transcendence. Everything boiled down to the man and the woman joined with him. Muscles bunched and strained toward release. Their scents mingled with his to create the primal essence of sex. Heat shimmered around the three of them as their hearts pounded in unison. Sweat mingled where their skin rubbed together.

Mattie’s body grew taut. She tightened around them with her head thrown back and her eyes closed in utter trust and abandon. Owen reached around her to cup the back of Lars’s head. Lars sank his fingers into Owen’s hair. Owen knew with complete certainty they were going to come together.

Owen searched for his voice and finally found the words he needed. “Make us come, Mattie. Take us with you.”

She quaked as her climax uncurled like a wild thing. The power suffused every cell in Owen’s body. He trembled and ejaculated instantly as she continued to undulate around his cock. Behind the thin barrier, he felt Lars pulsing as he came with them.

The release left Owen light-headed in the aftermath. He tumbled them all to the mattress. He didn’t let go, even when they were all heaped together breathing as though they’d run the Boston marathon. In a world where Owen Bloodmoon had been careful to remain unattached, he’d just discovered two people he couldn’t live without. The task of keeping them both safe was the most important one he’d ever undertaken.

MATTIE DIDN’T WANT to move. One little wriggle, and the two softening cocks would slide free of her body. She had the insane thought that if she could keep Lars and Owen inside her all the time, she would never worry that they’d move on without her.

The blue circles tattooed onto Owen’s collarbone were a welcome diversion from her dark thoughts. She traced one finger over the interlocking patterns. “What does this mean?”

“My grandfather gave them to me when I turned thirteen.” He caught her hand and flattened it against his chest. “They’ve lost their meaning over the years.”

The underlying pain in his words touched her deeply. Nobody tattooed the body of a loved one without a reason, especially not with sets of three. Her grandmother had often talked about the power of three. Grandma had told Mattie from her earliest years that three was a magic number, a number of beauty, symmetry, and visual perfection. In numerology it symbolized past, present, and future. The number three was creative, it persevered, and it embraced adventure and passion.

Her mind filled with her grandmother’s sayings and witticisms. Mattie remembered working in the garden and learning to sow seeds in groups of three. She’d learned to draw perspectives using three points. Life was all about the number three.

Why again is a relationship between three people a bad idea? I am such an idiot.

She’d been holding so tightly to the idyllic picture of what a family should look like that she’d never once considered the possibility that hers was meant to be something different.

“They have to mean something,” she told Owen quietly. “Why did he give it to you?” Mattie couldn’t have said why, but her instincts were telling her there was a whole lot of fate wrapped up in what looked like a mundane grouping of blue circles.

Lars hadn’t made a sound, but his hands tightened on her waist, and she knew he was hanging on every word.

Owen sighed. “They symbolize my past, present, and future. Grandfather told me they were marks of success. I was supposed to be a protector of my family.” His dark eyes filled with pain. “So far I’ve been an utter failure at whatever it was he meant me to become. I’ve never been able to overcome the violence inside me.”

Mattie had never felt such a fierce desire to defend someone against self-recrimination. “Don’t ever say that. Never! The things your grandfather told you are true. All of them. You’re not violent, Owen. I could never imagine you hurting someone else because you enjoyed giving pain.”

She couldn’t see Lars’s expression, but his low voice was filled with warmth. “Mattie’s right.”

For once there was no hint of sarcasm on Owen’s face. He looked like a man who was afraid to believe what they were telling him but wanted to more than he’d ever admit.

Mattie tried to condense everything she was feeling into something tangible. A tough chore when she felt as though her heart might burst with her revelations about the number three. “You
have
been caring for your family. You made the hard choice to leave your grandmother in order to keep her safe. Staying would’ve been better for you, but you left because you loved her. You’ve spent years trying to walk away from your brother’s fights. Now you’re here with us even though you had no interest in long-term attachments. You’ve been protecting me since the moment I met you, Owen.”

“Me too,” Lars agreed. “Maybe you need to expand your definition of family, because what we have is the closest I’ve been to it in a long time.”

Chapter Seventeen

Owen listened to the rhythmic cadence of Lars’s and Mattie’s breathing as they slept. He was still emotionally reeling after their speech about family. He’d thought of himself as a failure for so long that he’d never taken a moment to look at it from the perspective Mattie offered.

He’d isolated himself, hiding behind a wall of sarcasm. He’d lived through years of self-induced isolation and solitude because of one bad decision. Well, one last bad decision anyway.

A tiny nightlight he kept in the bathroom alleviated the absolute darkness in his suite. The swath of orange-tinted brightness was all but swallowed before it could reach the bed. It illuminated the tiny kitchenette and reflected dully off the stainless steel refrigerator.

When had an apartment beneath Triptych become the summation of all he wanted in life? He thought back to the tiny two-bedroom house he’d shared with his grandparents. The scent of woods and fresh earth drifting through the open windows, and the sound of his grandmother’s loom clicking in the background.

Many of his childhood afternoons had been spent in the kitchen, watching Grandmother prepare supper. She’d always had a snack waiting after school. They would discuss everything that had happened during class as though they were contemplating the secrets of the universe. Maybe they had been because Grandmother had been a wealth of advice about people and why they did things that seemed ridiculous.

Owen recalled waiting for his grandfather’s ancient truck to pull up to the house. Grandfather would park on a strip of gravel beneath the carport after working ten hours or more for the Rhode Island Environmental Department, but that wasn’t the end of Grandfather’s day. He’d been the
sachem
for the Narragansett tribe, the equivalent of their chief, and he had tribal matters to attend to in the evenings.

Mattie sighed in her sleep and snuggled closer to Owen’s side. He tenderly brushed a lock of dark hair from her face. His grandparents would have loved Mattie and Lars too. They hadn’t been hung up on conventional parameters when it came to relationships or life in general. Although they had been concerned with tribal traditions surrounding the people and the land.

He wondered what Mattie and his grandmother would make of each other. Mattie’s artistic soul would mesh perfectly with Grandmother’s love of loom lore, weaving, and earth magic.

Grandmother wouldn’t have been fooled by Lars’s playboy image either. She’d have seen the hurt buried deep and his all-consuming need to protect the ones he loved. Even there in bed Owen could feel Lars’s reassuring touch, his arm thrown over Mattie and his hand resting against Owen’s belly.

Owen closed his eyes, savoring the closeness of his lovers and accepting that he would do anything to preserve this precious bond he’d discovered. Even if “anything” meant pitting himself against a power-hungry maniac like Hyde. Even if it meant he had to ally himself with his brother to help unravel Hyde’s Samhain plans. Even if he had to thumb his nose at the tribal council and take a stand against his brother and his father. Owen had finally found something worth having. There was no way he was going to let it go without a fight.

* * * *

Lars was having a deliciously erotic dream. He arched his back as Owen pressed against him. Their skin was slick with sweat, their limbs entwining as they writhed on the bed. Owen’s hands slid across Lars’s belly, tracing the grooves between each muscle before dipping dangerously low on his abdomen.

Lars’s cock was hard. His skin was painfully taut across his shaft, precum beaded on the tip of his erection. A breath of air whispered past the sensitive nerve endings in his penis. The familiarity of Mattie’s feminine scent mingled with Owen’s more masculine musk. Anticipation curled in Lars’s gut, and he almost begged her to ease the need gnawing at his insides.

Please, Mattie.

A warm mouth enveloped the engorged head of Lars’s cock. He groaned and plunged into Mattie’s mouth, shocked when he bumped against Owen’s equally swollen cock. Mattie’s tongue stroked them both with teasing brushes that had Lars dying to flip her over and sink into her wet pussy.

Owen’s ragged moan startled Lars from sleep. He blinked and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dimness in Owen’s suite. Lars registered Owen’s muscular form molded to his side. Mattie straddled them both, a hand wrapped around each of their cocks.

“Now that you’re awake, maybe she’ll give in and let us fuck her,” Owen growled.