Competitive Nature Read online

  “What’s that, Elyssa?” He broke the kiss, making her meet his searching blue eyes. “You want me? Is that it?”

  “Please. Let me. Please.”

  “It’s for you,” he said, relaxing his grip so that she was able to plunge down on that shaft in one triumphal move.

  Patrick purred with pleasure at the guttural sound that was forced from her lips by the wonderful fullness his cock gave her. Elyssa supposed he didn’t realise that she was still sore from Jay’s attentions, so he was merciless from the start, but when she began to whimper and bite her lip, he relinquished control of the pace to her. She could have this any way she wanted, he seemed to imply. If that was his thinking, she had to admit it was smart—that way she would be more likely to want to come back for more.

  Elyssa didn’t want to think of Jay, but the inevitable burn that Patrick’s cock was engendering made this difficult. It wasn’t uncomfortable, exactly, but it was definitely there, and this gave her a feeling of wantonness that was half-exciting, half-guilt-inducing.

  “Don’t think about him!” said Patrick suddenly, sharply. “You don’t owe him anything. Think of me. This. Us. I’ve got you now, and I don’t want you thinking of anybody but me.”

  Elyssa tried. She tried to focus on Patrick and Patrick alone, to focus on the pure sensation of his cock, taking it all the way inside, leaning down to let the base of it touch her clit, or leaning back to let it penetrate her all the more deeply. She was almost there, almost doing it, almost forgetting everything else, letting the tension build and build until it was close, so close to flying apart then…her phone bleeped.

  “Ignore it,” gasped Patrick, face contorted like that of a man in pain, grabbing her upper arm and yanking her down into what should be the climactic kiss. But as he roared and bucked her up and down on his pelvis, almost dislodging her with the force of it, all she could think was, I bet that’s Jay.

  “I’m sorry,” said Patrick, lying beside her, stroking her forehead. “You didn’t come, did you? Let me…” His fingers walked down to her pubis. His eyes were anxious, caring, loving.

  She hated herself. “It’s okay, Patrick. Let’s just sleep…”

  “We can try for round two later,” he said hopefully, but his face was defeated, pained.

  “Yeah,” she said consolingly, kissing his lips. “Later.”

  She watched the ceiling, waiting for him to sleep, desperate to check her phone, but ultimately afraid to. She had blown it. By thinking she could have them both, she had ensured that she would end up with neither. Jay would be devastated, and Patrick disappointed. She would leave before he woke and go back to Coventry to prepare for the conference in San Francisco. It would break her heart, but it was the only way. She lay like that until dawn, when she drifted off into an uneasy sleep.

  Chapter Three

  A brisk knock at the door startled her awake.

  “Room service.”

  Patrick was stirring, his eyes bleary, his head as scrambled as hers by the look of him. “Don’t think I ordered…” he mumbled but the door opened anyway.

  “Smoked salmon, scrambled eggs, toast, orange juice, coffee.”

  “Jay!”

  Elyssa wanted to bunch the sheet over her head and hide forever, but her limbs were frozen and all she could do with stare, mouth hanging open, as a Jay, who was far more suave than anybody had a right to be at six thirty a.m., glided around the side of the bed, pushing a wheeled trolley laden with food.

  “What the fuck?” demanded Patrick, almost looking on the verge of laughter. Almost.

  “So then,” said Jay conversationally, perching himself on the side of the bed and beginning to pour coffee from a cafetière. “No need to ask how it went last night.”

  “Jay…” said Elyssa tentatively, wanting to fall at his feet and beg forgiveness, but settling instead for a hand on his arm.

  “Elyssa.” His smile, his eyes…they looked genuine. There was no discernable pain. There was something a bit like mischief…it didn’t make sense. He took her stray hand and kissed her fingertips, tenderly. Then he stood and started taking off his clothes.

  “Budge up,” he said. “There’s more than enough room for one more in that bed.”

  Elyssa looked wildly at Patrick, who was shaking his head, but smiling, too.

  “This is, um, can someone tell me how I should feel about this?” she stammered.

  “Flattered?” suggested Jay, now stripped down to his underwear and inserted between the sheets, passing a cup of coffee to Patrick, then to Elyssa before settling himself down for some three-in-a-bed caffeine ingestion. “The lengths we go to just for you.” He peered at her over the rim of his cup and winked through the thick lenses of his spectacles.

  “I knew Jay would get there first,” said Patrick. “I knew you’d never resist him. So I rang him the day after the reunion and suggested an extra clause for the contest. If he managed to get his dirty mitts on you, I’d still get my chance. And if you…if we…well, we’re adults, aren’t we? Broadminded, intelligent adults.”

  “What Patrick is trying to say, in that charmingly gauche way of his,” Jay took up the conversational reins. “Is that we’re big boys now, and we’ve learnt how to share.”

  Elyssa’s hand shook so that the coffee threatened to spill over onto the pristine white duvet. “Share?” she said weakly.

  “We both love you,” clarified Patrick. “And you love us both. Shall I draw you a diagram? I’m awfully good at those.”

  “Not as good as me,” mock-snarled Jay. “I draw the best diagrams in the western hemisphere. But yeah. I know it’s all a bit Sixties, man, but I never understood why free love went out of fashion. I always thought it was a splendid idea. I had to sell it to Patrick a bit, but I think you’re cool with it now, aren’t you, Paddy, my old mucker?”

  “If it means I get to see more of you, Lyss,” he murmured, putting an arm around the academic.

  “So…you’re talking about…some kind of ménage?”

  “Yes. Some kind of ménage. The best kind. The kind that has you and me and Pat in it,” said Jay enthusiastically.

  “I won’t lie,” said Patrick, sighing. “If I could have stolen you from Jay, I would have done it. But it was pretty clear last night that you weren’t going to forget about him. And, well, y’know. If seeing more of Jay is the price I have to pay for seeing more of you…”

  “You cheeky bugger!” exclaimed Jay, pretending outrage. “I know you were only using Elyssa to get to me, big boy. Don’t pretend otherwise.”

  Patrick put up two fingers at his old friend and they laughed in embarrassment. All the same, Elyssa hoped they were prepared to forgive each other everything for the sake of this new era in their love lives.

  “So. What do you think?” Patrick sounded anxious again.

  Elyssa looked at him, then turned her head to look at Jay. This mattered to them. They cared what she thought. They were serious about this.

  “It’s the maddest thing I ever heard,” she said slowly. “But…I think you can count me in.”

  The two men pressed their lips to her face, kissing her cheeks and throwing their arms around her.

  “I don’t know how it’s going to work,” confessed Patrick.

  “You’ll have to loosen up a bit for a start,” Jay told him. “Since we’re sealing the deal, I think you should give me a kiss.”

  “Give you a kiss?” Patrick winced.

  “Oh, come on. You’ve never…? I don’t believe you. You’re in a rugby club. I know what goes on in the shower block.”

  “Fuck off, Jay! Just because I’m not some poncey metrosexual like you.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you? You’ve never kissed another man. Aww, Patrick, that’s so sweet. Come on, pucker up. Just a peck. Just for starters.”

  Elyssa didn’t dare laugh. “If Patrick doesn’t want to…” she demurred.

  “Of course he does,” said Jay. “Because I dare him to.”

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nbsp; Patrick’s eyes flashed with purpose, he sat straight, pushed back his shoulders and put down his coffee. “Right then. You asked for it,” he said, and his hand darted out to grab Jay by the scruff of the neck and haul him across to his strong, firm lips, taking the taller man’s mouth as if he had been kissing men all his life.

  Elyssa watched their embrace, thrilled by its adversarial feel, enjoying the sight of Jay’s pale, slight torso against Patrick’s rugby-player build, Jay’s long spidery fingers lodged in Patrick’s short dirty-blond crop, Patrick’s strong jaw working into Jay’s freckled cheek. His glasses had steamed up. Elyssa reached out and removed them, her unintended interruption breaking the men’s kiss and recalling their attention to her.

  “Wow,” she breathed.

  “Not bad for a beginner,” said Jay, a little hoarsely. “Bit lacking in finesse, but that’ll come.”

  “Less of your cheek, Marriott, or I’ll have you on your knees before you can say ‘elegantly wasted.’”

  “Wow,” repeated Elyssa. “There is definitely a spark there.”

  “Don’t think you’re getting away with anything,” growled Patrick, turning to her. “Two men and one girl—you’re going to be a busy, busy bee, aren’t you?”

  “I hope so,” she said with a grin. “God, I’m starving. Sort us some food out, Jay, will you?”

  “My pleasure, madam. And after that, you’re coming into the shower with me and Patrick. Is the shower big, Mr. Robertson?”

  “Massive,” confirmed Patrick with a wicked smile. “More like a wet room.”

  “Well, that’s good. Somebody is going to get very wet in the wet room.”

  He handed her a plate of breakfast. “So get those proteins and carbohydrates down you. Slow release energy, Elyssa. It will be your friend.”

  Jay drained the last of his coffee, banged the cup down on the trolley and loped off towards the bathroom.

  “What about your slow release energy?” Elyssa wanted to know, but he shrugged.

  “Need other appetites satisfied before I can eat,” he said. “Don’t let Robertson there eat it all. He always was a gannet.”

  “Growing boy, mate,” muffled Patrick, mouth stuffed.

  “I hope so,” muttered Elyssa, blushing at her own wickedness. This couldn’t be true, could it? It was like some kind of luxurious, decadent dream. She turned to Patrick.

  “You really are okay with this?”

  He put a hand on her knee, rubbing it underneath the duvet.

  “Never more so,” he reassured, chewing off a final crust of toast and brushing the crumbs from his chest. “Look at the state of me! I need a shower. And so, I think, do you.”

  He took Elyssa’s glass of fruit juice from her hand, put it down and assisted her, gentlemanly as ever, from the bed.

  “Is it cheating if I kiss you on your own, without Jay being here?” he murmured.

  “I don’t think so,” she whispered back and, connected at the lips, they made a slow and smoochy journey across the deep-pile carpet to the bathroom, from which the sound of water splashing on tiles was already audible.

  “Come on in,” Jay invited, his lean, nude body outlined behind the streaming, steamed-up glass door. “The water’s lovely.”

  Elyssa stepped in first, finding herself instantly grabbed and pulled into Jay’s body, the wetness causing their skin to slap, and water to drip and pool around their mouths as they engaged in a deep kiss. She sighed into his throat, shutting her eyes and remembering again just why and how much she adored this man. He had the technique and the finesse, of course, conferred by years of practice, but he also had such a sensual nature, a genuine love of the amorous arts. Patrick, by contrast, was more boisterous, perhaps a little rough at times, but in his case, the passion that caused it was also so appealing that she wouldn’t have had him any other way.

  She opened one eye, wondering where Patrick was, and noticed him standing rather awkwardly outside the vast shower cubicle, fiddling with the towels on the heated rail.

  “How do we do this?” she asked Jay under her breath, emerging from the kiss and blinking drips out of her eyes. “One at a time? Taking turns?”

  “Oh, no, I think there’s room for all of us,” he decreed, extending a hand to the door and shouting at Patrick to get his pert arse into the shower before he poked his eye out with his erection.

  Patrick, who was always observant of correct etiquette, and might be forgiven for struggling with the concept of what might pass for it in this situation, grinned with relief and joined his friends.

  Elyssa was standing with her back against Jay, leaning into his chest while he massaged exotically scented shampoo into her scalp. His fingers had magical properties, unlocking every knot of tension in her neck and shoulders while the suds flowed down her back, and she thought she would always insist that he washed her hair for her from now on.

  “Grab the shower gel and give her a wash,” Jay suggested, though his suggestions were almost always orders. Perhaps he sensed that Patrick, always so proper and traditional in his outlook, would have more difficulty getting into the flow than either he or Elyssa. Even if he didn’t, a gentle shove along the way might not go amiss.

  Patrick seemed unruffled by his friend’s dictatorial tone, and he took the tube of pearlescent gel in his hands, squeezing some into his palm, then applying it to Elyssa’s belly and breasts, smiling at the lather as it bubbled up and frothed her skin, slathering it over her curves. Elyssa pushed her head, which Jay was rinsing now, back like a cat demanding more stroking, thrusting out her ribcage and breasts for more of Patrick’s careful washing. Jay’s hands were on her hips, his fingers drumming on the top of her thigh, while Patrick leant into her, giving her the solid support of these two male bodies. Now that they were so close, she could feel Jay’s hard cock prodding her buttocks, while Patrick’s dinted her stomach. Four hands soaped her, sometimes vigorously, sometimes whisper-lightly, until she felt that every inch of her had been claimed. The sensory overload was intense, but addictive, and she angled her pelvis towards Patrick, looking for the one touch she had not yet been granted—that most intimate location.

  Both men slid hands between her legs at the same time, and they managed not to struggle with each other, one finding her clit, the other circling her entrance with wet-tipped fingers. Patrick’s other hand caressed a breast, his tongue dipping low over her nipple, while Jay held his free arm braced across her stomach, preventing any thought of escape. His mouth attached to the base of her neck, nipping and sucking at the tender flesh, voracious with unsated lust.

  Elyssa rocked and twisted between the walls of their chests, feeling herself double-ravished, twice-kissed, twice-fingered, twice-importuned by their impatient cocks, which threatened to bruise her pale skin with their unyielding stiffness. Jay’s fingers slipped up inside her, spreading and stretching her walls, while she ground her clit down against Patrick’s hand, wild for more, for all of it, her legs thrashing and sometimes kicking the air while the two men sustained their attentions to her crotch, urging her onward with all the assistant force of their teeth and tongues and mouths and rolling hips.

  When she came, it was with utter abandonment, her senses taking her beyond the knowledge that she had two men watching and making her orgasm, into a place of pure animal need. She poured her cries into the tumbling water and swirling steam, into Patrick’s wet hair, into Jay’s iron-taut arm, anywhere that would take them, until her body was limp and she could see again.

  “Nice, Elyssa, good girl,” crooned Jay into her ear. “See, it’s good, isn’t it? Lots more of that to come, sweetness.” The two men fell on her with their lips, kissing her face and hair and neck all over until she came down and the strength returned to her legs.

  “Can I help you wash, Jay?” she offered, once her breath was back.

  “Oh, yes, I think I’m going to need a hand. I’m filthy,” he said, handing her the shower gel. Elyssa got to work, rubbing the foaming cleanser into the
smooth skin, finding its secret hollows, its curves and bumps. His back arched perfectly beneath her touch and when her caressing hands slid lower, to his hips and belly, he seized them and pushed them down where his cock stood, proud and unsheltered from the insistent shower-rain. She ran her wet, lathered palms up and down, up and down, then she knelt, so that her face nestled against his thigh, and used her tongue to bathe his balls, licking an upward trail to the soapy-tasting cock.

  In the end, it was just too soapy—she had gone a little overboard with the gel, she realised—so she stood back up, using her fingers to flutter to the tip of the shaft and back again while he held her against him. Behind her, between her bottom cheeks, she felt the sudden touch of Patrick’s cock, rubbing itself forward between her thighs, prodding her flesh so insistently she feared bruising. With her free arm she reached behind her and took its base in her hand, circling it tightly between finger and thumb, squeezing it while he slicked up and down inside her opening pussy lips.

  They both seemed appreciative of her attentions, but Elyssa knew that much more of this would give her the most monumental crick in her neck.

  “Back to bed?” she suggested.

  Jay grinned, reached up and turned the spray off. “Best offer I’ve had all day,” he growled. “Towels! Now!”

  Patrick was first to the pile of warmed, fluffy bath sheets, and he wrapped himself and Elyssa into a clean, dry embrace, leaving Jay to sort himself out. Only two bathrobes hung on pegs by the door, and somehow the two men managed to appropriate these, so that Elyssa was forced to re-enter the bedroom in an abbreviated towel-toga, with a towel-turban on her wet hair.

  “You look good like that,” Patrick remarked, first to the bed, lying with legs sprawled, finishing off a piece of cold toast as if he’d been starved for a week. “You don’t show your legs off enough.”

  “How the hell would you know?” retorted Elyssa. “It’s been fifteen years since you were qualified to comment on my dress sense.”

  “Fair enough,” he shrugged. “So you don’t dress like you used to then? All long skirts and plaited belts and ethnic jewellery?”