Mind (Naughty Wishes #3) Read online

  Even so, Geoff slowed to a stop. Something had changed. The bedroom door was open. Not cracked or closed. The large rectangle of darkness flickered with the blue-gray light of the TV.

  He’d told Chris—rather emphatically, with pretty Dom-like panache, if he did say so himself—that he’d wait until Chris came to him. But that had to do with other things, the undefined Dom/sub nuances between them, how that power exchange would play out. His revelation in the car made this a different kind of moment. You had to learn how to walk before you could run. Or, as the first Master he’d ever met had told him: “Learn how to fuck; then learn how to top.”

  Chris was the only man who’d ever seen Geoff cry. When Geoff’s mother told him she was staying with his father, despite his blatant and continuous infidelity, she’d given her son a look so distant, it was as if she were someone he didn’t know, had never known. “If you can’t treat your father with respect, Geoff,” she’d said stiffly, “you aren’t welcome in our home.” Geoff had packed and left.

  To this day he didn’t really remember making a conscious decision to go to Chris’s place. He’d just somehow found himself back at college. The guy lived in an eight-hundred-square-foot box with a postage-stamp-sized patio—one step up from a storage building, but it was adjacent to the organic garden the botany students had started. Chris was allowed to room there because he watered the plants.

  Chris sat him down on the patio in a sturdy lounge chair next to a huge pot of white, purple and red flowers, then went inside to get him a beer.

  Geoff looked past the patio boundary, at rows of some kind of vegetable he didn’t know. It didn’t matter, because he didn’t see them. He was staring at nothing, and it felt like someone had shot him. His heart seized, his throat closed up and his shoulders were hunched against the pain. When Chris came back to the patio door, he could have retreated without being seen, or done the awkward shoulder-pat thing, but he hadn’t done any of that.

  He’d come out and set the beer down. As the pain got worse and Geoff started shaking, he’d wrapped his big arms around Geoff from behind, leaning over him and pressing his head on top of his, holding Geoff tight while Geoff let his childhood and his family go with those tears.

  When he was done, Chris had given him a light pat, a hard squeeze of his shoulder, and said, “Hey, let’s splurge on Luigi’s. You know their lasagna cures everything. We might get that waitress with the great smile and the double Ds.”

  Chris was his best friend. The man he loved. Thinking about how quickly they’d integrated Sam into their lives, how easily they’d fallen in love with her, Geoff wasn’t as surprised at it as he’d expected to be. They’d shared so much together; why not love for the same woman? Sam said he was a romantic, and he always denied it, but he couldn’t help feeling as if another reason he and Chris had waited on what was between them was because she needed to be part of it all coming together. Maybe he and Chris had so quickly recognized her as the missing part of their three-part puzzle because they’d had nearly fifteen years to learn what love truly was—from each other.

  When Sam had stood before him the first time naked, her beautiful eyes fixed on him, her expression and soft mouth had told him everything he needed to know. He’d felt her arousal down to his soul, her craving for submission. Submission to him. His heart had locked up, everything good and perfect about the world right there in front of him. People who cherished a once-in-a-lifetime love didn’t realize it could be doubly powerful when it was twice in a lifetime. And at the same time and place. What made it even more of a miracle was when there was no choice to be made between the two of them. Only whether or not he would open himself up to love them with everything he had to offer and more.

  Thinking about what Logan had said about loving and cherishing, Geoff thought he’d dig down past his soul to China to find whatever Chris or Sam needed from him. And impatience had its place. Sometimes it was needed to get shit done that probably should have been done a long time ago.

  Geoff pushed Chris’s door inward and stood in the threshold, letting his eyes acclimate to the dimness. Chris was looking at the TV through half-closed eyes, one hand behind his head, the other lying loosely on the covers. He was on the mattress on the floor instead of in his hammock. He liked having two options for sleeping. The covers were pushed to his waist, showing the waistband of his worn boxers that fell low on his hips. The TV light limned the lines of his firm abdomen, the roll of his biceps bunched behind his head, the tousled hair over his brow. He’d either been sleeping or scraping his hands through it, like he did when he was worrying over something.

  When Geoff moved into the doorway, his friend’s head turned. Chris’s brown eyes were dark and compelling. His mouth was firm, tense in a way that had Geoff’s body tightening in response. Chris’s large hand curled on the covers as his gaze skated down from Geoff’s face over his chest, exposed by the open shirt.

  “Turn off the TV,” Geoff said. His voice was husky, strange to him.

  Chris lifted his gaze back to his face. After a weighted space of time, he picked up the remote and switched off the TV. The safety light plugged in behind the dresser gave Geoff enough illumination to see where he was going, but he thought he could find his way blind. He moved to the side of the mattress. Chris had gone even more still, if that was possible, the energy around him knitting into tighter coils. Geoff knew he might be punched in the next few seconds. Chris could hit like a hammer. But no guts, no glory.

  Dropping to his heels by the mattress, Geoff reached out and laid his hand flat on Chris’s stomach. All that physical labor, he didn’t have an ounce of fat, but with those large bones, he was built like a brick wall. Chris stared at him. He could have been a statue, except no statue had ever vibrated with so much life. Time stretched out like a wire, and Geoff found himself waiting, just as motionless. He wasn’t sure if he was breathing.

  Chris shifted then, sliding up onto his elbows. Holding Geoff’s gaze, he closed his hand on Geoff’s wrist and slid Geoff’s hand into the loose waistband of his shorts.

  Holy God. He’d seen Chris naked before. In the locker room in high school, plenty of times, or that crazy night in Myrtle Beach when they’d picked a couple of cheerleaders up off the beach and had sex with them in separate beds but the same room. When Chris had stripped off his clothes and put his knee on the bed, his eyes on the pretty blonde whose eager arms were reaching for him, Geoff remembered his thick, stiff member rising above the slope of his thigh.

  It had been a while since he’d had a close-up impression of it, and he’d never had direct tactile experience. Chris was hard and smooth, that typical velvet over steel that coaxed the fingers to stroke, squeeze. It was his size and the rigidity that impressed Geoff. When Geoff tightened his grip on a surge of pure greed, Chris’s lips parted. They were red, moist, and Geoff could imagine their taste.

  “You were looking earlier,” Chris said, a rasp to his voice. “Looking at it like you were already touching it.”

  “This better be all for me.” Geoff put enough of an edge in his voice to get an answering spark from Chris’s gaze. Yeah, it was different from interacting with Sam. Her submission had pleasant spikes of misbehavior. With Chris, the challenge was more constant, at a higher level. Both responses fit the individuals, giving Geoff a delightful variety to enjoy.

  “Fantastic Four just went off.” Chris lifted a shoulder. “Jessica Alba in a bodysuit. Can’t help that.”

  Geoff snorted. “Yeah, I’ll give you that one.” He gave Chris’s cock a firm pump and Chris drew in a breath. He curled a hand around one side of Geoff’s open shirt, not drawing him forward, but holding him in that same stasis. Reluctantly, Geoff released him, put his hand over Chris’s wrist and removed his hand so he could straighten to his feet. Moving to the end of the mattress, he stared down at Chris’s body, ranged so temptingly below him. “I want to see you naked. Handling yourself.”

  As Geoff stood, legs planted shoulder width apart, ha
nds loose at his sides, Chris’s eyes slid over his bare chest and down.

  “Get rid of the shirt,” Chris responded.

  “Give me incentive.” It was like playing poker. Knowing how to bluff and how to draw your opponent out. Though his opponent’s responses couldn’t be predicted, Geoff usually had sure footing on this field. But for Chris, he’d give ground if needed to win the war.

  As Chris held his gaze, he kicked off the covers in a fluid movement so he could remove the shorts. For such a big man, he did it gracefully, lifting his hips up off the mattress, shoving the underwear down and then pushing them off. Geoff studied the burly chest, the structure of his hips, his upper thighs, and spiraled around to the center, Chris’s erection. Thick and tall, looming over heavy testicles that were a dark rose color and layered with a light covering of the same type of gleaming hair on his chest. As Geoff watched, a drop of pre-come oozed out of the slit, giving it a pearlescent sheen that made him want to lick his lips.

  “Waiting,” he said in a voice that was close to a growl. A reminder he’d told Chris to do two things.

  Chris fanned out his fingers, sliding his palm down the ridges of his abdomen to find his cock and curl his hand around it. Geoff forced himself not to do a hard swallow. The room was so heavy with erotic tension, everything was moving in slow motion. Chris’s breath clogged in his throat as he manipulated the skin over that steel shaft.

  “You ever been fucked up the ass, Chris? Had anything up there at all?”

  “You know the answer to that.”

  Geoff closed his eyes briefly. With a man, he was used to this being all about sex. He didn’t expect more from it than that, not usually. This was a whole different level. He hadn’t been entirely sure if he was right, about him being Chris’s first male experience, but having it pretty damn close to being confirmed affected him unexpectedly.

  He told himself to get a grip, opened his eyes and let his lips spread in a feral smile. “I want to hear it.”

  “No. I haven’t.” Chris’s brown gaze held a trace of sullen fire now, his lips firming. Geoff understood the fire, because if Chris’s answer had been anything different, he would have responded the same way, no matter how illogical it was.

  “Good thing for you one of us knows what we’re doing,” he said mildly. He dropped to his heels, closed his hand on Chris’s ankle. The intimate gesture had Chris pausing and Geoff let him see the truth in his own eyes, hear it in his voice. “Because I’d rather cut off my own dick than hurt you in the wrong way.”

  Chris’s mouth tightened, but Geoff rose again, taking it back a notch. “It’s better if you’ve done stuff with it, toys or fingers, to loosen it up,” he said casually. “But I like the idea of taking your ass completely virginal.”

  Geoff stripped off his shirt and slid the tongue of his belt free. He wondered if Chris would ever submit to letting his ass be striped, because the idea of applying his belt to those twin muscular lobes had his cock stiffening up even more. As he let the strap dangle from one hand, Chris’s gaze followed it before coming back to Geoff’s face. Geoff was reminded of a mastiff, that inscrutable face that gave nothing away until you got close enough to lose a hand. But the key was not showing fear.

  Geoff slid the strap through his fingers contemplatively. Chris was still slowly squeezing and stroking his dick. “Roll over on your hands and knees. I’ve got to get something from my room.”

  He left the belt by the mattress and slid out into the relative coolness of the hallway. Crossing to his bedroom, he fished the lube and a condom out of his nightstand drawer. He kept it there with condoms, a long-standing habit for potential bed partners, male or female, though they hadn’t seen use here until he’d taken Sam.

  When he came back, Chris was sitting up on his knees, ass resting on his heels as he faced the wall, but that was as far as he’d gotten. It was quite a view, the wide back and tense shoulders, his buttocks pressed into his heels, his bowed head exposing the vulnerable nape. But he lifted his head and shot Geoff a glance that said the mastiff was thinking about going for the throat rather than wasting the time on a hand.

  Geoff showed him the lube, pocketed it, and dropped to a knee beside him. Chris’s expression was wary. Reaching out, Geoff threaded his fingers through his hair, a soothing touch. Chris kept his eyes on him, not saying anything, but Geoff noticed his hands relaxed on his thighs.

  “Thought I was just going to shove you down and do a hammer-and-nail job on you?” he asked lightly.

  Chris snorted, a self-conscious sound. “Yeah, good luck with that.”

  Geoff set the condom aside, his pulse thudding at the quiet declaration. He summoned a smile. “Sam had a lot of fantasies about us. You and her, me and her, you and me with her. I expect you’ve given it some thought yourself. Have you only fantasized about her?”

  There was a significant pause, Chris seeking the truthful answer. He was a pretty honest guy, all in all. Yet when he nodded, Geoff admitted it was a punch in the gut, but he pressed on, not letting that derail him.

  “Based on present context, I’m thinking that wasn’t because you didn’t have any interest in fantasizing about us. Maybe you weren’t sure how to make it play out in your fantasies. Or maybe you didn’t want to take it in your head where you thought we might not be able to take it in real life, ever, without risking what we already have. Why tempt yourself with what could never be?”

  The flicker in Chris’s gaze confirmed the truth and soothed the impact in Geoff’s gut. “Let’s just take it one step at a time, then.” Geoff slid his hand from Chris’s hair to his neck. It was an incredible contrast. Sam was silk and cream, all soft woman. Chris was tanned, firm heat. Geoff wanted to touch them both endlessly. He thought of restraining them side by side on two tables. He’d blindfold them, lock them down so they couldn’t move, but when he restrained their arms, he’d cuff their nearer wrists together so they could hold hands. As he enjoyed every inch of their different textures, scents, curves, softness and hardness, he’d watch their grip on each other tighten, scrape, caress and claw.

  “You know what I am, right, Chris? Know the things I like?”

  “Yeah.” Chris’s face was like carved marble, all those expressive emotions in compelling stasis.

  “Anything you can’t do, you just say, okay? Show me you understand.” Geoff nudged him. “And breathe. You stopped.”

  Chris’s lips tugged in a rueful smile and Geoff passed his thumb over them. Chris’s eyes went deep gold and Geoff had to force himself to take his touch away. “Stay still,” he ordered. “Like when you were watching that coyote and her kits in the Smiths’ yard last month. Remember that? You said you didn’t move for fifteen minutes, not wanting to spook her.”

  In this case, Chris was the animal Geoff didn’t want to send crashing away into the forest, or charging him with teeth bared. Geoff molded his palm over the rounded expanse of his shoulder. The damn thing was the size of a large grapefruit. From there he drifted to his biceps, which were contracting then releasing. A glance down showed Chris was flexing his hand in a fist, nerves and tension.

  “I want to try something. You’ll be able to get out of it if you really want to.” Geoff straightened and moved behind him. He didn’t intend to take a detour from his plan, but when he trailed his hand along Chris’s shoulder, he had to bury his fingers in the dark, thick hair for a blissful moment. Hunger overcame him and he pulled on it so Chris’s head dropped back on his shoulders. The unwitting submissive response sent a hard shot of longing through him that tightened his fingers further. He saw the muscle in Chris’s jaw flex, and his brown eyes were back to fire again.

  Geoff forced himself to release him and stepped back, out of range of Chris’s sight. The hot-as-hell view of him sitting bare-assed on his heels had only gotten better. When he dropped his head forward again, the layers of muscles down his back and in his tight buttocks flexed. Geoff wasn’t sure where to start, because he wanted to start everywhere.
r />   Picking up the belt again, he threaded the tongue through the buckle. As he knelt behind Chris, Chris’s head turned, chin tucked toward his shoulder to watch what Geoff was doing. Geoff slid the loop over one of Chris’s hands, tightened it on his wrist. Then he reached for the other. Chris quivered, one hard shudder that made Geoff pause, his own heart thudding up high in his throat. He carefully closed his hand on the free wrist, brought it behind Chris’s back and worked the belt end around both of them. A belt was a good beginning restraint, because if secured loosely around both wrists, a person could work their way out of it, since it was too thick and rigid to be an unshakable binding. But if someone needed the sense of being restrained to let other things go, it was an optimal choice.

  “I’m thinking maybe you did fantasize about us, but you didn’t give yourself pictures. You didn’t shine any light on it. Close your eyes, Chris.”

  Chris’s lips set in a firm line as he stared at the wall, his fingers twitching under Geoff’s grip. Geoff tilted his head enough to see his eyes were still open. Submissives were all different. Chris wasn’t at Sam’s level, plus he had some intriguing switch qualities. Yet he had desires and needs that Geoff’s instincts recognized. He reacted accordingly.

  “Close them, you hardheaded bastard,” he said, tone as silky as a glide up Chris’s cock, which was still sitting up high and mouthwateringly tight between his legs. “Else I’ll blindfold you with my shirt.”

  Chris’s lips twisted, but he complied, eyes shutting. He had thick, long lashes that fanned his tanned cheeks. Geoff gave the belt an extra cinch, putting his other hand flat on Chris’s back so he felt his heart jump. His own did the same.

  “So you’re in darkness,” he said, steadying his voice. “Total, pitch darkness. Where you’re not Chris, you’re not really anyone. Just pure need and want, no thought or judgment. You’re on your stomach, the way you normally sleep.” Geoff lowered him into that position, putting him flat, making sure his cock got pressed to the mattress in the right direction. Nothing could break a moment like having your dick at the wrong angle . . . unless the discomfort had erotic purpose. He thought of the sub he’d seen at the warehouse, trussed in pallet wrap and under a coating of heated wax.