Chapter 13
Bella
In the morning, I wake up under a mountain of skin and muscle. At first it's alarming, but then I remember where I am, what we've been doing.
They sleep hard, like teenagers, their arms thrown up over their heads, totally secure in their nakedness. I didn't know the people acted like this. Positively immodest, walking around naked whenever they can, laughing and joking with each other. They seem completely at ease when they're together, when no one else is around. They show a sort of playful happiness that I don't see any other time.
But I've noticed we don't have a whole lot of very deep conversations. Maybe they just communicate without words. Sometimes I find them staring at each other, seeming to be talking, but not talking. They seem to understand each other in a way that makes me a little bit envious.
And they share, without jealousy. I would have thought that was just made up, just nonsense. When we're in public, sometimes I see jealousy flare up in Dillon when he feels left out. But when we're alone, and I can divide my attention between them, they're gracious to one another. More than once, Dillon has offered to let Emmet have me first, taste me first, enter me first. And vice versa.
It’s sweet. I mean, I know it's totally weird and perverted and insane. But it's also kinda sweet.
And they've made me feel things I've never felt before. I always knew I was missing something, but that was my choice. I did not want to be tangled up in the drama and disappointment a relationship always results in. But my body… our bodies, together. The sensations…
Oh my God.
I feel it building in me again, that warmth, that clanging pain in my belly like a rubber band snapping, but so good.
Before I know what I'm doing, my hands wander along the bedsheets, finding their bodies, brushing my palm against the light fur along their sculpted, thickly muscled abs. They look like gods, fallen down from Olympus.
Both of them are already half hard when I close my fingers around their velvety, veiny shafts. The cocks move heavily against my palms as I begin to stroke them, and they’re hard in seconds.
Emmet wakes first, rolling over and smiling. He kisses me sweetly and groans, grinding, already wanting me.
It feels like magic. Like power. I never really felt like I could handle one man, let alone two. But here I am, arousing them both with just the touch of my hand.
“I need you,” I whisper against Emmet’s cheek. “Make me come again.”
“Yes, Bella,” he answers, nudging me so I can turn onto my side. With his hand, he lines himself up with my entrance, then reaches around to circle my clit gently as he begins to thrust inside me. I shift both my hands to Dillon's cock and continue to stroke him as Emmet dives into me, filling me, swelling until I am almost bursting.
Dillon's lips find mine and he kisses me, completing a sort of circuit. I feel charged, bright with ribbons of electricity as all of me turns on all at once. In moments I'm coming and coming, drinking Emmet’s seed deep inside me, smearing Dillon’s seed into my skin.
We drift back to sleep for a little while, unworried, satisfied, complete.
“What do you want for breakfast?” Emmet sighs after a while, as we gradually slide back to waking. He stretches grandly, flexing those beautiful abdominal muscles.
“Well… actually do you think you could ask your driver to take me home?”
Dillon pushes himself up on one elbow, placing his hand in the middle of my chest and pinning me to the mattress playfully. I wriggle, pretending to struggle fruitlessly.
“What are you talking about? You're not leaving. I can make you come two, three more times before lunch.”
“Oh, I know you can!” I smile, briefly considering that thrilling offer. “But I have some work I need to get caught up on. I want to take a personal day.” I wriggle between them, sliding toward the end of the bed. When I look back over my shoulder, Emmet's feasting his eyes on my naked ass, but Dillon looks more concerned.
“What do you mean, a personal day? Are you serious?”
“Yeah, I'm serious,” I shrug, sliding on my skirt from the night before. I wonder what people in the lobby think of me, traipsing through there in the mornings, wearing the same clothes again. I'm sure I cannot be the only person in building who does that walk of shame, certainly.
“You can work here,” Emmet suggests. “Naked, for instance.”
“You see, that's why I can't work here. Because I would be naked, and I wouldn't be doing anything like work.”
I pick my handbag up off the chair and sling it back over my shoulder. My shoes slide on pretty fast, and I'm filled with a little bit of regret. Do I really want to go? Really?
“What if I promise you that it will be a real workout?” Dillon suggests, quirking an eyebrow at me suggestively.
“Okay… goodbye now, gentlemen!” I call out as I force myself to leave the room, walking back through the penthouse to the private elevator. I keep telling myself this is the right thing to do as I cross the lobby and get in the waiting car. All the way home, I remind myself that I really do have work to do. Books don't just write themselves. All the great ideas and source material in the world do not equal a book. You have to put your ass in the chair and grind it out.
Ooooh, that sounds dirty.
Oh man. I really need to get it together.
And then when I'm finally in front of my Greystone again, that's when I know I really have done it. I just exercised the right amount of discipline. Or at least started to. The still actual work to be done.
It's a good thing I don't have pets, I think as I re-enter my home. I don't even have real houseplants. There are couple of mother-in-law's tongues and philodendrons in the kitchen, but those things would survive the total collapse of civilization. Not even I can kill them. But I certainly haven't been spending a whole lot of time at home. Nothing really seems out of place, but nothing really seems very clean either. There's a little bit of a film of dust, or so I think.
But after a quick shower and change of clothes into yoga pants and an overly large, worn T-shirt, I'm ready to sit down and make this happen.
Here's our story.
I open the document, going back to the very beginning. I met Dillon in a parking garage and mistook him for his brother. I suggested a date. Hannah relayed that information to Emmet. The date began with Dillon.
And then we kissed.
Truthfully, that first kiss blew me away. The warmth of his breath on my cheek as he exhaled, leaning into me, eagerly tasting my lips… That sensation seared through me. I'd forgotten how wonderful it is to be kissed. I'd forgotten how delightful it is to want to be kissed.
And then when Emmet arrived, the confusion returned. I forced myself to remember that I was on a mission and reconstruct my defenses. Also, I had to reconstruct something of my ambition, even while every secret part of me was screaming that I should leave. My cover had been blown. The character I’d created to act out the fantasy was torpedoed to smithereens.
But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t just give up on everything like that.
And so I forced myself find a way to salvage the story. I had to kiss Emmet as well so that the blogger could see us. That wasn't like me at all, kissing two different men within, say, years of each other. And that aroused something different in me: a feeling of power. The realization that I could actually do this. They were actually going to let me.
They both wanted me.
My eyes scan the transcription, and I scroll through page after page, replaying every scene in my mind as I read through them again. From time to time I add more notes, but I find myself eager to get to the next meeting, the next conversation.
I realize quickly that there's quite a lot of material here. I execute the keystrokes for the word count tool and my mouth drops open. I have a hundred thousand words already. That's a novel, a really long novel.
I sit back in the chair, knuckling my chin and chewing on my bottom lip. Did I really write a novel? In three weeks? How the hell did I find the time, in between acrobatic bouts of the kind of sex regular people would never even consider?
But really, I've stolen every moment that I could, dictated everything that I remember into the app. I have been faithful, disciplined, dedicated.
Something else begins to occur to me too. It's my voice. It's me. This is the kind of writing that I wanted to do, the kind that Hannah told me was too difficult to sell. She is the one who nudged me off, forcing me to write those inane lifestyle pieces.
My eyes dart over the page, hungrily skipping ahead to the next juicy details. This is good. This is really good. This could be a perfectly steamy romance novel, if I just changed the names. A quick find and replace, and I could come up with a pen name in five minutes, I'm sure of it. I could self-publish it by tonight.
But I'm not going to do that.
This is my story. Our story. And the agreement was that I own this story. Every single word.
Can I really do it? I have got long passages in here describing the exact length and girth and texture of Emmet's beautiful cock. That sweetly rose-colored tip. The branching veins rolling under the skin. His balls, cupped tightly to his body, wreathing that beautiful shaft.
Oh boy. I wonder what he is going to think of this?
But I play the scene in my mind and realize he's going to love it. Dillon especially! He's going to adore my descriptions of his cum sliding between my tits, pooling in my belly button. He's going to absolutely love it. He may have to have it printed on a T-shirt.
Nearing the end of the document, I realize I'm almost up to today. So where does the story go? We’ve got the proposal coming up, with the spectacle of all of that. I'm sure it will be something, and a slow smile creeps across my face. Emmet has been very quiet about it, and I’m really excited to see what he's being so secretive about.
So what is my ending? Romance readers expect happy endings. Happily ever after, if at all possible. The characters are supposed to ride off into the sunset together, even if it's an unusual ride into the sunset, on three horses instead of just two.
Were supposed to make gooey declarations of forever at each other, passionately exclaim our love…
Oh, about that.
I scowl, wrinkling my nose. Love. Now there's a four letter word. I wonder if they've ever been in love. I wonder if I've ever been in love. Mark was my college boyfriend, but did I love him? I thought I did. We spent nearly all of our time together, applying to the same college and then walking around campus, holding hands smugly like we were relationship royalty.
I had that whole Promise Ring thing propping me up, the idea that my virginity was a shining jewel in a dingy sea of shattered glass, or so I had been told. Among all the other sullied college women, I rose gracefully above because I had a man who loved me and, to prove it, would not make love to me.
But when I found him with Camille, it all fell apart. They were in bed together, just two hulking, shuddering shapes under the blue blanket. They heard me drop my purse and poked out their sweaty, surprised faces.
So much for the noble love who respected me too much to defile my body. I guess he just thought I was a dead end chump, one who would give him the innocent Promise Ring Prince Charming reputation for just a little bit of his time in return. And a lot of his lies.
But after the initial shock, it was easy to let him go. It was like turning off a switch. If it was love, would it have been that easy to cast him aside?
And then Trevor… I must've loved him, because he changed everything. He's the reason I just gave up even trying. He was so charming, so believable. So earnest and unassuming… I believed every single word that he told me. I saw our future blooming in front of me like a wide-open landscape being illuminated quickly by a rising sun. I never even thought that I could see a horizon stretch out like that, see my future pushing out fast ahead of me like a thrown spear.
He too loved the idea of my virginity. He loved how special that made me, especially as I crept toward twenty-three, then twenty-four. He said he was satisfied just to cuddle. We talked about our future like it was a castle on a hill, complete with birds to carry my wedding train and angels to giggle around our eventual wedding bed.
So when he turned out to be a drug addict and a liar at a cellular level, it wasn't just a day-to-day relationship he took from me. He took the whole damn landscape, castle, fairies, and dwarves with him. The sun went out. In an instant, my whole future was scooped wholesale off the planet.
So that must have been love, because that was devastating.
So what do I see now? Do I see a future? Are Emmet and Dillon the kind of men I make plans with? Are these the kind of people I trust long enough to find out if the plans are for real? Because that's what love is, isn't it? Bliss today, but the promise of more bliss tomorrow too, right?
Slowly, I lift my hands off the laptop and snap the lid closed. I see the light blue of the screen flicker and go out.
I don't have an ending for the story it. I don't know what it is.