Voyeur - Lacey Alexander [81]
“Ready to put the steaks on the grill?” Braden asked—and from there, things turned amazingly easy. Since, after all, they were just three normal people having dinner. Sort of.
Braden and Tommy fired up the grill, putting on the steaks and potatoes, while Laura tossed the salad, then set the table. She turned on music, something low and soft in the background.
When they sat down to their salads, Laura chose the chair at the head of the table. Only when Tommy sat on one side of her and Braden on the other did she realize perhaps it had been a subconscious effort to put herself between the two men, to begin to get used to that, see how it felt—even if only in some small way.
And though conversation was easy—the guys telling her about the new computer games they’d tested today—everything inside Laura began to heat up, to swell with an inescapable and potent sexual consciousness. She wasn’t sure if it was just her body, wound up from her thoughts through the day, or if it was more palpable than that, something they all could feel passing between them, hovering in the air—but a whole new element of sensuality pervaded her being. Everything she touched, she felt more. Everything she ate delivered more taste than ever before.
She found herself forking an entire cherry tomato into her mouth, letting her tongue run over its smooth skin as she luxuriated in its very roundness, until finally she bit into it and let the tangy flavor burst across her taste buds, wet and cool. She washed it down with a swill of wine, welcoming the fruity warmth as it passed into her throat, then lowered the glass back to the table, where her fingertips slid slowly up and down the stem.
When Braden went to check on the steaks, Laura emptied her glass and watched as Tommy reached to refill it.
“Braden tells me you had a rough breakup not long ago.” She wasn’t sure it was the right topic, but it had just popped out—with a little help from the wine. She liked knowing he was a guy with feelings, a guy who could take a relationship seriously—maybe more seriously than Braden, for all she knew.
He nodded, took a sip from his own glass. “Yeah. But it was my own fault,” he admitted with an endearingly devilish glint in his eye. “Did he tell you that?”
She shook her head.
“I cheated on her,” he said, then held up his hands as if in defense. “Don’t let that make you think I’m a lousy guy, though—because believe me, I regret it. It was a stupid thing to do and I’ve learned my lesson.”
She tilted her head, intrigued. “Why does a guy do that? Cheat on a girl he cares for?”
He grinned. “Easy sex?”
She laughed softly, despite herself.
“Seriously, the temptation was there and I took it—but I really don’t know why. Now I think maybe I just wasn’t comfortable knowing I was getting in so deep with Marianne. Maybe I wanted to sabotage it—or at least prove to myself that she didn’t matter as much as I was afraid she did.”
“And?”
A grin of admission. “She mattered as much as I was afraid she did. And now I wish I hadn’t been afraid.”
She tried to reconcile this guy with the one who had three-ways with ski bunnies—and realized it wasn’t that easy to peg a person, to lump him into a category. She’d learned in her own way recently that she herself possessed a lot of different sides, varying and sometimes conflicting parts of her personality. She supposed everyone did, whether or not they chose to let it show.
She found herself reaching out to touch his hand on the table. “I’m sorry it worked out that way.” Heat flew up her arm and her pussy flooded at the simple gesture. Yet it wasn’t just her general attraction to Tommy causing it—it was knowing what they might do together later, with Braden, and it was knowing Tommy knew it, too.
Their eyes met,