Page 169 of The Widow and the Wanted

Who’s touching who. Who’s being tended. Who’s been left wanting too long.

But Lula ain’t one to keep score.

Lord knows there’ve been nights Okee and I took her apart between us until she couldn’t say either of our names right. Nights she laid soft and trembling in the middle of the bed while we fussed over her like she was something sacred.

So when she sits on the settee in front of me, skirts spilling around her knees, I don’t think much past getting my mouth on her.

“Sit back,” I tell her.

Her eyes flash, amused by the command, but she does it. Settles against the cushions like a queen granting favor.

My hands shake some when I ruck her skirts up.

It ain’t that I’m nervous. It’s from Okee still behind me, moving slow and deep, hitting that place inside me that turns my bones to pudding.

I grit my teeth and pull Lula’s drawers down her legs, my mouth near watering for the taste of her.

But then Okee gives a slow thrust that near folds me in half, and my forehead drops against Lula’s knee.

She strokes my hair. “You poor thing,” she says, sweet as pie.

Okee laughs under his breath.

Bastards. Both of them.

I lift my head and press my mouth to the inside of Lula’s thigh, partly to make her stop smiling like that, partly because I need something to do with all this wanting before it tears me clean apart. She smells like rose water and warm skin and the soap she keeps wrapped in linen by the washstand.

Supper. Home. Her.

Her fingers tighten in my hair.

There. That settles me some.

Okee may have me half out of my mind, but I know Lula. I know the hitch in her breath when my mouth gets close. Know the little lift of her hips she tries to pretend ain’t a kind of begging.

I kiss her there, slow at first, because I am a gentleman.

Then Okee drives in again, and my mouth loses all patience. I grip her thighs and hold on, working her with my tongue while Okee works me from behind, and for a minute there ain’t any counting at all. No fairness to measure. No turns to keep. Just the three of us tangled in the lamplight, each taking and giving as much as we can stand.

If I can only get her halfway there before I lose my mind, Okee will see to the rest.

That’s one of the blessings of three.

A man can fall apart and trust somebody else to keep loving where he left off.

Lord help me, Lula tastes sweet as cream as she makes this soft little sound above me. Just a tiny broken thing that says I found the right place.

Her fingers have slid into my hair, holding me there like she’s decided she likes me best with no room to run my mouth.

I lick her again, slower this time, and her hips lift off the settee.

That does something stupid to me. Makes me want to grin against her. Makes me want to say, see there? I know you too.

Because I do.

“Boone,” she whimpers.

That’s right. I hum against her.