When Xane flipped her over onto her stomach and positioned her on all fours, and growled stuff about her arse being pert and perfect, and her showing him how much she wanted this, Dani wasn’t sure which particular ‘this’ he was talking about. In all honesty, maybe it didn’t even matter. Tongue, fingers, cock, she’d get untold pleasure from each of them, and the chances were he’d use all three.
His intent became all too apparent when his lips touched the top of her arse. Hairs raised all across her body. She was so sensitive there it was hard not to squirm, especially when he traced whisper-soft caresses over her cheeks. Not that he lingered in that particular place. Within seconds he was tormenting the entrance to her forbidden hole.
It didn’t matter that they’d done this a bunch of times now, with and without a vibe to fill up her empty pussy. The naughtiness of it, the sheer fact that it was considered such a sin by the community she’d left, lent an additional thrill to the act.
Xane tickled her with his tongue. He lit up nerves she didn’t know existed. Until she was writhing like a woman possessed. Then he returned to his feet and shoved his cock into her. Deep into her pussy, in a way that made her cry out in shock and ecstasy. He fucked her hard, tangling his hand in her long hair and pulling until she lifted her head and arched her back.
It wasn’t long before he cracked a hand against her butt, and then began to rub circles over her anus with his thumb. ‘Yes,’ she moaned in encouragement. ‘Do it. Push it in.’
He wetted it between his lips, and then teased the digit into her hole. A shiver of bliss rolled up Dani’s spine. The combination of his cock and his thumb made everything feel exquisitely tight and dangerously full. God, it felt fucking amazing though, the pressure, all the nerves being rubbed at once, coupled with the forbidden aspect of it to send her into a complete meltdown.
‘Not yet,’ Xane warned her. ‘Don’t come yet.’
Like she could stop herself. Orgasm was building momentum like a runaway train about to smash into a line of coal trucks.
She cursed him roundly when he pulled out. It was only for a moment though, then he was inching his way back inside her, filling her arse with his rigidly hard shaft.
He took it slowly. She appreciated that.
‘OK?’ he asked once he was balls deep, right before pulling back and taking her skyrocketing to the moon.
‘Oh, Jesus, Xane … I forget how thick you feel when you’re in me like this.’ No matter how many nerve endings it set alight, there was a fine line between pleasurable and downright painful. He knew that though. It’s why he let her control their movement, and make their rocking together only a tiny shift to begin with.
‘Need it like this,’ he confessed, once they were comfortable. He pulled her against him, so that she was upright, her back against the glorious muscles of his torso. Dani put her arms around his neck and demanded hungry kisses. It was so good loving him. Her life had been transformed the day they’d met, even though he’d been a huge part of her existence before that point.
‘I love you … I love you.’ Endearments were rolling off his tongue as if he were drunk. It was all good stuff, the kind of things that made her feel positive about herself and convinced her that Luthor wasn’t any threat. She and Xane, they were gold. He was fucking her, unable to keep his hands off her.
‘Wanna fuck you. Need you. Wanna fuck you both. You’re so fucking lovely.’
The remark gave her a jolt, but his fingers were on her clit again, and she was too close to the edge to let it actually concern her.
‘You’re going to come for me now, aren’t you? You’re gonna come all over me. I can’t wait to have you both.’
Both! He was thinking about Luthor.
Oh, my God, she was there, coming in response to his actions, and in his head he was fucking Luthor. She shoved him away, hard, so that he lost his balance and toppled off the end of the bed, making an almighty thump as he hit the floor. Guilt immediately sent her scuttling over to him to see if he was all right. He was rubbing his butt, and looking confused, but his cock was still every bit as hard as it had been a few seconds ago while he’d been riding her into oblivion.
‘Dani?’ He reached out to her.
She slapped his hand away.
His grey eyes filled with smoke. ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ He grabbed her, wrestled her close and pinned her down beneath him. ‘Why are you mad? What did I do?’
‘This,’ she said, meaning what they’d just done, and him poised over her, his cock still stiff enough that it was bruising her thigh. It flexed against her as it sought a way to get back inside. ‘You swore that we’d keep this real, that you’d never get into bed with me for the wrong reasons. Well, you have, and you did. You just fucked me in the arse and—’
‘What are you talking about? Since when was wanting you the wrong reason to get horizontal?’
Damn him. She wrapped her hand around his cock, slid her palm upwards so that it covered the crown. ‘The problem is this isn’t for me. It has nothing to do with me. I’m just a convenient hole to shove it in.’
‘Dani …’
‘No!’ She covered his mouth to silence him. ‘You’re not hard for me. This is for Luthor. He’s the one you want to fuck. He’s the person you were thinking about, whose arse you were imagining sliding inside.’
‘That’s not—’
She pressed down harder, refusing to let him lie and suggest it wasn’t true. ‘It’s all you’ve wanted since we got here. Do you imagine I didn’t notice? Do you think I don’t know how your mind works? You were hard for him the moment he arrived on the docks, you locked lips at the first opportunity and then you used me as a substitute.’
He pulled her hand way from his lips. ‘I did not.’
He had. She knew it. She felt it in her chest, which was so tight right now she could only breathe in short gasps. ‘You wanted him, but you fucked me.’
Xane sat back on his knees, his mouth agape over her accusations. ‘Is there an alternative I’m missing that you’re suggesting would have been preferable?’
‘I don’t know … I don’t know. Masturbation.’
‘Fuck, Dani!’ he swore, and sucked his lip piercing into his mouth. He pushed up onto his knees. ‘You expect me to just wank myself silly. My God, I mean, of course, why didn’t I think of that? How about I do that now, and give the muscles in my forearm a good workout. Maybe I can shout his name as I come. It’ll be really satisfying.’ He shook his head, so that his hair fell around him like a shroud. ‘Stroking it’s got nothing on the real thing.’
She didn’t understand why he felt the need to be so growly. He wasn’t the one who’d been wronged. She hadn’t used him, nor been unfaithful in her head. ‘You should do.’
‘When I’m this wound up the wankfest of the century isn’t going to do a damn thing.’
‘Then don’t. Do something else?’
‘What something else would that be? You haven’t left any other options open. No kissing, no fucking, no obvious intimacy between him and me. Those are your rules and I’ve obeyed them, and now you’re adding another. I only ever think about you when I’m aroused.’ He gave a mocking laugh. ‘Yeah, because you only ever think about me while we’re making love. You never think about a sexy actor, or a stranger you walked past, or the cracks in the ceiling, or how many marks your deranged mother and her cronies would cut into your skin if they had any idea what you were doing.’
Rage bloomed white and hot when he mentioned the silvery scars that covered her skin. ‘I do only think of you.’ That was the truth. The absolute God’s honest truth. Xane was the only man she’d ever fantasised about. The only man who’d ever made sex so good she got so wrapped up in the moment there was no room in her mind for anything else.
‘Yeah, well, I’m not superhuman like you are. I’m into you, Dani. I’m so … so fucking into you that it hurts, but I’m not wired in a way that’s ever going to restrict my attraction to only one person. You’re right, I do want to fuck Luthor. His body, his scent, the damn twinkle in his eyes, they all drive me crazy, just as plenty things about you do too. I’m attracted and I want both of you. In fact, if it was purely down to me, I’d probably bed you both together, but I’ve accepted you’re not comfortable with that. Now though … you … you need to learn to compromise.’
‘Compromise how?’ she croaked, feeling cranky and embarrassed. ‘I’m not going to lie back and open my legs when I know it’s all a lie.’
‘You’re not listening. I want you. I wanted you when I came to find you, and I still want you now.’
The damned head of his cock nodded at her in agreement.
‘No,’ she insisted. ‘Stop saying that. Don’t pretend.’ She slapped away his attempts to pull her to him. ‘You want him, so just go and find him and fuck him. Do whatever it is you need to make you feel happy.’
To her horror, Xane pushed up onto his feet. ‘You know what, maybe I should. Maybe I fucking should.’
He walked out and Dani threw the nearest thing to hand at the door. That happened to be a shoe which bounced back and hit her in the stomach. Tears filled her eyes immediately, and she doubled over as a sob exploded from her throat. ‘No. Noooo!’ She hadn’t meant that. She didn’t really want to push him towards Luthor. She opened the door and walked into the lounge while simultaneously trying to pull down her skirt and get her arms back inside the upper part of her dress. Xane was nowhere to be seen.
She was too late. He’d already taken her at her word. If she went searching she’d find him easily enough. He’d be in the Little House wrapped around Luthor.
She trekked back into the bedroom, but only for a moment. The bedsheets were rumpled and the air smelled of sex. Dani took off her dress and found an old T-shirt and a pair of knee-length yoga pants. Then she returned to the living room and crept up the stairs onto the mezzanine level. There was a laptop on the table there, and a nook containing a daybed housed in an alcove full of books. She claimed the computer and crawled into the darkest corner of the book nook. Her knees were wobbly and she couldn’t stop shivering. She offhandedly brushed away the tears that were tumbling down her face. It was her own fault what had happened, and she was just going to have to live with it if she wanted to live with Xane. She wished there was someone she could talk to who would understand, but the only people on this island were Xane’s band-mates, and the members of Black Halo would always side with him over her. The only other outsider was Ginny, and while their friendship predated their involvement with the band, Ginny had almost become one of them since Ash’s accident. She’d never understood Dani’s issues with Xane’s bisexuality. She just saw two hot guys and made ‘phwoar’ noises.
There was only one person outside her current environment who cared anything for her, whom she could turn to for support. Dani waited for the computer to boot up, then logged into her account. She wasn’t really sure if she’d get a response considering the time-zone difference, but she had to reach out to someone.
The introduction was unnecessary, but their relationship was so new she always felt she needed to identify herself. She paused in thought, watching the cursor blink as she wondered what to write, and to her surprise a pop-up notified her that the message had been read.
When she’d first summoned the nerve to contact her father a few weeks ago, she’d expected him to be in England, maybe a couple of streets away from where they’d once lived when she was a child. She’d been relieved it was Xane’s bill when she’d finally got through and discovered he now lived in New Zealand. He and Dan – the guy he’d left her mum for – had emigrated four years ago, and had no plans to return to Europe.
Lies. A yawn stretched her jaw. She never used to lie, except by omission, of course. She typed,
Then deleted it.
Her little finger hovered over the return key, then landed on backspace instead.
This time she’d make sure she had some privacy before she began. During their first live chat, Xane had walked out of the bathroom naked and straight in front of the camera. She’d nearly died on the spot. He seemed to have his clothes off more often than on. He was parading around naked again wherever he was right now – screwing Luthor – though she supposed sticking around long enough to dress would have been pointless when he intended to get naked again immediately.
She slammed the laptop lid down and shoved it to the other end of the daybed as another sob erupted. The image of the two men entwined hit her like a punch in the guts. She gagged and coughed, snorted back her thickening tears. What did it do to cry over this? She’d known from the moment on the beach on Liddell Island that this time would come. That if she wanted to hang on to Xane, she’d have to face and accept his attraction to other men. She’d even convinced herself for a little while that she’d leaped that hurdle. She’d been fooling herself. Getting caught up in the passion of a moment wasn’t the same as living knowing that the man you doted on, whom you loved with every fibre of your being, didn’t feel the same way about you. She wasn’t sure how to live with that knowledge.
A loud creak prompted her to lift her head from her knees. A shaft of light spilled across the wooden floor and the rug at the centre of the square of sofas. Spook came out of his bedroom.
He turned his head, even leaned over the railings to look down on the room below. Dani held her breath, hoping he wouldn’t notice her. She didn’t want to make explanations, but there was a tickle in her nose that she had to rub at. The whisper of sound obviously travelled, because he immediately turned and pattered forwards, bare feet tapping on the honey-gold wood. He stopped a foot or so away from the daybed and squinted into the gloom.
‘Dani? Is that you? Are you OK?’
‘Fine.’
Wrong choice of expression, fine being the universal indicator that a woman was the very opposite of fine, and Spook Mortensen was intuitive enough to know that. Unsurprisingly, he clicked on a lamp and flicked another switch that illuminated the depths of her hiding place. He took one look at her huddled there, and her no doubt hideously pink and swollen nose, and straightened as if he meant business.
Shit! The last thing she wanted to do was cause a rift between Spook and Xane.
‘There’s a duvet in the drawer underneath you.’
When she didn’t move, he got it out and gathered it around her shoulders.
‘Thanks,’ she murmured without looking up, so as to avoid displaying the tear tracks upon her cheeks. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you.’
He gently cupped a hand against the back of her head before sifting a few strands of her hair. ‘You didn’t. I was reading.’
‘Something good?’ She peeped at him from the corners of her eyes.
‘It’s a book about Nikola Tesla. Fascinating stuff. I’d loan it you, but it’s in Swedish.’
‘He did weird stuff with electricity, didn’t he?’
‘And lots of other things.’
She raised her head a fraction. It wasn’t as if she was revealing anything he hadn’t already figured out.
‘Can I get you anything? A drink, maybe, or another blanket?’
‘Vodka,’ she croaked, and then laughed.
It made her sound hysterical.
‘If that’s what you want.’
Vodka, she recalled, was Xane’s poison of choice. She shook her head. ‘Maybe just a glass of water.’
Rather than descending to the kitchen, Spook went into his room. He returned a moment later carrying two glasses and a bottle of sparkling elderflower juice. ‘Is this all right?’
‘Looks lovely.’
He poured and handed her a glass.
Accepting meant she had to uncurl from her porcupine pose.
‘Am I to assume you and Xane aren’t friends?’
She opened her mouth to speak, but promptly closed it again. A thick lump embedded itself in her throat. If she started talking, she was going to start crying again, ugly crying, and Spook didn’t need to deal with that.
‘On a scale of one to five, how big a bastard was he?’
She held up her clenched fist, only to then flutter her fingers indecisively.
Spook caught hold of her hand. ‘Let me guess, it was something to do with Luthor.’
She nodded.
‘Well, that was obvious enough. Now for the specifics. Did he do something he wasn’t supposed to, or—’
‘He wants Luthor. He was thinking about Luthor while we were … I flipped out, and told him that if that’s who he wanted then that’s who he ought to bed.’ She covered her face with her hands again. She didn’t know why she was telling Spook this. It wouldn’t fix anything, but somehow he was easy to talk to, and he actually seemed to be listening. More importantly, he wasn’t frowning in any sort of judgemental way. ‘I really wish I hadn’t said that.’ She straightened her back and yelled, ‘I take it back, OK. I take it back.’
‘Where is he now?’ Spook asked.
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. With him, I guess. It’s my own fault if he is.’
‘OK.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘You know there’s more than one reason I made Luthor bunk with Paul. If Xane’s gone over there with the intention of securing a shag, he’s either performing for a scathing audience right now, or he’s decided an icy cold shower is a viable alternative. Paul’s an absolute bastard about anyone getting any action if he’s not party to it, and gay sex really isn’t his thing. He’s probably the straightest out of the lot of us.’
‘You’re all—’
‘Sexually fluid? Not really, no. We just live a rock ’n’ roll lifestyle. Experimentation and drunken fumbling are inevitable parts of that.’
‘Along with drug-taking, groupies and throwing TV sets out of hotel windows.’
‘Absolutely. I’ve done all of those things.’
She didn’t know how he managed to keep his face straight. ‘I’ll bet you have. I bet you’re the naughtiest of them all deep down. Don’t they always say it’s the quiet ones?’
‘Who’s calling who quiet?’
Touché. He had her on that one. ‘Spook,’ she said after a moment of chewing her thumbnail. ‘How do I fix this?’
‘You make a choice: walk away or accept what he is and that he isn’t going to change. And that means accepting his attraction to Luthor. I know you think you already did that, but the reality is that you’ve no more accepted it than when you first caught them together. It’s why you’re doing everything you can to keep them apart.’
‘I’m not … I guess I am. It hurts though. It hurts so goddamned much. It’s not just knowing they want each other, or thinking it means he might love me slightly less. It’s the fear that I’ll wake up and it’ll all be over. He’s been there for me for so long.’
‘Six months.’
She pursed her lips. ‘Way longer than that. I don’t know how to survive without him.’
‘Then don’t. Choose not to. Choose to accept the reality of who he is and find a way to make it work.’
He rose from where he was perched on the end of the daybed. ‘He loves you, Dani. I wasn’t sure I believed it in the beginning, but I do now. All you need to do is open your heart to him and you’ve got him for life. He’s a sex addict – you’re not going to magically cure him of that. It’s so much a part of him that he can’t actually separate his libido from his emotional state. But he’s ferociously loyal to those he cares about, and you can’t buy that sort of devotion. Let him love you in his own way. I don’t think you’ll regret it.’
Somehow she couldn’t help but smile, not when he spoke with such sincerity.
‘Am I OK to stay here?’ she asked.
‘Sleep wherever the hell you like.’
‘Is this where you were going to put Elspeth?’
He glanced back at her over his bare shoulder. It occurred to her that he was only wearing a pair of lounge pants and that she’d never seen him anything less than fully dressed before. His shoulders and his biceps were inked, much like Xane’s, and his hair was every bit as long, just blond. ‘I’m not sure it’s padded enough.’
He closed the door, leaving her to wonder just what the hell she was supposed to infer from that.