I DROWNED IN THE taste of Richard’s skin, and Jean-Claude’s mouth breathed along my skin so that I shivered between the two of them like wood trapped between different flames. The feel of my hands on both their bodies at the same time with no one to tell me to stop was intoxicating. The ardeur gave us to each other in ways that we had always denied. It was desire so pure there were no doubts, no protests, no stopping. The next clear memory I had was being on the floor with Jean-Claude above me. Richard’s face appeared above Jean-Claude’s shoulder, the rich brown waves intermingling with the black curls. I was pinned under their combined weight, trapped in a way I’d never been trapped before. Richard’s eyes turned wolf amber, glimpsed like a wild thing through the fall of their combined hair. Richard did something with his hips that made Jean-Claude spasm, thrusting deeper into me, which made me cry out.
“Up,” Richard said, an edge of growl in his voice. Jean-Claude lifted his upper body off me in a sort of push-up. A tanned arm encircled Jean-Claude’s pale waist. I loved the contrast of their skins, and then Jean-Claude did something with his hips that made my eyes roll back into my head, so I only felt his hands curve under the small of my back and hold me in place as he went up on his knees. Normally I would have wrapped my legs around his waist to help hold myself in place but there was no way for me to reach around both men. I had a moment of not knowing what to do with my legs, but I needed the leverage of the lock. It was like being in guard in Brazilian jujitsu when the person above you is massive, you just can’t get a lock, but you need to find a way to get your leverage, except here I didn’t want to escape, I just wanted to be able to move.
“I need to wrap my legs around someone, or a headboard to hold on to,” I said, because that could make up for not being able to use my legs to help, but there was nothing within reach.
“We can come to you,” Richard growled.
“What?” I asked, but Jean-Claude seemed to understand just fine because he said, “Legs up, ma petite, put the heels I have been dreaming of seeing you in all day on my shoulders.” There was a heat, almost a hunger in his eyes that let me know he meant it about the shoes, and for that look in this moment I could wear more ridiculous shoes.
I had to move my legs wide as I lifted them up so as not to spear anyone with the stilettos. Jean-Claude held my weight in his hands, so it was easier than it would have been. I finally carefully had them on Jean-Claude’s bare shoulders, framing his face. All the beading and extras on the shoes that I had hated looked like a jewel in some treasure box with his black curls touching them, his dark, deep blue eyes bluer than I’d ever seen them, and I realized the blue in the shoes brought out his eyes as if he’d planned it that way, and being Jean-Claude he probably had.
Then Richard peered around his shoulder and those feral wolf eyes didn’t match the shoes at all, but their faces next to each other above me was perfect, as if I’d been waiting forever to see them like this. Jean-Claude lowered his body over mine, but with my legs over his shoulders it was the least missionary position I could imagine. I was still staring at his chest, but my own legs kept him up and off me enough that I could get glimpses of his face as he began to move inside me. Then the weight changed, and I felt Richard pressing us both to the floor. I was completely trapped under their combined weights, and I loved it.
Jean-Claude and Richard found their rhythm. In this position with Richard on top of him Jean-Claude couldn’t do his usual gliding in and out of me so that I could see every inch of him going deep into me, but the angle meant he didn’t need to do much to start my body building toward orgasm. I couldn’t see Richard at all, but I could feel the weight of him over us, the push and pull of his body in the gentlest of movements. He normally made love like he was trying to pound his way through to the other side, but not tonight. He was as gentle and careful as I’d ever felt him. I normally liked rougher, more vigorous sex myself, but tonight gentle was enough. That warm weight began to build deep in my body as Jean-Claude pushed and pulled himself over and over inside me.
“I’m close,” Richard said, and there was no growl to his voice now, just the strain of keeping his careful rhythm without pushing himself over the edge before we came.
“Yes,” Jean-Claude said, and his voice held the strain of concentration as he fought to bring me before he gave himself over to pleasure.
The weight was building, but I wasn’t there yet. I opened my mouth to say Not that close and then from one stroke to the next the orgasm rolled over me, out of me, brought me screaming underneath them.
I heard Richard say “Thank God,” and then felt him thrust his weight, pinning us both. Jean-Claude shuddered above me, inside me, and that brought me again, screaming and struggling underneath them, my fingernails tearing at the carpet trying to find something to hold on to, to keep me from falling into the pleasure of it and never coming out again.
My eyes had fluttered back into my head so that I was blind and only the lighter weight above me let me know that Richard had moved. Jean-Claude rose up on his arms. I tried to look at him, but everything was white-edged and light flashes. It’s a lie that you’ll go blind with too much sex, but it was moments like this that I understood where the idea came from. He pulled himself out of me and that made me writhe and scream again.
I lay on my back waiting to be able to move anything. Jean-Claude collapsed beside me on his stomach, his arm flung across my waist. I turned my head and all I could see was his black curls. Richard’s arm came into sight resting on Jean-Claude’s shoulder, down his back so that his hand rested against the other man’s body. Richard’s breathing was still labored, more than I’d heard him after a lot more vigorous workout. He gave a breathless laugh.
Jean-Claude raised his head, and I still couldn’t see anything but his hair. “We have won this battle, but we must make plans to win the next.”
I patted his arm where it lay across me and said, “If you can move, then start that Machiavellian planning, I can’t feel my legs yet.”
He laughed and shook his head, long hair still hiding his face. I found that I could move my arm enough to part his curls so I could look at him. His eyes were the lightest blue I’d ever seen them, not midnight blue, but autumn skies just as the sun begins to sink. I felt what I felt most times when I looked at him: that he was too beautiful to be mine. He smiled at me, not the smile he used onstage or when he was on camera with the media, but a smile less practiced and more real and all the more precious for it.
“Can’t we just lie here and enjoy the moment before we gear up for the next battle?” Richard asked, and his voice was almost sad.
Jean-Claude turned his head to look at him and I found that I could rise up on my elbows enough to see Richard’s body on the other side of him, but I could not see his face. “You are right, mon lupe, this is a moment to be savored. Forgive me.”
“Since we can’t get up yet, we could cuddle,” I said, because if this moment never happened again, I wanted us to hold each other.
I half expected Richard to climb back into his issues and insist on me being in the middle, but he didn’t. He just turned on his side and was the big spoon for Jean-Claude, who was the big spoon for me, and I was the littlest spoon. Love it or hate it, it was the truth. Jean-Claude held me close, and then Richard’s arm slipped over both of us, so that he held us. Eight, almost nine years and this was the first time we’d ever cuddled together like this, held each other like this, or if we’d ever done it before it had been so long ago I didn’t remember it.
I stroked my fingers down his arm. I’d forgotten how dark his skin was, or how pale mine was against it. I liked the contrast of his warm tan to our paleness. I’d never been able to tan, I just burned. I wondered if Jean-Claude’s skin had tanned when he was alive, or if all this white skin had burned like mine?
There was a knock on the office door, and we all tensed. Ethan said, “I’m sorry to interrupt, really sorry, but the audience is still waiting for you. Nathaniel is onstage trying to keep them occupied so they don’t start to leave, but we need you.”
I lay there in our cuddly nest of spoons and said, “Am I the only one that completely forgot about the audience, or should I feel stupid all on my own?”
Jean-Claude nuzzled my hair and held me tighter, pressing his nakedness against mine. It wasn’t so much sexual now as comforting. “It is not stupid to fully enjoy the pleasures that you love, ma petite.”
“Maybe not stupid, but you didn’t forget them.”
Richard’s arm tightened around us both like he was hugging us. “I came in the back through the alley, so I didn’t even see the audience. I just felt Jean-Claude call to the wolves for help, and I was close enough to answer the call.”
“It is lucky indeed that you were close at hand, mon lupe. I do not think any other wolf could have substituted for you this night.”
“Wait, did you say you were on a date and that’s why you were so close?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Is she here? Please tell me your date wasn’t standing outside the door while we had sex.” I started to try to sit up enough to look at him, but both men held me in place.
“She isn’t here. I called her an Uber and sent her home.”
I tried not to struggle with their combined strength keeping me pressed in place, but suddenly being the little spoon wasn’t as cozy. Richard had dumped his date to come have sex with us; it just seemed rude.
“I hope she forgives you,” I said.
“It was a first date, and I was bored out of mind. I’m sorry that people are in danger, but I’m not sorry that I’m here with the two of you instead of with a stranger droning on about her divorce and how I was nothing like her ex-husband and wasn’t that good.”
“That sounds awful,” I said.
Jean-Claude stroked his arm and said, “Why would you be on such a date?”
“Fixed up by another teacher, and my therapist has been encouraging me to date more.”
“What’s your therapist going to say about being here with us?”
“Nothing, she told me to either date and find someone to make me stop mooning over you and Jean-Claude or to get back with you.”
I was glad that Jean-Claude was in between us because I went very still. The sex was fabulous, and we needed to repair the triumvirate to secure Jean-Claude’s power base, but we weren’t back together. We were not suddenly a threesome. Richard had alienated so many people in our poly group that they’d never have sex with him, and he couldn’t seduce them into thinking it was a good idea. I didn’t even think it was a good idea and I had the benefit of seeing him naked. Did Richard really believe that one good fuck and all was forgiven, or had I misunderstood? Please let me have misunderstood.
“I know that this doesn’t make everything all right between us. I’m not expecting one good fuck, and everything is forgiven.”
“Thank you for saying that out loud,” I said.
He hugged us both again and then his arm moved, and I looked back over my shoulder. I caught a glimpse of his hair and upper body, so I rolled over still in Jean-Claude’s arms so I could see both of their faces.
He idly stroked Jean-Claude’s arm as he spoke. “I don’t know how comfortable I’ll be with certain things, but I finally changed therapists a few months ago, because the first one was an older man and he was more homophobic than I was, and one of my major issues was that I was totally captivated by this beautiful man that I kept trying to hate, because I didn’t want to be bisexual on top of being a werewolf. It’s one of the reasons I freaked out after we were together with Asher in the bedroom that first time. It felt great and then I went home and tried to be what I thought I was supposed to be instead of what I was.”
We both just stared at him. “Wait, go back, did you just say you were bisexual?”
He nodded.
“Richard,” Jean-Claude said, “I am astonished. I . . . you have rendered me speechless.”
“Am I too late? Is there no room for me in the poly group? I’ve been horrible and I’ve vanished for months on all of you, so if it’s too late then I understand. It’s my own fault.”
“It is never too late while life remains,” Jean-Claude said. “Only true death takes away our second chances.”
“I agree,” I said, “but we have to talk to the rest of our people. Some of the newer ones haven’t even met you or only in passing.”
“I know, and I’m sorry that it took me this long to admit the truth to myself.”
Jean-Claude rolled over on his back to look up at Richard, and for some reason that made me go up on one elbow so that I was mirroring Richard’s pose. He got totally distracted by my breasts for a second and couldn’t make eye contact with either of us.
“If that look on your face is you trying not to stare at my breasts, it’s okay to stare. We just had sex, so you’re allowed,” I said.
Richard smiled and looked embarrassed. “Not all women feel that way, even after sex.”
“That’s their issue, not mine.”
He looked at my face and there was a depth of feeling in his brown eyes that once would have made my heart sing but now forced me to look down so he couldn’t read the uncertainty in mine.
“I’m tired of their issues,” he said, then added, “and so tired of my own.” He bent down and I looked in time to see him kiss Jean-Claude softly, tenderly, the way most women like to be kissed. He drew back and Jean-Claude’s eyes were still closed, the black lace of his lashes making him look like Snow White in some gender-switch porn. I had sex on my mind but after what we’d just done together and gazing at the two of them nude knowing I could just reach across and touch them . . . who could blame me?
Jean-Claude opened his eyes and gazed up at Richard. “I feel like I am dreaming, and I do not wish to wake, but we must clean up enough to be presentable and use our combined energies to send the audience home safe and sound.”
“Just tell me what to do,” Richard said.
Jean-Claude sat up, then got to his feet like he was dancing onstage. I was not going to be anywhere near that smooth standing up in my heels. Maybe he read my mind, or maybe he just knew me well enough, because he offered me a hand up, which I happily took, because I actually needed it. Richard stood up with us. There was a moment of awkwardness when it was like he didn’t know whose hand to take.
“Ma petite needs the most help in those delicious shoes.”
Richard moved so he could take my other hand, and we walked toward the door, and then I stopped so they had to stop. “Not everyone in the hallway gets to see me naked on a regular basis; I need my dress.”
“I should put on my clothes, too,” Richard said.
“And I have a robe,” Jean-Claude said.
“Someone hand me my dress, so I don’t have to bend down for it.” Jean-Claude bent in the boots, and I admit to admiring the view while he did it, so that I was grinning happily when he handed me my dress. He smiled back as if he knew exactly what I’d been admiring. I wrapped my arms around him with the dress in one hand so that we could kiss. We drew back at the same time to smile into each other’s eyes. I suddenly felt better like everything would be all right; no matter what anyone else did, we would be good.
Richard stopped with his clothes in his hands. “If we’re going to clean up, I’d rather do that before I get dressed.”
“If we tend to the audience before we shower, then I might have something for you to wear onstage,” Jean-Claude said.
I watched Richard hesitate. “I teach at a college, which is more forgiving than when I taught junior high, but I don’t have tenure yet and stripping might make sure I never get it.”
“If we hide your face and get you out of your conservative clothes I doubt any of your fellow faculty will dare admit they recognize you except in their fantasies,” Jean-Claude said.
“What will you be wearing?” I asked.
“I have a robe that matches the boots.”
I grinned and shook my head. “Of course you do.”
“If you have clothes that will fit me and that someone is willing for me to borrow, I’m game,” Richard said.
“We will find something,” Jean-Claude said with a smile, and we did.