Fairyville (Fairyville #1)(52)
Author: Emma Holly

"He still loves you."

The words stirred a thrill she couldn’t repress. "Maybe. But I don’t think I’m the only one he feels that way about."

Bryan touched her cheek, his palm rough with calluses that neither Alex nor Magnus had. When Zoe lifted her head, his face was flushed, intent with an emotion that—with any other man—she would have said was desire. His eyes gleamed in the darkness, their black coffee richness touched with a hint of gold. She found it very hard to look away from him.

"I want my own back," he said. "What Alex did hurt me more than I expected, made me angrier. I was thinking—" He drew his hand from her cheek to her throat, skimming her skin with a tingling delicacy. His eyes followed the motion of his fingers to her slight cle**age. She was wearing a camisole and light cotton drawstring pants, both dampened by the rain, both more transparent than she should have been comfortable with. Her ni**les tightened as his gaze hit them.

Okay, maybe her radar was working, because Bryan swallowed hard before he went on. "I was thinking I would use what Alex did as an excuse to put the moves on you. I thought if there was any good way to hurt him back, that would be it."

"You sound like you’ve changed your mind."

"I want to do it." He looked at her face again, his gaze as hungry as any she’d ever seen. "I’ve been thinking I’d like to since I watched you and Alex eat each other up with your eyes while you made that bed."

Her body seemed to be making its own decisions. She turned to him, her hand coming to rest in a gentle cup above his right nipple, not touching it but close. The left was a tiny point beneath his wet black shirt.

"You like women."

"I like them when they don’t try to stop me from doing what I want with men."

Despite the coolness of the rain, Zoe’s temperature jumped a few degrees. It was difficult to get her next question out. "What are you trying to ask me?"

"I want you," he said. "I want you so bad I could screw you right where you stand."

"But?"

"But I want Alex to watch me f**k you even more. I want him to see my c**k push into you. I want him to know he’s not the only one who can take pleasure from someone else."

"And what—" She cleared her thickened throat. "While you’re ‘taking your pleasure,’ what would you want Alex to do?"

Bryan leaned in, his bicep bunching as he bent his arm. "I’d make sure he couldn’t do anything but watch until his dick was ready to cry. I’d make sure he was so hot he couldn’t see straight. And then, when he was an inch away from screaming with frustration, I’d want us both to do him."

"That last part doesn’t sound like punishment."

Her hands had slid to either side of his ribs, holding him lightly but not so lightly that she didn’t feel his heart thumping hard and quick. He moved his mouth over hers, the feathery touch tingling on her lips.

"It isn’t a punishment," he whispered. "It’s a fantasy he’s never managed to live out."

Zoe’s pu**y clenched so hard she felt like she was coming.

She was wet, and hoarse, and so ready for sex she could barely breathe. This wasn’t just Alex’s fantasy, it was hers. To be with him and another man. To have that other man desire her. No doubt her yen to do this was completely screwy, but to her it seemed the ultimate re-empowerment, the ultimate exorcism of the pain he’d caused her all those years ago.

"You forgive him?" she managed to ask.

Their faces were so close that when Bryan shook his head, his nose bumped hers. "I don’t know. I only know I can’t hate him. I understand what it’s like to want and want and finally get the chance to have."

Zoe wet her lips, the tip of her tongue accidentally touching his. He sucked a quick breath and then licked her back, just enough to curve his tongue inside the softness of her upper lip. He was masculine to the nth degree, and yet she wanted to capture his mouth and plunder it like a warrior’s prize. This aggressive heat she felt for him was crazy, and it only grew with not giving in to it. She wanted it to grow, to blaze so high it incinerated any shred of conscience that could hold her back. Sensing this perhaps, Bryan drew his mouth away.

"Is this something you’d want to do?" he asked raggedly.

She slid her hands down his sides, over the soaking cotton of his shirt, over the dip of his navel and his clinging jeans. Their front was stretched across his erection, a hard, curved ridge that pulsed beneath the heavy drag of her thumbs.

"Yes," she said and watched his eyes flash with fire.

Chapter Fourteen

Zoe held off until Friday evening, though her body had been itching to go with Bryan as soon as he’d asked.

"Don’t tell Alex what we’re planning," she’d pleaded before he left. "I need time to prepare myself."

"Understood," he’d said, his face still dark with arousal, his fingers playing with a curl of her hair. "I hope you realize I’m going to be like this until I get inside you, because nothing’s going to satisfy me short of that."

She’d smiled, flattered by his half-serious claim, and pulled his head down for a deep, wet kiss. This time, he’d let himself really take her mouth, and the kiss had slipped down her pleasure channels a lot more smoothly than she’d expected. Alex’s friend kissed hard but nice, and she hadn’t been able to keep from speculating what else he might be hard and nice at.

She’d been useless at work all day, actually giving one of her clients a slew of messages from the wrong spirit, until the woman’s confused expression clued her in that she wasn’t being her usual accurate self. Zoe apologized and refused to let the woman pay, but her lack of focus was telling.

As many times as she’d wondered what making love to Alex would be like, her most powerful fantasies, the ones that stole into her mind uninvited, didn’t involve him and her alone.

It was funny—and possibly disturbing—but in the two years she’d known Magnus, she’d dreamed of bedding just him much more often than she’d dreamed of bedding just Alex.

So I’m perverse, she thought, attempting to shrug it off. It stands to reason I’d be more exclusively attracted to a man who’s playing hard to get.

Naturally, this was the moment her contrary brain chose to send her a clit-scorching image of all three men in bed with her.

Giving up, Zoe rescheduled her last appointment, waved goodbye to Teresa through the cafe door, and went home early. If she was going to live out this fantasy, she was going to do it right. She was going to shower and shave and moisturize every inch of her tingling skin. She was going to beg Raj el to help with her hair, and she was going to pack a discreet black bag with toys she hadn’t been able to resist buying, but had always wondered if she’d ever use.