Holly's Intuition (11 page)

Concern flitted through her expression. “Both of you, yes?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Again he stroked his thumb over her nipple. She panted aloud, her eyes squeezing shut.

He shook his head, rueful y acknowledging the burden he’d created for them both. “If I don’t stop now I won’t be able to stop.”

Moving his hand, he cupped her whole breast. He held her for a second longer then eased his hand free. Aching for more, he stared down at her.

She met his gaze, and he felt odd, as if he was on a precipice, wavering.

A moment later, she caught her breath and gave him a rueful glance. “You’ve made it even worse on me now, I’m so turned on.”

He pul ed her bra back into place, zipping up her uniform. Regret swamped him. He wanted to do more, but he pushed the selfish needs aside, thinking of Josh. “I don’t want you to forget what I said about tonight, that’s why I did it.”

“Oh, I won’t.”

As she left the office, he gave her a pat on the behind.

“Stewart.” When she glanced back, she smiled.

It felt good to have put that look on her face. She’d looked as if a huge dark cloud hovered over her, while she’d expressed her concerns. The fact that she was leaving his gym with a smile made him feel like he could pump iron solidly for the rest of the shift—in fact that might be a necessity.

He escorted her through the gym. She paused by the double doors that led to the outside world. “Promise you’l talk to him, make sure he understands and he’s okay with what I said?”

“I wil .”

“I’l stay away until you’ve talked about it. But…if he doesn’t want to see me again because of my…my added complication, I’l know.” She forced a smile.

Would she real y know? Stewart couldn’t get to grips with the depth of her connection, but there was no doubting she had a real y strong handle on Joshua and his emotions.

“Don’t worry, real y.” He knew it was an empty statement, but he had to reassure her. He had no idea how Joshua would take it, and she was going to worry anyway. He ducked down to kiss her cheek.

As he watched her leave he tried to imagine Joshua saying he didn’t want to see her again. If the little masochist did that, he needed some sense shaking into him. Stewart hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. Even stress-and-drama boy knew when he had a good thing going on, surely? Joshua just had to learn to accept life’s gifts as wel as its trials, without question.

Watching the swing of her hips as she disappeared out of the mal , Stewart figured Hol y was the best gift they could ever have wished for. He just needed Joshua to accept that.

“You have to be kidding me, psychic powers?” Joshua was dubious.

“No, not kidding.” Stewart didn’t even have a hint of a tease about his expression.

Joshua tried to make sense of it. When Stewart had sat him down at the kitchen table with a beer in order to talk, his mind had run through al the possibilities. Never in a thousand years would he have guessed he’d been about to announce that about Hol y. That was the sort of cookie nonsense he’d expect from someone much more ditzy.

“She came to see me at work today,” Stewart said. “At first I thought it was because of what had happened between the three of us…”

Unaccountable jealousy surged through Joshua. Why had she gone to Stewart?

“But it wasn’t,” Stewart continued. “Wel , not real y. I mean, she mentioned that too.”

Joshua’s lips tightened. He stared across the kitchen table at Stewart. When Stewart didn’t add any further comment, he forced himself to ask.

“What did she say?”

“About Saturday? Not a lot. I wondered if she’d done a runner on us and she had, but not because of what had happened. She doesn’t regret it.” He paused to let that sink in. “It was because of this other thing, the psychic link she has with you. She feels it’s something we need to be aware of, because…she says…it’s what has drawn us together.”

Joshua couldn’t take it in. Psychic powers? The concept sounded way too weird for Hol y. A woman like her was far too grounded and practical, surely? To him she embodied serenity and quiet confidence, a beautiful, sensible woman. But maybe that’s what having psychic powers did for a person.

Who was he to judge? He didn’t have the first clue what to make of it.

Stewart sat on the other side of their kitchen table, observing the reactions while he dropped his bombshel and afterwards, while Joshua went through various stages of disbelief. Stewart had his feet very much on terra firma and he seemed to believe it. He’d had longer to mul it over though.

Joshua sighed and lifted the bottle top that sat on the table between them and spun it, watching it as it turned and eventual y fel flat to the surface.

“It makes sense of a lot of what happened,” Stewart commented.

He was trying to force a response out of him, Joshua knew that. He wasn’t ready. He’d gone from initial denial to subsequent silent consideration of the facts, and he stil wasn’t sure how to react or what to say. His gut response was that it just seemed like another element of his life that was beyond his control and understanding.

“Doesn’t it?” Stewart added, pressing him.

Joshua nodded. “I guess so.”

It did make sense of what had happened though, and he’d felt closer to her, that much was true. But nothing like that, not inside her thoughts or whatever it was that she experienced. It was eerie. He was baffled. “And you say she’l know what I’m feeling now?”

Stewart nodded. “If you have an emotional response, she wil .” He coughed, clearly trying to be serious about the subject and not completely succeeding. “Let’s face it, you are aren’t you? Having an emotional response, I mean.”

Joshua shrugged dismissively. “I guess.”

“Wel then, she knows. That’s what she said, highs or lows of emotion.”

“That’s weird.” Joshua rubbed his hand over his hair. He kept thinking back to the night at his parents’ home and the strange way it had unfolded, how she’d known him so wel and how she’d held his hand while Stewart made love to her, as if she knew what he felt and how turned on he’d been.

Stewart watched him intently. Joshua had never seen him attempt to be this serious, not even when they’d first argued about coming out as a couple.

That was stil hanging in the atmosphere between them, an act that had to be done to prove how much Stewart meant to him. Stewart was being patient, but Joshua was aware of that patience running thin. And now this. Joshua sighed and grabbed his bottle, taking a swig of the cold beer.

“It’s unreal, the whole thing is just unbelievable,” he said as he put the bottle down.

“We could go over there and ask her to tel us more. Proof would help us both.” Stewart seemed to brighten as he offered the suggestion.

The thought of being near Hol y again made Josh want something entirely different than a heavy discussion. He wanted to lose himself in hot sex, to be surrounded by deviant possibilities that took him into another plane. As he looked across the table at Stewart, tension built inside him. Is that what Stewart was after too, a sexy female shag to take his mind off the presence of way too many issues in their lives? Anxiety hit Joshua like a stranglehold on his throat, and he snapped. “Is that al you want to do if we go over there, get proof?”

Stewart lifted his hands and gave him an exasperated glance. “This is about you, and how you feel about it. It’s up to you what happens now.”

He’d placed the burden at Joshua’s door, right alongside the one he was already dealing with—outing his sexuality to his family. It almost felt as if Stewart was using this to push him one way or the other, by accepting Hol y into their bed. “Is that some kind of test?”

Stewart’s mouth quirked to one side. “It was meant to be a gesture of faith and trust. I care about you, you stupid bastard.”

Joshua was hauled up a moment. It was something Stewart rarely put into words. He was a gruff kind of man. Nevertheless, Joshua’s more visceral reaction was blurted in the heat of the moment. “It’s right up your street though isn’t it, having a woman as wel as me?”

Stewart rol ed his eyes. “It didn’t happen like that, and you know it.”

“Didn’t it? You were the one who got the three of us on the bed.”

“For Christ’s sake, you were the one who invited Hol y to your family event. That was to suit you, nothing to do with me.” Irritation flashed in Stewart’s eyes. “I’m strong enough to admit being bi, and that is not something you’l ever change. I told you that at the outset.”

He had told him that, but Josh hadn’t expected Saturday night to happen. Angry, he lashed out. “Oh right, so this is about you being better than me now, because your bisexuality makes you some kind of higher being.”

“You’re deliberately misunderstanding me,” Stewart stated, from between gritted teeth. “But if you want to push my buttons, and you have, then yes, I do feel better because I’ve admitted what I want.”

Joshua bristled. “That’s low.”

“No it’s not, it’s the truth. The way I see it, you’re in a mess. I’m not. Simple.”

That hit Josh hard and he hung his head.

“Look Josh, I’m attracted to people, not their gender.”

“So am I, I think.” His head hurt.

Stewart, however, was on a rol . “Okay, but…what the hel do you want me to think? It seems to be black and white for you, putting things in boxes and label ing them and denying that there was ever any other way to do it. That’s not how I feel, so shoot me.”

“It’s not about labels.” Joshua stood up and put his hands flat to the surface of the table, furious. “It was because I’d never felt anything as strong as the need I felt for you. You were al I wanted. To me, that meant I was gay.”

Stewart stared at him, the tension that had built in the atmosphere between them peaking then level ing as they looked into each other’s eyes.

Stewart nodded then gestured at the chair. “Sit down for crying out loud. This shouldn’t be an argument. We both want each other, it’s not about that.”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“You can’t deny you wanted Hol y.”

Josh sighed. “I did want her, yes.”

“And your ex?”

“I thought I did. But, I wanted you more.” He shook his head, remembering the turmoil. “It wasn’t easy. I didn’t want to hurt Sue, she was a friend…but I did that for you.” His emotions were getting the better of him, he knew that. He slumped back in his chair and put his head in his hands.

“What, did you think you’d never be attracted to a woman again?”

“That’s exactly what I thought!” He blurted it out. “I never thought something like this would happen.”

“No, but it did.” Stewart’s brows were lowered. “So coming out as gay was a statement about how you felt about me…maybe?”

Joshua felt increasingly miserable. “Maybe.”

“Can you at least understand where I’m coming from, when I leave the door open on my sexuality?”

Joshua lifted his head and stared at his lover, and he felt suddenly cold, icy to the bone. “That’s what scares me most of al , that you’re going to meet a woman you want more than me.”

“Yes,” Stewart agreed after a long moment, “or a man. It could be either. We al have to live with that possibility, but we can’t live a life in fear of what might be.”

That suggestion did nothing to settle Joshua, but he could see what Stewart was getting at. It could be a man or a woman, that didn’t real y matter.

He swore silently. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Don’t you think I thought about what I am and what people expect of me? Believe me, I’ve had flack from al angles. Growing up in a smal town in Scotland where everybody knew everybody’s business made it doubly worse. I’ve been cal ed a fence-sitter and worse.”

Joshua was astonished. “You’ve never told me that before, you always shrugged it off when I asked.”

“Because it’s history.” He stared across the table, and Josh had the horrible feeling that he was tel ing him to buck up his attitude or they’d be over.

But Stewart gestured with his hands, and his expression softened. “Okay, I’m sorry. I’m not one to dwel on the dark days, but if you think it would help you, we can talk about it…you know what I’m like. I’m a doer. I get on with it. None of this is meant to be easy, but we have to make our choices and we live with it. If something changes, we have to deal with it when it occurs. That’s life.”

“Is that your pep talk?”

“No, it’s just…for fuck’s sake, Josh. If these things were bothering you so much, you should have talked to me about them. I thought you were just worrying about tel ing your parents.”

Joshua wondered why it was that Stewart was in control and he wasn’t. “Things were so bloody good between us. I didn’t want to spoil it with my doubts. You’re chil ed with who you are, I want to be that way but it hasn’t happened yet.”

“It’l happen.”

Joshua couldn’t even begin to believe that, not right at that moment. He’d never felt so torn.

They sat in silent contemplation for a while. Then Stewart got up and fetched them another couple of beers. “We’ve been wrapped up in exploring each other,” he said. “Perhaps we need to make time to talk about this stuff some more.” When Josh didn’t say anything, he carried on. “Surely you feel a bit more relaxed about tel ing your folks, after what emerged about your uncle on Saturday?”

Joshua snorted. “I should be, but to be honest it just made me feel stupid.”

“You’re not stupid.”

“It also meant I’d made things more complicated, just like you said I had, and now I have to extricate myself from that.”

Stewart reached over and covered Joshua’s hand with his own. “Things are good. Lighten up.”

Joshua nodded, but he wasn’t entirely convinced. When he met Stewart’s earnest stare, it just made him feel even more stupid.

Stewart squeezed his hand. “Just because I’m attracted to a woman it doesn’t mean I’m going to sleep with her, not while I’ve made a commitment to you. On Saturday we both wanted it, that’s why it happened.”

The anxious feeling dissolved somewhat. Not completely, but it let go of its hold on him enough that he could breathe easier and nod. “I know. I’m sorry.”

He pushed his empty beer bottle to one side. “I’m in a mess and I’m stil trying to figure what the hel went on between the three of us on Saturday night, and now this…something else to figure out.”

Stewart sighed. “Sometimes human beings do something because it feels good, simple as that. Torturing yourself over it is no way to live. Saturday night was about three people sharing a bit of fun, no need to make a big deal of it. Under the circumstances I’d cal it light relief.”

Joshua lifted his eyebrows.

“Yes, okay, it was damn hot and it was more than light relief, but I’m not about to crucify myself over the event when it’s already happened, and neither should you.”

Joshua thought about that and once again wished that he could be as easy-going as his lover. Thank God Stewart was grounded. It was harder for him to come to terms with change, but he liked to think he got there, eventual y. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Do you regret moving in with me?” Stewart asked the question out of the blue, and it shocked Joshua. There was a brooding look in his eyes.

“No.” Josh stated it fast and firm. “I’ve told people at work about you. In a few days my parents wil know too.”

“That’s good, but maybe you should hang fire.” Stewart locked his gaze, deeply serious.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you might be bisexual, have you considered that? You’re so into your labels and everything, but you can’t deny that you enjoyed being with Hol y.”

“No I can’t deny it, but my fundamental belief is that a relationship is meant to be one-on-one.”

Stewart gesticulated with his hands, temper flaring again. “Where do you get these things from? One-on-one, my frickin’ arse. What if it’s not meant to be? It’s like you are blinkered to human nature. We are here on this planet to explore and evolve, and you should have realised that on Saturday night.