Random Acts of Love (Random #5) (32 page)

We’d never had that.

If we were meant to have a future together, we had to agree to make this a conscious part of who we were as a loving team.

“But,” I continued speaking, “I need for this to be real. Open. For the rest of the world to react to us and not vice versa. We’ve been living life afraid of how people will view our choices. What if, instead, we put the world on notice. We just live life. And the world will just have to adjust to us.”

“What if we lose people?” Trevor asked. “Look at how Mike just reacted.”

“I know.” I frowned, thinking about Mama. How she’d known. “And we will. Lose people, I mean. We just will. Just like you lost friends who developed different political or religious beliefs, we’re gonna lose friends and even family who aren’t as open-minded as we need.”

“Like my mom and dad,” Joe said with a sigh.

“They love you, though,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, but this...”

“This is who you are. If they don’t like it, then they don’t really love you.”

Trevor said that. Not me.

Joe’s shoulders slumped and he sat next to Trevor, pulling up his knees to his chest like a little kid. It was a vulnerable stance, and it made something in me more hopeful.

“I know. I’ve thought about this. A lot.”

“We all have,” Trev answered.

“And,” Joe continued, “losing your parents’ love is about as destabilizing as life can get.”

“No kidding,” I said.

Joe’s contemplative face suddenly turned apologetic. “I’m sorry, Darla. You know that more than any of us, with your dad dying when you were so young.”

A lump formed in my throat and the bridge of my nose tingled. I think that was the first time Joe had ever really acknowledged my daddy. I turned to the small box where I kept Josie’s photo album she made for me. I handed it to him.

“What’s this?” Joe asked.

“My daddy. Open it.”

I turned on a brighter lamp in the shed and he cracked the book open, both Trevor and Joe gasping as the big picture of Daddy appeared first.

“You look just like him!” they said in unison.

A huge sob poured out of me. “Yeah. So I know something about losing your parents. But my Mama also figured it out, guys. She knew all along we were a threesome.”

Joe’s mouth dropped open.

“Yeah,” I said, sniffling and laughing wryly. “She said she was more embarrassed that I was a hypocrite than she was of my threesome.”

“Whoa,” Trevor said.

“Right.”

Joe stood and opened is arms up to me. “I know we’re broken up, but you look so sad. I just...can I give you a hug?”

I nodded. 

And then he took a step into that raging void between us and just slipped into my territory, hands on my waist finding their journey like he had a map in his head.

You know, you can touch a man a thousand times between this moment and tomorrow, a million caresses between now and back through time, and there’s nothing like the sweet solidity of having someone’s skin lie next to yours like it owns the right to do that.

My tears turned into a keening. Joe’s arms tightened around me, hands stroking my hair as I sobbed into his neck. He smelled so good. I missed this smell. I missed his touch. We were on new ground right now, because I couldn’t think of any time in our two years together where I talked about my inner life and Joe met me halfway. More than halfway, stepping into the sphere of influence where my soul reigned, and just being there for me. 

Maybe, though, I’d never invited him in. Now that I had, he was there.

Was he there to stay?

I felt a third hand on me, Trevor’s palm flat between my shoulder blades and rubbing, a slow caress of compassion. My chest seized and a new round of crying began, but I wasn’t crying for Daddy any longer. I was crying because I missed us.

The us I had right here.

“I want to be with you, Darla,” Joe whispered in my ear, his voice muffled by my hair. “The real you. The real Darla brings the real Joe out, and no one has ever done that before. I’ve relied on you being the most authentic one of us three, and now I see what a disaster that was. How unfair we were to you.” He pulled back and gently wiped my tears from my face, his eyes shining with his own. “Let me be your equal. Let me help
you
to be more real. I’m so sorry I didn’t give you that before.”

Trevor’s breath was hot in my ear as he whispered, “I expected you to do all the changing. All the adapting. That was so unfair. I can’t promise I’ll be perfect if you decide to try again, but know that I’m more aware now.” He squeezed my shoulder gently, then his voice went lower. Rougher. “I’m so in love with you that it’s breaking parts of me I didn’t know could be broken.”

I had to ask. Had to. With a hitch in my breath, I stammered, “What i-i-if you tell your parents and they disown you? Or c-c-cut you off?” An actual pain formed in my breastbone at the thought. My journey through that question was done. Theirs hadn’t even started.

Joe’s eyes cast down, then back to me. “Then what Trevor said was right. They only loved an image of me. Not the real me.”

“And we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Trevor added. “But we will come to it. First thing, when we go home. We need to claim you as ours, Darla. If you’ll have us.”

Every cell in my body screamed
yes
.

I don’t remember actually reaching up to kiss Joe, but I must have. I know I led the way, because the guys were completely following me, letting me make all the decisions. At some point my subconscious mind kicked in and sought reconciliation in the form of Joe’s lips. I felt Trevor’s hands roam up and down my back, sliding up my waist, just exploring the warm terrain. 

The kiss wasn’t tentative. It was bold and clear. You want authentic and real? It’s been here all the time, my men.

Let’s go forth and explore together.

I pulled away, fevered and panting, then turned to find myself in Trevor’s arms, my head tilting up higher, my legs going on tiptoes to reach him. His kiss was tender and sweet, a
welcome back
that was a yin to Joe’s yang.

“Are we...does this mean we’re together again? All of us?” Trevor rasped against my neck as he pulled me in for a long, hot embrace. 

“I hope so,” I whispered, reaching for Joe’s hand. “If you mean it about being real. About being true to us.”

“I’ve never meant anything more in my life,” Joe said.

“Me, too,” Trev added.

My tiny little purple place, the refuge from a life where I felt like I had no choices, filled with the breath of possibility and reunion, with the gasps of relief and renewal. My body quickened under their touch, straining for more of their hands, their lips, a desperate clawing that needed to be carnal and erotic with them, naked and sharing.

I knew in my heart we were back together.

Now I needed to know it in every part of my body.

“We’re back,” I said. “Together and open.” 

Four hands said
yes
.

I reached for Joe, both hands on his jaw, his day’s stubble scratchy and visceral. I leaned in for a kiss as Trevor’s hands reached around me, meeting at my belly. Joe’s tongue parted my lips and we sought each other out, little sighs and gasps deepening the moment. I wanted them, now. Did they want the same?

Trevor’s hands slid under my shirt, cupping both breasts as Joe crushed them in place by pulling me in for a kiss that made my skin suddenly break out in goosebumps.

We were definitely in sync.

“I have missed you so much,” I rasped as Trevor kissed my neck, peppering a trail to my mouth, his warm lips and tongue a delightful taste, one familiar and lovely. 

“Your body is like an amusement park,” he said as his thumbs caressed my nipples, making me ache for more.

“You ride it too many times and it makes you puke?” I gave him a half-cocked smile.

The chuckle deep in his throat made me laugh, so happy to have them both again. “No. So much fun and an endless supply of heart-racing excitement.”

In the next ten seconds all three of us managed to get naked, hands flying and buttons undone, fasteners unfastened and cotton flung into the air. None of us seemed to want to take this slow. We all agreed, without a single word, that we just wanted the closeness, the sensual eagerness driven more by urgency than tenderness. 

I wanted them in me, on me, under me—just
with
me. We’d always been great at the sex part of our relationship. Sex had a language of its own that couldn’t be replicated in verbal communication. The slip of a fingertip against the rolling lines of a comfortable curve. The frantic cling of fingertips against corded muscle. The clench of inner core as a climax tipped into unfettered pleasure. The delighted groan as a partner gave something new and unexpected, yet secretly craved. Only flesh on flesh could release an unspoken need between the three of us, and while we’d worked it all out verbally, now we needed to sign the deal with a robust commitment of the body. 

The dim light made our skin glow with a sultry quality that elevated this as Joe guided me onto the bed and sucked one nipple, Trevor claiming its twin. I clenched and became so wet, my clit pulsing with the need to be touched and stroked, noticed and attended to as part of the natural layer of this lovemaking. My own hands gave as well, reaching to wrap around Trevor’s cock, the hiss of a short inhale from him telling me I’d hit the spot.

My other hand buried in Joe’s hair as he kissed his way down, down, down to where the rest of my words would be driven out by his fevered attentions.

“You’re so wet,” he murmured as his own ministrations added to that quality, two fingers sliding in me as a poor imitation for either of them, my body loving the touch of his tongue against my clit but wanting more. I needed them to fill me. As with so much of our relationship, we were really two sets of two in this moment, no matter how hard we tried to integrate. 

There was only one way to truly be a gathering of three.

“You’re so beautiful,” Trevor added, his voice filled with emotion. “I’ve missed us. Not just you, Darla. But us. All three of us.” 

We each made little sounds of agreement.

“Do you,” I whispered into the night, “have something?” 

“In my wallet,” they murmured in unison, Joe’s lips against my V a vibration that made me arch up. Trevor wordlessly searched the piles of discarded clothes and returned with one condom, one hand holding it while the other stroked my breast, his hands unable to stop touching me. We were reveling in the permission again. The open consent to cross the invisible walls we all have that separate us as beings from each other. In this moment, those walls did not exist. We integrated when we touched. Not being connected felt like an emptiness to be avoided at all moments.

Touch was the cure.

“I want both of you,” I hissed. “Together. Now.” I could feel Joe’s smile against my inner thigh.

Trevor went to the clothes and came back with a second condom, handing it quietly to Joe. They both took care of their own as my body throbbed, aching to be filled, needing the transcendence that so much sensation would deliver.

Neither one asked if I was sure. They knew, too.

“If we’re doing this, we need—” 

Joe grabbed his wallet and pulled out the packet of lube, just like when we were on Eden.

“Boy scout,” I teased.

“You never know when your best friend is going to call you, naked and high, and ask you to rescue him so you can meet the woman of your dreams and fall in love...with both of you.” 

“For the second time,” Trevor added with a laugh in his voice.

My soul blossomed, opening to invite in the light of a love so great it made me part of Trevor and Joe, united into a single being whose soul was stronger than any singular one of us.

Joe stretched out on the bed, his body less a work of art—as I’d always admired it—and more just that of a man. A man I loved so deeply I wanted him to become a part of me. He pulled me over him, the heat of our sweaty skin regenerative, as if the love soaked through to the surface and radiated off us. I centered myself over him and oh—the sweet divinity of having him in me. I leaned forward and pulled up, sinking down to his groan.

Trevor joined us, his hands on my breasts, my ribs, gliding down to my ass, the lube a slippery tingle of anticipation. Even with Joe in me there was more I needed, and soon I’d be complete. We would be conjoined, a hot, frenzied mess of emotion we could only feel through this bodily connection. 

Trevor’s light touch pressed against my puckered skin, the area healed from my ill-advised actions with the waxing kit, and as the lube warmed and eased the way, I felt the familiar blend of the forbidden and the ecstatic, the rush of too much followed by the sense of orgiastic glow, my body stretching for him as my soul unlocked in concert.

We were
one
.

Hands, torsos, bellies, legs and tongues all mingled in random patterns designed solely to enhance pleasure and to say,
Yes. I’m home.
 

The rhythm came naturally. No one led, and yet everyone did, our bodies driven by what felt good, by what we could give to each other. The guys moved while I stayed in place, completely entranced by the thousands of ways I was being loved, inside and out, from the simple friction of flesh on flesh.  

My hair hung down and framed Joe’s face, his eyes hidden in the shadows, his hips curling up and thrusting slowly, my pussy taking it all in, my inner walls clenching in patterns that alternated with the gasps that caught in my throat. A wave of flushed heat shimmered through me, a startling warning of my pending climax.

This was our path toward love. Ours and ours alone. Joe cried out my name and shifted under me, his movement heightening everything, my lust connecting with my clit and cresting me, my body rigid and writhing, urgent and halting, as Trevor cried out behind me, his body tense then loose, his throat hoarse with release. A small star in a solar system far away burst behind my eyelids, making us stardust, part of everything known and unknown, our love a frequency that could travel for infinity, carried only on a wave unseen.