“Come…in me,” I beg. “Banks.” He’s so hard.
“I need inside her,” Banks says gruffly, passionately—standing up. They move blisteringly fast. Dizzying. He picks me off Akara, his hands careful but rough, and Akara rises to his feet and goes to the single bed, leading Banks.
I’m suddenly lying on my back. My head meets a pillow. Legs spread open. Banks strips. Akara strips, and I eat up their hardened lengths, standing at attention.
“I guess you don’t need condoms…” I swear their cocks twitch as soon as I speak.
“You feel badly at all, you tell us,” Akara says like an order.
“I will,” I promise.
Banks’ rock-hard build hovers over my frame, my thighs around him, and he clutches my cheek, kissing me strongly before slipping slowly—so, so slowly—inside me. My eyes roll again.
A pleasured noise catches in my throat.
“Fuck,” he grunts, thrusting. Our gazes connect in deep desire before I turn my head. Akara is crouching near my flushed face, and he clasps my hands. I watch in rapt attention. Tenderly, he spools nylon rope around my wrists, tying them together above my head. All the while, my body rocks in the hypnotizing rhythm of Banks’ thrusts.
Akara is watching Banks make love to me.
A moan breaches my lips. Akara kisses the sound away, and Banks groans out my name with emotion and heat. I’m lit alive like a million Olympic torches blazing through me.
Before I come, they switch places. Taking turns inside me, I lose sense of time to these entrapped, harmonious feelings. To their groans and grunts and whispers of I love you and Sulli. And I cry against the passion that fucking swells and erupts between us—don’t end.
Never end.
I love and hate when I reach the quaking peak.
Hot and sweaty and relaxed after the come-down, Akara and Banks lean against the headboard—which is really just the fucking wall—and I lie naked across their laps. I rest a lot of my upper body against Banks’ firm chest while Akara is massaging my hamstrings.
I replay the sex we had. Did their arms graze? Maybe. Did they touch each other? I don’t think so. Their biceps meld now, sitting closer than close on the single bed, and they’ve always been comfortable sharing intimate space.
“Did you guys kiss?” I wonder if I missed something.
The look they share says, no.
“Do you want to?”
Banks lifts a shoulder to Akara.
“Now?” Akara asks him, and I see their eyes drop to each other’s lips.
21
AKARA KITSUWON
This is happening now.
Okay.
Okay.
My pulse ratchets up in anticipation of the great unknown. Land that I’ve never crossed, but for a while, Banks and I have been eyeing the turf in the horizon. Wondering when we should reach the shore.
“Only if you fucking want to,” Sulli adds quickly. “I’m not trying to pressure you guys or anything.”
“You aren’t, Sul.” Honestly, her naked body across our laps is sending signals to my dick more than the idea of kissing Banks.
But the curiosity is too heightened to keep ignoring. We both want answers.
Banks tries to smile to me. “No pressure, Nine.”
I almost laugh. “Yeah, the only pressure we feel is from the entire world.” I tilt my head to our girlfriend. “Not from you, string bean.”
“Okay, good.” She exhales. “Not about you feeling pressured at all. But you know.”
“Do we know?” I tease.
She sits up further and lightly slugs my arm.
I make a wounded face. “I didn’t curse, Lady Meadows.”
“That was just extra for the asshole.”
Banks laughs.
I smile hearing him and seeing her.
“Are you guys sure about this?” Sulli slides off our laps. After wrapping up in a blanket, she faces us. “I just don’t want things to change in a bad way between you two.”
Change.
That word makes home in my soul.
Not all change is bad, which is why I know Sulli added that word. Some change can be good. And I think we’re all built for it either way.
“I’m sure,” I say, confident.
Banks already slides his hand on the back of my neck. “I’m ready.” He cracks a “cowboy-up” smile. “Ready for your lips, Kitsuwon.”
I try hard not to laugh. “We have to be serious about this, man.”
He bounces his head. “I’m serious.” His voice carries a deeper tone. “I’m kissing you—”
Before he can finish, I grab the back of his head, and I’m the one to close the distance between our lips. It’s an odd feeling. Not bad.
Just different.
Feeling his stubble as our lips meld together. His hand is larger than Sulli’s, and I don’t mind the strong, masculine grip on the back of my neck. I’ve felt it there before. I still can’t tell if I’m completely turned on—so I deepen the kiss.
He reciprocates. His hand falling to my bare thigh.
His breath comes in heavier like mine, like we’re fighting for clarification. For an answer. From someone somewhere to wipe the fog and make clear what we mean to each other. Emotion starts barreling through me and I grip at his bicep. His fingers dig into the flesh of my neck. My thigh.
Our kiss is angrier.
I can feel and taste his desperation and frustration. It matches mine.
We claw at each other, and I push him back into the wall. He takes the force but hangs onto me like a life raft. But I’m drowning too.
When our lips break apart, I struggle to catch my breath. His chest rises and falls in unsteady rhythms, and we both cling harder to each other. Banks buries his head in my shoulder. I rest my forehead atop his head. We stay like this for what feels like an eternity. Trying to breathe.
There’s nothing sexual about what just happened.
I’m not aroused. And I can feel that he’s not either.
I’m just spent.
“Nine,” Banks whispers. “You okay?”
“I think so.” I swallow hard. “You?”
“Yeah, I’m alright.”
“I still love you, you know.”
“I love you too.” Banks sniffs. “I wish it were simpler than this.”
“I know.” I kiss the top of his head. It’d be easier to just tell everyone we fuck the same girl and we fuck each other. It’s harder for people to understand that I’m straight (at least, this label is the one that feels right to me), but I still love a man. And is this kiss even a good enough test for our sexualities? I don’t know. Probably not. It’s just one part of the equation—the sexual part.
Sexual attraction. Romantic attraction. Emotional attraction. Are those things that can even be so easily defined? Who has those answers anyway? And maybe it’s not about fitting into a certain label. Maybe it’s just being comfortable with what I believe I am.
We both break apart to look at Sulli.
She has her knuckles to her lips. Her eyes are glassed, breath a little uneven.
“Why are you crying, string bean?” I ask, even though no tears are really escaping. She looks near tears. “Don’t you know it’s bad for the bean sprout?”