Saint hissed at that, and his hand came up to cup my chin. He forced my head back and looked me straight in the eye. “Ama, shut up. This self-pity shit doesn’t suit you.”
My nostrils flared in outrage. “Saint! How can you even say that?”
“I say it because it’s true.” His jaw clenched. “Yeah, you’re selfish. Keys is selfish. I’m selfish. And sure as fuck, Ink will be too. Every fucker on this planet is selfish. It’s why we all waste water and use plastic bags even though we know some poor turtle somewhere is going to be eating it for supper. It’s why we give to charity instead of actually doing something to help. It’s—” He hesitated, sucking down a breath. “It’s because we’re human, babes. To be fucking human is to be selfish, and you know what? That’s okay.
“I might be called Saint, but I ain’t a saint. You know that as well as I do. I’m only called it because, with you, I have an infinite well of patience.” I shook my head at him, but he ignored me and continued, “Yeah, I do. For most of the shit you pull, but self-pity? No, I’m not gonna stand for it, baby doll.” He cupped my cheek and tilted my head to the side. “What you want isn’t ideal, but… if it means I get you, then I’ll take it.”
My throat worked as I stared into his eyes. “That’s not what I want. I don’t want you to resent me.”
“I won’t. I don’t. I think I’ve known for a long time this was where the end of the road would be. Maybe that’s why I didn’t claim you on your eighteenth birthday.” He blew out a breath. “When you came down those stairs for your party in those short shorts and that little tee? I swear to fuck, I almost went caveman on you, hauled you over my shoulder, and took you back upstairs. I’ve been waiting on you to grow up for a long time, and I ain’t about to miss out on shit just because you’re a little kinky.”
My cheeks grew pink at that. “I’m perfectly normal.”
“Nothing’s normal about you, Ama,” Keys grumbled, but before I could stiffen with hurt and outrage, he soothed both by muttering, “Ain’t nothing normal about me either. That’s why we fit. Like two pieces of a goddamn puzzle.”
“Why do you sound so sad about that?” I whispered, turning my head to the side so I could rest my cheek against his.
“Because I want you all to myself. I want something simple, and I’m like Saint, knew that was never going to happen, so I never did anything about it.”
Brow puckering as I tried to reason what the hell was going on here, I asked, “I’m confused. You’re going to do this, but for me? You don’t want to. In fact, you hate the very idea of it, but for me, you’re all in?”
“Pretty much.”
“Yeah.”
Their answers didn’t soothe me. Sure, I was getting what I wanted, but fuck, I’d never thought about what they needed either. How horrible was I? God.
“No.” I shook my head. “Maybe we should just be friends. If this is your idea of hell, I’m not going to live with you both in moods and resenting me because you don’t want what I want—“
“Ama,” Saint snapped. “Shut up.” And like that, he kissed me. He kissed me, and he kissed me, and he kissed me.
It went on for a lifetime, until I was drowning in him, until I was existing for him, until I was breathing his air and he was breathing mine. At my back, I felt the hard-on digging into my ass, but I ignored it because, at that moment, I was one-hundred-percent Saint’s.
He fucked my mouth with his tongue, sure, but he also made love to it. Every part of me was enticed and incited by his loving kiss, and I knew I couldn’t spend the rest of my life without experiencing this. I just couldn’t.
He was it for me.
But so was Ink.
And Keys.
I was made for them, and they were made for me, but if they couldn’t deal with what I needed, I didn’t blame them. Even if it broke my heart.
Saint broke our kiss, and his lips were red and raw, swollen, as he bit off, “You’re thinking.”
“Of course, I am,” I rasped, my voice hoarse and husky from what I’d just experienced.
“Then he wasn’t doing it right,” Keys grumbled, and he stepped back, just so he could twirl me around and claim my mouth.
I wasn’t sure if this was some kind of Hunger Games where kissing was concerned, but consider me won over.
Jesus.
Had they both been kissing other women like this all this time? Had they been treating other bitches to what should have always been mine?
He kissed me like I was dying, like he was dying. Like this was our last day on Earth and we’d run out of time.
It made my heart pound, my body throb, and between my legs, I was wet. So wet that my hips rocked into him as want and need ricocheted inside me and I didn’t know where to put them.
Didn’t know how to respond when my body wanted something that I didn’t know how to ask for.
A whimper escaped me, one that sounded as hungry as I felt. It encompassed every emotion inside me. Made me recognize just what the two of them had done to me.
There was no denying they wanted me just as much as I wanted them. But the idea of living like I wanted? Like my parents? That was the idea that turned them off. I understood, I did, but it didn’t stop me from craving it.
Maybe I was greedy, but I didn’t think of it that way.
I was eighteen, and for someone as fucked up in the head as me, I considered these three guys to be my normality. I knew who I was around them. Knew what I wanted to be. Yeah, I’d laid the foundations of my world on them, and maybe I shouldn’t have done that, maybe that wasn’t what feminists wanted from me, but I had no fucks left to give.
When Keys pulled back, his teeth tugged on my bottom lip before he murmured, “You’ve always been mine, Ama. Just as much as you’ve been theirs.”
“I think we need to show her that.”
My eyes were dazed when I turned and watched Saint twisting the ‘Open’ sign on the door to ‘Closed.’ I didn’t stop him, didn’t even utter a word. Just turned back to Keys and asked him, “Is this what you want?”
He blew out a breath. “The one thing I know is that I want you. That if you need me in your life, I need you just as badly in mine. Maybe it isn’t ideal for me. Maybe I want you to myself. But… I know you, babe. I know how you work. I know that we each represent something different to you, and even when I was thirteen, I knew that.
“I didn’t like it. I hated it. I wanted to be your world, but after what happened? I just wanted you to find your balance. Back then, I wasn’t even jealous of Ink because hell, to me, he was ancient, and I thought he would be to you. But, I know he means something to you that I don’t. And maybe, yeah, that makes me jealous, but I know I’m something to you that he isn’t as well. Just like it is with Saint—” He bit off his own words and shook his head. “I’m fucking this up.”
“No, you’re not. You’re making perfect sense,” I rasped. “To me, I love you so much that I don’t even know how I contain it. It isn’t more or less than what I feel for Saint or Ink. You each are…” I closed my eyes and pressed my face into his throat.