Night is Darkest Read online

  “No, Mason. It’s you who’s always struggled with our attraction. Don’t make this about her. You saw the pictures she had on her hard drive. There were plenty of bi scenarios, not to mention all the hot gay action she had mixed in. You don’t have to say anything, just show her how it is between us.”

  “I’m not gay.”

  “You’ve buried your monster cock in my ass more times than I can count. What do you call that, Mason? Is it so hard to admit you want me?” Tyler turned his head toward Lacey. “Just think… She didn’t horde all those pictures overnight. I wonder how many times she’s kicked back in her desk chair to stroke herself while she added a new morsel to the stash. I can imagine her fingers sliding over the slick folds of her pretty pussy, coated in that sweet juice while she thought of…”

  “Fuck! Shut the hell up, Ty.”

  “Now imagine what she’d do if she saw the real thing.”

  “That’s a cheap shot,” Mason growled as his cock rioted in his pants. After the adrenaline of the day, he needed an outlet to slake his bottled aggression. Fear of losing his loved ones incited a need to claim them all over again. He must be demented. Tyler’s reasoning was starting to make some kind of twisted sense.

  “Fine. You’re immune to me. You can go forever without ever touching me again. But I don’t think I can live this way, Mason. I need you.”

  Horror lanced through his heart when Tyler’s eyes turned glassy.

  “After being so fucking helpless while we crashed, I thought…I thought she’d died, too. I thought someone had killed her right in front of my eyes. Just like Rob. I’m fucking pissed off. I’m terrified that someone could hurt her again. And I’m horny.”

  Tyler groaned then slid one broad hand across his smooth chest, over his shimmering abs and into the waistband of his pants. Mason’s resolve began to crumble when Ty cupped the erection tenting the soft cotton. He tried to get up but his legs boycotted the decision.

  “I jacked off twice in the shower. Nothing works. It’s driving me insane. Lacey is out of commission. She has a concussion, for God’s sake. Please, Mason. I need you. I’ll do whatever you want. Prove we’re okay.”

  Ty’s other hand snaked out, wandering around Mason’s shoulders to bury in the hair at the nape of his neck. The tiny tug shouldn’t have propelled him forward at the speed of light but Mason couldn’t resist the temptation of a begging submissive. Every fiber of his nature harkened to the instinctive lure.

  Before he could rethink the urge, he crushed his lips to Tyler’s then devoured his mouth. The kiss acted as an outlet for all his rage, terror and relief. They exchanged moans, lashes of their tongues and not-so-tender love bites. Mason nipped at Ty’s chin causing the other man to growl and arch his neck in invitation.

  Lost in each other, they failed to notice the slight shifting from the other side of the bed. They didn’t even hear the tentative but awestruck, “Guys?” Instead, they continued to ravage each other until a delicate touch, unmistakably feminine, covered their joined hands on the pillowcase beside Ty’s head.

  Then they both froze.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Don’t stop.” Lacey’s whispered plea rang out like the report of a high-powered rifle in the deafening silence of her bedroom.

  Tyler observed Mason with longing oozing from every pore of his body. She could almost feel him willing Mason to continue his sensual assault. But Mason spun to face her so fast she feared he’d fall off the edge of the bed where he braced his torso over Ty’s on straight locked arms.

  “Lacey! I-I can explain.” His breath burst from his chest in giant pants.

  “No need.” She tried to roll onto her side to watch them full on but a wave of dizziness stopped her in her tracks. Though she clamped her mouth shut to prevent it, a whimper escaped. Tyler reached for her but Mason got there first. Leaning over Ty, he rested the backs of his fingers against her forehead then stroked her hair. “I’m fine. Really. I just wanted a better seat for the show.”

  Instead of resuming where he’d left off, Mason nibbled at her lips then brushed his own over hers so lightly she couldn’t say if they’d touched or if she’d detected the breeze of his mouth passing nearby until she caught a hint of the cinnamon gum Ty favored. Stealing it from Mason made it taste twice as good.

  “Excuse me.” Tyler nudged Mason’s face aside with his cheek as he butted in for a kiss of his own. Full, fluid strokes of his tongue tantalized her but the drugs she’d taken fuzzed her senses, restricting the pleasure that should have suffused her at his touch.

  “I’m so sorry, Ty,” she murmured against his parted lips. Somehow he understood her reference to both the accident and her inability to relieve him.

  “Shh, little one. We’re safe now. James, Mike and Razor are staked out around the house. All you have to worry about is getting better.”

  “You sound like your mom.”

  He dismissed her concerns as the guys appeared to ignore the sparks she’d seen flying between them when she woke. Had it been a lingering dream? She might have believed that if the scratch of Mason’s five o’clock shadow hadn’t painted Ty’s olive complexion bright red. They had so much practice cloaking their relationship, it had become second nature. But she refused to allow them to hide from her any longer.

  She studied each man in turn. Mason refused to meet her stare. His fingers clenched in the sheets and she thought he might start vibrating beneath the effort of containing all the tension trapped in his strung muscles. But the agony she read in Tyler’s morose eyes, though he attempted to disguise it with a weak smile, tore her heart in two.

  Another point for Mama Rose.

  “Mason, could you help me to the bathroom?” She cleared her throat to cover her disgust. Playing into their misplaced notion of her helplessness couldn’t be avoided.

  In a flash, he’d scooped her up tight to his chest. She watched his still-pounding pulse throb in the pronounced vein on his sexy throat as he jumped to accept any excuse for escape. Okay, so maybe their attention had its benefits every once in a while. When he turned toward the adjoining room, she caught sight of Ty as he crashed back onto the pile of pillows with a groan. The frustrated flop of his arms, not to mention the tent in his pants, cinched her resolve.

  Lacey grimaced when her bare toes touched the chilled tile floor as Mason set her in front of the toilet. “Put the water in the sink on high and turn around, please?”

  “I don’t want you to slip and fall, doll. Are you still dizzy?” The nearly translucent hue of her skin worried him further. He maintained a firm grip on her upper arms.

  “I just moved too quick when I first woke up. I’m alright now, I promise.”

  Though he didn’t necessarily believe she’d made a full recovery, he tested out her statement by releasing his support by degrees. When she stood straight and tall without a hint of wobble, Mason nodded then did as she asked.

  He let his forehead fall onto the paneled wood door, straining for any hint of distress from her direction as he castigated himself for the rash behavior she’d interrupted.

  He’d been so reckless! Foolish!

  A whisper of sound ghosted to his ears as she approached from behind but he stayed perfectly still, afraid to meet her gaze. He jerked when her palm pressed to his tight lower abs. The muscles of his back flexed when she laid her cheek between his shoulder blades. Though he knew he should return her straight to Tyler then concoct some excuse to leave, he entwined their fingers then drew her hand over the steady thump of his heart instead.

  He was so fucked.

  It wasn’t right to stay, to expose her to all the censure an unconventional relationship would generate but he couldn’t compel himself to flee yet. Her tiny fingers curled tighter in his grip.

  Without facing her, he spoke. “I’ve never been so scared in my life as when I saw your car fly off the road earlier.”

  She tugged his hand until he had no choice but to turn, or crush her knuckles. He pivoted. />
  With surprising grace and speed, she flung her arms around his neck then wrapped her legs around his waist. He caught her luscious ass in his palms, supporting her, then walked her forward until she perched on the vanity beside the still rushing water that would’ve drowned out their conversation if they hadn’t whispered a hairsbreadth from each other. He rationalized the way he smothered her by telling himself he didn’t want to drop her.

  “You were afraid you might lose the two people you love most.”

  With a fierce little growl, she captured the lobe of his ear between her teeth when he shifted to separate them. The gesture sent a surge of blood straight to his rock-solid cock. The force of his desire prevented him from realizing she waited for his reaction for a solid ten seconds.

  He couldn’t admit his feelings to her or she’d never let him leave, no matter that it was the right thing to do. Instead, he hedged. “Ty is my best friend. Of course I care about him. And you, too.”

  “No, Mason. You’re in love with him. Big difference.” She cupped his jaw with trembling fingers, forcing him to look her straight in the eye as she allowed a fraction of an inch between their faces. Relief smoothed the jagged edges of her doubts when she observed his acceptance of her declaration. Apparently, he couldn’t hide a damn thing from her. He didn’t argue about her use of the L word, as Ty would say, in reference to herself. Such a ridiculous denial would be pointless.

  “How would you know?” He tried to play it off.

  “Because I love you, Mason. I love you both and I can see the same emotion reflected between the two of you no matter how hard you try to hide it.” His insides turned to molten lava—gooey, churning and red hot—as her statement firebombed the last shreds of his control. She pressed a tender kiss to his parted lips to soothe the sting of her next words. “Plus, Mama Rose pretty much said so.”

  “What?” He flinched. “Ty told her about us?”

  Too late, he realized he’d confirmed her suspicions. Shit, like that crazed kiss hadn’t already tipped her off. What had gotten into him? He knew better than to slip up and let his emotions run free. That went double when both Tyler and Lacey were near.

  Lacey shook her head. “He didn’t have to, Mason. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. You two had me so twisted in knots, I doubted my instincts about how you felt toward me. I was too caught up in my own drama to pick up the friction between you.”

  He scrubbed his hand across his face then swallowed hard. “Look, Lacey, I swear I won’t touch him again. I didn’t mean to kiss him now. It’s just that…”

  “Mason Gregory Clark! Stop jumping to conclusions and listen to what I’m saying.” She gnashed her teeth when she shook his shoulders.

  Stunned by her outburst, he only stared.

  “Am I a casual fuck for you?”

  “What the hell?” Caught off guard, he backpedalled. How could she even imagine that? God, he needed a minute to think when she wasn’t scrambling his logic into a mess. “No, of course not. Don’t you know I’ve wanted you forever? Still do.”

  “I hoped.” She rested her forehead against his. “But I’m greedy. I want Ty, too.”

  “Yeah. Shit, Lacey, I thought you realized that’s what we intended yesterday. This isn’t some kind of game.” No, he just needed to figure out how to give his lovers what they needed without putting them in danger.

  “Perfect. Then let’s get back in there so I can watch you seduce Tyler.”

  His cheeks flamed and his hands fisted in his hair. He tugged until the pain broke through his confusion. “Quit talking in circles! I didn’t say anything about being gay. Not that I have a problem with what other people do…it’s just not me. I’ve never wanted another guy in my life.”

  He saw the mischief in her eyes a moment before she sprang her trap. That minx had him right where she wanted him! “If you don’t acknowledge your feelings for him, we’re both going to lose Ty. Would you take him from me because you’re too closed-minded to admit the truth? Straight with one exception, bi, gay… I don’t care how you think of yourself. The end result is the same. Somehow, we were lucky enough to have met not one, but two soulmates. How can I love a man who’s destroying the other man I love?”

  “You don’t understand, Lacey.” Terror flavored the cocktail of emotions brewing inside him.

  “Then explain it to me.” Her open-eyed gaze stole his breath. Somehow he’d make her understand.

  “There are a lot of people in this world who aren’t as indulgent as you and Tyler.” He winced as he thought back, remembering the agony licking along his ribs at the edges of the fractured bones.

  “What happened to you, Mason? Why are you so afraid?”

  She traced the crinkled edges of his mouth as he winced. Only she would see the fear he kept shrouded. Tyler might have too if he hadn’t been so caught up in his misplaced self-doubts. That thought hurt far worse than the memory of forcing his broken body to crawl away, tumbling down the cement stairs in his father’s sidewalk with jarring crunches only to drag himself across the gravel driveway, never to return again.

  “Tell me.”

  The urgent whisper shattered his resistance. She wouldn’t back down until he forced her to understand the consequences. He’d never spoken of that night to anyone but it seemed like the only way now. But how should he start?

  “Tyler and I have wanted you forever. When we were seventeen Tyler came to me, nervous. He told me that he knew I was in love with you. Of course, I’d seen the way he looked at you. I knew he felt the same. We made a pact that it would never come between us. When you were old enough to decide which one of us you wanted, the other would concede.”

  He ignored her hiss and a whisper that sounded suspiciously like, “Morons.”

  She cleared her throat and arched an eyebrow. “What if I didn’t want either of you?”

  “I…uh…” He must have looked horrified because she let him off the hook with a reassuring smile. The unbridled lust in her eyes made it clear that wasn’t the issue here.

  “So, why can’t we all get what we want, Mason?” This time her tone held curiosity. “You guys enjoy threesomes and we all love each other. What’s the problem?”

  “We only started having threesomes because of you.” He latched onto the easiest subject for discussion.

  “What?” She snorted. “I wasn’t born yesterday!”

  “It’s true. After our agreement, we decided we should learn everything we could about sex before you came to one of us. We wanted to make all our mistakes on women who didn’t matter.”

  “That’s a lot of practicing, Mason.”

  The resentment she couldn’t quite conceal ate at his conscience. “I know, doll. Things got out of control. No matter how many women we took, or the things we tried with them, it was never enough. They could never be you. Then you came home from school that summer. I could tell you were scared. Rob came to us and told us you were off limits. That we were too rough for you. I agreed. I should have looked more closely but I think I was afraid of what I might find. But I never stopped wanting you. Wishing you were the one in our bed.”

  “Now you have me. Why are we wasting time talking in the bathroom? Let’s go to Tyler.”

  He stared at the ceiling while he counted to ten, reining in the desire to do just that.

  “Because you haven’t heard the whole story yet.” Fuck! He didn’t want to say this out loud, to make it real. It’d been years since he let his mind relive that terrible night.

  She waited in patient silence, stroking his cheek until the words began to tumble out.

  “You know my dad wasn’t around much growing up so we’d usually use my house to…practice. One day, we’d finished messing around with a girl but we were still so green, so clumsy. Shit, I can’t even remember who it was. Afterward, Tyler and I were hanging out. In my bed. I made fun of him for coming so fast when she’d sucked him off. Tyler insisted she’d had some trick, hit some magic spot on the underside
of his cock. I didn’t believe him. So he…umm. He offered to show me.”

  Lacey whimpered. When he glanced down, the hard points of her nipples distorted her silky top. He had to focus and get it all out before he lost his nerve.

  “I’d seen the way he looked at me sometimes, the same way he looked at pretty girls. Once he’d told me he had a wet dream about making out with the mailman. It didn’t bother me. Back in those days, everything made us horny. So when he came closer, I didn’t move. I figured, ‘it’s just sex’. It didn’t mean anything with the girls we’d slept with, it wouldn’t mean anything if he touched me.”

  Mason had to stop to clear his throat as he remembered the searing bliss of that connection.

  “But it did. The moment his lips surrounded my cock, it felt better than anything I’d experienced before. It was so powerful. So much more than sex. I came in his mouth in half the time he’d gotten blown by that girl but it had nothing to do with his fancy technique. I made some excuse about homework, which I’m sure he knew was a lie since I never gave a shit about school, and he left. I just needed to think. But when I watched him back out of the driveway in our truck, I saw the carport wasn’t empty. I think he must have been too upset to notice. Thank God, he kept going.”

  Mason hadn’t realized the fury rising inside him caused his body to shake until Lacey gathered him close.

  “This is why your dad kicked you out?” She, like everyone else, had been led to believe he’d spent the last few months of his high school career living with the Lambert’s because he argued with his father about going to college. “That jackass!”

  Mason nodded. “He saw Tyler… He told me he’d been hoping he wouldn’t have to teach me this lesson. He told me it wasn’t safe to be gay, even in today’s world. He yelled that people would hurt me. They’d hurt Tyler. He took off his shirt and showed me his scars.”

  “From the fire he’d been in?” Her choked gasp made it clear she was starting to get the picture, even if she didn’t want to believe.