Page 27

Since he and Ian had decided to be nonmonogamous, Spencer had been thinking about something. Generally, it was at the back of his mind, an idea he was chewing on, not even sure he would ever bring it up. But now Ian was on his couch, looking adorably soft in the pajamas he’d brought over so he had clothes that actually fit him at Spencer’s, feeding individual raspberries to Norman as though he wasn’t going to ultimately let him eat half the box, and something in Spencer’s brain snapped. “How do you feel about threesomes?”

Ian looked up, but if he was scandalized, he didn’t show it. “I’ve only had a few, but they’ve all been positive experiences. How do you feel about threesomes?”

He set the box of raspberries on the coffee table, but Norman continued searching his lap for it.

“I’ve never had one. But I thought maybe since we’re sleeping with other people, it would be fun to sleep with other people . . . together?”

“It can be,”

Ian said seriously. Spencer loved that he never teased when he knew Spencer was feeling fragile about something, which he seemed to always be able to tell. “Is this a general conversation, or did you have someone in mind?”

Spencer looked down at his hands, then back up at Ian. “How do you feel about Raj?”

A smile spread over Ian’s face. “I think he’s a very good-looking man. And obviously very attracted to you.”

“You seemed to get along well at Hector’s.”

To be honest, that might have been when the germ of this idea was planted in Spencer’s mind.

“He’s lovely. I like him.”

“I’m not even sure how one goes about asking a friend to join a threesome.”

“Well, you know Raj better than I do, but I think just asking directly might do it.”

Spencer could feel his heart beating a little faster at the realization that Ian was really entertaining this. “What would it be like, the three of us?”

Ian reached over and took his hand, then started massaging his palm. “That would depend on what we all want. We’d have boundaries as a couple, and Raj would have some of his own, I’d imagine.”

“Do we just, like, have a meeting?”

Ian smiled gently. “Maybe something slightly less formal. A meal or coffee.”

Spencer bit his lip. He kind of couldn’t believe he was becoming the type of person who asked his friends to dinner to discuss whether they wanted to have sex with him and his boyfriend. “I keep thinking that it could be really sexy.”

Ian dislodged Norman gently and pulled Spencer into his lap. “I like the idea of watching you with someone else.”

Spencer turned his face up in surprise. Ian had gone slightly pink. But something about the look in Ian’s eyes was emboldening Spencer. “I like when you tell me what turns you on. Keep going.”

Ian licked his lower lip. “You’re so beautiful when you experience pleasure. I want to see how gorgeous you are and watch someone else appreciate it, too.”

“Jesus, Ian.”

Spencer took Ian’s face between his hands and kissed him. “That’s so hot.”

The corners of Ian’s lips ticked up, then he leaned back in and sucked on Spencer’s bottom lip. “I’m glad you think so.”

Spencer had come into this conversation slightly unsettled, but Ian’s enthusiasm was making him fairly hot and bothered, and he could tell Ian was feeling similarly if the bulge under his ass was anything to go by. He slid a finger into the waistband of Ian’s drawstring pants. “Ian?”

“Hmm?”

Ian was busy dancing his lips over Spencer’s neck, running his thumb over his bottom lip and down his Adam’s apple.

“Will you fuck me? Right here.”

He could feel Ian’s smile against his skin. “Will Norman be upset?”

“That we’re fucking on the couch? Probably.”

But that was Norman’s problem, not his.

———

The sun was at the perfect angle to be exactly in Spencer’s eyes when he sat next to Raj on the bench in the dog park. He threw the ball he was holding, and Norman bounded off after it. Bibi, Raj’s Yorkie, couldn’t have cared less. She pranced off to the other side of the park to be as far away from Norman and his antics as possible.

“You okay, Spence? You look kind of twitchy.”

Raj put his elbows up on the back of the bench, taking up space like tall, attractive men did.

Spencer swallowed. He’d practiced this in his head a bunch of times, and a few extra times with Ian, who’d assured him that Raj didn’t seem like someone who would completely freak out about this kind of offer, even if he wasn’t going to be into it. He’d asked Raj here specifically to talk about it. Well, they took their dogs to the dog park together at least once a week, anyway, but since the dog park was usually basically empty, it seemed like as good a place as any to have this conversation. “You know how you said you’d, uh, have sex with me, if the conditions were right?”

A smile twitched at the corner of Raj’s mouth as he looked over into the distance where Bibi was yapping angrily at a squirrel that had gotten too close. “I don’t think those were my exact words, but yes, I remember.”

Spencer tried to look away from Raj, figuring that would make this easier, but then he ended up looking directly into the sun, so he had to turn back toward him. “How do you, um, feel about Ian?”

Raj’s head snapped back around so he was facing Spencer. “Is this a test?”

“What? No!”

Spencer could feel his cheeks heating. This was absolutely a terrible idea.

Raj bit his lip. “Then I would say Ian is also very hot, and I would also tap that, given the right conditions.”

Okay, so Raj was teasing him, which meant this was maybe going in a promising direction after all. Spencer gripped the edge of the bench like it was anchoring him to the earth. “How would you feel about sleeping with both of us?”

He heard Raj stop breathing, and then suddenly a massive smile spread across his face. “Spencer Lim, are you propositioning me for a threesome?”

Spencer didn’t know how to answer because he was pretty sure there was no other way to interpret what he had been doing.

“I never thought I would see the day.”

“Oh my god.”

Spencer buried his face in his hands, unable to bear the thought of how red he’d become. “Can we please forget this ever happened and go back to being friends like we were five minutes ago?”

“No, hey, hey.”

Raj put a hand on his shoulder and gently eased him back. “I was kidding. I’m sorry. I know that took a lot of guts.”

“This feels really absurd right now.”

“It’s not absurd. It’s cool.”

Spencer looked over cautiously. Raj was still smiling but gentler now, like he wanted Spencer to feel comfortable with this truly horrifying conversation they were having. “Have you done this before?”

“A handful of times, yeah. Have you?”

Spencer just shook his head.

“Well, I think you and Ian would be fun to do it with. We’re friends, and I trust you guys. Also we’re all very good-looking.”

“Jesus, Raj.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Was that not why you asked me?”

“I’m having trouble remembering why I asked you, to be honest.”

“Let’s pick a time to meet up. If we’re all looking for the same things, I don’t see why we shouldn’t.”

Norman chose that moment to bring his ball back, and Spencer threw it again. He was pretty sure Bibi was just asleep in a tuft of grass on the other side of the fenced-in area. “You don’t think it would be weird?”

Raj shrugged. “I mean, that’s something we should all definitely talk about. But I like hanging out with you. I liked hanging out with Ian that time at Hector’s. I don’t see why I wouldn’t like hanging out with you both naked.”

“You are startlingly straightforward sometimes. You know that, right?”

“I like to think it’s part of my charm.”

———

The next time Ian had an afternoon free, he and Spencer walked down to Raj’s café after closing. Raj unlocked the door and let them in. “Have a seat. I’ll grab coffee.”

“You don’t have to do that,”

Spencer said, picking a table against the wall.

“It’s called hospitality, Spence,”

Raj said over his shoulder.

Probably sensing that Spencer was nervous, Ian took his hand across the table. He looked nonchalant as ever in his T-shirt, shorts, and Vejas. “Can we at least pay?”

he asked in Raj’s direction.

“Absolutely not.”

Raj put three mugs on the table, then went back to the counter for a plate of pastries that looked like the day’s assorted leftovers. He pulled up a chair from an adjacent table and sat. “So, you guys want to fuck me.”

Spencer almost snorted his coffee through his nose.

“We’re open to any number of arrangements, depending on what you like,”

Ian said diplomatically. They’d talked it through, and both Ian and Spencer were happy to have pretty much any sex act on the table, reasoning that anal penetration wasn’t any more or less sex than a hand job or a blow job.

“I’m a pretty strict bottom, so it would be you fucking me. Unless you don’t want to go there, which is totally cool, too.”

Raj had an entirely businesslike demeanor about the whole thing, which was both encouraging to Spencer and stressing him the fuck out in equal measure.

“We’re open to it if you are.”

Spencer found the courage to join the conversation. “We can send you test results, but we also want to use condoms.”

“That sounds good to me. I can send you mine from last month.”

Raj took a bite from a cookie. “I’m generally open to most things. Though maybe let’s keep anything really hardcore off the table until we all know one another a little better?”

Spencer nodded. He’d always considered himself to be pretty vanilla, to be perfectly honest, so he wasn’t sure he would ever want anything hardcore to be on the table.

Raj leveled his beautiful brown eyes at him. “How do you want it to be when we’re not fucking?”

Spencer was glad Raj had brought it up because whatever happened with this, he didn’t want it to ruin their friendship. “Like it is?”

Spencer offered. “We’re friends. And now sometimes we fuck when we all agree to. I don’t want it to be a secret, but I don’t feel the need to tell anyone about it directly, either.”

Raj dusted crumbs off his hands over the plate. “Sounds like the ideal setup for me, honestly.”

“For us, too.”

Ian smiled at Raj, and for the first time, Spencer saw that casual confidence directed at someone else. The curve of Ian’s mouth, the glint in his eye, the relaxed set of his shoulders that indicated that he knew the situation was under control. Spencer might have stopped breathing. If this was even the slightest preview of what nonmonogamy with Ian was going to be like, he had made a very good decision.

“Oh no, I think you broke him,”

Raj mused.

Ian looked over to him, concerned, but Spencer just shook his head. “I’m fine, thanks.”

Then he stuffed as much of a croissant into his mouth as he could at once.