Page 15 of Party of Three (Sapphire Cove Suite Secrets)

If he was going to jet, now was the time, Jeff thought.

Mateo had gone to run the bath. Buckley was half conscious next to him. He could scoot out before the other man came back. Even if Buckley threw himself across the door, he wouldn’t be outnumbered.

But when the man sighed and snuggled up into him before he could put the plan into action, his warmth filled Jeff like the first cool drink after a grueling trek through scorched desert. He returned the embrace before he could think twice about it.

When was the last time sex had left him this spent, this utterly content? He couldn’t remember.

He’d had his fair share of wild experiences, guest starred for plenty of couples in his day.

Hell, he’d even taken a chance on a Grindr hookup who wouldn’t share a face pic only to have the door to a La Jolla hotel room opened by an A-list celebrity he’d lusted after since seeing him in his first superhero flick.

Apparently the guy had been in town for Comic-Con.

For the most part, those experiences had been hotter in the retelling than in the execution, the stuff he’d brag about with some of his buddies. The couples awkwardly scooted him out the door once the deed was done, and the celebrity had smelled of too much liquid courage.

This had been something else entirely. This had been…Mateo.

And Buckley. Who somehow knew me down to my core without ever meeting me.

It felt like loving the same man had made them instantly intimate with each other. In ways that went beyond the physical.

Our boy.

Mateo’s words thrummed in his head. They’d pushed him over the edge, causing him to erupt. The idea that he and Mateo could have someone to share, someone wild and fierce and eager to surrender to them both.

He tried to remember the last time he’d lost control like this. With Mateo, of course. In San Diego. For over a year and half now, he’d assumed that trip had ruined everything. But if it had set the stage for this, maybe that wasn’t true. But what was this? What had they started?

And was it true he’d lost control? He’d spent the night chipping away at Buckley’s agenda and eventually he’d revealed it.

“Alright, gents,” Mateo said from the bathroom door. “Let’s get clean.”

Jeff rolled to one side. Mateo had lost the shirt.

The sight of him naked and leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his smooth brown chest made Jeff’s head spin.

He smiled, extended one hand, and helped Jeff to his feet.

As soon as they were face-to-face, their mouths met.

This time they kissed without a mad race to orgasm driving them.

The next thing he knew, the two of them were guiding Buckley into the dimly lit bathroom where sweeps of honey-colored marble flickered in the light of the candles Mateo had relocated from the villa’s sitting room.

The massive jacuzzi tub was almost full.

Buckley stumbled for a few steps, clearly still spent in more ways than one, before Mateo guided all of them into warm water, positioning Buckley in the middle.

As their soapy hands kneaded and caressed the man between them, Buckley’s soft cooing sounds turned to long, throaty groans. His pleasure was infectious, and Jeff felt a stirring in his balls. No small feat for a guy in his forties who’d just come so hard he thought his eyes might pop out.

“Damn, papi ,” Mateo cooed, and that’s when Jeff saw that Buckley was going hard again in the bathwater.

“I like being your boy,” Buckley whispered.

They were quiet words, casual words. Gentle, even. But they seemed full of promise and potential, and in the watery silence that followed, they hung in the steam over the tub as both men continued working their soapy hands across Buckley’s neck and shoulders, then up into his armpits.

Did he mean Mateo’s boy? Or did he mean he belonged to both of them?

Eventually, these vague and slippery possessive pronouns would have to grow more defined. But for now there was only the gentle sounds and sights of a man being gently undone by the work of four powerful hands.

Buckley leaned back. Jeff worked his hands up the center of his chest. Mateo focused on Buckley’s outstretched arm, a wicked smile on his face at the sight of the tenderness between the two men in front of him.

“Normally a bottom has to get railed to get this kind of treatment,” Buckley said.

“Yeah, well, it sounded like it wasn’t the right moment.” Jeff kissed the side of Buckley’s neck.

“Stay the night,” Buckley said quietly, clearly struggling to focus through the pleasure both men were giving him. “He should stay the night, right, babe?”

Mateo nodded with an eager smile.

“Not sure that’s a good idea,” Jeff said before he could stop himself.

Mateo’s smile faded. Slowly, Buckley turned over in the water until he was eye-to-eye with Jeff.

“Do you ever let go long enough to let anyone take care of you, Master Sergeant?”

The words lanced through him.

They should have hurt, but the man who’d spoken them hadn’t said them in anger. He’d said them in need.

And that’s what he felt coming from both of the men sharing the tub with him—need.

Lust had been fed by their wild three-way, distance bridged by his arrival earlier that night.

Basic cravings had been satisfied. If they still wanted him to stay, they were being driven by something else.

They didn’t want a guest star or a sex toy.

They wanted him , and it had been a very long time since a sexual experience of any kind had left him feeling that way.

People wanted Jeff Braxton’s Marine Corps experience, they wanted him to command, to train, and occasionally, they wanted him to fuck them into the wall while calling them dirty names.

But they never wanted him to be messy and hungry and needy in expensive hotel sheets for hours on end.

“You’re pretty frank now that we’ve gotten sweaty together.”

“As if. You didn’t nickname me firecracker after two minutes because I mince words.”

Jeff’s eyes met Mateo’s. “Is this how he charmed you off your feet?”

Mateo shrugged. “A little. But I didn’t need the hard sell like you did. He had me from day one. Besides, you’ve got a helluva of a mouth on you too, Master Sergeant.”

Buckley sat up. Then, smiling, he sank back against his beautiful boyfriend.

For a second, Jeff thought he was being punished with a bit of distance.

Then he realized it was the opposite. Buckley was setting the table with a two-course breakfast that would be waiting for him in the morning if he decided to spend the night.

He felt a lecture brewing.

They should keep this fun, that’s all. And maybe fun meant once or twice a month and no more.

Then they wouldn’t lose their heads. But the lecture didn’t come.

Instead, he found himself drinking in the sight of their beautiful young bodies tangled together in warm water turned sudsy.

Light flickering off their wet smooth skin.

What a pair they made. Mateo, tall, bronze, and solid, his gaze steady and piercing as Jeff’s, his long, muscled arms wrapped around Buckley’s thick, compact, creamy white body that always seemed coiled and ready to spring into pleasure giving.

A promise buttressed by the constantly mischievous glint in his big blue searching eyes.

“Watcha thinking, Master Sergeant?” Mateo finally asked.

I’m thinking you’re two sirens and I’m a helpless sailor you’re about to drag off to a pleasure island. But what he said was, “I’m thinking we should ditch rank if we’re gonna keep doing this.”

“The master sergeant thing’s hot, though,” Buckley said softly. “I mean, I don’t even know what they do, but still…hot. Besides, Mateo’s not a Marine anymore.”

Jeff reached under the water and squeezed one of Buckley’s feet, bringing it close to the surface while kneading it in a way that made the man’s eyes hood and his lips pout with suddenly deep breaths. “Got yourself a chaser here, Cano.”

“What’s that?” Buckley asked.

Mateo shook his head. “Old-school term for a gay guy with a Marine fetish.”

“Excuse me,” Buckley said. “I will not be lumped in with some creeper who cruises Oceanside trying to blow enlisted guys in his car.”

“Hey,” Jeff said, “don’t judge. A lot of those so-called creepers were sexy as hell. I should know. I hooked up with plenty of ’em.”

“See, Master Sergeant?” Mateo asked. “This isn’t the craziest thing you’ve ever done.”

“So is this a DP I’m being invited to in the morning?”

Buckley furrowed his brow as if considering it deeply, but Jeff figured it was the killer foot massage he was giving him that had reduced him to silence.

Mateo laughed and patted Buckley’s chest. “I think we’re going to need to work up to that one.

My boy’s talented, but that’s Olympic level.

Right?” He kissed Buckley on the nape of his neck.

“We’ll work up to it,” Buckley answered, staring into Jeff’s eyes.

Working up to something took time. It was, dare he say, a commitment.

“And I should glove up if we go that route, know what I mean? Unless this isn’t your first time hosting a visitor.”

It was a simple request that raised complicated questions.

He took a pill every day to prevent HIV and got tested for pretty much everything else on the regular.

In light of both things, his condom use hadn’t been anywhere near as regular as it had been back when he’d first come out.

But if Mateo and Buckley had been monogamous up until last night, they probably weren’t on PrEP.

Had they, though? Suddenly he cared whether or not they had.

Suddenly he hoped desperately to be the first third they’d played with.

Maybe even the last third they ever played with.

Are you playing, Braxton? Or did you make a giant fucking mistake here?

“We’re not on PrEP, if that’s what you’re asking,” Buckley finally said. “You’re the first.”

Like he could see right through him, this guy.

“I’ll stay,” he finally said.

Visible relief overtook both men.

Slowly, Buckley crawled forward through the water, studying Jeff carefully, as if their closeness would have more impact now that he’d agreed to spend the night.

When their mouths met again, he feared the kiss wouldn’t have the same flushing heat to it.

Perhaps their initial sparks had been thrown off by the fire of the forbidden.

But as Buckley’s mouth melted under his, Jeff’s spine felt incandescent.

Mateo’s face was inches away suddenly, and then it was his lips Jeff was tasting.

The water started to go lukewarm around them.

He lost sight of which man he was kissing, which man was groping or caressing him. Because he didn’t care.

And he thought, Heaven. I have found heaven. And I did it by walking straight into my fears.

After toweling himself off, Mateo headed for bed, but Buckley paused in the doorway, turning to face Jeff, who was still drying himself.

“I’ll get the lights,” Buckley whispered.

Jeff wasn’t sure what the guy meant, which must have been clear in his expression because Buckley added, “They’ve got dimmers, and he doesn’t do well with those.

I took them all out at our place. When they fade they remind him of when the Osprey pitched forward and—”

“Gotcha.” Jeff felt foolish for not having put it together and a little childish for thinking Buckley’s furtive whispers were a prelude to more shenanigans.

As he slipped into bed next to him, Jeff wondered if Mateo had ever been surfing again after his near drowning, but the last thing he wanted to do was ask.

He wondered if, when it came to the accident, Mateo could bring himself to say aloud those four letters that bedeviled so many military men and women—PTSD.

And his ignorance on these matters made him feel a twinge of guilt.

A twinge that might have felt more like a sword in the gut if he hadn’t been holding Mateo in both arms.

The ache and longing he’d felt over the past year and a half whenever he thought of the man’s beautiful brown eyes or gentle laugh had been removed from him in the course of one wild night. And by a man who ignited a new appetite in him that felt just as powerful.

Once he’d finished turning off all the lights one by one, Buckley slipped into bed on the other side of Mateo, and in a few seconds they’d made a snuggly sandwich out of the birthday boy.