Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 100060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 334(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100060 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 334(@300wpm)
“You found them turning each other’s cranks,” Tobias finishes. “Been there. On the crank turning end of things, of course.”
I shoot Tobias a venomous look.
He winks back at me—and he’s very lucky the windows on this tram don’t come down or I might “accidentally” push him out of one. It occurs to me in that moment that I am having vastly different reactions to these three men. Tobias riles me up, irritates me. Banks is like looking into an emotional mirror, giving me a strange sense of camaraderie. And Gabe? I’m protective over him. A man twice my size.
Like I said, nothing makes sense anymore.
Giving myself a mental shake, I refocus on Gabe’s story. “I’m sorry that happened. It can’t be easy living next door to them.”
“They act like it didn’t happen. The marriage. And they park on my lawn.” His tone is disbelieving and I get the impression he’s never said any of this out loud. “Their wheels are only a few inches onto my property but it kills the grass. I like my grass.” He splits an annoyed look between all three of us in defense of lawn maintenance. “Anyway. They…expect me to follow their lead and act like the marriage never happened and I don’t know how.”
“That’s because it’s impossible, Gabe,” I say. “An impossible thing to expect from you.”
He nods, studies my face closely. The sun has gone down and it’s growing darker in the small car. Suddenly everything is more. The intimacy of our position—my hands on his chest, his arms wrapped around my hips. Banks and Tobias observing closely, not breathing. All four of us are sort of suspended in animation, but my pulse is galloping, moving faster when Gabe wets his lips, his hand flexing on the small of my back. Oh my God, I think he’s going to kiss me. Right here, in front of these other men. Why doesn’t that seem as wild and crazy as it ought to?
I mean, it does. It’s bananas. But in the near-dark private world above the river, it’s almost like we’ve momentarily slipped out of reality.
Gabe’s breath shallows—and I feel it. His erection spears up between us, almost shockingly hard, and he immediately drops his arms from around me, backing toward the other side of the car and turning around, bracing his hands on the metal frame that surrounds the glass. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, uh…”
Skin flushed, I nod once, stammering, “I, yeah. I know.”
“Sweet hell, if I apologized for my dick every time it got hard, I would be hoarse twenty-four hours a day,” Tobias declares, looking down at the appendage in question. “I’d advise you all to buy stock in throat lozenges, because I’d be going through bags of them like water.”
The absence of Gabe’s furnace-like heat starts to take effect immediately. It’s like walking out of a hot shower into a snowstorm. I’m even colder than before, because I’ve been to the Promised Land. Gabe must hear my teeth chattering from across the tram car, because he shoots me a miserable look over his shoulder…
But suddenly Banks is stepping into view, blocking Gabe.
Blocking, well, everything.
He wraps his overcoat around me and draws me up against his body. And when I say my mouth begins to water over his scent, it’s not an exaggeration. A scent has never intoxicated me. At the mere suggestion that I might one day lose my chill over cologne, I would have laughed—until now. It’s smoky and sensual and ever so slightly sweet. And where Gabe is thick and rounded, Banks is ripped and tight. He looks me right in the eye while heating me up in very precise, proficient manner that leads me to believe he’s been envisioning how he would do it this whole time.
I’ve been in denial for the last few minutes. Trying to ignore the fact that I was aroused by Gabe. The packed press of his strength, our size difference, his capable energy. But I can’t deny it now when Banks is holding me accountable with eye contact that I can’t seem to break. My nipples are puckered inside my bra and there is a teasing tingle between my thighs that is growing harder to ignore. It was there when Gabe held me and it’s only growing more potent now that I’m in Banks’s arms. So which one of them is doing this to me? It can’t be both, right?
Banks presses a thumb into some magical pressure point at the very base of my spine and I make a breathy, whimpering sound before I know what’s happening.
All three men seem to expand in the darkness. Like they’re grown attuned to me and I’ve just turned some knob to raise the volume. This has to be a dream. I’m going to wake up any second now and be home in bed, my phone chiming on my bedside table. I’m definitely not hanging suspended over the East River with three men, two of whom my body seems powerless to ignore.