Chapter 4 REMINGTON

Julia is soft in her explorations, taking her time to learn my tells. She takes my lips into her mouth, one by one, testing their fullness with her tongue. She makes the most exquisite noises every time her head tilts to change the angle of her attack. Her skin is like satin where I cup the back of her neck, and the smell of her shampoo tickles my nose.

"He tastes like chocolate," Julia murmurs against my lips, and at the adorable little snort through her nose, the spell is broken.

My hands are on Julia's ass. My dick is pinned underneath her, aching at the constant rubbing of her body. And, yes, my hands are on Julia's ass. Julia. The Julia who's married to Justin.

Together they are my JJ. Justin and Julia. Julia and Justin. The JJ's to my R.

And my hands are on her ass...

"Uhhhh..."

It's the only noise my face will make.

Justin has collapsed onto his side, his arms around his stomach, tears dripping down his face from the intensity of his laughter.

"My hands are on Julia's ass," I tell anyone who will listen.

Did the air conditioning break in their apartment? They live on Park Avenue, for fuck's sake. It shouldn't be so hot in their apartment.

Julia climbs up from my lap, looking between her husband rolling on the floor and me still sitting on the couch, my hands now squeezing the air where her ass cheeks sat.

The room is spinning around me.

"I need another shot."

Julia mumbles something under her breath, and I think I hear something about me being broken. Then she uses her foot to push J over onto his back.

"Okay, boys," Julia sighs, grabbing my hands and hauling me to my feet.

"Hey, baby." I grin at her, but I think it loses its effect when she has to yank on me again to stop me from tipping over.

"I'll be back for you," she aims at the floor while flinging my arm around her shoulder. She's short. In, like a hot way.

Whoa. I never noticed how uneven their floors were before. First thing in the morning, I'm calling my father's contractor. JJ paid out the ass for this place. It deserves to be in better shape.

"I love you, Julia.

"I do. She's the best. Justin's the best too. They like, get me on a spiritual level. He's a really good kisser too. I always knew Julia would be. But Justin, that took me by surprise."

"I'll be sure to tell him you said so," Julia responds to my internal monologue, and she tips me unceremoniously into my bed.

"That's how much I love these two. She can fucking read my mind."

"I'm not reading your mind Remi. You're talking out loud," she laughs.

She has such a pretty laugh.

"I bet her pussy tastes good. I should have tried it when I had the chance. Before Justin put a ring on it. He liked it, enough that he bought it."

Julia makes a noise like she's choking, and I swim through the molasses to find her at my feet, pulling my jeans off my legs.

"How very Beyoncé of you," she says, and I have no fucking clue what she's talking about.

The bed shifts beneath me, and Julia climbs to my side, pulling the blanket up to rest under my chin.

"Go to sleep, Remi," she says and drops a kiss to my lips. I try to kiss her back and think maybe I do, but the weight of the blanket pulls me under and...

"Uhhhhhh."

My head is pounding. My bladder is bursting. I peel my eyes open, the lids like sandpaper across the soft flesh.

It takes me a minute to realize I'm in my bed at JJ's place, and I'm going to kill those assholes for letting me drink so much. I roll with a groan onto my side, reaching for the bedside table. My phone is on its base, charging, and I have zero memory of putting it there.

Fuck.

Three forty-five in the morning.

The climb from the bed is almost painful. My pants are in the hamper, somehow, and I pull my booze-tinged shirt from my head, dropping it in on the way. I keep a week's worth of clothes at JJ's place for exactly this situation. When it's too late to go home to the apartment where I live alone.

I have other friends. Other people I hang out with. But the truth is, I'd always rather be with them. With JJ. Since the moment they moved in, Julia made sure I'd have everything I needed in 'my room,' so I could stay over as often as I wanted.

The truth of the matter is life is easier when I'm with them. I'm not Remington Lancaster III, heir to the Lancaster fortune. With JJ, I'm just Remi. An asshole who drinks too much and makes stupid bets on college basketball games.

I think maybe I'm still drunk. When I try to go pee, the room spins, and I have to support myself with my forearms on the wall behind the toilet.

I empty my bladder, the easing of pressure releasing some of the tension in my brain. Until I reach for the aspirin on the counter and find the container empty.

Son of a bitch.

I toss it into the trash bin, then venture out of the bathroom looking for pills for my head. I stop at the dresser and debate putting on something more than my boxer briefs, but everyone is asleep right now. My head hurts too bad to make the effort, only to strip it off again in five minutes.

There isn't a light to be seen. The apartment is dark and muted. Even my steps on the hardwood are eaten by the vacuum of New York at four in the morning. I turn towards the kitchen to find the stash of meds I know Mrs. Jones keeps hidden in the cupboards.

I'm two steps down the hallway when I hear it.

But hear what?

I tilt my head to the side, straining to catch the noise that pulled my attention. The apartment is quiet and still-the very air seems held in stasis. But just when I think I made it up, the sound flits down the hallway again.

Goosebumps break out over my body; my heart suddenly stops in my chest. I swallow back the moisture flooding my mouth and stiffen with my hand on the wall, willing my body back under my control.

There it is again. Low, drawn-out, and so deep I feel it slip through my gut like a panther through the grass.

Someone is moaning.

It's not my business. This is their apartment, in the middle of the night. I have no right to search out those sounds in the dark.

I head back in the direction I came from, softly stepping towards the door at the end of the hall. The corridor dead-ends at the master suite-the spacious living area taking up a fourth of the apartment's square footage.

Another moan slips through the cracked door. Julia. Julia is calling me to her like a moth to a candle flame. She sounds debauched, and I know it's not a sound of pain.

My palms are sweating, and the blinding pain of my headache has all but disappeared, replaced by a pull in my gut. Flashes of the events on the couch flicker through my mind like a projector slide with a damaged video, broken images of Justin's mouth and Julia's hands burning into my soul.

Their door opens without a sound.

I sway on my feet, my eyes struggling to take in the vision in front of me.

They're naked.

But not.

The floor-to-ceiling windows that line the far wall are translucent, the curtains drawn to let in the light. The New York skyline streams in through the glass, giving their bodies an ethereal glow. They look like divine avenging angels, delivered as gifts from God.

Or succubi sent to tempt.

Justin is on his knees.

I can see the sweat on Justin's skin from here, the way it drips down his back and curves between his ass cheeks. His hair, always so perfect, is pushed haphazardly from his face, dampness giving it body and curl his product never allows.

The hard lines of his body have edges I've never noticed before. Never allowed myself to see. The curve of a bicep, the planes on his back where his muscles ripple and flex. His tattoo, bursting with life and vitality that trails down his side and over his hip.

Very few people know of its existence. Its presence on his body is a gift to his wife and for our eyes alone.

Julia.

His wife.

I take a step forward before coming to a stop.

I've thought about her before. Halted and ashamed-disgusted with myself for doing it. I've brought myself to orgasm with images of my best friend's wife in my mind. Of what she'd look like splayed out underneath me.

My imagination was like a kindergarten finger painting while Julia in the flesh is a Monet.

Julia is strapped to the bed.

Her skin is paler than moonlight, scattered with stardust and sprinkled with sweat. I blink once, twice, bringing my gaze into focus. Ensuring I'm seeing what I think I'm seeing.

My dick swells to twice its size when Justin slowly thrusts inside his wife.

Her ass is in the air, her knees spread to accommodate her husband's girth. But her body, long and lithe and feline in its grace, is stretched out across the bed. Her arms are extended above her head, her face pressed cheek first into the mattress, and her wrists bound in black, a strap disappearing behind who knows where. Her hair fans out around her, the clean line of her neck bared. My eyes trail over the curve of her spine, the swell of her hips, to where her husband disappears inside her.

Justin plunges into his wife, his hips snapping with force, then rotating at the moment of impact, pulling that drawn-out keen from Julia, her face twisting in pleasure. He runs his

palm down her spine, cupping the curves of her ass. His movements are languid, the act of a man who has all the time in the world and doesn't intend to be rushed.

I grasp my dick through my boxers, the tight fabric doing nothing to ease the ache.

"Do you want to taste her?"

The voice startles me from my trance, and blood rushes to my face when I meet Justin's eyes. Justin pulls out of his wife, replacing his dick with his fingers, then bringing the slicked digits to his mouth. He climbs off the side of the bed, causing Julia to mewl in distress at the loss, her hips searching out his heat once more. His dick bobs with pride, hard and flush, covered in Julia's pussy.

"Taste my wife," he orders me in that goddamn fucking voice, and I'm halfway across the floor before I realize I've even moved.

I don't go to the bed.