Page 28 of Cross To Bear

“Is this a date?” Fuck, where the hell did that come from? “I mean—”

“Do you want it to be?” A man shouldn’t be allowed to have a voice so deep it made every single follicle on my skin rise, sending ripples of pleasure through me. He shouldn’t be able to lose that grin and look somehow even more beautiful when he did, as he leaned closer. “Is that—?”

“No.” Jesus, had they put some kind of truth serum in my bloody drink? “I mean, I just got out of something and…” Bjorn flicked his hands free of suds as the water gurgled down the plughole, then walked closer. “I know this isn’t what you want to hear—”

“No, that’s not how it works.” Razor jerked my attention back to him. “You don’t have to stuff your feelings down, just to make us more comfortable.” I flushed then, remembering all the times I did that with Jesse. They’d seen that too, that became apparent. “Tell us what we don’t want to hear, Maddie.”

I swallowed hard, my tongue feeling too thick, my mouth too dry. I took a sip of my drink, the bitter, lemony astringent taste rushing in as they waited. So I forced my eyes up to meet theirs.

“I just ended a relationship. Not a good one, granted, and that’s kind of the point.” I sagged against the couch. “I’m not sad Jesse’s not here, I’m… relieved.” I dared to glance at Bjorn, knowing academically he’d never judge me, but feeling forced to check. “I feel… exhausted and invigorated at the same time. I don’t have to carry him, clean up his fucking messes, deal with the chaos he created, and also…” I sucked in a breath, almost able to hear my mother’s critical voice inside my head. “I can be as selfish as I like.”

Bjorn sat down beside me, leaving me sandwiched between them, so I didn’t look at him or Razor, instead at the rug on the floor, staring at the small scorch mark Jesse’s cigarette had left not long after I bought it, resulting in his smoking being relegated to the balcony.

“On the weekend, I can get up when I want to, go and do whatever the hell I feel like doing. If I haven’t bothered to do the dishes the night before, I have to do them, or I can also just leave them for later and go to the farmer’s market.”

I wasn’t here, in this room anymore. I wasn’t even in my own life. I was somewhere else, a place completely of my own choosing.

“I can spend as long as I like looking at the stalls that interest me and only me and ignore the others.” Jesse hated coming to the markets with me and coped with this by going over to the solo beer producer and talking extensively about his products. “I can go when I want to, leave when I want to, and never worry about what anyone else needs.”

I let out a sigh that rattled its way out of my chest.

“I can have a nap if I want to. I can slip between washed cotton sheets that smell of sunlight and lemon washing powder, and snuggle down under the covers. I can rest my head on pillows that smell only of me and I can…”

I saw what I might do next, something that was always a bone of contention with Jesse. Weirdly, he saw me masturbating as both a sign of rejection and a waste. If I was horny, I was better directing that energy at him, but…

No matter how it started, sex always ended up about him. Sucking his dick, his hoarse words urging me on even as his hands gripped my skull. Me bent over as he slammed himself into me, going harder and harder, until his fingers buried themselves in my hips. Or me pulled on top to ride him, his eyes raking over me even as I felt terribly exposed. Even when he was going down on me, I felt self-conscious of how long he was down there, found I grabbed at pleasure, any pleasure, to try and hurry things along, never able to just relax, and accept what he was doing as my due.

But I didn’t owe anyone my silence anymore and so my jaw tightened as I turned to gaze back into Razor’s eyes.

“I can get myself off in exactly the way I like and not worry about anyone else’s feelings.”

God, that, that’s what I wanted. It was only now it became clear just how much I’d resented carrying the emotional weight of Jesse and the muscles I’d used to do just that were tired, worn out. I could only look at the two of them and know I wasn’t in a place where I could pick them up instead.

“I can just be perfectly, breathtakingly selfish and not have to worry about anyone or anything but myself.” I nodded slowly. “I can’t date anyone right now because that’s where I am. I just want to walk out into the world and grab at experiences, do whatever the fuck I want, when I want it and not have to worry about anything else.”

“And you think we want to get in the way of that?” Razor’s smile had me flushing, though was that from embarrassment or from the potential for a million dark pleasures lurking there? “You just want to feel things, little girl?”

He nodded to Bjorn, the only warning I got before Razor grabbed my wrists, using them to pull my arms up over my head as Bjorn grabbed my feet and placed them in his lap. Somehow my speech ended with me lying on my back on the couch, spread across the two of them.

“Raz—” I yelped.

“Shh…” His deep voice was soothing now, right as his spare hand slid around my throat. Not to squeeze or anything, but to rest there and keep me pinned where I was. “Bjorn’s gonna put a movie on.” Razor looked over to his sleuthmate, and when my eyes rolled down, I saw the other man nod. “Something light and fluffy and you’re going to try and be so very quiet.”

“What…?”

Two thumbs moved to silence me, but I didn’t care. One, up my throat, not pressing down on my larynx, making clear that it could, while the other pushed between my lips. A little groan escaped me, sounding slightly strangled.

“Ssh…” Razor let go to put his finger to his lips, his eyes sparkling as he gazed down at me. “If you like that, you need to be quiet.” He settled back against the couch, staring at the screen now as the credits started to roll. “For the length of the movie, Bjorn will do his level best to release all of the tension inside you.” I caught a brief sidelong look that came with a small smile before he focused back on the TV. “But if you make a sound, he stops.”

I went to ask what the fuck was going on, to ask how the hell my speech about being selfish had gotten me here, when I got my answer. I looked down my body, my range of movement limited by Razor’s grip and somehow that just made it all the better. The glimpse I caught of Bjorn’s rapt expression as he traced the shape of my foot, rubbing his callused palms up and down the top, then swivelled down to slide up the arch. He realised he had an audience, pushing his thumb into the fascia underneath it, forcing muscles that pulled tight after walking around in court shoes all day to let go, before he nodded to the screen.

“Watch the movie, Maddie.”

It was an old favourite, but I couldn’t have told you the plot right now if you’d put a gun to my head. Because just like John Travolta asserted in Pulp Fiction, a foot massage was never just a foot massage. At first it was a weird mixture of sensual and pain, stroking one foot, then another, then Bjorn’s fingers dug into the muscles, rubbing the knots out, the release of tension I hadn’t realised I was carrying washing over me. Despite being a perfect gentleman, confining himself to the job at hand, this remained. A man I’d never touched before was touching me, bringing my awareness back to my body in a way I hadn’t felt in some time.

It was the same heavy feeling I experienced right before I crawled into bed for a nap. Not the mid-afternoon slump I had to fight past at work. It was the weekend, so I could afford to surrender to its seductive pull. I felt a similar feeling of sleepy paralysis, one I could break the hold of if I wanted to.

But I didn’t.

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