Page 58 of Kiss and Tell

He and Miles nodded.

“Have the two of you ever…” Lucy waved her hand in the air, clearly uncomfortable with her question. “I mean, I was wondering… Never mind.”

“Ask your question, Lucy,” Joey demanded.

“You told me about your siblings, Joey. About their relationships. Is that something that, um, the two of you are looking for?”

Miles shook his head, saying, “Absolutely not.”

At the same time, Joey replied, “Yes.”

Her gaze traveled between them. “So the two of you have never…”

Lucy never struggled to speak what was on her mind, so Joey wondered if her issues now were based on embarrassment or something else.

“What just happened on this couch is as close as Miles and I have ever come to sharing a woman.” Joey’s response took Lucy’s cheeks from pink to bloodred in an instant.

“I shouldn’t have let things go that far,” Miles added.

There was no denying the hurt in Lucy’s expression at his comment. “Because you don’t want?—”

“Don’t,” Miles interjected, lifting his hand. “Don’t even think that, Lucy.” Softer, he added, “But please don’t ask either.”

Joey stared at his best friend, grateful Miles wasn’t attempting to lie, to tell Lucy he didn’t want her. Of course, that was where the gratitude ended because the bastard also didn’t want to confess to his feelings either.

“So you don’t want to be part of a threesome?” Lucy asked Miles.

“I’m a one-man, one-woman kind of guy. There’s no way in hell I can take off my clothes and have sex with a woman while another man is lying in the bed. I’m not wired that way. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with what Joey’s brothers and sister have, nothing wrong with Joey for wanting it too. It’s just not whatIwant.”

As much as he hated what Miles was saying, it also opened the door for Joey to probe a bit deeper. “Is your hesitance a jealousy thing?”

Miles didn’t answer immediately, which told Joey he was seriously thinking about the question. When Miles’s gaze drifted between him and Lucy, Joey realized Miles had found his answer. And he didn’t like it.

Finally, Miles shook his head. “I…I don’t think it is.”

“Can I ask you something else?” Lucy asked.

Joey got the sense Miles wanted to refuse, his friend struggling with the conversation as much as Lucy.

“Sure,” he said, somewhat begrudgingly.

“Did you like it when the three of us kissed?”

Joey had been looking at Lucy, but at her question, his eyes flew to Miles.

Miles dodged the question by asking one of his own. “Are you asking that because you want to participate in a threesome?”

Lucy bit her lower lip. “It’s not something I’ve ever thought about before Joey told me about his family.”

Joey leaned forward. “But you’ve been thinking about it since?”

“It’s pretty hard not to. I like kissing both of you,” she admitted.

She had to be the bravest woman Joey had ever met, to be so willing to lay out her feelings without reservation and in the face of rejection.

“I like kissing you too,” Joey said.

Miles grimaced, then admitted, “Fine. I liked it. But, dammit, kissing is a hell of a lot different from sex, Lucy.”