Page 52 of Inked Beasts

He smiles. “Good.” His eyes meet Gage’s over my shoulder, and I can tell the two of them are having a brief but intense wordless conversation.

The men disengage from me and carry me into the shower, where we all clean up. After I drink a big glass of water, we doze off, but not for long. When we wake up, we don’t need words to know that we want more.

Time does one of those strange things where it telescopes out, and the night seems to last forever. Sometime during our extended encounter, it hits me that if I’d stayed in Vegas, my late teen years would have been spent exactly like this, with exactly these men.

I’m so thankful it’s happening now. Despite the fact that we’re fucking each other’s brains out, it’s never been just sex, not with them. It’s a sacred rite, full of tenderness and respect and affection, and I feel a profound gratitude for my men and the gift of their bodies to me.

KAI

This woman. Fuck.

She’s the best fucking thing in the entire world.

Despite our years of friendship, Gage and I had never shared a woman—and after tonight, I know we never will unless it’s Lexy.

He and I were on the same page afterwards. We didn’t need words to know it. The family I talked about at Thanksgiving—it’s real. The four of us fit together, and always have.

We just need to persuade our maybe-reluctant woman that we’re where she belongs.

GAGE

After last night, I’m as obsessed as Kai. Before this, I would have been sad if Lexy chose to move on, but life hands out failures and disappointments, not just victories. I could have accepted it.

At least, that’s what I told myself.

Now I know better. We had enough sex last night to fill several porn films—and it was one of the most pure experiences of my life. There is no other woman who could complete us the way that Lexy does.

Our solar system will be empty and cold, forever, if our sun doesn’t stay where she belongs. She has to feel it too.

Doesn’t she?

LEXY

In the morning, I’m tired and happy …and I feel like my soul’s been turned inside out.

After this experience, I’m not sure I can keep pretending that everything’s casual between us. Maybe it’s casual from their point of view, though—these gorgeous inked beasts with the endless lines of women who want them. So many women they literally had to hire a guard at their shop’s door to hold the groupies back.

And Thorn with all of his online fans, plenty of whom make trips to Vegas just to get a glimpse of him.

I don’t blame those women for wanting them. What straight woman wouldn’t? But I resent the groupies for wanting my friends without knowing them, or even caring about them. To their fans, Kai, Gage, and Thorn are nothing more than fantasy fulfillment.

But isn’t that what I’ve been doing—fulfilling a fantasy?

In my heart, I know it’s so much more than that for me, much as I’ve been insisting otherwise.

As impossible and impractical as it is, I want them. All three of them. But I don’t want to share them with other women. I want them all to myself, even though that’s hypocritical, since the three of them have all been sharing me.

Apparently, I’m not done lying to myself, though, because I decide that it’s just the intense physical experience that has me thinking this way, and it will be best not to think about it at all.

I bury my head in work the next couple of days, determinedly ignoring the gnawing sensation in my chest while I follow up with prospective clients, work on details for upcoming events, and make calls to local wedding planners inviting them to visit our venue.

Just as I’m getting off the line with one of those calls, my personal phone vibrates with an incoming call from my dad, which immediately gets my attention because he’s called exactly once since his wedding, just to let me know he and Belinda were back from their honeymoon.

I told him during that call that I was going to be living in Vegas for a while, and though he asked several questions about my job, he only made vague comments along the lines of “we’ll have to get together sometime soon.” I haven’t been holding my breath.

“Hey, Dad. What’s up?”

“Alex.” His tone is stern, and I immediately go on alert as I get a quick flashback to getting in trouble when I was a child.

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