Tempted by Megan Hart

Excerpt one:
Tempted
by Megan Hart (www.meganhart.com)
available from Harlequin Spice, January 2008
ISBN-13: 978-0-373-60519-4
ISBN10: 0-373-60519-6
copyright Megan Hart

I’d tucked my feet up on the edge of the chair, the better to snuggle close for warmth. James’ shoulder made a bony pillow but I rested my cheek there, anyway. It brought me close to him and let me see Alex at the same time.

“Yes, James. I want to hear the answer to that.” Beneath the blanket, his hand moved between my thighs. His fingers were a little cool but quickly warmed.

“I’m just saying. It’s not ‘fresh’ anything. Hey, man, give me one of those.” James gestured at Alex’s pack of cigarettes.

Alex tossed him the pack. James pulled out one of the slim tubes and held it up to me. “Anne?”

The look I gave him was one he’d fondly termed the “what-the-fuck” look. As in, what the fuck are you doing, asking me if I want a cigarette?

“Let me guess,” Alex said as he sucked in smoke and held it. “You don’t smoke?”

“I don’t. James doesn’t either. Do you?” I sat up, putting some distance between us.

“Only when I’m drinking, babe.” He lit the cigarette and drew in some smoke, but let it out in a small fit of coughing.

“Ha, ya fucking pansy.” Alex grinned and blew a smoke ring.

They traded more insults, and to my relief, James stubbed out his cigarette without taking any more drags. He pulled me back down next to him. His hand slid beneath my arm to cup my breast. His thumb eased back and forth across my nipple, bringing it to a tight point. His lips found my temple and lingered.

Across from us, Alex had fallen into shadow lit by the occasional flare of his cigarette and the square of light from the kitchen window. He and James had been matching each other bottle for bottle, and now he lifted another to his lips.

“Don’t swim. Don’t drink, don’t smoke,” he said in a husky voice. “What do you do, Anne?”

“That’s me. Goody Two Shoes.” It wasn’t true. Didn’t feel true, anyway.

“Just like Jamie.” Alex propped his feet up on the edge of our lounger, one between James’ toes and the other along the edge of mine. His feet dented the blanket tangling around our heels.

“Why do you call him Jamie?”

Under the blanket, James’ hand kept up the slow stroking. He’d moved it beneath my shirt, his fingers skating the edge of my lace bra. I was pretending not to notice, though it was impossible to ignore.

“Why don’t you?”

It didn’t seem fair that they were both drunk and I wasn’t, yet I was the one left without a witty answer. “Because…his name is James.”

“Alex is the only one who calls me that.” James’ mouth moved against my temple.

A chill skittered down my neck at the combination of hot breath and tweaking fingers. I shifted, which pushed my foot against Alex’s but allowed James the chance to slip a hand between my thighs again. He put it much higher, this time, the edge of his thumb pressing against my clit.

“Why? Why not Jimmy? Or Jim?”

Alex couldn’t see what James was doing to me, and might not have cared. James had drunk enough beer to make certain he didn’t. I was the one who ought to have had more restraint. I didn’t have the luxury of blaming booze for my lack of composure.

“Because his name’s Jamie,” said Alex, like that explained it all.

Maybe to both of them, it did, but I was still on the outside. I hadn’t heard half of their inside jokes and didn’t understand the ones I had.

James left off pressing between my legs to shift my hand over the bulge in his jeans, then returned his hand to its previous spot. His cock pushed against the denim. His thumb pushed against me. His other thumb dipped inside my bra to fondle my nipple.

I wasn’t drunk, but I was feeling a bit lightheaded. I wasn’t averse to a little subtle poke or pinch now and again, but James was full-on trying to get me off.

It was working, too. My clit had gone as tight and hard as my nipples, even though there were two layers of cloth between his hand and my body. It was the steady push-push against me that was doing it. It hit me just right. It was…perfect.

James and Alex kept talking, sharing memories, though I noticed they avoided any further mention of Alex’s parents or the years after high school. They mocked each other mercilessly, saying things I’d have bet would have earned other men a punch in their faces.

They talked. James stroked and kneaded me and every now and again pushed his crotch with growing insistence into my hand. My arousal grew slowly, like the first drip-drip of melting ice that threatened to become a torrent.

It was my husband touching me, but his friend whose face I watched as my pussy got slick and my clit throbbed. The two of them, James so light and Alex his dark counterpart, seemed to work together. James’ hands, Alex’s voice as he told us stories about living in Asia. About the sex shops there, where you could buy anything you wanted.

“I thought Singapore didn’t have sex shops. I thought they were illegal.”

How did my husband know about Singaporean sex laws?

“In Singapore, yeah…but not in other places. There are always places to find it, if you want it.”

“And you wanted.” James voice had grown hoarse.

The night had grown downright cold, though beneath our blanket James and I were hot enough to start a fire. Alex didn’t seem to mind the chill. He’d buttoned his shirt up to the throat but seemed otherwise unaffected.

“Who wouldn’t, man?” Came Alex’s shadow-voiced answer. “Find a girl, find a boy. One of each. You’d find your houseboy there, Anne.”

My inner thighs were trembling, my breath coming short and shallow as the sneaky seduction orchestrated by my husband’s hands did its work. It wasn’t exactly what he was doing, as the stimulation would likely have left me wanting under other circumstances. It was the sheer length of time he’d been at it.

“Anne wants a houseboy? That’s news to me.” James didn’t sound like he was about to dissolve into orgasm at any moment. Then again, my occasional pressure on his cock was probably only enough to tease.

“Yeah, she wants a houseboy in a thong to cook and clean for her.” Alex’s chuckle was low and naughty. “But, hell. Who wouldn’t?”

“I never said…he had to wear thong.” I shifted and put a hand over the one between my legs. James didn’t get the hint, didn’t stop what he was doing. A slow, inexorable press-press, release against my clit that had me biting my lip and wanting to moan.

“She doesn’t need a houseboy. She’s got me.” James nuzzled the side of my neck. He nipped. I felt tongue. I closed my eyes.

“You, my friend, don’t cook.”

“You’re right.” James’ laughter buzzed in my ear. Press-press. Release. “But you do. And now she has you.”

I was only paying half attention to their half-drunk conversation, focused too much on the building pleasure between my legs. My fingers gripped down on the arm of the lounger. I was timing each breath to coincide with the infinitesimal motion of James’ hand. In. Out. Press-press release.

I was going to come, hard. Inevitably. I couldn’t stop it, not without forcing away James’ hand and leaping to my feet to get away from him, and even then I’d reached the point where something as simple as the pull of my panties against my clit would finish me off.

“She’s not listening.”

I heard Alex’s chair scrape the deck and felt our chair shake a little as he pulled his feet off it. My eyes opened, wide. Startled. He leaned forward, hands on his knees, and the motion brought his face completely into the golden light shining from the kitchen.

“She’s listening,” James said.

And I came. Not fast, like lightning, but in slow, easy waves. Climax rolled over me in a tightening and trembling of muscles, in a stifled, hitching breath, in the flutter of my eyes as I fought not to give any outward sign of my orgasm. My eyes went wide, though, as my fingers dug into the arm of the chair and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from crying out.

We were looking into each other’s eyes, when I did it, Alex and I, and no sooner had the last spasm coursed through me than he leaned back in his chair, one bare foot resting on his denim-clad knee.

Excerpt Two
Tempted
by Megan Hart (www.meganhart.com)
available from Harlequin Spice, January 2008
ISBN-13: 978-0-373-60519-4
ISBN10: 0-373-60519-6
copyright Megan Hart

It’s amazing how quickly things became familiar. How easy it was to adjust. The tidy little life James and I had formed melted and re-formed to include Alex.

There were benefits to it. Sex. A third set of hands to help around the house. Another bank account to draw from, for Alex was generous in his contributions to our budget. A less tangible but more appreciated benefit was the way having Alex with us kept Mrs. Kinney from dropping by as she’d been wont to do for the first six years of our marriage. She even stopped calling the house, preferring instead to reach James on his cellphone.

There were drawbacks, too. Two other bodies in my bed, both snoring. More laundry to wash and fold and put away, for though Alex never asked me to wash his clothes they had a tendency to end up strewn around in odd places and I never knew what jeans belonged to which man until they were already in my basket. When we weren’t all tangled up together, I sometimes felt like a third wheel, not privy to their in-jokes or moronic forays back to adolescence. It was sometimes like living with Beavis and Butt-head.

“Why do you do that?” This came from Alex. James wasn’t paying attention, his eyes focused on the television where their lame and loud video game was blaring. Alex had brought home the latest game system and they’d been playing nonstop for hours.

“Do what?” I stopped on my way out of the room.

“If you want us to stop playing the game, why don’t you just say so instead of getting all frowny?” He actually looked interested in my answer, unlike his cohort who was hooting with glee at the cartoon carnage.

“I did say so, about twenty minutes ago.”

“No, you asked us if we wanted to go to dinner and a movie tonight.” Alex let go of the controller completely, which did get James’ attention, since that meant Alex’s character was no longer shooting. A monster came and ate his head. James grumbled.

“And obviously, you don’t.” I folded my arms. The video game system had way underwhelmed me, I didn’t care how many bytes of memory it had or what sort of graphics card, or how hard it was to get.

“See? Why do you do that?” Alex unfolded himself from the floor in a long, lean motion. “Now you’re pissed off.”

James looked up. “Huh? What’s she pissed about?”

“Because we’re ignoring her,” Alex told him.

“Huh?” James seemed honestly stumped. “No, we’re not.”

“Yes, fucker, you are.” Alex tried to take me in his arms, a ploy I resisted without success. “We’re ignoring our Anne, and it’s pissing her off. What I want to know is, why do you walk away like that instead of telling us to get the fuck off our lazy, immature asses and take you out to dinner and a movie?”

PMS had made me cross and weepy. I tried pulling away from him, preferring to sulk, but his hands gripped my upper arms firmly. I went stiff and unyielding, instead.

“Jamie, turn off that damn game and get up here. Anne wants to be taken out to dinner and a movie. You’re not treating her like the queen she is.”

James scrambled to his feet at once. “Why didn’t you say so, baby? We’d have turned it off.”

I managed to roll my eyes. “Just forget it. I don’t need to be treated like a queen.”

“Yes. You do.”

“Alex,” I said, less pissed off and more exasperated. “I’m not a queen.”

“You are.” He pulled me closer. “A queen. Am I right, Jamie?”

James grinned and moved behind to hold me from behind. “Yep.”

“A goddess.”

They moved closer, sandwiching me.

“The light of our lives,” said Alex. “Breath in our lungs. Mustard on our hotdogs.”

“If you say the wind beneath your wings, I will punch you both in the face.”

“See?” Said Alex. “That’s what I mean. Why don’t you say stuff like that more often?”

It was hard to concentrate with James licking the back of my neck and Alex’s thigh nudging between mine. “What? That I want to punch you in the face?”

“If that’s how you feel. Hell, yes. Jesus, sometimes I want to punch the ever loving shit out of Jamie over there, especially when he fucking farts under the covers and acts like he didn’t.”

“Hey,” James protested. “Fuck you, fucker. Sleep in your own bed.”

Alex wiggled closer, dipping to nuzzled my jaw. “My bed doesn’t have Anne in it.”

Between them, I lost the anger over the video games, but I wasn’t quite ready to give up. “You’re both pains in the ass, you know that?”

He pulled away to look at me. “See? Doesn’t that feel good? Say it again.”

James snorted lightly behind me. Alex reached around to poke him. “Shut up.” He looked back to me. “Go on. Say it again.”

“You’re both pains in the ass.” I waited a second. Neither of them looked concerned. I tried again. “And if I walk into the bathroom one more time to pee in the middle of the night and find the seat up, I’m going to scream.”

A sly smile slid across Alex’s mouth. “See? Doesn’t that feel better?”

It did feel better. James wrapped his arms around me and rested his chin on my shoulder. I leaned back against him, letting him take my weight.

“Are we really pains in the ass?” James asked.

“We are, man. I’m sure we are.” Alex didn’t sound upset. Just resigned. “Men are pigs.”

I laughed, finally. “You’re not that bad.”

James tugged me until I turned to face him. “You want dinner and a movie? We’ll give you dinner and a movie. Jeeves! To the limo!”

“Wait, wait, I’m not ready –” I protested around laughter as James tickled my sides.

“What do you mean, you’re not ready? You look ready to me.” James looked me up and down.

“You’re an ass,” said Alex. “Don’t you know anything about women?”

“Since when are you an expert?”

I put my hands up, one on each of their chests, pushing them apart and away from me. “Gentlemen. Enough with the banter. Give me ten minutes in the bathroom. Alone,” I said to Alex, who didn’t have the same sense of bathroom privacy as I did. “And I expect to be taken to a nice restaurant, not some burger joint.”

“What madam wishes, madam shall have.” Alex took my hand and lipped the back of it, a silly gesture that still managed to make my stomach do happy flip-flops.

Later, we came home to an empty house after an exquisite dinner and an enjoyable movie. We stumbled down the hall, hands roaming, mouths meeting, clothes strewn once more in odd places. I had two men doing their best to please me, over and over, and their best was pretty damn good. Lying between them as the chorus of snores began, I looked up at the ceiling and wondered how it was that Alex, who didn’t know me, knew me so well, and James, who should have known me better than anyone in the world, didn’t.

Ed’s Note: Megan Hart, one of the hottest erotic authors gracing the genre today, sets the pages of her novels on fire with gripping storylines, passionate characters and scintillating sex. Visit her website, Megan Hart – Read In Bed, to learn more about this amazing writer.