Odd Woman Out (Book 4 of The Triad Series)

8. Jump

"Jump."

It wasn't a question, nor was it really a response. Emily sounded like she was tasting the word, like all the meaning could be felt if she rolled it around in her mouth long enough—maybe like a nice Chablis at a wine tasting event.

Still, Leo and Sofia smiled encouragingly, looking all the world like proud parents that found that their child had learned a new and exciting word.

Emily didn't have time to mull it over too much, because Leo's lips were close enough to taste, Sofia's eyes lingering between them as she leaned forward. It was like she didn't want to miss a thing that happened.

"Like this."

His mouth pressed to hers as a foreign hand cupped her knee. It was too small to be Leo's, too soft, but the result was the same. A flash of heat winding into a slow roll across her body as butterflies beat their overexuberant wings against the lining in her stomach.

She felt a wet tongue lick her bottom lip, dropping her mouth open as her head fell back ever-so-slightly. He slipped it inside, slow and searching, teasing her as he groaned against her lips. The sound slid down her throat like liqueur and mingled with the whimper that scraped against the top of her vocal cords.

Hands—too many of them, yet not enough—drew her closer. Her tank top suddenly felt tight, constricting, as her chest expanded with each inhale. The touches stabbed nerves so raw and exposed that she'd forgotten they existed. But when? Where had she last felt them, felt this?

For the life of her, Emily couldn't remember. They were mixed with memories buried so deep, shoved so far down inside her, it seemed as if nothing could dig them out again but her lingering doubt.

Leo's hands wound around her waist, pressing against the small of her back, his short fingernails digging into the threadbare fabric until it bunched and let a sliver of bare skin peek out. His hands splayed wide and stroked, Emily's flesh scorching to sizzling cinders where his fingertips touched her.

Where they both touched her.

His tongue swept in further, coaxing hers to take, to twine with his. Her skin felt tight everywhere, heated, and a soft hand ran down her arm before coming to a rest on her hip in a gentle caress. Emily let out a soft whimper when Leo's tongue licked deeper, and she pressed her body against his.

"Em," Sofia's voice called. "May I?"

Emily opened her eyes to see Sofia staring back at her. When her eyes slid lower and tugged at the bottom of her top, she knew what she wanted...

And nodded back, only slightly less wary about her actions than before, but so deep into the moment that she didn't really care.

Leo pulled back, and Sofia lifted her shirt, one tortuous inch at a time until she was pulling over her head. Her dark auburn hair fell over her shoulders in soft, tousled waves.

Leo's left hand drew up to chest to weigh the soft flesh in his hand, the rasp of his calloused thumb scraping against her n****e and puckering both of them before his mouth found hers again. Found it, and plunged his tongue right back between her lips as a warm mouth closed around her tight bud and sucked.

Emily jerked. Not with pain or hesitance, but with overwhelming, earthshattering pleasure. It spiked so sharp and restless in her that she leaned into the touch and felt a tongue raking over her skin. It burned and soothed.

One hand wrapped around Leo's neck as he slid her onto his lap. Sofia's forehead bumped against soft flesh, but she didn't let go, instead letting the pinch of her teeth tug as they shifted position.

Carefully, Emily's hands pushed through her silky hair, nails scraping gently as Sofia's moan hummed in her throat, contracting everything in her into one tight point.

Leo suddenly moved then, laying Emily down on the bed and moving over to one side, Sofia bracketing her on the other. When they both leaned down to tongue her n*****s, Emily hissed and wrapped her hands around both their necks in the back.

It was too much, but she wanted more. Warmth folded around her like sunshine as she drew them closer with insistent hands. When her teeth sank into her bottom lip, she thought it would stave off the pleasure, not multiply it. They both sucked harder, arching her back as she lifted her hips, both of their deliciously hot mouths on her.

"Oh, f**k!"

Her fingernails sank into their skin, probing for more and unable to handle it when they gave it easily. When Leo licked up her neck to her ear, his voice jolted her into heady arousal that wouldn't be tamed.

"You want me or Sofia to lick your p***y? I bet you're dripping for us right now."

A rainforest dripped. Monsoons caused too many puddles to count. Emily was pretty sure she was in the tsunami category of moisture.

"No—I mean, wait. N-no more. I can't take anymore right now." She could barely catch her breath, and everything felt tight and ready to implode in on her. She had to think, and she couldn't do that with their warm tongues lapping at her like she was a bowl of rich chocolate-fudge ice cream—dripping with cream between her legs.

They both immediately stopped, their eyes laced with concern, focused solely on her needs and wants.

"Was it too much? Too soon?" Sofia asked, and Emily smiled to soften the blow.

"It was...it was intense."

"Intense good, or intense you don't think you can handle it?"

"Intense good," she assured them both. "But I think I'm a little too tipsy now to go further."

They both understood, and Sofia offered her the tank top that had slid to the floor when she'd pulled it off her earlier. When she was tugged it back on, she didn't feel awkward, but she felt she should say something.

"I've never been with a woman, and the last boyfriend I had was well over a year ago," she told them both softly. "His name was Dean. We'd been living together for a while, and I thought we'd eventually get married. It certainly looked like it was headed that direction when he asked me to move in with him."

She drew in a deep breath, her jaw twitching with irritation at the unpleasant memory.

"Besides Dean, I had a best friend for half my life named Isabel. Besides my family, they were my closest friends. Isabel moved to South Lake Tahoe from Tracy when her father's job moved him to managing one of the resorts by Wyndham on the Nevada side of the lake, and since my parents owned one as well, we ended up having a lot in common.

"About a year after I started living with Dean, he started f*****g my best friend. Behind my back, of course. He got the b***h pregnant and we broke up. He said he didn't love her, that he loved me, but I told him I couldn't love him anymore. I can't love what I don't trust, so I moved out and got a place of my own."

Her eyes flickered over to the small coffee table where she kept her scrapbooks and photo albums.

"I cut them both out of my life. Like a tumor. He tried to apologize, convince me to come back to him. Dean was an i***t. He would say two things sweet and almost snag me, but then he'd follow it up with something stupid that would make me wonder why I thought he was a good guy in the first place. I love you and I can't live without you paired with, you're better in bed than she is, isn't exactly reassuring." She snorted. "I didn't date anyone for over a year because of that asshole. I was asked out, sometimes by some of Dean's friends who'd cut ties with him for what he did to me. They were good guys, too, but I couldn't. I didn't want anything around that reminded me of him, so I ended up looking for jobs in Sacramento and San Francisco. I got the job here at SCAN and figured I'd be able to make a new life—a better one."

She hesitated and bit her lip. Hard.

"My family life is...untraditional, to say the least, but that's a tale for another time. I sometimes thought I interested guys only because of who my family is." They both tilted their head at her, confused. "I guess depending upon your view of the world, we're either famous or infamous for being both eccentric and for owning quite a few resorts. Hawaii, South Lake Tahoe, one in Colorado, a few others. That's why I wanted to get away—to not have to see Dean and Isabel be a happy little family, as well as...as being a nobody."

Leo and Sofia both looked like they wanted to ask more about her family's eccentricities, but knew that would be prying. If she wanted to tell them about it, it would have to be in her own time—just like knowing if she wanted to be with them.

"I'd like to try more of this with both of you, preferably when I'm not six sheets to the wind with peach Schnapps. Oh, it's not that I regret anything and I probably needed it to kickstart this thing, but doing more right now...I don't know if I'd be okay waking up tomorrow until I think this through." She paused. "I'm not saying no. I'm saying I want to let this sink in overnight and see how I feel about it in the morning. Is that cool with both of you?"

They both smiled back at her assuredly.

"Of course."

Sofia nodded to drill the point home. "I think it's a wise decision, and I hope you feel you can communicate openly with us at any time. Through text or chatting over the phone, if you have questions, just ask and we'll give it to you straight. We can go slow if you want, and we would never try to push you."

"At your pace, honey, and no faster than that."

They'd had all sat up on the bed as Emily talked, giving her just enough space to breath. Now, they stood as one, climbing off the bed with Sofia a little closer to the exit.

"Even if you want to talk about anything else, anything not related to a possible relationship between us—well, we want to be your friends, too."

Leo agreed with a jerk of his head. "The best lovers can be best friends as well. I think we'd all prefer it that way."

"It was what I think pulled Grace away from us, though we don't regret it. She wanted one life—a life we couldn't give her with one man or one woman, and we will always choose one she couldn't cope with."

***

After they left, Emily laid in her bed thinking for hours. All the adrenaline, the rush of something new and exciting had worn off, and she was left with the remnants. It was a tangle of emotion that elicited a thrill followed by heart-stopping lows. Like a rollercoaster gone rogue.

Basically, her heart skipped often when she thought of their lips, hot and moist, sucking her intimate parts like they were worshipping her. That bled into thinking of Leo kissing her, of what it might be like if Sofia's softer, lusher mouth was pressed against hers, their tongues stroking, licking, the harder rasp of Leo's stubble being replaced by softer, feminine skin.

Heat rushed to her cheeks, and she placed her hands on them until her palms burned.

"What am I doing?" she whispered to herself.

It was a question she couldn't answer and haunted her dreams that night.