What Happens In Vegas...

Although he still had his narrow-minded days, my brother had come a long way since then, was a valuable member of the Ladder 19 fire crew and a guy in whose hands I’d put my life more than a few times while on the job. That didn’t mean I wanted him tracking my every move. I sure as hell didn’t want him referring to Carinna as a piece of ass.

Since he knew about Carinna’s relationship phobia, and I could guess he would think I was a hopeless fool to still be making a long-term play for her, I didn’t want him knowing I’d hooked up with her again.

I dismissed his words with a shrug. “You’re the one who’s always saying shit happens. Besides, how was I to know you’d be spending the night home playing curfew cop?”

Dressed as he was, in baggy gray sweats and a faded black T-shirt with a picture of a bunned hot dog and the words Bite Me beneath it, Ryan didn’t look like a ladies’ man. The endless string of females that crossed our threshold on his arm and proceeded straight to his bedroom proved he not only cleaned up well but knew how to work his year-round tan, dark good looks and muscles honed on the job to their best advantage.

“That wasn’t the plan,” he said dryly. “I had a blind date that five minutes in had me wishing I really was blind so I could trip over a rock and fake my death. I got in around ten, watched a couple movies, then headed to bed around three, wondering where the fuck you were.” He gave me the death glare a few more seconds, which was pointless since I was the one who’d taught him the look fifteen years ago in an effort to get a schoolyard bully off his back. Finally, he let the glare go and gave me a conspiratorial smile. “So, how was she?”

The best of my life.

I might not have liked the way our talk had gone in the bar that morning, but memories of loving Carinna and holding her well into the night had a euphoric smile tugging at my lips. I knew Ryan would see it and know damned well who was behind it, so I pushed him out of my way and headed for the coffeepot.

Thankful to see the light was still on, which meant it hadn’t been brewed too long ago, I poured a cup before turning back. I was shitty at lying, but attempted it anyway. “She was a poker table down at The Liege. I was hot as hell last night.”

Ryan settled at the kitchen table, reclining back in one wooden chair and propping his bare feet up on the seat of another. “Did you see Carinna?”

“Should I have?” I groaned inwardly as I slid onto a chair across the table from him. Shit, I’d sounded defensive.

The amusement that passed through Ryan’s eyes said he hadn’t missed my reaction. “Like I said yesterday, she dumped the foot-fetish dude, model, whatever the hell he is. I checked in on her last night to see how she was handling things and she was about to head out for The Liege. She wasn’t dressed in that itty-bitty-titty costume, either.”

In the midst of sipping my coffee, I winced at the mention of Carinna’s uniform. I hated the way the black sarong-style top spangled with gold sequins was cut so low her cleavage risked spilling out. The matching miniskirt was a waste of about three inches of material, given every time she moved it threatened to expose her entire ass. In the twenty minutes I’d been in the tequila bar that morning, I’d caught a glimpse of the black thong sheathed between her firm butt cheeks three different times. I’d been hard with the first glimpse, aching with the second and ready to throw her over my table and fuck her in front of every patron in the place with the last. The knowledge most every other guy in the bar was experiencing the same reaction killed that urge.

“I didn’t see her.” My disapproval of her uniform came through in both my voice and the way I slammed my mug onto the table, sloshing coffee over the rim. I mentally calmed myself before adding, “Like I said, I was in the card room all night.”

Ryan snorted out a laugh. “Nice try, bro. But you can’t lie any better than I can. You saw her. You were probably just too much of a pansy to talk to her.”

There were times I hated living and working beside my brother 24/7. It made it impossible for him not to know exactly what buttons to push. Calling me a pansy was a pretty damned big one. “Fine. She was in the card room. I talked to her. Happy?”

He smirked. “Was that before or after you bent her over her bed and tapped her ass?”

Damn, I should have known I’d never be able to get last night with Carinna past him. At least he wasn’t mocking me for wanting her. Yet. “You’re pushing it, Ry.”

“You deserve it for not calling. So what’s the status quo? Friends again, or just fuck buddies?”

“I don’t know. We don’t fuck.” We had tidy, missionary- style sex. Okay, so that wasn’t true, but I hated the way the word fuck made sleeping with Carinna sound so detached from emotions.

“Maybe you don’t, but I’ve heard too many of Carinna’s tell-all sex stories to believe she doesn’t. Hell, that time I stopped by her house last summer to see about borrowing her Crock-Pot, I could have heard her shouting about what an amazingly big dick the guy with her had even if the windows hadn’t been open.”

I knew Carinna’s track record, as well as she knew mine. It shouldn’t bother me to hear about her past lovers, but my gut roiled in a way that made it seem my one sip of coffee had been toxic. “Are you trying to get your ass kicked?”

Ryan narrowed his eyes astutely. “What I’m trying to do is get your ass in gear. You know how Carinna works. She’ll have a new fuck buddy by the end of the month and I’d just as soon see it be you. Why don’t you invite her over for poker tomorrow night? It’s been too long since we played together.”

“She’s working a double.”

“That never stopped her before. Make it a late game, and I’ll make it a point to be home.”

“Planning on a threesome or chaperoning?” Or why the hell was my brother pushing the idea so much?

“Neither. I just know you well enough to suspect you didn’t walk away from Carinna with a simple goodbye this morning. You probably did or said something to freak her out and the odds of her seeing you again so soon will be that much better if she knows I’m part of the equation.”

He was mistaken about her seeing me again. She would see me tonight, and in her own apartment, no less. At the same time, since I was liable to do exactly as he’d guessed, and do or say something to concern Carinna come tomorrow morning, I kept my mouth shut and accepted that the reason Ryan was pushing the idea so much was simply because he was my brother and, as such, he wanted to see me happily laid. It was simply chance the woman doing the laying would be Carinna.

Jack

Carinna and I had exchanged keys years ago, when we’d first moved into our respective places. I took advantage of that tonight, slipping into her apartment ten minutes before I expected her home from work, in order to prep her bedroom.

She’d suggested I add olives to tonight’s schedule and while I was reasonably sure she’d meant for her martinis, I’d spent the four hours since today’s tournament play had ended imagining a hundred-and-one olive-enhanced scenarios that had nothing to do with drinking alcohol and everything to do with dirtying her pristine-white silk sheets.

Hearing her enter the apartment, I popped the lid on the olives and tucked the jar between her dresser and bed. She appeared in the doorway of the bedroom seconds later. Any fear I might have had about looking guilty faded the instant I saw she hadn’t changed out of her cocktailing outfit.

I hated the scanty getup as a uniform. But I loved it as a vice to get me hard on sighting

Tonight, the uniform looked naughtier than ever. At some point during her double shift, she’d added black stockings to the ensemble. Seductively sheer nylon hugged her shapely legs, ending in a lace band a few inches shy of the miniskirt’s hem.

My cock pressed rigidly against my jeans as I rushed to the door and tugged Carinna into my arms. If I was in the mood for tact, I would have taken the time for a long, hot welcome-home kiss. Between having a bad run of luck in the tournament today, dropping me to eighth place, the way Ryan’s warning Carinna would have a new fuck buddy by the end of the month kept eating at me, and now those damned sexy nylons, I wasn’t in the mood for tact. I was in the mood to fuck the beauty in my arms, show her exactly how much we belonged together, so I turned her around, grabbed her around the waist and hurried her to the bed.

With a touch of my hand at the small of her back, she bent over the side of the mattress, splayed her fingers on the baby-blue blanket and wiggled her round ass in my face.

Little tease. She knew good and well the throbbing effect that wiggle had on my cock.

I gave in to my fingers’ restless urges for a moment, caressing the backs of her smooth legs, from thigh to calf, then journeyed my hands up to her inner thighs, teasing the soft, naked flesh for seconds before her body ignited with shivers and my need became too great to bear.

Tossing up the tiny hem of her skirt, I fisted the rear of her thong, until my fingers and thumb met at the hot divide of her buttocks. Then I jerked the thin cotton from her body with a twist of my wrist.

My shaft jumped with the primal sound of shredding cotton. Carinna jerked on the bed, her breath catching. “So much for the massage and martini.”

Her appreciation for my feral behavior rose from between her thighs to color the air with the hot, musky scent of her arousal. Cream dripped from her sex, seeping down her toned inner legs to catch in the lace band of her stockings. My fingers were restless again, and I couldn’t resist coating one with her juices and sucking it between my lips.

Fuck, she tasted so sweet. I could barely stand the thought of pushing an olive into her plump pussy and eating it back out dripping in her cum. “I didn’t forget the olives.”

If she thought the comment odd, she didn’t say so. Then again, it could be she was too busy gasping as I yanked my zipper down and rammed into her from behind.

Carinna dug her nails into the blanket, her knuckles going white in stark contrast to her naturally golden-tan skin. “You could warn a girl,” she panted out, already rearing back to meet the second thrust of my glistening cock.

I laughed thickly as I lifted her hips higher and stroked into her deep. My eyes all but rolled back into my head with the feel of her hot pussy pulling me deeper yet. “Like you want the warning. You like the surprise. You like it dirty.”

“You don’t know me that well, Jack.”

If she’d meant to sound convincing, she’d failed. She was holding out hope I didn’t know her as well as I did, and that meant she was beginning to understand what I wanted from us was more than a sexual friendship. That also meant she didn’t want anything to do with that particular want of mine.

She would.

There would be no new fuck buddies for Carinna. We were it, meant to go the distance. If she couldn’t see that truth in how suited our bodies were, then somehow I would convince her of it in words, prove to her we were worth risking a relationship. That somehow eluded me right now, so I concentrated on the moment, on pumping into her delectable pussy and losing myself in each moist, hungry grip until I could feel her orgasm clenching tightly around me, drenching my cock in her juices, and finally I gave in to my own climax.

Carinna

Jack didn’t forget the olives. He’d told me as much twenty minutes ago, before he’d given me one of the fastest, hardest, most incredible fucks I’d had since our first time together.

I’d been too caught up in pleasure, as well as concern over his continued need to point out how well he knew me and what exactly that said about his state of mind where our friendship was concerned, to get his meaning until two seconds ago—when he’d pushed my thighs wide and buried a pimento-free, green olive in my slit.

The ends of his carnal grin disappeared into his mustache as he bent his dark head, used his thumbs to pull my slick pussy lips so wide they burned with wicked pleasure and skewered the center of the olive with his tongue.

My fingers pushed savagely into his hair. Sizzling heat pooled in my blood and shot from my center to my freed, bouncing breasts. Keeping my hips from thrusting against his face was an impossible feat. I could feel the push of the olive inside me, mini-fucking me with each of his forceful strokes, but even more arousing, I could see it.

The closet at the foot of my bed was finished with mirrored doors and Jack had been careful to position me at an angle where I could view his every sinful move.

My hips bucked on the bed and my blood pumped wildly as I watched his expert tongue work in and out of my hot, wet body, licking at the slippery folds of my pussy and the cream-coated olive, then go racing toward my clit.

The bastard never touched my clit.

He just kept teasing, both with his tongue and the slow circling of his fingertips along my swollen labia. Always coming so close. Making me ache so badly I hurt with my need.

It was the sweetest of slow, sensual treats and, given he’d already supplied me one fast orgasm, it should be the last thing I wanted. But I did want it, wanted it to go on all night long. Only, the increased tempo of his tongue and the way he turned his teeth on the olive, attacking its tender, tart meat in seconds to expose my dripping sex, told me it was about to turn into a fast orgasm, after all.

Hell, at this rate, I would be lucky to last a minute.

Keeping the exquisite pressure of his thumbs on my spread lips, he cupped my ass with his fingertips, lifted my center more fully to his mouth and twisted his tongue, French-kissing my pussy. My nipples stabbed with throbbing sensation. My toes curled. Sweat gathered between my breasts.

“Is it nine already?” I sang out as orgasm approached in a dizzying rush that had me forgetting the erotic sight in the mirror to release Jack’s hair, fall back on the bed and dig my nails into the blanket.

His tongue kept up its tender assault, licking, twisting, lapping at the walls of my sex until climax took me over, and then he pulled from my body to devour my juices.

I came back down from a happy little orgasm cloud to find him sitting at my feet, his lips glistening and his grin huge. “Eight-thirty,” he finally responded to my question. “And I didn’t forget the gin either.” He winked one of those devilish blue-green eyes. “Just wait till nine. We’re going to play a round of The Disappearing Bottleneck.”

I laughed hard and long, while my pussy gave an eager flutter and exploded with a fresh burst of arousal.

Despite my claim to the contrary, Jack had been right. I did love my dirty sex and he knew exactly how to provide it. It was just one of the many reasons I loved him.

I loved him.

My laughter stopped short. I dragged in a steadying breath. Why did I keep coming back to those damned words? Could I actually love Jack beyond friendship the way I was coming to think he might love me? And what did it matter if I did? I didn’t do relationships. I knew too well how they ended in ruins and heartache.

No, I couldn’t love Jack that way. And even if I did, I wasn’t about to admit it to him.

Carinna

We were back to being bosom buddies. When Jack had left my apartment that morning—after giving me an open-mouthed kiss that had left me wet and horny and an adoring look that had left me fearful that I could end up breaking his heart if I kept letting him sleep with me—I had never thought that possible.

But here we were, sitting around Jack and Ryan’s kitchen table, dressed in our oldies but goodies, tossing chips into a poker pot and shooting the shit like the three of us had done every Wednesday night for nearly fifteen years. It was Friday, but the scenario still felt more like a homecoming than anything I’d ever experienced. These guys were my family as much as, and probably more than, my parents had ever been, and I belonged here with them, as a friend and the sister they’d never had. And that meant I needed to stop sleeping with Jack. Forgetting how quickly and thoroughly he got to me wouldn’t be easy, but for our friendship’s sake, I could do it.

Or so I was trying to convince myself when Ryan grabbed a bag of salt-and-vinegar chips and another of pretzel rods from on top of the fridge and tossed them on the table. The pretzel rods were my favorite, the salt-and-vinegar chips Jack’s favorite. I knew even before Jack pulled the bag open and popped a chip into his mouth I was in deep trouble.

It wasn’t the way Jack ate his chips that bothered me. It was how he licked the residue from his fingers, so as not to get grease on the cards or poker chips. One at a time, starting with his index finger, he trailed his damp tongue from knuckle to knuckle, onto the next finger, the next knuckle. Lick. Lick. Lick.

His gaze flicked to mine without warning, far too fast for me to stop my ogling or close my slightly open mouth. A cocky grin curved his lips. Wicked intent sizzled in his eyes. His licks turned to a fervent suckling of the sensitive web of flesh connecting his thumb and first finger.

My heart raced. My pussy pulsed. I stifled my moan, just barely.

I could feel that suckle straight to my core, like he was slurping the juices from my sex, eating the cum clean from my body the way he’d done that morning, after delivering me to ecstasy by way of the vibrator he’d found stashed under my bed. Feeling the flesh-colored dildo quivering inside me had always felt good. Knowing Jack had controlled its every move had tripled the sensation, until I hadn’t been able to stop from writhing on the bed and grinding my pussy against his hand while I’d screamed out my pleasure.

“What’s up, Carinna?”

My breathing coming too fast, I glanced over at Ryan, aware he’d spoken but not sure about what. “Huh?”

“You calling or what?”

I grappled for the pretzel bag and yanked it open. Stuffing a salty rod in my mouth, I sucked on it hard in an attempt to dislodge the totally arousing and completely unwanted thoughts from my head. “Yeah. Sure.”

Ryan laughed so obnoxiously I looked back at him. Humor curved his lips and gleamed in his sea-green eyes. “I oughta hold you to your word and make you give me all your chips, but something tells me your mind isn’t on the game.”

And something told me he was right as rain. Speaking of rain, I felt like a major downpour had let loose in my sweatpants.

Pushing aside the urge to shift in my seat, I glanced at the table in front of Ryan and then at the pot and realized he’d gone all in. A look at my hold cards had me inwardly cringing. Nice. I’d called him on an off-suit two and nine.

Not about to admit I had a one-track mind that revolved entirely around getting Jack naked, I stuck out my chin and narrowed my eyes. “I have cards.”

Ryan’s smirk said he wasn’t buying it. “Then put your chips in the pot and prove it, sweetheart.”

“Do I look like an idiot? You already made it clear you have a winning hand.” I folded my hold cards into the deck, giving it an absent shuffle just in case Ryan decided to look. Too much of a chickenshit to meet Jack’s eyes or look at his mouth again, I stood. “I need a beer. Anyone else?”

“Please,” Jack said as I made my way to the refrigerator.

“Okay.” Just stop licking your damned fingers. Not that the deep timbre of his voice was any less lethal. “Ry?”

“You know it. There’re longnecks in the crisper bin.”

Longnecks.

Without thinking, I slanted a look at Jack. His eyes had been teasingly wicked, now they smoldered with a sensual heat so forceful it guaranteed he shared my thoughts. Those of how he’d lived out his promise and used the bottle of gin on me last night, fucking me with its neck. Not to orgasm, just long enough to have me trembling on the edge. And then Jack had been there, his big cock filling me up while his tongue delivered my mouth to an erotic palate paradise.

Did Ryan know we were sleeping together? Did he know how Jack had used that bottle on me? Is that why he’d brought up the longnecks? Why he’d gotten out those damned torturous potato chips?

One thing was certain, I wasn’t up to handling a longneck. Hell, I was barely up to playing Texas Hold ’Em.

I opened the fridge door and basked in the coolness that greeted my hot body. Several long seconds was all I could risk without raising questions. Then I grabbed two bottles of Bud from the crisper and a can of Bud Light for myself from the top shelf and returned to the table.

Ryan had the dealer chip, which meant Jack’s hands were free to roam. Any relief I’d gotten from the cold air of the fridge was forgotten the instant his hand went into the chip bag. The damned chips went in his mouth. He started chewing. Any moment now he would be licking. Sucking. Slurping.

Popping the tab of my beer with one hand, I stuffed a fresh pretzel rod in my mouth with the other and attempted to suck my stimulation away. That proved as ineffective as trying to steal my gaze from Jack’s mouth to look at my hold cards.

Right on cue he started in on the licking. Right on cue my pussy let loose with juice. Right on cue a husky moan barreled up the back of my throat and attempted to push free of my lips.

Jack’s mouth opened. I waited for his tongue to escape, to start in on the next round of silent but sensuously deadly torture. Instead, he said, “Carinna?”

“What?” Christ, could I sound any more breathless?

“You’re bleeding all over the freaking table, that’s what,” Ryan answered.

“What?” I looked down to find blood oozing from the tip of my index finger to pool on the table’s wood surface. “Shit.”

“You probably cut it on the rim of your can,” Jack supplied. “There are Band-Aids in the medicine cabinet in the upstairs bathroom.”

Squeezing my finger with my good hand to staunch the blood flow, I stood and then realized where he’d instructed me to go. The master bath, which was hooked to his bedroom. Feet away from his bed. Where he slept naked. The same way he’d slept the past two nights. Naked and with a monster hard-on prodding against my ass crack. A monster hard-on I wasn’t supposed to be thinking of. But, Jesus, how could I not?

“I’ll help you,” he said, as if he honestly thought following me up to his room was a good idea.

“And I’ll see you two in the morning,” Ryan put in smugly as we exited the kitchen and headed straight to what I was sure would be more carnal temptation than I could possibly resist.

Chapter Four

Jack

“He knows,” Carinna said the instant we stepped inside the master bath directly off from my bedroom.

After taking a Band-Aid out of the medicine cabinet and handing it to her, I shrugged, surprised she cared. “You know how shitty I am at lying. Besides, Ryan’s thrilled for us.”

Downstairs, she’d looked pretty damned thrilled herself, in a way that had to do with being wet between the thighs. Now, she appeared to be walking the thin line between worried and pissed.

She ran her finger under the faucet until the water ran clear, then put the Band-Aid on and turned to face me. Her hip shot out. “Let me guess. He thinks we should have been sleeping together years ago?”

I ignored her irritated tone to consider the question. Did Ryan feel that way? I’d always presumed he’d laugh in my face if I admitted I had plans for Carinna of the commitment kind. Maybe I’d been mistaken. Maybe the reason he’d pushed for tonight to happen wasn’t because he wanted to see me happily laid but, rather, just plain happy. “Pretty much.”