hideaways in the bedroom, but I didn’t usually keep the whole arsenal out like this. There was barely room for the two bags on the far side of the bed and walking room.
I had a choice of stepping on some of the penguins that sat on the floor, or the weapons in the bags. I stepped on the penguins, but I didn’t like doing it. I finally gave up going around to the side of the bed I usually got in on, and decided to go over the footboard, rather than step on any more of the penguins. I know it was silly, and they were just stuffed toys, they couldn’t feel me stepping on them, but… the penguins had been my only comfort objects for years, and they still meant something to me. I had more in storage, because there just wasn’t room for all of the toys once we got the bigger bed, not unless we wanted to be wading through toy penguins, or stepping on them, which upset me, or tripped us, so… I’d given up some of my penguins for a bigger bed and more real people. I never regretted the trade.
Sigmund, my penguin sleeping buddy for years, had pride of place on the chair, but he didn’t sleep in the bed anymore. I had enough living, breathing comfort objects; I didn’t need stuffed animals anymore, now that I had the real thing.
That real thing was already in the bed, one of them lying with the sheet modestly at his waist and the other totally and comfortably naked on top of it. Once upon a time I’d made Nathaniel get under the sheet, but he’d worn me down, or maybe I enjoyed the sight of him so naked, so beautiful, on top of my sheets, in our bed, with Micah tucked in beside him hiding some of his amazingness with that thin bit of sheet. It was just so them.
I stood at the foot of the bed looking at them, and even after three years I still had that urge to say, “Wow, this is all really mine?” Some days I felt luckier than I deserved, and some days I felt just lucky enough.
Micah had taken the tie out of his hair so that it fell in loose, tight curls around his face and shoulders. His hair was that color of brown that starts life as a pale blond and darkens as you get older. He’d confirmed that he’d had a head full of nearly kinky blond hair as a toddler, but now it was a tiny bit less curly and a rich, dark chestnut brown. Nude, his upper body showed the muscle that he fought to put over a bone structure that was almost as delicate as my own. The muscle was there in the swimmer’s wedge of his shoulders, the arms, the chest, down that slender waist where the white sheet made his summer tan look darker, though not too dark. Micah tanned to a point and then just stopped. It was like his skin loved running outside, shirtless. He ran at the indoor track some of the time, but he preferred to run outside, even in temperatures, both cold and hot, that made the rest of us go for the nice, even, no-ice, no-heatstroke indoor track.
He blinked those chartreuse eyes at me. Most of the cats had a neat line of demarcation between the colors in their eyes, like Cynric did between his two shades of blue, but Micah’s leopard eyes were more “human” with the green-gold of them shifting, mingling, changing in the light, depending on what color was close to his face, his moods. It was closer to what hazel eyes do on some people than the kitty-cat eyes most had. In that moment his eyes were very green, but it was a rich, olive green, with that undercurrent of gold like leaves shining in sunlight.
Nathaniel made some small movement, snuggling down into the bed beside Micah, and suddenly I was looking at my second yummy boy. His hair was still back in its long, serpentine braid, but though having sex with all his hair unbound could be done, it also tended to tangle around things like body parts, and one of us was forever putting a knee, arm, back, ass, on all that hair and trapping him in midmovement, so at least for the beginning of sex he’d taken to keeping it braided. Sometimes the point was to play with the hair, and then he’d undo it, but for sleeping and a lot of the sex, you wanted all that auburn goodness bound in some way. He liked hair bondage, too, which I was a little puzzled by because it so didn’t work for me, but it worked for him, and sometimes kinky sex isn’t about understanding your lover’s kinks, but just about honoring them.
He was lying on his stomach so I could see the long, bare line of him from broad shoulders to the muscled spread of his back, V-ing down to his waist; the rise of his ass, which managed to be tight and round and lush; the swell of his thighs, the muscles of his calves, and his feet, where he had pushed his toes under the blanket that was folded at the foot of the bed. He did that a lot, just part of his feet under covers, but nothing else. I’d asked him why he did it, and he’d said he didn’t know, he just liked doing it. Answer enough, I guess.
He blinked those big, lavender eyes at me, and smiled that smile. It was part mischief, part happy, and all sex. The look caught my breath in my throat, and things low in my body tightened enough for my breath to shudder out between my lips when I finally remembered to breathe.
Seeing the two of them in my bed, knowing I could touch any part of them I wanted, with pretty much any part of me I wanted to, just made me happier than I could say.
“What’s that look on your face?” Micah asked, smiling slightly.
“Happy, I’m just happy.”
The smile widened, and then he got that almost-shy look in his eyes, ducking his head, but with the eyes coming back up so you saw that a part of him knew his own worth. I was never sure if the shyness was an old habit, or if the shyness had always been intermingled with that dark, almost predatory look, and I wasn’t talking about his beast. It was just the look that some men have in their eyes, their faces.
Nathaniel smiled at us both in a happy, possessive look. There was nothing shy about him when it came to sex, or knowing just how beautiful he was; his problem when he came into my life had been that those were the only parts of him anyone had valued. I was the one who learned to love him without sex. It had been a first for him that Micah and I loved him for other things; the fact that he was gorgeous and great in bed was more icing and not the whole cupcake. Though it was very sweet, yummy icing, and honestly if a cupcake doesn’t have icing on it, what’s the point?
“You’re overdressed,” he said.
I looked down at the oversized sleep shirt that fell nearly to my knees. It had Christmas penguins on it, and wasn’t the most attractive look, but I didn’t have a robe that didn’t look like lingerie here, and somehow with Gina, Zeke, and baby Chance staying with us, the sleep shirt seemed better for that last trip to the bathroom than the short red robe that was on the back of the door.
“I need a robe that won’t scar the kiddo’s psyche,” I said, looking down at the ice-skating penguins.
“We need another bathroom,” Micah said.
“I like the idea of a master bathroom off a master suite,” Nathaniel said.
“We talked about this; if we do that, then we have no bedroom while the remodeling is going on,” I said.
“We stay with Jean-Claude, and let Gina and Zeke continue to stay here so Chance can have his sunshine, and they can oversee the remodeling,” he said.
I frowned at him. “You’ve been thinking about this.”
He smiled. “Yep.”
I don’t know what I would have said, because Micah said, “You are still overdressed.”
I looked at him, frowning still, then smiled. “Hey, at least my legs are showing; you’re the one under the sheet.”
“You’re both too covered up,” Nathaniel said. “I’m the only one who’s naked.” To prove it, he sat up on his knees, and I got a view of things that no customer at Guilty Pleasures ever got to see. He grabbed a handful of sheet, jerking it off Micah, as he crawled toward me. He bent over the footboard, grabbing me around the waist, lifting, and putting his other arm under my thighs as he did it, so he picked me up at the same time, scooping me over the footboard and half-tossing, half-falling to the bed, so that I was suddenly between the two of them. We were all laughing as Nathaniel’s hand slid underneath the sleep shirt. He stayed on the outside of my thigh, then the outside of my hip, my waist, and moved slowly higher. I wasn’t laughing when his hand caressed my breast, but I was still smiling, and so was he.
Micah moved onto his side beside me, and his hand traced up the other side of me, to mirror Nathaniel’s movements, until they both had a breast apiece, and the smiles began to slip to something more serious, but no less good.
It was Micah who tugged on the shirt and began to lift it up my body. It was Nathaniel’s turn to mirror him. I raised my butt up so they could wiggle the shirt up higher and finally pull it over my head and arms. Micah tossed it on the floor and gazed down at me. “That’s better,” he said, voice already going deeper, not with inner leopard, but simply maleness.
I was suddenly lying there naked, staring up at both of them. They stared back, the green-gold eyes and the lavender. There was a growing darkness in both sets of eyes. That look that all men I’ve ever been with get in their eyes. A look that is certain of you, certain you won’t say no, and that in this moment you are theirs. Maybe not forever, maybe not exclusively, but theirs, nonetheless, because even in the most submissive man there is
