Chapter 1: Midnight Thirst In The Open Plan
The house had gone quiet an hour ago, the kind of thick quiet that comes after laughter and clinking glasses finally burn out. Nicholas was asleep upstairs, snoring softly behind a closed door. Janet, though, was parched, and her mouth had woken her like a hand on her shoulder.
She padded barefoot down the stairs in the short silk nightgown, the one Nicholas liked, pale blue and barely past her thighs. She hadn't bothered with anything underneath. Who would see, at half past two in the morning, in her own house?
The moonlight through the big windows laid white bars across the kitchen's granite island. The open-plan living room stretched out beyond it, one dark shape of the couch breaking the pale wash of light on the floor. She didn't glance at it. She just opened the cupboard, took down a glass, and ran the tap, the cold water filling the silence with its small, steady sound.
She drank half of it standing there, one hip against the counter, and that was when she heard it. Breathing. Slow and heavy, coming from the darkness by the couch. Not asleep-breathing. Awake-breathing.
She froze, the glass halfway to her lips.
Then a shadow peeled itself off the couch, and the moonlight caught it whole.
Burkey stood there completely naked. Broad, stocky, fifty-two years of solid muscle and heavy bulk, his dark hair cropped close, that permanent smirk already fixed on his face. He wasn't covering himself. He wasn't pretending he'd just woken for a drink. He stood in the pale light with his cock hard as iron, thick and long and jutting up against his stomach, and he let her look.
"Jesus Christ," Janet whispered, the glass clutched to her chest. "Burkey. What the hell."
"Couldn't sleep." His voice was low, unhurried. He didn't move toward her. He just stood, letting her take in all of it, his eyes dragging down her legs where the silk ended and her bare thighs began. "Been lying there thinking."
"Thinking," she repeated. Her heart was slamming against the glass in her hand. She should have gone upstairs. She should have turned around right then. Her feet didn't move.
"Thinking about all those jokes I've made over the years." He took one slow step into the moonlight, his erection swinging heavily with it, and he made no effort at all to hide the way he looked at her. "You remember the jokes, Jan."
Her face flushed hot. "They were jokes."
"Were they." Another step. Close enough now that she could smell him, clean sweat and the last of the whiskey from earlier. His eyes stayed on her thighs, then lifted slow and deliberate to her face. "I said one day I'd give you a proper seeing to. I meant it every single time."
"Burkey, my husband is asleep upstairs."
"I know. Told me himself I could crash on the couch." He shrugged those broad shoulders. "He also told me, about a year back, over too many beers, exactly what he'd like to see happen one day. I've been waiting to find out if he meant it too."
The room felt smaller. The air felt heavier, charged, and Janet became acutely aware of the thin silk clinging to her skin, of the fact that there was nothing at all beneath it, of the way his gaze seemed to know that already.
"You're drunk," she said weakly.
"Three sheets to the wind, maybe. Not too drunk to know what I want." He reached out, slow, and hooked one thick finger into the strap of her nightgown where it sat on her shoulder, tugging it down an inch, no more. Just enough to make the point that he could. "Been waiting years for this, Jan. You going to run upstairs, or are you going to finish that water first?"
She looked down at the glass in her hand. She looked at his cock, huge and glistening at the tip, standing up from that heavy thatch of dark hair like it had been waiting for her too. Her mouth had gone dry again despite the water.
"My husband," she said again, but her voice had lost its footing entirely.
"Is upstairs," Burkey finished for her, his smirk widening. "And I'd bet good money he left the bedroom door unlocked on purpose."
Janet's breath came out shaky. She hadn't moved away. She hadn't said no. And somewhere in her head, unbidden, she remembered Nicholas's hand on her hip that afternoon, and the way he'd said, out of nowhere, you still think Burkey's jokes are funny, right?
"Christ," she whispered.
"That's the spirit." Burkey took the glass gently out of her hand and set it on the island. His other hand came to rest on her bare hip, warm and heavy as a cast-iron pan, and his thumb moved once across her skin, slow. "Now. You're standing here in my favorite little nightgown with nothing on underneath it, and I've got the best view I've had in ten years. You want me to believe you came down here by accident?"
She should answer. She knew she should answer.
His hand slid from her hip to the hem of the silk, and he gathered it up an inch, two, the moonlight finding the smooth trimmed line of her pussy as the fabric lifted, and Janet's knees actually trembled.
"Say the word," he murmured, close to her ear now, his breath hot on her neck, "and I'll walk back to that couch and we never speak of it. Or say nothing at all, and I'm going to put you up on this counter and lick that pretty pussy until you forget your own name."
Janet's eyes drifted toward the stairs. Dark and empty. Then back to him.
She said nothing at all.
That was all he needed.
Burkey's hands closed on her waist, both of them, and before Janet had finished exhaling he lifted her clean off her feet. Fifty-two years old and he picked her up like she weighed nothing, setting her down on the cold granite of the island, the chill of the stone biting into her bare backside through the silk he'd bunched up around her hips.
"There she is," he said, stepping between her knees.
"Burkey." His name came out half protest, half invitation, and he heard it for what it was.
"Nicholas is going to thank me," he murmured, his hands sliding up her outer thighs, pushing the nightgown higher. "Sitting up there in bed, listening to every sound this house makes, hoping like hell he hears one particular sound."
Her legs opened without her permission. She sat there in the moonlight, silk rucked up to her waist, the trimmed dark line of her pussy fully exposed to him, and the cool air on her bare skin made her feel every degree of his body heat as he stepped closer.
"You're staring," he said.
"You're naked in my kitchen."
"And you're dripping on my countertop." He looked down between her legs and grinned, that unbearable smirk, and Janet felt her face burn because he was right. She could feel it, the wet heat of herself, the ache that had no business existing at half past two in the morning with her husband one floor above.
He sank to his knees.
Christ, the sight of it. That broad, heavy body folded down between her thighs, his shoulders forcing her knees apart wider, his cropped hair dark against the pale wash of moonlight. He hooked his arms under her legs and gripped her hips, hauling her to the very edge of the counter so her backside hung off it, so nothing was left to the imagination.
"Years," he said into the inside of her thigh. "Ten years of sitting across a table from you, watching that mouth, thinking about this exact one." Then he licked her.
One long, flat stroke, tongue dragging slow from the bottom of her slit all the way up, over her clit, and Janet's head tipped back and a sound came out of her that she'd never made before, low and broken and helpless.
"Oh, God."
"There it is," Burkey growled against her, and went back in.
He ate pussy like a man who'd been rehearsing for a decade. No fumbling, no polite warm-up. His tongue worked her clit in tight, relentless circles, then flattened and pressed, then circled again, and his lips closed around it and sucked, and Janet's hand flew out and grabbed the faucet to have something to hold. The cold metal squeaked under her grip. Her hips started moving without her, tilting up into his face, and he groaned approval into her, the vibration of it rolling straight through her clit, and slid two thick fingers into her without slowing down.
He curled them and found it instantly, that rough pad inside her that Nicholas sometimes took a minute to locate, and rubbed it in time with his mouth.
"You're going to make me come," she heard herself say, voice shredded. "Burkey, you're going to make me come right here."
"That's the idea, love." His fingers pumped. His tongue never broke rhythm. "Want to feel you soak my chin. Been dreaming about it. Come on."
The pressure crested fast, faster than she wanted to admit. She thought of Nicholas asleep upstairs, of the unlocked door, of whether he was lying there awake listening, and the thought, the filthy, impossible thought of her husband hearing this, hearing her, shoved her right over the edge.
She came hard, thighs clamping around Burkey's ears, her back arching off the granite, one hand slapped over her own mouth to smother the cry. He didn't let up. He held her hips down with those iron hands and kept sucking her through it, gentler now, dragging it out until she was shuddering and pushing weakly at his forehead.
"Stop, stop, too much."
He eased off, licking her slow and shallow, lapping up everything she'd given him, then rested his cheek on her thigh and looked up at her with his face soaked, smirking like a man who'd just won a bet with God.
"Told you," he said. "Wouldn't forget your own name for a minute there, did you?"
"Shut up." She was panting. The nightgown was a wreck, twisted up under her arms, her nipples visible through the damp silk. She made no move to fix any of it.
Burkey stood. That heavy cock swung up against his stomach, slick and aching, and he wrapped a fist around the base and looked down at her splayed on the counter like a meal he'd been saving.
"Now," he said, stroking himself once, twice, slow. "I promised somebody I'd fuck you in every position in this house, and I keep my promises. We starting here on the table, or you want to make it to the couch?"
Janet looked at him. She looked down the length of her own body, at her knees still open, at the thick head of his cock an inch from her pussy. Upstairs, faintly, the floor creaked. Nicholas, turning over.
Or not turning over.
"Here," she said, and reached down and wrapped her own hand around him, feeling the impossible heat and weight of it for the first time. "Right here. And Burkey?"
"Yeah?"
"He can't wear a condom if you're not wearing one." Her thumb circled the head. "So don't."
His smirk turned feral. "Wasn't going to."
She pumped him once, feeling the foreskin slide back over that fat head, the whole shaft pulsing in her grip. Burkey's hand covered hers, guiding it, and his breath went ragged for the first time all night.
Then the stairs creaked.
Not the small settling sound an old house makes. The deliberate creak of a foot on the third step from the top, then a pause, then another step. Both their heads turned toward the darkness at the stairwell, and Janet's hand went rigid around Burkey's cock.
Nicholas stood on the stairs in his grey boxer briefs, one hand on the banister. Not coming down. Not going up. Just standing there in the half-light, watching his wife sit on the kitchen island with her nightgown bunched under her arms and her fist wrapped around another man's dick.
"Nick." Janet's voice cracked. She made no move to cover herself. There was no point. "How long have you been standing there?"
"Long enough." His voice was steady. Calm in a way that made her stomach drop. "Long enough to hear you come on the counter."
Her face flamed. Burkey, to his credit, didn't flinch, didn't cover up, didn't bolt for the couch. He stood exactly where he was, her hand still on him, and looked at Nicholas like two men settling a score nobody had written down.
"You left the door unlocked," Burkey said.
"I left the door unlocked."
"You told me last summer, pissed on lager, that you wanted to watch someday. I figured someday was tonight or never."
Janet's head swivelled between them. "You told him. You two talked about this."
Nicholas came down one more step, then another, until the moonlight found his face. There was no anger in it. There was something she'd only ever seen in the first five minutes of their honeymoon, wide and hungry and slightly stunned.
"I've been lying up there with my cock in my hand for the last half hour, Jan," he said. "Listening to you. Listening to him make you make that noise. You know the one."
"Jesus Christ." She let go of Burkey at last, and he missed it, his hips twitching once at the loss. "You wanted this. You actually wanted this."
"Didn't you?" Nicholas reached the bottom of the stairs. He didn't come into the kitchen. He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, and looked at her sprawled there, nipples hard through the damp silk, thighs still tacky where Burkey's mouth had been. "You could have run upstairs an hour ago. You knew he was down here. You came down anyway with nothing on."
She opened her mouth. Closed it. There was no version of the truth that got her out, and somewhere under the humiliation, boiling up through it, her clit was still throbbing.
"Don't stop on my account," Nicholas said.
Burkey turned back to her, and the smirk was back, wider than she'd ever seen it. He stepped between her knees and put his hands on her hips, and this time she could feel her husband's eyes on all of it.
"Heard him, love," Burkey murmured. "House rules have changed."
"This is insane." Her hands came up to his chest anyway, flat against that warm solid mass of him. She could feel his heart slamming as hard as hers. "Burkey, we can't just..."
"Say it properly, then." He tilted his head toward the doorframe. "Tell him."
Janet looked at Nicholas. Nicholas looked back, and gave a single small nod, and that nod undid her.
"Fuck me," she whispered.
"Louder."
"Fuck me, Burkey. Right here. In front of him."
Burkey hooked her knees over his forearms and dragged her to the edge of the granite, and Nicholas crossed the living room without a word and sat down in the big armchair angled at the kitchen, the one with the clear view. He pulled the waistband of his boxers down and took himself in hand, already hard, and just watched.
Burkey pressed the head of his cock against her.
Janet had braced for pain. He was too thick for a quick entry, and he knew it, so he worked it in slowly, an inch, a withdrawal, another inch, his jaw clenched and his eyes fixed on her face while her stretched lips gripped him and her mouth fell open and nothing came out of it. The burn was enormous and then it flipped over into something else, a fullness so complete it felt like being remade.
"Oh my God. Oh my God, you're so deep."
"Nick," Burkey said, without looking away from her. "Your wife's got the tightest pussy in the county and she's soaking my balls. You sure about this?"
"Keep going," Nicholas said from the chair. His voice had gone rough. His fist was moving, slow.
Burkey sank the rest of the way in until his heavy hips met her bare backside, and he stopped there, buried to the root, letting her feel every last centimetre of him while her nails dug red crescents into his shoulders.
"Christ, Jan. Been imagining this since summer before last. It's better than that." He pulled back until only the head held her open, then drove in again, hard enough that the glasses rattled by the sink. Janet cried out, loud, no hand over her mouth this time, and she saw Nicholas's fist tighten at the sound.
"That's it," Nicholas said. "Let me hear you."
Burkey set a rhythm, deep and relentless, his thick body driving her up the counter and hauling her back by the hips each stroke. The granite was cool under her shoulders and Burkey was fire everywhere else. Her nightgown had gone to a wet band of silk above her breasts and his mouth found her nipple through it, biting down gently, and she wrapped her legs around his back and pulled him in deeper, filthy, shameless, fucking him back.
"Look at him while he does it," Nicholas said.
She turned her head, cheeks burning, and looked at her husband in the chair, his cock in his fist, watching her take another man. Something in her chest broke open. She came again without warning, a second climax rolling up out of nowhere, clamping down on Burkey so hard he bellowed and lost his rhythm.
"Fuck, I'm close already. Where do you want it, Nick? Inside her? That what you've been picturing?"
Nicholas stood up from the chair.
He crossed to the island and stood beside his wife's head, and she reached for him without thinking, her hand closing around his cock while Burkey hammered into her. Nicholas bent and kissed her, deep, tasting Burkey on her mouth, and groaned into it.
"Inside," Nicholas said against her lips. "Come inside my wife. All of it."
Burkey's thrusts turned brutal. He grabbed her hips hard enough to bruise and buried himself and held there, pulsing, flooding her, and the heat of it set Janet off a third time, her whole body seizing around him while Nicholas stroked her hair.
Burkey stayed buried, breathing like a bull. Then he looked over her heaving chest at his oldest friend.
"Right," he said, his cock still twitching inside her. "Couch, table, stairs, shower. I told you I'd do every position in this house, and I don't break promises. Whose turn is it to choose?"
"The couch," Nicholas said. His voice was low and certain. "Take her to the couch."
Burkey slid out of her with a wet gush, his come already running down the crease of her thigh and pooling on the granite. Janet gasped at the emptiness. Then he bent, hooked one arm under her knees and one across her back, and carried her.
"Bloody show-off," she muttered, but her arms went around his neck.
"Fifty-two and I'm carrying you across me own living room, love. Let me have it."
Nicholas followed them, naked except for his boxers shoved down around his thighs, and dropped into the armchair again as Burkey laid Janet down on the cushions. The leather was cool against her burning skin. The moonlight came through the window and fell right across her, and both men stood looking down at her, and she felt it like heat on her face.
She was laid out in a wrecked blue nightgown, silk bunched above her breasts, thighs apart, another man's come leaking out of her onto the cushion. Ten years ago she'd have died of shame. Tonight she reached down and spread herself with two fingers and watched Nicholas's breath catch.
"Well?" she said. "Somebody do something."
Burkey laughed, a deep chest sound. He knelt on the floor, pulled her hips to the edge of the couch, and put her ankles up on his shoulders. "Doggie next, Nick. But she's got me dripping out of her. Somebody should mind that."
"Leave it," Nicholas said. "I want to see it running down while you do her."
Janet's clit pulsed at that, at her husband's voice saying it, filthy and steady, like he'd rehearsed the words alone in the dark for a year. Maybe he had.
Burkey drove back in. Easier this time, her channel slick with her own orgasm and his load, and the sound of it was obscene, a wet slap that filled the quiet house. He fucked her deep and steady, her legs bouncing on his shoulders, and every stroke pushed a squelch of air and fluid out of her that she could hear and couldn't hide.
"Listen to her," Burkey grunted. "Pussy's singing."
"Christ." Nicholas had his cock out again, working it, his eyes fixed on the place where Burkey's thick shaft stretched her open, where a white ring of froth had started at the base. "Jan. Does it feel different?"
She tried to answer. The thrust knocked the words out. "Bigger. He's bigger than you, Nick, he's so deep, oh God, I can feel him in my belly."
Nicholas groaned like a man punched. "Is it good? Tell me it's good."
"It's so good I hate myself."
Burkey barked a laugh and slowed, grinding his hips in circles, the head of his cock dragging along her front wall. Her back arched off the leather. He hooked a thumb against her clit and pressed while he rolled, and Janet's heel dug into his shoulder.
"You don't hate yourself," he said. "You're the one who came down here with her fanny bare under that nightie. Half-two in the morning. Don't act surprised."
"I didn't think anyone was..."
"You hoped." He snapped his hips, a short hard jab that made her cry out. "You hoped."
She couldn't argue. Her orgasm built fast again, third of the night and it still ambushed her, and she grabbed the back of the couch and bucked, and Burkey held her legs locked against his chest and rode her through it, cursing under his breath at the clench of her.
When she came down, panting, he pulled out and flipped her over like a sack of flour. "Hands and knees."
She got her knees under her on the cushion. Her arms shook. Behind her she felt his hands spreading her cheeks, his thumb pressing at the smeared, dripping entrance of her, and then he pushed back in from behind, bottoming out in one long stroke, and the angle went somewhere new, somewhere deeper, and her elbows nearly buckled.
"Nick," Burkey said, not slowing. "Come look at this. Come see your missus taking it."
Footsteps. Then Nicholas was there, close, crouched beside the couch, close enough that Janet could smell his skin and hear the wet rasp of his fist. His face was level with her hips, watching Burkey's cock split her, watching his own friend's come froth white around it on every stroke.
"I can see right inside her," Nicholas said, awed. "He's stretched you wide open, Jan."
"Nick, please." She didn't know what she was asking for.
He kissed her shoulder blade. Then his hand slid under her, cupping her dangling breast, pinching the nipple, and she pushed back against Burkey, meeting his thrusts, the couch creaking and knocking against the wall.
"Harder," she heard herself say. "Fuck her harder, mate, look at her, she wants it harder."
"Jesus, Nick." Burkey picked up the pace, hammering now, the slap of his hips on her backside echoing off the kitchen units. "Tell her what you told me last summer. Go on."
Nicholas went quiet for a second. His thumb kept circling her nipple. Then he leaned close to her ear.
"I told him I wanted to watch him fill you up. Twice. I told him I wanted to taste you after."
Janet's whole body shivered. She came again, or half came, a shuddering ripple around Burkey's cock that made him bellow, and she heard Nicholas say "do it, do it inside her again" and felt Burkey swell and jerk and flood her a second time, deeper this time, the heat of it spreading inside her while she sobbed into the cushion.
Burkey pulled out slowly. Janet slumped onto her side on the couch, boneless, come running down her inner thigh and onto the leather. Both men stood over her, one spent and smirking, one still hard and shaking.
Nicholas knelt at the edge of the couch. His hand settled on her knee, and slid up her thigh, slow, toward the mess.
"Nick." She caught her breath. "What are you doing?"
"I told you what I wanted to taste." His eyes came up to hers, checking, asking. She looked at him for a long moment, her husband of twenty-six years, kneeling at her side with another man's come glistening on his wife's skin.
"Don't tell me you're going to stop now," she whispered, and opened her legs for him.
Nicholas dipped his head and licked her, one long stroke through the whole slick mess of her, and groaned like a starving man at the taste. Burkey's come and hers, salt and heat, all of it. Janet's hips jerked off the leather. His tongue worked lower, then pressed inside her, lapping at what Burkey had left there, and she grabbed his hair with both hands because her body didn't know what else to do.
"Oh, Nick. You're actually. Christ, you're actually doing it."
He came up for air, his chin gleaming, his eyes wild. "Told you I wanted to. Twenty years of wanting to and I never even knew it till last summer." He went back down, sucking her clit this time, and the sensations stacked, too many, his mouth and the burn of being freshly fucked and the wet drip still running out of her.
Burkey sat on the couch arm above her head, watching, his spent cock resting heavy against his thigh. He reached down and pushed her nightgown the rest of the way off her shoulders. She let him peel it down her arms and toss it on the floor.
"Nick," Burkey said. "Move over a second. I want her to try something."
Nicholas lifted his head, breathless. "Go on, then."
Burkey slid off the arm and knelt where Nicholas had been, but he turned her first, rolling her onto her hands and knees again. Her arms trembled. He bent and started kissing up the back of her thigh, and that was when she felt it. His beard. Rough and dark and new, scraping the soft skin of her inner thigh like coarse rope, stinging and burning and making her gasp.
"You grew that," she said over her shoulder, voice shaking. "You grew that bloody beard on purpose."
"Kept telling you I would." He bit her cheek gently, the stubble dragging everywhere his mouth went, a constant raw friction. "Decided last month it was happening. Decided tonight was happening too."
"You planned this."
"Nine months, love. Ask your husband."
She looked at Nicholas. He was standing by the armchair now, stroking himself slow, and he had the decency to look caught.
"He started growing it in March," Nicholas admitted. "I thought he'd just let himself go."
"I thought," Burkey said, and pressed the beard against her soaked, swollen pussy from behind, the coarseness of it grinding against her clit, "you'd feel it right here before the night was out."
The scrape of it was almost too much. She was raw from four orgasms and two fuckings and now this wiry, cruel texture rubbing her open. She pushed back into it anyway, whining, chasing it even while her thighs flinched away.
"God, it hurts."
"Good hurt or bad hurt?"
"Don't you dare stop."
He laughed against her and licked her once more, beard burning her the whole time, then straightened up and guided himself back into her from behind. Third time tonight and she was sore and open and it still made her jaw drop. He bottomed out and just held it, his hips flush against her backside, his hand fisted in her hair.
"Now then, Nick. Get under her."
Nicholas hesitated one second. Then he lay down on the couch cushions and slid his head and shoulders under Janet's chest, and she understood all at once. She sank down onto her forearms, her breasts hanging over his face, and he took her nipple into his mouth while Burkey started moving behind her.
It was too much and exactly right. Her husband sucking her tit underneath her, his own cock hard against her belly, his friend's thick shaft driving into her from above, and every downward stroke dragged her over Nicholas's chest, her clit scraping his skin. She was pinned between the two men she loved most in the world and she was making sounds the neighbours could probably hear.
"You're both insane," she panted. "Both of you. Oh. Oh, Nick, bite it harder."
He bit. Burkey's beard scraped her shoulders when he leaned over her back, his chest slick and heavy against her spine, his breath in her ear.
"Say which one of us you want to make you come this time."
She didn't even think. "Him. I want Nick to make me. Burkey, you keep fucking me, I don't care, but I want my husband's mouth on me when I go."
Nicholas slid further down her body. It should have been impossible, tangled the way they were, but he wriggled until his face was under her mound, and Burkey adjusted his stance, legs wider, still buried in her and fucking her in slow deep strokes while Nicholas's tongue found her clit from below.
Two of them on her at once. Burkey's cock pistoning and Nicholas's tongue circling, and the beard she'd felt earlier now Nicholas's smooth chin slick against her, the contrast between the two men written on her skin. She felt it building like a wave that didn't care whether she survived it.
"Don't stop either of you. Don't either of you stop."
Burkey laughed, low and dark, and drove in harder. Nicholas sucked her clit into his mouth, and the orgasm hit her like a blow to the back of the skull. She heard herself scream, actually scream, into the quiet house, felt her whole body clamp down on Burkey, felt Nicholas hold on through the bucking of her hips with both hands on her thighs.
She came down in pieces. Burkey was still moving but slowly now, gentle, letting her float. Nicholas crawled out from under her and sat up, his face soaked a second time, both his wife's taste and his friend's.
"Right," he said, and his voice had a finality in it. "There's one more thing I told him last summer."
Janet lifted her head, hair plastered to her forehead. "There's more?"
"He told me," Burkey said, sliding out of her and sitting back on his heels, still hard, clearly saving himself, "that he wanted round two upstairs. In your bed. With the lights on."
She looked at her husband. He was nodding, small and certain.
"And I want to watch from the pillows this time," Nicholas said. "Close enough to touch." He reached out and helped her up off the couch, and her legs nearly folded under her. Burkey caught her elbow, steadying her, his other hand giving her backside a possessive squeeze.
"Bed's got a creaky third stair before it, love," Burkey said, grinning. "Better hope nobody in this house sleeps light."
The stairs groaned under all three of them. Janet went first, bare and unashamed now, her wrecked nightgown abandoned on the living room floor. Burkey climbed behind her with one hand on her hip, and Nicholas brought up the rear, his boxers finally shed on the third step.
The bedroom light snapped on and Janet squinted against it. Their bed, their white sheets, the photograph from Lake Garda on the dresser. It all looked different with two men in it.
"Sit," Nicholas said, and steered her to the edge of the mattress.
She sat. Her thighs were shiny with the mess of the last hour. Both men stood in front of her in the flat yellow light, and nobody moved for a second, and the strangeness of it settled over the room like a held breath.
"Well," Janet said. "Somebody's supposed to be doing every position in this house."
"Bed counts double." Burkey crawled onto the mattress behind her, and his hands came around from behind, cupping her breasts, his beard scraping the back of her neck. "Lie back, love. Nick, get her legs."
Nicholas knelt at the foot of the bed. He took her ankles in his hands and lifted them, spreading her wide under the light, and he looked at her properly this time, close up, the swollen lips of her pussy reddened and slick, Burkey's come still seeping from her entrance.
"God, look at you." His voice cracked on it. He glanced up at her face, and Janet saw the question in him before he asked it. "You're sure? All of it? This is what you want?"
She could have laughed. She could have cried. Instead she reached down and took his hand and pressed it flat against her.
"I came down those stairs knowing he was there, Nick. I didn't let myself know it, but I knew." Her thumb stroked his knuckles. "Now stop stalling."
Nicholas looked over her shoulder at Burkey. Burkey nodded once, and something passed between the two men that had been passing for twenty years, unspoken and now spoken in everything but words.
"Up the pillows," Nicholas said. "Head there. I want you against the headboard where I can see everything."
Burkey shifted her up the bed like furniture, propping her against the pillows, and Nicholas climbed up after and stretched out beside her, his head on the pillow next to hers, exactly where he'd said he wanted to be. Close enough to touch.
"Burkey." He patted his own chest. "Sit her on my face first. I want her above me this time. I want to watch it drop."
Janet's whole body flushed. "Nick, that's..."
"What you've both been thinking about since the couch. Don't pretend." He was already sliding down, flat on his back, pulling at her hip. "Come here."
They arranged her between them, Nicholas on his back beneath her, Burkey kneeling behind, her knees planted wide on either side of her husband's head. She'd never been looked at like that from below, lit from above, her husband's eyes six inches from her open, dripping slit.
"He's going to see everything," she whispered, and Burkey's hand pressed her hips down.
"Good."
Nicholas's tongue went into her without hesitation, deep, his lips sealed against her, and he made a sound like a man drinking after a drought. Her come and Burkey's, everything the couch had left in her, and he lapped at it with his whole mouth, groaning into her, his nose pressed to her clit.
"Oh, Christ." Her hands found the headboard. "Oh, God, Nick, you're drinking it. You're actually..."
He pulled back just enough to speak, his chin soaked. "Told you I wanted to taste you after. Best thing I've ever put in my mouth." Then he pulled her down harder and went back in, tongue fucking her in slow pushes, and above her Burkey gathered her hair off her neck and kissed her shoulder.
"Look at him," Burkey murmured. "Twenty-six years married and he's still starving for you. That's rarer than you think, love."
She was trembling between them, Nicholas's tongue working up into her while his thumb found her clit from below, and Burkey reached around and took her nipple in each fist, rolling them, his chest hot against her back. She couldn't tell where one man ended and the other began.
"I can't hold..." Her head fell back against Burkey's shoulder. "Nick, I'm going to come on your face."
"Do it." Muffled into her. "Give me all of it."
It broke over her slower than the others, a long rolling thing, and Nicholas sealed his mouth over her and drank everything she gave him, and she heard herself sobbing, actually sobbing, and Burkey's arms wrapped her whole chest and held her through it.
When she could see again, Nicholas pushed her gently sideways and sat up. His face was gleaming to the ears.
"Right." His voice was wrecked. "Now fuck her. I'm staying right here on the pillows."
Burkey laid her back and pushed her knees up and out, and this time when he entered her, there was no slowness, no gentling. She was open past argument now, and he drove into her in one stroke and pinned her there, buried, his hips grinding against her backside.
"Fifth time tonight," he grunted, starting to move. "Gonna take longer now. Gonna fuck you slow and deep until you beg."
"Don't you dare slow down."
He laughed and kept it slow anyway, long dragging strokes, the head of him pulling almost out before sinking back to the root, and Nicholas lay on the pillow beside her head watching every inch of it, his hand working himself, his eyes fixed on where Burkey's thick shaft slid in and out of her.
"I can see her stretched around you," Nicholas said. His breath was coming short. "I can see every vein, Christ."
"Touch her while I do her. Go on. She's your wife."
Nicholas's fingers found her clit, circling it in time with Burkey's strokes, and the doubled sensation made her buck clean off the mattress. She turned her head and found her husband's mouth and kissed him, and he kissed her back with his tongue still tasting of her and Burkey both.
"He's going to come in me again," she said against Nicholas's lips. "Is that what you want? Watch him come in me while you're this close?"
"Yes." No hesitation at all. "Both of us. Jan, I want to watch you two finish together."
Burkey's rhythm broke at that, his strokes going short and hard, and Nicholas rubbed her clit faster, and the three of them climbed it together in the yellow light, the headboard knocking the wall, Janet's cries sharp and unhidden.
"Nick, I'm..."
"Come for him. Now."
She went, clamping down on Burkey with a shriek, and Burkey roared and slammed home and flooded her a third time, pulsing against her cervix, and Nicholas cried out with them, his come striping her belly and Burkey's knuckles where his hand worked her.
They collapsed in a tangle. Burkey on her left, breathing like a bellows. Nicholas on her right, his hand still resting on her soaked mound, not moving, just holding her there.
"Well," Janet managed, staring at the ceiling. "There's still the shower."
Burkey's laugh rolled through the mattress. "Told you. Every position in this house."
Nicholas lifted his head and looked at both of them, and his grin was the honeymoon grin again.
"Then we're not sleeping till dawn."
Burkey rolled off the bed and stood, his heavy silhouette crossing toward the bedroom door. "Shower first, then," he said over his shoulder, the yellow light catching the sweat on his back. Janet watched him go, then turned to Nicholas, who was still breathing hard, his hand resting warm on her hip. "Well," she murmured, "you heard the man." Nicholas got up on his elbows, watched her swing her legs off the mattress, and laughed at the way she wobbled. "You look like you've been on a boat for a week."
"I feel like it." She caught the doorframe with one hand. Her thighs were a slick mess, Burkey's come drying tacky on her skin, and she made no move to wipe any of it away. "If I fall in the shower, it's his fault."
Burkey's voice carried from the hallway. "I'd catch you, love. Always have."
They followed him in. The bathroom was small and bright, mirror already fogging as he twisted the tap, steam climbing the tiles. Janet stepped under the spray first and gasped, hot water flattening the silk-wrecked hair against her skull, running down her breasts in rivers. The mess between her legs turned creamy and washed off her thighs in pale threads that spiralled toward the drain.
She looked up and found both men in the doorway, shoulder to shoulder, both of them hard again. Fifty-two and forty-five, and both of them hard again.
"You're staring," she said, echoing him from the kitchen.
"Course we are." Burkey stepped in behind her, the cubicle barely big enough for two, his chest pressing her forward into the spray. His beard dragged across her wet shoulder. "We're also deciding who gets you first in here."
Nicholas reached past them and slid the glass door shut with all three of them inside, water hammering the glass. "We'll take turns. Move over, Burkey."
"You going to get in properly," Janet said, "or just stand there dripping?"