False pretenses or not, James was exactly the man for the job. I shook my head as he came closer, looking him up and down with a scarcely contained smile. The initial James dazzlement hadn’t gone away since that time I saw him walk out of the lake, dripping wet and glistening in the sun. The man was sex incarnate, and no one could deny that, not even me. “He’s perfect,” I whispered to Nick as his gorgeous friend stopped in front of us.
Nick was far less dazzled but far more appraising. “Well, you look...okay,” he assessed. Then, without any explanation, he pulled open the top two buttons of his buddy’s shirt. As James glanced down in confusion, Nick stepped back wearing a frown. “It’s just too...formal somehow.”
James glanced between us, looking a little lost. “Uh...too formal for freefalling? I figured they’d give us specific clothes—”
Without another word, the two of us yanked him forward and got to work.
I stretched up on my toes to ruffle his dark hair into those irresistible, sex-tousled waves, while Nick untucked his shirt and started rolling up his sleeves. His collar was loosened and his belt removed. By the time we finished, even his watch was gone, for good measure; we didn’t want it snagging any of Claudia’s designer wear.
Throughout the process, James’s initial confusion turned into surprise. He knew something was coming, but he certainly didn’t know what it was. Little did he realize that it was going to be far more dangerous than freefalling. When we finally took a step back, he stared at each of us in turn and asked flatly, “Is this a threesome? Is that what this is? I mean, I’m okay with it if you two are,
but I didn’t really expect—”
“What!?” I gasped, unable to believe my ears.
“Cause, I mean, I get it.” He shook his head with a little sigh. “You guys want to branch out, but you’re a couple now, so you want to do it with someone safe, right?”
Nick’s eyes snapped shut, and he actually made a gagging noise. “James, stop.”
James raked his hand distractedly back through his hair, looking amenable but highly inconvenienced by the whole thing. “I just wish you’d given me some notice,” he muttered, almost to himself. “I don’t have any of my tools—”
I cocked my head to the side, curious in spite of myself. “Um...tools?”
He sighed again, throwing his hands up in defeat. “Look, I mean, if you guys really want to do this, I guess I can get things started with Abby. Nick, maybe you can just watch, or—”
“Enough!” Nick shook his head, unable to listen a second longer. “I didn’t invite you to fuck my fiancée. In fact, consider her off limits for the rest of your natural-born, horny life. You got that?”
James’s face lightened considerably, with something that looked like a mixture of disappointment and relief. “Oh. In that case—”
“I want you to fuck my dad’s fiancée.”
The two of us nodded impressively as James shrank a step back.
“Um, thanks, but no thanks. I think I’d rather just go back to the car. Fucking Claudia equals Chlamydia.”
As he started to leave, I pulled him toward me. “Not so fast, mister.”
Chapter 24
“Tell me again why I’m doing this,” James demanded, fidgeting uncomfortably as I squeezed bits of product into his hair, “other than to buy my therapist a new summer home.”
I bit back a burst of laughter as Nick stepped in front of him, placing his hands on James’s shoulders and staring entreatingly into his eyes. “It’ll be your wedding present, for your best friend. It’s your duty as my best man.”
James met his coaxing smile with a cool glare. “Sex with the devil? Hmm. Shit, I hate to know what you’ll expect for your fiftieth anniversary.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll be in a nursing home by then, old man,” Nick teased. “We’ll get you some Viagra.”
James shook his head. “Well, at least she’s a gorgeous devil, that’s for sure. And you said your dad made her get tested and she’s clean. Why do all your presents tend to involve sexual blackmail though?”
Nick considered that for a moment before dropping his hands with a shrug. “I honestly don’t know. That’s just the way it plays out, I guess. You don’t have to go all the way, just get some compromising positions.”
James rolled his eyes and turned back to the bar. The three of us were currently hiding in the coat closet of the Manhattan Ritz. We happened to know Claudia was staying there alone; thankfully, we had no trouble committing light larceny of Harold Oates’s infamous day planner. We had to pay the butler 100 bucks to keep quiet about it, but the intel was well worth the money, and we had a perfect view from that vantage point.
Before long, Claudia herself wandered into the lounge.
“That’s her! There she is!” I said excitedly, hopping from foot to foot.
The men rotated slowly around, one with a look of infatuated amusement and the other with intense exasperation. They stared for a moment before turning back to the lobby.