Three Men and a Woman: Evangeline (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) by Rachel Billings Page A

him.
    Oh, not that urgent coupling, but the comfort of it, the solace, the finding…home.
    He was pretty sure she’d come. She hadn’t needed any foreplay, any stimulation other than the fast, hard presence of his body in hers. She’d quickened immediately, and she didn’t make much of it. He wasn’t sure she had the experience to even know what an orgasm was.
    But she’d had one. Like she was meant for him. Like he was it for her.
    He wondered why that hadn’t occurred to him until now.
    She’d looked off over the lake as he’d spoken, and when the silence went on too long, he gave her hand a squeeze.
    Slowly—reluctantly, he guessed—she turned her face to his.
    “I haven’t forgotten either, Giovanni.”
    She hadn’t wanted to say it. But she would never lie to him. Suddenly, he wanted her. Powerfully. Sexually, yes. Oh, so—yes.
    But more than that. He wanted her to be his. To be a part of his life, the most important part.
    “And I was fine. You needn’t have worried.”
    It took a moment for those last words to register. He was looking at her, seeing her in a new way. Or not a new way. She’d always been what she was right now, lovely and gentle and…grounding.
    But it felt new. It felt like a switch had turned. He’d hardly thought of her in eight years, or even the four before that except for those intense moments when he’d found surcease in the incredible comfort of her body.
    He hadn’t thought of her, but he’d felt her. Like she was with him every day, a part of the fabric of his life. Not the surface, the shiny part everybody could see, but the warp and woof, the underpinnings.
    Like his friendships with Briggs and Chase. He saw them a handful of times a year. They’d get together at Chase’s place a couple times in the fall, drink some beer, and bitch about another losing season for the Bills. Or he’d cross paths with Briggs in New York or LA when Gio was flying out of there. Sometimes they’d get Chase to join them.
    But even when he didn’t see them, they were there, a part of him. That included Shep, too.
    And Evvie, obviously. Why he hadn’t seen it until now, he couldn’t fathom.
    He squeezed her hand again and walked on with her. After a while they started to chat about things—her job, his job, her home in the Finger Lakes.
    They didn’t talk about Chase or Briggs or even Shep.
    He turned her around after a while, walking back toward moonrise this time. About halfway back they fell into silence. And when they got to the lawn of the clubhouse, he stopped her. He held both of her hands then and looked down at her, a head shorter than he with the sandals dangling from her fingers.
    They could go back to the reception. More dancing would be good. There would be food, too, and more alcohol.
    There would be family and loud cheer, true or false.
    Instead—
    “Come to my room with me.”
    She looked up at him, her warm fingers twining gently with his. Her blue eyes were open, unguarded like they always were. She bit her bottom lip, a motion that had him dying to swoop in and taste.
    She wasn’t going to answer. She wouldn’t say yes. He was pretty sure she couldn’t say no.
    When he’d waited long enough, he dropped one hand, kept the other, and pulled her with him.
     
    * * * *
     
    Evangeline should have given him an answer, and it should have been no. She should think about how she’d spent the previous night. She should remember how it had felt when she’d heard her mother referred to as a whore.
    But she wasn’t her mother. She hadn’t made love to Briggs out of a desperate desire to console herself, to fill her emptiness, to gratify her endless need to be wanted, acknowledged.
    She’d made love to him out of—love.
    And she let Giovanni take her to his room for the same reason.
    She couldn’t say no. He was so handsome—his curly hair a dark brown with eyes to match, his body still hard under that suit, she was sure, fit like in his hockey days. His touch so