Jenna let him lead her onto the back deck, the yard lit by the glow of the harvest moon and a thousand stars. Though the last few weeks had been chilly, the temperature had risen steadily through the day and showed no inclination to cool down yet. If you close your eyes, she thought, you can almost believe it’s still summer, not the middle of September.

The improvement in the weather had improved Luke’s mood too and she couldn’t resist his smile as he pulled her down beside him on the chaise lounge.

“We aren’t going to have many more chances like this,” he warned. “Soon we’ll be getting frost overnight.”

She shook her head and frowned. She didn’t want to think about summer coming to an end, the inevitable rainstorms then snowstorms. She preferred summer. Then again, cuddling up next to Luke was a good way to stay warm all winter.

“As long as I get to snuggle up with you, then I won’t mind the winter.”

“I won’t let you get cold,” he promised as he leaned in and kissed her. He licked the seam of her lips and teased inside.

She slid her fingers into his hair and reveled in the feel of his lips against her mouth before he moved on, nuzzling her jaw, behind her ear and down her neck until she shivered. He looked up at her, his cool blue eyes hot with desire. He drew her hand from his hair and fit it over the hard ridge of his erection. She groaned and pressed her palm against his length. She would never get enough of him.

“Out here,” he whispered, “by the light of the moon. I want you to ride me.”

She pulled her hand back, grinning at him, and yanked her sweater over her head.

She loved the way he licked his lips as he stared at her breasts. The new lace bralette she’d bought earlier this week propped them up like an offering.

He ripped his shirt open, buttons popping and flying against the deck. She laughed at the plink, plink, plink they made as they landed. His laugh was huskier than hers and it warmed her. She’d not had many relationships, and fewer lovers. Until Luke she hadn’t realized sex could be anything but serious, hard.

As he fell to his knees in front of her, grasping the waistband of her capris and dragging them over her hips and down her legs, she knew she’d never find anyone like him again.

“I knew your panties would match your bra,” he said, nuzzling into the sky-blue lace covering her mound.

The sensation was at once erotic and humorous. He burrowed his tongue into her folds, teasing her. She widened her stance, giving him room between her thighs.

“Fuck, you smell so good. I love the smell of you. The taste of you. I think about it at the damnedest times. Like in a meeting. I’m supposed to be concentrating on the structural load analysis and then suddenly I remember my face buried in your pussy, your juice on my tongue. And just the memory of your taste has my cock uncomfortably hard for the rest of the meeting. I have to run building codes in my head just to tame the beast.”

“I like the beast. I like when he’s not tame,” she told him as she braced her hands on his shoulders and he breathed against her pussy, licking the lace right above her clit. A ripple of pleasure washed over her. It wasn’t enough. She loved how orally fixated he was, but she needed more. She wanted him inside her. Like he’d promised. She wanted to ride him.

“Please,” she asked him. “We can go slow later. I want to ride you. I want to feel you stretching my pussy with your cock.”

He growled, but he didn’t argue. He rocked back on his heels and stood. It surprised her how graceful he could be. She may have fallen in love with his humor but she lusted after his body. He was lean and golden. His chest had a smattering of dark hair that ran in a line down his abdomen, to his groin. She watched as he moved his hands to his fly, whipping open the button and zipper. He stripped off his jeans, taking his underwear with them.

Naked in the moonlight, he reached out a hand for hers, pulling her off the chaise.

 He switched places with her and leaned back on the lounger. He loved having a woman on top of him, especially Jenna. He loved watching her touch herself for him. He loved being able to reach out and stroke her breasts or tease her clit.

He ripped open the foil packet he’d placed on the lounge before he’d gone back inside for Jenna. He wasn’t ashamed to say he’d had this planned. He rolled the condom over his cock, holding it by the base as Jenna straddled his waist.

She rested her hands on his chest and closed her eyes as she sank her pussy over him. She was wet, but she was tight. He’d never considered himself particularly endowed, but Jenna’s hot cunt made him feel like a god. She bowed her head as she worked herself onto him, twisting her hips, sinking a little deeper each time. It was the most exquisite sort of torture he’d ever endured. The feel of her. The sight of her silhouetted in the moonlight.

Already in great shape, she’d gotten leaner this summer as she’d tried to keep up with him and Eric. They’d dragged her hiking, kayaking, climbing. She confessed that for the last couple of years, between school and work, she’d barely taken any time to enjoy summer. They’d made sure she had appreciated it to the fullest this year.

He loved the sensual curve of her hips, which he watched now undulate against his groin. Her breasts swayed as she ground down against him, working herself closer to her first climax. He didn’t have to do anything but watch her, but he’d be damned if he could stop himself from touching her.

He wrapped his hands around her breasts, stroking his thumbs over her nipples. “You are such a tease,” she complained, looking down at him, pouting. He couldn’t help the throaty chuckle that escaped his throat. She should know by now I always follow through, he thought as he rolled the hard nubs between his thumbs and forefingers. He was gentle at first, but then increased the pressure, pinching because he knew she liked it. Needed it.

She cursed and dropped her head back. She grasped his wrists and her pussy clamped down on his cock. She ground against him faster, her clit rubbing against his pubic bone. He roared as she milked his orgasm out of him, surprising him in its suddenness. He couldn’t have stopped it if he’d wanted to. He pumped his hips up into her as they both shouted their release.

She rested against his chest, his cock still semi-hard inside her, as he caught his breath. His heart was pounding in his ears but not loud enough to drown out the snick of the bedroom window closing in the town home beside theirs. Eric is trying to give us privacy, he thought with a laugh. He pulled Jenna a little closer and smiled.

 * * * *

 On days like today, Jenna hated her job. She wasn’t the Sherwood’s usual veterinarian—her partner Dr. Martina Fisk had that pleasure—but the fifteen-year-old lab couldn’t wait and its family knew it. According to the dog’s chart, this day had been coming for a while, but the dog’s health had deteriorated so much over the last twenty-four hours that there was no choice. The decision could no longer wait. It was in the best interest of the dog to put her down.

She didn’t know the family or the dog, but she felt their pain and grief all the same. When she had still been a student, she’d assumed it would get easier, the losses, but after five years in practice it hadn’t.

As she walked down Queen Street, the hub of boutique shopping in Weston, she didn’t even bother to linger over the window displays. She just wanted to get to Luke and curl up in his arms. He was her safe place.

Jenna had begun seeing him a little over a year ago when he’d brought his ‘crazy-ass’ cat in for stitches. It had knocked a glass over and cut its paw in the process. She’d been struck by his affection for Winchester, the seven-year-old tabby. Even a small cut on the paw could bleed a lot, which was what had happened in Winchester’s case. There had been no permanent damage.

Winchester wasn’t really crazy, just fearless. He was always getting up to new adventures even if they included things he shouldn’t touch, places he shouldn’t go and things he should never eat. However, there was no doubt that that he was also adorable, with short hair, a long and sinuous body and the most beautiful black and gray stripes. Jenna had always been a cat person and she loved how much Luke doted on the fearless feline.

Melissa, Luke’s assistant and CAD tech, was just leaving when she arrived. They chatted a minute before Jenna continued down the hall. She stopped short, just outside Luke’s office door, as she heard him talking, his words clipped and excited.

“I know you heard us last night. And you can’t tell me it was the first time. I’ve seen the way you look at her. You can’t tell me that you don’t want her.”

“There’s a difference between fantasy and reality,” Eric reminded him. “Of course I find her hot. I find listening to you fuck her hot. You want me to tell you how I stood at the window with my cock in my fist, listening to the two of you?”

Jenna swallowed hard and pressed herself against the wall. Eric was Luke’s best friend and his former roommate. Eric and Luke had purchased the side-by-side as soon as they’d finished university, living in one side and renting out the other. When Eric had returned home, he’d moved into the rental side. As far as the guys were concerned it was the perfect situation and the first thing they had done was tear down the wooden fence that divided the two back decks.

Jenna hadn’t known Luke or Eric when they’d lived together. By the time she’d arrived in Weston, Eric had already left to do a two-year stint with a forest fire hotshot team in Western Canada. This summer, he’d come home to lead the area’s Wildland-Urban Fire Interface initiative, known locally as WUFI. It dealt with the real threat of forest fires spreading to the city or semi-rural subdivisions. Like Luke, Eric was an engineer but he was also an adrenaline junkie.

Jenna had missed the privacy a little, but she took enjoyment from watching the energy and friendship that the two men shared. Where Luke could be reserved, Eric pulled him out of his shell, and her too. They had been inseparable for the last couple of months. He had made a significant difference in their summer and in their relationship.

“You know she cares about you?” Luke asked. “That she’s hot for you?”

“You can’t know that.”

“The hell I can’t.” Jenna thought she heard a touch of longing in his voice. “I know her. Don’t you believe it’s worth asking? Do you think I’d ever mind sharing her with you? Don’t you know I’ve been dreaming of that?”

Jenna’s breath hitched and she covered her mouth with her hand to muffle any further sound. She was no stranger to the rumors, that the two men shared everything, not just the home she now lived in with Luke. She’d even asked Luke about it and he’d used his exceptional oral skills to spin word fantasies about the way it could be, shared between them.

She loved to be wrapped up in his dirty desires as he spun a tale about sharing her. How much she would enjoy the feel of two sets of hands on her breasts. Trapped between them, loved by them both. Those stories had stopped once Eric had moved back, so she hadn’t suspected that Luke might want to make those fantasies a reality, to pick up where he and Eric had left off.

But with me, she thought and her stomach fluttered with fear and excitement. She didn’t know if she could do that. “It’s insane,” she said under her breath before she pushed away from the wall.

She tried to be quiet as she took a few steps back down the hall, then called out as if only just arriving, “Hey, guys, where are you taking me for dinner tonight?”

Eric tried not to choke on a laugh. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t heard her in the hall. Well, he had at least. And he was so attuned to her body that she hadn’t a hope of hiding the fact that she had heard them. She was holding tension in her shoulders and her cheeks and neck were flushed.

One look at Luke said he saw it too. Luke, whose body was a perpetual movement machine, looked calm. Like he was at long last going to get what he wanted. Eric shook his head. He didn’t think it would be that easy.

“I hoped we could go down to Pisces,” Luke told her, stepping out from behind his desk and wrapping her in his arms. She melted into Luke’s embrace as he settled his lips over hers.

They made a beautiful couple. Jenna was tiny, nearly a head shorter than Luke, with thick shoulder-length dark hair that continued to curl no matter how much time she spent straightening it. She had ‘fuck me’ curves—there had never been a more apt term because it was all he thought about doing. He fantasized about wrapping his hands around her lush hips, as he slammed into her from behind. Her breasts would overflow his hands as he sucked her nipples into his mouth. He had to swallow a moan.

When it came to looks, Luke was no slouch either. He’d been that lanky, wiry kid in high school, who really hadn’t grown into his own skin until his early twenties. His tan complexion was more golden from the time they’d spent outdoors this summer. Similarly, his shaggy brown hair had been lightened by the sun until subtle tones of copper and blond peeked out from the darkness.

And as well as Eric remembered Luke’s body, its hard planes shaped from much time spent biking and hiking, he knew Luke’s kiss. He knew how he tasted, how he would use his tongue to test then to plunder. Eric’s cock grew hard in his jeans as he watched Luke cocoon Jenna in his arms. A sharp pain stabbed Eric’s heart and he knew it was the same jealousy he’d been living with for weeks. He wanted to be part of that.

Jenna broke the kiss, licking her lips. “Pisces is an excellent idea. I’ll just go use the restroom.”

She darted from the office, excited for anything that got them into a public space where the conversation that needed to happen, wouldn’t. That conversation would happen at home. Home. Even though he had his own space, he thought of the two units as one.

“This isn’t going to work.” He looked at Luke, his expression grim.

Luke hung his head back as if he were looking to the heavens for strength. It was a behavior that Eric knew Luke had learned from his mother. He’d seen her do that more than a time or two while they were growing up. Luke looked at him as he crossed the office and wrapped one hand around Eric’s neck. It was one of the few times since he had come back that Luke had touched him.

“How many women have we shared?”

Eric shrugged.

“A half dozen? A dozen? More?”

Eric didn’t need to be reminded. He remembered each encounter since that first time. It wasn’t quite an accident, but Eric hadn’t known Luke had fallen asleep on the sofa until after he’d bent his date over the back of the armchair. He’d just slid inside her when he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. That was when he’d seen Luke, looking sleepy but wide-eyed, watching them.

Eric hadn’t stopped. He’d fucked her as Luke had watched and, for his part, Luke hadn’t said a word. Afterward, Eric had winked at Luke and guided his date, who had no clue they hadn’t been alone, into his bedroom.

“We didn’t fuck all of them together,” he reminded Luke, but Luke just shrugged. Sometimes one or the other just watched. It depended on how far their date wanted to go.

“And you’ve almost always brought them home,” Luke continued. “You needed it, and you needed me too.”

“We never loved any of them.”

“I know,” Luke whispered, close enough to him now that Eric could feel his breath light against his cheek. “But I’ve always wanted that. That’s where it was always going. So yes, I found her. For me. For us.” Luke’s eyes gleamed with mischief.

Eric couldn’t resist the temptation of having Luke so close. He cupped his friend behind the neck and pulled him the few inches closer he needed to be. He took his mouth in a savage kiss. Luke wasn’t expecting it and it was a moment before he submitted, swayed into Eric’s embrace.

Eric needed this, to take the control back. He’d been thrown watching Luke gaze at Jenna with the same look that he used to reserve for him.

“Do you know how long I’ve waited for you to kiss me?” Luke asked him, pulling away, wiping his lips. “You’ve been home seventy-eight days.”

Eric scrubbed a hand over his face. “We said this would end if we ever fell in love with someone.”

“You mean if we fell in love with someone else, because I’ve always been in love with someone,” Luke argued, narrowing his eyes on Eric. “But now, I love her too.”