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  “Cameron.”

  A condom wrapper crinkled, and Jesse panted, aware of Kyle’s thrusts against his hip. At some point, Kyle had slicked himself with lube. Cam nudged at Jesse with the head of his cock, then breached him, and Jesse held his breath through the push. He pressed his face into Kyle’s neck and sweat sprang out over his body. Cam began the slow slide home, splitting him in two. All the while, Cam and Kyle held him, anchoring him even as he came apart.

  Jesse’s mind and body overloaded with sensation. He recognized his own breathless voice asking for more and gasped at the feeling of Cam’s body over his own. Cam slid one arm under Jesse’s chest and rocked, holding him close. The pain razoring through Jesse bloomed into a delicious ache. Cam’s movements ground him harder into Kyle, and Kyle groaned. Blindly, Jesse moved his head, intending to kiss Kyle, and he gasped as two pairs of lips met his. Kyle slipped a hand between them and took Jesse’s cock against his own in one slick fist.

  Jesse had no idea how long they lay entwined like that, Cam fucking him while Kyle frotted them both. Jesse’s body was liquid, and his senses filled with the men surrounding him—the salty taste of Cam’s sweat, the sweet smell of Kyle’s almond soap, their hot, damp skins and tender-rough touches. God, he was so close.

  Kyle stretched his free arm around Jesse’s body, searching with slick, unsteady fingers. They came to rest on Cam’s cock where it slid in and out of Jesse, drawing a moan from all three men.

  “Oh, God. I fucking love this,” Cam ground out. The fierce triumph in his voice made Jesse’s balls tighten.

  He loved it, too. He wanted more. Wanted more of Cam, any way he could get him, and Jesse shivered at the realization. In the next moment, his orgasm screamed through him, knocking both his mind and his body for a loop. Waves of bliss took hold of Jesse, and his back arched hard. The moment stretched and stretched until Jesse thrashed. He held on to his friends for dear life.

  He was still dizzy with pleasure when Cam yelled, his grip on Jesse like iron. He pressed his mouth against Jesse’s neck and came, panting hard while his movements stuttered and slowed. Kyle gave a great shudder. Jesse forced his eyes open. He caught Kyle’s gaze, dark and wild and filled with fire, and reached down to cup his balls. Kyle pressed his head back into the pillow with a moan, Jesse’s name on his lips. He came, his mouth going slack and his hips jerking lazily as his cock pulsed. His eyes never left Jesse’s.

  “Fuck, you two are gonna kill me,” Kyle slurred at last. He closed his eyes and let out a low noise when Cam straightened up and pulled him in for a kiss.

  Eventually, Cam’s and Kyle’s movements ceased. Kyle broke away from Cam, his eyes still closed, and nuzzled Jesse’s hair with his lips. He wiped his hand on the sheet and gave Jesse a squeeze before going still, his breaths evening out almost at once. Cam roused then, and he shifted back enough to slide out of Jesse. He worked off the condom with a hiss.

  Jesse lay quiet, floating on hormones and the lust still simmering inside him. Lazy delight lapped through him when Cam returned and draped his body over Jesse. Kyle snuggled closer. Jesse thought suddenly of the drink order that kicked off this encounter and huffed out a laugh against Kyle’s chest.

  Cam smiled against his shoulder. “What’s so funny?”

  “I’m gonna order the Redhead in Bed around you every chance I get,” Jesse told him.

  Cam gave a dry chuckle. “You get what you want, huh?”

  Jesse hummed and closed his eyes. “Always do, Cam. Always do.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jesse was sprawled on his stomach, sleeping hard, when Cam awoke. Kyle had left sometime before dawn with a kiss for both of them, and Jesse and Cam had passed out not long after. Cam wasn’t sure why he’d woken so early. Maybe his full bladder demanding he do something about it. He slipped out of bed to relieve it, then returned to the bedroom.

  He stood in the door for a moment, watching Jesse sleep. He lay with one arm stretched out toward the half of the bed Cam had vacated, and a bolt of panic shot through Cam.

  What the fuck was he doing? It wasn’t the scattered condom wrappers around the bed that freaked him out or the flashes of images from the night before. He’d loved every fucking second of being in bed with Jesse and Kyle. Having a third hadn’t diminished Cam’s closeness to Jesse. If anything, it had strengthened it. He’d loved watching Jesse kissing someone else. He’d loved the extra set of hands roaming his body and the feel of another set of lips on his.

  But now, in the cold light of day, the need to run crawled across Cam’s skin and urged his feet to move. He retrieved his discarded clothing from where he’d dropped them the night before, grabbed his bag and gear and bolted.

  Outside of the building, the bright morning sun sent pain shooting through his head, and he squinted. He fumbled in his bag for sunglasses, groping blindly before he closed a hand on the case. He jammed the glasses on his face as fast as he could and let out a small sigh of relief. He’d forgotten his phone charger yesterday, but at least he’d packed sunglasses. He wasn’t sure he could face the world without them at the moment.

  He was too tired and hungover to walk fast, but he set out for the nearest subway station. He needed the safety of Brooklyn and to figure out what to do next.

  * * * *

  Later that afternoon, Cam stood in his kitchen, poking around the refrigerator and looking for edible substances, when a sharp rap sounded on the door. He was closest, so he grunted, shut the fridge and walked to the entrance of the loft. He peered through the peephole, expecting a delivery person or the building super on the other side, and was totally unprepared to glimpse Jesse scowling at the door.

  “Fuck,” Cam muttered under his breath. His heart took off, pounding in his chest. A part of him wanted to walk away and ignore Jesse until the mess swirling around in his head made a lot more sense. But that was childish, and he’d already avoided this conversation once today.

  Reluctantly, Cam pulled open the door. Jesse looked so good it made his chest hurt. “Hey,” he said. The tightness in his throat made him strain to get the word out.

  “You’re alive then. I wasn’t sure.” Jesse’s tone was short. “Can we talk?”

  “Um, there’s no privacy. Several of the roommates are home.” Cam stepped into the hall and pulled the door shut behind him. “Let’s talk out here.”

  Jesse swore under his breath. “We would have had plenty of privacy at my place if you’d stayed.”

  “Sorry. I, uh, had a lot of end of the year stuff to do for school.” While technically true, Cam’s workload had nothing to do with why he’d left. From the look on Jesse’s face, he didn’t believe a word of it.

  “Is that why your phone’s been off and you haven’t returned my calls?” Jesse crossed his arms over his chest. The sleeves of his gray button-down shirt were rolled up and showed off his forearms. They were lean and sinewy, and Cam had a sudden vivid flash of those arms braced next to his head as Jesse had fucked him.

  He cleared his throat. “Dead battery. It’s charging.”

  Also true, but…

  “Oh, come on, Cam. If you needed to get work done, you would have kissed me goodbye or at least left a fucking note.” Jesse pressed his lips together into a thin line. “Answer me honestly. Was the threesome with Kyle last night a problem?”

  “No!” Cam protested, but his conscience prodded him to be honest. “Maybe.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Not the way you think,” he argued. “Look, it was hot as hell. I have zero regrets about getting naked with you and Kyle. It just… It made me think about things.”

  “What kind of things?”

  Cam’s stomach lurched. Now that he’d had a little time to think, he’d realized a few things. It hadn’t been Kyle specifically that had sent the intensity of the night through the roof, although he’d been the perfect third. It had been exploring it with Jesse, the feeling they’d done something significant together, that shook Cam. Because he wanted more. Mo
re time with Jesse, a bigger place in his life. But if Cam was realistic, Jesse wasn’t on the same path.

  There’d be another person in Cam’s place at some point. It would be Kyle, or Astrid, or some other new shiny person Jesse hadn’t even met yet. Cam would be at Ember or Under, watching him flirt with and take home someone who wasn’t Cam. And Jesse wouldn’t understand why it would hurt Cam so much.

  Cam bit his lip. They were just too different. All of Cam’s bravado about risking his heart felt like stupid bullshit in the face of imagining what it would feel like when Jesse walked away for good.

  “What things, Cam?” Jesse prompted.

  “The kind of things you don’t like to talk about. Feelings. What we both want. I don’t know.”

  “You’re not making any damn sense, Cam.”

  “I know.” He dragged his hand through his hair. “I’m sorry I took off without saying anything, but I’m struggling right now. I’m not sure I can keep doing this.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Whatever it is you and I have been doing.” Cam looked away. “I’m not saying we can’t see each other at all, but maybe a cooling-off period is called for.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “I mean, maybe we should focus on being friends for right now.”

  Jesse stared at him for a long, silent moment. “Is that really what you want, Cam?”

  No, he thought. “Yes,” he said aloud.

  “Okay.” Jesse cleared his throat. “Well, I don’t understand a damn thing about what’s going on with you right now. And I fucking wish you’d talk to me about it, but I won’t force you. If you want to cool off, fine. I won’t push you to do anything. If you need space, I’ll respect that.”

  Cam swallowed hard. That was the thing with Jesse. He wouldn’t force Cam to do anything. Chasing him down in Brooklyn was more than Cam would have expected. If Cam sent him on his way, that was it. He didn’t want to, but he didn’t know what else he could do. Because he knew if he spilled everything on his mind, Jesse would run. And friendship would be off the table. At least this way, Jesse wouldn’t be totally gone from his life.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his tone lame. “I think it’s for the best.”

  “Right.” Jesse nodded once, sounding baffled and more than a little irritated. “You set the boundaries from here on out. You know you’re welcome at Under anytime, and I’m sure we’ll see each other around.”

  Without another word, he turned on his heel and strode down the hall. Cam’s eyes pricked with tears.

  He’d done the right thing, though, hadn’t he?

  * * * *

  “Pretty sure I fucked up,” Cam said, morose. He stared down into his coffee. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to get his usual order of a tall, hot blonde. He’d gone with an Americano. Taryn’s pointed look hadn’t gone unnoticed, but he’d tried to ignore it.

  “I’m gonna need you to back the bus up,” she said.

  He glanced up at her. “How far back?”

  “Somewhere around the place where you had a threesome last night with Jesse Murtagh then bolted. Then he chased your ass down and you said you only wanted to be friends.”

  “Keep your fucking voice down.” Several people at nearby tables gave them sidelong glances. Cam had made a mistake meeting Taryn in a cafe instead of somewhere more private. “I don’t want this shit in the gossip column.”

  “Sorry.” She lowered her voice and leaned forward. “What happened? Was it sharing him with someone?”

  “No,” Cam said slowly. “You would think so, right? But I liked it. I didn’t like that I have no idea where my place is in Jesse’s life. It’s all so tenuous.”

  “You’re not making sense, Cam.”

  “Don’t I know it?”

  “So make sense!” Taryn sounded exasperated. “You’ve never been this wishy-washy about dudes.”

  “He’s not just any dude.”

  “Yeah, I get that.” She sighed. “But I’m starting to think you don’t have two brain cells to rub together. You ended things with a beautiful, amazing, rich guy after getting it on with him and his beautiful, amazing, rich friend. Something you enjoyed the hell out of.”

  “Kyle’s not rich,” he corrected. “And I’m not into Jes for the money. You know that.”

  “What the fuck ever. You know what I mean.”

  Cam swirled the cooling coffee in his cup. “Kyle’s not the problem. Group sex isn’t the problem. The fact that Jesse and I want different things in the end is.” His throat seized and, for a moment, he couldn’t continue. He finally forced the words out. “I think he’s strictly looking for fun, and I’m not. I want more.”

  “You didn’t before you met him.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Cam admitted. “I just wanted fun, too. But sometimes…sometimes you meet someone who makes you question if you aren’t looking for something different. He makes me want more. Someone who is mine. I don’t even give a shit if I share him with someone else. I want to know at the end of the day he won’t just fucking disappear.” Cam’s voice cracked and he paused. “I get it. He’s not the right guy for me if he doesn’t want what I want. And Jesse will never be that guy. He’s told me so himself enough times. But I don’t know how to stop wanting him to be.”

  “Well, shit,” Taryn said. “Here I thought I’d get all the dirty details of what you three did.”

  Cam cracked a smile. “Sorry to be a downer.”

  “Nah, I get it. I’ll just imagine myself in your place.” She looked off in the distance, a dreamy expression on her face.

  “Kyle’s not bi,” Cam pointed out.

  “Shush!” She waved at him. “You’re ruining this.”

  Cam managed a genuine snort of laughter.

  “I suppose Jesse is available now, isn’t he?” Taryn said a moment a later.

  Cam breathed through a sharp stab of pain. “Sure. But he always has been, right? I’m just not in the picture anymore.”

  * * * *

  “Great job tonight, guys!” Cam called after his students. “Don’t forget to take home what you left in the classroom! Backpacks, lunch boxes—anything like that.”

  Two of the kids raced toward his room, disappeared for an instant, then streaked out and down the hall to catch up with their friends. Cam didn’t bother to try to get them to walk. With a week left in the school year, the children’s spirits were high and Cam couldn’t do much to contain them.

  Besides, he’d been trying hard not to let his shitty mood infect the kids. He hadn’t seen Jesse for several weeks. He would have liked to say it had gotten easier, but it hadn’t. He still missed Jesse like hell, and although his head knew this was for the best, his heart wasn’t convinced.

  Cam had gotten a few texts from the other guys and been glad to realize he wouldn’t lose those friendships, too. He and Kyle had even played Fallout until Cam was convinced he might hallucinate from lack of sleep. He wanted to reach out to Jesse, suggest they grab lunch or drinks, but he couldn’t. Other than a few brief and stilted texts, they hadn’t interacted at all.

  Yet, Cam wasn’t surprised to step through the door of his classroom and see a familiar figure on the far side of the room, examining the photos and biographies of composers plastered on the wall. June’s focus had been female composers, primarily women of color. Cam made it a point to explore beyond the usual bunch of old, dead white guys.

  “Jesse,” he said. He wished his voice didn’t sound so strained.

  Jesse turned to face him. “Great concert.”

  “Thanks.” He wet his lips.

  Jesse looked amazing in a striking soft blue suit with a white shirt, open at the collar. It picked up the silver in his beard, but his usual at-the-ready, charming smile was nowhere to be seen.

  Cam couldn’t smile either. He’d wondered if Jesse would show up tonight. Cam hadn’t seen him during the concert—thankfully—but suspected he’d been there. Of course Jesse would want to support Sadi
e and Dylan. And here was what Cam had feared would happen before they’d gotten involved. Thank God, the school year was about to end and Cam could take the summer to get over Jesse before he had to do this again.

  “I hope you don’t mind me being here. Sadie and Dylan invited me, and I didn’t want to let them down,” Jesse said.

  “Of course not,” Cam assured him. “It’s fine.”

  Jesse stepped a few feet closer, and the skin on Cam’s arms prickled. He wanted to throw himself into Jesse’s arms and tell him he’d made a stupid mistake. Instead, he jammed his hands in the pressed trousers he’d put on earlier. Had he subconsciously dressed with care because he’d known Jesse would be here tonight?

  “I hate this,” Jesse said. “I don’t like this awkwardness between us.”

  “I know.” Cam looked away and stared out of the window of his classroom. Although evening, at this time in June, it was still light out.

  “I know you’re still talking to the other guys, and I’m glad. I don’t want whatever happened between us to get in the way of that. But what the fuck, Cameron?” The frustration in Jesse’s voice and the use of his full name pulled Cam’s attention back to him. “I would like to understand what the hell happened.” He stepped closer again. “One minute we were having a great time and the next, you were just gone. You said you wanted a cooling-off period and to be friends, but that’s not what this is. This feels like you’re done with me. Totally.”

  Cam swallowed hard. “I know. And I’m sorry.”

  “Jesus. Stop saying that and talk to me.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” he admitted.

  “I don’t care what you say!” Jesse’s voice rose before he looked around and seemed to remember where they were.

  Cam strode to the door and closed it. The school was nearly empty, but on the off chance someone walked by, he didn’t want them to overhear. He returned to his spot in front of Jesse, and Jesse looked Cam in the eye.