Page 90 of A Fool's Game

“I see you, too, fool,” Taylor adds softly.

No one says anything for so long that my eyes start to droop. I’m exhausted from traveling, from the huge meal, from the emotional upheaval.

Gemma’s breathing shifts and I glance down to find her sleeping in my lap.

When I look back up, Taylor’s watching me. I can’t take another attack on my poor, long guarded secrets, so I look back down at Gem’s sleeping form. “Let’s get her up to bed.”

Chapter 31

Taylor

“This whole giant penthouse and only one fucking bed?” I hiss softly as I close the door to the room where Gemma now lays sleeping.

Ainsley laughs, and my heart lifts at the sound. I’m not sure I really understood what it was to need someone to be okay until tonight. Until I saw into the dark holdings of this man and worried that I’d lose him.

Losing him is officially not an option.

“It’s not exactly designed for a family vacation,” he says, leading me down the sweeping staircase to the ground floor.

I huff. “Do you want to go for a swim?”

He shakes his head. “Let’s save it for the morning. I’m beat.”

I nod, watching him head toward the downstairs bathroom where he put his toiletry bag earlier.

He peeks his head out a second later, eyes narrowed at me. “And you’re not swimming either, wino. First rule of drinking and swimming, never go alone.”

I huff again, seeing the logic in his words. I’m not going to admit that diving straight into that big, empty pool was my plan as soon as he disappeared into the bedroom. “Nah. I’m ready for bed as well.”

Ainsley takes the center, something I’m silently grateful for.

It’s not that I hate sleeping with other people, it’s just that they never stop moving and making noises and getting in and out of bed. For someone who sleeps poorly on the best of nights, it’s just one more layer of awake I don’t want to deal with.

I wake when Gem gets up to use the bathroom and crawls back in bed.

I wake when Ainsley rolls to his back and pulls Gem’s torso onto his chest.

I wake when the two of them roll toward me, Gem’s arm draped gently around Ainsley’s waist.

I wake a while later, the wide-open window showing a slight brightening of the dark sky. It’s early morning, stars still twinkling, dawn on the horizon. The two of them have shifted toward my side of the bed, still wrapped around each other, facing me, inches away from where I lay.

There’s just enough light for me to trace the curves of their naked bodies, draped lightly in the white sheet. Gem’s long, slender arm curves up and around Ainsley’s chest, her delicate fingers curled in on themselves. Ainsley’s chest rises and falls with his sleeping breath, his hair messy on the pillow and obscuring one closed eye, but I watch the other. Watch his lid shift as he dreams, watch his forehead go from smooth to creased and back again.

And I have to touch him.

I don’t want to wake either of them, but I need to be in the fold.

I shift slowly and gently until I close the inch wide gap between my body and his, starting with just a knee touch, and when he doesn’t wake, I slip my arm over his chest to rest on Gem’s back where she curls tightly behind him.Ainsley stirs and shifts, his legs opening as he rolls half onto his belly, trapping my leg between his own. I slide deeper into the position until my chest just barely grazes his as we breathe together.I can’t tell if he’s still asleep or just pretending.

I feel it on my thigh first. The hardening of his dick. His hips shift just enough to press the tip into my leg and then pull back until it’s just a phantom, leaving me wondering if I actually felt it.

When he presses forward again, he’s harder, and I press back against him. There’s a definite shift in his breathing pattern, but not enough to convince me he’s awake. Throwing caution to the wind, I tighten my arm that’s draped over the two of them, holding him a bit tighter, a bit closer. I tilt my head down to rest my forehead against his with the slightest touch.

He grinds against my leg again, harder. And again. My own cock is stirring, wondering what game we’re playing here, but I make no move to include myself.

Ainsley’s rock hard now, sliding the full length of himself against my thigh, only a thin sheet separating his skin from mine.I’m struck with worry that he is still asleep, or if he’s not, that he somehow mistook this limb for one of Gemma’s in our dark tangle.

“Ainsley, that’s me,” I breathe the words, sending them over the tiny gap between our faces so softly that only he could hear.He grinds against me harder, still not opening his eyes. Not giving any signal that he’s awake or that he heard me.