Page 10 of Party of Three

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Only when Jeff’s eyes met his was Mateo convinced the man was really there, standing within inches of his boyfriend, with whom he’d been exchanging tense and serious words a few seconds before. Intimate words. Like the two men shared a history he wasn’t aware of, which after yesterday’s kitchen session, seemed distinctly weird.

The look Jeff gave him distracted him from his paranoid suspicions. It was pure need, pure hunger. Mateo felt suddenly like he was back in that motel room in Pacific Beach, wishing his body and soul could bend to the full arc of submission the man had craved from him.

Then he was in Jeff’s arms and all he could think was,Buckley did this.

How else to explain it?

Was it a coincidence Jeff was at Sapphire Cove the night of his party?

Had Buckley spotted him and run over to him to keep him from leaving?

Seemed farfetched, and it didn’t explain the intensity of the way the two had been speaking to each other. Like co-conspirators.

“Surprise!” Buckley said.

He looked flushed and breathless andcaught. There was no other word for it. Maybe they’d been planning a more elegant reveal than this one. But this was the same spackling of color that graced his boyfriend’s skin whenever Mateo slowly, teasingly undressed him, when he kissed his thighs, when he fucked him with his fingers, tongue, heart, and soul. Somehow, Jeff had left the same pattern of blush on Buckley’s cheeks and the sides of his neck.

He should be weirded out at least, suspicious at most. Instead, Mateo felt a stirring in his balls and a deep hungry ache in his gut. He found himself looking between both men as if he was trying to decipher some small, molecular trace of the currents flowing between them.

Anger. Attraction. Secrecy.

Whatever they were, they made the back of his neck tingle.

Jeff reached for the valet ticket in Buckley’s hand, tugged it free, and pocketed it.

Why had Buckley been holding Jeff’s ticket?

Something had happened here, and instead of pissing him off, it excited him. The idea of Jeff helping himself to Buckley’s body—helping himself toanyman Mateo had claimed—made total and perfect sense, and his ease with the prospect left him breathless and dazed. Suddenly he was imagining the two of them fucking hard and fast in some hotel room upstairs. A fantasy that should have had him punching walls and turning over the planters nearby. Instead, he was rock hard in his briefs, the fantasy as potent and powerful as the one he and Buckley had brought to life in the kitchen the day before. And instead of being upset, he was hoping Jeff had emptied himself insideof Buckley with the same thundering bellow he’d let loose when Mateo had made him come with his hand.

He doubted any of it had actually happened. But did hewantit to be true? Was he so excited to see Jeff again that he was willing to hand over Buckley as a party favor?

Absolutely. If he could watch.

What the fuck? I’m not even drunk.

Quickly, Jeff said, “Your boyfriend here managed to track me down. I moved a few months ago.”

“You did?” Mateo asked Buckley.

“I did,” Buckley said, nodding. “He’s your birthday surprise. Just one of them.”

Jeff was a surprise. For Mateo! Even after what Mateo had revealed about their history to Buckley the day before.

Holy shit. Buckley got me a three-way for my birthday.

“Well, I can’t think of a better gift.” The words were out of his mouth before he could second-guess them. “Let’s go in.”

He curved an arm around Buckley’s back and then one around Jeff’s as he steered them into the lobby, his heart pounding in his chest, wondering if Buckley, the man who’d opened the door to so many of his fantasies, had set the stage for a more intense and dangerous one.

4

Jeff Braxton was a man who liked to come prepared.

Nothing had prepared him for Buckley Mitchell, not even the intel collection he’d done before deciding to accept the invite. In the photos he’d found, Mateo’s boyfriend looked like a precious cupid—baby cheeks, curly blond hair, and big blue eyes that radiated innocence. He’d expected beatific smiles and batting eyelashes as a result—a submissive pretty boy who could make Mateo happy in ways Jeff couldn’t, a fact that twisted Jeff’s heart into knots he didn’t want the world to see.

Man up, he’d told himself. Say good-bye before you lose Mateo forever.

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