Page 26 of Once Upon a Dream
The idea of him needing saving from a bedroom full of agreeable ballerinas was ludicrous and almost pulled a smile onto his face. But not quite. He was still too preoccupied with Tamsin, despite the whispers and sighs of the waiting dancers around them.
“But I’m worried about you needing to stop,” he told her quietly. “I’m worried abo
ut you.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Is this some kind of male thing where you think I won’t get anything out of this? Or that my feelings will be hurt by seeing you fuck someone else?”
“No to the first,” Cal answered. “And yes to the second. I know you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t think you’d get something out of this, but I would feel selfish if I agreed. Selfish and unthinking. I don’t want to be that around you.”
She ran her palm along his length, up and down, up and down, until he could hardly breathe. “This is fun for me,” she said finally. “I like this. What I get out of it is the same thing I got out of last night. My feelings are only going to be hurt if you stop us from enjoying something we both want—just to be noble.”
Noble. That was a word he hadn’t used to describe himself in a very long time. Maybe ever. “Dammit, Tamsin, I’m not trying to be noble,” he said, as if his rock-hard cock left any doubt about that. “I just want you to still like me after the night is over.”
“Oh Cal,” Tamsin murmured. She pulled away to look at him, and the loss of her touch on his dick had him nearly gnawing at his lip in agony. “I already so much more than like you.”
Jesus. Her words bit him where he was vulnerable.
“Take a leap and trust me,” she continued, still looking up into his eyes. “Join me in my dream.”
It felt like that was all he’d ever wanted to do since the day he was born. He wrapped his hands around her jaw and pulled her face close to his. “Okay,” he whispered. And then he kissed her, trying to pour every last feeling and fledgling hope into his kiss, so that she knew that she’d somehow become the most important person in his life over the course of a week. He couldn’t tell her that, he couldn’t act on it, he felt guilty even hoping around it. You didn’t watch a girl through a camera lens and fall in love, you didn’t play blackmail games with her and like it, you didn’t fuck a girl once and wish for more unless you knew she wanted it too.
And yet.
He’d been kissing Tamsin so thoroughly and so deeply that he hadn’t been aware of the other dancers inching closer until a hand brushed against his back. And another hand. And another. Too many hands. His entire body sang with hunger, but the knot in his chest necessitated that he refuse to respond. Instead he murmured against Tamsin’s lips, “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Trust me,” she said.
And he took a deep breath and joined her in her dream.
The first thing that happened was the kiss to his shoulder. He turned to see one of the ballerinas—Latinx, dark-eyed, Nina was her name—smiling up at him. It had been so long since he’d fucked a woman before Tamsin, and now the idea of fucking several women at once was almost laughable. Like he’d actually tripped and fallen into fairyland for real.
Tamsin stepped forward and took his hand, pressing it hard against Nina’s small breast with its dark, erect nipple. “Don’t be shy,” Tamsin said to Cal. “We all want this. Do you?”
He did. Whichever that made him, man or monster, he wanted it.
Tamsin kissed him again, her tongue teasing at his lower lip until he opened to her, and then, with his hand still on Nina’s breast, he slid his other hand around Tamsin’s waist and pulled her tight against him.
“I want you close,” he said against her mouth. “You be here with me, do it with me. Got it?”
She nodded, and he gave her a final rough kiss before he turned his attention to Nina. She purred as he thumbed her nipple and then lowered his mouth to her neck. She tasted different than Tamsin, who was all rose and delicacy. Nina was lavender, elegant, more grown-up smelling somehow, even though Tamsin was the oldest.
More like a woman.
And just as the thought breached his mind and sent a surge of blood to his already painful dick, hands were under his T-shirt, sliding warm and searching over the scars on his back, over the hair-dusted ridges of his belly.
“Off, off, off,” a few of them chanted, pulling the cotton up over his head. He allowed this, allowed the giggling exploration of his back and chest after, the coos when they reached his scars, the oohs when they traced his muscles.
“With me,” he told Tamsin, taking her hand and putting it to Nina’s other breast, so that the two of them mirrored each other. A large bronze hand and a small white one, both flat against Nina’s barely-there chest, both kneading and massaging and pressing. Nina moaned, her head lolling to the side, and Tamsin looked fascinated by the contrast and symmetry.
“With me,” he repeated, and then bent to Nina’s neck. Tamsin bent to the other side, and together they bit and licked until Nina was moaning against them. He guided Tamsin’s hand down to where the naked ballerina was wet and waiting, and together he and Tamsin explored Nina’s most secret place, rubbing her until she whimpered.
“You’re hogging him,” Ellie complained from somewhere beside him, and there was a resounding chorus of agreement. Before he could object—or indeed, even really understand what was happening—he was pushed and herded towards the large bed in the center of the room, herded with hands and shoulders and sighs. And then pushed so that he fell onto his back, an amused smile tugging at his mouth. It was like being attacked by a cluster of butterflies.
But he kept Tamsin close to him, so that she lay next to him on the bed, nestled against his side. He wanted this and he wanted her, and he didn’t know how else to show her that he’d meant what he’d said. There wasn’t a fucking Emily Post book about what to do in this situation.
The dancers came over them like a cloud. He found himself kissing a pretty black woman named Daneice, pulling her on top of him so that Tamsin could embrace her just as easily. The three of them shared a searing kiss, messy and breathy and wet, while hands started tugging at his belt. He hadn’t felt someone else’s hands on his belt since before his divorce, and for a minute he had to stop everything and just feel it. The novelty of being wanted as much he wanted in return. The now-unfamiliar feeling of different fingers fumbling on the buckle, yanking the leather through the loops. The slide of different skin under the waistband of his boxers. The grip of a different hand around his erection.
He groaned into Daneice’s neck as an eager hand stroked him.
