Even Better (Stripped #2.5) Read online

  Busted. “How did you know?”

  A giggle. “I can always tell. It’s the way he looks at you, like he’s imagining you naked. But not speculative. Like he’s remembering you naked.”

  I bury my face in my hands. “Oh man, I’m never living this down.”

  “Spill,” she says, all seriousness.

  “There was a moment, last night. It was really short. We had eaten dinner and each had a couple beers. Then I’m sitting in Blue’s lap and he’s touching me. West never touched me or did anything. He only…watched.”

  Candy looks impressed. “And here I thought you’d gone white picket fence, two-point-five kids on me.”

  “Not sure about the white-picket-fence part, at least,” I mutter.

  Her eyes widen. “Get the fuck out.”

  “Nothing’s happened yet,” I assure her. “But Blue is talking about it.”

  “Talk? That’s not how babies are made, Hannah. Has no one explained?”

  I roll my eyes. “We’re not trying yet. Not exactly. He wants to wait until we’re married.”

  Candy’s eyes narrow. We have jokingly called her the Man Whisperer because of her uncanny ability to know what they like—and subsequently coax them out of their money. But the truth is she is just a People Whisperer, man or woman, and she’s turning all her ability on me.

  “When will that be?” she asks, her face the picture of innocence.

  “Soon.”

  “Of course,” she says, her voice singsong again.

  “Oh for God’s sake, stop saying that. I am totally going to marry him. And we’re going to have a baby. And maybe a fence, though I’m not sure how that’s going to work in a condo. It’s just…”

  “It’s just that you’re afraid,” she says softly.

  I shut my eyes tight, against her words, against the truth. Against the sight of the Grand, the place I was desperate to escape, the place I now miss. “I’m afraid that he’s suddenly going to realize what I am, that I’m a stripper, and what is he doing marrying me?”

  “You’re not a stripper anymore.”

  “I’m not anything at all. The only thing I knew how to do was dance.” I can’t help the bitterness that creeps into my voice. I don’t mind what happened last night, as much as I mind that it’s all I’m good for. “And turn men on.”

  Her hand covers mine on the shiny bar top. “You do a lot more than that. Those hot military guys walk around with all their confidence and their swagger, but inside they’re hurting. You help soothe them. It’s a lot more than just their bodies. It’s nothing they could find within these walls, that’s for sure.”

  I hang my head, hoping that’s true. Hoping I provide some measure of comfort for them. Would that be enough, being a source of peace for other men? Being a balm? In some ways it’s all I’ve ever aspired to be, to take care of others—Mrs. Owens and the girls at the club. And Blue.

  And now West. He gives me a little wave from across the room.

  I’m blushing when I wave back. Because if I take care of West the same way I take care of Blue…our evenings are going to get a lot more interesting.

  Candy laughs, and I don’t really mind.

  She’s right—there isn’t enough smiling around here.

  I sigh. “Sometimes I miss working here. Is that crazy?”

  She gets this secret look on her face, half smug, half mystery. “Maybe one day you’ll come back.”

  Chapter Seven

  The first thing I see is the moon, framed by the windowpane and open curtain. Luminous gray casts the rest of the room in shadows, and I have to orient myself by touch alone. The cool cotton of the sheets and the warm weight of Blue’s arm.

  I don’t know what woke me up, but I lie very still. Even after all these years, there’s a part of me afraid of who might walk into my room. I lived in foster home after foster home, with random men and “brothers” who might visit me at night.

  My breathing speeds up, and Blue’s arm tightens around me.

  Even without waking, he’s attune to me, guarding me. I’m safe with him, and bit by bit I relax into his embrace. I still don’t know what woke me, but I know no one can touch me while he’s around.

  Then I hear it—a low keening sound. It doesn’t sound like it’s from a machine. It doesn’t quite seem human either. The hair on the back of my neck raises.

  “Blue,” I whisper.

  Alertness enters his body quickly, smoothly, the sleep draining right away. “What’s wrong?”

  I start to answer—I don’t know. I’m scared. But then the sound comes again, almost too low to notice. I can sense it more than I can hear it, and it makes my body clench tight. Blue is up and out of the bed in an instant, already leaving me behind.

  “Stay put,” he warns before slipping out the door.

  I hold my breath and clutch the sheets, waiting. God, what could have made that sound? It was almost like a wounded animal, but on the twelfth floor in a glass-walled condo, that isn’t likely.

  Blue can take care of himself, I remind myself when the silence threatens to choke me.

  Then I hear it, the low voices of Blue—and West. They’re speaking in serious tones, private tones, but I don’t detect the kind of urgency that an intruder would cause. I push the sheets back and creep toward the door. He told me to stay put, but I can’t sit in that bed for one more second, can’t wonder and wait after feeling the strange moans vibrate under my skin.

  The hallway is pitch-black, but the guest room is illuminated by the moon like the main bedroom. I stand at the door, a few feet behind where Blue is standing. Beyond him, West is sitting up in bed and rubbing his forehead.

  “Christ,” he mutters. “Sorry to wake you.”

  Blue shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it. Besides, after sleeping in the same bed with Hannah, I’m used to waking up several times a night.”

  “Hey,” I say before I can stop myself.

  He looks back and winks at me. “That’s what you get for eavesdropping.”

  I give him a small smile, still tense from before. “Just checking on you.”

  His expression softens, and he pulls me close. “Check away. We’re okay. He’s okay.”

  Except that West doesn’t look okay. I can’t see his face at all with the shadows, but his body language tells me he’s tense and frustrated and maybe even scared. “West?” I ask softly.

  His laugh is hard. “Okay is not the word I’d use to describe myself. I’ll move out tomorrow. Don’t worry. You won’t have to hear me again.”

  I flinch, though I’m glad he can’t see me do it. Too many years with angry men have left me wary. Even Blue has an intensity that is unnerving, a single-minded focus that breaks through my walls. I don’t like being vulnerable. But that’s something we have in common. West doesn’t like being vulnerable either.

  One step closer. Two.

  “I can’t help but worry,” I say, sitting on the edge of the bed. It feels like an invasion of his space. Even if I live here and West is a guest. Because this is his bed. More than that, this is a moment of weakness. He would rather be left alone, would prefer never to have woken us up.

  But turning my back on him now would be like turning my back on every soldier who had a bad dream. It would be like turning my back on Blue, and I can’t do that.

  Instead I reach for him, my hand a dark slash against the white sheet. I’m giving the option to reject me, and I wouldn’t be angry if he did.

  So it’s almost a surprise when he takes my hand.

  A surprise when a strong, hard man takes comfort from someone like me. I’m too soft to really support them, these soldiers, these warriors. I know that, but it seems to help anyway. Some of the tension leaves West’s soldiers.

  “Shit,” he sighs. “I thought it would stop once I left Fort Armstrong.”

  “Flashbacks?” I ask quietly.

  “Nothing as specific as that. Or if there are, I don’t remember them. I just wake up shaking and
sweating, my BP to the ceiling and copper in my mouth. Then I’m awake for the rest of the night, with nothing to do but lie here and think.”

  “That’s the worst,” Blue says, coming to stand by the bed, his hand on my shoulder.

  The men aren’t touching each other, but they’re both touching me. I’m the link between them, the comfort they struggle to offer each other. West’s hand is larger than mine, but it’s trembling. I squeeze, offering comfort, feeling the calluses—the general ones that cover his palm and the specific hills where skin rubbed against a part of a weapon. Blue has them too. Hours of practice and hours more of using the weapon in combat left their mark, as much a scar as knife and bullet wounds.

  West squeezes back, and I know we can’t leave him like this—to face the darkness and his demons alone. He might leave tomorrow, like he says he will, even if we reassure him it’s okay. And at some point, he might need to be alone.

  Not tonight.

  “Scoot over,” I say.

  I feel West’s surprise more than I see it. He doesn’t object though. He just scoots to the far side of the queen-sized guest bed, leaving plenty of space for myself—and for Blue.

  Glancing over my shoulder, I ask, “What’ll it be? Do you want to be the cream or a cookie?”

  He snorts. “What do you think?”

  Then he’s pushing me into the middle of the bed, climbing in after me. Of course he’s the hard outer shell. I’m the middle, the one sandwiched between them. My body recognizes the two muscled male bodies around me and responds with heat. Mostly, though, I feel both safe and protective. These two men would defend me against anything, but they need me to keep them company, to hold their hand through the long, dark nights.

  We drift asleep, held safe in each other’s arms.

  Chapter Eight

  The next night it feels almost inevitable to wake up, hearing that unearthly animal sound and drifting down the hall. I climb into the bed beside West, as if it’s the most natural thing on earth, Blue on my heels.

  West wakes up startled, half in his dream and half awake. “Shit. Again?”

  It’s a question that doesn’t need an answer. Probably it will happen for a long time, but while he’s here, he has us. I feel him struggle to regain control, his tension palpable.

  At least he isn’t pushing us away.

  Blue strokes my hair from behind while West holds my hand, playing with my fingers. It’s a strange sensation, being between two men. I still feel the tension in West’s body, but I know he’s trying to act normal.

  “You can talk about it,” I say softly. “It helps Blue.”

  Blue chuckles. “She’s telling the truth. Not sure about talking in general but something about this girl makes it okay.”

  He presses a kiss to the crown of my head, and I shiver. Some of the things he’s told me were violent, others just sad. All of it came from a deep well inside him, an experience I will never fully comprehend. All I can do is be here for him—sometimes by listening and other times by being a distraction.

  West is silent a moment. “Maybe I’ll take you up on that someday. Right now I’m too wired. I really just want to forget, to not think about it for half a second.”

  I understand that desire. That had been dancing onstage, the ability to forget, to transport myself into another body, one with power and confidence. During his darker memories, Blue sometimes needs to forget too. Of course, the way I usually distract him is with my body, and I can’t do that with West.

  As if his thoughts went the same place, Blue’s hand smooths along my hip and up my side, his fingers resting against the lower curve of my breasts. My breath catches. It’s one thing to be close to West with Blue nearby.

  Another thing entirely for me to be near West while Blue is touching me sexually.

  Blue’s voice is somehow casual. “Lots of ways to forget where you’ll be working.”

  The Grand, he means.

  “Yeah?” West still sounds strained. “Not sure I can trust myself with that. With a woman. Woke up one night with the mattress half off the bed frame and the lamp on the floor in pieces.”

  It’s my turn to tense up, imagining the scene. There have been plenty of broken things in my past, angry voices and fists. Blue’s hand tightens around me, reassuring me and marking me as his. “You want to leave?” he murmurs into my ear. “You can wait in bed until he’s chill.”

  He’s giving me an out. I can hop out of bed, give both these boys a breezy wave, and drift off into a dreamless sleep. I don’t have to face their demons. Blue won’t make me.

  Except I have demons of my own, ones I can’t quite shake, even here with him.

  Demons that make me question everything, that put my future at risk. How can I turn my back on West? And Blue? He may not even know what he’s really asking, what’s really at stake. Are you okay with this? Can he touch you?

  Will you be there for me too, when I’m sweating and panting from a nightmare?

  This is what Blue wants to know.

  I put my hand on West’s chest and feel the rapid thump of his heart. His words are still heavy in the air, wrapped around his body like chains. Not sure I can trust myself with that. “I trust you,” I tell him.

  Because it’s true. I do trust him. I know what cruel men are, how they feel and laugh and hurt. Blue tried to do that to me, because he hated me. He hated himself. But in the end, he failed—because what we shared was deeper than what pushed us apart.

  West’s dark gaze flickers from me to Blue. “Don’t let me fuck this up,” he mutters.

  What is this? Their friendship? My relationship with Blue?

  I don’t know, and I’m just as afraid. That’s what pricks me every day, the thorns to this beautiful rose. Don’t let me fuck this up.

  We wait with held breath, the room in silent stillness. Heat courses through my body, from Blue to West and back again. I can feel every hard line of Blue’s body, familiar and feared and beloved. He molds around me, defining me, becoming my edges, so I can let go and become something more.

  West is waiting for an answer, and I am too. How much am I worth to you? Do you love me enough to hold me tight? Do you trust me enough to share me too?

  Blue makes a low sound in his throat, a rumble through his whole body. He’s the sky, and his assent, it’s the incoming storm. “You and me,” he says to West. “We’re rock solid. Nothing can change that. And as for her…”

  I gasp as he squeezes my breast tight, and my hand fists against West’s chest.

  “She’s mine,” Blue finishes softly. “No one can take her away from me. Not even you.”

  West’s sigh sounds like defeat, and so it feels right when Blue pulls my tank top aside, revealing my breast to the night air. He’s the one directing this, controlling us, using one friend to help another. Though I’m not sure who’s helping who when West swears under his breath, his arousal a jolt to my own.

  I got something out of being watched onstage, something that’s missing. And while I don’t really want to go back, I’m not ready to go forward either. Maybe Blue knows that about me.

  He’s letting me be seen, be touched, and keeping me safe in the process.

  “Tell him you like this,” Blue says, and I shake my head. I can’t. It’s too much.

  Then his hand is smoothing down my stomach, slipping into my panties. I squirm as he thrusts his fingers between my folds, crude and possessive. “Tell him,” he warns, fingers dripping through wetness that already proves his point.

  Chapter Nine

  “Christ,” West mutters, brushing the backs of his fingers against my breast. “I’ve been dreaming of these since I saw them.”

  “I get to touch them every day,” Blue says, casually secure in his possession of me. That’s how they’re talking about me, like I’m a possession—a thing.

  “I know,” West says on a breath, and it doesn’t sound like envy. It sounds like awe.

  He cups my breast and runs his thumb over th
e tip. My nipple is already hard, and he pushes it back and forth, teasing me until I whimper. Blue has his hand in my pussy, sliding in and out with a leisure I find maddening. I rock my hips, demanding, desperate, and Blue huffs a laugh.

  “Want to come, beautiful?”

  I nod, frantic. He always makes me this hot, this fast, but it’s somehow worse now. As if the sex we’ve had since West got here, as if every moment since that first night in the dining room has been foreplay leading to this.

  West doesn’t laugh. He studies me from beneath heavy lids. “She always this needy?”

  “Always,” Blue says like a vow.

  “Fuck.”

  “Let’s get her warmed up.” Blue’s fingers find my clit with skilled ease, immediately hitting a rhythm that has me panting. I’m already warm, already burning up.

  West leans down and takes my nipple into his mouth, the suction a sweet ache.

  It’s too much, and I squirm away. Blue keeps me in place, his leg holding mine open, his fingers steady on my clit. “You don’t control this,” he whispers in my ear. “You can’t do anything but let it happen.”

  “Blue,” I moan. “I need… I need…”

  “I know, beautiful. I know exactly what you need.”

  And I think he does know. He knows how I need to be touched, how I need to be owned. He even knows how I need to be flaunted, desired by men other than him, bared both body and soul. He knows what I need, and he’s giving it to me—forcing me to take it.

  I plead and pray, my body strung tight, held like a live wire between two power sources. Just like that, I snap. My chest thrusts forward, begging for more force, more suction, and my hips grind onto Blue’s hand. They ride me through my climax, a fierce pressure that drives me higher and leaves me collapsed in their arms.

  As I lie there, replete, Blue licks my juices from his fingers.

  West tracks his movements with narrowed eyes. “Am I gonna have to beg?”

  Blue sounds amused. “Why, you hungry for something?”