Page 39 of The Triangle

I stop kissing her and close my eyes. Drop my head a little and let myself enjoy it.

Alec’s mouth takes my place on hers. He smells like… Alec. Which makes me smile. He smells like money. He smells like the past, and danger, and something exotically erotic.

Her other hand comes up and rests on mine, which is still tangled up in her thick mane of auburn hair. She slowly pries it away, the kiss she’s sharing with Alec more urgent, and she drags my hand down her body. For a brief moment it brushes against Alec’s hand, still gripping her tit with insistent need, and then she moves on. Down to her hips, to her thigh, and then she grips my hand and my cock with the same squeezing pressure and blows my mind.

But she’s not done. Because she moves on once again. Placing my palm against Alec’s hip. His thigh. Then his thick, hard cock pressing up against his stupid dress slacks.

I don’t know why I think about his clothes in this moment. I should be backing up. I should be shaking my head no. I should be coming up with all sorts of reasons why this won’t happen.

But I think about his clothes instead. How his broad shoulders fill in his button-down shirts. How he always looks so put together. How every time we have a problem he’s got the answer. Confidence. I think that’s what seeps out of Alec. The con man confidence.

She lets go of my hand and forces me to focus.

In? Or out?

Make a decision and commit.

So I do.

I don’t pull away. I lean in to them. Hating myself for letting them win, but loving the agony of defeat. And hating myself for that too.

Because I have already committed to Brasil. Because I chose a side too early. Because—it’s true. I will be the reason the world ends.

I will blow these two people apart like a goddamned bomb.

And I do it anyway.

I lean into their kiss and join in.

And even though I thought that first kiss was the true first kiss, it wasn’t.

This one is.

This is the moment it all begins.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN - ALEC

People have called me complicated.

I’m not.

The motor that drives me to do the things I do in my life is fueled by a simple source: Power.

I’d love to pretend that it’s more complex than that and that underneath it all I’m more sophisticated, but I ain’t. I just like getting the things I want, and I like knowing I can. And I feel like what separates me from all the other okes out there who try, and fail, is that I’m honest about it.

With myself anyway.

I was already getting hard before Danny and Christine got swept up in the heat of the moment. I was hard as I sat, watching them sleep. I didn’t know for certain that this would happen, but I had a fair suspicion. And the fact that I was right, and that it means that I’m responsible for making it so, fills me with as much energy as the heat of our bodies coming together.

I’m not the only one in this room who has wanted this for the last handful of years. I’m just the only one who’s been willing to do what’s necessary to make it happen.

My fingers twisting Christine’s nipples cause her to bite hard on my lip. Her neck twists harder so she can reach my mouth but not be pulled away from Danny. I gasp at the rush of pain and pleasure, a needy groan bounding out from deep in my lungs.

It’s actually only been a few weeks since we’ve been together like this. Christine and I, that is. But it’s been a lifetime since all three of us have been together. And never quite like this. Not for lack of desire, of course. The timing and the circumstance are not precisely how I foresaw this moment occurring, but that it is now is satisfactory enough for me.

I’m made even harder by feeling that I’m the one who orchestrated it. It’s because I chose to call Danny and convinced him to do as I asked that this is happening. And there’s nothing under the bright yellow sun that feels better than that. That knowledge that I win.

There is possibly only one thing that could soften the feeling of strength I have right here in the now of now. And unfortunately…