Elemental Pleasure Page 6

  Lance pulled out and dropped to his knees on the floor, replacing his cock with his mouth. Preston’s fingers and Lance’s tongue danced over her clit and she screamed. Then Preston kissed her, while both of his hands stroked her oversensitive nipples.

  She wasn’t sure if it was the same unending orgasm or if they had pushed her to a third climax, but Carly shook hard, her body succumbing to the glorious agony once more. She reached out, needing something to ground her, to hold her together lest she splinter into a million tiny pieces. Her hands grasped at Lance’s head and Preston’s shoulder.

  When she had nothing more to give, her body went limp.

  They drew her to the center of the mattress, and then lay down beside her, protecting her, caging her with their big, warm bodies. Carly was empty, exhausted. Wrapped in their arms, she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  *****

  Carly woke at five a.m. the next day.

  She was smashed between Lance’s back and Preston’s front. It was so hot she was almost sweaty, despite the fact there were no sheets or blankets over them.

  Carly slid down the bed and tiptoed out of Preston’s room. By the time she crossed the central suite to her room, she was shaking.

  She closed and locked the door. Leaning against the cool wood, she almost slid to the floor. It was only an act of sheer will that allowed her to keep her footing and make her way to the bathroom and the shower. She turned the dial to scalding and got in, letting the hot water beat down on her.

  The first sob caught her by surprise. Carly braced her hands on the wall and leaned forward so the jets hit the back of her head.

  She cried until she was empty, until she was no longer shaking.

  Stumbling from the shower, she pulled on her clothes and sat on the side of the bed.

  What was she going to do?

  Last night was the best sex of her life and that was the problem.

  She’d lost herself. She wasn’t the kind of woman who let men—or anyone, for that matter—make decisions for her. They’d manipulated her, using her desire, her needs, against her. They’d treated her like she was a sex toy they were fighting over and then decided to share, and she’d let them do it.

  She didn’t mind the sex. It was amazing and she’d willingly do all of it again. No, the problem wasn’t that. It was the way they’d acted. They hadn’t treated her like a partner. They’d treated her like a glorified blow-up doll.

  She told them she didn’t want to be put in between the two of them, and yet that’s exactly what had happened.

  And she’d done nothing to stop them.

  Carly wasn’t sure she if she was more angry with them or with herself, but she was furious. And terrified she’d let them do it all again.

  She had to leave.

  She didn’t care what power the Trinity Masters had, she wouldn’t be a part of this. The sex was good and Lance and Preston were hot, but she wouldn’t be some mindless fuck toy they used to manipulate each other…and her.

  Pushing to her feet, she grimaced as her abused muscles protested. Carly placed her suitcase on the bed and threw in her clothes. She tucked her cell phone in her pocket and put her hands-free set on her ear. Using voice command, she dialed the airline, changing her plane reservations as she finished packing.

  Ready to go, she paused. As angry as she was, it felt wrong to walk away without saying anything, so she dashed off a note on the hotel stationery, apologizing for her necessary departure. Then she opened the door as quietly as she could, placed the note on the bar and left.

  ~~~~

  Chapter Six

  Lance folded his arms, his jaw clenched. He’d woken up next to Preston, which had been more than a little disconcerting, and discovered Carly missing. They’d gone looking for her, only to find a note saying she had returned to California and that she couldn’t be a part of their trinity.

  “You scared her,” Lance said, eyes on Preston as the other man read the letter once more.

  “I think we both did.”

  Lance snorted.

  Preston put the letter down and pinned him with a calm, dark gaze. “You’ve made it abundantly clear you don’t want to be a part of this relationship.”

  Lance opened his mouth, but shook his head. That wasn’t really true, but he didn’t know how to explain the anger that had come when he’d felt like he was losing control.

  “Perhaps you need to be reminded what you took on when you joined the Trinity Masters.”

  “I know the rules and I know I’d be dead without them.”

  That seemed to take Preston by surprise. “Dead?”

  “I joined while I was in college. A girl in the Marines got me involved. I—” Lance shifted his weight from foot to foot. “I have trouble following orders if I don’t understand them.”

  Preston tipped his head to the side and considered Lance. “I assume that’s not a valued trait in a Marine.”

  “No. It’s not. But the Trinity Masters stepped in. I was an officer going in, but if not for their influence; I would have been out with a team, stomping through the desert. They made sure my skills were put to better use.”

  “And what are your skills?”

  “Math.”

  Preston blinked, a slow grin spreading across his face. “You’re a mathematician?”

  “Yes. For DARPA.”

  His brows rose. “Damn if I’m not impressed.”

  Lance looked away, not entirely comfortable with the praise.

  “If you’re good with numbers, I have a financial report back in California that could use some translating.”

  “Unless you need a massive mathematical simulation run on it, that’s a bit below my pay grade.”

  “Of course. I was only joking.”

  There was a moment of silence, but this one was less tense than previous ones.

  “Is that why you were so resistant?” Preston asked. “It was an order you weren’t sure if you should follow?”

  That was close to the truth, and Lance nodded, relieved he wouldn’t have to try to explain himself.

  “What do you do?” Lance was suddenly curious as to who and what Preston was. Of the three of them, only Preston seemed totally comfortable with the fact he’d just been bound to two people he’d never met.

  “Well, most relevant to our current state of affairs, I’m a Trinity Masters legacy.”

  “A what?”

  Lance sat on the couch, listening as Preston explained that his parents, all three of them, were members of the Trinity Masters. He found himself admiring Preston’s poise. His first impression of the other man had convinced him Preston was calculating, controlling, cold. Now, Lance could see he’d been mistaken. Preston was smart—seriously smart—and confident. He knew how to handle things in an efficient way Lance couldn’t.

  “Do you want to go get a drink?” Preston asked.

  “Yeah.” Lance went to his room and grabbed a coat. When he came back, he asked, “What are we going to do about Carly?”

  Lance realized he was deferring to Preston the way he would to a superior officer. As soon as the thought shot through his brain, Lance relaxed. He shouldn’t have been surprised. In the heat of the moment last night, they’d worked well together. Preston had a better understanding of what was expected of them, what the potential traps were and how to negotiate a successful outcome. As far as Lance was concerned, that meant Preston needed to take the lead.

  “Let’s talk about that over a drink.”

  Nodding, Lance followed him out of the suite.

  *****

  Carly lay back in the tub. She had aromatherapy bath salts in the water, calming candles burning all around and cello music playing.

  Despite that, her mind was whirling, shifting between angry, sad, confused and aroused.

  In short, she had no idea how she felt. By the time she landed in San Francisco, she’d been ashamed of herself for running, yet certain she had made the right choice. She needed to get away fro
m Lance and Preston to ground herself. When she had run from Boston, she’d seriously been ready to back out of the deal, to disobey the laws of the Trinity Masters and refuse the partners the Grand Master had picked for her, but she couldn’t do it.

  She would lose everything.

  That price was too high. As tumultuous as their encounter had been, it wasn’t worth giving up everything. Her best hope was to ask the Grand Master for a new match, to make it clear she wasn’t disobeying, but that she was trying to keep herself sane. She couldn’t go through the rest of her life being treated like a sex toy they’d decided to share. She had a company to run, an entire industry to pioneer. Her value as a computer programmer and an innovator must be high enough that he would find her other partners rather than risk her falling apart.

  The thought was bittersweet. She refused to participate in a relationship where Lance and Preston were at each other’s throats all the time. Well, except, of course, when they were fucking her. Once they’d agreed to share, they seemed to get along just fine. It had been she who’d had a problem with what was happening, a problem she’d done nothing about, said nothing about, because she’d been too turned on to think straight.

  It was amazing the stupid things people would do for the sake of pleasure. All Carly had to do was read the news—or the gossip blogs—to know terrible decisions were made every day for the sake of lust. Labeling it love didn’t make it any more legitimate. While she might have thought she was above that, yesterday made it clear she wasn’t.

  She sighed in regret. If things were different, if they would agree to treat her like an equal in the bedroom as well as outside it, Carly would be the luckiest woman on earth. She certainly couldn’t have asked for two hotter, sexier men.

  The image of Lance between her legs, his cock sliding in and out as Preston touched her made her dip her hand under the water. Pressing her knees against the sides of the tub, she opened her thighs and pushed her fingers into her sex. She was roused by the memory of it, and with a few quick strokes, she came, whispering their names in the silence of her mind.

  When her heartbeat slowed, she rose from the tub. The orgasm had done more to calm her than the candles or music. Toweling off, she vowed to put the men out of her mind. She was going back to work tomorrow. Somehow she would get in touch with the Grand Master to make her request.

  Until then, she had the memory of their hands and mouths—and a vibrator—to get her through.

  *****

  Carly slipped her headphones off, letting them dangle around her neck like a stethoscope. Like a doctor, she’d been diagnosing, but in this case, it was the most technologically advanced RPG on the market, not a person.

  Nexus Six had taken the world by storm, as players bored with games that could be beaten with walkthroughs, and whose interactive features mostly centered on character customizations, flocked to her game. No two players, and no two games, were ever the same.

  Nexus Six was in the middle of beta-testing the next version of their signature game, End Times, which would elevate it to a new level. They were taking the ever-changing world they’d created and adding multi-player features. Solo players loved the complexity of End Times, but those who loved MMORPG—massive multiplayer online role play games like World of Warcraft—wanted the multi-player features. It was no small feat to create a game in which multiple people could have input, while simultaneously having it react in unique ways. The story department constantly had to come up with new starting points—quests, missions and events—that launched the game. They created the stories and dialogue that were fed into the program, creating the base layers, and once the game was live, it learned from other players, taking their decisions, actions, and even their dialogue—whether spoken or keyed in—and added it to the program’s memory banks.

  It meant Nexus Six had server rooms that rivaled those of Google, a massive programming team, and an even bigger troubleshooting department, who responded to reported issues and jumped in and out of games to see how the program was working.

  At the center of, and in charge of all that was Carly.

  “We’re going to need to split the input,” Charles, one of her team, said.

  “I don’t want to split it.” Carly pushed herself out of the beanbag she’d been sitting in. The testing room looked like a kid’s dream room with a massive HD projector, couches and beanbags, and small tables loaded with gaming equipment and computers. “What if we have it aggregate the player input, then treat that as a single input for the next trigger?”

  Charles nodded. “We might need to randomize it, otherwise groups might find a way to manipulate the game, if they know it’s an aggregate.”

  “And you know they would.” Carly picked up her laptop. “That sounds good.”

  “I’ll do a first pass.”

  “Send it to me when you’re done.”

  Charles saluted her. “Aye, aye, Capitan.”

  Carly smiled and left the testing room. As she walked to her office, she nodded to everyone. She knew most of their names, but Nexus Six had grown. She was always both horrified and delighted it had reached the point where it was big enough that she didn’t know everyone.

  Shelly, Carly’s executive secretary, sat at a glass and steel round desk in the center of a bright atrium. Carly, the CFO and the COO all had offices off the atrium. Framed copies of their ads and box covers lined the curved walls.

  “Carly, we might have a problem,” Shelly said.

  “What?”

  “Security has two men downstairs. They said they’re here to meet with you, but they’re not on your schedule. I checked and you’ve never met with either of them before. Security let them up because they’ve got solid credentials. Dave said he didn’t want to turn them away in case they were here for something not on the schedule.”

  Two men.

  “What are their names?”

  “Preston Kim and Lance Glassco.”

  “Let me see.”

  Shelly turned her computer monitor around. The feed from the lobby security camera showed Preston lounging on a couch, staring at his phone, while Lance stood, one hand clasping the opposite wrist behind his back as he examined some of the framed articles and photos on the wall.

  “Send them up.”

  Shelly’s brows rose. “Really?”

  “Yes. I…met them in Boston. I might bring them on as consultants.”

  Shelly nodded, and Carly breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t owe Shelly an explanation, but she hadn’t been able to stop herself.

  “Let me know when security gets them up here.”

  What she had to say to them was going to be said in private.

  *****

  Lance glanced around, taking in everything, as a security guard led them to Carly.

  This was her company?

  He needed to re-evaluate his understanding of her. Preston had explained what he knew about her over drinks. Lance wasn’t a fan of story-based games, as he preferred things with patterns and clear ways to win, but he’d heard of Nexus Six.

  He hadn’t fully understood exactly how important the games she made were, or how important she was, until Preston pulled up articles about her and her company on his phone. According to Preston, she’d revolutionized modern gaming and developed an entirely new kind of technology.

  The company had offices with security to rival a military base. It had taken them an hour just to get onto the grounds, and they’d only managed that because they’d both handed over their business cards. The guard had been willing to let someone from DARPA and a fancy scientist onto the property. They’d been passed through two different vehicle checkpoints, then a buzz-in front door, before making it to the lobby, where they heard the guard calling to check on them.

  He’d been sure they’d be turned away there, that Carly would have security escort them out, but instead a guard was now leading them deeper into the building. The space was bright and colorful, and unlike any offices he’d ever seen, with
toys and comfy furniture everywhere.

  “Here you are,” the security guard said, opening the door into a round room.

  A large skylight illuminated the space, and a pretty woman sitting inside a round glass desk looked up when they stepped in.

  “Preston Kim, Lance Glassco?”

  “Yes,” Preston answered.

  “Just a moment and Ms. Kenan will be with you. Can I get you anything? Coffee, tea, juice, or water?”

  “Water,” Lance said, more curious about how she got out of the desk than he was thirsty.

  The woman rose and pressed both hands down on one section of the desk. It popped down, then slid sideways. She walked over to a shiny black cabinet, then brought him a cold bottle of water before returning to her desk.

  Lance shook his head. People liked to say that DARPA had some of the best toys and most advanced technology on the planet, but clearly the private sector had better—and cooler—resources.

  They waited almost twenty minutes before the secretary lifted her head. “She’ll see you now.”

  The woman led them to one of the many doors in the wall of the round room. She opened it and motioned them in.

  Carly was there, though for a moment Lance didn’t recognize her. The woman who leaned against the desk was gorgeous, but in a completely different way from the ultra-feminine, polished woman he’d met in Boston.

  She wore dark jeans, riding low on her hips, and a tank top printed with the image of a pixilated video game character. Expensive headphones hung around her neck, the high-gloss white finish mirroring the gloss on her lips. Her hair was up in a simple ponytail that fell in soft waves down her back. She wore bracelets on both wrists, and they clacked as she unfolded her arms, bracing her palms on the edge of her glass desk.

  Lance positioned himself so he could see both her and the door. Now that he was here, he had no idea what to do or say. The woman standing before him radiated power and control. Either he hadn’t noticed that when they were in Boston, or he’d been too aroused to see much beyond the end of his dick.

  “Gentlemen.” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. She wasn’t happy to see them. Her eyes were wary and her posture was tight, on guard. Had they done this to her? Given her a reason to fear them? “What can I help you with?”