Compliance Page 5

  Just as Curtis began singing his country’s national anthem.

  Seriously, there was no fucking use. With the way Bethany’s tongue rasped against the underside of his cock, with the way she kneaded his balls and sucked on his dick, he’d be lucky to make it to the second fucking line.

  “God, Curtis, you’re a bad singer.”

  Logan’s chuckled declaration stole the next line of lyrics from his mind. Or maybe it was the way Bethany smoothed her palm beneath his sac and pressed her finger to the puckered hole of his anus.

  He hissed in a breath, struggling to find the words of “Advance Australia Fair” as hot liquid pleasure flooded his cock. Staring at Logan, he hiccupped out the line about golden soil and wealth for toil, burying his fingers in Bethany’s hair as he did so.

  Fuck, her mouth…her tongue…

  Logan stared at her lips sliding up and down Curtis’s length. His jaw bunched. His nostrils flared.

  Bethany nipped at the tip of Curtis’s cock with her teeth, causing the next line of the national anthem to fall from his lips as hitching and choked as the previous.

  With another chuckle, Logan shook his head. “Yeah, like you’re going to last to the end of the first verse.”

  He moved then. Toward Bethany. Releasing his belt as he did so.

  Curtis watched him, his heartbeat rapid, any hope of singing stolen from him.

  Bethany continued to work his cock with her mouth, the rhythm of her tongue and lips echoing the pulsing pressure of her finger on his arse. He bit back a groan, and another one as the tip of her finger penetrated the tight ring of his entry.

  “Fuck,” he burst out, slamming his hips forward.

  “Don’t you mean, ‘Our lands abound in nature’s gifts’?” Logan murmured, slipping his belt from the loops of his jeans.

  “‘In beauty rich and rare…’” Curtis stammered the next line of “Advance Australia Fair”. Jesus, what was Bethany doing? His whole lower body thrummed with charged energy and strung pleasure.

  “‘In history’s page’,” Logan joined in, his voice deep and melodic, his lips curling as he smoothed a slow palm over the curve of Bethany’s backside. “‘Let every stage…’”

  Bethany sucked her way up Curtis’s length, scraping her teeth with gentle pressure on his flesh.

  Curtis stared at Logan, his head roaring, his groin throbbing. “‘Advance’,” he croaked. “‘Australia…’”

  Bethany plunged down to the root of his shaft, her mouth hot and tight, and dipped her finger into his anus again.

  “Fuck!” he burst out, bowing his spine as any hope of restraining his release shattered and he came.

  His seed erupted from him, pumping into Bethany’s mouth.

  She took it all, milking him of his orgasm, her finger teasing his back entry, her palm massaging his balls.

  “‘Fair’,” Logan crooned the last word of the last line of the first verse of the national anthem just as Bethany withdrew her mouth from Curtis’s cock with a fierce sucking pop and turned to face him.

  “My turn,” he murmured, looping his belt around her hips and yanking her to his body.

  He crushed her lips with his mouth, and as Curtis watched, Logan made love to her mouth with his. He nipped at her lips, bit them, nibbled on them. He cupped her face with a firm hand, his long fingers splayed over Bethany’s cheek.

  Curtis stared, enrapt by the undeniable vision of a man utterly lost to a woman.

  Stared and watched and felt a wave of sheer joy and broken hope crash over him.

  There was no denying it. Not at all.

  They may be participating in a threesome, but for Bethany and Logan…

  His friend smoothed his hand from her face, down over her breast. Curtis followed the path of Logan’s fingers, fingers more used to flying over the keys of a laptop than a woman’s curves. The sight of Logan’s hand skimming the side swell of Bethany’s breast with incredible reverence sent fresh heat into Curtis’s spent cock.

  As did the raw moan that escaped Bethany as Logan slowly lowered himself to his knees at her feet and slipped his tongue between her thighs.

  She raked her fingers through his hair, head back, eyes closed. “L-Logan,” she whispered his name, swaying on her feet a little. “I was…I was meant to be giving…”

  Logan pulled his head from the curve of her sex, smoothing his hand in an arc over her belly, up her ribs to her breasts and back to her belly again. “You are, babe,” he murmured, smiling up at her. “Trust me, you are.”

  He kissed the spot below her navel.

  And again, the sight of such open desire stirred Curtis on a deep, soul-clenching level.

  Clearing his throat, he shuffled his feet and turned away. “Just gonna let you guys—”

  “No.” Logan’s steady voice halted his retreat. He looked back at his friend, a tight lump filling his throat.

  Both Logan and Bethany regarded him. Logan with the kind of smile Curtis recognized, the kind that said Logan knew Curtis was trying to wimp out on doing his homework. Bethany with eyes fogged by desire and passion and excitement.

  “Don’t go,” she said, holding out a hand to him. “I want to feel you against me as the nerd here makes me…ow!”

  She pouted down at Logan, whose sharp smack to her naked butt still hung in the air. “Hey. What was that for? ’Cause I called you a nerd?”

  Logan chuckled. “No. I wanted to let the jock here see what he was going to miss if he left.” He smacked her butt again.

  And as much as Curtis knew he should leave, he couldn’t.

  Instead, he crossed to where Logan kneeled at Bethany’s feet and joined them.

  Again.

  He pressed his chest, his belly, his groin to her back, her butt, and held her, his face buried to the side of neck, his hands massaging her breasts, as Logan made her come once more with his tongue and teeth and mouth.

  Chapter 4

  Lying on her back on Logan’s living room floor, utterly spent and drained and gloriously happy, Bethany let her gaze wander over the white ceiling as she attempted to catch her breath.

  Holy hell, she’d never had a guy go down on her with such masterful skill or intent. Once again, Logan had made her come three times. And when he was finished making her come, Curtis had done the same, propelling her to a bone-melting climax with his fingers that tore a wordless scream from her she was positive the whole of Sydney Harbour heard. At the very least, Logan’s neighbours must have felt the ten-point-five-on-the-Richter-scale quakes that rocked her to the core as the orgasms claimed her.

  It was only by sheer willpower and wanton greed that she was capable of exerting enough energy to reach for Logan’s still-zipped fly. When he removed her hand with a shake of his head and a low chuckle, it was all she could do to whimper out a protest.

  “Later,” he murmured, before brushing the knuckles of his hand down the line of her jaw and walking away.

  “Where are you going?” she asked, all too aware of the plaintive note in the question.

  “Going to grab us all something to eat,” he threw over his shoulder as he plucked his glasses from the coffee table. “We need sustenance and someone—I won’t mention any names—didn’t deliver on cooking us dinner.”

  “Hey!” she protested with a grin, watching him leave the room.

  “Don’t argue,” Curtis chuckled, waving his hand about with weary exhaustion from where he lay, eyes closed, stretched flat on his back on the floor. “I definitely need a minute or two to catch my breath before we continue.”

  Bethany nudged his ribs with her foot—finally devoid of her stilettos. “I thought you sport stars were meant to be super fit?”

  Curtis snorted, dropping his hand to his stomach and scratching at his six-pack with languid effort. “I’m a retired sport star. Now I’m just super…” He patted his sublimely sculpted abs. “Pudgy.”

  Laughing, Bethany stretched out beside him, determined to not examine the madness whirling th
rough her head as they waited for Logan to return with whatever constituted sustenance in his book.

  She lay on her back, her heartbeat still rapid, her breath still shallow, her stare jumping over the stark-white ceiling as she tried not to accept the fact she was completely in love with Logan.

  “I’ve never seen this side of Logan before, ya know.”

  At Curtis’s low murmur, Bethany’s heart thumped faster. Rolling her head on the lush carpeted floor, she turned her attention to his profile. “What side it that? The dominating sex-god side?”

  He nodded. “That, and the confident side. He’s a bloody genius with more money than God and more business clout than just about every billionaire in the country, but most of the time he’s still trapped in the school yard, facing down ridicule and contempt and bullying.” His Adam’s apple slid up and down his throat before he turned to regard her with a wry smile. “You bring out a confidence in him I’ve been trying to get him to believe in for over two decades.”

  Bethany’s belly clenched. Her pulse tripped over itself. Rolling onto her side, she propped her head up with her palm and studied him. “I’ve been wanting to ask about you two. You’re so different. How did you become friends?”

  Curtis chortled. “What? A nerd and a jock just can’t be friends?”

  She gave him a pointed look. “It’s not the norm, no matter what the movies of today are trying to tell us. So tell me, what’s the story?”

  A tormented tension pulled at Curtis’s eyes and he returned his gaze to the ceiling. “Back in high school, I was a walking talking cliché, awesome at sport, lousy at school work. When I was fourteen, I was selected to play on the state cricket team. I lived for cricket. It’s been my one true love since I was a kid. By the time I turned fifteen, I was the captain of the team and already being courted by the national team’s manager. Not the junior national team, but the big guns. The professional team. The team that plays in the Ashes. Everything I wanted in life was unfurling before me and I couldn’t be happier. Except for the fact I was failing school.” He let out a dry snort. “And by failing school, I mean I was last in every class except PE. Mum and Dad came down hard on me. So did the coach of the state team. If I didn’t pass at least the core subjects—English, science and maths—I was off the team. I didn’t want to be off the team, but my brain didn’t want to come to the party.”

  “And Logan what? Tutored you?”

  Curtis laughed. “Logan found me one afternoon sitting on the steps of the music block, slowly tearing up my maths workbook. I’m ashamed to say I had tears in my eyes. I’d been aware of him before that. It was hard not to be aware of the school target when you go to an all-boys’ school renown for churning out Olympic gold-medal winners, Grand-slammers and more than one English-league pro-soccer player. Logan didn’t do sports. He could have. Even at fourteen, I could see that, and I was pretty much the most self-absorbed kid there. He was tall and rangy and fast when he needed to be. And fuck, did he have to be fast often. I saw him fleeing more than once from the rugby league players, but until that afternoon, he’d been little but a blip on the edge of my radar. Someone to pity and laugh at.”

  He stopped, giving Bethany a quick glance. “I’m not proud of that, by the way. But I’ll own it. Until Logan took notice of me, I was a prick.”

  Bethany frowned, finding it hard to imagine Curtis anything but the relaxed charmer he was. She found it damn near impossible to imagine him as anything but wonderful to Logan. “What did he do? When he found you crying?”

  “He sat down beside me, took the book from my hand, closed it and whacked me on the head with it.”

  Bethany couldn’t help herself. She burst out laughing. “He what?”

  Curtis chuckled, grinning at her. “There was a reason the rugby-league guys had it out for him. Back then, Logan didn’t really have much of a filter when it came to pointing out how dumb people were. Most of the time, his sarcasm was too intelligent for those around him, but when the penny did drop…yeah, he copped quite a few canings in those first few years of school. I figure that day, seeing me destroying something he deemed of paramount importance, pushed him over the edge. He resorted to the very kind of attack he spent most of his days trying to avoid. He hit me with my maths workbook, told me to suck it up and if I wanted to stay on the cricket team to come to his house that afternoon. How he knew I was on the verge of being booted from the team, I still don’t know.”

  Bethany narrowed her eyes. The scene Curtis was painting made her tummy knot. Kids were cruel and mean. She knew that firsthand. To this day, she remembered all too well the jibes and bullying insults her brother had been subjected to about his undeclared homosexuality. Those insults and attacks had contributed to Lance never coming out. To him committing suicide before his twenty-first birthday. “Why did he want to help you?” she asked, trying to put herself in Logan’s shoes. “Was it a tradeoff for your protection at school?”

  Curtis shrugged. “If it was, he never asked and I never offered. But I don’t think it was. By this stage in Logan’s life, he’d already resigned himself to his social status. No, I think he just wanted to help me. In case you haven’t noticed, he’s a genuinely nice guy.”

  A heavy pressure wrapped Bethany’s chest and she swallowed. She had noticed. Had been noticing for fourteen wonderful days, in fact.

  Shifting on her side a little, she watched Curtis study the ceiling. Her heart raced. A horde of butterflies cavorted in her belly. It was so very easy to picture him and Logan together, sitting at a desk in some generic school setting, both with their heads bent over a book, Logan walking Curtis through the equations and numerical problems math teachers tortured students with on a daily basis. So easy to see Logan grow proud of Curtis as he became more adept at working said problems and equations out.

  So easy to see Curtis’s opinion of the nerd transform to one of respect and, ultimately, friendship.

  “And that’s why you’re so close now?” she asked. “Because he helped you with your school work? So you could stay on the cricket team, thereby becoming the captain of the Australian team when you grew up?”

  He shook his head. “No. Because he taught me how to understand and do it myself. Because he didn’t judge me and never spoke down to me. And by being in his company, I grew to be less of a wanker.”

  Rolling his head to face her, he drew a slow breath. “At least that’s why I love him the way I do now. Ask Logan why we’re so close and he’ll probably tell you a different story.”

  Bethany frowned. “Which would be?”

  “That I saved his life.”

  The tight pressure wrapping around Bethany’s chest constricted. “Literally or figuratively?”

  Curtis let out another breath. “Literally.”

  “Fuck.” The curse fell from Bethany on a whispered sigh.

  A haunted pain twisted Curtis’s face. “Two years after we became friends, a new kid started at our school. His folks were stupidly rich and powerful. Very influential in Australian politics and business. He was already a national swimming star, representing the country at international junior events. He came from a school where the student body worshipped him. By the time he started at our school, Logan was less the target of the morons and more the brainiac to be revered. I’m not stupid enough to deny us being friends didn’t help. It did. The other kids left him alone. And then this fuck-knuckle arrived, sussed out the situation and the hierarchy and decided to elevate himself to top dog by beating the cricket captain’s nerd best friend to a bloody pulp.”

  Bethany’s stomach rolled. “Jesus.”

  “I was still in class talking to my science teacher about the upcoming state cricket finals when he started. By the time I walked out of the room, five other students were running for me. I arrived at the scene, pushed my way through a crowd of screaming students just as the bastard was about to smash his fist into Logan’s nose.” He paused, swiping his palm over his mouth. Bethany couldn’t miss how much his
hand shook. “After,” he went on, his voice a flat note of contain rage, “already fracturing Logan’s cheekbone and eye socket.”

  She stared at Curtis. Pictured Logan beaten and bloody. Pictured him broken on the ground. She felt sick.

  Curtis let out an emotionless snort. “I was suspended from school for a week and had to step down from the state cricket team for the rest of the season for what I did to that new kid. To this day, I don’t regret it.”

  The churning tension in Bethany’s belly flared to a tight heat. She caught her bottom lip with her teeth, studying Curtis. Undone by his words and the sheer acceptance in them.

  He rolled his head again, giving her a lopsided smile, a hint of his dimple creasing his cheek. “Logan makes me a better man, Beth. Has done since we were fifteen. If ever the term bromance applied to two hetrosexual guys, it’s to us. I love the bastard like he’s my own brother. Even more, to be honest. My own brother is a bit of a git. And it tears me apart every damn day that deep down inside, Logan still considers himself a lowly social outcast. Despite his phenomenal success and intelligence and status, despite his money and influence in the technology and business world, Logan will always view himself as the nerd who never gets the girl.”

  He paused once again, his smile widening, his eyes shining with an emotion Bethany couldn’t decipher. “Until you came along, my American friend. And it doesn’t take a genius to see he’s got you.”

  Bethany sucked in a swift breath, her stare locked on Curtis’s face.

  “And for that,” he whispered, “I will cherish you forever.”

  And before she could say a word, he rolled onto his side and brushed his lips over hers.

  Two instant and conflicting emotions crashed through Logan at the sight of Curtis kissing Bethany.

  Arousal. Carnal, base arousal. An arousal so potent it was as if his entire body had been injected with concentrated pleasure.

  And jealously. Elemental, primitive jealousy. The kind that sank into his gut and stole his breath.