Anything but Ordinary. Madelynne Ellis
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christened in some way, along with most of his kitchen utensils. Ric liked to be inventive, and Zach liked to hug walls and shag in doorways. As for her, she was just happy to get her mitts on two such genuinely gorgeous guys. Everything else was just set dressing.
‘Kara, stop,’ Chris said, sticking his hand in the way of her closing the suitcase. ‘This isn’t what I expected to come back to. Look, I don’t like it, but you’re a grown woman. It’s not like I can force you to break it off.’
‘I’m glad you realise that. I’m still going. I refused to move back to Mum’s after I broke it off with Gavin because I wasn’t interested in being emotionally mind-fucked, hence I’m not going to stay here and take it from you. I don’t care what you think, Chris, your assumptions are all wrong. It’s stable between Ric, Zach and me. It’s secure, and very, very real. It’s not a fling, or some sort of rebound. It’s absolutely what I want and the fact your moral compass says it’s wrong is not going to mean it ends.’
‘OK. I hear you,’ he replied around an enormous baying yawn.
Kara guessed it was the best response she could hope for under the circumstances. She dragged her luggage off the bed and waved Chris towards the pillows. He looked about ready to drop, and even if she was contemplating kicking him, she still cared enough about him to look after him.
‘Get in, before you fall over. You can tell me about New Zealand in the morning.’
‘I thought you were leaving,’ he said, while kicking off his shoes.
‘I am. You can tell me before I go.’
Chris pulled off his shirt and draped it over the footboard. ‘Wake me. Don’t just leave.’
Kara shook her head, then turned away, leaving her possessions stacked beside Ric’s tripod.
‘Just go to sleep.’
She tramped back downstairs, and then stretched her legs by walking a little way along the clifftop. The tide was out in the cove, which left a large semicircle of soft white sand below, but the glow of the sun was no longer on the water, so that it was a dull slate-grey, instead of the blue it had been earlier. She watched the foam lap at the shore and tried to find some peace there.
Something had obviously happened in New Zealand, something that had turned a perfectly reasonable human being into an idiot. She supposed she ought to try and find out what, just not right at this minute. She needed to think about her own situation first.
Moving into the fort might not actually be as straightforward as she’d like. Zach wouldn’t be an issue, but Ric…
Her muscles pulled tight, making her belly ache. Ric could be…
Well, he might actually say no.
Not because she was a crutch as Chris suggested, but because he was funny about people encroaching on his space. It had taken a near tragedy for him to agree to Zach moving in. Her current circumstances weren’t nearly as dramatic.
‘There’s no point fretting all night about it,’ she told herself, making the decision to return to the barn. ‘You’ll just have to see what tomorrow brings.’
Ric’s studio occupied the entire top floor of the fort he called home. There were no dividers in the vault-like room, which had an arched ceiling and only one narrow window, set too high to look from. There wasn’t even a door onto the narrow stairwell. Seating was minimal, other than a small area of squishy leather beanbags, and a couple of spindly prop-type chairs. Lighting was another matter: there were more options than the average regional theatre stage, though only a couple of lamps burned at the moment.
The rest of the space was devoted to photography in the form of screens and cameras, a centrally positioned workstation with state-of-the-art computer editing software and a whole rack of filters and lenses. There was no artwork displayed on any of the walls. Instead, the perimeter was stacked, in some places nine deep, with framed prints. All of them positioned with their backs facing outwards, as if Ric couldn’t bear to look at the art he’d created.
‘Do I need to go and dunk my head in a sink, or are you going to spritz me with water?’ Zach asked, as he positioned himself under the two glowing spotlights.
Ric barely looked up from the camera he was fitting a lens to. ‘I don’t want you wet.’
‘This isn’t for the collection?’
‘It’s for me.’
OK, that wasn’t what they’d agreed outside, but Zach was prepared to roll with it. Likely enough, it would be more fun. Strutting about and posing for publicly displayed material was one thing – a cool thing even – but doing it for his lover’s private collection tickled Zach on an altogether deeper level.
‘Just tell me what you want and I’m game.’
The remark earned him a glance from under Ric’s brows, and the faintest of terse smiles, but no definitive answer. That was unusual; normally Ric barked instructions at him. Another thing that stood out as different from normal was the chug Ric took from a bottle of ice-white liquid that definitely wasn’t water. He dried his lips on the back of his hand and set it aside before pattering forwards barefoot.
Neither of them had bothered to change clothes, so Ric was still wandering around with a broken fly, and Zach was feeling the chill.
‘Where do you want me? Do I just stand here?’
‘Yeah.’
Ric raised the camera and put Zach at the centre of its viewfinder. The mechanical device whirred and clicked as he took static shot after shot. Zach remained poised, ready to perform in whatever way Ric required him to. Sometimes he wanted a show, needed to see movement. Other times, he demanded repose, or subtler gestures. Tonight, he remained uncharacteristically quiet, which could only mean that he wasn’t certain what direction he wanted to explore yet.
Zach’s heart thudded as he waited. Ric might not know where this needed to go, but he did. He didn’t actually want to be at the centre of a camera’s eye, but he hoped one thing would inevitably result in another. Let Ric demand he get sexy. Let his lover work himself into a frenzy while he created his art, and then let him explore the need that heated the air between them. Once they’d ridden one another hard, the worry about Chris North would be reduced to insignificance and forgotten.
He cast a sly glance over his lover’s form. Ric’s jeans hung off his hips, so low now, due to his constant motion and the force of gravity, that they were barely hanging on. Zach knew a blush was streaking across his cheeks when Ric zoomed in on his expression, yet he still couldn’t avert his gaze from Ric’s cock poking obscenely between his busted fly. He wanted to plant his lips against the silky trail of golden hair that marked the centre of Ric’s abs and widened across the top of his groin. He wanted Ric’s cock in his mouth, and to trace his tongue down Ric’s shaft and keep going. Suck his balls. Tease the stretch of skin between them and his arse. There weren’t pictures enough of the two of them fucking.
‘What do you want, Ric?’ he asked, his voice husky because of the sudden tightness in his throat. ‘Do you need me to touch you?’
His lover shook his head.
‘Touch yourself. Show me what you need.’
What he needed was Ric’s hands on him, his lips, his passion lapping at him, swaddling him, fingers making bruises on his skin because the grip was over-tight. Zach needed to know that he was special, and that this wasn’t all some gigantic lie.
He’d been allowed to move in. They’d made an exclusive commitment to one another – and to Kara – which he’d never expected to get, but there were times when it was like living in a bubble. Everything was shiny and smooth, but one wrong touch and pop, it would all