Critical mistake. The worst move? Allowing the alcohol and his dick to form the committee that made his decisions. Yeah, epic fail there. After that, everything went to shit.
Suddenly, Deke bounced beside him on the sofa. Tyler blinked, returning to the present as the last four seconds of the basketball game ticked down.
Just before the buzzer, one player made a killer three-point shot, and Deke rose to his feet with a fist pump. “Yeah, the Mavs won!”
“Nice.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “I should ‘go to bed’ now.”
Deke’s demeanor changed instantly, becoming all business. “I’ll, um . . . let myself out the door.”
“Want a pillow or blanket?” Tyler whispered.
“Nah. I’ll be fine for a few hours.”
Plenty of time for Del to flee. She couldn’t wait to leave him and throw herself into danger. Damn it.
“Good night. Thanks for the playpen, man,” he called out for Del’s benefit.
The front door opened, closed. Ten silent seconds later, Deke returned to the family room and settled on the sofa. With a nod in his buddy’s direction, Tyler headed to his bedroom, stripped down, and slipped between the sheets.
As he lay in the dark, he tucked his hands behind his head. The day washed over him. He had a son. Ten fingers, ten toes. So perfect. So life altering. A precious baby boy who’d need a father to teach him to play catch, learn right from wrong, help him become a good man—something his own father hadn’t stuck around long enough to do. Tyler’s eagerness to embrace fatherhood surprised him; he’d never thought much about kids . . . but he already loved that little boy, would lay down his life to keep Seth safe.
But thinking of the child led Tyler too easily back to the night he’d been conceived.
His mind drifting back to that unseasonably hot evening in Los Angeles two years ago, he recalled the instant the mood in the room had changed from drunk and jovial . . . to sexually supercharged.
“You’re lucky, dude,” Eric intoned. “I miss f**king. Nothing like sinking balls deep into a tight, wet cunt. I’d kill to have that again.”
“Hey!” Del slapped him on the shoulder.
“With you, of course, babe,” he hastily added. “Hell, I’d even settle for watching.”
Suddenly, Eric raised a brow at Del, then slid a stare back at him, a slow smile spreading across his dark face.
Tyler feared he knew what the next words out of his friend’s mouth would be. “No.”
But as the thought of taking Del to bed entered Tyler’s head, lightning streaked through him, shocking, unrelenting. Fuck if his c**k didn’t get hard at the mere thought—and not just slightly. In seconds, he’d gone from zero to dick of steel pressing insistently and painfully against his zipper.
“C’mon,” Eric cajoled, his words not as sharp as his stare. “For me. I’m dyin’ here. Help a guy out. I need to remember what it’s like to really f**k a woman. I need something to look forward to.”
On the chair across from him, Del leaned forward, bracing her forearms on her knees. Tyler could see straight down her tank top, to the barely there white lace bra. The overhead lights clearly illuminated her fair, slightly peachy-toned cle**age and the rosy brown of her ni**les through the lace.
He hadn’t thought it was possible, but he got harder. Tyler’s gaze crawled up to Del’s face, to her rosy, bee-stung lips, to her sultry, slightly unfocused blue eyes with their thickly fringed lashes. She blinked, met his stare, her own questioning.
How would her kiss taste? Would she orgasm with her eyes closed and a moan? Or with her gaze wide and surprised, screaming for the man who’d delivered it? He’d wondered more than once over the years. And as the questions rolled through his mind again, Tyler swallowed down a hot ball of lust. It settled south, making the throbbing of his c**k like an insistent, nagging ache. Del was his best friend’s wife, and with every one of these thoughts, he sank deeper into a thick cesspool of guilt. But now that Eric had planted the possibility of being Del’s lover in his head, Tyler wondered how the f**k he was going to keep his hands off her?
He just would. Eric was like a brother . . . who’d had enough booze to be a few sandwiches shy of a picnic. Sober, he’d know this was a really f**king bad idea.
“Are you asking Tyler to sleep with me?” Del’s voice slurred just a hint. She looked adorably confused. “You want me to have sex with your best friend?”
This was his cue to get up and leave, even though his dick really wanted to stay and party.
Before he could find his feet, Eric hammered his point home. “I’m asking him to be our middleman, Del. But it will be like you’re with me, like it’s my c**k sinking into you, like me making you come.”
She nodded, then frowned. “But won’t that be . . . cheating? Won’t you be hurt?”
“No, babe. You’re not sneaking behind my back. I’ll be right here, and I’ll feel like you’re with me.” He grabbed her hands, then sent Tyler a pleading glance. “I might not ever be with her again. You’re the only way I have to experience that. The only one I trust.”
Tyler sucked in a shuddering breath. “Dude, she doesn’t sound okay with it, and I won’t do this against her will.”