Fail Seven Times Read online

  Contents

  Title

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  What's Next?

  Bits and Bobs

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Fail Seven Times

  Kris Ripper

  Chapter One

  WHAT THE FUCK is happening right now?

  Let me tell you a few things that, until now, I’d’ve said should never happen to yours truly.

  1) Being naked. With a woman. This makes no sense.

  2) Being kissed. By my best friend. This makes…okay. Full disclosure: I’ve basically been in love with him since I learned what made my dick hard. But I’d actually never thought about kissing him, and now that we are, my brain might explode.

  3) Did I mention there’s a woman in the room? What’s worse: I actually like her. A lot. I sort of even love her, in that way that you love people who piss you off and drive you nuts and also happen to be your best friend’s awesome girlfriend.

  5) And the worst part of all? How fucking right this feels. Me, them, this.

  Fuck. Just fuck.

  * * *

  This happened once before. We were drunk. I don’t remember much of it, except that vaginas are actually pretty cool, and clits are even better. Then I didn’t talk to them for two months. Because it’s a really spectacularly terrible idea to have sex with your best friends, especially if you are in fact in love with one or both of them.

  In the spirit of helpfulness, since at least one of us should learn from past mistakes, I thought I’d tell them that. The part about it being a dumb thing to do, not the part about maybe being in love with them, because they would definitely take that the wrong way.

  Jamie McGowan is half-County Cork, half-California. You can hear it when she talks sometimes, especially if she’s standing in front of you in a bra and you’ve just said something ill-advised like, “This is a really bad idea.”

  “Oh, is it, lad? Please feel free to share.” She put her hands on her hips, where a scrap of lace seemed to be holding a triangle of black satin over a part of her I’d never even imagined I’d be in a position to see up close.

  I’m gay. As in I like cock. As in I’ve never looked at a woman in my life with even an ounce of curiosity. Except Jamie, but that’s not my fault.

  It’s Alexander’s.

  “Jame, back off.” He turned toward me, taking half a step closer. “Jus…”

  Since I have always been a blithering idiot when it comes to Alex, I stood my ground and tried to win a staring contest he didn’t realize we were playing.

  But then I was looking at him, and gazing at my best friend makes me a fool. I wanted to brush out his eternally tangled blond hair, or force him into something other than a black polo or a damn T-shirt. Or possibly stare into those god forsaken baby blues like they could grant me sweetness by association.

  Or, right now, kiss him again, because I could still taste the salty smooth flavor of him on my lips.

  “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” Alex said.

  Jamie and I traded rolled eyes.

  “If idiot features didn’t want to have sex with us, this wouldn’t be a problem.” She narrowed her eyes at me, and I’m not into women as a rule, but Jamie was tall, with a strong jaw, and hazel eyes that looked right through into my brain.

  Where yeah, I wasn’t exactly trying to work out how to let them down gently.

  Alex sighed. “Why don’t we sit down for a minute.”

  Yeah, not so much. “Why’d you kiss me?”

  His eyelashes fluttered. Did I mention his eyelashes? Movie star long, and they give his expressions this sort of…butterfly grace, this sensitivity beyond normal people. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “I’m not complaining.” I bit back the sharpness in my voice. It’s cruel to attack sweet, pretty things. “But last time, we didn’t kiss. It just surprised me. Anyway.”

  Jamie finally dropped her hands from her hips. “We were drunk and stupid last time. Sit down, Jus. And for fuck’s bloody sake, why don’t you let us in, for once in your life? I thought it’d be different this time. You started it. You told us you were going to try something new.”

  “I said maybe, after you forced me to go to that stupid workshop where everyone wanted relationships, I’d pause my currently satisfying smorgasbord of randoms for a few weeks.” Actually, I’d been under the influence of lovey-dovey coupled people, and others who wanted to be lovey-dovey coupled people, and I might have said…more than that. Possibly.

  “You said you might be open to romance. As in with us.” A wide gesture encompassing Alex and the room. “Behold: romance.”

  “I don’t see any rose petals.”

  She growled, grabbed me by the arm, and force marched me to the bed—their bed—where we sat beside one another, legs pressed together, her arm through mine.

  She was the only one who touched me. Casually. My mother had never been touchy. Alex and I had spent most of our lives together, and while that meant I didn’t have a problem taking a leak while he was in the shower, we didn’t hug or cuddle or whatever else it was that people did.

  Jamie didn’t do that stuff with other people. Only with us. I flushed as I considered it. Maybe I’d taken it as casual, but it hadn’t been.

  She gestured again. “Alex, sit.”

  “You’re so fucking bossy,” I grumbled.

  “Like that doesn’t turn you on.”

  I snapped my mouth shut and definitely didn’t look at Alex.

  He sat on the floor in front of us. Someone else might have dragged over the armchair, but not him.

  We’d made it to underwear before I lost my nerve. I had on gray boxer briefs. Alex had on thin boxers with ladybugs. Nearly all of his printed clothes included bugs. He’d been obsessed with insects since he was a little kid, could reel off all kinds of bizarre bug facts. Usually didn’t, unless he was nervous.

  It probably wouldn’t help much, but what the hell. “Tell me about a bug.”

  His lips curled up, like a paper thrown on a fire just before it turned to ash. “Aphids are sometimes called ant cows. They secrete a substance referred to as ‘honeydew’ from the anus and have a symbiotic relationship with certain ants in which the ants provide them with services and receive the honeydew in exchange.”

  I could only blink at him for a long moment. “Did you just…tell us a story about interspecies anal play?”

  “And how long have you been saving that one?” Jamie added.

  “So long. Like years. I was saving it for a special occasion.” Then he kind of glanced down and away, pink lighting up his cheeks. “Which it sort of seemed like this was going to be. I don’t know.”

  “I just need a drink.
Or four. Then we can resume our—”

  The elbow to my gut wasn’t exactly a shock, but I didn’t make it easy on myself, I didn’t fold over and take the impact. I more…embraced the wrongness of being hit. Which felt kind of right.

  Though clearly not to Jamie. “Jesus, Justin.” She tugged me against her. “You’re not supposed to let me hurt you. Except when you ask me to, which by the way, is a thing.”

  I surveyed our states of undress. “What the hell do you think we’re doing right now?”

  “God, you are impossible. Alex, your man’s impossible.”

  That sweet smile again, because Alex was a terrible, unforgivable romantic, and he thought all of this was somehow auspicious, us sitting here in our underwear.

  I groaned. “I despise you both.”

  “Oh, if only you did.” She kissed the side of my face. “You’re not allowed to drink this time. Last time I lost out on fucking you for years after that. This time, own your shit.”

  “I hardly remember it,” I lied.

  Jamie only laughed. “Boy, I’m not that forgettable.”

  I am unerringly attracted to smart, self-assured men, often arrogant bastards, but always with the same brand of confidence: I’m not that forgettable. And in truth, a lot of them weren’t altogether memorable, fading faster than the marks I asked them to leave on my skin.

  But Jamie had been intense and nervy, pushing me past all the lines I’d drawn in my head around sex and power. I’d gotten off more times than I could count in the last three years at the memory of her hand in Alex’s hair, guiding him on my dick. Some of that was the picture of his lips, spit slick, wrapped around me, but some of it was the rough way she handled him. The rough way she handled both of us.

  I’d gotten wasted one night long after that and dared ask him if that’s how she always was in bed. He’d shaken his head, suddenly hopeful, and replied that she’d done that for me. Which was so terrifying I had to go out and find someone to fuck me hard enough to feel it for days.

  I buried my head in my hands. “This is a horrible idea. We can’t do this. It’ll ruin fucking everything.”

  “What everything?” Alex asked.

  “Everything. Any illusion that I can just…that I can be…that anything can go back to normal. It was one thing when we were drunk. No one’s responsible for that. But now…we can’t.”

  Jamie’s fingers trailed down my spine. “You let me seduce you last time with the promise of Alex’s mouth.”

  I held myself rigid because the alternative was pushing into her, leaning into her, which I wanted so badly I could fucking taste it.

  “You said…a few days ago…” Alex shifted closer. I could feel him in the air, hear him on the floor. The gentle wing beat of his presence. “You said you wanted to try something. With us. Again.”

  “That’s before your tyrannical woman outlawed liquor.” A joke between Jamie and I, referring to the other as Alex’s. When Alex was the least possessive person I’d ever known. I’d been more possessive of him in grade school than he’d…ever be of me.

  “You can’t blame me for playing the odds, pet. Last time we were drunk and you avoided us for two months after. If my goal was just to fuck a cute, aging misanthrope, I could pick up half the hipsters in Berkeley.”

  I picked up my head. “Aging? And did you seriously just call me a hipster?”

  “I called you a misanthrope.” Her knuckles brushed across my jaw. “I thought I could do this again, just like we did last time. But I don’t know, maybe I was a better actor then.”

  “Cork…”

  “Last time I wanted this for Alex. Not for me. And you wanted Alex, not me.”

  If I could have denied it, I would have.

  “But now…it’s different between you and I, isn’t it, Jus?”

  She was softening. I could feel it. “Just let me have a drink, Cork, c’mon. Please. That would make everything easier.” I was begging. I hadn’t meant to be begging.

  A flutter of fingers on my shin. “I want both of you. I always did.” Then, oh god, warmth, a spot of warmth on the side of my knee. Then another, slightly higher.

  I wanted to run like hell. I wanted to jerk my skin away so Alex would stop kissing up my thigh. I wanted to hide in Jamie’s hair and pretend I was somewhere else.

  Part of me, a horrible part of me, wanted to run my own fingers into his hair and gaze down at him, glow in the warmth of his attention like a goddamn firefly.

  He kissed my skin again. “I dream about you sometimes. About what we did. Can’t we do it again? Please?”

  I broke on the word and pulled him up to his knees, leaning forward to kiss him, to take him, and he was all compliance beneath my lips. Alex still had virtually the same body he’d had as a teenager: broad shoulders, strong arms, soft through the middle, very little body hair, about which he used to be self-conscious. I wanted all of him and all at once.

  Jamie’s hands slid up the back of my head as she murmured encouragement.

  The bitch of it, the unrelenting bitch of it, was how good he felt, how good he smelled up close like this, how goddamn good her nails felt as they dragged across my scalp.

  Jamie McGowan, who was my favorite person to one-up when it came to kinky misadventures. Who knew what I liked because I’d never bothered to hide it.

  She tugged my head back, insistently without being too harsh or trying too hard, and Alex knelt in closer, between my legs, kissing down my neck, my chest. I could barely breathe and shut my eyes, trying to block out visuals, still overwhelmed by the feel of both of them around me.

  Then she shifted, swinging one leg behind me and scooting in until her breasts pushed into my back. She shimmied back there and I couldn’t help giggling, because it was ridiculous, and Alex had stopped to watch, and I was trapped between them, which I hated. Which was perfect.

  “You guys are jerks,” she muttered, finally settling down. This time she hooked her legs around mine, and I was shaking my head even before she added, “I’m your restraint, and you can get up and leave at any time.”

  “Fuck you.”

  She pulled my legs open wider, which was lewd and hot and humiliating, because my dick was hard, and Alex was right there, and Jamie was definitely getting off on forcing me to stay like that.

  It felt like force, even though she didn’t have the strength to overpower me. I felt pinned in place like a moth under glass, maybe more by Alex’s gaze than by Cork’s impressively muscular legs.

  I craned my neck back, holding it tense so she wouldn’t think I was doing anything so foolhardy as resting it against her. “You must work out.”

  “Shh. Look at himself. He’s got The Face happening right now.”

  The Face, phrase in common usage to denote a specific form of glassy-eyed contemplation achieved by Alex Tierney when his brain has taken him so far into a moment that he forgets to actually live it.

  Her left hand came around me and traced up my jockeys-covered dick with agonizing slowness. “A-lex,” she sang. “Wake up, honey.”

  And there: Alex blinked and he was back with us. Now even more riveted on my crotch. “Oh my god. Jame.”

  “Tell Justin about your fantasy.”

  His fantasy? I needed to pay attention right now, even though most of my brain cells were devoted to not trying to hump up into Jamie’s hand. I had to be cool, dammit. The less I engaged, the easier it would be to get back to normal when this stupid momentary indulgence faded away.

  Alex was blushing deeply. “Oh jeez, um.” He laid his head down on my thigh, above where she’d hooked her feet. Damn close to my dick. He laid his head down like that was my shoulder. A perfectly acceptable motion from a bashful man ordered to share a fantasy.

  “You don’t have to.” Wait, was that me? Did I really just fucking say that? Except that was my hand brushing through his hair, and his lashes beating against my skin and I could probably keep breathing just as long as I didn’t explode.

  “No,
it’s…um. Just. I tried really hard to memorize you. Last time. Because I was…a little worried you wouldn’t let me do it again? And the, um…the way I…um…remembered…” He turned his face all the way inward, pressing his eyes against me. “I used to pretend Jamie was showing you off. Like you were sort of…her plaything. To show off.”

  “My pet, collar and all.” Her hand left my dick (bereft) and slid up my chest, pausing to pinch a nipple. “I know Alex’s memory of your cock far better than my own memory. How about you let us see how well he did?”

  I made my voice dry. “I’m in a somewhat inconvenient position for that at the moment. Don’t know if you noticed.”

  “I guess scissors are out of the question? I’m afraid if I let you loose, you’ll run.”

  Protesting would have been ludicrous. Running was the only thing that made sense.

  “Although…I have a thought.” Jamie’s tone was suspicious as hell.

  Alex kissed my thigh again before looking up. “Yes. If it gets Jus’s undies off, then yes.”

  Undies. File that under words no one over age ten says with a straight face, except Alex.

  “Oh, it does, and he’s not going to like it, so it should be perfect.”

  “Fuck y—”

  Jamie’s hand in my mouth didn’t taste bad. She’d washed them not long ago, so they were clean, but not right before pulling her clothes off, so her palm didn’t taste like soap. I’ll have to write a complimentary letter to the management.

  “Shh, pet, use your ears, not your voice. I’m gonna guide you back and hold your hands down. Alex is going to pull these bad boys off.”

  I was so fucking glad I couldn’t see her eyes, that she couldn’t see mine, see how fucking hot that picture was, and how excruciating. At their mercy. Between them. Both of them with more agency, more control.

  I couldn’t help shuddering and her arm tightened around me. Comfort and security, even as she stole away my ability to argue. Or maybe it was my inclination to argue. Which was worse.

  Clever one, our Cork. So clever I wanted to curl up and hide from them, like one of those bugs that rolls into a ball. Alex would know what it was called, but the amateur entomologist thing never actually rubbed off on me.