Paranormal Dating Agency: Her Mane Men (Kindle Worlds Novella) Page 2

  “Not shock,” I disagreed.

  “Then, what?” Parker sounded much more concerned than Curtis looked.

  “Intrigued.” It was so much more than that, but that would work for the moment.

  “Intrigued. We can work with that.” Parker refilled all our glasses, although mine was the only one that needed it.

  “So, what now?” I had no idea what to do from here, but my gut told me to give it a go. My gut and the moisture drenching my panties, but that wasn’t the best way to make a decision.

  “Now we eat dinner.” Curtis waved as he called out, “Louis, we’re ready now.” To which the waiter showed up far quicker than I would’ve imagined, ready to give us the evening’s specials.

  Chapter Three

  Dinner was amazing. We agreed to set aside any talk of anything more than a nice night out with friends. Not that that kept my imagination at bay, but it kept the conversation away from the things I was so not ready to broach yet.

  I ordered the crab cakes, while both men had steaks, made all fancy by who knew what. We dined and chatted about their jobs and mine, about what kinds of movies we enjoyed, what our favorite colors were, and all the normal first date stuff. The best part was watching the two of them interact. They had an undeniable connection and complemented each other well.

  When it was time for dessert, I was stuffed to the gills but ordered anyway, trying to stretch out our time together.

  “Your berry meringue, ma’am.” Louis placed it in front of me along with my tea before giving Parker and Curtis their slices of pie. Steak and pie. We were at the fanciest place around, and they ate steak and pie. Part of me loved that. None of the pretentious truffle oil everything.

  “How’s your dessert?” Parker asked, looking at my untouched confection.

  “Truth?”

  “Always.” They both spoke at the same time, affirming the importance of that one simple statement. They wanted the truth. Always. I could give them that. Would there be more opportunity for me to do so? Things seemed to be going well, but that didn’t mean they wanted more time with me.

  “I only ordered dessert so our dinner wouldn’t be over.” I put my fork down, the pretense of eating no longer needed.

  “It doesn’t have to be.” Parker reached over, gently placing his hand on mine. There was no innuendo in his voice, his hand a chaste gesture, not that my body got that message.

  “It does, though. I have no idea how to process any of this, and with you guys both here being all interesting and sexy, I can’t think straight.” My words came out a mile a minute.

  “She called us sexy.” Parker squeezed my hand, his eyes never leaving Curtis.

  “That’s what you got out of her honest expression of her needs.”

  “Really, Curtis.”

  I bit my lip to avoid the smile of amusement attempting to break free as Parker spoke.

  “This isn’t a radio call-in show.”

  “And I did call you sexy.” I reached my hand over to Curtis’s side of the table, which he accepted readily as I winked. This was not me in so many ways, but, around them, it was, oddly enough. I didn’t feel like I was putting on a show or working my flirt, I was just having fun. It was nice.

  “Two peas. You two are two peas.” Parker’s smile grew as he shook his head in false disapproval. The playful banter came easily, but that was all this evening could be. At least, unless it was going to be more than one yummy meal, which I increasingly desired it to become.

  “Seriously, though, what do you want to do from here?” I held my breath as they looked to each other and back to me, their expressions telling me they viewed me as a scared kitten they were afraid would run up into a tree or into traffic to never be seen again.

  “I don’t want to leave it where you will let us know because I’m a selfish bastard and want to know we will see you again.” Curtis’s words shook me to my core. The raw honesty in them let his mask of composure slip for a moment, a side of him I ventured few had ever seen.

  “If we try to go further, is it I date you, and I date Curtis, and you two date each other?” I was past the point of you’ve got to be kidding me and the point of can this really be a thing for more than a roll in the hay, and was now into the how do the nuts and bolts of this work because, for whatever reason, I went from the girl who hates first dates almost as much as second dates to the girl who wants to make it work with two men.

  “Is that what you would want?”

  Is that what I want? That was such a loaded question. I could easily see myself dating either of these men, and my imagination already showed me them dating each other, but the idea of three separate relationships wasn’t very appealing.

  “I don’t think so.” Not that I knew where to go from there.

  “We’ve never had our third before, so this is as new to us as it is to you.”

  With the exception of his selfish bastard comment, Curtis appeared to choose his words carefully, so when he said, “our third,” it did things to me. Not even just lusty things, although they were surely there, but more than that. He had put me on an equal plane, not just by way of explaining things or proving a point, but naturally, as if it simply was.

  “You’ve never been with—” I snapped my mouth closed. No good could come of me knowing who they did and didn’t bed in the past. Unless it came time for the being safe talk, that had no place in this conversation. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.” Understatement. Of. The. Year. Which was weird given the fact that I knew they were together and no part of me minded that. In fact I quite enjoyed it.

  “We found each other just over two years ago and we’ve always been exclusive in that time,” Parker answered matter-of-factly as Curtis watched my every movement.

  “And now you’re what? Bored? And want a third?” I needed to shut up. The hurt that crossed Parker’s eyes before he schooled them was painful for me to witness, and even as I said the words, I knew the answer.

  “Does that sound right to you?” Curtis’s hand went under the table and, if I were a betting woman, straight to Parker’s thigh to give him the comfort I stole.

  “No, but nothing does.” Not that I didn’t think it could work, because that was the crazy part in all of this. I not only believed it could work, but that it was made to work. It was the mechanics that had me in a fluster. I barely dated one guy, much less two. Or was it dating a couple as in one entity?

  “We were never meant to be a couple, we always knew that. From the time we met, we felt as if we were part of a whole, a whole that was still not complete.” I let the intensity of what Curtis’s words implied seep into me. Never meant to be a couple. And yet they were. I could see it, more and more, as the night went on. They complemented each other and fit together in a way that shouted true love.

  “But you love each other.” It wasn’t a question; they did beyond measure. Which, in a way, was the crux of my confusion.

  “Of course.” Parker chuckled as he answered, finding amusement in my revelation for some reason.

  “And you get it on from time to time.” I raised my eyebrows a few times so as to leave no confusion to my meaning. Loving each other was one thing, but lust was an entirely different element in a relationship.

  “More often than that.” Dear sweet heaven, the porn reel started again. What was wrong with me? “But, yes, we have a normal coupledom in that way.” Parker’s words should have given me at least the faintest hint of jealousy, but, instead, it got my engines revving. I was so not going there tonight. Thinking. I had a lot of thinking to do, and it needed to be done without their sexy presence getting my body in a tizzy.

  “And you want a third.”

  “Yes,” they responded simultaneously.

  “Me?” This was a question because as much as they seemed to be all about me tonight, the self-conscious part of me worried I wasn’t what they were looking for.

  “Yes.” Firm. Strong. Honest. And, again, in unison. They. Wanted. Me.


  “But you just met me.” Not that it stopped me from wanting them.

  “And you feel it, too,” Parker stated.

  I nodded, barely, for he was right. I did feel it, too. I felt so many things, and not one of them made sense from a logical perspective.

  “Tell me I’m wrong,” Parker dared, knowing that I couldn’t and that sometimes words were needed, my nod less than a sufficient response.

  “I can’t.” The smiles the spread across their faces were everything in that moment. “But I’m scared.” And that was the harsh reality of it. I was intrepid when approaching a normal relationship, or at least as “normal” as any relationship could be. This was not only different, it felt like more, and that was dangerous territory for a heart as easily mushed as history said mine was.

  “Of us?”

  I shook my head furiously. Not them, never them, at least not in that way. Scared of being hurt emotionally, maybe, but they would never hurt me physically, of that I was sure. It was the reason I didn’t run away from the get go. They felt safe. They were safe.

  “Not exactly.” I squeezed their hands. “Of these feelings, like you are important even though we just met. And of the safety I felt with you from the moment I arrived, even though, let’s face it, any woman with half an ounce of sense would’ve run from that scenario unless they were in a sex club, where I’m sure you two would have them lining up.” I babbled my reassurance.

  “Is that something you’re into? Sex clubs, I mean.” Curtis’s face was unreadable as Parker looked as if he’d been punched in the groin just from the questions being asked aloud.

  “Heck to the no. I just read a lot. You?” I was 99 percent sure I knew the answer, but that 1 percent needed to know.

  “We don’t like to share,” Parker growled out. At first, I thought it was me he was angry at, but the gentle squeeze of his hand told me it was whatever his imagination conjured that had him in a roar. At least I wasn’t the only one with a creative mind that needed to pipe down.

  “But you want to share me.” At least that’s how I thought it was going to work. Two guys, one girl, meant sharing, right?

  “Yes.” Curtis tightened up as he spoke, the tension rolling off of him. He was carefully selecting his words, something I was not gifted at. “No.” His eyes fell. “It’s not like that.”

  “That make no sense.” I let my thoughts fly out without thinking, something I was gifted at, and immediately wanted to kick myself.

  “What he means is, we don’t want to share you with anyone else,” Parker clarified. And in a bizarre way, that sort of did make sense.

  “But you want to share me between the two of you.” Blush burned my cheeks as the sexual connotations of what I just said sank in. I was the crème of their man-sandwich. Or, at least sometimes. Yeah, the blush was burning hot in three point two seconds. “Forget I said that. It came out wrong.”

  They knew where my mind had gone—there was no way they missed it—but, being ever the gentlemen, they let it go.

  “More that you would be sharing yourself with us as we would be sharing ourselves with you.”

  Goodness let the waiter not still be standing at the door waiting for us to beckon. The sexiness oozing off Curtis’s words left no room for interpretation. None. We were 100 percent talking about sex now, even if no one was directly naming it. Weirdest first date ever. Also, the best.

  “At the same time, then.” Damn that sounded good. Because, apparently, they had turned me into a sex freak without any more than a maybe kiss on the top of my head. I never understood how people could jump in the sack with someone they just met until now. I was far too close to begging the two guys sitting with me to do just that with me.

  “I’d imagine so, but not always.”

  All the possibilities.

  “We should stop talking about this now.” Because I was so close to ruining all things by begging them to take me home—their home.

  “Because you are uncomfortable, or because you like it a bit too much?” The glint in Parker’s eye said he knew it was more of the latter.

  “Both.” I inhaled deeply, wanting to address the elephant in the room. Wanting was a bit of an exaggeration, but knowing the elephant would be ever present until I did, pushed me forward. “Answer me this. Why did you need a dating service? You are hot, smart, have good careers, and I’m sure there are many women who would be happy to be in a Parker and Curtis sandwich.”

  I did not just say that.

  “Is that—” Parker began before a knee hit the table just as he exclaimed, “Owww.”

  So, yes. Yes, I did say it.

  “What Parker was going to say before turning left to the gutter, was Gerri is known far and wide for finding people their perfect ma—match. That’s what we wanted. If we wanted a good time, I’m sure we could’ve found that easily enough, but we want more, and Gerri thinks you are more—I think you are more.”

  “We think you are more,” Parker corrected.

  “Why did you go to Gerri if not for the same reason?” Curtis queried, his eyes holding mine.

  “This is going to sound really lame, but my best friend gave me a gift certificate there for my birthday.” Lame was such an understatement. There they were looking for true love, and I was all, I had a coupon. “She was worried I was not putting myself out there enough since she moved, which is probably accurate. Roxanne found Barry though the agency and thought I might be as lucky.”

  “Roxy Johansen is your best friend?”

  How did Parker know her? Oh, Roxanne and I were gonna have words.

  “Yes?” It wasn’t even a question, but his connection to my best friend caught me off guard.

  “Barry’s the one who told us to go to Gerri in the first place. Almost two years ago, now.”

  Small world.

  “Ha, that’s when she started pestering me. How do you know him? Isn’t he from Maple Rivers?” The town he whisked my friend to on the other side of the country so she could be blissfully happy. Even I couldn’t be mad at that.

  “He is.” Curtis’s shoulders tensed again. He should never play poker, the way he gave his stress away. He’d never successfully bluff. “So are we.”

  Fuck a duck. Of course, they don’t live here because why make a complicated situation any easier.

  “You don’t live here?” Just in case my ears misheard, which they never did with the bad stuff because life doesn’t work that way.

  “No. Gerri told us to get our backsides here or forever be lonely and incomplete, so we did.” Because that made rational sense to no one in the world. Some person is all get your butt here for a blind date and off you go traveling the country. That was almost as crazy as—yeah me thinking two men are better than one, which was 100 percent the direction my mind had been going before the roadblock of them living most of a country away.

  “When do you need to go back?” I didn’t even pretend to hide my disappointment. At least I knew now and not after we—did stuff.

  “That depends on us.”

  “Us?” I asked Parker, needing to know which us he meant because, somehow, over the course of the night I agreed to be part of one, possibly three us’, depending on how you broke things down.

  “Yes, I can stay here as long as I want and work remotely. Curtis has never taken a day of leave, so he can stay pretty much as long as he wants too, and if we decide this works, we can move on from there.”

  “Meaning I move where you are?” Which didn’t sound awful. Since Roxanne left, it was pretty much me, and the once-a-month book club at work to keep me from being lonely, and the only reason I joined that was because it sounded fun until we got into the third book in a row that ended with a main character dying. If I want to weep, I’ll just watch the news. Books are for fun, an escape. But then my manager got excited I was “participating in some of their positive workplace initiatives,” and book club it was.

  “Or I get a new job here,” Curtis offered. His work sounded inte
resting, at least what I understood of it. But was labwork portable the way my work was, and, whoa, weren’t we jumping the gun?

  “You would do that?” Jumping the gun or not, knowing it even passed through his mind was beyond endearing.

  “If we can find our third, we would move mountains to make it work, and I really hope that turns out to be you.” Curtis once again showed his vulnerability, his fear of it not working out embracing each of his words. He felt it, too, whatever this was. They both did.

  “Don’t scare the hu—Maddie.” Parker took over, as if sensing Curtis’s need for him to do so. “No pressure Maddie. None.”

  “It feels like pressure.” They asked for honesty, and with all that was thrown at me, the honesty I had to give was probably not what they hoped for, but there it was.

  “How about this? Call Roxy, get her opinion of us.” I could do that. It would be weird asking her to gossip about her husband’s friends with their knowledge, but what part of this wasn’t weird. “Then we go on dates. One at a time. See if you even like us. And if things feel right, we move on from there.”

  That seemed easy. Go on dates. See if we worked separately and then build from there. What could be weird about that except at the end of the dates they went home to each other, not me. I wasn’t jealous, but the weirdness of adding a woman to a couple that was already there was poking at me.

  “You know I’m a woman, right?”

  “Believe me, we noticed,” Parker teased.

  “And that’s not a problem?”

  “Meaning, you want to know if we are more into men than woman.” Curtis clarified, to which I nodded.

  “Sounds stupid said out loud.”

  “It’s not stupid if it weighs on your shoulders and causes doubt.” And with that my embarrassment fell away, and my insecurity fled. “Curtis was the first and only man I’ve ever been into in that way.”

  “Whereas, I tended to be less concerned with gender and more concerned with who I made a connection with.”

  “I see.” It didn’t completely answer my question but did tell me they both had interest in women, so it would have to do. Why did sexuality need to be so complicated? I remember being a little girl and thinking all little girls fell in love with a prince—the end. That was so not how things worked. The only part that was true was that people fell in love and how that looked—well that couldn’t be put in a box, and if they said my gender wasn’t an issue, I needed to take them at their word. They’d never given me a reason not to, with the exception of leaving out who all would be at the dinner.