cross loves

Remington

September

"Good night, Mrs. Williams."

The door to the sitting room we're currently hiding in cracks open, and the face of my best friend's grandmotherly housekeeper, Mrs. Jones, pops into view. She gives us a smile, which I can't understand at all. It's almost three in the morning. I'm exhausted, and I'm sure she's been here since before the sun rose. Julia makes quite the sight collapsed on the couch, her legs thrown across my lap and her head in her husband's. But Mrs. Jones adores Julia as if she were one of her own.

Thinking about it, Julia basically is her granddaughter. Mrs. Jones helped raise Julia since she was a little girl. When Julia bought a house of her own, Mrs. Jones packed up her cookbooks and followed her across town.

Jules perks up from the couch, lifting herself onto her elbows.

"Thank you so much, Mrs. Jones, for staying tonight," Julia says. "You are my hero, as always. Go home, get some sleep, and then go shopping, on me. I don't want to see you until Wednesday."

It's only Friday night. Or Saturday morning, depending on how you look at it. I know Mrs. Jones never works the weekends, but five days off is a little much just for helping with a party.

Mrs. Jones tsks, shaking her head at the outlandishness of her employer.

"You were hosting, dear. Which means I needed to be here. No offense, but we both know you can't do it without me."

The three of us on the couch burst into laughter. There's nothing to be offended about. Julia is a master of many things, but Mrs. Jones has always been her right-hand woman. After all, Mrs. Jones trained her.

Mrs. Jones finishes her debriefing.

"The cleaning crew is gone, Mrs. Williams. I sent them home with most of the leftovers. I'll see you on Monday."

"Call me Jules, Jones," Julia moans pitifully, closing her eyes in mock pain and collapsing back onto Justin's lap. "It's too late for formalities."

I swallow back the chuckle begging to escape.

Mrs. Jones did call her Jules, up until the moment Justin and Julia said I do. Julia has been Mrs. Williams ever since. It drives Julia absolutely batty.

Mrs. Jones winks at us, knowing exactly what she's done to her pseudo-granddaughter, and pulls the door closed until there's only a crack of light shining in.

"I expect to see a charge on your credit card, Amelia!" Justin yells after his housekeeper, but she doesn't reply, and we hear the front door open and shut a few moments later. Mrs. Jones hit the light switches as she went, and the vivid shine of fluorescents streaming into our hideaway dims until Julia is lit with little more than the moonlight burnished through the window.

"You know you pay that woman more money than a broker on Wall Street," I tell them, and Julia giggles between us. It's a pointless comment but a conversation we have on a fairly regular basis. I think I'm jealous that my best friends has a demigoddess for a house manager, and I'm stuck with Olga the Grump.

I cast my mind back and try to think when the last time I actually saw my housekeeper. Does she still work for me?

"Worth every penny." Justin grins, and I let the silence fall between us.

It's peaceful, hidden away with the people I love the most. Tranquil, with a layer of static electricity floating over the surface.

I should go home. Or at least to my home away from home, the bedroom saved for me in the family wing of the apartment.

Of course, it's been months since I've slept in either place.

Instead, I sit in the darkness with Julia's legs on my lap, feeling her toes running up my thigh.

Julia sighs, a sound I feel deep in my gut, and slides down the couch several inches, letting her knees come to rest across my thighs as her feet, shoeless and stocking free, land on the armrest. I gather one into my hands and dig my thumb into the ball of her foot. Justin cups her neck in his hand, his fingers moving in a slow rotation up and down her throat.

It's mesmerizing the way his long, slender fingers caress her skin in the dark. I can't look away, even though I know I should.

Julia is Justin's wife. Watching him touch her shouldn't affect me like this. It shouldn't speed my pulse and make my cock twitch in my pants. But it does. Knowing she belongs to him, but spreads her knees for me, twists my gut until I want to worship at their feet.

"What was I thinking, hosting a roaring twenties party for the purpose of absolutely nothing?" Julia asks into the air, her voice tired and rhetorical.

Justin chuckles under his breath, and I smile to myself, already knowing the answer.

"You were thinking that it is, in fact, the roaring twenties," he says succinctly, the adoration for his wife bare in his voice. "If only a century after the first."

Welcome to 2020. See you in another hundred years. Wanting to celebrate a famous moment in history isn't what brought this on, though.

"Justin has been reading the Great Gatsby," I say with a smirk. "Again." It's his favorite book. Julia smiles at me without ever opening her eyes. Justin tilts his face from his wife, meeting my gaze. Even in the near darkness, I see the concupiscence behind his eyes.

"He had one of those rare smiles, with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor."

Justin whispers the quote into the darkness, the words floating over his wife's prone body, and I have to lick my lips to bring the moisture back to my mouth.

This is what I'm talking about. The effect they have on my body. God. If it were only my body, I could handle it. Justin is innocuous in his tone. A favorite quote from a favorite book. But goosebumps break out over my skin, the bow tie around my neck suddenly too tight for me to breathe. When he tilts his head to the side, his eyes wreak havoc on my soul.

It's the effect they have on everything else that's ruined me.

It's dangerous for me to be here with them, like this. I should walk away before anyone else gets in too deep.

Justin never breaks his stare.

He draws me in like oxygen to a flame.

But I can't leave. The building could burn down around me, and I couldn't move from this spot. I knew I shouldn't have come tonight. I should have sent a moving man for my things and been done with it.

My eyes drift towards the feet in my hands and up the legs they belong to.

"It was a good party, Jules."

I didn't intend to whisper, but the stillness in the room has stolen my voice. It emerges deep and gravelly, and Justin's eyes flick to mine, his Adam's apple bobbing when he swallows. Julia sighs again, settling deeper into the couch. Her knees part slightly, her still-gloved hands coming to rest beside her head.

The silk of Julia's dress flows around her body like water, and moisture floods my mouth when the fabric slips up her legs, exposing the pale cream of her thighs. They don't live in the penthouse, but it's a corner apartment in Downtown New York. We're high enough up to see the tops of other buildings and to watch the boats float down the Hudson for miles. This late at night, it feels like we're alone in the world. Action and consequence are a fantasy. One that has no place with us here.

My hands slide from Julia's feet and over her ankles. I dig my thumbs into her calves, and Julia moans, her knees falling open in my lap.

My eyes snap to Justin to find him already searching me out in the darkness. My suit jacket is long gone, but he still wears his, the black lapels lost in the dimness of the room, the white stark against his wife's body supine in his lap. His facial hair, always expertly trimmed and scruffed, is thicker on his cheeks, the result of twenty-four hours without a razor to his chin. His undercut is messy from hours of hosting and dancing in his wife's arms.

She danced in my arms too.

I can't dance in his.

"Harder, please," Julia instructs, her voice husky and soft. Justin burrows his thumbs into the back of Julia's neck, the pressure firm enough to make her arch. Her breasts thrust into the air, and I find myself leaning in, the need to be closer to her overwhelming my sense of self-preservation. Justin's gaze holds me captive when he slips his hand down Julia's back. The sound of her zipper lowering explodes into the darkness like thunder.

If Julia can feel my cock thicken and swell under her legs, she doesn't let on. Though, I'm sure she's used to it by now.

Justin knows. He licks his lips, and I have to drop my eyes. It doesn't make a difference. The sight of Julia displayed like a feast doesn't help my self-control.

She looks so small, lying against me. My hands engulf her legs, and I use the pressure of my fingers to massage muscles and caress her flesh. She's so fucking pale; I swear she's glowing next to my muted darkness.

I never knew what hands were for until I used them against her body.

"Touch her," Justin rumbles, and my eyes flick to him again, watching me as I rub my palms over his wife.

"Please," Julia begs, and I immediately surrender to her will.

I'll pay for this. I know I will. But if I'm going to be punished, I should at least reap my rewards. After all, Justin taught me that. Good boys always get rewarded.

When my hands glide over her knees, I apply pressure with my palms, spreading her farther as I go. Her moan licks over me, goosebumps rising to the surface of my skin. My entire body electrifies at the sound of it, of her.

She's mine.

A set of slender fingers enter my view, and I watch with awe as Justin gathers his wife into his lap, pulling her arms up and around his neck. He angles her against his chest, and I move with them, unable to let my hands leave her flesh. I think a growl slips from my lips when he pulls her from my grasp. Justin's responding laugh is dark and dirty, and I want to lick it from his lips.

She's ours, he seems to remind me. Julia is ours to share.

"Stay," Justin commands in a voice that sends liquid fire through my veins. It sends a shock along my cock, and I freeze with my hands on Julia's thighs, my fingers grazing her panties. His face is tilted down to her, but then his eyes flick to me. I know this shade by now, darker