For Research Purposes Only Read online

  The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement (including infringement without monetary gain) is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in, or encourage, the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  For Research Purposes Only

  Copyright © 2011 by Stephanie Williams

  ISBN: 978-1-61333-053-1

  Cover art by Dara England

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Decadent Publishing Company, LLC

  Look for us online at:

  http://www.decadentpublishing.com

  For Research Purposes Only

  Stephanie Williams

  DEDICATION

  To LaVerne Thompson who is willing to go outside her comfort zone and reads and critiques my work. And to all my fans. **SMOOTCHES**

  Chapter One

  “Aaargh! This is hopeless!” Lacy threw another piece of paper from the printer against the wall. No matter how she looked at it, whether on the computer screen or on hard copy, the story just wasn’t working.

  She got up and paced the room. Shaking her head, she wondered why she’d chosen the writing profession. To be fair, it wasn’t the profession but the subject matter she’d picked to write about this time—ménage à trois. She went back to her desk and put her head in her hands. “Concentrate, concentrate. It’s just sex with an extra person.”

  “What!”

  Startled, she bumped her head on the shelf above her computer. “Ouch!” Getting up, she rubbed her head and gathered up some of the books that had fallen on the desk and the floor. “You scared me.” She turned and faced Marty who stood in the doorway—dripping wet. He’d just gotten out of the shower and wore a terrycloth towel wrapped around his waist. She reached for his hair. “I like your hair and body all wet like this.” She ran her fingers through his long, black, wavy mane, and smoothed her hand over his chest.

  Staring at her with his mossy green eyes, he took her hand and kissed it.

  “Your eyes are darkening. We just had a roll in the hay last night, you horn dog.” She giggled, sitting back down.

  “Your fault, but never mind that. What’s this I hear about an extra person and sex? What are you writing now?” He came over and stood behind her, looking over her shoulder at the computer screen.

  “How long have you been standing there?”

  “Long enough that I know I want to read this.” He bent over, scrolling through the pages on the screen. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Don’t rub it in.” Lacy shot up from her desk and walked into the bedroom area. She plopped down on the ottoman in front of the bed, taking off her house slippers. “If you must know, I’m trying to write a threesome story, a ménage à trois.” She threw a slipper across the room in frustration.

  “Whoa! Regular sex is not doing it for you anymore?” He sat next to her, almost knocking her off her seat.

  “That’s not it and you know it.” She kissed him on the cheek, rubbing her hand over his five o’clock shadow, enjoying the feel of it, even damp from the shower. “But it seems my audience is looking for more excitement. I had no less than ten emails this weekend asking if I will ever write a story on threesomes—or more.” She slapped her hands on her thighs and headed back to her writing area.

  “Kinky crowd.” He followed her and massaged her shoulder before sitting down himself. “So what’s the problem, Miss Number One on the New York Best Seller List, four months in a row?”

  She smiled up at him. “Thanks, I needed that.” She patted his hand. “But this is different. I’ve never experienced a threesome before. I don’t even know where to start.” She turned back to the blank screen.

  “I see. Suppose you do some research.” He pulled up a chair and sat next to her. “By the way, Jerry is coming into town for a few weeks.”

  Lacy slowly turned away from the screen, and glimpsed back at Marty. “How did you go from threesomes to Jer….” His eyes darkened again. Which could only mean one thing.

  Lacy loved how his expressive eyes dilated when he was horny, taking on a more hunter green color. She noticed however, since talking about threesomes, they’d never returned back to normal. She had a strange feeling about this. “Um, how is Jerry?” She took a quick peek at his eyes again. She could be imagining things. She let out a mental sigh, when she saw them shift back to the dazzling light green. Yep, she’d imagined it.

  “He’s doing okay.” Marty leaned back in the chair. “To be honest, he’s a bit burned out, that’s why he’s coming here to spend a few weeks.”

  “Oh?”

  “I guess being the number one ad man east of the Mississippi isn’t as glamorous as people might think.”

  “Poor dear.” She shook her head. Lacy loved Jerry. She’d met him and Marty at the same time, during her third year in college. Jerry had the honor of being her first crush. But he put a stop to that¸ telling her she could do better. He pointed out Marty for one, but at the time, she’d just seen Marty as a best friend. Strange how things turned out.

  “You like Jerry, don’t you?” he asked, as if reading her mind. How did he do that? Boy, that irked her sometimes.

  “Of course, he’s a good friend. We all go back, I don’t know, fifteen years.” Then it hit her. She checked his eyes again. Nothing. She couldn’t even read his expression this time.

  “I like him, too. He’s like a brother….no, more than a brother to me.” He looked around her desk and picked up some of the crumpled papers she discarded.

  “Marty, is there something you want to tell me?” She took the pieces of paper out of his hand and chucked them in the garbage pail next to her desk.

  “Nah.” He got up and stretched, catching the towel in his right hand before it hit the floor. “Let me know if you need any help with that threesome. I might be able to come up with something. And remind me to call Jerry on his cell. I need him to stop by a store and pick up something for me before he gets here.”

  She stared into his eye again and saw it! What the… “Sure.”

  Marty left the room, leaving an air of mystery behind. That conversation had taken a strange turn. Lacy returned to her blank screen and shrugged. “Maybe I’m burned out, too.” She crumpled another piece of paper and threw it across the room.

  A ménage à trois. This had to be her most challenging story yet. She stood up, scanning the bookshelf at all of her past stories. Lacy wrote the typical man/woman relationship stories. The sex definitely hotter than most stuff on the market, her characters more fleshed out than the formula stuff out there. But it seemed the tried and true, boy meets girl, loses girl and gets girl back didn’t work with her audience anymore. She hoped her readers wouldn’t bail and move on to spicier reading.

  She’d received a lot of emails over the weekend, and they all basically made the same request, but one email in particular had stood out. So much so, she’d printed and tacked it up on her board. She reached up and snatched it off the wall and read it again.

  Dear Miss Cunningham,

  I am
a loyal reader of yours and I enjoy all your books. I like the way you take a story that has been done to death and give it your certain flare. Your characters are so three-dimensional and the sex is H-O-T. I particularly loved your latest, Stranded. When Shelly came upon the barbarian and he had his way with her, I just about fainted. To have wanton sex with a stranger, no apologies, is pushing the envelope. I would like to see other stories like that. Which brings me to my request. Have you ever thought about writing a ménage à trois? Preferably, two men and a woman. A lot of new upcoming writers are doing it, but I know if you were to write that kind of story, you’ll bring something totally different to the genre.

  Yours truly,

  Rene Wilson

  Something different? Weren’t two men and a woman different enough? Apparently not, since Rene’s email represented just one of many.

  Research. Marty suggested she do some research. Little did he know she’d started doing that weeks ago. She’d bought several books, both fiction and non-fiction. They were basically all the same. Now, she’d be the first to admit, the stories were smokin’. When Marty jested that regular sex didn’t do it for her anymore, it made her think.

  Sex with Marty had become an almost spiritual and mythical experience. Being left breathless and passing out after several orgasms gave a new meaning to la petite mort. How could a girl improve on that? Not to mention, they’d experimented and tried everything under the sun. Well, not everything. They’d never had a threesome. Never even mentioned it.

  Just the thought of another man made Lacy a bit uneasy. She hadn’t looked at another man since being with Marty; she never had the urge to stray once. Marty kept her happy, there was never a reason to go outside the relationship.

  Besides, fidelity aside, how would one find an extra person anyway? Put an ad on the community center board? Go to the grocery store and ask the butcher at the meat counter. Pardon me, would you like to join my boyfriend and me in some wild, kinky sex? You can be on top.

  And what would Marty have to say to all of this? He would beat his chest in warning if another man looked at her, let alone touched her in an intimate manner. If she even entertained the thought of another man, it would have to be with someone she and Marty knew, not just a casual acquaintance. Someone they could trust and knew like the back of their hand. Someone like…Jerry. Always the missing piece in the puzzle in everything they did. Camping, vacationing all around Europe, the World Cup, you name it.

  It made sense, especially since Lacy had the hots for Jerry from the beginning and like Marty had said, they were tighter than brothers. Jerry let her know she could do better. Even being a bad boy, he had the decency to let her know that. And even though she was madly in love with Marty and wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, Jerry still held a special place in her heart.

  Could she entertain the prospect of a threesome with the two of them?

  A lump lodged in her throat. She couldn’t be thinking this. She got up again and paced the room, wringing her hands. “Don’t be silly, Lacy. He just happened to mention Jerry’s arrival the same time we were talking threesomes. There’s no connection. Marty was in no way suggesting anything. He simply suggested that you do some research, like you’ve done numerous times with other projects.” She stopped in mid pace. “Okay, I’m talking to myself waaay too much.”

  She stomped her foot and placed her hands on her hips. She had to straighten this out before it drove her nuts. Well, one way to find out for sure. Just ask him. He’d probably be insulted, or not even speak to her for a few days. Or who knows, he might even laugh it off. One thing for sure; she needed to clear this up for her own peace of mind.

  ***

  Marty busied himself in the kitchen, preparing a light lunch for him and Lacy. He looked at the salad, and decided she needed something a bit more substantial since she’d been up since four that morning and it was now ten o’clock.

  The new book she’d started working on really piqued his interest. Threesomes. Very interesting. And what a coincidence.

  They’d dated for two years and become best friends and lovers. She was quirky, intelligent and sexy as sin, he couldn’t ask for a better woman. Her smooth, flawless mahogany skin felt like silk underneath his touch. And he loved touching her any and every chance he got. He couldn’t get enough of being near her. Her deep brown, almond eyes always had a come hither look, her lips pouty and beckoning with his favorite shade of lipstick—Burgundy Rose with a hint of gloss. When Lacy told him the brand and color after he’d insisted, he made it a point that she never be without.

  The mere thought of Lacy being in someone else’s arms never crossed his mind. It actually enraged him. Until a call a few months ago.

  “What’s going on, bro?” Jerry asked.

  “Lacy’s writing a ménage story, she’s doing research right now.”

  Jerry laughed. “Really. You could teach her a few things about how that works.”

  Marty nodded. “We both could.”

  The words hung between them.

  In a low voice, Jerry said, “Come on, man. That was a long time ago. And, Lacy’s different.”

  Marty picked up a picture of the three of them, taken during a trip to Australia. The three of them always had a great time together, no matter where they were. “I love her. And you know my feelings for you.”

  “I do. So?”

  “You know I left the door open a long time ago.”

  Ironically, he and Jerry both discovered they liked engaging in threesomes. An accidental discovery. Typical crazy college years. The memories immediately transported Marty back to one particular, eventful night.

  Along with everything else going on in Jerry’s life, his love life stank. After his latest breakup, he’d poured his heart out to Marty once again. And Marty, always being there for him, listened and gave the best advice he could at the time. They’d talked over a few beers at the local bar. Later that evening, they saw a woman they wanted sitting in the corner, and it didn’t take much convincing to get her to go back home with them where they had sex with her. Nothing shy about her either, she became an active participant.

  But something happened between he and Jerry. They bonded even closer. They thought the few drinks played a part in it, so they did it again with another woman later—sober.

  Same result. They just enjoyed sharing women. But there was still something missing. Marty and Jerry realized they were looking for a particular woman, a woman they could not only share themselves intimately with, but emotionally, too.

  Although the women they’d slept with satisfied them both sexually, the emotional connection hadn’t. He and Jerry became more attached, bonded—not so much sexually—although they’d shared a kiss during sex once. But the women always became nameless figures after the act.

  “Hey, Marty!”

  “Huh?” Marty had forced himself back to the conversation.

  “Still there?”

  “Yes. Uh…like I said, the erotica Lacy’s working on is a ménage à trois. I just happened upon her notes, she’s hasn’t said anything to me yet. But I know she’s having trouble with it.” As if on cue, Marty reached into his pocket and pulled out one of Lacy’s discarded attempts. It opened with a woman on the beach and two men approaching her. They talked and went back to her place. Lacy had red lines all through it. Poor thing.

  Jerry sucked in a breath. “Marty.”

  “You’re right.” Marty stuck the paper back in his pocket. “Think about it. I have. I know how you feel about Lacy, and I know how Lacy feels about you.”

  “She’s with you now, and in love with you.”

  Marty nodded. “You’ll always have a special place in her heart.” That statement should have made the hair stand on his neck. But the words fell from his lips so naturally he didn’t bat an eye.

  “But Marty, she’s not going there.”

  “How do you know? I’m sure with just a little prodding…”

  “Why are you so willi
ng to share her with me, especially now after all this time?”

  “I’m a scholar when it comes to your love life, have been ever since college. You haven’t been happy with any one woman yet.”

  “Just not the right one.”

  Marty shook his head. Jerry was either in denial, or afraid to come right out and admit his feelings for Lacy. “Exactly, but I know who the right one is.”

  Another pause. “Suppose it’s true. She’ll never go for it.”

  “Don’t be so sure.”

  “And you?”

  “I love you, Jerry, and I love Lacy. It was only a matter of time that the three of us got together. I left the door open for just this moment.”

  “Look, before this goes any further, let me tell you what I originally called about,” Jerry said.

  Marty chuckled. “Okay, man.”

  “I’m experiencing serious burn out.” He sighed.

  “Weren’t you the one behind that Rolls Royce ad?” The man was an advertising genius.

  “Yep, and the client was never satisfied. That took me six months.”

  “Damn. I’m surprised you haven’t run from there screaming.” Marty laughed.

  “Almost. But I put in for a long vacation, that’s what I’m calling about.”

  “Well, Lacy would love to see you, it’s been a while. We’ll have a double date vacation. Are you still with…?”

  “Uh, you have to change that. Nancy and I broke up.”

  “What?” It figured.

  “Don’t feel like going into it right now. Let’s just say it was all about her—in the wrong way.”

  “You’re looking too hard. But the timing is perfect. You know who really loves you.” And it didn’t bother him one bit.

  “Lacy. But she’s too good for me and she happens to be seeing someone. My best friend to be exact”

  “Past transgressions. You need to forget them. She did.”

  “I can’t give her what she wants.”

  “Yes, you can. We both can.”

  Marty reflected on their college days some more. It was inevitable this would happen. He shook his head in disappointment. He’d hoped Nancy would help his buddy settle down. Jerry had it rough, and he needed a good woman and stability in his life. If one wanted to see a train wreck, Jerry’s relationships didn’t disappoint. Looked like things hadn’t changed. That’s why a setup between him and Lacy would be perfect.