I don’t want to be the third wheel,” I told Josephine emphatically.

“You won’t be.” She was doing her eye makeup, lining her big blue eyes with a dramatic kohl pencil. When she added the mascara, she opened her mouth in an “O,” and I thought how sexy she looked. Blake was a lucky man.

“I will, Joey. I’ve been in situations like this before,” I countered petulantly. I didn’t want to be impolite. But my roommate was inviting me out with her guy, and I just knew I’d end up feeling like I was crashing their party. I didn’t think I could handle any more rejection. “You know what they say,” I reminded her. “Three can be a crowd.”

“Three can be a lot of things,” she insisted. “Trust me. Blake and I both want you to… come.”

Had she hesitated before delivering that last word? I was sure she had. Then she winked at me and bounced off to her room to finish getting ready, her curls spiraling as she moved. I rolled her words around in my head. She was dating an older man, and he’d invited her to a concert. Something a little more highbrow than she or I was accustomed to. We tended to hear rock bands play at dive bars. He’d invited us to an upscale musical performance. They had a third ticket, she’d explained. He’d bought an extra for me.

I followed her trail of perfume from the bathroom to her bedroom. “Why did Blake buy me a ticket?” I asked. “He hardly knows me.” We’d met, of course, whenever he came to pick up Josephine. He was a handsome man in his early 40s, with black hair going gray at the temples and a well-kept goatee. He favored dark suits with bright ties — a pop of color that made him more interesting than your average-looking businessman.

“I told him that you and Rob had broken up, that you’ve been staying in all the time ever since.”

I didn’t know whether to be angry that she’d shared my relationship woes or excited about being given a reason to dress up. I chose the latter, and while Josephine puttered around in her room, I pulled out a dress I hadn’t worn all year. Tight. Black. Slinky. We were going somewhere fancy. Why not play the part?

When Blake picked us up, he offered Josephine one arm and me the other. “I’m so glad you could come with us,” he said. Now his words reverberated in my head. Come with them. They both wanted me to come. I started to feel a little spark of excitement flickering through me. The concert was classical music. I think. I didn’t really listen. Because Blake had his hand on my friend’s thigh on his right and his hand on my thigh on his left, and I was aglow. This was going to be some kind of a night, I could tell. And I needed some kind of a night.

When the concert ended, there wasn’t any question about what was going to happen next. There was only a question of where. To my delight, Blake made the decision for us. He invited us back to his place “for a nightcap.” I’d never heard the term in real life, only in movies from the 1940s.

We didn’t even bother with drinks. As soon as we entered Blake’s condo, we were in motion. Joey slid one hand around my waist and pulled me close to her. “You looked so sexy at the concert,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“You were holding yourself entirely still, like you thought one movement would wreck everything.”

She was right. I had been. In fact, I’d almost held my breath when Blake had first set his hand on my thigh. Nothing so erotically charged had ever happened to me before. We were there at the concert hall, three well-dressed adults taking in Bach or Beethoven — I knew I ought to be able to tell the difference, but I couldn’t — and we were touching each other. Well, I was being touched.

Joey was the one touching me now, though. She had her hands on the hem of my dress, and she slowly pulled the fabric up, revealing the tops of my stockings and the ribbons of my garters. Blake was right behind her, watching, and he said, “When I stroked your thigh at the show, I almost lost my cool. I was going to drag the two of you out with me, but I didn’t want to make a scene.”

“Make a scene,” I begged. He winked at me, and then he took over from Joey, pulling my dress off so that I was standing before the two of them in only my lingerie. I was glad I’d chosen my best set, and I felt powerful and sexy with the two of them admiring me. Joey said, “I’ve been waiting for this for so long,” and then she stepped forward and kissed me.

I had no idea she was into something like this. We’d been roommates since college, and the topic of sex had never come up — not sex between us, that is.

Blake got us on the right track, moving our party into his massive bedroom. I took a moment to look around at the heavy furniture — the overstuffed leather chair in the corner and the massive wood-framed bed in the center. He took off his clothes, then motioned for me to join him on the mattress, and I kicked off my shoes and came into his arms. Joey stripped off her red sheath, so that she was in bra and panties, too. Blake lay down between us, and we kissed above him. If I were totally honest with myself — and why would I not be? — I’d envisioned kissing Joey before. She is such a delicious minx, and we have an easygoing relationship. Every time she’d brushed past me in the hall on her way to the shower, I’d had an inkling of what it would be like to press up against her, to wrap her in my arms. But I’d never thought something like this would actually happen, or that it would happen across Blake’s strong chest. He had one hand on my back, and I imagined his other was on Joey. We leaned across him, passionately kissing one another, until we had to part for air.

I sat back on my heels, waiting to see what would happen next. Joey kissed Blake, and then she motioned for me to take a turn. I pressed my lips to his. I could feel his excitement, as if the emotion were coming from him in waves. I liked that. Even though he was two decades my senior, even though he had this distinctly debonair quality, I’d managed — well, we’d managed — to turn him on intensely.

How could I tell for sure?

“I fucked Blake, and then I slid off and told Joey to take up my position.”

When I gazed down his body, I saw that his cock was at full mast, standing upright toward the ceiling. Up until now, I’d been looking to the others for my cues on how to behave. But suddenly, I was filled with a desire too intense to hold back. I slid off my panties and climbed astride Blake’s dick, lowering my cunt onto his erection. He groaned and arched, bucking me upward. I giggled and slid right back down. Joey looked at me with wonder. What had happened? I’d been transformed from a mopey roommate to this untamed sexual being.

I fucked Blake until I came, and then I slid off and told Joey to take up my position. It was her turn to ride the ride. Then I kissed Blake while he fucked my friend. There was never a moment when we weren’t all connected — three points in a tantalizing triangle. Blake came before Joey did. I felt him stiffen, and I settled back to watch. His eyelids shut and his whole body became one tight wire. Then he climaxed in a series of rough, jerky motions. Joey cried out, but I could tell she hadn’t reached her peak. I decided to help her. I pulled her next to me and used my fingertips on her swollen clit. She didn’t argue, didn’t tell me to stop. She locked her eyes with mine as I rubbed her button until she came. The whole time, Blake stroked the back of her neck and kissed her shoulders. I could see his dick was slick with a combination of our juices, and that he was almost fully erect again.

Who was going to win his love next?

I maneuvered around so that I was between him and Joey. I positioned her on her stomach and started to rim her cute butt hole. Blake took that as a hint. He parted my own ass cheeks and started to lick my hole, too. I whimpered and sighed, sliding my hips forward and back. He held on to my waist, anchoring me so he could thrust his tongue in my hole nice and deep. That sent me, and I came, forgoing my task of rimming sweet Joey’s rosebud. She allowed me a few moments to regain myself, before she said, “Hold me open so Blake can fuck my asshole. He likes my asshole. Don’t you, Blake?”

I did as she asked, first finding their lube and slicking her up quickly. Then parting those cheeks wide, so that Blake would have an easy shot at her bull’s-eye. Watching him pierce her was one of the most erotic things I’d ever seen. I kept my eyes on his face, seeing the tightness in his jaw as he felt her anal walls contract around him. At least, I guessed that was what he was feeling.

“Me, next,” I murmured to him. “Me, next.”

As we rotated our way from one position to another, a realization slowly dawned on me. I wasn’t a third wheel, wasn’t an odd girl out. Two plus one had equalled the most delicious number of all. We were a three-way, a complete unit, plenty loud with each one of us shouting out our bliss — but not in any way, shape or form a crowd.