The War of Men and Monsters

Alex:

“Pants!” I shout from the doorway, waving a pair of my brother’s blue jeans at my half naked roommate. She’s still jogging away when she half turns and waves like I’ve just said goodbye. My favorite thing about crocodile hatching day is watching Anna be excited every single time like she hasn’t been doing this for a decade.

“He said you’re still naked!” Enzo’s rich baritone comes from somewhere behind me at nearly the same time as my brother’s tattooed hand rips the pants from my away and nearly throws me with a shoulder check.

“Yeah, stand here like an asshole, that’s helping.” He mumbles, and I try press my lips into a thin line to hold back the defensive retort that bubbles up. I’m bristling with irritation, more at myself for being a thoughtless prick than at Benji for being mad about it.

“Two already hatched!” Enzo’s almost-girlfriend, Maria, screeches and throws half of her body out of his bedroom window. A week ago I thought she was yet another one night stand, but she keeps coming back like she lives here. I wouldn’t mind if she didn’t have about as much respect for other people’s property as the giant asshole she’s glued herself to. I’d like to grab her throat, put her back inside, and put the screen back where it belongs, but I’d hate to give her the pleasure. I will, however, be speaking to Enzo about leaving my damn screens on my damn windows. “Hurry!”

“I never realized how long one week could be,” I grumble in frustration. Turning away from the source of my seemingly eternal torture, my eyes find the woman of my dreams gripping my brother’s shoulders and hopping one leg into the jeans he holds out for her. The fingers of her right hand caught her in wild hair to create a sexy backdrop of curls for her soft round face. He hoists the pants up and playfully lifts her off the ground in the same motion.

Jealousy burns a hole in my gut because, like every woman does, I know she likes him better and I know he is no longer interested in sharing. Unless I get my shit together, but apparently I’m the world’s biggest moron. A meaty arm around my shoulder sends my heart through my ribcage. I’m not doing anything wrong by watching them flirt, but it feels like I just got caught.

“Tissue?” Enzo doesn’t wait for a response before he begins dabbing at my chin with the tissue in his hand. I swat him away, but he counters with a headlock and I barely miss watching her get into her car and drive away. “Benji, how’d your brother get to be such a bitch?” He hollers out in an exaggerated show of his manliness.

“Shove it up your ass, frat boy” I grunt through clenched teeth and writhe my way to freedom, ending up on the floor. He just chuckles his happy ass back to his room and lets the door close harshly behind him. I stay where I am for a moment, stewing with the knowledge that he let me escape.

“What did I miss?” Benji offers a hand to me, but pride keeps me firmly planted where I am. My cheeks are burning from four different levels of embarrassment, so I don’t respond. Instead, I push myself up and walk as calmly as I can to our room, taking extra care to close the door with a normal amount of firmness. No need to advertise my frustration even more. Right about now my therapist would tell me to talk to my brother, and maybe even ask for help. I don’t want to talk, though, and I don’t want to ask for help. I can do this, I just… I have to think less selfishly. Thankfully, Benji takes the closed door for what it is, even though this is also his room, and doesn’t follow me in.

Something about Anna makes Enzo and me act like absolute dill weeds. Everyone knows we are into her, except maybe her, but neither of us is willing to step aside so we agreed years ago to not stir the pot. I should have told Benji about it before letting him move in, but if I’m being honest I think I’ve been hoping he’d open a door for me by being his charming self.

I pull my phone out from where I left it under my pillow and hold it over my face, thumb hooked through the loop stuck onto the back. The zoo’s website is already open to the live feed of a clutch of hatching crocodile eggs. Anna’s boss is cooing at one of the babies as it wriggles on its back, half stuck in its egg. He seems to be panting with effort, but I don’t actually know if crocodiles pant. I should ask when she gets back. My eyes scan the small crowd in the background of the video because any minute now Anna will come rushing toward the camera and that is my favorite part of these videos.

Sure enough, Anna’s bouncing figure is running up with her face practically firetruck red with the effort. I know she hates it, but I love it. Every last bit of it. The way her whole body moves when she runs, that cute “o” she makes with her mouth when she’s trying to catch her breath, and the way she perks up and jumps to attention like nothing happened. Without missing a beat she starts on her speech about egg teeth and umbilical cords and how to make sure a baby crocodile doesn’t drown in their egg before they can hatch. Children “oooh” and “aaah” when she puts on a facemask and brings one of the smaller newborns closer for the kids to see. I stifle a groan when her boss gives her an appreciative once-over. Creep.

The video ends with only one egg unhatched and I quickly get a picture of Anna in the group text. She’s carrying the egg to her office to place in her mini incubator and wait for it to hatch. Some hatch slower than others, and some never hatch, but she always waits until there is absolutely no chance before giving up on an egg. Taking the unhatched eggs off live stream to “hatch where it’s quiet” is also her boss’s way of keeping the advertisement for the zoo positive and focused on the eggs that hatch rather than the eggs that don’t. I hear a soft creak and I set my phone down on my chest.

“Are you done pouting, yet?” Benji’s voice has a note of exasperation in it, but I can’t blame him. I have kind of been an asshole since he moved in a couple of months ago.

“Yeah, I’m done.” I tell him, propping myself up on my elbows. “Did you watch the stream?”

“When you’ve seen one clutch of alligator eggs hatch, you’ve seen them all.” He says plainly before plopping down on the full sized bed directly across the room from mine. “Why do you two get so excited about it? Literally every time.” When I don’t answer he rolls his eyes and lays back with his arms crossed, “I think we really need to talk.”

“Not yet,” I say as I lie back and mirror his position. I can’t help but think about all of the other ways we mirror each other; we’re identical twins and for most of our lives we’ve made an express effort to change enough about ourselves that we won’t be mistaken for one another. Now, though, we’ve both kind of just accepted that we look alike. We even got our tongues pierced in the same way on purpose, with one piercing in the standard place and one a little farther back right behind it. Granted, our motivations were very different. I did it because I saw Anna liking a lot of pictures of alternately pierced men on TikTok and, at the end of the day, I want nothing more in the world than for her to look at me the way she looks at them. He did it because he thinks he’s bad at oral and wanted any advantage he could get. Which, I suppose, is a pretty fair reason; I’ve seen him perform and he could use the help. Unfortunately, my brother’s patience is running thin today.

“I’m sorry I called you an asshole,” He says, turning onto his side to face me. I release a long sigh and follow his lead. “You’ve really been doing better, and I wasn’t being fair.”

“I was mad because you were right, I knew it as soon as you said it.” I admit.

“Look, Alex, our last relationship ended badly, but that doesn’t mean our next one will, too. I miss you,” his eyebrows pinch together in that way that they do when he’s worried I’m going to tell him something he doesn’t want to hear. The truth is, though, that I miss him, too.

“What if I ruin your next shot at happiness, just like I ruined the last one?” I ask.

“If she doesn’t love us both, fuck her,” a grin splits his face in two and I can’t help the one that plasters on my face right along with it. “So… Friday night? We can take her to that small Cajun bar downtown?”

“Who?” I quirk my eyebrow up at him because he’s forgotten to tell me who it is we’re asking out. I need confirmation, because when he says Anna’s name I’ll have to go talk to Enzo and he’s going to throw a huge fit.

Our conversation is rudely interrupted with Enzo’s voice echoing through the house. He’s shouting something at Maria in another language, which is anyone’s guess because the man speaks like seven, but whatever it is must be pretty bad because she runs out of the house crying and holding her shirt in her hands like she didn’t have time to put it on. Benji gets up and leaves the room, but I stay at the window with two fingers on either hand crossed as I chant to myself “never come back, never come back” like it’s a curse I can throw at her.

Before she can get in the car, I see Anna barreling toward the house with no sign of stopping. Her truck hops the curb and skids to a stop to tear the living hell out of my lawn. Maria screams something at her, flips her off, and jumps into her sky blue Toyota. Anna jumps out of her truck and runs inside without shutting it off or closing the door and concern swells in my chest as I rush to the living room to meet her inside.

The scene in front of me is chaos. Enzo is shutting all of the blinds and curtains like someone with x-ray goggles is trying to look into our home. Anna is panting and leaning against the closed door with a hard plastic lunchbox clutched to her soft midsection and not even her cute “o” face can distract me from the wild look in her eyes. We all lunge to catch her when she drops to the floor with no warning, but we aren’t fast enough and she lands harshly. Enzo is now crouched in front of her, rubbing her arms from wrist to shoulder and whispering something I can’t hear. It fills me with jealousy and I fuss at myself internally for not thinking of that sooner. His massive form dwarfs her and I consider for a moment that I should tell Benji that I promised not to make a move on Anna. There may be two of us, but Enzo is tough competition. He is exactly what every woman I know goes for. Correction: he is exactly who every woman I know, aside from Anna, has gone for. And clearly, she called him. She didn’t even text me that something was wrong, but something is clearly wrong. A small but cheerful “okay” from the floor tells me she’s ready to talk and I try to throw Enzo backward to get a look at her, but the beast doesn’t budge.

“Help me up,” she says with a trembling hand stretched out toward me, even though Enzo is closer. I give him a smirk. He doesn’t miss it. Like he’s been reading my mind, he mouths “She called me, not you.”

“Spit it out already, before I do.” Enzo barks at her, prompting a shove from Benji which, of course, sparks a whole shoving war between the two. Fuck, the three of us really need to talk.

“Okay, okay, okay, okay. So I took that unhatched egg to my office to wait and see if it would hatch, you know, like I always do because sometimes-“

“A dragon came out of the egg!” Enzo shouts, interrupting her and reaching for her lunchbox. I don’t blame him for interrupting, her stories do go on a long time, but I do slap his hand away so he can’t snatch the box and he shoots a glare at me.

“It did,” she sighs with relief before popping the lid of the box open to reveal a foot long crocodile with bat-like wings making an umph sound up at us. Anna turns guilty umber eyes toward me, “I’m so sorry.”

“Hey, no,” I wrap my arms around her and hear the lunchbox snap closed. “Why are you sorry?” When she doesn’t respond immediately a hand grabs the back of my shirt and tugs me off of her. The culprit, Benji, takes my place and passes the lunchbox over to Enzo. The top of her head comes just barely past his diaphragm and her full form fits perfectly in his arms like that. Something purrs inside of me knowing that this is what she looks like in my arms, too.

Her response is through sobs, so I can’t understand a word she says, and I really am trying to be worried about her, but there’s a fucking dragon. In a fucking lunchbox. In my fucking house. Oh fuck. I go to the window and crack the curtain before carefully lifting one panel of the blinds to make sure no one followed her. Adrenalin starts building in my system because I’m pretty sure shit like this gets people thrown into black sites never to be heard from again. For all we know, it’s an alien or something.

“Baby I need you to tell me why you’re panicking. Did someone follow you? Did anyone else see it?” Benji speaks in a low soft tone with Anna hyperventilating in front of him. He crouches low to get into her line of sight; her eyes are practically glued to the floor. “It’s okay if they did, we can figure this out, okay?” Her mumbled response is once again incoherent, but apparently my brother speaks sobbing woman. “She’s sorry she came back here because she thinks now the FBI is going to come and take us all to away and we’ll never see the light of day again, but she doesn’t think anyone followed her home. I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the gist.” He says to us as he leads her to the couch slowly.

Enzo looks like a kid who just got the latest unrated video game for his birthday and he’s got to hide it from his parents, making it all the more exciting. That guy is all mischief all the time, and I eye him suspiciously. We haven’t known him for very long; Anna met him at work and said he needed a place to stay only a few months before my brother moved in, and I can’t say no to her even if it does mean letting a giant lunatic live in my home. And I do truly believe he’s a lunatic.

“I’m gonna set him up in your tub, try to chill out, okay?” He turns to me and hands me a clear glass tube with a joint inside. “Light this for her.” He commands before striding down the hallway that leads to her bedroom. I consider that if the three of us did try to share, he and Benji would be at each other’s throats.

“You could ask,” I grumble before popping the cork and pulling a lighter out of my pocket. Weed makes me paranoid when I’m stressed, so I pass it to Benji who lights it and tries to pass to Anna. Her hands are shaking too hard to hold it, so he puts it to her lips for her. I move behind the couch before anyone can see my blushing and stand behind her, leaning down to rub her shoulders and smiling when she leans into my hands.

“So… what do we do now?” Benji looks between me and Anna a couple of times before his eyes shoot behind me, presumably to the bossy asshole. “We can’t just keep a dragon in a bath tub. Are we all deciding it is a dragon? Wouldn’t this be some kind of…? I don’t know, like mutation or something? Alligators are born with mutations all the time, what if it isn’t a dragon and it’s really just a plain old alligator that grew a couple of extra appendages?”

“Crocodile,” Anna and I say at the same time. She starts laughing at that, and I start laughing because she’s laughing, and Benji starts laughing until we’re all panting with tears rolling down our faces while Enzo looks at us like we’ve completely lost it. His bewildered look makes us all laugh even harder, and my body weakens with the effort, forcing me to lean on the back of the couch with my forearms braced behind Anna for support and my head hanging next to her thrown back one.

“Ow ow ow!” Anna screams between fits of laughter, holding her side and gasping for air. I don’t know what the hell goes through my mind, but in that moment she’s so fucking cute I’m not sure I’m even thinking. My lips are on hers and the whole room freezes. No one is laughing anymore. To my surprise, no one stops me, either. Her lips are soft and full and my heart stalls when she sucks my bottom lip into her mouth and bites down firmly, but not hard enough to hurt. If I wasn’t filled with adrenaline before, I certainly am now. My skin is practically vibrating with energy when I pull back. We’re both panting and a tattooed hand wraps around her throat and tilts her head to the left toward my brother.

Oh shit, I think as my eyes shoot a glance toward Enzo who is watching with a wicket smile and hooded eyes. Benji kisses her with force, prying her mouth open with his tongue and I bristle a little when I see her melt into it, but I remind myself to wait my turn and bite back the jealousy.

My dick jumps when their mouths shift and I see their tongues dancing together. Enzo makes a grunting, almost growling sound from nearby and I am surprised to see him taking two long steps forward, grabbing her thighs, and pulling her away from Benji. Anna’s ass is almost off the couch as he bends over her and practically slams his mouth into hers. She doesn’t move to stop him, just like she didn’t for either of us.

My brother looks over at me, and I don’t need him to say anything. I most certainly don’t mind sharing with him, but I get the feeling I might mind sharing with Enzo. Without pulling their lips apart, Enzo stands and lifts Anna into his arms. Stunned, Benji and I both watch his broad back headed down the short hallway leading to her bedroom. “I will start without you,” over his shoulder.

“Doesn’t he have a girlfriend?” Benji’s voice is dripping with disapproval, but the look on his face is more confused than mad.

“I think she’s just a clingy hook up,” I say with a smile, deciding that I can indeed share with Enzo before striding after him.

“Let’s slow the hell down for a second here,” Benji calls after us, always the voice of reason. When I enter the room Enzo is setting Anna on the bed with his face buried into the crook of her neck.

“No,” he mumbles, earning a small giggle from the panting woman beneath him. Benji didn’t hear his response, though, because he’s still coming down the hall. Anna pats his shoulder twice and he lifts to hover over her. “Yes?” Enzo sends puppy dog eyes down at her with the question.

“I…” She starts, but seems to change her mind, eyes flitting between the three of us. “I’m not sure what we’re doing?” She squeaks the words out, a note of hope several layers under the apprehension, but it is there and it’s all I needed to hear. I crawl up onto the bed and kneel above her before grabbing her waist while she is still under Enzo and pulling her up several inches so that her feet no longer dangle from the bed and her head is in my lap. Enzo, who is acting like he’s done this before, leans back and tugs her shirt up to pass the hem to me. She doesn’t object when I pull it off, and she doesn’t stop Enzo from undoing her belt. “I don’t think this is really the time…” She starts slowly.

“We’re helping you relax,” Benji says with a smirk, apparently having decided to get while the getting is good like I have. His shirt is already hitting the floor as he speaks and, as if queued, Enzo and I do the same, but while Benji gets completely naked, Enzo and I both keep our bottoms on. Anna’s face burns redder with each item of clothing we remove. “If you want us to.” He adds like an afterthought, already fully erect and poking through the drawers of her bedside table.

“Don’t you think we should figure out what to do about-” Her words are cut off by a dark purple ball gag that I am genuinely surprised she has. In all the time we’ve lived together, she’s never brought a man home. I guess I’m not sure what I would have expected to find in here.

“I’m going to take that as a yes.” I almost forgot how assertive my brother can be when the bedroom door closes, and something in his tone triggers a long-sleeping part of me. With a practiced ease, I fall back into my old role and secure the gag for him. When we share, he likes to be in charge and watching him work stirs me up like nothing else could. It’s like watching a more confident and sure version of myself.

Enzo, however, looks like he’s struggling with someone else taking charge. He grabs her arms, passing them up to me and I can’t help the smirk that hits my lips when I have her wrists in my hands; okay, so maybe sharing with Enzo won’t be too bad. I’ve never shared a woman with anyone but Benji, but my dick seems excited to try. I’ve also never seen Anna’s body exposed like this and it is remarkable. Her breasts rest in her plain white lace bra like dew drops; I’d like to cut the thing off of her, but I know how expensive bras are. Her soft body moves slightly with each shift of the bed and I groan at the way she has to spread her legs to let Enzo pull her light pink panties down her thick thighs.

Benji and Enzo look at each other for a full minute without saying anything, and I’m not sure what conclusion they come to, but they seem to understand each other perfectly well. Benji takes a seat on the stool in front of the vanity beside the bed and his hand grasps his hard length. Anna’s eyes look between the two of them and then up to me before she seems to settle, twisting her wrists in my hands until she can grip my wrists in return.

Anna:

My heart is doing backflips in my chest while my mind runs at a million miles an hour to try and catch up with the three men surrounding me. I feel like I’ve been left out of some serious decision making. Alex and I have been roommates for a few years and, even if I did remove Benji and Enzo from the equation, this is not how I saw us ending up. Honestly, I thought he was gay. And Enzo, oh my god. Truth be told, I invited him to live with us hoping this is exactly where the two of us would end up. What woman doesn’t want a 6’2” walking thirst trap in their bed? Not a single one that I can think of. However, the man brings home women like they each have an expiration date and they all look like Maria, so I doused all hopes of climbing that tree because she and I are not the same. I’m fat, she’s model thin. Not that fat is bad, it’s just two very different bodies. Guys who like Maria are not typically guys who like me. Benji, well… honestly I got the feeling he was a sharer and I am so very happy to be right.

Things start to feel a lot more intense when the three of them spend several minutes just staring at me, and I would have awkwardly chattered until the mood died if it weren’t for the gag in my mouth. Benji is actively stroking himself next to us, but Alex and Enzo are just… staring. Their eyes seem to burn trails across my skin and I’m so wet that I feel warmth dripping from me and the air feels colder now. I squirm and make a noise of frustration and it’s like that’s what they’ve been waiting for.

Enzo is on me in a millisecond, prying my knees apart pressing my thighs to the sides of his head as he slides closer to my pussy, his beard scraping down my thighs in a way that surprises my senses. It feels really good, and I’m not even a beard lover. When his mouth closes around my clit there is no warm up, he sucks hard and presses his tongue down firmly, tearing a gasp from me.

“Wrap your legs around his head.” Benji demands, and I hesitate because I’m enjoying myself and I don’t want to kill the man. I’m throwing looks with my eyes at him, but he gives me a devilish grin. “Bite it.” He commands right before a sharp but insanely amazing pain comes from my clit and I scream before quickly wrapping my legs around Enzo’s head.

“Good girl,” comes from above me in a soft tone and my body melts. Alex shifts both of my wrists into one hand, bringing his newly freed hand down and under me to fiddle with the clasp of my bra. I arch my body to help him, but Enzo presses me back down with a hand so large it covers my entire stomach. Alex, apparently, didn’t need the help anyway because in only a few heartbeats my bra is being thrown somewhere and Alex is looking to his brother for instructions.

“Don’t touch them,” Benji says as he stands and leaves the room. He isn’t gone for long, but when he returns he has a glass of ice. I don’t have time to think about what he is has planned because the pleasure between my thighs is building and I’m having a hard time thinking in straight lines. “Open your legs.”

I comply immediately and release Enzo from his trapped position. He takes this window of opportunity and immediately fills me with two long fingers as he comes up for air. My eyes screw shut with the sparks of pleasure that follow his fingers and then his mouth is back on me, but it is freezing. I open my eyes and shoot a half-hearted glare at Benji, who is lowering himself back onto the stool with a satisfied smile on his face and one hand back on his cock. He looks me dead in the eyes as he spits on it and rubs slow, deliberate circles around the tip.

Alex slides out from under my head then, and kneels right in front of my face with his own erection pointed right at me from unbuttoned jeans. He pulls the gag from my mouth and it leaves a trail of drool on its way to rest at my neck. I nearly cum right there because Alex leans down and licks that trail of drool all the way to my mouth and starts kissing me like his life depends on it. I’m so distracted that I don’t notice he’s unclasped the gag and tossed it aside until his hand is on my throat, turning me to face his brother.

“That’s enough. Stop what you’re doing and put your clothes back on.” He commands to us all and I feel the whole room come to a halt. Enzo doesn’t remove his fingers, but his head comes up with an incredulous look on his face.

“What?” Enzo and Alex exclaim in unison and turn shocked faces toward Benji, but, to their credit, they do obediently stop what they are doing.

“Now that our intentions are clear, we really can’t stay here. We can talk on the road.” While the rest of us are shaking off whiplash, Benji saunters out of the room like he’s just had the time of his life. I both agree and disagree with the sentiment because there is a near-painful pulse coming from my clit and I just know that with a couple more minutes I can get there. Enzo rips his fingers from inside me, Alex releases my throat, and they both begin putting their clothes back on.

“Unkind!” I exclaim, sitting up and looking between the two men left in my bedroom. Enzo shrugs and mumbles something about a cold shower and he stomps back down the hallway.

“We wanted to help you relax and stop focusing on the dragon, and now you’re relaxed and not focusing on the dragon.” Alex smirks and gives a shrug before pressing a quick, firm kiss to my lips. “Benji doesn’t like going in on something like this until there have been some clear conversations first. Trust me, it really is better that way. Get dressed, I’ll throw something on the stove for dinner and we can talk this out.”

He leaves me then, my head spinning and my heart doing a victory dance. I don’t know if this was just a sudden, adrenaline fueled mistake, but I hope it wasn’t. I let out a sigh and look toward the closed bathroom door beside the vanity.

“What am I going to do with you, little buddy?” I say to the dragon, even though he isn’t even in the room. If I take him back, he’ll be turned in to the government and likely experimented on or killed. Still, though, I have no clue how big he’ll get or how long I can hide him. Resigned to having to get up, I roll out of the bed and grab the maxi skirt I like to wear as a dress. It’s one of the best things about being all of about five feet tall; what some consider skirts, I consider dresses. And I look hot in this one.

Checking the vanity I admire the bright white vertical strips that highlight the many curves of my body while I brush my hair and throw it into a messy bun of curls atop my head. When I turn to leave the room, the dragon is there on the floor beside me making little crocodile sounds and looking adorable. I scoop him up into my hands and, very uncharacteristically he wiggles free of my grasp and instead curls into the palm of my hand.

“I think I’ll call you Arlo,” I say in a singsong voice as I bounce to the dining room table to watch Alex cook dinner, wondering how many more of these creatures are out there.