Chapter 54
ELIJAH
My heart panics when we reach our floor. As though he feels it too, Jayden wraps himself around Finley and walks her to our door, peppering kisses across her shoulders like he might not get the chance to do it again.
I don’t know what it says about me that I want him to do it again. For them to keep touching each other. All I know is that being with them like this, watching them together makes me feel more like myself than I’ve ever been.
“Don’t go,” I tell him when he starts backing towards his door.
Jayden pauses mid-step, mouth hanging open like he doesn’t know what to say. When I look at Finley, she just smiles.
I don’t know what to do. What to say...
“What do you want to do, Elijah?” Finley asks, slipping a hand into mine.
When I look between her and Jayden, he comes closer.
“If we’re going to do this,” he gestures between the three of us, “you have to communicate. I need to know what you want, Eli. What you’re okay with beyond the kissing and the flirting.
And if that’s all you’re comfortable with, that’s okay.
If you just want to hang out like before, I’m good with that, too.
But you need to speak up cause I don’t want to hurt you. ”
“Me neither.” Finley leans into me, pressing a kiss to my bicep. “I love you too much for that.”
“I want to... I don’t know... hang out like before and I want to do more. Like last night. I liked what we did last night.”
Looking between Jayden and me, she lifts onto her tiptoes and plants a kiss to my jaw before she asks, “What did you like about it?”
The thumping in my chest becomes faster.
“Watching you,” I tell her and lifting my gaze to Jayden’s, I add, “together.”
“What part?” Jayden takes another step closer so that we’re in a huddle. “The dancing, the touching... the kissing?”
“I don’t know, JJ. I liked all of it.”
“Was there anything you didn’t like?” Finley asks.
Looking between the two of them, I admit the only truth I have. The only thing I know. “Leaving. I didn’t like leaving.”
“Because you didn’t want us to do more without you?”
“No. No, it’s okay if you do more without me. Fuck, I...” Sucking in a deep breath, I tell them, “I didn’t like leaving because I enjoyed seeing you together and being a part of it.”
“If there’s ever anything you don’t like, you’ll tell us. Right?” Taking Finley’s hand in his, Jayden shifts to Finley’s side.
“Yes,” I reply, even though I can’t imagine ever disliking watching them together.
“Good,” he says, tugging Finley in front of him.
A loud giggle bubbles from her when she collides with his chest. My hand is still clutching her hip when he leans into her and brushes his lips across Finley’s. His mischievous stare lifts to mine, right before he licks at the plump flesh and then sucks it into his mouth.
Fuck.
Finley’s groan rakes through me. A white-hot bolt sears down my spine, straight to my groin when she opens up for him.
“Do you like this, Fin?” Jayden teases. His hands trail from her waist to her hips, rounding to her ass when she nods. “Do you like being watched, baby?”
“Yes.”
Her head falls back as he licks a wet path along her jaw to her ear. “Good girl.”
I can’t look away.
Not for a second.
Not while his sculpted lips caress her skin, and she melts deeper into him. Trembling with every ragged breath.
With every kiss that he lavishes on her, a thrill sparks brighter in my chest. Warming through me with a relentless ache I can’t breathe past as I fumble with my key as I open the door.
I want to be a part of them so desperately.
It’s all I think about. All I feel. They’re all I yearn for.
In one swift move, Jayden throws Finley over his shoulder and powers past me straight to the couch. Her giggles fill the apartment. It’s the most wonderful sound I’ve ever heard.
This is the music I love—the sound of Finley's happiness and Jayden’s joy lighting up my universe.
With a playful swat to Finley's ass, Jayden throws her on the couch. Straddling her thighs, he pins her down with his body and cuffs her wrists to the midnight blue velvet. He’s nipping at her jaw and her throat while his other hand roves down her chest, clawing at her sides.
.. and Finley’s thrashing. Legs kicking.
Garbled squeals cutting through the air.
The air chills in my lungs.
Memories and nightmares swirling dark and heavy, cloying in the pit of my stomach.
I’m ready to drag Jayden off Finley until she erupts into frantic laughter. His name bubbling from her lips as he burrows beneath her sweater and blows raspberries on her stomach.
Relief has me dropping into the armchair to the side. Because that right there is everything I need. It’s the reminder that I’m okay. They’re my safety.
“Jayden,” Finley gasps, her body bowing off the couch when his head ventures higher and her legs part wider for him. “Oh... oh...”
I can’t see what Jayden’s doing to her, but the sounds she’s making tell me he’s no longer tickling her with his mouth.
I can’t look away as her hands grapple at his head beneath her sweater and his hips grind into the space between her legs when he sprawls over her.
My cock throbs in the confines of my tight jeans while my stare traces the stroke of his hands down the length of her arms. The heels of his palms dragging the loose sleeves of her sweater up, so they bunch at her shoulders.
Fuck, I can imagine what the rough pads of his fingers and his palms feel like on her skin. The same mine feel when I stroke my hand down my forearm, trying to dissipate the hankering screaming in the marrow of my bones.
Only better.
Because with Jayden reality is better than any kind of imagining.
The fucking alarm on my phone goes off in the back pocket of my jeans, jarring the moment. I can’t get to it quick enough to stop the noise from pulling them apart.
Jayden’s heated stare flashes to mine across the length of Finley’s body while her face tips back to mine when she arches her back chasing his lips with her torso.
They’re both watching and waiting.
Watching me.
Waiting on me.
I can’t fucking breathe with the way my chest is squeezing around my lungs. A hard choking rhythm that matches the throb of my cock.
All the words are balled in my throat.
An all-out panic slashes through me when Jayden kneels up. I desperately need this—the connection.
“Don’t stop.” The gravelly words rumble from deep in my chest.
Jayden’s stare widens on mine. “Are you sure?”
With a glance at Finley, I drag the air I need to focus on her. Her eyes flit between Jayden and me with the erratic rise and fall of her chest. I feel her lust consume any reservation I might have that she doesn’t want this too.
“Don’t stop,” I repeat, lifting my eyes to his.
The grit in my voice makes it sound more like a command than a request, and it’s not lost on me the way Jayden sucks in a ragged breath as it settles over him.
“Okay... if you’re sure,” he says, guiding Finley to her feet as he stands from the couch.
Lowering his mouth to her ear, he whispers something that has her eyes widening.
A mischievous glint sparkles in her gaze when it finds mine.
There’s something in her smile. A softness.
A certain kind of peace that I crave with every inch of my soul.
A promise that, even in our chaotic state, everything will be okay.
There has never been a time where I haven’t loved this girl. There’ll never be a time when I don’t. And Jayden…
He’s every fucking hope I’ve held on to since the second we became partners. He’s made me better in so many ways.
Really, how could I do this with anyone else?
How could I fathom opening myself up to anyone but them?
Watching Finley disappear down the hall toward the bedroom, I take a moment to steady myself.
Every cell of my being vibrates with anticipation. Excitement thrums in my blood, flaming in my chest when Jayden stops in front of me. His broad shoulders pulled back with the way his hands are tucked into the back of his jeans.
A pensive frown pulls at his brows while he tells me, “What we do here. What happens now. It doesn’t change who we are. How we are out there.” Tipping his head toward the windows, the city lit beyond, he gives me a bashful smile. “I don’t want to lose my best friend, Eli.”
“You won’t.” My mouth is so dry, the words crack.
“Promise. Swear it.”
Holding his unmoving stare, I give him what he needs. “I swear.”
And I mean it with every heartbeat.
I need him the way I need her. No rhyme, no reason. Just fact.