38. Harper
THIRTY-EIGHT
HARPER
I didn’t normally drink. But when Nashville Blackwood pulls out a bottle of fire whiskey and four glasses and asks you to do shots with him, you don’t really say no.
So I didn’t bother. I just grabbed a glass out of his hands, held it out like a good little bitch waiting for him to fill it, and downed it in one go the second he filled it to the brim.
And then I waited for another.
And before I knew it, we were all doing shots, Angel included, and I was fucking wasted.
Wasted.
Like full-on, white girl wasted at a frat party kind of shit.
And I hadn’t felt this free in a long ass time.
Angel and Nash leaned against one another on the other side of the kitchen counter, swaying to the beat of a song on the radio. I tapped my feet as I smiled and watched on, the sight of them finally getting along like a balm to my soul.
This was what I wanted for them. Friendship. Brotherhood. Love. They felt like actual brothers at this moment, not at each other's throats, not fighting for dominance like two vicious wolves in the wild. The thought that they would have each other when I was gone was the only thing keeping me together right now.
That, and the insane percentage of alcohol flowing through my veins.
Rowan leaned over me to grab for an empty glass, and I took the opportunity to slide my hands drunkenly up his chest, grinning like a coquette when his muscles stiffened, and his free hand fell to my back, tugging us together. He abandoned his search for a glass and lowered his head to kiss me, and it was unlike the ones from before.
This was a different man, a different emotion. There was urgency in this kiss, a sadness tinged with resignation, that permeated the two of us.
We didn’t need to say a word about the situation to understand there wouldn’t be many more moments like this for us. Tomorrow, I would be a free woman. They had no more reason to guard me, since there was no more reason to kill me. And I’d get to go back to my old life, working on cars, keeping to myself, and living a life under the radar that I’d come to love. My independence would be restored, and I’d finally be able to walk down the street without a fucking police escort.
No more being cooped up in this place, unable to even visit the common areas for fear that someone would make me for a civvie and have their fun with my body until they tired of me and threw me out with the evening trash.
I missed the little alleycat who begged for food on the fire escape. I missed my job, the solitude of my own apartment, the comfort of my routine.
I missed having freedom.
I wanted to be me again, not this person I’d become out of necessity that I didn’t even recognize.
His tongue slipped into my mouth, and for a moment, lost in the intoxicating taste of him, I let myself forget.
"Get a room, you two," Angel spat, though I knew from the tone of his voice he didn’t mean it. "God, that’s disgusting to watch."
"You’re just jealous," Rowan murmured against my lips, a smile spreading on his face as his brother growled and huffed in annoyance and denial.
"As if," he muttered, turning away from us to fill his shot glass again. "Fucking stupid contraption barely holds a swallow, Nash. Why’d you give all of us training wheel glasses?"
Nash grinned and offered Angel the bottle, but his gaze was on his brother and I, a feral glint in his eyes that made me shiver. I knew that look well—that was the Nashville Special. Back in high school, he’d flash it at any girl he planned to fuck, and they’d fall at his feet and drop their panties like they were born to be used as his fucktoys .
It was still as effective now as it was back then.
I felt my insides twist as Rowan turned me around and curled his big hands over my biceps, holding me in place as he nipped along the length of my neck, his gaze flicking up to Nash’s every few seconds, like this was a competition.
I needed some air so I could think straight.
"Oh, no, my glass is empty. Angel, be a dear and share some of that fire whiskey with me?"
He eyed my shot glass with disgust for a few seconds before filling it from the bottle. His long fingers curled around the neck of the bottle, and I shivered as I imagined those fingers doing a handful of other things involving me.
Bad girl. No.
"Thanks," I muttered, my eyes drifting to the floor for a second.
Nash bounced over to my side like a fucking puppy, his fingers brushing against the back of my free hand. "Why don’t we liven things up tonight and play a little truth or dare?"
Rowan’s laugh rumbled through his chest and into my own. "That’s Harper’s favorite game, if memory serves."
I could feel the beginnings of a hell fucking no situation building in my gut, but I ignored it like the idiot I was and grinned like a loon as I tipped that shot glass back and downed the fire whiskey with a wince.
"Good lord, how do you boys drink this shit?"
Rowan eyed my glass and nodded at Nash, who refilled it quickly, playing bartender with too much glee for my taste. "Whaddya say, Harper? Do you want to play a little going-away game with us? It is your last night here, after all."
I felt the disdain and disappointment in that single sentence, but the three of us collectively ignored it. We all had our reasons for pretending the sadness didn’t exist.
If they weren’t talking about it, neither was I.
"Sure. I guess I can play." My eyes narrowed as I leaned a little too hard into Rowan’s broad chest, letting him support me. "But you better be prepared. I’m not going light on you."
Nash’s brows quirked almost comically, but Rowan’s furrowed. Angel watched the three of us as Rowan let Nash drag me over to the couch and position me in the middle of the damn thing. He settled on my left while Rowan took my right, and Angel perched on the edge of the coffee table, his haughty airs a much-needed contrast to the other two.
"Who should go first? What are the rules?" I looked around for guidance, and then realized it had always been me. All my life, they’d let me set the parameters of this game.
It felt different, being grown and setting the game’s rules up. Past me had hangups and still lived in denial. She hid her attraction from them and was afraid to say anything indecent.
Past me had never sucked Nash’s cock from the other end of a leash.
Past me never made out with Angel on the hood of his boss’s car.
Past me never let Rowan fuck her on the conference room table.
It was starting to look like past me and present me were two completely different women.
"You set the limits in this game, Harper," Rowan said quietly, his stoicness showing through even in this semi-inebriated state.
"Okay, fine," I teased, slurring my words a little. "If you’re uncomfortable with a truth or a dare, you can pass and accept an alternate question or dare." Rowan nodded, and I looked at Nash next, my brows rising at his unrestrained excitement. "No visible marks."
His face fell almost comically. "Aw, come on, Harpie girl?—"
"And everyone has to play," I said finally, burning a hole in Angel’s chest with the intensity of my gaze. "No exceptions."
His noncommittal shrug was answer enough.
Let the games begin, I whispered in my mind, and held out my hand in Nash’s direction. "Rock paper scissors to see who goes first."
We went around the circle until Rowan ended up winning. I tensed in my seat as his eyes skimmed over me and then fell on Nash, a snarky grin crossing his features.
"Nash. Truth or dare?"
"Truth," he said with a wink, blowing his brother a kiss to the utter disgust of the middle child and myself.
Rowan was thoughtful for a minute. Nothing good ever came from that man’s deep-thinking sessions. His mind was calculating, precise, and complicated. In the past, none of us had ever been brave enough to choose truth when Rowan was asking. We just knew better.
Nash was asking for trouble, and it was likely he’d get it.
"What was the most embarrassing moment of your life?"
That was an easy one coming from him. He was up to something. What that something was was the real million-dollar question.
"That’s easy." Nash grinned, his eyes flashing with excitement and triumph. "The time Harper’s mom walked in on me jerking one out in the bathroom to those pictures of?—"
He shut up awful quickly. His guilty eyes cut to mine, and I watched the usually unflappable Nashville Blackwood blush in real-time.
Angel’s grin widened as he watched his brother flop around like a fish on the hot summer docks at high noon. "My turn." He took the bottle from Rowan and tipped it back, his Adam’s apple working as he swallowed. The single most sexy, attractive thing about this man, after his hands, of course, was the way his throat worked when he swallowed.
Maybe that’s why men like watching a woman suck dick.
He pointed at Nash and grinned like a fool. "Truth or dare?"
Nash wasn’t a fool. Either Angel knew something the rest of us didn’t, or he had a suspicion that Nash didn’t want to entertain. "Dare."
"I dare you to finish that fucking admission," Angel spat, his cunning violet eyes boring a hole into his eldest brother. "Unless you’d like to puss out on round one."
"Fuck you, Angel," Nash growled, grabbing for the bottle of liquid courage. He downed the last few shots in the bottom and tossed the bottle over his head, the glass making a tinkling sound as it shattered on the kitchen floor. "Fine. You want to play dirty? I’ll go there."
"You’ve gotta look at her while you tell the rest of that story," Angel added, crossing one long leg over the other in a power move for the ages.
I pointed at myself, confused. "Me? Why?"
Angel didn’t answer me, just smirked at his brother and waited patiently for Nash to reboot his brain and make a decision.
Nash looked like he’d just swallowed the world’s biggest fly and was trying to decide whether to vomit it out or just live with the extra protein. When he turned to me, his earlier blush had doubled, and I could tell he wanted to be anywhere but here all of a sudden.
"I was rubbing one out in the downstairs bathroom when your mom walked in and caught me mid-orgasm."
He refused to meet my gaze. Angel cleared his throat pointedly. "The rest of the story, Nashville," he purred sinisterly. "Don’t leave anything embarrassing out."
Nash was as red as a tomato as his eyes met mine, and I didn’t know what to do with this newfound realization that there were some things even he was afraid to admit. "I was holding one of your graduation photos. The one of you in that blue bikini on the beach, wearing that stupid fucking hat Angel brought back from Paris."
I remembered that day. The morning started out hot as fuck, but by nightfall, when we’d all gathered around the campfire for roasted marshmallows, I was freezing. Nash wrapped me in a blanket and ran his hands over my arms for an hour, and I hadn’t read anything into it. Now, I wondered what else I’d missed in the past we shared.
A past I wasn’t likely to make the mistake of revisiting.
"I wish I’d heard what Mom had to say to you about that," I supplied helpfully, turning to Rowan. "Do you have any more booze? I’m dry over here."
To punctuate the point, I waggled my shot glass in his direction and winked.
And of course in less than a minute, I was holding a full lowball glass of a new kind of liquid.
Water. Fucking water.
"This isn’t what I asked for," I whined, pouting like a fucking brat.
A fact that didn’t escape Nash’s eagle-eyed stare.
"Give the brat what she wants," he snapped, his blush creeping back up his throat. "Spoil her one more night. You know you want to. Oh, and it’s your turn, Ro."
Rowan rolled his eyes and passed me a bottle of what looked suspiciously like absinthe. "Go easy on that, now. It’s not your garden variety alcohol."
My eyes rolled at his concern. "Thanks for the warning, grandpa, but if you remember correctly, I downed a whole bottle of Everclear the night your team beat our homecoming rivals."
Ruining your liver and kidneys was like, the rite of passage that year after homecoming. I’d been sneaking sips from my stepfather’s collection of expensive booze for years at that point, and I’d gained quite a tolerance for the strong stuff. When Rowan’s side piece, my ex-best friend, dared me to prove I wasn’t a pussy, I drank her and all her little buddies under the table.
Even back then, I’d wanted the guys to know I was better than any of those little sluts that hung off their perfectly toned arms after practice. I just couldn’t admit it to myself or them that there was an attraction, an infatuation, building there. Simmering just below the surface.
An infatuation that would never see satisfaction. I couldn’t give in to their snark and charm and caring now. The chances of us having anything close to a relationship or a happy ending died with me that night on the bridge.
Rowan smiled and turned to me, the involuntary shiver that ran down my spine finding a home in the pit of my stomach as it coiled and turned to arousal. "Harper. Truth or dare?"
Fuck.
Double fucks.
Rowan was smooth. Too smooth. Either way I chose, I’d be fucked.
"Dare."
His eyes shimmered with laughter. "You’re getting brave, I see." He took a swig of his own drink and set the glass down on the end table, eyeing me with an intense fire banked in the depths of that expressive gaze. "I dare you toooo . . . I dare you to pull Nash’s hair."
Pull Nash’s hair? It wouldn’t be the first time. Hell, I spent years in high school tugging his hair whenever he pissed me off. "Lame dare, but okay."
Nash, however, looked like he might faint on the spot. "What is this, let’s fuck with Nash night?" He squirmed around and refused to let me near his head from behind, so with a sigh of resignation, I changed up my tactics.
He went still the second I straddled his lap and used my body to weigh him down. My hand snaked into the back of his hair, right at the base, and wound around those soft strands and waves. With a smile that smacked of payback, I tugged down, dragging his head back with me, exposing his throat as an aroused groan slipped from deep inside him and sprang from his lips .
I felt my panties growing damp at the noise.
"Fuck, Harpie girl," he growled, and just like that, I shot off his lap like a bat out of hell, scrambling for the safety of the armrest on the other side of the couch.
Rowan and Angel laughed like fools at mine and Nash’s embarrassment, but my eyes were glued to the sizeable bulge in his pants now, making it known he wanted me, bad.
Suddenly, this game didn’t feel so playful anymore. This wasn’t the same game we’d played in the past.
This one was careening toward a precipice that would throw us soundly into an erotic, sexually charged, very fucking horny valley of no return.
I’m leaving soon. Why can’t I enjoy a little fun with them before I return to my celibate, sad life?
I wasn’t some blushing fucking schoolgirl. Maybe it was the fact that I was in dire need of some actual dicking down. Maybe it was the booze. Maybe I’d finally realized I’d never have love in my life and would endlessly have to settle for no-strings-attached sub-par sex in the future. There was no hope of a relationship ever coming close to the way I felt about these men, because I would never let myself fall that hard or that far ever again.
"Nash’s turn," I breathed, tossing my hair provocatively.
The man in question cleared his throat and glared newfound daggers at Angel. "Truth or dare, fucker?"
Angel’s slow smile spread like a slow-creeping moss that turned into a raging forest fire at the halfway point. "Dare."
Nash’s glee was unbridled. "I dare you to kiss Harper."
"Are we five now?" He shot a look of disgust at his brother and shook his head. "I’m invoking my option to switch to an alternate."
"Fine. Truth, then. Why are you still acting like you hate her when we all know better?"
The room grew silent, and Angel’s face contorted into a myriad of emotions .
Anger. Frustration. Regret. Sadness. Rage. And finally, resignation.
He didn’t say a word as he got up from his seat and stormed off, slamming his bedroom door behind him.
Rowan and Nash didn’t miss a beat, though. They both turned to me expectantly and waited with eyes that burned with an intensity that had me squirming.
"I suppose that makes it my turn?"
Nash grinned. "Yes, it does."
I pretended to think about it for a hot minute, my eyes continuously drifting to that closed door. It seemed that Angel had drawn his line in the sand, and I felt a particularly strong pang of regret that the literal door he closed between us was also a symbolic door in our lives that had been left open for me since I met him.
The fact that he was the one slamming it shut this time hurt.
"Make it a good one, Harper. I’d hate to see you waste your turn on some weak sauce shit?—"
"Wait. Since Angel bailed on your turn, Nash, maybe you should go again," Rowan interjected.
I took another swallow of the absinthe and grimaced as the room tilted a little. "Yeah, Nash, go ahead." I needed a minute to find my feet again. Regroup and plan a strategy.
Nash leaned in and bared his teeth at me, inches from my face. The oppressive aura from him was like a ton of bricks squashing me from all sides. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, couldn’t think with him so close to me.
"I dare you to take your panties off and stick them in Rowan’s pocket."
My throat went drier than the fucking Sahara Desert. "I’m—what?"
His breath was hot against my skin as he brushed his lips against mine playfully, teasingly. "You heard me. Slip your panties off and give them to Rowan as a going-away present." His grin widened as he moved his lips to the side of my jaw, brushing my ear lobe. "I bet he’ll sniff them when you’re gone."
Rowan glared at him but didn’t move to stop him or protest the dare. Sure, I could demand another option, but what was the point? Knowing Nash, it would be a whole lot easier to take his first offering. The alternate would be far worse and likely degrading.
I reached under my skirt and tugged the lace thong off my hips, painfully aware of both pairs of eyes on me all of a sudden. My whole body lit on fire as their eyes watched the downward progression of my hands, their fists tightening on their thighs when the first peek at my panties appeared below the hem of my skirt.
I could have just let them drop to the floor and avoided anyone getting a glimpse of what I had just revealed, but I was three sheets to the wind and a lot braver than I had been sober. Maybe it was the realization that I wouldn’t have to look them in the eye over breakfast tomorrow and relive this moment in shame that made me do it. Maybe it was the stupid lizard brain lurking under my inebriation. Maybe I was just ready to lose myself in them one more time.
I lifted a foot and planted it squarely on Rowan’s lap, sliding my thong down that leg first, then the other. His hand circled my ankle, and I winked at him as he held me steady, his eyes never leaving mine.
Like a gentleman.
Nash, though, had no such hang-ups.
The fucker was practically drooling as he watched me spread my thighs just enough to peek at what lay beneath my panties. I could see his cock twitching in his pants as he groaned and shifted his position, that bottom lip trapped between the rows of his teeth, much to my enjoyment.
"Fuck, Harpie girl, you’re a tease."
I tugged those panties off the end of my foot and wadded them in a ball, stuffing the damp fabric into the front shirt pocket of Rowan’s leather jacket. I patted the pocket gently, smiling as I imagined him pulling them out later and sniffing them like Nash had joked.
"There you go, big guy. A present for later."
His hand on my ankle tugged me into his lap, and he managed to shove my skirt up to my waist, baring my now-naked pussy to their burning gazes. "Your turn, Harper," he whispered, his eyes roaming over my body with now-unconcealed lust. "Who’s it gonna be?"
"Me," Nash whimpered, "oh, please pick me and make it dirty."
So of course, since he was so eager, I had to do the exact opposite. "Rowan. Truth or dar?—"
"Truth," he breathed against my hair, his chest expanding as he took a big whiff of me. "Anything you wanna know, now’s your chance."
"Why did you fuck my best friend in high school?"
Rowan’s face contorted into confusion, but he answered, ever the reliably honest one. "Because I was mad that I couldn’t have you. I wanted to make you jealous for a change."
"How does the real thing live up to the stand-in?"
His breathing hitched as he remembered our little tryst. "There’s no contest."
"Okay, okay, you sappy assholes, my turn," Nash butted in, even though it was a lie. "Harper, I dare you to touch yourself while we watch."
Rowan had been about to protest, and his mouth fell open in silence. He stared at me, then his brother, his eyes wide, hands clenching the armrest of the couch. "Nash, that’s taking it a little far?—"
I wasted no time in shoving my fingers inside myself for their viewing pleasure. I was so wet already, and half-gone from the booze, and normally I would not be doing this for these men, but I didn’t give two fucks right now. I wanted them to see me come, wanted them to know what it was to see something you wanted desperately and couldn’t have. Something just barely out of reach.
I wanted them to know how frustrating my whole life until that night was.
"Fuck, that’s hot," Rowan whispered, his hands twitching with the urge to touch me himself. "My turn."