Chapter Fourteen #2
Here, now, in the guest room, a wanton breath escapes my lips when Jake unbuttons his navy-blue pants.
He studies me, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows.
I pull his slacks to his ankles—too quickly for him.
He catches my hand when I grip the hem of his dark gray boxer briefs.
“Slow,” he reminds me. My pussy throbs just hearing the grit to his voice, and our eyes latch in an aroused beat.
The command both infuriates and electrifies me.
Desire is impatient. It aches for release.
Unhurriedly dragging down his boxer briefs, I free his erection from the fabric. His cock is already thick and hard. I pulse just imagining Jake inside me. I really love him there.
Blow job.
Don’t rush.
I nod to myself and grip him at the base, then I skate my tongue along the shaft. The pace is agonizing. My thighs quiver as I study his face while he studies mine.
His mouth parts. His hand clasps a fistful of my hair. I’m slow to take him in my mouth. Slow to fit him between my lips. Slow to ease him to the back of my throat.
When he’s inside me as far as he can fit, he commends me with a husky “Good girl.”
Wetness soaks my panties, and I make a concerted effort to breathe through my nose so I don’t choke. I begin to suck. Ease in and out. My whole body thrums as I watch him. Veins spindle through his neck, his breathing irregular. His pinpointed eyes darken in headier desire.
It feels so good not being inside my head.
It feels so good laying waste to these feelings instead of being tangled inside my thoughts.
A gentle creak sounds behind me, and before I can turn around, Jake mumbles out, “What the fuck?” I quickly remove him from my mouth and glance over my shoulder.
Jake’s hand tightens on the back of my head as he follows my gaze.
Oliver. It’s just Oliver.
Relief quickly spins into tension.
Oliver shuts the cracked door. Confusion lines his brows. A hairpin is pinched between his teeth, a book under his arm, and his gaze pings from me knelt on the floor to Jake’s legs on either side of me, quickly processing the erotic position.
And in this moment, I remember I asked Oliver to come to my room tonight. But that was before Jake was kicked out of his room. Before he became my roommate for the summer.
The error is mine. So I take responsibility for the building strain.
“I…” I start to say, but I realize Jake and Oliver aren’t looking at me. Their attention fixes to each other.
“You break into Hailey’s room often?” Jake questions, his tone protective. Accusatory. All while his hand still cups my head in tender affection.
Oliver slips the hairpin out of his mouth. “I hardly would call it B and E when I was invited.” He leans his shoulders against the closed door, and his gaze lowers to mine. He winks at me. Then his eyes lift back to Jake. “You want me to leave or stay? I don’t mind either.”
“You wouldn’t mind staying?” Jake asks in disbelief. Oliver confuses him, and with Jake’s inquisitive nature, I’m not shocked he’s fueling questions rather than ordering Olly out.
Oliver shrugs. “Call it curiosity. I’ve never seen Hailey give head to anyone else but me.”
He’s always been a playboy, until recently when he promised he’d only sleep with me.
It was a big promise, considering I couldn’t offer the same.
But Olly assured me he wasn’t looking for mutual exclusivity.
He just felt it was something he needed to do while I was…
am trying to sort through my mental state.
On the surface, it seems like Oliver might be interested in voyeurism. Staying here to get off. The truth is, he wants to stay because he’s just as protective, and he doesn’t know Jake very well. He’s seeing how he’ll react.
My neck aches, and I turn back to face Jake.
He contemplates. He considers. He’s…curious, too.
I suddenly realize, we might all share this one trait in common.
A fuck ton of curiosity.
Jake isn’t breaking from Oliver. “Hailey, it’s up to you.”
The weight of this call bears on me as heavy as their gazes. I don’t want to choose wrong, and it does feel like maybe there is a wrong choice. I care about their feelings, but tonight I feel reckless. Selfishly, I want both of them. Realistically, I know that ends once they learn about the baby.
Stupidly, I decide now is not the moment to tell them.
My curiosity is too heightened. My arousal built.
I want to drive this speeding train into the ground. Fling it off course. Risk it all. I can’t play it safe in bed. I never could.
“I don’t mind,” I tell them. “Oliver can stay.”
I worry Jake might be upset at the choice, but intrigue must supersede all. He nods, accepting this strange road.
He’s so confident and assured in his own body, he hasn’t even hidden his cock away. His hand remains firm on my head, and I dip down to gather him in my mouth. I restart where we’d left off. Sucking in and out, licking and tantalizing. I watch him, but he’s not watching me.
His gaze careens over my shoulder, pinned on Oliver at the door. He studies him in the way that he always studies me. Unpuzzling. Unpeeling the layers. But Oliver has too many, and Jake only grows more restless. His nose flares, and he lets out a low groan when I suck harder.
Jake looks at me. “Slower.”
A moan scratches against my throat. The command pulses the spot between my legs. The awareness of Oliver hearing it behind me stimulates me in a deeper way. I obey, until Jake bends down to plant a kiss on the top of my head. He whispers in my ear. “Stay still.”
I do as I’m told.
“Good girl.”
He moves his hips in and out. In and out. Fucking my face in slow, deep thrusts. His tip hits my throat, but I stifle a gag. Then he releases into me with a low, throaty growl. I wait for the spasms to end before I lick him up slowly.
Oliver rounds the side of the bed as Jake lifts the elastic of his boxer briefs back to his toned waist.
“That was enlightening,” Oliver says casually, offering me the book under his arm. I take the thick hardbound copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Still on my knees, I sink back against my heels to flip through the collection of poems.
Jake scrutinizes me. “Late night reading again?”
Oliver cocks his head. “Do I hear judgment?”
“You hear concern.” Jake buttons his pants and gets up from the bed, facing Oliver eye to eye. “She stayed up reading all last night.”
With my eyes planted on the book, I feel the heat of Oliver’s gaze descending on me. “How many hours of sleep, Hailstorm?”
“Three,” I say honestly. I flip the next page, reading quickly. Nerves mount the longer they watch me. My brain buzzes too much to focus on the text. I don’t do well with new. And this—both of them in my room tonight—is a bucketload of new. I don’t have a plan. No blueprint.
It’s unexpected. Not unwanted. But I don’t know what to do other than…read. Or pretend to read.
“You’ll try for more than three tonight?” Olly asks. He sinks down to the floor beside me, sitting with his back against the bed.
“Yes.” I flip a page.
His hand skims the rug. “Tibetan silk.” He whistles. “Should we take it with us when the summer ends? You think he’ll notice it missing?”
Jake rubs his palm against the back of his tensed neck. “I’m guessing rugs were a part of your Billionaire Bullshit School?”
Oliver blinks slowly, confusion crushing his face. “What?” He shifts the hairpin in his mouth with his tongue, then loosely holds his bent legs. It’s about the only casual movement he’s able to make.
Jake frowns from him to me, then back to him. “Hailey said you came up with that name. It’s what you call all your lessons over expensive brands and objects. So you knew which marks had real money…is that…not right?” He glances to me for confirmation.
I didn’t lie to him.
Oliver is just caught off guard. Olly won’t look at me, but I can see hurt pulsing against his brown eyes. “No, that’s right,” he tells Jake. “Did she also tell you why she chose the name Hailey?”
The question jolts me like whiplash. I know Oliver so deeply. Like a story I’ve read over and over and over since I was a little girl. Pages I’ve memorized. I can practically see his thought process, and my breath lodges in my lungs.
“It was a fake name for a job when she was six,” Jake says. “She kept it because she liked the little girl she was pretending to be. A bookworm who’d been placed in advanced classes.”
My pulse pounds in my ears. “Olly—”
“And Trevor? Did she tell you about his name?” Oliver asks.
Jake rubs at his lips, his hesitation landing on me.
I breathe out, “Don’t lie to him.”
Oliver bites a little harder on the hairpin. He still won’t meet my eyes.
“He’s the third child in the Tinrock family,” Jake says, still wary as he can see the emotion building in Oliver, too. “So, when he was little, he went by Tre for three. Then Trev…and finally Trevor.”
“Phoebe and Rocky?” Oliver asks him.
“They named each other. You named yourself after Oliver Twist, and Nova after a comic book character.”
“Everyone then,” Oliver murmurs. “She told you about everyone.” His expression fractures into a rushing cascade of emotions, most of them bordering on pain. Deep, deep hurt.
Carter spilled the origin of Oliver’s name first to Jake, and Oliver never cared. But me leaking information is different, because I once told Oliver I’d rather cut out my tongue than expose the truth behind our names.
Oliver swallows and tries to collect himself, but when he faces me, his gaze rummages through mine like he’s trying to make sense of this.
Nothing breaks Oliver Graves. Except me locked in a storm shelter.
And now, I’m terrified maybe this has, too.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
He lets go of his bent legs, just to sweep nonexistent dust particles off his kneecaps. It’s not helping him appear indifferent. Not when muscles strain against his neck, when his shoulders won’t unbind, when the normal sparkle in his eyes drowns in a dullness I hope to never see again.