Chapter 21
Thomas
Chapter Twenty-One
“Fuck you are so beautiful.” I sighed, my hands wandering up and down on Kinsley’s body while her nails dug into my back. I have never wanted something so bad as fucking her right here in the water, but that wouldn’t be right. Instead, I fisted her hair and pulled it so she was looking at me. “Can you be a good girl and stay quiet?” I asked, brushing my mouth against hers. “We wouldn’t want to expose our hideout, would we?” I kissed her already swollen lips.
Kinsley nodded, and I smiled at the sight of her reddened cheeks. I dragged a finger over her wet clit under the water and pinned her legs open with mine before I pushed two fingers inside her, stretching her out. Oh fuck, she was so warm inside. I needed to stay focused.
“Such a perfect little pussy,” I breathed into her ear while I kept sliding in and out of her. “So wet.” I almost moaned, too, as she closed her eyes and reached out for me, tugging her fingers into my wet hair. I leaned closer to her, capturing her lips with mine, her body trembling under me.
“Thomas.” She moaned my name like a praise, and I groaned, my dick pushing against my swim trunks from the inside. She rode my fingers with delicacy, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Not even if I wanted to. Luckily, I would never want that. She gasped for air, and I smoothed her fallen baby hairs out of her face.
“Are you going to come for me?” I rasped into her ear, pumping my fingers faster while I cupped her breast over her bikini top with my other hand. Her only answer was a squeaking noise mixed with a moan.
She moved between my arms and pulled her bikini to the side, releasing her slippery breasts, and my lips parted with surprise. Fuck. I felt my cock harden even more, and I needed all of my self-control to keep my word. I said I was not going to fuck her, and I meant it. At least for now. I wanted her to know that I wanted her, all of her, and not just her body.
“Oh shit,” she muttered, squeezing her eyes harder. “Don’t stop,” she whimpered.
I let a smile pull on the corner of my mouth, before ducking my head down to suck on her pink nipple. She let out another moan, riding my fingers harder, and her pussy tightened around me. Oh, she was close. I released her breast and captured her lips instead, just in time to smother her cries as she climaxed. I could taste her sweetness in my mouth from when I sucked her off of my fingers in the tool room, and I let out a groan while I kept pumping in and out of her. Her body stopped trembling, and she opened her eyes, looking up at me as I pulled out of her unwillingly. The only thing I wanted to do was to eat her off of my fingers again, but instead, I pinned her back against the pole with my hip, letting her feel what she was doing to me.
“Kinsley? Thomas?” someone shouted from not far away, and we both froze. I could tell we both thought the same thing, that it could be a trap to lure us out.
“The round is over.” It was my brother’s voice this time.
I turned my gaze back to Kinsley’s. She still had her bikini pulled aside, her breasts eyeing me, and my mouth watered. She was looking up at me with gleaming eyes, and I leaned down and rested my forehead against hers. She might just be the death of me.
“We give up, you won!” Kevin shouted, and a smirk formed on both of our lips. I loved that she liked this word just as much as I did.
“I told you we will win,” I rasped, helping Kinsley readjust her bikini, before stepping back to give her space. It might have been the hardest thing I had to do, as all I wanted was her, against this pole.
“You actually didn’t,” she replied.
“I did.” She gave me a look before swimming out from under the pier.
“I found this place first,” she reasoned, turning back around, and I was about to argue, when I heard footsteps approaching. We both turned toward the house’s direction.
“There they are.” Braxton’s voice reached me right before I saw him running through the fog.
I pulled myself out of the water, and Kinsley did the same before I could turn to help her. Braxton was followed by the red-haired girl and the blonde one, and in the back, I could see my brother approaching with Kevin and Aaliyah.
“Why the fuck are you guys soaking wet?” Kevin asked, stopping a few feet away from us. “Don’t tell me you hid in the water.” He grinned.
Kinsley shivered next to me, and I put my arm around her waist and pulled her body closer to mine. I ignored the surprised faces of the people around us and Kinsley’s one sloppy try to pull away.
“We didn’t. We just happened to crawl out of there when you got here,” I deadpanned. “You know, midnight swim and all,” I added, and Kevin showed me the finger.
“You could have just answered yes, dickhead.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” I asked, and Braxton laughed.
Kinsley let out a frustrated breath before she slid out from under my arm and moved toward the house.
“They definitely made out,” I heard Braxton say, and I gave him a deadly stare before I turned to follow Kinsley.
“And where are you going now?” Connor called after me.
“To change. We hid, you didn’t find us, we won,” I answered without turning around.
Kinsley had already opened the door when I caught up to her. I turned on the light, which gave a strange sound as it lit up the space. I must have taken my time studying it, because when I turned around, Kinsley was standing in the middle of the living room next to the coffee table. I walked up to her with my brows furrowed, and only when I was less than two feet away from her, I noticed that she was holding something in her hand. A picture to be exact, which was strange because Josh had packed away all of our pictures after my mom’s disappearance.
Before I could ask her what she found, she turned to me with a worried expression and held out the picture to me. I kept my eyes on her while I reached for it. When I finally looked down, my brows knotted. It wasn’t a picture from my childhood as I expected it to be. My mother wasn’t even in it. This was a picture taken only a few months ago and probably downloaded from Kinsley’s mother’s social media. I studied the picture for any clues besides the obvious. I wanted to know why someone would choose this exact one. Kinsley and her mother stood in the middle of the picture, Connor, me, and our father behind them. It was one of those cheesy pictures everyone’s parents insisted on taking. The only difference was that our heads, except for Helena’s, were crossed out with red marker, or at least I hoped it was marker. I put down the picture and rushed into the kitchen, pulling out a knife from the drawer.
“Go to Connor,” I said to Kinsley, running up the stairs, but she wasn’t paying attention. She was caught up with something else on the table, and blood rushed through my veins when I realized she wasn’t going to move.
“Kinsley, go. Now.” She finally looked up, but her eyes were distant.
“It’s blood, Thomas.” She lifted something from the table, and I narrowed my eyes. It looked like a picture of a lake from here, but I couldn’t be sure. She looked concerned, and something else flashed in her eyes as she chewed on her lip.
“Just go to Connor, please. And put that on.” I pointed at my hoodie on the couch when I saw her shiver and waited for her to leave the house with the extra layer on before I turned the lights of the second floor’s hallway on.
I was surrounded by silence. The only thing I couldn’t decide was if it was the suspicious or the normal kind of silence. I moved toward Kinsley’s room first, as that was the one that was broken into last time. I pushed the door open, and it collided with the wall. The sound that it made filled up the house, and I tightened my grip around the knife’s handle. I turned on the lights here, too, and stepped inside. The window was the first thing I went to check, but I found it closed. When I looked out of it, I froze. At the edge of the woods, over the low-hanging mist, stood the guy I followed into the forest after Braxton’s party. I would have recognized that white theater mask he was wearing under the black hoodie anywhere. That was what caught my attention in the first place.
I opened the window and jumped out onto the roof. He didn’t move, but I could tell he was looking at me from behind the disguise. It was a risky, around ten-foot jump from the roof to the grass, but I didn’t have the time to go around. I dropped the knife and jumped after it. I landed on my feet, bending my knees, and I grabbed the knife out of the grass, letting out a frustrated breath, before darting toward the forest.
The masked guy stood there for another moment before they started running too. The ground was hard under my feet and my fingers squeezed around the knife as I dove into the forest. I knew it was a bad idea to hold it while I was running, but I pushed down the small warning voice in my head. I slid out of my wet shirt when it started to bother me, and without taking my eyes off the person ahead of me, I let it fall to the ground.
The cold wind crushed against my body harder as I got deeper into the woods. The person in front of me took a sudden right turn, disappearing from sight between the crowded trees, and I sped up, but it was no use. When I took the turn, they were nowhere in sight. It was just trees and mist everywhere I looked. I let out an enraged breath. Whoever it was had vanished into thin air.
???
I spent a good half an hour looking behind trees, but it was pointless. When I finally reached the edge of the woods, the house was flooded with warm light, and Kinsley and Connor were standing on the front porch.
When they noticed me, they hurried down the stairs. Kinsley got to my side first, and seeing the concern in her eyes, I forced a crooked grin to my face.
“What happened? Why were you in the forest? We were looking for you,” she blurted, sparing an uncomfortable glance at the trees behind me.
“If I knew all I needed to do was disappear for a short time to get your attention, I would have done it sooner,” I replied, playing with the knife in my hand.
“You are not funny,” she said, and I furrowed my brows.
“Because I wasn’t joking.” The corner of my mouth turned upward, and Kinsley looked away.
She still had my hoodie on, two sizes too big for her, and it made her sexy and adorable at the same time. I wanted to pull her closer to me and inhale in her sweet scent, but Connor cut in.
“Okay, this conversation became overwhelming very quickly.” He shivered. “What happened? And why are you half-naked?”
“He just came out of the woods, and your biggest concern is why he’s half-naked?” Kinsley hissed, before glancing back at me. “I showed him the picture, by the way.”
I nodded. Good. It was better if he knew about it, and I wasn’t sure I would have told him. There was still a part of me that wanted him—them—away from this.
“There was someone at the edge of the woods.” I looked back around, narrowing my eyes at the darkness.
“And you chased them?” Connor frowned.
I made my way around them and walked toward the house before answering. “No, I just felt like taking a walk in the middle of the night.”
“Funny. Who was it?”
“I hope you are still drunk and didn’t forget what someone means.” I glanced at my brother, and he opened his mouth, then closed it.
“Right.”
“But it was the same guy I saw after Lee’s party,” I added. “Same theater mask and everything,” I thought out loud, and Kinsley’s hand curled around my lower arm, stopping me.
“Masked? You didn’t mention they were wearing a mask.”
“I—”
“What’s going on?” Kevin stepped out the front door.
“Is everyone else still here?” I asked. The hope of them being gone when I got back had vanished.
“Somewhere,” Kevin answered. “They went to search for Samantha and Braxton. We started another game of hide-and-seek. She hid with Brax— Is that a knife in your hand?”
So, it could have been any one of them in the forest. Kinsley and I shared a look, and it was enough for me to know she thought the same.
“What’s going on?” Kevin asked.
I sighed. It was impossible to think with so many people asking questions.
“We are just as clueless as you,” Connor replied, and Kevin turned his gaze toward the starry sky above.
“Apparently Thomas followed someone into the woods,” Kinsley informed him from next to me, leaning against the railing.
“Umm, what now?” It was Lee’s voice coming from behind our backs and we turned around to look at the four people walking toward us. Braxton and Aaliyah were walking each side of the ginger girl, apparently called Samantha, and the blonde one was coming slightly behind them.
“Is she all right?” Kinsley asked the same time I muttered:
“They could have at least gone home.” I turned my head toward my brother, who widened his eyes at me.
“I will try to not be hurt by that statement of yours, Rhodes,” Braxton replied, and I tilted my head at him.
“Freaks me out,” he mumbled after a moment, making a grimace. “She has asthma,” he explained. “And I may have made her out of breath while we were playing.” He grinned.
“Because you made me run around like a maniac,” the girl replied between two short breaths before using her inhaler.
“Thomas?” Kevin called, raising a brow at me.
I turned to Kinsley, who was still standing by my side, her eyes on me. I lifted a brow, and she shrugged. I tipped my head, and she bit into her bottom lip, narrowing her eyes.
“Are they having a conversation?” Lee’s voice came from behind me, but I didn’t pay attention to him. I was concentrating on Kinsley.
I didn’t want to share anything with them, but at this point, it didn’t feel like an opinion. I had a knife in my hand, and I had just come out of the woods; if I acted too secretively, it could easily become gossip around town, and that could mess up everything. I needed her opinion.
“Either that or they both just had a stroke,” Aaliyah added, and Kinsley flickered her eyes toward her.
“Let’s go inside,” she said at last. “I think we should talk.” She walked up the stairs and disappeared into the house.