3
KAIN
When somebody touches my shoulder while I’m in the line in the cafeteria, I expect it to be one of my teammates, ready to ask me to grab them lunch too. When I whirl around to find Gabriella behind me, I’m momentarily lost for words.
She looks like a vision, with the sunlight streaming through the windows behind her and her golden hair hanging straight over her shoulders. She also looks way more amused than I’d have expected with our last encounter still fresh in both our minds.
“Is standing around with your mouth hanging open a new thing for you?” she asks, then uses her index finger to gently push my chin up until my lips are closed. “Better.” She blinks her black-rimmed, almond-shaped eyes and folds in her lips to hide her smile.
My brain has seized up, realizing she’s casually referencing yesterday’s incident without anger or malice. In fact, Gabriella Cross seems positively amused.
Interesting.
“Well, to be fair to me, I had a good reason yesterday.”
“Yeah, you did.” Her cheeks pink, making her appear a little more human. Even so, I’m still a little in awe of her from this close. All the years of thinking she’s pretty are coiled up in my belly, ready to unsettle me.
“So, I should probably apologize profusely and explain why we burst into your room unannounced like three Neanderthals.”
“It’s okay,” she says, raising her hands. “Mom told me that you were helpfully clearing Travis’s room, and I wasn’t the quietest. I guess you were coming to my aid.”
I snort, taking two paces to the left to catch up with the others in the line. “Not the kind of aid you needed, though.” The words come out before my brain has computed how they sound, and now it’s my turn to blush. Well, I’m not sure it’s even possible for me to blush. Too much beard and the tan I carry year-round from all the outdoor training I do.
“Yeah,” she says, and if I’m not mistaken, her voice has taken a breathy turn.
Blake’s suggestion barrels through my mind as I’m asked what I want by the server. “Burger and fries,” I say. “And whatever she’s having.”
“Same,” Gabriella says, and we both watch as our lunch is heaped messily together.
My stomach rumbles noisily at the sight of cooked food. It’s not going to be that delicious. I know from experience. The bun is powdery and the patty too smooth. The fries have been sitting under warming lights so have lost their crisp. But it’s better than anything we make at home.
I recall Dalton’s ridiculous suggestion that we ask Gabby to cook for us with embarrassment. I’m embarrassed that I would love it to happen. How pathetic is that?
Taking both plates, I rest them together on my tray. It’s presumptuous to assume she’ll sit with me because I pay for her lunch, but I’m hopeful. It suddenly seems ridiculous that I’ve known this girl since she wore onesies that sagged with her diapers, and we go to the same university and never hang out.
Maybe that’s about to change.
“So, Blake and Dalton send apologies too,” I say, wanting to turn the conversation back to yesterday.
“That’s sweet,” she says. “I don’t need apologies, though. Just don’t tell my brother.”
Shooting her a serious look, I shake my head. “We would never mention it to anyone.”
“Okay. Good.”
I pay for the food and head to an empty table by the windows, and Gabriella trails behind me. When I take a seat, she does too, and I say an internal prayer of thanks to whichever deity has shined a lucky light on me today.
When I pass Gabriella her plate, she reaches out for it with two hands. “I’m going to demolish this,” she says. “I’m ravenous.”
There’s a roughness to her voice that has my dick stirring between my legs. He’d like her to be ravenous too, just not about that kind of meat.
Travis, forgive me . What kind of friend am I, sitting in front of my best friend’s sister, imagining her feasting on my sausage with as much gusto as she’s using to handle her burger?
A terrible friend.
A terrible friend who’s listened to his brother’s crazy ideas and wants them to be reality more than he wants to win the next game.
“Be careful where your dick leads you,” my dad told me when I turned thirteen. “ Your dick can be your best friend or your worst enemy. Just make sure he isn’t the one making your decisions, or he’ll get you into trouble .” I laughed at him, thinking his tirade of advice sounded ridiculous. I was too young to grasp the concept of powerful desire. I was too foolish to grasp the power that comes with wanting a woman so much you’d sacrifice sense and loyalty and self-respect. But now, sitting with a burger clutched in my hands and the object of almost all of my fantasies sitting in front of me, I understand the wisdom of my old man.
Maybe my dick can be my best friend and my worst enemy at the same time if I let him get his way, and Gabriella doesn’t have a shit-fit at the suggestion.
That’s probably what will happen if I dare to voice what me and Blake and Dalton have wanted for more years than I can count. Not probably. Definitely. I mean, what kind of suggestion is it? Hey Gab, want to play pass the sausage with me and my douchebag brothers?
Even suggesting it would probably be construed as an insult.
It’s not that we’re not appealing prospects. I’m not oblivious to the longing looks we all get when we’re out. There are enough jersey chasers on this campus to keep my bed filled every night. The thing is, none of them measure up to Gabriella. Not even close.
“So, are you dating?” she asks, breaking my downwardly spiraling train of thought.
“No.” The single word sounds more abrupt than I meant it to, and her eyebrows pull up in surprise.
“And your brothers?”
“Dalton is too busy hefting bricks, and Blake works ridiculous hours. With my training schedule, we spend most of our downtime on our couch, exhausted.”
“All work and no play.” Gabriella pops a fry into her mouth and chews with a half-smile.
“Yeah, we have some time to play. We just haven’t been lucky enough to find someone worth playing with.”
Across the canteen, Elias and Dornan are having some kind of disagreement. I’d usually step in to intervene, but I’m not risking losing my spot with Gab. Let someone else break up their stupid rivalry.
“Someone?” she says. “Like, you’re looking for just one woman between the three of you?”
I lower the burger, realizing my slip, and then take on board what the beautiful girl in front of me asked without a hint of disgust in her voice.
“Your best friend shares three dudes, right?” I ask, knowing full well that Ellie is in a committed relationship with Colby, Seb, and Micky. It’s deflection but relevant.
“Yeah. I like to think I played a major hand in that blissful union.”
That surprises me. “Really. What did you do?”
“It all started with a dare,” she says, glancing over her shoulder as though she’s worried someone might be listening to our conversation. “I mean, I knew Ellie had a thing for her stepbrothers for a while, so I nudged her in the right direction.”
“Maybe your momma should have named you Cupid.”
Gabriella winks and wiggles her eyebrows and I drop my head from side to side, suddenly feeling the need to limber up. It’s like the minutes before a big game when a surge of nervous anticipation makes my skin tingle and my head hot.
“To be honest, I thought she would get down and dirty with one of them and that would be it. I never imagined she’d sleep with them all.”
“Well, sometimes sex is just sex,” I say. “And sometimes it comes with feelings.”
“Awe, listen to you, Mr. Big Bad Baller, getting all emotional.”
I pick up a fry and toss it at her. “It isn’t the nineteen-fifties, you know. Men don’t have to be made of stone anymore.”
“I always took you for a tough guy,” she says. “Remember when Tommy pulled my pigtails in our front yard? You punched him so hard you made his nose bleed.”
“I was nine,” I snort. “But I’d do it again now if anyone messed with you.”
Gabriella rests her hand over her chest, drawing my attention to the soft skin of her neck and clavicle, and the curve of her breast beneath her black tank. “Be still my heart.”
“I kind of like the idea that I made it race.”
I lean forward a little and Gabriella holds my gaze, almost as though she’s staring into my soul and trying to work out if I’m worthy. I’m grateful she doesn’t really have that kind of X-ray vision because who knows what she’d discover? I try to be a good, respectable man, but the thoughts I’ve had about this girl would send me straight into Satan’s furnace.
She folds in her pretty lips, the full bottom one looking glossy and appealing as it’s released. Damn, if we were alone, and she was willing, I could kiss the hell out of her. And more. So much more.
She leans in too, the space between us feeling charged with a new kind of energy. “I was telling Ellie what happened,” she whispers. “She asked me if I ever thought about you guys in that way.” She inclines closer when she emphasizes that and I lean in too, sensing this could be a pivotal moment between us. The kind of moment I don’t want to waste or forget.
Maybe Blake wasn’t so crazy with his suggestion. Maybe Gabriella really wants us.
“And what did you say?”
“I told her that despite Travis defining you all as off-limits, it didn’t stop me from wondering.”
I feel bad for knowing just how much wondering she’s done over the years. Travis divulged a whole lot of Gab’s journal to Blake, and I don’t like the unequal footing it puts us on. “Wondering?” God, I’m making her work for this, but I have to. The closer we get to admitting the forbidden, the more I need to know for sure it’s what she wants. If the shit ever hits the fan in the future, it could make all the difference.
“Yeah,” she whispers, her pupils spreading wide and aroused, and it takes every ounce of restraint I possess to not climb over the stupid fucking table and grab this woman. “Wondering what it might be like. Haven’t you wondered?”
“I’m a man, Gab,” I say. “Wondering is part of our DNA. There’s isn’t much time in the day when we’re not wondering.” She laughs, and the sound makes my heart expand against my ribs. “When you wondered, what was it like?” My voice comes out as husky as it gets after I’ve yelled my lungs out at a game, and I flex my fingers beneath the table, my half-eaten burger and fries forgotten as the woman of my dreams confesses that I’ve not been alone in what I thought were off-limits fantasies.
“Good,” she says, biting her bottom lip. “So good.”
“Fuck…” Below the table, my cock stirs, eager and ready and my heart speeds, thudding in the cavity of my chest like a drum warning of invaders.
“You ever think about doing more than just wondering?” Her eyes search for an answer I might not confess, but I’m beyond all thoughts of why this is so fucking wrong. Gabriella Cross may be my best friend’s little sister, but she’s all woman and so far, my greatest fucking temptation.
“Shit, Gab. What are you trying to do to me?” I groan.
“Tease you to the point of distraction,” she grins, biting her lip again.
“Only tease? I thought you were an angel, not a devil.”
“Oh, I’m a devil when it counts.”
She leans back, resting against the chair, the extra distance between us feeling all wrong. I need her closer. So close, we’re skin on skin, heat on heat, sweat on sweat. One being fixated on nothing but pleasure. But she’s making it very obvious that flirting is as far as she’s going to take this.
If I want her, I’m going to have to work for her. But that’s not a problem. I’d toil until the end of time just for a chance to see again what I saw by accident yesterday.
“I think we should hook up,” I say before I can convince myself to keep my distance. “In fact, I’m sure we should hook up. No way that bit of rubber is doing what a woman like you needs. Frankly, it’s a travesty that you should ever need to resort to battery powered satisfaction.”
“Kain Nowak, are you propositioning me?” She feigns shock, her hand pressing against her mouth even as her eyes dance with excitement.
“Look at it as me offering you a service. Whenever you need me, just drop me a message and I’ll be there to rock your world.”
“Dial-a-dick!” she laughs.
“I guess you could call it that.”
“What would your brothers think?” she asks.
“Well, that’s the thing,” I say, already cringing at what I’m going to need to bring to the conversation. “It’s all of us or none of us.” Holding my breath, I watch Gabriella chew the inside of her cheek. She’s going to say no. She’s going to tell me I’m a degenerate fucker. She’s going to tell Travis and blow up our friendship into the stratosphere, nuclear style.
“Triple dial-a-dick,” she laughs eventually, and I know for certain that I’ve never been more relieved to hear the sweet tinkle of her amusement in my life.
“Three for the price of one,” I agree.
“A bargain,” she laughs, picking up her burger. “I better start fueling up.”
As she eats, I realize we’ve talked about this, but she hasn’t actually agreed. She’s left me out on a limb, hanging in the wind. I’m not going to push it, though. Women don’t like men who beg. They want a man so confident he’ll assume he’s desirable enough that she’ll definitely say yes.
“You’d better keep your strength up because there’s another part to this offer.”
“Oh yeah? What?”
“Well, in repayment for our dial-a-dick services, you’ll need to cook for us. A home cooked meal for every orgasm.”
She splutters, choking on whatever was in her mouth. I pass her a bottle of water so she can wash down her food and a napkin to dry her lips. “I can’t agree to that,” she says.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m banking on you guys working hard, and that’s going to mean more big O’s than there are mealtimes.”
Shit. She’s banking…it hits me that she’s agreed to the part of this arrangement that matters. Fuck Dalton’s stupid food idea. We can live on sandwiches for the rest of our lives.
Or maybe not.
“Okay. Let’s say four hot meals a week in exchange for an unlimited number of orgasms.”
Our eyes meet and the zap of heat that passes between us sends shivers over my spine and a surge of blood into my cock.
“Four meals I can do, but you’ll have to buy the ingredients.”
“Done,” I say, offering my hand. She takes it, wrapping her cool, slender fingers around mine and shaking vigorously.
“Nice doing business with you, Mr. Nowak.” She grins.
“Nice doing business with you, Miss Cross.”
And just like that, it seems that all my fantasies might come true after all.