Chapter 28
Haven
“Chug, chug, chug, chug…”
The thumping bass line and chorus of way-too-fucking-drunk voices fades a little as Kai drags me through the first unlocked door he finds in the upstairs hallway of the Theta Chi frat house.
“Whose room is this?” I slur against his mouth as he kicks the door shut behind us.
“Don’t give a fuck,” he mutters before crushing his mouth against mine again.
Fair enough.
Guess we both used up our last fuck on that fifth round of tequila shots.
Four hours ago, Kai told me his charges had been dropped, and we have to celebrate.
Two hours ago, we ended up at a Theta Chi party because Kruger said there’d be free booze and loud music.
I came willingly enough—we’d almost finished a six-pack by that time—but the farther the Uber took us down Maple Row, the more concerned I became.
This frat house is nothing like the one Kai was staying in.
But, like Kai, I’m all out of fucks, so I don’t care that we’re currently inside a building that looks more like a crack den than a frat house.
His hands are everywhere—under my shirt, down my jeans, tangled in my hair—and I’m grabbing at him just as desperately, both of us crashing into furniture we can’t see in the dark. My hip catches the corner of a desk. His shin connects with what might have been a mini fridge.
“Ow! Fuck—”
I clap a hand over Kai’s mouth. “Shh, someone’ll hear—“
“So fucking what?” he growls, and then his mouth is on my neck and I stop caring too.
God, I’m so happy. And horny. But mostly happy.
Kai’s charges are dropped, the case is closed, and for the first time in weeks we don’t have a massive threat hanging over our head, aka Bastian fucking Rooke.
Kai fumbles with my bra clasp, making annoyed growling sounds in the back of his throat like he’s never undressed a girl before.
“Okay, you know what, just—here—let me—”
Kai cuts me off with a frustrated mutter. “I got it, I got it—”
I reach back and unhook it myself.
His groan of appreciation when my tits spill free almost makes up for the fact that he immediately trips over someone’s discarded sneaker and takes us both down onto the bed.
“Smooth,” I giggle.
“Shut up.”
He’s on top of me now, grinding against me through our jeans, and I wrap my legs around his waist and pull him closer.
Yes, fucking finally.
Kai pushes my legs open and humps me with manic energy. It should feel amazing…but it just feels off.
It’s been like this the whole night.
We’d dance and be moving in perfect unison, then one of us falls out of rhythm. We’d tongue each other like high-schoolers, then someone’s nose pokes the other’s eyeball.
I’ve never seen Kai drink like this, either. I know he likes his beer and his J?ger and—apparently—tequila. But I’m truly concerned for his liver.
Every time I asked if he was okay, he’d scoop me against him and kiss me until I couldn’t breathe.
And, fine, whatever, it’s not like I’m complaining.
But it began to feel less like a celebration and more like an escape.
Like something’s chasing him, and the only way to not get caught is to get drunk.
Really, really drunk.
Drunk enough that I think he’s forgotten that we have to take our clothes off before we can fuck. Unless he plans on dry humping me until we both come.
“Kai.” I grab his face, forcing him to look at me. The only light in the room is from a street lamp filtering in through the slats of the partially open blinds. But there’s just enough for me to see how glassy his eyes are. “Hey. You good?”
“I’m fucking great, Heavenly.” He kisses me hungrily, desperately. “So fucking great.” But his voice cracks on the last word, and when he buries his face in my neck, I feel wetness that might be sweat…or might not be.
I don’t push, even though I know it’s utter bullshit.
I just hold him, running my fingers through his hair while the bass from the party throbs through the floor beneath us.
He pulls back and yanks on my jeans.
Well, at least he figured that out.
“Up.”
I lift my hips, and he yanks my jeans down my thighs right along with my underwear. His hand shoves between my legs, his fingers curling up and thrusting into my pussy.
I wince.
He stops.
“Jesus,” he mutters, working his fingers shallowly in and out of me a few times. “You…uh…you’re okay with this, right?”
“Yeah,” I say through a sigh. “Sorry. It’s the alcohol, I think.”
I realized the moment he pulled my underwear down that my pussy was dry as the fucking desert. How the hell that’s possible when I’ve been so horny the whole night, fuck knows.
He pulls his fingers out of me and starts petting my pussy like it’s a fucking dog. “Should I—”
“No, it’s fine.” I grab his hand because I don’t know what the hell he thinks he’s doing, but it’s not fucking working. “Just—just give me a minute.”
He puts his mouth to my ear. “Got something better,” he says.
He kisses down my stomach, working his way to my clit and licking at me until his jaw must be aching, but my body refuses to cooperate. Every time I start to feel a swell of arousal, my mind drifts back to his face when I saw him on the stairs with Deputy Thatcher, and I lose it.
He just looked so…gutted.
My first thought was that Thatcher was there to arrest him. But when I didn’t see any handcuffs, my second thought was that the deputy was there to arrest me.
Ah, fuck. This isn’t going to happen, is it?
“Okay, okay, stop. Stop.” I tug at Kai’s hair to get him off my non-responsive clit. “Lemme try something.”
I shove him onto his back and zip open his jeans, reaching inside to find—
A floppy cock.
A very, very floppy cock.
“Jesus,” Kai groans, throwing an arm over his face. “Got fucking whiskey dick.”
“It’s okay. Here, let me—“
It’s my turn to try. I stroke, I lick, I do all the things that usually get him hard in seconds. But nothing’s working. His cock stays stubbornly limp in my hand, and after a few minutes of increasingly desperate attempts, he gently pushes me off him.
I roll onto my back beside him, hands draped over my ribs, staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars some previous occupant stuck to the ceiling. They’re arranged in the shape of a dick.
Classy.
“I’m sorry,” Kai mutters at the ceiling. “I don’t know why—“
“Me neither.”
“Alcohol,” he says.
“So much alcohol.”
The music rages on downstairs. Someone’s yelling, “Sarah!” at the top of their lungs.
“We should leave,” I say.
“Yeah.”
Neither of us moves.
My eyes are heavy from the booze, but my brain just keeps replaying that scene on the stairs at AHC. Maybe he was in shock, that’s why he looked like he’d seen a ghost.
“Hey.” I roll onto my side, propping my head on my hand. “What happened today?”
“What? Nothing.” He glances at me, then gives me a double take. “I told you, the cop—”
“Bullshit.”
He’s quiet for a long moment before letting out a heavy, world-weary sigh.
“I just want to forget, okay?”
My stomach tightens. I knew something was up. “Forget what?”
His jaw tightens. “The arrest. The charges. All of it.”
I get that…but there’s something he’s not saying. But honestly, I’m not sure I want to know right now. I’m too drunk to handle the fallout.
“Okay,” I say softly.
He rolls away from me, pulling on his jeans and fumbling in his pocket. A lighter clicks, the flame giving him a warm orange silhouette. The joint Kruger gave him earlier crackles as he hits it.
“Want some?” he asks in a tight voice, passing the joint without looking at me.
I hesitate, then take the joint and inhale deeply. The smoke burns my throat so much I burst into a coughing fit.
Kai doesn’t even chuckle, and I don’t even care.
We smoke in silence, passing the joint back and forth until it’s gone. The weed mingles with the alcohol in my system, creating a floaty, disconnected feeling, like I’m watching myself from somewhere outside my body.
We lie back, Kai wrapping me in his arms. I snuggle close, exhaling happily as I close my eyes and listen to the music.
But the serenity is only temporary.
The DJ starts playing a remix of Jefferson Airplane’s ‘White Rabbit’ and that causes a flood of memories from Halloween to burst into my mind.
Bastian pinning me and Kai side by side in that crypt.
The way he forced Kai onto his knees to eat me out.
Oh, and who could forget how Bastian forced me to admit that I thought about him while I fucked Kai?
Oh my God.
Is that why Kai can’t get it up tonight? Why he’s been running hot and cold since Halloween? No…no. That’s ridiculous. He has other shit to deal with.
Fuck.
He’s probably still processing the fact that he’s bi. I’ve been trying to gather up the courage to speak to him again, but I can’t stand him pushing me away if I try.
I should try, though.
Maybe now.
“So, you know—” I pause to clear my throat “—I’m totally here if you ever want to talk about—“
Kai sits up abruptly, running his hands through his hair. I don’t think he even heard my meek little voice.
“Jesus! My brain won’t shut the fuck up! Kruger said this shit was indica.”
“Kruger’s a fucking liar,” I declare loudly, taking a wild stab in the dark. I’ve never really been a big stoner, so half of what Kai says when he’s speaking about weed goes right over my head.
Kai’s leg keeps bouncing against mine. “He knows I hate sativas when I’m drinking.”
“Asshole.”
“I’m going to kill him.”
“I’ll help you bury the body.”
We lie there, aggressively not relaxing, as my mind spits random questions at me like it’s prepping us for a weirdly specific round of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
Whose crypt did we fuck around in at the Halloween party? Did Kai pick up his hat, or is it still lying there? Why do I suddenly want nachos so badly?
And then, out of nowhere—
Dad’s car. Well, my car now, I guess.
God, how did I manage to forget my dad’s dead? Oh, right…he won Worst Father of the Year award nearly two decades running.
I sit bolt upright.
“Kai! God, Kai!” I slap him with the back of my hand.
“What?” He sounds half-annoyed, half-relieved at the interruption.
“My car’s still at Rooke’s house.”
It takes him a moment to process before he murmurs, “Fuck.”
“I completely forgot about it! We’ve been Ubering around town this whole time when we have a perfectly good—“ I reassess what I’d been going to say “—a semi-functional car we can use.”
“At Rooke’s house,” Kai says slowly, like he’s still processing.
The weed wasn’t that hectic, seriously. If anything, it’s reconnected synapses in my brain that have been dormant for way too long. Or…however brain stuff works.
“He hasn’t said anything about it. We could just, like, leave it there. Forever.”
“What? No!” I slap him again, and he recoils like I punched him in the kidneys. “That’s my car! I want my fucking car!”
I get this creeping suspicion that I don’t care as much about the car as I do about getting it back from Bastian.
Maybe it’s why I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him.
There was this open loop in my subconscious, and my brain was—subtly, stupidly—trying to remind me I was forgetting something.
Whatever. I’m drunk and stoned, and this suddenly feels like the most important mission of my entire fucking life.
“We have to go get it.” I’m already climbing out of bed and hunting for my shirt.
“What, now?”
“Right fucking now.”
“Babe, it’s—“ Kai checks his phone. “One in the morning.”
“So?”
“So Rooke’s probably…” Kai trails off.
If it was anyone else, he’d say Bastian would probably be sleeping. But we both know what our professor’s favorite weekend activities include.
Sex, drugs, and psychopathy.
Preferably all three.
Simultaneously.
“This isn’t Mission Impossible, Kai. It’s…”
“Mission Fuck Around and Find Out,” Kai supplies grimly when I flail.
He’s staring at me like I’ve lost my mind.
I stab a finger toward him. “This is happening with or without you. You can blame Kruger and his Superman weed later.”
“This is fucking insane,” Kai says as he shoves his sneakers back on.
“Definitely.”
“He’s going to be sooo pissed,” Kai mutters, standing to his full height, arms on his hips like he’s trying to death-glare me into a stand down.
It doesn’t work.
I’m fucking wired.
“Abso-fucking-lutely.” I match his stance—shoulders back, arms akimbo—and watch a war play out on his face between common sense and chaotic impulsivity.
Common sense loses.
“Jesus.” He heads for the door, grabbing my arm on the way past. “If he gets all murder-y, I’m sacrificing you to save myself.”
“Attaboy, Romeo.”