Chapter 7 — The Morning After Math #4
“They’re not subtle,” she said, falling into step beside me as we walked back toward the house.
“Any of them. It’s adorable. Tatum’s been ‘dropping’ things near you for forty minutes.
Reese has touched your arm approximately six times, which is four more than her usual, and Penny just basically announced to the entire cleanup crew that she wants you to fuck her where people can almost see.
” She laughed, low and warm. “I love them. They’re terrible at this.
I’m the only one with any actual stealth, and that’s only because I’m saving it for something better. ”
“What’s better than almost getting caught?” I asked, and the question came out rougher than I meant it.
Eden’s smile widened. “Getting caught on purpose. By the right people. At the right time. In a way that makes it very, very clear that this is happening with everyone’s full consent and enthusiasm.
” She squeezed my shoulder. “Think about it. Or don’t.
I’ll do the thinking for both of us. That’s my job.
Instigator. Party logistics. Very sexy job title, criminally underpaid. ”
She peeled off toward the house where Trina was calling something about leftover food, and I stood in the middle of the Hollis yard with folding-chair imprints on my palms and the distinct feeling that I was surrounded by women who had stopped asking permission and started making plans.
The fragments reached me in waves, carried on the lake breeze between clusters of cleanup activity:
“—after Kiki and Shay, obviously, but I’m thinking soon, like maybe tomorrow—” Tatum’s voice, bright and carrying.
“—not rushing, but the room closest to his, because of the thunderstorms, you know how I get—” Reese, warm and certain.
“—Rourke event on the twelfth, that gives us a window, and the visibility factor is—” Penny, polished and plotting.
“—game night at his place, I can arrange the seating, and if we—” Eden, timing everything.
They were deciding. Not if. How. In what order, with what combinations, with the casual certainty of women who had loved each other longer than they’d loved me and saw no reason why those loves should conflict.
And underneath it all, the thing that was unraveling me thread by thread: not a single one of them sounded jealous.
Not one. They sounded thrilled. Competitive, eager, hungry in ways that made my cock ache, but underneath the hunger was a generosity so bright it hurt to look at directly.
Kiki wanted Shay to be happy. Shay wanted Kiki to be happy.
Tatum wanted her turn with the cheerful certainty of someone playing a game she knew she would win.
Reese wanted closeness with the patience of a woman who had been collecting memories of me since thunderstorms. Penny wanted visibility, danger, the thrill of being chosen where reputation mattered.
Eden wanted to keep the whole thing moving with the delighted focus of a party girl calling the next round.
And I stood in the middle of a family cleanup with his resolve in pieces and his cock hard in his shorts and the clear, terrifying understanding that he wanted all of it.
Every woman, every want, every combination they were plotting in voices that carried across the yard like invitations he had no intention of refusing.
The resistance was crumbling. Not in a dramatic collapse, not in a single moment of surrender.
In small, warm increments: a touch on the arm, a bump of a shoulder, a look across a yard full of folding chairs that said, clear as day, we’ve decided, and you’re deciding too, whether you’ve admitted it yet or not.
I hadn’t admitted it. Not out loud. Not to myself, not fully.
But my body had decided hours ago, on a squeaking air mattress in a green-lit tent, with a wild-haired woman taking my cock from behind while cleanup sounds carried from half a mile away, and the distance between what my body knew and what my mouth was willing to say was getting smaller by the minute.
The queue was real. And I wanted every person in it.
***
Kiki found me by the stacked chairs near my truck, where I’d been loading the last of the Bishop coolers into the bed with the focused determination of a man trying to outrun his own desire.
She materialized beside the passenger door with a folded blanket in her arms, her golden hair loose around her shoulders, blue eyes bright behind the casual cover of a simple request.
“Luke, Mom says these go in your truck for the next Bishop dinner. The good ones, not the dog ones.” She held up the blanket, and the smile she gave me contained approximately zero interest in linens and one hundred percent interest in what she was about to do.
I took the blanket. “Sure. Truck bed or cab?”
“Cab. They’ll get dusty back there.” She stepped closer, close enough that I could smell the vanilla sunscreen on her skin, and her voice dropped to something warm and private. “And I need a minute. Just a minute. With you. Right now.”
She didn’t wait for permission. She took my wrist and pulled me around to the driver’s side of the truck, where the open door and the high bed created a pocket of privacy that wasn’t really privacy at all, the Hollis yard was thirty feet away, full of folding chairs and coolers and family traffic, but felt like enough for what she wanted.
What she wanted was my mouth. Her hands found my face, fingers framing my jaw, and she kissed me with a sweetness that contained absolutely nothing innocent.
Her lips were soft, warm, her tongue finding mine with the confident familiarity of a woman who’d been inside me enough times to know her way around, and the taste of her, vanilla, lake air, that unmistakable Kiki Bishop warmth, flooded my senses and turned my spine to liquid.
She kissed me like she was reminding me.
Not claiming, not competing, just placing her mark on territory she already owned with the casual certainty of someone who had no doubts about her place.
Her body pressed against mine, breasts against my chest through the thin fabric of her tank top, and her hand slid from my jaw to the back of my neck, fingers threading through my hair with a possessiveness that made my cock hard against my zipper.
“God, baby, I want you so bad,” she whispered against my lips.
“Me too. Like, right now if possible.”
“I missed you this morning. Woke up in my bed instead of yours, and it felt wrong.” Her thumb brushed my cheek, and the tenderness in the gesture made my chest tight.
“But I’m glad you were with her. I’m really glad, Luke.
Seeing you two together, the way she looks at you now, It’s...
” She smiled, that sunshine smile that contained no shadows.
“It’s everything I wanted for her. For both of you. For all of us.”
I kissed her again because words were failing me, and she kissed me back with a warmth that felt like coming home, her body soft against mine, her hand on my chest over my heart where she could feel exactly how fast it was beating.
Then Shay’s voice cut through the moment like a cheerful thunderclap.
“Oh my God, are you two making out by the truck? In broad daylight? With, like, actual people nearby?” She bounded around the corner, dark hair flying, blue eyes bright with delight rather than anything resembling jealousy, and the smile on her face was so wide it looked like it hurt.
“This is amazing. This is the best thing I’ve seen all day.
Kiki, your technique is impeccable, by the way.
Very thorough. Very possessive. I approve. Strongly.”
Kiki laughed against my mouth, pulled back just enough to look at Shay, and the warmth that passed between them, genuine, easy, completely unforced, hit me somewhere behind my sternum and stayed there.
“Your turn,” Kiki said, stepping back with a grace that made the whole thing feel choreographed. “But make it quick. I think Cooper’s headed this way with more chairs.”
Shay didn’t need to be told twice. She stepped into the space Kiki had vacated, pressed me back against the truck door, and kissed me with none of Kiki’s sweetness and all of Shay’s dirty hunger.
Her mouth was hot, demanding, her tongue against mine in a way that reminded me exactly what she’d felt like on that squeaking air mattress, and when her hand found my cock through my shorts and squeezed, the groan I bit back vibrated against her lips.
“Missed this,” she whispered against my mouth.
“Missed your mouth, missed your hands, missed how fucking hard you get when I touch you—” Her thumb circled the head through the fabric, and my hips bucked against her hand without permission.
“God, you’re still so hard. Even after this morning.
Even after I rode you until that mattress sounded like it was giving birth.
You’re insatiable, Lake Luke. It’s my favorite thing about you. ”
She kissed me again, deeper, her free hand sliding into my hair, gripping hard enough to make my scalp tingle, and the contrast, Kiki’s sweet possession, Shay’s dirty hunger, back to back in the space of sixty seconds, nearly short-circuited my nervous system.
Then Cooper’s voice carried from the side of the house, close, getting closer, calling something about chair storage, and the transition happened so fast I barely processed it.
Shay’s hand was off my cock. Shay’s mouth was off my mouth.
Shay was two feet away, examining a scratch on the truck’s bumper with the focused interest of someone who’d been doing it for minutes, and Kiki was adjusting the blanket in the cab with casual efficiency, her golden hair catching the light, her smile serene and utterly innocent.
“Hey, Whitaker.” Cooper rounded the corner with an armload of folding chairs, sandy hair messy, grin easy. “These go in your truck too? Dad says the Bishop ones can wait, but the Hollis ones need to get back to the shed before Trina murders someone about tripping hazards.”