Chapter 8 — Pantry Shelves And Bad Ideas #3
It sat between the kitchen and the side porch, tucked behind enough traffic that you could steal a breath there, but not enough to forget the whole house was full of parents, siblings, cousins, and men who thought shouting at yard games counted as conversation.
Kiki caught my hand first.
She did it while everyone was arguing over whether cobbler should be served with ice cream or whether that was an insult to cobbler's structural integrity. Her fingers slipped around mine, gentle and certain, and she tugged once.
I followed.
Because I was weak.
But I wasn't weak at all, just done lying to myself about what strength looked like.
Shay slipped in behind me and pushed the pantry door almost closed, leaving it cracked enough that light cut across the floor.
"This is a terrible idea," I said.
Kiki turned to face me. "Probably."
Shay's hand landed on my lower back. "Historic, really."
The hallway smelled like sugar, paper bags, lemon cleaner, and heat trapped in an old house. Kiki stood in front of me, close enough that the buttons down her dress became a moral problem. Shay pressed in behind me, all warm skin and wicked laughter under her breath.
Out in the kitchen, Caroline said something about plates.
Ten feet away.
Maybe twelve.
Kiki slid her hand up my chest and looked at me with no tease in her eyes at all.
"Tell us no if you mean no," she said.
The words hit harder than any touch.
Shay went still behind me.
There it was. The real line. Not the family noise, not the hallway, not the risk. The choice.
My hand closed over Kiki's waist. My other found Shay's hip behind me.
"I don't mean no."
Kiki's breath caught.
Shay's fingers flexed against my back.
"I mean not here," I said. "Not in your parents' pantry. Not where Vince can come looking for paper towels and find me with both of you pressed against me like this."
Shay leaned around my shoulder, grinning, but her eyes were bright. "You noticed both of us pressing?"
"Shay."
"Sorry. Serious moment. Continue being responsible. It's very hot and annoying."
Kiki laughed softly, then lifted onto her toes and kissed me.
It was quick. It had to be quick. A brush of her mouth against mine, warm and sweet and so full of promise that my grip tightened at her waist before I could stop it.
Shay kissed the side of my neck from behind.
My cock went hard in one brutal rush.
"My house," I said.
Kiki's eyes darkened.
Shay's mouth curved against my skin.
"Your house," Kiki repeated.
"My bedroom. Locked door. No parents. No siblings. No one walking in because they need napkins."
"Look at him," Shay whispered to Kiki. "Setting boundaries like a filthy grown-up."
Kiki's thumb moved once over my ribs. "I like this boundary."
"I love this boundary," Shay said.
Kiki kissed me again, and this time it wasn't quick. Not even a little.
Her mouth opened under mine. Her hands caught my shirt.
Shay pressed closer from behind, her breasts against my back, her lips at my neck, her fingers sliding under the edge of my polo to find skin.
I had Kiki's tongue in my mouth and Shay's breath at my ear and the entire Bishop family on the other side of one bad decision.
Shay's hand flattened over my stomach. She didn't go lower. That was somehow worse than if she had. The restraint was deliberate, wicked, and full of promise. Her palm held me in place while Kiki kissed me like she had earned the right in front of every God-fearing pantry shelf in the Carolinas.
"He's shaking," Shay whispered.
Kiki broke the kiss just enough to look at me. Her lips were wet. Her eyes weren't sweet now. They were warm, yes, but dark with the private knowledge of what my body did when she stopped being careful.
"Luke," she said, so softly it almost disappeared under the kitchen noise.
"I know."
"Do you?"
Shay laughed once against my shoulder. "He knows. His cock knows. His face is negotiating with his conscience, but the rest of him has already packed a bag."
I should have told her to stop.
Instead, my hand tightened on Kiki's waist and my other hand covered Shay's where it rested under my shirt.
For one dangerous second, the three of us stood there breathing like we had already left.
Kiki in front of me, Shay behind me, both of them touching skin nobody in that house had any business imagining.
The pantry door stayed cracked. The voices stayed close.
The whole world narrowed to sugar, lemon cleaner, Kiki's mouth, Shay's hand, and the brutal fact that the safest place I had ever held in these families was becoming the cover for the dirtiest thing I wanted.
Kiki's hand slipped lower, not to my belt, not far enough to make the decision for me, just far enough that her fingers rested against the hard line of my cock through denim.
Her eyes widened.
Shay felt my whole body lock and laughed under her breath. "Oh, Kiks found the truth."
"Shay," Kiki whispered, but she didn't move her hand.
"What? It's a very persuasive truth."
My grip tightened on both of them. Kiki against my front, Shay against my back, my cock hard under Kiki's careful fingers, and the kitchen full of people who would have trusted me with car keys, coolers, daughters, secrets, anything.
"This is why we're leaving," I said.
Kiki's smile trembled. "Soon?"
"Now, if you keep touching me."
Shay kissed the back of my shoulder. "That sounds like an incentive."
The wrongness of the location made the wanting sharper. Not because I wanted to be caught. I didn't. Because every sound from the kitchen reminded me how much trust surrounded us, and every inch of Kiki and Shay against my body told me what that trust was failing to see.
Kiki broke the kiss with a shaky inhale.
Shay's hand slid over my stomach and stopped just above my belt.
"Not here," I said again, rougher this time.
Shay's fingers stilled.
Kiki looked up at me, flushed and breathing hard.
"No stopping?" she asked.
"No stopping."
Shay made a small sound behind me. Not a laugh. Not quite.
Then footsteps crossed the kitchen.
The pantry door swung open.
We separated so fast it would have been funny if every cell in my body hadn't been screaming mutiny.
Cooper stood there with a stack of paper plates in one hand and the blank expression of a man who had opened a door, found three people standing way too close together, and decided immediately that he had seen absolutely nothing.
"Hey, Luke, Dad says cooler duty before the next round."
"On it," I said.
My voice was too rough.
Kiki turned toward a shelf of canned goods with tremendous interest. Shay slipped around me and grabbed a roll of paper towels.
"Found them," Shay announced.
"Cool," Cooper said, and left.
Nobody died.
Barely.
The next twenty minutes were the most controlled exit I had ever performed in my life.
Kiki helped Caroline stack plates. Shay got pulled into a loud debate about whether Knox had cheated at cornhole.
I moved coolers, shook Mark's hand, promised Vince I'd look at the dock hinge later in the week, and didn't look at either woman long enough to set anything on fire.
Kiki left first, claiming she needed to run an errand before dinner.
Shay left eight minutes later, saying she had forgotten something at her house.
I stayed exactly long enough for nobody to connect the three exits.
Then I drove home with both hands on the wheel and the windows down, pretending the air was going to help.
It didn't help.
Kiki's car was already in my driveway.
Shay's was behind it.
My front door was unlocked.
The women waiting inside my house had stopped pretending.
***
Kiki stood in my living room when I walked in, pale blue dress still on, bare feet on my floor, hair loose around her shoulders. Shay stood beside her in denim shorts and a white tank, arms crossed under her breasts, grin tilted like she had been waiting her whole life to see what I'd do next.
The house was quiet.
No grill smoke. No family voices. No yard games. No fathers asking if we were behaving.
Just Kiki and Shay in my house, looking at me like I was late for something that belonged to all three of us.
I shut the door behind me and locked it.
The sound changed everything.
Kiki's expression softened first. Shay's grin sharpened. They crossed the room together, and the last clean piece of my afternoon broke.
Kiki reached me first, rising onto her toes to kiss me with the soft, hungry confidence of a woman who already knew where this ended. Shay came in behind her, hands on my waist, mouth at my shoulder, laughing once under her breath when my body reacted to both of them at the same time.
"There he is," Shay murmured. "Responsible Luke made it all the way home."
"Barely," I said.
Kiki's hands moved to the buttons of my shirt. "Good."
They undressed me like they had discussed it ahead of time.
Maybe they had.
Kiki opened each button carefully, her eyes on my face, her mouth brushing my chest every time more skin appeared. Shay tugged the shirt from my shoulders and kissed the back of my neck, then my shoulder, then the line of muscle down my arm like she was tasting how patient I had been.
"You were so good today," Kiki said.
"Painfully good," Shay added. "Tragically good. The kind of good that makes a woman want to reward civic responsibility."
"Is that what this is?"
Kiki pushed the shirt off me and laid her palm over my heart. "Partly."
Shay moved around in front of me and stepped between my feet.
The room tilted.
"Mostly," she said, looking up at me with eyes gone dark, her fingers hooking lightly in my belt loops, "I want to see what Kiki does when I make you lose your mind."
Kiki's breath caught.
Shay smiled like she had heard it.
Then she let go and backed toward the stairs.
They took me upstairs slowly, which was crueler than rushing. Kiki held my hand. Shay walked ahead of us, looking back over her shoulder every few steps with a grin that made my cock throb against my zipper. At my bedroom door, Kiki stepped in first, then Shay, then me.
I shut the door.
Locked it.
Kiki's eyes went bright.