Chapter 8 — Pantry Shelves And Bad Ideas #8
"They are fluffy."
"They are traumatized."
I lay there for a second, staring at the ceiling and smiling like an idiot.
There were clothes everywhere. Shay's black bra hung from the corner of my dresser.
Kiki's blue dress was folded over a chair because of course Kiki had folded it at some point, even in the middle of destroying my life.
My shirt was missing. There were three water bottles on the nightstand, two empty, one half-crushed under Shay's pillow.
Evidence.
Everywhere.
I pulled on sweatpants and followed the smell of coffee.
Kiki stood at the stove wearing one of my gray shirts and a pair of panties, bare legs long and golden in the morning light.
Her hair was a mess. There was a mark low on her neck that she either hadn't noticed or had decided to ignore for now.
She moved through my kitchen like she knew where things belonged because she did.
Shay sat on the counter in my white button-down, mostly buttoned wrong, one bare foot swinging against the cabinet. Her hair was wild. Her lips were swollen. She had a mug of coffee in one hand and a piece of toast in the other, and she looked at me like I was breakfast number two.
"Morning, Responsible Luke," she said.
Kiki turned from the stove and smiled.
That smile did something worse in daylight.
At night, desire could pretend it belonged to darkness and locked doors. Morning made it domestic. Morning put Kiki in my shirt and Shay on my counter and coffee in the air. Morning said they had stayed. Morning said they weren't sneaking out of my life before anyone noticed the bed was warm.
"You made coffee," I said.
"Kiki made coffee," Shay said. "I supervised toast."
"She burned one piece," Kiki said.
"I created contrast."
Kiki crossed the kitchen and kissed me.
Not a secret kiss. Not a desperate kiss. A casual morning kiss, warm and slow, like she had done it before and planned to keep doing it.
Shay made a sound of theatrical injury. "Oh, so we're doing greetings now?"
I walked to her. She set her mug down just in time for me to step between her knees and kiss her too.
She tasted like coffee and trouble.
Her hands slid into my hair. The kiss went from greeting to problem in less than three seconds.
Kiki cleared her throat. "Eggs."
Shay pulled back, breathing harder. "Your eggs can wait."
"My pan can't."
"Your pan lacks vision."
I laughed and rested my forehead against Shay's for a second before stepping back.
Breakfast shouldn't have been erotic.
It was.
Kiki knew where I kept the mugs because she had learned my kitchen one morning at a time.
Shay knew I took coffee black because apparently chaos still had room for details.
Kiki moved around me with a hand on my lower back whenever she passed, casual and warm, like touching me had become part of the route between stove and counter.
Shay stole the first bite of toast from my plate, then held the second to my mouth with a look that made the kitchen feel less like breakfast and more like foreplay wearing socks.
"You're limping," Shay said.
"I'm not limping."
Kiki glanced down, then up again with a blush she tried to hide behind the spatula. "A little."
"Betrayal," I said.
Shay beamed. "Evidence."
Kiki slid eggs onto a plate and kissed my shoulder as she passed. The kiss landed exactly where Shay had bitten me the night before. I went still. Kiki noticed and smiled into my skin before moving away.
That was the part that got me.
Not the shirts, though both of them wearing my clothes was doing permanent damage to my sanity.
Not the bare legs, though those weren't helping.
It was the ease. Kiki rinsing a pan like she belonged at my sink.
Shay sitting on my counter with one heel hooked on a drawer pull, reading the labels on my spice jars and insulting my paprika.
The two of them touching each other whenever they crossed paths, hip to hip, hand at the waist, quick kiss stolen over a plate of eggs.
They hadn't just stayed the night.
They had stayed into the morning.
There was a difference, and it was dangerous.
"You have terrible paprika," Shay said.
"Nobody has opinions about paprika."
"I contain multitudes."
Kiki set a mug in front of me. "Drink before you argue with her. You always lose when you're undercaffeinated."
"I always lose when you two are in my kitchen wearing my shirts."
Kiki's smile softened.
Shay pointed her toast at me. "Correct. Healthy self-awareness."
For one long minute, nobody knocked, nobody called, nobody needed a cover story. It was just the three of us in the wreckage of breakfast and sex and sleep, and my house didn't feel invaded.
It felt claimed.
Kiki proved it by opening the dishwasher without asking where anything went.
"You loaded this wrong," she said.
"I loaded it normally."
"You put a pan on the top rack."
Shay gasped from the counter. "Luke. We trusted you."
"I'm being judged in my own home by two women wearing my clothes."
"Our clothes now," Shay said.
Kiki didn't correct her.
That landed harder than it should have. Kiki just moved the pan, set two plates in the right slots, then reached behind her without looking. Shay handed her a mug. They worked together for three quiet seconds like they had practiced this, like my kitchen had been waiting for their rhythm.
The room still carried the night if you knew how to read it.
Shay's hair was knotted from my hands. Kiki kept shifting her weight like she was sore and trying not to show it.
My shirt hung off Kiki's shoulder far enough to reveal a mark I had left low near her collarbone.
Shay's mouth was swollen. There were three mugs out, not one.
Kiki caught me staring at the mark on her skin.
Her blush started slow.
Shay followed my gaze and grinned. "Breakfast with evidence. My favorite meal."
"Your favorite meal is attention," Kiki said.
"And toast."
"In that order?"
Shay looked at me. "Depends what he's doing with his hands."
Kiki laughed and shook her head, but she reached for my hand anyway.
She held it for one beat in the open middle of the kitchen, no tablecloth, no family cover, no bedroom door.
Just her fingers sliding through mine while Shay watched from the counter with soft eyes and a mouth that still wanted to joke its way around the tenderness.
The morning after sex, which was infinitely more dangerous.
The house had receipts everywhere.
The hallway smelled faintly like shower steam and sex.
The laundry room door was open because Kiki had already found the ruined top sheet and started a pile like she planned to solve the evidence with detergent and confidence.
A damp towel sat over the edge of the hamper.
My bedroom door was half-closed, but I could see enough from the kitchen to know the bed still looked like a crime scene with better lighting.
Shay followed my gaze and smiled around her coffee.
"We should maybe close that door."
"Maybe," Kiki said.
Neither of them moved.
That was the real answer. The bed, the towels, the shirts, the marks, the way Kiki shifted carefully when she reached for the pan, the way Shay's eyes dropped to my sweatpants and warmed like she remembered exactly what my cock had done to both of them.
The night hadn't vanished because the sun came up.
It had moved into the house and started making coffee.
"You two are trouble," I said.
Kiki handed me a plate. "You invited us."
Shay lifted her mug. "And came in us."
Kiki made a tiny scandalized sound, but she laughed before it could become anything else.
"Breakfast," Kiki said firmly.
"With receipts," Shay said.
I took the plate and understood that anyone who walked through that front door was going to feel the difference even if they didn't know every wet, filthy detail behind it.
"I unlocked the front door," Kiki said suddenly, eyes flicking toward the hall. "Tatum texted about dropping off our bags."
Shay looked at me.
"You're telling us this now?"
"The eggs were at a critical stage."
That was when the front door opened.
All three of us froze.
"Hello?" Tatum called from the entryway, bright as a siren. "No one be naked unless it's emotionally convenient."
Penny's voice followed, smoother and drier. "That isn't how you announce yourself."
"It's in this house."
Kiki's eyes went wide.
Shay looked down at herself, at my misbuttoned shirt, at her bare legs, then at me. Her grin started slow and wicked.
"We could hide," Kiki whispered.