CHAPTER FORTY-TWO #2
“Oh, hey guys!” Eden says, pretending to just now exit her room. “What’s up?”
Lina raises an eyebrow at her. “The gig is up. We know the three of you were listening by the door.”
She freezes, knowing she’s been caught red-handed.
Meredith and Kara both come out of another bedroom, and they look just as guilty.
“We can talk about this tomorrow,” Lina says easily, dipping into her room to grab the normal bag she brings when she spends the night at my place. “I have to change real quick.”
“We all cast our vote and laid it on your dresser!”
I have no idea what they’re talking about, but I have a good feeling it’s something to do with what she’s wearing—all the girls coming together to decide. Still, that seems odd given how casual Lina’s outfits tend to be.
Now, I’m left alone in the living room with Lina’s three roommates.
Meredith is the first to speak. “We’re not going to threaten you.”
Kara looks at her strangely. “We’re not?”
“No!” Eden slaps her on the shoulder. “He already knows what we’ll do to him if he fucks up.”
I can’t help but narrow my eyes toward Meredith. “Why did Braxton never get this treatment?” Technically, the two of them aren’t even back together yet.
“That was different,” Meredith says, her voice laced with annoyance.
“And he brings us ice cream,” Eden adds.
I snort. “Of-fucking-course he does.”
Then Lina comes back out of her bedroom, dressed in a Yale crewneck and leggings. The crewneck looks like she’s cut the neckline herself, big enough to hang off one of her shoulders.
“We’re leaving,” she says, eyeing the three of them.
“We one hundred percent will be talking about this tomorrow,” Kara tells her, pointing a demanding finger her way. “Be prepared.”
Lina smiles, waving to the three of them as she walks back out toward the entryway. I follow her, and as I do, I hear Meredith mutter, “Glad to see the panties worked.”
I swear Lina almost stops dead in her tracks. I see the millisecond where her entire body pauses, but she fights it. Probably because she’s hoping I didn’t hear and doesn’t want to draw attention to it.
“I heard that,” I whisper in her ear once we’re at the front door. “And I would like the details.”
“There may have been a committee of roommates who came together to decide what underwear would be best when I went over to your apartment the other night,” she whispers back as she shoves her tote more firmly onto her shoulder. “It was a whole thing. There may or may not have been a vote.”
I blink at her—stunned for a second—then laugh. “A vote? Like, an actual vote?”
“There were ballots,” she deadpans sarcastically, eyes gleaming. “It’s quite a serious election. We’ve all done it for one another.”
It only solidifies the friendship Lina has with her roommates, a bond where nothing is too small to make an event out of. It’s weird and wild and makes total sense when you understand how their friendship works.
They love each other in the way houses hold rooms all painted in different colors—it’s purposefully mismatched, and somehow it makes sense. The chaos is what makes it a home, in the same way the girls’ differences make them a complete unit.
“So, was there a vote for what you’re wearing tonight?”
She nods. “That’s what the girls were talking about when they said they left it on my dresser.”
Yeah, I figured that.
I lean in, still grinning. “And what exactly won?”
She glances up at me through her lashes, feigning nonchalance. “Red lace. Moderate risk, high reward.”
I groan, dragging a hand through my hair to distract myself from the way my dick pulses as we step out into the snowy air. “Jesus. I really wish I didn’t know that. Now I’m going to be thinking about it all night.”
She bumps her shoulder into mine. “No one’s stopping you from doing more than thinking about it.”
“Oh really?” I raise a brow at her as she quickens her pace.
I follow after her, pulling her backward by the strap of her overnight bag, halting her before we get to the door.
“We don’t have all night,” she says with the smallest bit of desperation, trying to pull out of my grip.
“Actually, we do.” My hands reach out for her waist automatically, pressing her backward against the wall right beside the door. “Patience, pretty girl.”
Lina rolls her eyes. “You have practice tomorrow morning.”
“I’d lose any amount of sleep if it meant my conscious mind had the chance to focus on you a minute longer.”
Again, she thinks I’m lying. “Whatever,” she says, smacking my shoulder. “Can we go in now? I have theories to prove.”
“Theories?” She opens the door easily—because Braxton, Cam, and I are all bad about locking it when we leave—and heads straight for my bedroom. “What kind of theories?”
Her voice stays completely level, and she barely cracks a smile when she glances over her shoulder and says, “Sex god theories.”
I lunge in front of her, nearly tripping over the leg of a barstool that hadn’t been pushed in all the way. I don’t bother fixing it. I’m too busy trying to get inside my bedroom as quickly as possible.
Lina giggles. “I thought we had all night?”
I shake my head, pulling her into my bedroom and shutting the door behind me. It doesn’t take me more than three seconds to have her pressed up against it.
“I’ve decided I’d like a vote,” I whisper, my lips barely grazing her ear as my hands inch beneath the band of her leggings, fiddling with the strap of her panties.
“It’s a little late for that,” she manages to reply before her breath hitches. “Plus, you can’t vote. That would be like sports betting on a game you’re playing in. You can’t be a voter and an unbiased election official—it would corrupt the system.”
“I have about a thousand much more corrupt thoughts running through my mind.” I know exactly what I’m doing, teasing her as I inch my fingers closer and closer toward her center. “And I can promise you none of them include you wearing anything.”
I feel her tense. It’s clear she’s still getting used to the buildup of it all—letting herself relax first, instead of fast-forwarding straight to the races.
Trailing kisses down her throat to her clavicle, I feel her body slowly ease up.
Lina must feel it too, because her normal confidence comes back ten-fold. “Well then, my vote is for you to just take them off.”
I follow her order without complaint, settling on my knees as I pull her leggings down her legs and nodding in approval when I see the red panties she’s wearing. Despite what she originally requested, I don’t take them off right away. They look too good on her to discard them yet.
She hums, lifting her feet one at a time for me to drag her pants completely off. “I like this view.”
Me too. This angle of her allows me to see every sharp line and contrasting soft curve while feeling every ounce of power she knows she holds over me.
Evangelina Everhart is the type of beautiful that should come with a warning—a quiet ruin you never truly see coming until you’re wrecked.
“I’m sure you do,” I chide, grinning up at her as I press a kiss to the inside of her thigh. “Feel free to get used to it.”
She leans back against the door, eyes warm, smirk even warmer. “I’m already used to you being obsessed with me.”
My fingers slide up her calves, over her knees, until I’m gripping her hips again, mouth hovering just shy of where I know she wants me. “I campaigned hard, didn’t I?”
Working my way into Lina’s good graces didn’t come from a grand speech or gesture. It came from relentlessly showing up, openly campaigning myself to her in order to be the name on her ballot.
“Careful,” she murmurs, threading her fingers through my hair. “My roommates might not be the happiest with you if you’re holding separate elections.”
I kiss her again, slower this time. “Your roommates can’t rig the vote if I’m the only candidate.”
She pulls me up by my shoulders, pressing her lips harder against mine once I’m standing. “Let’s take politics out of the bedroom.”
With that, she shoves me backward. Her back is no longer against the door as she stalks toward where I’m standing near my mattress.
I have a fairly good idea of where tonight is going, but I’m well aware of Lina’s wariness toward intimacy, and I’m not trying to assume anything. Her ex was the crack in the dam that flooded her fears—I can’t ignore that fact, despite how much I’d like to.
“You hold all the power here,” I tell her, taking a seat on the edge of the mattress, pulling her so that she’s standing between my legs. “Whatever you want to do, pretty girl.”
Lina easily joins me, straddling my lap and forcing my hands to fall when she runs her hands along the nape of my neck. “Fuck me,” she says in two breathless syllables. “ Please .”
“You must really want it if you’re already using manners.” I drink in the sight of her, grabbing her chin to make sure she’s looking at me. “Are you sure?”
She nods, lifting her arms for me to take her crewneck off. “You’ve made it clear you can make me come.”
Of course I oblige, pulling it up over her head. “That was never a concern.”
I just want her to feel good about this, not like it’s something looming over her head.
A grin lifts her lips. “So you might as well do it again.”
I withhold the groan stuck in my throat while she pulls my sweatshirt over my head.
Our lips, hands, and bodies all collide at once, like a storm breaking against the shore. We’re moving against each other like it’s the last moment we have together. I force myself to remember that it’s not.
This is only the beginning of us. And with every ounce of hope I have, there isn’t an end in sight.
“Get a condom,” she tells me when her hands meet my waistband.
Everything she says hammers through me in long breaths. It makes me reach for the nightstand as she pulls my pants and boxers down from where she hovers over my lap.
“Can I put it on?” she asks when I procure the foil packet.
Fucking hell. This girl is going to be the death of me.