25. Twenty-Five
The sharp slam of the van door forces me into consciousness, followed quickly by the sound of a pair of boots stomping away in the opposite direction of the tent. When I crack open my eyes, I see it’s well past sunrise, and the heat of the sun is already collecting inside the thin fabric walls.
The door slides open again, this time it’s shut a little more gently, and the accompanying footsteps head in our direction.
“Rise and shine, fuckers!” Ray’s shout cuts through the still morning air. That calm quiet is shattered entirely when the sides of the tent start to shake violently.
“I think that’s our wake-up call,” I whisper to Tucker.
He’s desperately clinging onto the wisps of sleep still drifting past him. He groans and rolls over, utterly uninterested in Ray’s intrusion.
“Everyone decent?” The zipper is already halfway undone, regardless of the state of dress we might be in. Fortunately, I already dug through my bag and threw on a shirt, knowing there was always a possibility someone would barge in and demand we get ready to leave.
Ray is back to his normal, self-assured state, all smirks and conspiratorial glances as he crawls into the tent, his frame eating away at the little bit of open space.
“Sleep well, Princess?”
“Like a baby.” I bat my eyelashes at him.
Does he know what happened?
As soon as the thought crosses my mind, his line of sight falls on my neck.
His eyes grow wide. “Holy shit, Tuck. Were you trying to suck her soul out?”
My hand flies to my neck, and I find that the skin is tender in more than one spot. I look away from Ray’s wide eyes to check the rest of my body, and yep, there’s a definite constellation of marks. I forgot about his whole ‘Can I mark you” thing, but I can’t pretend I’m not heated again at the memory of it.
”Don’t worry, he’s given me a few of those. Hickies are kinda his thing.” The words don’t immediately make sense and Ray’s eyes shine with delight at my dumbfounded expression.
I must have heard that wrong.
Surely, he meant he’s had these marks before. Period.
I blink stupidly, not sure how to process this information. “Wait, you mean like…”
A slow smile builds on his face, confirming my thoughts. Confirming what he just said, and my brain is running a mile a minute coming up with every scenario that ends in one or both of them covered in the evidence of the encounter. Each image flashing through my mind is dirtier and more intriguing than the last.
He crawls closer, crowding further into the limited space, and angling to get a better view of me, a better view of the smattering of bruises covering my skin. I can’t see them all, and a pang of jealousy hits that Ray can. Before he gets too close, I pull the unzipped sleeping bag tighter around my waist, his proximity making me realize I’m naked aside from my tank top.
“Hiding something, Princess?” Ray’s teeth flash at me, a predatory look shadowing his beautiful features. I’m caught between the desire to keep myself covered and throwing away the meager bit of privacy I’m clinging to.
His tanned and calloused hands grip the polyester bunched between my fists, but doesn’t pull it away as he continues his slow approach.
“Now, what sort of surprise will I find under here, huh?” Mischief twinkles in his eyes. “You know I’ve seen it all already.”
My breath catches and his gaze drops to my lips, I can feel myself being drawn into him as if by a magnetic force. It would be a defiance of physics to retreat from him now, to reject the all-encompassing pull between us.
Just as I loosen my grip, and he begins to inch the bag away, a shadow descends over the tent, and Dane ducks his head in.
“Let’s go. I’m leaving in five, with or without you.”
That’s it. No reprimand. No surprise at what he just walked in on. My ears burn at being caught before whatever it was we were about to do. What I was willing to let him do to me.
“Don’t mind him. He’s just grouchy we had to listen to you two all night.” He pauses, sliding his eyes across the tent. “Sounded like quite the party. Good on you, Tuck.” He punctuates his compliment with a slap to Tucker’s leg.
My cheeks heat and my muscles tense. Of course they heard! Of fucking course! I don’t know what I was expecting, I wasn’t even thinking about trying to be quiet as I was being dragged through orgasm after excruciatingly amazing orgasm.
Tucker finally sits up, running a hand through his wild curls and shooting Ray a glare. “Enough, Ray. She just woke up.”
When he turns to me and sees what he’s done, he doesn’t look ashamed. Instead, his eyes darken, and he looks like he’s one second away from disregarding Dane’s demand and reliving last night’s fun.
It seems he’s made his decision when he all but lunges at me, planting a kiss on the most tender part of my neck. I’m lost to the world the second his tongue laps at my pulse, falling into Tucker’s embrace. I’m about to abandon all thought, ready to let myself go again, when Ray intervenes.
His fingers are tangled in Tucker’s curls, pulling him off me and close enough he could kiss him if he wanted to.
“Later, Tuck. We gotta go.” Ray clears his throat, driving off the roughness of his speech, clearly upset he has to be the voice of reason. I am too, before I remember Dane might not be above stranding us in the woods to find our own way to wherever we’re headed next.
Their eyes are locked on me, both of them making a silent promise that there’s more to come. Promising they’re not even close to being done with me yet. It’s a promise that I’m more than happy to let them fulfill.