Chapter Forty-Two
Carter
I stepped out of the shower after washing off, having sent my clothes down to get cleaned in the hotel that sat across the street from the Mexican restaurant we’d eaten at.
With Yun in her condition, I saw no reason to drag her ass back to the compound tonight, figuring letting her sleep the tequila off was a far better plan.
Besides, I didn’t want to make that trip covered in her puke, either.
We’d taken the penthouse suite of the fancy hotel, giving us enough room for us to all sleep comfortably.
Well, as comfortably as we could in tight quarters with Yun.
She napped in the master bedroom where I’d left her, while I showered in the attached bathroom. I trusted the others, but not enough to leave a drunken Yun with them. Or maybe it was just selfishness that had me wanting her close.
The towel hung low on my hips, tied there to keep me somewhat covered.
I’d have walked around without a stitch if I didn’t think she’d react rather poorly to that.
Room service would bring my clothes, once cleaned, back to the room, which left me stuck until then.
The steam rolled from the bathroom when I opened the door, my hair damp, having been only towel dried well enough so that it wouldn’t drip.
The idea of leaving Yun for longer than I had to felt entirely bad. It made my skin itch, made me uneasy, drawing me back toward her.
Was that because she was our guide? Was it more?
Fuck, did I want it to be more?
That answer was pretty damn obvious, wasn’t it?
My chest tightened when my gaze landed on the bed to find Yun no longer lying down, snoring and sleeping soundly. Instead, she sat up, wrestling around like something attacked her.
The villain in question?
Her shirt. She yanked at it, twisting her frame in ways that made my body ache. “Hot,” she muttered.
Stripping her down wasn’t a great idea, but neither was letting this go on. If she kept on with her epic battle against her shirt, she’d end up falling off the bed and hurting herself.
I went over and set my hands on her arms, hoping she wouldn’t decide to scramble my brain for the help. “You’re going to fall,” I warned, hoping my voice helped her relax, as though knowing it was me might calm her down.
“It’s hot,” she complained again, jerking hard, locked inside the fabric like a little self-made prison. The fabric muffled her words.
The entire situation drew a chuckle before I grasped the hem of her shirt and helped strip it off her.
I never expected that getting a girl out of her clothes could be this unsexy, but Yun’s absurd behavior made it so.
The strangest thing about it, though, was how endearing I found that.
Seeing this side of her, a part she’d never willingly show to us, it had me far more interested than simply spreading her legs would have.
“What are you doing?” Kenyon snapped from the doorway, his voice far angrier than was typical for the usually easygoing man. “She’s drunk.”
“I’m not doing anything,” I pressed. “She’s hot.” At that, I sighed. “I don’t mean it like that. I mean literally, she says she’s hot and was rolling around to get her shirt off.”
I had no reason to explain anything else since Yun took that chance to lean back and work at the button of her pants.
She lifted her hips in a way that wasn’t quite so childlike as her other actions, and the exposure of her bare stomach, the way the points of her hips shown through the gapping space of the zipper was far more adult.
She’d kept herself covered most of the time, which meant this was my first chance to get a good look at her.
She didn’t pose, didn’t try to look sexy, and somehow that all hit me so much harder.
She had a slim build, which I’d known already, but it had never felt as obvious as right now.
A basic black bra still covered her, the fabric pulled across her entire chest rather than two individual cups.
It was far from seductive, but fuck if it didn’t give me the same general feeling.
Matching black panties peeked out through the exposed area where she’d unzipped her pants, her shoes already off since I’d removed them when I’d put her into the bed.
The underwear was practical, like Yun, and I never thought I had a kink for the practical, but look at that…
Kenyon sighed and came over, Ingram and Shear peeking in through the doorway. “Yun, you don’t want to get naked here, do you?”
“It’s hot,” she complained again. “I feel hot all over.”
I let my head drop back, closed my eyes and rubbed my hands over my face, trying to get my brain to work.
She was drunk. I wasn’t about to fucking jump on her when she wasn’t anywhere near in her right mind. I might have been a shit person, but that was way too far.
Something touched my bare stomach, drawing my attention back, making me wonder why Kenyon was manhandling me like that. To my shock, I found Yun’s small hands tracing the valleys and rises of my stomach, the muscles there, like they fascinated her.
“Whoa, now,” I said, all those things I’d just told myself a lot more challenging. “I’m pretty sure this isn’t what you want to do.”
“Why not? Isn’t it what you want?” Her words were soft and slightly slurred, her gaze on her work rather than up on my face, like I was just a toy for her. “It’s what espers always want.”
“Yeah, but not when you’re drunk.”
“It’s easier when I’m drunk.”
“Easy isn’t that important to me. I just know exactly what you can do and don’t really want to deal with you pissed off tomorrow when you wake up sober and angry.”
She blinked slowly, curling her fingers over my skin. “Do you know how much I’ve thought about this? It’s just quiet inside my head right now, so I can.”
And, yeah, fuck, that proved so much harder to reject.
There was this sweetness in her voice, this longing that I understood pretty well.
If it were up to me, I would have probably given in right then and there.
How could someone reject a girl in that state?
Who would possibly just give that up and tell her no when she pleaded so prettily?
It seemed Kenyon could, since he stepped closer and caught her chin, turning her face so she focused on him rather than me. It didn’t stop the way she traced my abs, of course, but she locked her gaze on Kenyon. “Hey there,” he said in that gentle way he spoke.
“Please?” Her fingers moved down to run along the edge of my towel, the touch downright scandalous.
Kenyon’s gaze darted over to catch what she was up to, his fingers flexing to hold her chin a bit tighter. “I can’t sober you up entirely, but I can clear your head for a minute.”
The electric feeling in the air said he was using his powers, helping her to think clearer, to lessen some of the fog from the alcohol. He couldn’t fully remove it, since the alcohol was still in her system, but he could at least reduce the effects for a short while.
Yun blinked quickly, some of that wariness returning to her gaze, and damn I missed the sweet innocence, the desire without fear. I much preferred that, even if it was caused by the liquor.
“Better?” Kenyon asked before removing his hand from her chin. “It won’t last more than a few minutes, but it should help you get some of your senses back.”
“What if I don’t want them back?” Her words were still soft, less certain, but they held sanity that she’d lacked before.
When no one responded, she went on. “I don’t want to feel like this, okay?
I don’t want to keep questioning everything, to have to doubt myself.
Why can’t it just be easy? Why can’t my head be clouded so I can just be normal for a little while? ”
Kenyon turned his gaze toward me, unsure.
Ingram came in, but he didn’t touch her, didn’t crowd her. “You know what you’re asking for, don’t you? Last thing I want is for you to come to tomorrow and start playing the victim, hating us for any of this.”
She nodded, her hair falling forward to obscure her eyes.
“I know. I know what I’m asking for, okay?
Like we didn’t realize it was going to go this way eventually, I mean, you said that yourself, Ingram.
So if it’s going to happen, why can’t I use a little extra liquid courage, huh?
” She shot the words like bullets, voice quiet but strong, gaze down.
I exchanged a loaded glance with Kenyon, Ingram and Shear, the question we all faced.
Sure, we fucking wanted this. Who wouldn’t? And she was clearheaded at the moment, so maybe that was the okay we needed? But, fuck, a part of it felt bad…
The idea that to do this she needed to be drunk, that didn’t settle well. Would agreeing just make this shit all the more difficult later? Would it give her reason to distrust us later? To run? To shove us further away?
I liked my plans, even if I never seemed that on top of them to others, so going into this having no real idea if it would get us closer to or farther from our goal wasn’t my favorite idea ever.
She dipped two fingers beneath the edge of my towel, the action loosening the terrycloth until the tuck job I’d done gave up the good fight. It left the towel covering me only because her hand held it, like some white flag between us.
“Please?” she asked again before dropping the towel, letting it fall to the ground as though it didn’t matter anymore, like it had done its job and was useless now.
And just like that, I knew we’d lost. No matter what other plans we had, what reservations about it, Yun’s sweet little please took all the control.
She’d been so afraid that we’d control her, that she’d wilt beneath us, but when push came to shove, when it came right down to it, look what happened.
She wrested all the control right away from us.
“You’d better not regret this,” I said, forgoing that jovial attitude I usually put on, letting her see the truth beneath the mask I usually wore. “Because you started this.”