“You’re blushing, Lilith,” he whispered in a husky voice, doing all kinds of unspeakable things to my insides. “Was Brodie flirting?”
I swallowed hard, my brain not fully functioning with how my hormones were raging and my pulse raced. Rather than lie, I just nodded…technically, he had been flirting.
Ethan hummed a thoughtful sound, his gaze dipping to my mouth as his fingers caressed my jaw, tilting my head back against the wall. “I haven’t stopped thinking about you all day, fantasizing about what could have happened if Brodie didn’t interrupt us after class…”
Oh my god.A somewhat obscene whimper escaped me, and Ethan’s gaze heated. His head dipped lower, his lips meeting mine for just the briefest moment.
“Eth! You get lost or something?” Brodie yelled up the stairs, and I groaned.
“Asshole,” Ethan grumbled, then kissed me again, quick and hard, before releasing me entirely. “We still need to talk, Lilith. After dinner?”
I blew out a heavy sigh, leaning my head back on the wall. “I suppose so. I’ll be down in a minute.” I gestured for him to head downstairs while I quickly went to my room.
Once inside, I closed the door and very firmly turned thekey in the paint-splattered lock, testing the door to check it wasdefinitelylocked. Confident no one would come bursting in, I dove onto my bed and reached into my bedside table for my vibrator.
Between Brodie, Ethan, and the fear of getting caught hanging over my head—and with my trusty rechargeable vibrator—I got myself off in less than a minute. Then needed to lay there on the bed gasping and buzzing for another five before I could force myself to head back downstairs.
Wandering into the kitchen, I could safely say I was a shitload calmer and in control of my dumb hormones once more. Not to mention I was alotmore relaxed.
“Evie babe,” Brodie purred from where he sat at the kitchen table. “Come sit with me.” He patted his lap, and I rolled my eyes, grinning.
“Rein it in, Brodes,” Ethan scolded. “Eve, can you dice those tomatoes for me, please?”
I nodded, trying to ignore the way Brodie watched me move through the kitchen with pure lust in his eyes. I’d made the right move, taking a minute for myself upstairs. If I’d come down here with all that sexual tension still sky high…well, I’d soon be finding out how Ethan and Brodie felt about threeways.
A few minutes later, my libido cooled as Connor joined us in the kitchen and made a snide remark about how I was dicing tomatoes wrong—as if there was even a wrong way to dice a fucking tomato.
Ethan seemed to be cooking without a recipe, so I simply followed his instructions about what was needed, and an hour later, we were serving up the most delicious lasagna I’d ever tasted.
Surprisingly, Andrew and Haze joined us right as we plated up, and everyone sat down to eat together.
“Did someone clean in here?” Andrew asked, pausinghalfway through his dinner and squinting at the kitchen. “Like, deep clean, I mean.”
I glanced over at Connor, but he just stared back at me, his expression unreadable.
“I think campus staff were here today,” Ethan commented as casual and confident as if that were the truth. “They must have done it.”
Andrew frowned. “Huh. Well…they did a good job.”
I quirked a brow at Connor, but his response was just to hold my gaze steadily while he scratched his stubble-dusted cheek…with his middle finger. Fucking immature asshole.
19
EVELYN
Iwas running. Running and screaming. Running harder than I’d ever run before, but nothing moved around me, as if I were stuck in the same spot.
“Come out, come out, Evelyn. Your time in this world is done.”
He hit me from behind, and my skin burst in flames as gunfire filled the air.
A crash had me shooting up in my bed, my heart pounding so hard that it hurt my chest. At first I thought the crash was part of the dream, until there was another bang, and the windows shook in my room.
A storm had rolled in while I slept in fear, and now I had awaking fearto deal with. I yanked the blanket over my head, having hated the sound of thunder since the day my world was destroyed.
It reminded me of his footsteps crashing around the classroom, each bang bringing another surge of fear. My limbs trembled, and my head felt light as I fought the debilitating terror, fought through the air frozen in my lungs, while black spots danced before my eyes.
Fuck! Fucking fuck. I had to get out ofhere before I lost my mind and started to scream at the top of my lungs. Connor would love to see me fall apart like that, and honestly, I’d rather die than give him the pleasure.
