Instead, I’ve been pacing.
Wearing one of Liam’s soft black shirts, sleeves too long, hem brushing an inch below my bare pussy. My nipples catch on the fabric every time I breathe. They’re sensitive, needy. I’m not even trying to tease myself, but my body doesn’tknow the difference between want and memory. Every brush of cotton might as well be a mouth.
God, thinking of their mouths on me makes me wet. I’ve had them both now dozens of times and I’m not sure how I’d live without them.
Linus maps me with his tongue, every pass methodical, every pressure intentional. He listens to the tiny sounds I can’t hold back and licks my clit like a ritual.
Liam possesses me. His mouth is pure hunger and heat. He knows exactly how to lick my clit with careful greed. Devouring me with a pressure bordering on too much until it isn’t.
Linus touches me with intention. Liam touches me with instinct.
Linus uses two fingers when I’m tender, three when he wants to draw out every tremor, curling them with precision until I’m shaking. Liam fucks me like he needs to feel how deep I can take him, coaxing my body open for something bigger, something powerful, something he knows I’ll beg for.
And their cocks—God.
I feel myself creaming thinking about them.
Linus glides into me with purpose. The weight of him inside me feels grounding, like he’s pinning me to the world. Liam drives into me with fervor, like he’s breaking something open I didn’t know was closed.
They’re so different.
The strangest, most impossible thing is their differences don’t compete. My men fill places I didn’t know were missing. Linus gives me depth. Liam gives me edge. Linus steadies me. Liam ignites me.
Two sides of the same need. Two tastes of the same hunger.
I pace. My body doesn’t know how to choose which memory toyearn for.
It’s something deeper than sex. Bone-itching. Soul-pulling.
They’ve already given me two orgasms today and I find myself horny as hell with no one to take the edge off.
Linus is at the office attending to some emergency scheduling thing for the office move to Los Angeles. All of the paperwork is in place, thanks to my dear friend, Marcella. He was already zipping up his jacket and cursing traffic before Liam and I finished blinking awake. Kissed us on the temples. Said he’d be “back by dinner, more or less, unless someone dies or sets the fuckin’ place on fire.”
Liam bolted right afterward. Said he was meeting Padraig and his brother, Connor, who are both passing through town on their way back to Seattle.
I’m sure it’s true, but I know his deer-in-the-headlights look now. He smiles too quickly and says he’s popping out for a walk, but his phone is already in his hand lit up with Padraig’s name. They talk every day, multiple times.
I get it. News about Koko leaving is spreading through the industry.
In between fucking me and Linus, he agonizes about everything Fireball aspires to be and everything it has yet to become. Linus and I pretend it’s the only thing he’s conflicted about.
Anyway, I’m not in the mood to get myself off, so I decide to distract myself with music for a while. In the studio, my guitar leans against the wall by the spare bed like it’s the only other thing in this house with a heartbeat. I pull it into my lap. The body is cool and solid against my skin.
I strum once.
Twice.
The chords come immediately. The melody’s there, raw and waiting. I hum as I play and the words fall into place like I’ve been singing themin my sleep:
They told me not to love the fire
But God, I fed it anyway
Kissed mouths that weren’t mine to savor
Let them ruin me, every day.
Now there’s ash on all my sheets
