“You sure?” Aspen checked.
Eve nodded. “Yeah. For as much fun as this is”—she rolled her hips and smirked when Aspen whined softly—“I actually enjoy spending time with you outside the bedroom, too.”
It was a simple enough confession, but affection still bloomed in Aspen’s chest at hearing it. Because, yeah, they were attracted to each other and sexually compatible in a way she’d honestly never experienced before—but, for her, their connection was so much more than just physical, and it was a relief to have Eve confirm that she felt the same way.
“I like that, too,” Aspen admitted, kissing her again for emphasis. Which, okay, didn’t exactly fit with the whole liking Eve even when she had clothes on thing, but Eve was here and so perfectly kissable, and she wasn’t foolish enough to squander a single moment they had together. She hummed into the kiss when Eve’s tongue dipped between her lips to deepen it, andsighed as their tongues swirled slowly together. She nuzzled Eve’s cheek when the kiss reached its inevitable end, and murmured, “You know, kissing me like that isn’t exactly selling me on the whole ‘leaving bed’ idea.”
“Me?” Eve laughed. “You started it.”
Aspen pecked her lips lightly before pushing back onto her heels so that she was kneeling between Eve’s legs. She bit her lip as she drank in the view of Eve nude and spread open before her, and let it slip free with her smile as she caressed her inner thighs. “I’d say I’m sorry about that, but it’d be a lie. I’m totally not sorry at all.”
Eve smiled and stroked a hand along Aspen’s forearm. “I’m not sorry, either.” The moment stretched between them, thick and warm with the weight of possibility until Eve shook her head and pushed to a sitting position in front of her. “You”—she kissed her softly—“are just too tempting to resist. So, I’m going to go get in the shower.”
Aspen chuckled. “Do I get to join you?”
“I mean…” Eve let her voice trail off as she rolled out of bed and padded toward the en suite.
Aspen didn’t even have it in her to be upset about the lack of an answer because she was too distracted by the view of Eve’s pert, toned behind and the sway of her hips as she waked. She smiled unapologetically when Eve paused at the door to the bathroom to glance over her shoulder at her, and her mouth went dry when Eve threw her a flirty wink and an even flirtier, “I’m sure you’ll be able to think of a way to sell me on the idea.”
Eve laughed when Aspen went absolutely slack-jawed in response, and blew her a kiss before disappearing.
“Good lord,” Aspen groaned softly to herself. She shook her head to clear it before firing off a quick text to tell Kit that they’d meet them all at the Blue House Tavern in an hour. As soon as she’d hit send, she tossed the phone aside and all but vaultedfrom the bed. An hour didn’t leave them a lot of time, but she’d be damned if she didn’t get at least a few more kisses in before they had to leave.
Brunch with Aspen and the Troublemaking Trio was decidedly more hilarious when they weren’t all hungover. They were absolutelybrutalwith each other as they bantered back and forth, and Eve spent the majority of the meal trying to not draw attention to herself. Not because she was afraid of causing a scene—and they were, at several points during their meal she’d noticed people from nearby tables looking their way when the table burst into raucous laughter—but because the stories they were telling were so incredibly out there that she couldn’t possibly compete.
“No, wait! I’ve got a better one!” Jack waved his hands to try to hold everyone’s attention as he prepared to one-up the story Lydia had just shared. “So, it was our junior year at MIT, right?”
“Don’t you fucking dare, Watts,” Kit warned, clearly knowing where this story was headed before it’d even really begun.
Eve leaned into Aspen’s side as Jack grinned in a way that said he was very much going to dare. “And this one”—he waved toward Kit—“had a gigantic girl boner for the TA of one of our mechanical engineering classes.”
Kit threw a wadded-up napkin at him. “She was hot!”
Jack smirked as he easily swiped the napkin out of the air and tossed it onto his empty plate. “But that’s not the point. So, the hot TA…” He frowned at Kit, clearly looking for help. “Whatwas her name?”
“Trinity Reed,” Kit supplied in a long-suffering tone.
“Shit, that’s right? Like the Matrix. How did I forget that?”
“She looked just like a young Carrie Ann Moss, too,” Kit added, shooting a look at Jack that said,If you’re going to throw me under the bus, at least tell the fucking story correctly.
“Oh my god, she totally did!” Jack agreed. “Anyway, so one day during our seminar, Trinity the TA was talking about how she was bummed she had to cancel her ski trip over break because she had to work. So our girl Kit, here, decides she’s gonna invite her to join us on a weekend trip to Smuggler’s Notch.”
“Vermont? Really?” Aspen scoffed, though the twinkle in her eye suggested she wasn’t passing judgment so much as she was just messing with Kit.
“Oh, fuck you,” Kit sniped. “It was an easy weekend trip from Boston, and you know damn well that my parents have a ski-in-ski-out place on the mountain that we could stay at for free.”
Eve turned to hide her smile in the crook of Aspen’s neck as Aspen held up a placating hand and drawled, “Of course. Excellent choice, then. Please continue.”
Eve kissed Aspen’s throat and then leaned her head on Aspen’s shoulder as Jack continued, “So we’re inVermont, yeah?” He sniggered and ducked away from the slap Kit aimed at him. “And Kit’s showing off, like big-time. Hot dogging all the way down the blacks, throwing frankly unnecessary amounts of powder just to, I dunno, show how strong her legs are or some shit in whatever weird lesbian mating ritual she was performing.”
“It’s called skill, dickhead,” Kit muttered, rolling her eyes as she downed what was left of her second Irish Coffee.
“It’s called Kit caught an edge and flung her gay ass into a fucking pine tree,” Jack retorted, jumping straight to the punchline of his story.
Kit flipped him off as she set her glass mug back onto the table. “It’s called the hot TA played nurse for Kit for the rest of the weekend.”
“And you were too concussed and broken to make a move,” Jack howled. “And then the whole program heard about it—”
