I don’t know who said it, but it was enough to cause the lightning bolt of arousal ripping through my body to start burning.
What the hell was I doing? I ripped myself away from Theo, the force of it sending me sailing backwards and falling over the ledge of the hot tub and spilling onto the hard stone of the patio floor.
The cackling of the girls around us made me shake with fear.
This is it. I’m so fucking stupid. I should have pushed him away.
I rose to my feet, making a huge show of wiping my lips. “Ew! You fucking weirdo! What are you doing?” I made my voice comically low, trying desperately to seem as macho as possible. Anyone with a brain would have known I was acting, but everyone at the party was trashed.
The girls were giggling and squealing, saying how hot it was. Theo looked at me while touching his lips, his head cocked to the side. Soon, his tongue traced the seam of his mouth, almost as if he were tasting…me?
Is he smiling?
All at once, the other guys on the team spilled onto the patio to see the show. It seemed like the whole party had emptied out of the house to witness the spectacle taking place in the jacuzzi.
Guys on the team started chanting “make out” to the girls on the ledge, but one of them screamed, “Not until Asher gets naked in the Jacuzzi with us!”
“Get in there, Lachlan!” Two guys on the team had flanked my sides and were tossing me back into the bubbling water.
Theo, still in a daze, seemed to snap out of it once he heard the guys chanting. He shook his head and yelled, “Get back in this sex soup, Red!”
He approached me in the Jacuzzi and attempted to pull off my shirt. That’s when I nearly puked.
No. I couldn’t let them take off my clothes.
I pushed Theo hard, harder than I meant to. I hated that I did it because no part of me wanted to push him away, but I had to protect myself. I scampered out of the Jacuzzi and bolted into the house, ignoring the echoes of everyone screaming for me to come back.
But I couldn’t.
I found Rowan making out with a girl in his entertainmentarea and demanded that he give me a dry set of clothes. He told me how to get to his bedroom and said I could take whatever I wanted as long as I left him alone.
He didn’t need to tell me twice. I wanted nothing more than to hide in his room for a minute and collect myself.
Abstract art covered the winding walls of the second floor. There wasn’t a single photo of the family. The whole place felt like a weird art installation.
I found Rowan’s room—it was hard to miss, considering it had a homemadeOff Limitssign taped to the front. I thought it was pretty laughable that Rowan didn’t give two shits about people fucking in his parents’ bedroom, but his room was apparently sacred and deserving of a ridiculous sign.
The sign worked because Rowan’s room was the only one that didn’t have the sounds of sex in it.
I crept in and sank to the floor.
That was close. Too close.
I took a deep breath, collecting myself, as I sat on the floor. After a moment, I got up and looked inside Rowan’s massive walk-in closet.
This rich little fuck.
My mind couldn’t get over the sheer number of shirts and pants he had hanging in there. They all hung on these weird-looking hooks, and I realized that there was a button on the far left wall. I pressed it, and the clothes started moving like they do in a dry cleaner’s.
Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
It was wild. To have just a fraction of the money he had would change my life. Hell, if I could sell just half the clothes in this closet, I could probably put a down payment on a shitty apartment and free myself from the horrors of living withMom and Louie.
I took off my wet clothes as Rowan’s wardrobe whirred around me like a toy train when I heard a gasp. I turned around and saw Theo, in all of his naked glory, looking at me with horror in his eyes.
No, no, no, no!
“Duuuude! Wadda ffffuck happened?” he slurred.
