Page 70 of Twins for Three Bad Boys

She pulls back just enough to let the chill air sting, then takes me deep, swallowing, her throat pulsing around me. I lose track of my hands.

I think I’m gripping the sheets, maybe her shoulder, maybe flailing in the air above my head. I want to memorize this. Her lips, her cheekbones, the starry furious way she looks up at me. I want to paint her with my tongue, sketch her in sweat.

I want to be ruined by her, burned down to bones for the look on her face, looking up, eyes wild and shining like windshield glass in the dark. She wants to see me lose it. She wants to know the power she has.

And I do.

I flex my toes against the bed, trying to anchor myself, but she’s everywhere, all at once, the taste of her still ghosting my lips, her tongue unspooling me, her laughter still ringing around the inside of my head.

The edge comes up on me fast. I brace a hand in her hair, just a warning, and she hums low, not slowing, and I think I might black out. I want to hold on and devour her at the same time.

She swallows me, takes everything, then climbs up and grinds her hips over my thigh, chasing her own aftershocks. Her face above mine is both predatory and soft, her smile split wide and true. I pull her down.

The kiss is wet and messy and tastes like candy, like a dare, like something I was always meant to have. She laughs into my mouth, nips my bottom lip, and then is gone, straddling my waist, her body flushed and slick and luminous with sweat.

She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, delicate and crude all at once, and I can’t tell if I want to laugh or cry. My face is hot. My whole body is hot, like I’ve been running for miles, like I just survived something big, and the world around me is still reorganizing itself, atoms all jostled and bright.

The heat ebbs. The room thins.

Her weight fades like mist burning off asphalt.

I suck in a sharp breath and pry my eyelids apart.

I’m alone in my bed, sheets twisted around my legs, heart still hammering.

Bolt lifts his head from the floor and gives me a sleepy huff, unimpressed by whatever just tore through me.

The room smells like old wood and clean soap and nothing else.

No June.

Just the dark, the low hum of the building settling, and the uncomfortable truth sitting heavy in my chest.

That didn’t feel like the sort of dream you just shake off.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

June

It’s been just over two weeks since the bonfire party.

Since Fletcher’s hands, his mouth, and the quiet certainty in his voice when he said, I’m gonna take you on a date.

But it’s hard for me to focus on that when, really, I’m starting to hate my phone.

Not in the normal ugh, social media is exhausting kind of way.

In the my stomach drops every time it lights up kind of way.

Because the truth is, though I can block numbers all day long, it doesn’t prevent Max from getting through to me. All the damn time.

I’m standing at the kitchen counter, packing Evan’s lunch, when my phone buzzes again.

Unknown Number.

Evan is at the table with his dinosaur car, rolling it back and forth, whispering intensely to his toy like they’re in the middle of a mission.

“Bridge is broken,” he informs it gravely. “You have to fix it.”