Page 101 of Freefall

For a split second, irritation edges past the lust pooling in my belly. He can boss me around all he wants. He can take control during sex and hold my pleasure hostage until he decides I’ve earned it.

But he can’t say those words to me if he doesn’t actually mean them.

Especially not when the last time he said them, it was out of anger.

“I thought it was complicated?” I say in the brattiest tone I can muster.

“Complicated?” He lets out a humorless laugh. “Call it whatever you want, Dani. I told you I wasn’t done with you, and I meant it. Maybe I should have made this clear sooner, but I’m telling you now. As long as you’re letting me inside you, you’re mine. You can make all the jokes you want. You can mess with me and flirt with my cousin, but know you’ll be punished for it. And if I find out another man has touched you…” He shakes his head once. “It won’t end well for him.”

Nate’s thumb lightly grazes my clit, and if I wasn’t trying to hold in a moan, my jaw would be on the floor. There are probably ten different shades of red flags wrapped up in everything he just said. That should scare me, but it doesn’t. All I can think about is how good it feels to still be wanted by him after all this time. I can’t deny that his darkness is intense, but wasn't I the one who taught him to embrace it?

My hips rock forward on instinct, but Nate’s free hand lands against my hip, holding me still. “Don’t move,” he orders. “This isn’t about getting off, Harper.” His thumb traces another slow circle against my aching clit. “It’s punishment.”

I nod softly as he continues to torture me with barely-there touches, speeding up just to slow down seconds later. I only vaguely register the sound of footsteps when, all at once, his hand disappears, and my dress is righted as if nothing happened. River steps onto the patio just as Nate calmly lifts his fingers to his mouth and licks them clean.

River’s eyes are both hooded and bloodshot when he sits down, looking between the two of us. The faint scent of weed that drifts through the warm air makes me queasy. I know that smell—that look. River is definitely high. It’s just weed, I remind myself. It’s legal. Plenty of people do it. That doesn’t stop my pulse from kicking up, or maybe that’s from what Nate just did to me.

River leans forward, resting his forearms on the table. “It’s kinda humid out here,” he drawls, glancing over at the pool. “Why don’t we go for a swim?”

Nate’s eyes snap to mine, and I shake my head. “I don’t have a bathing suit.”

“Neither do I,” River says, punctuating the statement with what has to be his third wink of the night.

“We’re good,” Nate answers for both of us.

River shrugs and takes another sip of wine. “Your loss.”

He reaches behind him, lifting his shirt over his head and…

Holy Jesus. The man is ripped.

I’m not entirely sure how someone gets muscles like that from owning a bar. Maybe it’s from hauling the kegs around or fighting rowdy customers. Either way, Nate notices my shameless perusal and squeezes my thigh in warning.

Meanwhile, without a shred of embarrassment, River stands, shoving his jeans and boxers down in one swift motion, and takes off running.

A second later, he launches himself into the pool with a cannonball that sends water splashing halfway across the patio.

I’m frozen solid, trying to come to terms with the sheer size of what I just saw, even though it was only for a split second. Nate, on the other hand, looks like he’s thinking of the most painful way to cut it off.

“You guys are missing out,” he calls. “This feels fucking amazing.”

Yeah, I bet it does.

A lot of things feel amazing when you’re high. I’ve only ever smoked weed once in high school. Grace got her hands on a joint from the guy she was hooking up with, and we smoked it behind her house while her parents were still at work. It burned my throat, and we spent the next two hours laughing at absolutely nothing. We tried baking cookies, forgot about them until the smoke alarm went off, and ended up working our way through Grace’s stash of Phish Food instead. The irony was completely lost on us at the time.

When I got home that night, Jace smelled it on me immediately and lost it. He yelled at me for ten minutes straight, I called him the biggest hypocrite I’d ever met, along with some other choice words, and then he held my hair back as I threw up.

I never touched the stuff again.

River dives underwater, and Nate quietly shifts his chair until it faces the pool. Then he pats his thigh. “Come here.”

Sometimes all I want to do is disobey him. Right now, though…it’s the last thing I want. I push back my chair, walk over to him, and sit on his lap. His hand finds my waist before sliding to the outside of my thigh. At first, he just leaves it there. Then his thumb starts tracing slow circles against my skin.

River’s head breaks through the surface of the water, and he flicks his wet hair to the side just as Nate’s hand inches higher. Now it’s under my dress again. I don’t know how much River can see from where he’s treading water, but the thought alone makes my pulse hammer. Nate shifts my panties aside, his smooth fingers dragging over the sensitive flesh.

He speaks slowly into the shell of my ear. “Want to show him how hard you can come when I’ve been denying you?”

His words send a rush of heat straight to my clit, and I grow wetter. I know he feels it too because he lets out a low growl.