The Risk: Kings of Linwood Academy #3 Page 14

  Still, I can’t help but wish he was wearing a lot fewer clothes.

  I glance down at myself and then back up at him, raising my eyebrows. “Well, this just seems unfair.”

  He grins, stepping forward and skimming his hands along the curve of my waist, over the swell of my hips. “I dunno. I kinda like it.”

  I roll my eyes. “Of course you do.”

  A broad smile spreads across his face. Then he’s kissing me again, sliding his hands over my ass and gripping my thighs as he lifts me into his arms. I wrap my legs around him, winding my arms around his neck and devouring his lips with mine until he sets me down on the bed.

  He pulls back, and I grudgingly release him, already missing the feeling of his hard, muscled body pressed against mine.

  I rise up onto my elbows and watch as he lifts his shirt over his head and tosses it to the floor in a smooth motion. He grabs the waistband of his pants and grins as my gaze immediately darts downward. Then he stretches the elastic to draw it over his jutting cock and pushes his sweats and boxer briefs down together.

  Fuck, he’s gorgeous.

  I’ve seen him naked once before, the night we all played poker, but there’s something different about this. Tonight, it’s just the two of us, and we’re not hiding behind a game of strip poker, using the cards as our excuse. Tonight, I get to look my fill just because I want to.

  And I do want to. I want to look and touch. To feel his smooth, golden skin and run my fingertips over the line at his waist where the skin turns a little paler. I want to bury my fingers in his hair, to press my body against his, to watch his expression change as he comes.

  “That’s better.” I bite my lip, grinning like an idiot. “Now we’re even.”

  “Yeah. We are.”

  He starts moving before he finishes talking, crawling up onto the bed with me and draping his large body over mine as I open my legs for him. His weight pins me to the mattress as he attacks me with lips, teeth, and tongue, drawing his mouth up and down the line of my neck, over my breasts, along my collarbone. I grab onto his hair and close my eyes, letting the wash of feelings sweep me away.

  When I feel the head of his cock at my entrance, I open them and find him gazing down at me. We stare at each other in dazed wonder as he slides inside inch by inch, my body stretching and opening for him.

  Once he’s filling me up completely, he stops.

  His body shudders, and he drops his head, breathing heavily.

  I’m breathing harder too, pleasure spiking in my veins, and I roll my hips against him, needing more movement, more friction.

  But his hand drops to my hip, his grip firm as his muscles tense up. “Just—give me a second,” he mutters, his voice strained. “I’ve been dreaming about this for a long time, and if I don’t take a couple breaths here, I’m gonna fucking embarrass myself.”

  His body shudders again as he says the words, and I can feel him teetering on the edge.

  I am too. Feeling him like this, so close to losing it, so close to coming just from the sensation of being inside me for the first time, is making my heart rate pick up.

  “It’s okay. Take all the time you need,” I say breathlessly.

  But the rest of me doesn’t seem to have gotten that memo, because even as I speak, my pussy walls clench around him, like my body is trying to draw him deeper inside me.

  Chase grunts in response, his eyes flying wide as his lips press into a line. “Not. Helping. Harlow.”

  I know it’s not. But he’s driving me just as crazy as I’m driving him. He feels so fucking good inside me, so perfect, that I need more. I’m starving for him, and trying to hold back the feelings swelling inside me is like trying to hold back a hurricane with a single umbrella.

  My walls clench around him again, and Chase grabs both my wrists, pinning them down to the mattress beside me. I lift my head, pushing against gravity and his grip on me to bring my lips closer to his—and maybe it’s the sight of me straining to get to him that does it, but Chase finally stops trying to hold back, to regain control.

  His lips crash into mine with bruising force, and then he’s surging into me with hard, deep thrusts. The bed rocks with the motion, and it feels like he might drive me right through the mattress. I clutch at his shoulders, digging my fingernails into his skin hard enough to leave scratches as my ankles lock behind his lower back.

  “Fuck, Chase. Fuck. Jesus. Oh, fuck.”

  An incoherent stream of words flies from my mouth as I mutter against his lips, driven past the power of rational speech by the sensations tearing through me.

  He was right.

  He doesn’t last long.

  Neither of us do.

  He lets out a choked groan, throwing his head back, the corded muscles of his neck straining as he slams into me one more time, grinding his hips hard against mine.

  The pressure against my clit and the feel of his cock jerking and swelling inside me makes stars burst behind my eyes, and I come hard, clenching around him over and over, biting my lip to keep from screaming.

  Chase collapses onto the bed, wrapping his arms around me and rolling us so I’m on top and he’s beneath me, his cock still buried inside me. I rest my head on his shoulder as we both suck in gasping breaths, hearts hammering hard and fast.

  It’s quiet for several moments, nothing but the gradually slowing sound of our breathing filling the room.

  Then Chase reaches up to brush my hair away from my face, lifting his head off the mattress a few inches to look at me.

  “Sorry about that.”

  I lift an eyebrow. “For making me come like a freight train? Yeah, you should be sorry.”

  He chuckles and drops his head again, still playing with my hair. I lie like that for a little while longer, too pleasantly worn out to move, but I finally slide off his cock, which has hardly softened at all. I press a kiss to his chest, then pad into the bathroom to clean up.

  When I return a minute later, Chase hasn’t moved at all. He has one hand behind his head, and he watches me with eyes like a Caribbean sea as I crawl back up onto the bed and settle beside him. He pulls me into his side and wraps both arms around me, and I can feel his heart beating against my cheek.

  “Well.” He laughs softly. “That was only slightly embarrassing. But I’ll remember it for the rest of my damn life.”

  “Me too.” Our lips find each other’s in a lazy kiss before I add, “And I don’t think it was embarrassing at all. I mean, it’s not like we only get to do it once.”

  He makes a pleased noise in the back of his throat that sends a small shiver up my spine, his grip on me tightening a little.

  A thought occurs to me, and I lift my head, scooting up a bit and resting my chin on his chest so I’m practically draped over him.

  “Hey. You don’t feel like I think of you and Dax as one person, do you?”

  His eyebrows lift at the question, but he considers his answer seriously before speaking.

  “No. I know you don’t. We’ve met plenty of girls who wanted to hook up with us because they had some sort of twin fetish or whatever, and that shit does get old. But you’ve never treated us that way.”

  “Good.” I trace a line over his chest with my finger. “Because I like you each as your own person. But I also like you… together, if that makes sense. And not in the dirty way,” I add with an eye roll, although if I’m being honest, I do like that too.

  He chuckles, and we’re pressed so close together that I feel the movement of it in my own body.

  “Yeah, it does make sense. I mean, you asked if you treat us like one person, but truthfully, sometimes it feels like we’re one person. Like we’re two halves of a whole. We know each other so well and are so much a part of each other’s lives…” He trails off and shrugs. “Without Dax, I wouldn’t be me.”

  “I think it’s amazing you have that. I think you make each other better,” I say softly.

  “Yeah.” He grins down at me, his smile bright as
the sun. “Although sometimes”—he hauls me up so I’m fully draped over him, my legs straddling his hips, his cock sandwiched between us—“I want moments that are just mine.”

  “Like this moment?”

  Bracing one hand on his chest, I rise up onto my knees, adjusting my position as I use my other hand to guide his already hard cock to my entrance, lining him up and sinking down slowly.

  “Yeah. Like this one.”

  His words are a raspy groan, and when I begin to rock up and down, rolling my hips as I ride him, he reaches up to cup my breasts, letting me control the pace of our movements.

  Our first fuck was hot and hard and fast, but this one is slow and deep as we torture and tease each other, pushing right to the edge but never quite past it.

  And when we can’t hold back any longer, Chase sits up and wraps his arms around me, impaling me hard on his pulsing cock. I shudder around him as I come, and he follows me over the edge with a harsh sigh.

  We drift off to sleep in each other’s arms, and as I fall into unconsciousness, breathing in the subtle scent of musk and bergamot, it occurs to me that tonight was one of the best and worst nights of my life.

  That seems to be happening a lot lately.

  So much good.

  With so much bad.

  16

  The kings and I have settled on a plan, a strategy for facing Judge Hollowell. But before we put it into action, there’s one thing I have to do first.

  On Saturday morning, I go to the Fox Hill Correctional Center to see my mom.

  “Hey, sweetheart. I’ve missed you.”

  Her wan smile breaks my heart as she presses her fingertips to the partition between us. She seems tired and… resigned. Like she’s getting used to the orange jumpsuit and the prison food and only seeing me through a goddamn plexiglass barrier.

  I hate it.

  And it tells me everything I need to know about how things are going before I even ask.

  “How’s it been, Mom? Is your lawyer doing okay?”

  “Scott is—” Mom breaks off, like even in prison, she won’t allow herself to say the things she wants to about this man. Then she sighs, rubbing a hand over her cheek. “He’s doing fine. He was doing what I asked, focusing on my character in his preparations, lining up witnesses. But now he’s saying it’s a bad idea. If we make it about the kind of person I am, it will allow the prosecution to go after the… other side of my character.”

  “What?” My stomach drops out, and my chair scrapes loudly on the floor as I scoot closer to the partition. “What other side of your character?”

  My mom is one of the best, kindest people in the whole world, and that’s who she is. There’s no hidden monster inside her, no evil flip side to the coin.

  She shakes her head, looking a little haunted, and I realize how fucking hard this all must be on her. To have her name dragged through the mud, her character as a human being denigrated, just to prove she committed a crime she didn’t do. It’s awful.

  “Scott says the prosecutors could claim I had motive to kill Iris because she bullied you.”

  “What?” My voice is a loud screech, and the guard near the door looks up. I turn away from him, lowering my voice. “What? That’s insane.”

  “Yeah. Well.” She shrugs, her gaze growing a little unfocused as she gets lost in her thoughts. “They talked to that doctor I threatened at Bayard Medical Center. I don’t know how on earth they dug him up.”

  I stare at her, wide-eyed. “Mom. Doctor Soudek was incompetent. And he wasn’t listening to you. If you hadn’t yelled at him about changing my course of treatment, I might not be alive right now.”

  “Doesn’t change the fact that I threatened to kill him.”

  “In the heat of the moment! With your daughter in the middle of cancer treatments! Of course you would get worked up!”

  “I know, Harlow.” She touches the glass again. “But that’s the exact point Scott says they’ll make. That I got ‘worked up’ about Iris going after you. That I’m an overprotective mother who would do anything to protect her daughter.”

  “Fuck, Mom,” I whisper. “Fuck.”

  She doesn’t give me a hard time for my language. She barely even seems to hear me.

  Nausea roils my stomach. Did Hollowell know this would happen? Maybe his advice was intentionally bad, designed to set us up for a trap.

  That fucking asshole.

  “It’s okay, Low,” Mom says softly. “It’s not over till it’s over, right?”

  She musters up a weak half-smile, so I try to do the same. She perks up a little as she straightens, and I can tell she’s deliberately changing the subject.

  “How are you? How’re classes going?”

  Ugh. Not great.

  “They’re okay.” I shift a little in my seat. It’s not a lie, but I’m stretching the definition of the word “okay” to its limits.

  “And you’re still staying with your friend River? Are you okay for money? Do you need anything?”

  She asks the question as if she could provide it if I do, as if she’d do whatever it took to make sure I got whatever I need. But fortunately, without having to pay rent, my expenses are pretty minimal. If it gets desperate, I could always try to get back into a couple of those poker nights the kids from Linwood host, but so far I haven’t put too big a dent in the remainder of Mom’s savings.

  “No, everything’s okay, Mom. I’m good. And I’m…” I pause, biting my lip as a million things I want to tell her crash against the walls of my chest. “I’m not staying with River anymore.”

  “Oh.” She sits up straighter, worry sharpening her brown eyes. “Where are you staying? Are you with the Black family again? Samuel said you were welcome as long as you wanted.”

  “I know he did, but I’m actually—I’m actually staying with Dax and Chase. You might’ve met them at one of Samuel and Audrey’s cocktail parties. Their parents are the Lauders?”

  Her eyelids flicker for a second as she sorts through her memories, and then she nods slowly. “I think I remember them. The twins, right? With the brownish-red hair?”

  I nod. The two boys really do stand out in a crowd. Their looks would be striking enough on just one of them, but the fact that their gorgeous features are repeated twice over makes it hard to look away.

  “And that’s going okay?” Mom presses. “Their parents are okay with it?”

  I can tell she hates this. Hates not being able to do normal parenting things like call their folks to make sure it’s all right for me to stay with them. Like know where her daughter is living, for fuck’s sake.

  Maybe that’s why I open my mouth and say what I do—because I don’t want my mom to think she’s lost me completely, that she has no idea what’s going on in my life.

  “Actually, I’m sort of dating them. Dax and Chase.”

  She blinks a few times. I don’t think she’s even quite processed what I mean by that, but I rush on anyway before I lose my nerve. This wasn’t exactly how I planned on telling her, but it’s too late to stop now.

  “And Lincoln. And River.”

  Now she doesn’t blink. At all.

  She stares at me for such a long, loaded moment that my stomach knots and unknots itself over and over as I wait for her to say something.

  But she doesn’t. She doesn’t speak a word. I can’t hear anything through the phone’s earpiece but her soft breathing, the only indicator that she hasn’t turned into a statue.

  Panic flares in my chest. Fuck. I shouldn’t have told her. What the hell was I thinking? Like this? While she’s in prison? While she has so much else on her plate?

  I thought I was doing it for her, but maybe I was doing it for me, being selfish because I miss her so fucking much, because I just wanted my mom back for a few moments.

  Desperate to undo the blank stare on her face, I open my mouth and start babbling.

  “I know it’s—it’s probably not what you were expecting. Hell, I wasn’t expecting it, but
it just happened. I care about them, Mom. A lot. And they’re good to me. They’re good for me. They make me better, stronger. And they love each other so much, being with them makes me feel like I’m part of something good, something unbreakable, that could stand up to anything.”

  The words are pouring out of me now, like they’ve been lying in wait for weeks, trapped in my heart with no way out.

  “Some people will never get it, and I know it’s different, but it’s not any less real than if I was just with one of them. They all fit me in different ways. Lincoln is so strong, no matter what gets thrown at him. And Chase is like you—he finds the good parts of everything. Dax has the biggest heart, and River is so fucking smart. He sees so much; he sees right through me.”

  My heart is bashing against my ribs, and Mom is still gazing at me, a look of something like shock on her face.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. Or maybe I shouldn’t have even told you now. But I’m happy with them. Please don’t hate me, and please don’t tell me I’m wrong. Because it’s not wrong, Mom. I know it. I’m falling in love with them.”

  When I finally stop talking, I let out a shuddery breath. It’s done. I can’t take it back. Not the first thing I said, and not any of the things I blurted after.

  Mom keeps staring at me, but this time, I don’t fill the silence. I just let it be.

  And then, suddenly, her expression cracks. Tears flood down her face, and even though burning disappointment fills my gut, I cry too. Because I never meant to hurt her with my choices, and I hate that I brought this up when there’s a literal wall between us. I shouldn’t have. It was fucking stupid.

  Mom’s shoulders shake with sobs, and she drops her head, her free hand pressing against her stomach like it might keep the emotions contained somehow. I sit with her and watch her cry because I can’t fucking hug her like I want to, and I hate it more than I’ve ever hated anything.