43. Utah

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

utah

“ Y ou finally went for it, huh?” Triss asked as soon as the door closed behind New Jersey.

Nosey bunch of hooligans around this house.

“How ya been, Retirement?” I asked instead.

“This is hardly a time to be talking about me,” she said with a laugh.

“Well, let’s not get carried away with that,” Indy said. “We can always talk about your sex life too.”

She smiled at him before she hugged him. “I didn’t even realize how much I missed you.”

“Because he spent all his free time sending you creepy pictures of me? Felt like you were still here with us anyway?” I asked.

“I thought he didn’t know about that?” she whispered to Indy.

“Yeah. He kind of knows about the Utah Bible now too.”

“Does he?!” she squealed. “I’ve been dying to tell J about that.”

“I don’t actually know anything about that,” I said. “And I don’t know that I want to hear about it from either of you.”

“So, was it the bar night?” Triss asked.

“No.”

“Really? I would’ve bet money on that. When then?”

“Last night, for sure,” Indy said. “I don’t know that I’ll ever believe either of them about when it started. They were spending the out-of-town nights sneaking back and forth between rooms without bothering to say anything.”

“Probably because it really isn’t any of your business,” I said to him. “Or yours,” I added and pointed at Triss.

“I think it makes it my business when she called me for advice about you,” she laughed.

“She pesters me nonstop about you,” Indy said. “Makes it my business too.”

“Somebody should probably tell her that you two are the last people she should be seeking advice from in this area.”

“That felt a little personal,” Indy said, holding his hand over his heart.

“You don’t know how to talk to people unless it’s about sex, and she fell in love with the jackass who kidnapped her.”

“Definitely personal now,” Triss said. “I don’t think he wants to talk to us about Memphis.”

I winked at her and clicked a finger gun in her direction.

I think I spent another two fucking hours listening to those two argue over whether it was me or Memphis who was the boss in bed. Both sides seemed to come into it fully prepared with a theory, what they considered proof, and a seemingly endless list of counter arguments to disprove the other.

None of these things made me uncomfortable in any sense, but they’d absolutely make Memphis squirm to know that we were the topic of discussion.

I never thought I’d see the day when I was grateful for the unpleasant silence that came back in the door of that house when New Jersey set foot through it. Indy normally wasn’t very good with boundaries, but even he seemed to sense that a sex chat about the things Memphis liked having done to her probably wasn’t the smartest with Jersey in the room.

She surprised the hell out of me when she walked into the kitchen and came straight to me, putting herself squarely in my arms like she suddenly decided that she didn’t care at all who was watching.

“That’s so fucking cute that it hurts,” Triss whispered.

“I told you she was the boss,” Indy whispered right back to her.

“She better be,” New Jersey added, shocking everyone in the room right back into silence.

“Sounds like you guys had an interesting talk,” Memphis mumbled directly into my chest.

“I was going to say the same to you, angel.”

Lying in bed alone that night left me in an unpleasant state of frustration. Memphis wasn’t my sex toy. It was wildly unfair of me to think that she’d be staying in this room with me every night just because I’d fucked her twice. Even while I could acknowledge that, an unpleasant voice in my mind kept quietly reminding me that she’d probably stay in her own room tonight because New Jersey was back in the house. And it was, technically, his house.

Like I needed more of a reason to be an asshole to the guy.

I’d told her as plainly as I could that I wasn’t going to stop touching her just because he was back. She’d taken the extra step to show me that she didn’t plan to stop either by hugging me while he was there to see it. But my dick wanted her presence tonight just as much as my mind did. I stayed in my own bed and in my own room for as long as I could stand it.

“Fuck it,” I mumbled to myself and rolled to the edge of my bed to get up. There was no ignoring how fucking hard my dick was. It almost hurt. I was going to have to take care of it myself or make it Memphis’ problem.

I found myself chuckling at the top of the stairs to see her already halfway up them on her way to my room. She froze right where she was when she heard me. She stared at me for just a second before she giggled.

“Get up here, sugar.”

The temptation to put her on her knees a couple steps below me was overwhelming, but that decent part of my brain was always there to quietly remind me that she was still new to most of this. She probably wasn’t really ready for me to be a fucking psychopath yet. She didn’t just stop when she made it to the top of the stairs, though. She jumped right at me so she could wrap her legs around my waist, and she latched her hands behind my head.

For as much as it rubbed me the wrong fucking way to have to admit it, having been in this house with her for the last six months showed me who she was when she felt alone. Having her in my arms tonight, now that she felt like a missing piece of herself had been returned, showed me who she could be when she was happy. She giggled the entire way that I carried her back to my room. She pulled my hair when I accidentally walked her right into the doorframe because I couldn’t see shit. The laugh that came out of her when I tripped over god only fucking knew what on the path to my bed was somehow both the cutest and the sexiest thing I’d ever heard. She turned me into something feral when she bit me the second that I dropped both of us onto that bed.

I couldn’t even begin to guess how many rounds we went over the course of the night. What I was certain of, however, was how very tired I was by the time I heard the others moving around the rest of the house the next morning. I should’ve known that she’d be exhausting. It shouldn’t have surprised me in the slightest that I hadn’t just lit a tiny spark of lust inside her. She’d exploded into a motherfucking wildfire, and there would be no dousing it now. Because this was Memphis. She was all in, or she wasn’t there at all. There wasn’t much in between for this girl.

I laid across her to kiss the tip of her nose.

“I need to get down there,” I said quietly. “Indy gets even more unbearable than he normally is when he’s hangry.”

She groaned and tried to roll out from under me, but I didn’t move, so she couldn’t either.

“Didn’t we just go to sleep?” she whined.

“I tried to tell you it was getting late after the first two times, sugar,” I chuckled.

“I regret nothing.”

“You can stay here. If you’re still up here after I’ve fed your friends, trust me, I’ll come right back up here, too.”

“ My friends,” she repeated. “They’re yours, too. And you know it. No matter what you say.”

“I think New Jersey would disagree with you.”

She wrapped both arms around my neck to hold me there when I tried to get out of the bed.

“Will you try with him?” she asked. “Please?”

“I think you’re asking the wrong person.”

“Utah,” she tried again. “Please?”

I groaned and dropped my head down on her chest. “That’s hardly fair when you already know I’ll do anything you ask.”

She let me escape that time when I tried to move, and she squirmed out of bed right behind me to get dressed, too. She hesitated for a second in the hallway just outside the kitchen. The voices of all her friends were in that room, and we were the last ones up. She knew they would know why, and I very much expected her to turn right back around to run up the stairs. Instead, she laced her fingers in between mine and pulled me into the kitchen behind her. Then I was the one left unsure of how I felt at the sight of New Jersey already cooking breakfast for everyone. Everyone including Kyle, who’d apparently decided to join us now that Jersey was back.

“Morning, lovebirds,” Indy said, like starting the day this way was the most normal thing to ever happen around here. Memphis’ hand slipped out of mine, and she went to sit in her usual place next to Indy. I stood there and just stared around that room, very much confused by what was happening in this house.

“Pancakes, boss lady?” Jersey asked.

The fuck?

But this was his house.

Couldn’t just stand here and tell him that breakfast was my job.

“Over here, hoss,” Indy said and moved down a chair to pat the one between Memphis and him when he noticed that I was apparently fucking lost. “Weird not seeing you down here first, but it’s still not a bad view,” he added and nodded toward New Jersey.

Whatever Trista was whispering directly into Memphis’ ear while I sat beside her turned Memphis bright red in a matter of seconds. She cleared her throat and tried to shift away from Triss just a little.

“We need to respond to Salem today,” she said, looking toward Indy instead.

“Whatever you say, sweets.”

“Salem,” New Jersey hissed and turned around to look at me. “She told me about that. You let another woman attack her?”

That shit was somehow both an accusation and a question.

“Says the man who let his girl get stabbed. My girl didn’t even bleed.”

“That definitely happened,” Triss chimed in immediately and looked at Jersey. “You did do that. He’s got a point.”

“One time. It was one motherfucking time,” Jersey huffed.

“I had a knife in my leg for like two hours, J. The scar is hideous. And you made me sit on the ground while you covered the seat of your car before you put me in it to take me to a doctor.”

“I should’ve given you to the sharks,” he said with a sigh, pointing at her with the spatula that he was holding.

“This is the best relationship argument I think I’ve ever witnessed,” Indy added.

“I think dating got really fucking weird since the last time I did it,” Kyle groaned, just for all of us to bust out laughing at the reminder that he was also present.

The tense silence returned to the room the moment that New Jersey slid a plateful of food across the island in my direction. I stared at him in pure fucking confusion when he nodded at me. Until Memphis squeezed my thigh under the counter and I did the douchebag nod right back at him to apparently accept this truce, even if only temporary.