Chapter 32

Connor

Van and I came home, ready to cook Kendall dinner, but instead of walking into our house, we entered a war zone.

“What the fuck…?”

Van said exactly what I was thinking as we saw reddish footprints all over the floor, yellowish handprints on the wall. I touched one, recoiling when I felt the sticky mess left there.

“Did Kendall kill Gage?” He looked up at me aghast. “Did he come home and disturb her, and then she went postal—?”

“That’s tomato sauce, not blood.” I sniffed the air, able to catch the stink of honey, peanut butter, mustard, and sauce. Jesus, what the fuck did the two of them get up to? “Let’s put the food away…”

I didn’t get to finish that very sensible thought because I heard it. Just a little moan, but somehow it was louder than a sonic boom in my ears. The bags I was carrying dropped to the floor, and I paced forward, Van at my heels.

More mess, more chaos, it was as if every single item that could be smeared on another person had been dragged from the pantry and then sprayed all around the kitchen, but I couldn’t take that in. I just sidestepped the pools of gunk and then walked down the hall. The moans got louder and louder as I got closer, which made my dick harden so damn fast it hurt. I half expected them to be Gage’s muffled cries as Kendall choked the life out of him, but instead, I reached his door and found this.

Kendall, naked. The sight of that was seared on my brain, ready to be stored away and summoned later when I had time to soak it in. Not just naked, but lying on Gage’s bed with her heels wrapped around his waist. And his hips rocked back and forth, making clear what he was doing, something Van discovered as well.

“Are they…?”

They were, and that was when I felt a strange twist of emotions.

Have you ever seen the one person you wanted most in the world in the hands of someone else? I wasn’t jealous per se. We went into this knowing we would share, but… My throat felt thick, my pulse throbbing too fast and too loud as I watched Gage touch Kendall like he had a right to. Sliding a hand up her thigh only to bury his fingers in all that soft flesh. That, that’s what I envied with a viciousness that took my breath away. Because I didn’t know what Gage had done to create such a mess in the kitchen, but I’d trash the whole house if that’s what it took to put me in his place.

“Whoa…”

Van barely whispered that, but I shot him a dark look anyway. My fingers gripped the door frame as I sidled up to the gap. Van grabbed my shirt, hauling me back, because he felt the exact same way. That we were spying on the two people we cared most about in the world, but we just couldn’t stop.

“Tell me we don’t fit together,” I heard Gage say. “Tell me that this doesn’t feel perfectly right.”

But she could only reply in long, drawn out moans. Was he hurting her? My fingers dug so deep in the doorjamb I was about to tear the wood from the wall. Each one of us knew some girls struggled to take Gage, but then I got the confirmation I needed. He drew back so far I thought he’d slip free of her, and Kendall obviously felt the same. Her nails created tiny pinpricks of blood as she dragged him back down. He let out a low chuckle as her legs tightened around his waist, doing everything she could to keep him right where he was.

That was when my hand dropped down, the heel of my palm ground into my dick.

Was she wet? I got my answer quickly, hearing the slick sound of their bodies moving, coming together faster and faster. Did she feel like hot silk? I couldn’t get that from what I saw, no matter how hard I stared. Did he feel like he was falling into a woman he loved and that he never wanted to crawl out? That he was drowning in her and refusing to rise up to take a breath. I had to imagine he was, because as my fingers tightened around my length as much as the fabric of my work pants allowed, I heard them get closer and closer.

Gage was slamming into her with a ferocity that made my teeth ache. Partly because I didn’t want him fucking her too hard, and partly because I knew I’d do the same thing. He was caught up in the feel of her, the suppressed longing of all these years finding somewhere to go. Every time he plunged deep, he made clear just how much he wanted her, needed her. Over and over he made his feelings plain, right up until this.

She sounded almost scared when she came, I didn’t expect that. Her pants became frantic, a little whine following that as she rose up off the bed. She was beautiful, cheeks flushed, eyes shining as she stared into his, her mouth opening to say something, but she couldn’t. There was speaking or feeling, and right now she was just feeling Gage.

“Come for me.” He wasn’t ordering her, but begging. “Come on my cock.” Gods, I hadn’t felt this keyed up since the first time I kissed a girl. I wanted Kendall to do exactly as he said, just as I wanted to shoulder forward and take over. Pull Gage off of her and replace him in one long stroke, or maybe tilt her head back, stare into eyes hazed with lust and then ease my cock between those open lips. Or just stand there, like a guard of honour, working my dick as I watched them fuck, right before I came all over her fucking gorgeous tits. “Come, Kendall!”

Gage wasn’t ordering me to do anything. He didn’t know I was here, but somehow the words affected me the same. I hadn’t jizzed in my pants since high school, but my breath came in rapid and noisy as I felt that involuntary rise of pleasure tearing through me. It was like I was being licked by flame, every nerve ending burning as they screamed, right as my dick twitched then unloaded in my hand.

“Fuck…”

It took real effort to drag my eyes away from Gage, but when I met Van’s eyes, saw his stricken expression, I knew he was feeling the same way. We shuddered as we rode whatever hellish feeling this was, right up until we were done. A gentle kiss between Gage and Kendall and some soft words were what broke the spell for me. I glanced down at the growing wet spot in my pants and then jerked myself away from the door, dragging Van with me.

“What the—?” he hissed.

“We’re not ruining this for Gage,” I replied, marching us back to the front door, skirting the mess, then going back to the bags of food. I opened the front door and then slammed it shut again, hopefully giving Gage the warning he needed that we were home.

“Maybe he would’ve let us join in,” Van shot back. “Maybe we should be in there—”

“We don’t know what went down, but we do know that Gage has managed to pull off the one thing we all want, and we need to respect that.”

He nodded slowly, but the mutinous look in his eyes gave me pause, right before he walked down the hall, making sure his boots clumped along the floor as he headed for the kitchen. I sighed and went to grab the mop, but right as I was running the water to fill the bucket, I heard a thumping at our front door.

“Kendall!” A muffled masculine voice at the front door had me approaching with a frown. Did she have some stalker ex-boyfriend she hadn’t told us about yet? I yanked it open, not to find a former lover but Finn. “Where’s my fucking sister?”

I filled the doorway and planted my feet, making clear I wouldn’t be moving anywhere.

“She’s here, dickhead, and?”

“She left me a voicemail, said we need to talk.” He shot me a dark look. “What did you do? What the fuck did you do to her?”

“Nothing.” Van appeared at my shoulder. “We just got home and were about to start making dinner so it’s ready by the time we finish working on her car.”

“Her car…?” Finn looked down at his phone, then shoved the screen in our faces as he played the voicemail. “So what’s this about?”

Sure enough, she’d left a terse message about wanting to talk to him.

“I dunno.” Van was all nonchalance as he shrugged. “I think she’s in the shower—”

“Where’s Gage?” Finn was a lot of things, but he wasn’t stupid. He noted that just the two of us had answered the door, not all three, and his eyes narrowed. “Where the fuck is Gage, and what is he doing with my sister?”

Hopefully he was kissing her long and slow while the two of them came down from that high. He needed to be holding her tight, making her feel safe and secure, and most of all, wanted right now. Kendall deserved all of the afterglow, and I was prepared to fight Finn to get it. Van was evidently of the same mind, moving to block the doorway as well.

“Where the fuck is Kendall?” Finn growled. “Kendall!”

Jesus, he’d have the whole neighbourhood staging an intervention with the way he was yelling, and I was frantically thinking of a way to de-escalate things when a feminine voice stopped him cold.

“I’m here.”

If I was envious before, I was fucking jealous as hell now, because the woman herself came walking down the hallway dressed only in one of Gage’s old t-shirts. It was far too big for her, the neckline hanging off one bare shoulder.

Which had me wondering.

Was she bare underneath it? Did Gage clean her up properly or was his seed dripping down her leg right now. I didn’t mind a bit of cream pie action in porn, but I needed to know more than my next breath. Her cunt, swollen, pink and dripping cream as I—

“You said you wanted to talk?”

Finn’s tone had changed completely. He’d gone as stiff as a board as he took his sister in. That tension only ratcheted tighter as Gage came behind her, spreading his hands possessively over her hips before tilting her head back. My mouth went dry, my lips shifting as they kissed, like I was the one doing it, not Gage. I needed to know how she tasted like I needed my next breath, but that wasn’t what happened. Instead, she shot him a smug smile before her gaze hardened as she turned to her brother.

“Yeah, I want to talk. About you and swapping the sugar for the salt when I was cooking in preparation for that interview with the bakery.”

That was what had happened? I’d busted my balls getting Dad to agree to arrange a meeting between the bakery and Kendall, forced to promise him I’d go to university rather than get an apprenticeship. It’d all come to nothing and Dad had thrown that in my face, going on and on about how he knew he should never have stuck his neck out for her right before I went back on the deal. I was broken out of my reverie by the fact she pushed past Van and me to stand on the doorstep, facing her brother down.

“You came home and found the kitchen a mess. I’d lost my shit, screaming and tossing all of my hard work on the floor, and when Mum was off getting a broom and a mop, you told me…”

Did Finn hear the rage vibrating in her voice? Because I did. Whatever Gage had done, he’d unlocked a part of Kendall I was beginning to fear had been stuffed down, never to return. We hassled her endlessly, but she gave as good as she got, never backing down.

And she didn’t now.

“You told me the guys did it, deliberately as one last prank. To make sure I didn’t get that apprenticeship.” My heart was beating too damn fast, a faint whine starting up in my head as I stared at the man I thought was my best friend.

And saw a stranger.

One that looked worried, then furtive, eyes flicking around, throat working and ready to come up with an excuse, any excuse, to get him out of this. My hands became fists and so did Van’s, the two of us squaring off to face him.

“You got me out of the house, took me to a friend’s place, and helped me find somewhere to rent later, but…” She shook her head, and I knew why. It was as if she wanted to dislodge this thought, one she couldn’t bear to consider. “I thought you were finally looking out for me, being my big brother, but you… But you…”

My hand shot out, grabbing hers, and I expected her to throw it off, but instead her grip tightened. Her fingers were like iron bands as she finally squeezed this out.

“You just wanted me out of the way. Why, Finn?”

When her voice broke, I tried to pull her closer, but that wasn’t Kendall. She endured our shit stoically, facing us down, even when she had tears in her eyes. But I didn’t want her to have to tough it out anymore, so I dared to put my arm around her.

“It’s OK.” I said that, but it was a lie and we both knew it, which was perhaps why she pressed against me, but her body didn’t soften. “Everything’s OK.”

“I…” Finn was on the back foot now, taking a step backwards, but Gage and Van weren’t about to let that happen. They advanced on him, ready to grab him bodily and force him to answer our girl. “I… Look, fellas—”

“Fucking answer Kendall, mate.”

Van bit that last word off like it was the vilest of swear words as we watched Finn collapse in on himself.

“It was supposed to be the four of us.” He glanced at Gage, Van, then me but evidently didn’t get what he wanted from that. “We were gonna stick together forever.”

“We did stick together, you fucking Muppet,” Gage growled, smacking one fist into his open hand. “And what good did that do us? You knew…”

Kendall pulled away from me, grabbing Gage’s arm when his voice broke, my best mate’s muscles tensing to throw off her grip right before he pulled her close. His lips went to her hair as he pressed a kiss there, and I knew he wanted, needed, to do so much more.

“You knew Kendall was the only one for us.” My dad was a cold prick, and deep down, I was my father’s son. I dropped down one step, then another, my muscles loose and ready to be unleashed. “We waited until she was out of school out of respect for her and…” I looked him up and down, not seeing a friend, but a… thing. “You. Respect for you. She was your sister…”

And that’s when I put two and two together for the first fucking time. Just a moment of kicking my own arse then I forged on.

“And that ruled you out of what we had planned.”

Finn liked sharing girls a whole damn lot. He was the one who presented it as an idea one night when a girl made clear she was up for it. Settling down with Cheryl had put a dampener on things, especially when I’d made clear we wouldn’t be joining them in any manner.

“We could’ve been friends forever.” I smiled but there was nothing but venom in it. “We could’ve stayed mates to the bitter end. We stuck it out thus far, but you… You had to take away the one person that made it all worthwhile.”

I couldn’t look at him, not with this throbbing through me. Her, all I wanted was Kendall Kennedy, and now that I knew what had kept us apart, it was all I could do to keep myself from breaking shit.

So I didn’t.

I turned then, sucker punching the little fuck straight in the jaw, the sight of him sailing through the air and landing heavily on my front lawn going some way to dousing the fire that burned in me.

But not completely.

“What the f—?”

I planted a foot on his chest when he tried to get up.

“I’ve been in love with Kendall since the moment I knew what love was. All I ever wanted was her. Gage is the same and so is Van. You knew that. We all knew that. I don’t know what you did to fuck up your sister’s chances of chasing her dreams, whether it was deliberate…” I didn’t see a flicker of guilt in his eyes, so I continued. “Or it was just a fuck up you didn’t want to own up to.”

There it was. I was a fucking expert on reading blokes, able to see through guys lying to us about being sick or bullshitting about what they were capable of on a worksite, so I caught that furtive little flinch that he tried to smother.

“I didn’t plan any of it,” he croaked out, especially when my foot pressed down harder. “I didn’t mean for the interview to get fucked up.” Finn said that to his sister. “If anything, I wanted you to get that apprenticeship. Then you’d move out on your own and away from…”

“Away from your best friends.” Kendall stepped forward, the folds of Gage’s t-shirt fluttering slightly in the breeze around her legs. “Because you knew if it came to choosing between you and me, I’d win. They were your friends, but they loved me.”

She met my eyes for just a moment, and all of the anger and hurt I felt evaporated. If she could just look at me, I’d never feel a moment of pain again.

“And you knew I’d end up loving them and where would you be?” I didn’t know how Finn bore it when she stared down at him, fierce as a valkyrie. “On the outer, like you will be now, Brother.”

I wanted to pound that fucker’s face into the ground, keeping on going until only dental records could be used to identify Finn, but I had to be satisfied with the thin trickle of blood coming out of his nose. Kendall turned on her heel and stalked back inside, but I stayed behind to clean up the shit.

“Get your crap out of the office,” I told him in clipped tones. “I’ll have the lawyers draw up a buyout deal and send it over.”

“But—”

“Accept, Finn, or you will not like the consequences. Trust me when I say that.”

I flexed my hands and felt the sting in my knuckles, focussing on that and the movement of Kendall’s legs as I followed her inside. I couldn’t take a breath until I heard the front door slam shut, the lock clicking in place. I’d had my future stolen before, the gall of Finn choking me, but I forced myself to suck oxygen in before letting it out. I’d be damned if I’d let anyone take it from me again.