Chapter 41

Kendall

My dad always said if you bite off more than you can chew, just keep chewing. Somehow, that made sense right now, because as Van opened the door and carried me in, I saw it. The guys hadn’t just asked my mother for the recipe of my favourite meal, they’d built me a damn bed. It was lucky the room was a large one because the frame now took up most of it. The width of several mattresses, I dimly made out its hulking shape.

And theirs.

The light was off, but enough filtered through past the curtains to reveal the two of them, the sounds of their long, slow breaths filling the air. I glanced at Van who set me down on my feet, then pressed a finger to his lips before he moved closer. That still hit me like a gut punch, that it was him, Van, who was edging into my space, his hands cupping my jaw. But when his mouth slammed down on mine, it felt right.

Of course it was him kissing me. Of course he tilted my jaw up, then parted my lips, to go deeper. Of course it was his hard chest pressed against mine, his arms like ropes of steel, not letting me go for a second. He was the only one who could feel anything like the desperation burning inside me. Our hands moved restively, touching, caressing, mapping each other’s forms, as if we were terrified someone would come along and snatch the other person away, right before we were forced to pull away. Our breaths were coming in rapidly and noisy as we grinned at the other person.

“You never had your dinner,” I whispered.

“I don’t give a fuck about food.” That was delivered hoarsely as he stroked my hair. “Just you, Kendall. Tell me I can have you.”

I was on the verge of begging him to take me if I was honest, but I didn’t need to tell him that. This might be Van 2.0, but he was still capable of being an arrogant prick, so I made a show of considering what he was saying.

“Kendall…”

That feral little growl, then the kisses that followed, each one deeper and more aggressive than the next… He left my lips stinging and my jaw aching, and yet somehow I just wanted more.

“Yes…” Little more than a breath exhaled, but he heard it all right, herding me backwards until my ankles hit the new bed frame.

“Yes?”

There it was, that cocky smile. His eyes felt like they burned in the dark, right into me, as his hands began to move. My work shirt was tugged up and over my head, then my bra clasp flicked open with expert fingers. It was eased off, but then he stopped, long enough for me to want to cover myself. I wasn’t like him, like Barbie, perfect and without a fold of skin or roll of fat in sight. I had lumps and bumps and it felt like he was staring at each one of them.

“Yes…” That little hiss, it was enough to stop the body-anxiety train from pulling away from the station. He pushed my shoulders back, forcing me to display my bare torso. He smoothed his hands down one shoulder, then the next. “If you had any idea how fucking much I fantasised about these tits…”

“What?” I giggled, then peered furtively over his shoulder when I heard a snort from Connor’s sleeping form. “You guys used to go on and on about the pinups stuck on Finn’s walls, saying how perfect their tits were.”

“But it wasn’t theirs that I dreamed about.” He brushed his fingers over the swell of one breast so softly it made me shiver. “It wasn’t theirs that got me so fucking hard.”

The tip of his finger traced the circle of my areole in lazy circles that got tighter with each revolution. Van’s mouth covered mine, bestowing little nipping kisses as he clamped his fingers down on my nipple. He swallowed my gasp, then worked to have me uttering more.

“I tried really hard not to stare when you were in your bathers or walking around the house in a tank top, but I failed. Over and over.” His mouth dropped down, kissing the side of my neck before going lower. “It felt like I was making it my life’s work to study your breasts.” A single kiss placed on the nipple. “But now the real work can begin.”

He was teasing me, his face pressed into the slope of my breast as his tongue flicked out, pressing the nipple up, only to pop back. The cool air of the aircon had my nipple pulling tighter, or was it just the anticipation? My hand slid down, tangling my fingers in his hair before pushing him right back where he needed to go.

“Better get started then.”

That might’ve sounded sassy if I could’ve managed it. Instead, I sounded breathy and desperate. He might have been uttering whispered confessions about how much he wanted me, but I knew exactly how it felt. That sharp tug of his lips sucking me in, the velvety slide of his tongue, then an explosion of sensation that had me panting far too loudly, right before his hand slapped over my mouth. He muffled my moans before pushing two fingers into my mouth. I sucked on them greedily, needing something to ease the growing ache inside of me, but that wasn’t it.

My body jerked free of him, shifting restlessly at everything I could see in the dark. I could fill in the dark shadows easily enough because I knew Van.

“You think you had it bad?” I whispered. “You three seemed allergic to shirts. Always walking around in the bare minimum with all of this…” I waved a hand at his chest. “On display. It was bad enough that I had to listen to every girl at school sigh over you, but when I got home…”

My voice died away, the instincts that had been hard coded into me stopping me from saying more, but Van wasn’t standing for that.

“When you got home, what, Kendall? What?”

“You just want me to tell you how beautiful you are.”

I ground that out between clenched teeth.

“Beautiful…?” He couldn’t be that surprised. People blew smoke up his arse all the time and then, some of the girls just blew him. That had my eyes raking across his bare chest, taking in the swells of taut muscle, taking in the way the shadows turned his skin to tarnished gold, right before my eyes slid down. “You didn’t think…”

He was mine now, that’s what he was saying and for a moment I felt the sense of having everything you ever wanted and feeling sure it was about to be snatched away. It was like finding out you were a lottery winner when you were down to your last dollar, and I couldn’t seem to get my brain to understand it. That my fingers didn’t need to flex on the air but could slide over his skin. That when I touched him, he sighed, then hissed out a breath like it hurt to feel me, but when I went to pull away, it hurt more for me to stop.

“Tell me you weren’t up the hall, aching in your bed for me, just like I was you.” I felt his words rather than heard them, his voice low and quiet. “Tell me you didn’t need me just as much as I needed you. That you would’ve been prepared to risk your parents’ wrath to get to me because that’s how much you needed me.”

“I can’t,” I replied, staring into his eyes, willing him to see it. The thing I’d never dared admit to… anyone really, not even myself most of the time. “I can’t, Van. I fucking hated you.” A little flinch at that, as if I’d slapped him rather than told him my truth. “But I…” I swallowed frantically, my throat now bone dry. “I wanted you just as much, maybe more.”

“More.” He nodded slowly, surging forward, taking my mouth, my neck, as his hands moved frantically, undoing the button of my pants then sending them fluttering down by my ankles. I did the same, no longer OK that those thin cotton shorts were between us.

And nothing else.

His cock felt like it seared my hand when I wrapped my fingers around it and he hissed as if it burned him too, going so very still. I slid my thumb up and down the underside, and he shivered, bearing that tiny caress for as long as he could before shoving my hand away.

“I’m so fucking close.” His eyes shone as he confessed that. “Feels like I’m always on edge around you, Kendall, but I’m not blowing on your thigh like some dumb teenager. Baby…” I always hated cute nicknames before this, but he could call me baby any damn day of the week because he said the word with such sweetness, such desperation. “I spend my fucking days wanting to crawl up inside you as deep as I can go. Tell me I can have that.”

Something tightened, then flexed and fluttered, like he was already buried inside me. And maybe he was in some way, both of us lodged under each other’s skin, like a burr. Instead of plucking it free, we wanted to push those little barbs deeper, locking each other together in ways that would never be separated.

“Yeah, I want that.”

He tried to strip me bare, but my shoes were tangled with my pants, so I dropped down to sort that out, easing them off only to be confronted by his cock. It was long, hard, and twitching in the air, which was perhaps why I moved. Licking a stripe up the centre of his dick to the musical sound of his protest turning into a moan.

“Fuck, baby…”

I’d sucked plenty of dicks before this, but never had anyone said anything like that with such reverence. Nor had anyone cradled my head with gentle hands as I swallowed as much as I could. That little thrust, nudging at the back of my throat, the way his hips mimicked the suck of my mouth had us both working harder, faster, when he forced himself to pull away.

“Not like that.” His dick throbbed in time with his heartbeat, telling a whole other story. “Later, but not now.” Van pulled me upright, kissing me once before turning me around. My hands were pressed against the foot of the bed frame, forced to feel how well he’d sanded the timber. “I remembered how blowing down your throat felt all fucking day, but now I need something else.”

It became clear what he meant as he slid his hand through my folds. He groaned when he felt his fingers come away wet.

“Fuck, you need it too…”

“Yes,” I hissed as he pushed his fingers inside me far too easily. They created a little stretch that was an echo of last night, but it wasn’t enough. His fingers were torn free, leaving me gasping, right as they slid around to strum my clit. When I felt something big and hard brush across my seam, my stance widened, my hips tilted back.

“Ready for me already, baby?” I heard a rustle, felt a shift on the bed, but I couldn’t focus on that, not when I felt Van notch the head of his cock against my opening. I tried to push back, to engulf every inch, but I didn’t get a chance. He slapped his hand down on my hip, holding me right where I was. “Need to take this slow. Been dreaming of this too fucking long to rush shit.”

“And here was I, just trying to dream.”

My eyes flicked open to see a naked Connor kneeling before me.