Chapter 16

Millie

This was all supposed to be a game.

I talked big, but I don’t think I actually meant to go home with any of the guys. I was wired, tired, and feeling reckless after seeing Noah. It was like a punch to the gut, and just this once, I think I wanted him to feel the same damn way. None of that remained as I slid into Knox’s lap. It wasn’t my teenage crush I saw, but him. My rescuer, my protector, my…

Fucking amazing kisser.

I thought he was going to leave me to do everything, but a strong hand slid into my hair and held me in place, his mouth taking mine. That was the only way to describe such a masterful kiss. The sharp intake of breath, that slight pause, then he was surging forward, parting my lips as his tongue slid between them. I’d only specified this condition in the dare to try and show I wasn’t intimidated, but damn. Usually my mouth just got me in trouble, but right now, it was heaven.

I felt like I was made of the same stuff as my dress, soft and slick. Knox wasn’t satisfied with that, his hands going to my hips, clamping down on my arse before tugging down my shirt. Shit, I was commando under these pants and the waistband was gaping. That thought felt like a ray of sunlight in a great fiery haze, trying to lead me back to rationality, but nope. It wasn’t the possibility of flashing my arse to the room that stopped me, but another feminine voice.

“Sorry to interrupt.”

I jerked away, and that’s when my brain finally came back online, because there was a girl standing in the doorway looking way too pale. Holy shit, did I just pash her boyfriend? That idea felt wrong on so many levels. I’d walked in on an old boyfriend banging a so-called friend. Not Jamie obviously, though she’d offered to create voodoo dolls in the cheater’s likeness and stab them for me. I knew what that kind of pain was like. I would never, ever, ever?—

“I’m just here to pick up Dave,” she explained, looking everywhere but at me.

Dave? Dave! Dave had a goddamn girlfriend? I shouldn’t have been surprised. His cartoonish leer was something I was familiar with. Blokes at the pub often thought the fact we were paid to serve them meant we were theirs for the taking, something I corrected pretty sharply.

“Katie…” Yep, there it was, the bunny in the headlights look as Dave realised he’d been caught in a compromising situation. “Babe, we were just playing… It’s just a game. Noah and his team?—”

“No one touched Dave,” I said, wanting to put Katie out of her misery more than her own boyfriend did apparently, because his apology sucked. “Honestly, I wouldn’t even have played the game if I knew he had a girlfriend.”

“She’s not—” he started to say.

“Shut up.”

Katie and I snorted when we both said that at the same time, but she took command of the conversation.

“Get in the car.”

That long-suffering sigh spoke volumes, and Dave seemed to get a clue, getting to his feet and following her out.

Leaving just me and them.

Still straddling Knox’s hips, I realised, but more interesting was when I went to dismount. Knox’s hands gripped me tighter for just a second before he forced them away so I could get free. I shook my head, then wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, realising that I had let things go too far. Charlie watched everything with eyes that danced with mischief, but Noah?

Revenge apparently didn’t taste so sweet.

I’d thought about this moment way too often, even imagining some crazy scenario like Annie had described where I looked freaking amazing and Noah realised just how big a mistake he’d made rejecting me, so why didn’t this feel like victory? His eyes were hollow holes in his head, staring like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, and that made my heart hurt.

Why, though?

It had been ten years. We lived in the same city. If he still felt a thing for me, he could’ve found me without too much effort. Noah didn’t talk to me for the rest of high school, for the rest of our life, until he just happened to come to my rescue, and that meant I owed him nothing. I settled back down on Knox’s lap, and that’s when I felt just how into this the big man was.

Both Sally and I had shared a whole ‘OMG girl, did you see the size of that thing?’ look when Knox dropped trou. Like what in the Girthmaster was that? Not massively long, but thickness wise, the beer cans were looking pretty damn slender. I just knew it’d hurt so damn good when it went in. An experimental wiggle had his grip on me tightening, so I settled right where I needed him, that solid length pressing up through my thin pants and against my bare heat.

“So whose turn is it?” Noah snapped that out, his voice ringing with challenge. “Whose turn?”

“Charlie’s,” Knox replied, and damn, I could feel that rumbly voice.

It wasn’t actually his turn. I’d landed on ‘kiss someone next to you,’ but apparently we weren’t playing by the rules anymore. Charlie picked the coin up and placed it on his name, sucking in a breath before he turned to the rest of us.

“Only a few players left. How’re we gonna do this?”

But we all knew. The rules were simple, we each flipped a coin and did what the dare told us to do or piked out and faced relentless teasing from everyone else, but that’s not what Noah did. He placed the coin on one of the few blank spaces and then wrote something curious.

‘Ring the last person you called.’

“Why the hell—?” I started to say.

“Just flip the coin, Amelia,” Noah said. People only called me my government name when they were pissed with me, so my eyes narrowed. “Unless you’re done playing.”

Being the younger sister to three brothers had me doing stupid shit sometimes. The boys manipulated me by playing on my desperate desire to be one of them, so maybe it was that reckless urge that rose in me now.

Or maybe it was the wine.

I didn’t look at the board, place it where I wanted to, instead flipping the coin and letting fate take the wheel.

Apparently Lady Luck was a dirty ho.

My coin landed between ‘hot seat’ and ‘kiss the person next to you’.

“So which is it going to be, Millie?”

Charlie was taking everything in like it was some kind of fascinating reality TV show or something. His lips twisted into a smile as he watched me watch him.

“Well, I’m already in the hot seat.” I shifted a little, just in time to feel Knox hold me tighter. “So shoot. What do you guys want to know?”

Charlie went to reply, but Noah cut across him.

“When you saw Dave write down that dare, you have to have considered you might land on it.” He glanced down at the paper. “He made sure to write it right next to you, making it hard for you to miss. Who did you hope you’d end up kissing, Millie?”

You, I thought, the reply almost instantaneous, but by their reaction, I’d said it out loud. Knox went to let me go, but my hands covered his.

“You, because there was a time in my life when I couldn’t want anything more.” I sat tall, staring down at Noah. “I thought you were going to be my first. In my mind, you’d be nice, gentle, respectful, not like some of the other dicks at school. They no sooner kissed a girl than they were running back to their mates and telling them all about it.”

My hand went to my mouth, my lips feeling soft and swollen, as if we already had. Not him , my drunken brain informed me, Knox.

“Part of me feels incomplete that we didn’t.” It was all coming out, the shit I barely talked about, and it hurt when it did. “Like a sentence without punctuation, or when a show ends on a cliffhanger, but isn’t renewed. I...” My throat closed up, but I shook my head, determined to forge on. “I thought you liked me.”

“I did.” Fuck, I didn’t realise I needed to hear that, not until I did, Noah’s voice a perfect pitch of raspy need. “I do, so much?—”

“But you didn’t. You didn’t break up with me, because we weren’t even together.” He flinched at that. “You didn’t even want to talk to me. It was just one minute we were like this and then we weren’t and I had no idea why.”

“Millie—” he started to say.

“Amelia.” I couldn’t bear to hear him use my nickname, not right now, because that soft voice was the same one that had me falling for him in science class. “I’m Amelia. The girl you rejected for no good reason that I can see, except maybe you got the ick. Maybe all of the sudden you saw something so repulsive in me?—”

“Millie, Amelia, no?—”

Noah Taylor was pleading with me, leaning forward, even as I sat on his teammate’s lap, my chin sporting the beard rash Knox had left there. I was drunk, tired, sad, horny, fuck… my emotions were a messy tumble, and I couldn’t separate one from the other.

“So that’s your truth.” We all turned to see that Charlie had leaned across the table. “But who’re you going to kiss?”

“Millie…”

Knox growled my name when I turned his way, and I’m sure he had something all very noble to say, but I cut him off with a hard, close-mouthed kiss. The wine sung in my blood, telling me all sorts of grandiose stories about having it all. I didn’t need to choose. I could be just like Jamie, bold, and take every damn thing I wanted.

Knox let me go as I slipped from his lap, watching me as I approached Noah, I was willing to bet. In my current state, I could only focus on one guy at a time, and right now that was Noah.

I’d traced the sharp edge of his jaw in my mind so many times. Sneaking glances at him in class, I’d spaced out on the teacher’s discussion of mitosis, having no answer when she called on me. Noah had smiled just a little bit, trying to stifle it, because our science teacher was notoriously volatile, but it made me feel things.

That we were in this together.

Sure enough, I caught him looking at me too. It was like there was a strange kind of light in his eyes, one of hope and hopelessness, fear and desire, and that made sense as teenagers. We were dumb kids with no idea what we were doing, stumbling towards our more adult selves, but that didn’t explain the way he looked at me now. The exact same way, like I was a treat he didn’t dare sample, treasure he didn’t dare steal, even as his hands went up as I slipped into his lap. His very impressive chest was heaving like he’d run a mile, not played stupid games. I let my fingers trail along that jaw, liking the way the shape fitted into my hand, right as my head dropped down, hovering but not going any further.

Just like that night.

I didn’t like to admit I needed anyone, but sometimes, just sometimes, a girl wants to feel like she’s wanted, desired more than anyone in the world, and Knox fulfilled that brief. I wasn’t kissing someone else without that feeling. Noah’s brows creased for just a second, then he whispered something mostly to himself.

“You have no idea how fucking much I’ve wanted you, Amelia McDonald.”

Right before he kissed me.