Chapter 17

Noah

Watching Millie kiss Knox was a punch to the guts, one of those really hard ones that drives all the wind out of you, leaving you gasping, aching. So why couldn’t I feel one iota of that pain when my lips grazed Millie’s? Because this was happening, finally happening. Ten years too late, and that was all my fucking fault.

Well, mine and her brothers.

I wanted to tell her, willed the coin to land on my last dare, forcing her to call her family and find out the truth. She needed that. I needed that. But when she came sauntering over, I forgot about them, Knox, about Charlie, about everything else but her. When she sat in my lap, she was the perfect weight, keeping me pinned to the chair when I felt like I’d just float off, untethered.

I wasn’t sure what I was doing. I knew the mechanics of a kiss, lips pressed against each other, but just like that night, my heart beat way too hard and way too fast in anticipation. In the end, I needn’t have worried. Some instinct kicked in and had my hand going to her hair as I tugged her closer.

Soft. She was so damn soft and her lips gave beneath mine as I claimed hers. That tiny little whistle of breath, was that irritation or…? No, a small moan followed it, one I echoed gladly because I was rigid. Millie was sitting on my cock, grinding it against my zipper, and I couldn’t even feel the pain, not while I was kissing her. My lips moved, trying to tell her, show her, all that I felt.

That I wanted to claim every part of her, map every curve with my mouth, and call it mine. That I wanted her, needed her, loved her? I didn’t know the woman she’d become, but there wasn’t anything I wanted more. My throat swelled, threatening to cut off my breath at the feel of her, but I still couldn’t stop kissing her, not even when her tongue slid between my lips. Mine surged forward, tangling with hers, the kiss going on and on and on until we were forced back, gasping.

She stared at me like she was seeing me for the first time, and I sucked up every moment of that. My arms flexed, mostly to stop myself from reaching for her and tugging her back down again, but I felt a surge of pride as she took them in.

“Huh.” She half smiled as she touched her lips, then blinked. “So that’s what it would’ve been like.”

More, better, that’s what I wanted to tell her, but we weren’t in my room at my place, instead still in the conference room, and that’s when Charlie decided to butt in.

“So, are we done playing?”

There was a weird kind of tension in his voice, but I couldn’t bring myself to wonder about it, not when Millie was close, but his words made her stiffen. Before I could grab her, she pulled free, sitting in her own chair. Her eyes remained resolutely on her wine glass as she sipped it, but her cheeks gave her away. They were bright red, making clear how she felt.

Embarrassed.

My eyes raked across the room, ready to jump on anyone who’d give her shit. I didn’t see mocking smiles, but a feeling I could easily identify.

Hunger.

Was that how I looked? Like I was a starving wolf and she was the last scrap of meat? Did I look that desperate for just one glance, just one bit of attention from Millie, even as she resolutely avoided all our eyes. I felt a strange kind of camaraderie with my teammates, even as something selfish wanted to shove every single one of them out of the way.

“Are you done?” Millie replied belatedly, looking up with a familiar gleam in her eye. Girls at school knew better to mess with Millie because she never backed down.

“Not even a little bit.”

Charlie was always the one with the jokes, full of bullshit, but I didn’t see that now. He moved the coin back to ‘hot seat’ and left it there.

“Something you want to confess?” Her smile was brittle and I wanted to tell her she didn’t need to play anymore. We could all walk away from here, alone or…?

“Something I want to ask,” he replied, not looking away for a second.

“That’s not?—”

“How’d it feel, kissing two guys in this room?”

“Charlie…” Knox and I looked at each other when we growled the same thing at the same time, but Millie held up a hand to silence us.

“You want to know?” Charlie nodded in the face of her challenge. “It was amazing. It was hot and sexy, and when I kissed Knox, kissed Noah, all I could think of was them.”

“But when you stopped…?”

I wanted to point out that Charlie had already asked his question, but Millie was too quick for me.

“When I stopped?” She lifted her glass and drained it before daring to stare at each one of us. “I know I should feel embarrassed, ashamed, that this is slutty kind of behaviour. I should worry about what you think…” Millie’s brows creased for just a second, and I felt like I could see her thought processes happening in real time. “But I don’t.”

Charlie leaned forward, tapping the coin again and that had Knox and I leaning forward. We both knew what his bullshit could entail and felt a need to protect Millie from it.

If she would just accept that help.

“So what do you want?” He didn’t pay any attention to either or us, only Millie. “What do you really want? If no one could get hurt and there were no consequences?”

That wasn’t possible. Even with all the beers I’d had, I knew that, but Knox and I weren’t playing anymore. We’d both made our moves, made clear what we wanted, but these two kept on playing without us. Millie grabbed the coin and flipped it, and I wished, willed it to land on my phone call dare, sure that the truth would cut through the suddenly close atmosphere of the room.

But it didn’t.

Fuck Dave and his sleazy bullshit. I should’ve stepped in and done something earlier, because that damn coin, it landed on ‘kiss the person next to you’ again. I could barely look her way, not sure if she’d choose me or Knox, but I needed to know. My heart beat a rapid tattoo in my chest as she rose to her feet, and for just a second, hope bloomed as she walked my way.

And past me to Charlie.

Fuck…

I watched her straddle his hips, her hands running through his hair, just as she had done to mine, and I could almost feel it the moment her lips crashed down on his. Mine moved in sympathy, remembering the way it felt. Had I gripped the back of her neck like that, let out a small sound of pleasure, of gratification, as she shifted against me? I forced myself to look away. Watching them made my cock throb like an aching tooth, but my heart ached as well. My eyes found Knox, and if I wondered how he was taking this, it was written clearly in his expression. He watched the two of them with a strange kind of hunger, as if he wanted to be the one doing the kissing.

When he realised he could be.

He jerked himself to his feet and I did as well, ready to step between him and them if that’s what it took. Millie didn’t belong to any one of us. She could kiss who she pleased. I wanted it to be me, but I’d fight the team leader if she decided she wanted Charlie. Her little moans of pleasure were like fingers around my cock, tugging it too slowly to get me off, but stoking the desire higher, even as I went to intercept Knox. I was too slow, the beer making my reflexes sluggish, but I needn’t have worried.

He didn’t storm over to hit Charlie or drag Millie away. Instead, as I drew closer, I watched his hand slide up her back. The way she arched up into that caress, her shirt inching higher, it drew me forward. I couldn’t look away, not when Knox shot me a look laden with meaning I couldn’t understand, right as his hand collared her throat.

“Is that nice, Millie?” She pulled away from Charlie, looking up blindly at Knox’s purr, and he tipped her head backwards. “Is he making you feel good?”

“I’ll make her feel a whole lot better if you keep her just like that,” Charlie mumbled, pressing kisses to her neck, her collarbone.

“Is that what you want?” Knox asked, watching her lick her lips and then blink, seeing him clearly now. “You felt so damn right the night I carried you away from the fire. I thought it was just the adrenaline, the fire, but it wasn’t.”

She stared into his eyes as he put it all fucking out there, what she’d made him feel.

So why wasn’t I doing the same?

“It wasn’t, and if this is the way for me to get more, I’m in.”

She smiled then, that beautiful golden thing that caught my attention in the schoolyard, but this was decidedly not high school behaviour. Millie reached up and tugged him down, his lips crushing hers with a pent-up passion I understood well. His hand slid down from her throat, pulling her shirt upwards. A strange sound formed in my throat. One part moan, one part whine, I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing.

But I knew exactly how I was responding.

My feet moved me closer, my hands rising as Charlie left off kissing her to stare up at Millie, then down at her bra. He smiled like a kid at Christmas who’d gotten all the presents he wanted and now he was going to unwrap them. The bra clasp was flicked open with expert ease and then slid free.

Fuck.

I’d dreamed of those breasts, and yet nothing I’d visualised was as perfect as the reality. The nipples were pulled tight as if begging to be touched. Charlie grinned at the sight of them, his head darting closer, but not before he stopped and turned to stare at me.

“Like this, baby?”

He licked one nipple and her hand went to the back of his head, tugging him closer, but he held off. Instead, he brushed his lips against the slick point, before pulling back. A small sound of muffled protest had me moving closer, whatever I thought, felt, needed, pushed aside, especially when I saw her. She pulled away from Knox and said the one thing I needed to hear.

“Noah… I need?—”

She didn’t have to say another thing. A dark part of me wanted to tear her from their arms, beat my chest and then drag her off to my cave, but that wasn’t the me that had the wheel. The boy that watched her, trying to catalogue every shade of blonde and brown in her hair, he was right here, and while he had no fucking idea what to do, he knew this. If Millie McDonald wanted something from me, I’d give it to her every time.

I moved in close, brushing my mouth over hers as Knox drew closer, watching us kiss, right as my hand covered her breast. She was soft, so soft, making me only harder.

“You know what she needs.”

Charlie stared into my eyes, obviously feeling a certainty I didn’t share, but fake it before you make it, right? It’d gotten me this far and I couldn’t back down now. I lowered my head, unable to stop myself from peppering little kisses along the slope of her breast before I got to that hard little nipple. A kiss, a lick, her hand went to my head, pulling me closer, and that was all the help I needed. What was happening now threatened to take my fantasies and speed on past them as I sucked her nipple in.