I shook my head. “No,” I told him. “Thanks, though.”

He nodded slowly, still unsure. “O…okay.”

He sped off, and I pulled out my hands, sick of this feeling inside me.

Scott was right. Nearly two years, and I was still pining while she’d been stone. Not a look, a hint, or a whisper from her.

She thought I was nothing.

I walked and walked, passing the village and the gazebo I’d heard she’d abandoned the last time I was home at Christmas.

I didn’t want to see her and anything of hers. I just wanted the pain to go away.

Before I knew it, I was walking through Damon’s house, up the stairs where the maid guided me, and up to the third floor where I knocked.

I faintly heard whispers and shuffling, and then he was there. In his lounge pants, freshly showered and no shirt.

His eyebrows shot to his hairline. “Here to see my coffin?” he joked.

I looked behind him, seeing the bed. “It looks comfortable.”

His eyes turned warm, but then he dropped them, looking hesitant.

Tears pooled in my eyes. “I’m fucked up,” I choked out.

“I know.” He nodded. “But if you come in here, I’m not fixing you.”

He was just as fucked up. Tomorrow wouldn’t be any brighter for either of us.

“Just fix it for tonight,” I whispered.

Dive and destroy and show me how to get lost. Just for tonight.

He moved to the side, inviting me in, and I closed the door behind me.

An obnoxious junkie.

At least Sid could play a guitar.

Emory

Present

I arched my back as Will gripped my hip and thrust against me, his dick sliding inside.

He filled me so tightly, stretching hot and thick, I whimpered, “Ah.”

Twisting my head, he covered my mouth with his as the steam filled the shower and he yanked my hips back again and again, fucking me harder and harder without breaking the kiss.

I licked his tongue and took over, backing up into it as I guided his hand down between my legs.

He rubbed my clit, slow but steady, in circles. “I don’t love you,” he whispered in my ear before biting my lobe.

“I know.”

He knocked my hand off his, slamming mine to the wall and returning his to my pussy, thrusting harder and bottoming out, going so deep.

I squeezed my eyes shut, moaning.

A hand took mine, and I closed my fingers around Alex’s slender ones.

“Say you’re sorry to me,” Will breathed out.

“I did.”

He pulled out, spun me around, and I let go of Alex’s hand as he lifted me up.

“Say it,” he demanded.

I wrapped my arms and legs around him as he slipped back inside. “What happens then?” I ask. “Huh?”

I trailed kisses over his face and then buried my lips in his neck as I hugged him to me.

“Once you get what you want, you’ll stop,” I told him, “and I don’t want you to stop.”

His hips moved as he gripped my ass in both hands, and I sucked the water off his skin, nibbling and dragging his skin out with my teeth.

He groaned.

“Don’t stop,” I panted. “I don’t love you anymore. You’re bad news and always have been.”

“But don’t stop, huh?” he chuckled. “The class reunion is next year, and I’m going to tell everyone what you really like to do when your nose isn’t buried in a book. I’m going to tell them that you like me and how you let me have some fun when no one was looking.”

I fell back against the wall, turning my head, my forehead meeting Alex’s as I moaned. I wouldn’t admit it to him, but I got off on how much he wanted me.

Aydin pressed Alex against the wall next to me, and while she faced me, he looked down at her, almost frozen except for his hand that slipped underneath her shirt so slowly. She breathed shallow, her lips close to mine, and in the blink of an eye, he’d torn off her bra and dropped the black fabric onto the shower floor, the water slowly drenching her shirt.

He was why she was here. This was why she was the one who came for Will, instead of Michael.

It was about Aydin. She was his artist, and she’d found out he was here when she was looking for Will.

Gliding his hand over her shirt, he moved up her stomach and between her breasts as the shirt plastered her skin, revealing the dark circles of her nipples through the linen.

She wouldn’t look at him, and I pressed my lips to her forehead, trying to soothe her. It was almost like she was scared, and if there was anything I knew about Alex Palmer it was that not much scared her.

I turned back to Will, tightening my hold as I watched him tip his head back and start to lose it.

“I’m going to slip,” I gasped.

He hefted me back up. “I got you.”

I sank my mouth into his, my wet hair sticking to my face and neck, and I wished I was back in that wrestling room with him and I wouldn’t have been so timid. I would’ve loved him and stayed there with him all night if I could do it over again.

“Kiss her on the mouth,” I heard Aydin say.

I looked over to see Alex staring up at him. “I want to kiss you on the mouth.”

He shook his head, his expression calm, but his breathing ragged.

He licked his lips. “Touch her on the cunt,” he whispered. “Like that night I watched you on the screen. Do it.”

He grazed his hand over her breast through her shirt, barely touching, and her mouth fell open, and I didn’t think she was breathing.

“Touch her,” he begged, hovering over her lips. “Fuck her for me in the bed.”

She swallowed. “No,” she whispered. “I do what I want, when I want, and nothing for your pleasure.”

“Nothing?” he asked, touching her lips with his fingers. “For him but not for me?”

She glared up at Aydin. “I feel safe with him. I feel like a whore with you.”

His jaw flexed, and his fingers curled over her breast like a claw. Her nipples hardened, poking through the fabric like bullets.

Will’s head collapsed into my neck, breathing hard and groaning, and I could tell he was close.

But my blood rushed hot, my orgasm crested, and I was already there. I whimpered, squeezing my pussy around him and holding on for every thrust as my body bobbed up and down, moaning loud and not caring who heard.

Part of me hated Alex. She was gorgeous, tough, and everything Aydin said she was in the bedroom. She was more Will’s friend than I ever was, and the hardest part was that she was stunning in every way.

She had to have been through shit, given her occupation. There had to have been days that brought her to tears, but you’d never know it.

And here the rest of us were, hurt and using it as an excuse to destroy ourselves, while she just kept trudging along day after day, getting closer and closer to what she wanted.

“What if I want to touch you someday?” I whispered to Alex, but leaned my head into Will, holding him close. “What if I want to kick them out and climb into bed with you, just us?”

Will grinned, kissing me without missing a step.

What if I felt safe with her, too, and she deserved better than how Aydin was treating her, and I wanted her to know that?