Fraud (Antihero Inferno #2) - Lily White Page 0,75

you come.”

She does what I say, and the slap of our skin echoes over the clearing, my fingers running the line of her spine to grip the back of her neck and tug her back to my chest. When my teeth sink into her shoulder, she cries out, her body falling apart again as my name bursts from her lips.

I can’t hold myself back after hearing it.

“Fuck.”

Pulling out, I come on the back of her leg, my body jerking as the climax rolls through me. It takes both of us a minute to catch our breath and calm down.

Ivy is the first to speak.

“We’re a mess, Gabe. Please tell me you stashed towels out here or something to clean up.”

Now that she mentions it, that wouldn’t have been a bad idea.

“I didn’t mean for it to go this far.”

Soft laughter shakes her body. “Liar.”

Turning her to face me, I kiss her slow and soft, my hand cupping her cheek before I pull away.

“If it makes you feel any better, I have dirt in my ass, too.”

The beauty of her smile is intoxicating. “It does actually. But how the hell are we getting back? Where are my clothes?”

Along the trail. It’s something else I hadn’t considered.

“I’ll let you wear my shirt until we find them.”

She smiles again and shakes her head.

“Such a fucking gentleman,” she mumbles.

“Only for you,” I whisper.

Ivy

I’m not going to lie, the walk back to the cabin with Gabriel is actually fun.

Sure, when I first saw him on the trail, I was terrified about what he might do. We don’t have the best history, and we haven’t technically ever been friends. Gabe had no reason to be nice when I ran straight to him in the woods.

I’d taken off with the very real belief that I had eight men chasing after me, ones who might tie me up like a human sacrifice and carry me out of the woods.

But the first time Gabe caught me and kissed me, I knew it was only him. Don’t ask me how. I just did.

We speak our own language sometimes, one that doesn’t need words and isn’t something that can be learned or taught.

You have to know a person to have the ability to read them. It’s an inflection in their voice, a look in their eyes, the feeling when their hand touches your skin.

It’s all words that aren’t spoken, sentences that don’t require structure, a knowing that develops between certain people that can never be explained.

I know Gabriel. Even if we’ve always been at each other’s throats. Even if we’ve been cruel more than we’ve been kind. I know him because I’ve watched him more closely than I’ve watched any other person.

We watched each other grow up. Even when our circumstances were so insanely different.

So that’s how I knew we were the only two people there, my fear quickly becoming laughter, the terror turning to fun. Running around practically naked in the forest may seem stupid to some people, but how many of them can say they’re really alive?

That’s what Gabriel meant when he asked me whether I would have felt alive without him before he abducted me at Emily’s house.

Sure, we were enemies more often than not, but we never let each other drown.

He could escape the crap his father was doing, and I could escape the pedestal where my father insisted I stay perched because we had something else to focus on.

We kept each other breathing.

We gave each other a reason for our hearts to pound and our spirits to shine through.

Even if it was only cruel pranks and this bullshit war, we kept going because we refused to buckle beneath the challenge.

I think the truth is that for as much as the spoiled princess and the broken prince hated each other, it’s a simple fact that we wouldn’t let go because we were the only people who could distract the other from the heavy weight of our lives.

Like now, for instance.

I’m currently disowned by my father, and Gabriel’s house is a wreck. And while we’re to blame for that situation, we’re still walking through the woods practically naked, laughing at the sad fact that, to us, it doesn’t matter.

This is us.

It’s what we do.

Despite nobody understanding it.

“This isn’t funny, Gabe. Where the hell are my clothes?”

Tears leak from his eyes as he doubles over, my laughter matching his because we’ve walked the same damn path a hundred times and have yet to find my shirt or pants. It’s