out and left my mom and sister home, instead of—”
“But you had no way of knowing!” Chastity pleaded. “It couldn’t possibly have been—”
“Or even if I’d sat in the front seat, instead of her,” I went on. “She called shotgun. Can you believe that? It was one of the last things she said to me. ‘Shotgun!’ And then she smiled that beautiful seventeen-year old smile, and she jumped in the—”
“I’m coming over.”
Her words stopped me mid-sentence.
“Chastity, it’s after midnight.”
“I’m coming over right now.”
“No,” I said. “You really don’t have to—”
There was a click, followed by silence. When I looked down at the phone again, the timer had blinked off and I was talking to no one.
Thirty-Three
CHASTITY
When the door opened I flung myself into his arms, wrapping myself tightly around his body. It felt good, right, perfect. Like I could stay there forever.
Instead we went back to his bedroom, where I held him all night long.
Senan melted into me, and I could feel the pain and sorrow slowly drain away. In the hour before we drifted off to sleep we didn’t talk about Kylie at all. Instead we discussed everything and anything else, including Brett showing up as a student in one of my classes… as well as his invitation to come over and play Zelda with me.
“He invited you too, you know,” I smiled, spooning into him.
“Yeah?”
“He said you don’t really play video games but it would be fun.”
“It sure would,” he joked. “For you anyway.”
“I know,” I chuckled, feeling that familiar knot of excitement cinch a little bit tighter, somewhere below my navel. “He said that too.”
Senan sighed, clutching me against his wonderfully naked chest. He was in boxers only, and I in my G-string. We’d stripped down together, to sleep in our underwear.
“I wish I could this week,” he said, “but I’m going to be busy every night with work. Too many bills to pay. Not enough hours to pay them.”
I felt a sharp stab of jealousy, just picturing him working extra hours. Taking on additional clients. Sleeping with other women…
“Definitely take Brett up on it though,” he said nonchalantly. “You guys should hang out. Have fun.”
His words put a knot in my throat. For conflicting reasons.
“Y—You’d be okay with that?”
“Sure,” he shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, I guess… because…”
“Because you don’t want to ‘cheat’ on me?”
There. The cat wasn’t just out of the bag, it was chained beneath a spotlight.
“That’s cute and all,” Senan went on, “but I really wouldn’t look at it that way. Not if you did it with Brett, or Ander.”
“Why?” I asked. “Just because I’ve been with them already?”
“That, yes,” he admitted, “but mostly because they’re my friends. My brothers, really.”
“And you share everything with your friends?”
“Not everything, no,” he chuckled. “But this? You?” He spun me around, turning me so that I faced him on the pillow. In the dim light filtering in through the window I could see his lips, his mouth. The hard curve of his bearded, masculine jaw as he spoke.
“For some reason sharing you seemed natural,” he shrugged. “It seemed right to me, and to them.”
“You’ve talked to them about it?”
“Of course. And believe me, they loved it just as much as I did. Not only in a sexual way, either — any guy would love that. But in all the same emotional ways, too.”
My stomach did a slow somersault. It woke the butterflies up again.
“Emotional ways?”
“Yes,” said Senan. He reached out gently to stroke my cheek. “The guys got a little — how do I say this? ‘Attached’ to you the other night. After you left they couldn’t stop talking about you. And they talked about you as a person — someone who was funny and perfect and cool. They talked about those things way more than they talked about what we actually did.”
My body was on fire, and not just because we were beneath the blankets. It was an internal heat. One that came from feeling warm and fuzzy inside.
“What exactly did they say?”
Senan smiled and kissed me softly, briefly, before crushing me tightly against him. My face was buried in his tattooed chest. His mighty legs, wrapped around me in a cocoon of smooth, hard flesh.
“They said lots of things,” he replied, “but so did I. And after we finished talking about how great you are, they both told me they wanted to see you again. With or without me.”
There should’ve been alarm bells. There should’ve been shock, surprise, maybe even some outrage.
Instead there were