Page 37 of Before You Fell

“Usually before breakfast.”

Her fingers brush my skin as she takes the pill from the bag. The contact lasts less than a second, but it hits harder than Mickey’s mouth around my cock.

I bury that thought before it can turn into something even more fucked up.

Willow tips her head back, swallows, and reaches for my drink. I hand it over. Her lipstick leaves a faint mark on the rim and all I can think about is seeing that same color smeared around my cock.

Heat pulls low and dirty in my stomach.

Fuck.

This is Willow. I shouldn’t be thinking about dragging that dress over her hips and whispering enough filth into her ear to find out how wet her pussy gets for me.

But I want to know what she sounds like when she comes. Whether she would bite my shoulder to protect her pride or moan my name loud enough to destroy it. How it would feel to push my cock inside her and fuck every clever argument from her head until the only thing Willow remembers being annoyed about is that I didn’t fuck her sooner.

The thought rips through me and leaves my cock aching with six years of wanting what I have never let myself touch. That is the part that pisses me off most. I have wanted to fuck Willow since I was seventeen. Back when I was young enough to pretend a hard cock was just a hard cock and not the beginning of a six-year problem.

I shove the thought down before it gets teeth and take the glass back. I drink from the same spot where her mouth was because apparently I enjoy making the want hurt worse.

The party keeps moving around us.

Cruz laughs as the red-lipped girl whispers something into his ear. Jax knocks back another shot and tells the woman with her hand down his jeans that he has enough stamina to fuck everyone in the room and still make breakfast. Damon answers a call near the bar, his gaze flicking over to us once before sliding away again. Jett stays near Jax, chicks hanging off him by the dozen, watching.

The suite blurs by degrees. Not enough to lose myself, but enough to stop giving a fuck about where I end and the music begins. The bass turns thick and warm beneath my skin. Hard edges soften. Light spills gold across the room and the knot behind my ribs finally loosens its grip. Someone laughs too loudly but the sound dissolves before it reaches me.

Willow stays beside me.

Soon, she is the only thing I am tracking.

Her knee brushes mine, accidental at first. Bare skin against the rip in my jeans. It should mean fuck all. The pressure is barely there, but my body feels every millimetre. My cock hardens as if she has spread those thighs and invited me between them instead of resting one innocent knee against mine.

I keep my arm stretched along the back of the couch, my fingers close to her hair. Honey-brown strands spill over her shoulder and one boot rests against the table leg. Her dress has ridden up, exposing enough thigh to make me wonder whether she is wearing anything beneath it and how quickly I could find out.

Every man in this suite has likely noticed. I want to break their fucking teeth for looking.

Willow tips her head back against the couch and looks at the ceiling. “The chandelier is ugly.”

I tilt my head up to look at it. “It probably cost more than our first paycheck from the label.”

I shift slightly, pretending to get comfortable, and my knee presses more firmly against hers.

She doesn’t move away.

“It’s still ugly,” Willow says.

“Money can’t buy taste. Look at Cruz.”

Across the room, Cruz raises his middle finger without turning around because the annoying idiot can be half-high and halfway into a bad decision and still hear his name from twenty feet away.

The woman on his lap laughs as if he has just said something brilliant. Cruz sits there with pupils blown.

Willow laughs and the sound slides under my skin before I can stop it.

I stare at her mouth for half a second too long. That’s all it would take. I could lean in and catch that laugh against my lips.

The thought hits low and dirty, but the want behind it is worse. This is not some woman from the party. This is Willow and kissing her would not be a kiss. It would be a match dropped into a room full of gasoline.

And I have always been a selfish bastard around fire.