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"I hope he does," I said. "I feel like there's a piece of the puzzle missing." I also didn't want him to stomp off every time he saw me. He spent so much time here, he might as well live here too. The last thing I wanted was for him, for any of them, to feel uncomfortable here.
"That's exactly how I feel too," Ice said. "I thought we had everything figured out, but we didn’t. Now we've met you, I know how this is supposed to go. The four of us against the world." He slid the tip of his finger down my ass crack.
I shivered deliciously. Could I keep up with two guys, much less three? Even knowing how inexperienced I was, they all still wanted me. And each other. I could very easily fall into this warm, tight web they wove around me, and I wasn't sure I'd mind. One thing I knew for sure, once I got in, it might be difficult to get back out again. Maybe even impossible.
I wasn't sure how I felt about that, but right now I was safe, held between two smoking hot guys. Guys who seemed to care about me as much as I was coming to care about them.
If this was a trap, maybe I’d jump in feet first and never look back.
Chapter Twelve
Kennedy
"Nice wheels." Charlie looked sideways at the shiny new Porsche Taycan. The long black ribbon was gone, but the car was still ridiculously incredible and undoubtedly expensive.
I couldn't bring myself to look at how much it was worth. At a guess, I'd say more than a small house in a rural town, and less than a luxury apartment in Sydney or Melbourne. As presents went, it was extravagant. None of the guys would let me refuse it, although Ares muttered something about me spreading my legs for it. When I left for work, Mannix and Ice were busy growling at him for saying that.
"Uh, yeah." How did I begin to explain how I came to have a car like this? "It belongs to my mother." I hated to lie, but the truth was hard for me to believe, much less explain, to someone I barely knew.
"Are you feeling better?" I asked. When he looked confused, I added, "Nicola said you had food poisoning?"
"Oh, right. Food poisoning. Yeah that was… You know, rough. Don't eat chicken that isn't cooked properly." He didn't meet my eye as he spoke. He quickly turned to unlock the gym door and stepped aside to let me enter.
"So that guy the other day, he's a friend of yours?" He followed me in but skirted around me to walk to the office. I had a feeling if he could cross to the other side of the street, he'd do that. What the hell was going on? He’d seemed friendly up until now.
"Mannix? Yeah, I guess you could say we're friends. My mother is marrying his father. We live in the same house." He told me I belonged to him, but we hadn't talked about being boyfriend and girlfriend, or anything official.
Just because he bought me an insanely expensive car didn't mean I'd assume he saw our relationship the same way I did.
"Right." Charlie placed his bag under the desk and sat in the chair to pull off his shoes. "So he's…family?"
"I suppose you could say that." I put my bag beside his and leaned against the desk to take off my own sneakers.
Charlie flinched and turned the chair away from me.
What the hell?
"Are you okay?" I asked. "You seem really… I don't know, on edge. Did I do something to upset you?" I hadn't had enough to do with him to have pissed him off too much, had I?
Some peopleweretouchier than others. Mannix and Ares, to name two.
"No," Charlie said quickly. Too quickly. Like he was worried about upsetting me. His eyes flicked to the door and he looked nervous.
"If you're worried about Mannix suddenly coming in like the other day, he's working," I said.
Charlie relaxed visibly, but only slightly. His body was still wound tighter than a corkscrew.
I frowned at him as I tossed my shoes down beside my bag. "Did something—"
The gym door opened and the flood of children began. Charlie looked relieved to have been interrupted and hurried away to gather his class to one side of the gym.
My class consisted of a group of six five-year-old girls, who would all start school in a few months. Right now, their skills consisted of bouncing, running and some basic tumbling. One of them might be a future champion. Right now, they had crazy short attention spans. It took all my energy and attention to keep them from wandering off or chatting amongst themselves too much.
I kept half an eye on Charlie during the class. He had a group of four boys the same age as the girls. Since boys used different apparatuses, their gymnastic skills were different from the girls. They could often learn together, but where possible they tended to be separated. At least two of them seemed more interested in running up and down the mats than in learning anything. That was one way to work off excess energy. They must be exhausted when they got home. I knew I was.
Charlie didn't say a word to me when the class finished and the next one started.
This was a group of younger children and their parents. My job was mostly to guide the parents while the kids walked over beams a finger width off the floor. Most of the kids looked less interested than the energetic boys, but the parents seemed to have fun.
