AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Something had changed in the last day. I wasn’t certain what it was—it definitely wasn’t Galen, so I didn’t think the app had done anything—but Baron and Ezra seemed… more settled, maybe. Confident, both in what they felt and what they presumed I did.
Baron caught me staring and handed me a beer, and I smiled with my eyes over the lip of the cup. He regarded me for a moment, more relaxed than I’d seen him yet, and shook his head a little before he settled himself on my other side and looked away.
Curious, I caught the sleeve of his shirt with my fingers. “What?”
He wrapped a hand around the back of my neck and pulled me closer to him. “You’re just really fucking pretty,” he said low, for my ears only. “This...” he swept a hand around him, at the truck and the field and the plastic cups. “It’s a good look on you, Pinky.” He released my neck and turned his attention back to the field.
I felt myself blush and searched for a subject change. “This is some set-up. It’s a shame Galen couldn’t come.” I hadn’t been to a party in close to a year, and it hadn’t been anything like this. Nobody here looked like they gave a shit if their drunk selves looked stupid, or if someone saw them puking in a bush, or even, apparently, if they hooked up with someone. They were here with one agenda, to have a good time, and that atmosphere was contagious.
Baron scowled at my statement, exchanging a look over my head with Ezra. “I don’t know what his problem is,” he said. “Don’t let it bother you.”
Galen had stated merely that he didn’t feel like coming. His eyes had rested on me as he said the words, though, and there was no doubt in my mind that if I hadn’t been here he would have been. Was I sorry? Not even a little.
The music changed, sliding from a bouncy tune to something croony and soulful. Ezra held a hand out and after a brief hesitation I placed mine in his. Briefly I thought of my inhaler, back in the SUV. I should probably have taken a puff before we got out. Shrugging it aside, I allowed him to tug me off the tailgate and pull me a few feet away. He curled an arm around my waist, and we started moving. He was a good dancer, his amber eyes magnetic as he stared down and mouthed words about being high on my love.
My eyes bounced from the hint of chest peeking from the vee of his button up to his jaw, covered in a coarse golden shadow, to his eyes, the bonfire flames reflecting in their depths. Levity played in the curve of his mouth as he watched me. “What’s so amusing?” I asked.
He shrugged a little, his fingers flexing on my lower back. “You’ve been real skittish here lately,” he explained. “It’s cute.”
I wrinkled my nose in distaste. “Cute.” The rest of what he’d said registered a beat later. “Skittish! What do you mean?”
He executed a half turn, and I saw Baron over his shoulder, still leaning against the truck and watching us.
“I walk in a room and you walk out. When we are together, your eyes are looking at everything but me.”
“Oh.” I forced myself to look at him steadily. “I hadn’t noticed.”
He laughed. “It’s okay. I obviously make you nervous, and I’ll take it as a compliment.”
The tips of my ears were burning but I layered on bravado with a soft guffaw. “Me, nervous. Why would you make me nervous? Hey, did you know that there are entire languages devoted to whistling? One is in Turkey. It’s called bird language and—”
Ezra puckered his lips and whistled, long and low, effectively halting my word vomit. “That’s… fascinating.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“So the other night…” He started. The shuffling sway we were doing slowly faded to a stop and we stood, our bodies separated by a breath.
“Yeah?”
He cleared his throat. Opened his mouth, then seemed to think better of it and closed it again. Our gazes clung, the dancers and music and laughter around us spinning into a vortex of sensation that contracted until there were just the two of us.
“Yeah,” he said, and it was affirmation and confirmation and conviction all at once.
And then he kissed me.
In the middle of a field, in the middle of a crowd, with stars shining cold and bright in the sky above, he bent his head and claimed my mouth, lips molding mobile and warm over mine. My tongue teased the borders of my own lips, welcoming him inside, and he followed willingly, his tongue twining against mine like a sinuous feline.
The music changed to “Closer” by the Chainsmokers and we began moving again, our mouths still fused together, my arms looped around his neck to hold him in place against me.
The feeling of another pair of hands settling on my hips sent a jolt of electricity down my spine. I pulled my mouth from Ezra and dropped my head back to find Baron behind me, cornflower eyes glittering down at me. Smiling, I leaned my head against his chest and drew one arm back around his neck, leaving the other stretched across Ezra’s shoulder. Baron drew closer to me, one hand sliding around to span my belly and the other rising from my hip up my torso in a lazy caress, until his finger rested just beneath the swell of my breast.
I felt a wicked sense of pleasure at being the filling in the Baron-Ezra sandwich. The three of us danced together, song after song, for what felt like hours. I finally called it quits when, despite the cool night air, a faint sheen of sweat coated my body and my breathing began coming fast and shallow. Shit. This was going to be fucking embarrassing, but I needed my inhaler. I was about to have an asthma attack, brought on, no doubt, by my allergens and cold air combined with the steady exertion. The controlled environment was the main reason I preferred to run indoors; it made the asthma so much easier to regulate.
Pulling free, I gave them a weak smile and started making my way back to Baron’s SUV, conscious of them following me. My purse was in the floorboard, shoved beneath a seat. Starting to wheeze, I bent to get it, fumbling with the clasp.
“Jude? Are you—”
I shook my head, unable to speak, and turned the purse upside down. Junk scattered everywhere—pens, napkins, loose change, antibacterial gel—but I didn’t see my inhaler. Where the hell was it?
