“What’s that supposed to mean, why fucking bother?” Dami gripes. “She’s my friend. Of course I’m going to bother. If I’ve learned anything from this whole Mara Bancroft debacle, it’s that we all need to take better care of each other. People can’t just go disappearing off anymore. We can’t let that stand. Mercy could be dead, too. She could—”
“If she actually was your friend, she would have told you where she was going,” I say. I’m amazed I get the words out in a calm voice. I’m circling Chase’s clit, applying a decent amount of pressure, not moving enough for my actions to be obvious to the blonde viper sitting three feet away…but they’re definitely obvious to Chase. Chase, who clenches her jaw, digging her fingers into my chest again, giving me a warning of her own. One I promptly ignore.
“You’re such a bastard, you know that? Mercy and I were close. I don’t give a shit what you say.”
“Bullshit.” I huff out a sharp breath when Chase tightens around me, her pussy gripping at my dick. I’d have expected to lose my erection, but nope. It’s still raging hard and only getting harder as I watch Chase’s eyes glaze over. She looks so fucking beautiful, so dazed and turned on, her breath coming in quicker and quicker, that it’s no wonder I haven’t gone soft.
“If Mercy and I weren’t friends, then how do you explain this?” Damiana leans over me, shoving her cleavage in my face as she shows me the gaudy gold necklace hanging around her neck. It’s one half of a heart. On it, the letters ST END have been engraved. The other half of the heart, which Damiana clearly believes is hanging around Wren’s sister’s neck, must have the BE FRI part etched into it.
I quicken the pace, rubbing Chase’s clit a little faster. She can do nothing but sit still and take it. Not if she wants our situation to remain a secret. She spasms arounds me again, though, her pussy clenching around me, massaging me from the inside, and my eyes nearly roll back into my head. She’s so fucking tight.
“Christ, how old are you? You’re such a child, Dami,” I mutter.
If Chase keeps doing that…
I must have a look on my face. My nostrils must have flared, or my pupils must have blown. Whatever. I’ve done something to clue Chase into how good her clenching around me feels, because she does it again, tighter this time, for longer, with a knowing look on her face. A two-can-play-this-game look that spells disaster for me. I have to fight back the urge to spin her around and throw her into the grass so I can fuck the living shit out of her as punishment for her insolence.
“God.” Dami grimaces, looking from me to Chase and back again, as if she’s suddenly realized who she’s sitting with. “Since when have you two been a thing, anyway?”
“We’re not a thing,” Chase says breathlessly. “We’re just…hanging out.”
“Oh, totally. I can see that. I always sit cowgirl the guys I hang out with, too.” Sarcasm drips from her every word.
I speed up even more, switching between the small circles and rubbing up and down over Chase’s clit. She’s so fucking wet now, I can feel her slick heat all over my lower belly. She jerks, gasps—and tries to cover both with a sneeze that even Damiana spots as fake a mile off.
Dami narrows her eyes at Chase. “You are so weird, Presley.”
I develop a shit-eating grin. “She has allergies.”
Chase does not look impressed. She looks vengeful, in fact. Leaning her weight back, she angles her hips forward, giving me better access to her. From Dami’s perspective, it probably looks like she’s just shifting her weight, getting comfortable, but I know the truth of it. She’s telling me to have at it and do my worst… because she’s about to do the same. I have to bite the inside of my cheek when she tenses the first time. The second time she does it, I bite so hard I taste blood.
Fuck.
Maybe I shouldn’t have laughed.
“You’re both fucking weird. I’ve never seen you even so much as look twice at a Wolf Hall girl, and now you’re out here, canoodling with this one?”
I glance over at Dami sharply, venom rising up the back of my throat. I’m gonna remember that nasty, snide little remark. “Give me eight separate examples of your friendship with Mercy Jacobi and I’ll tell you exactly where she is,” I say.
“Yeah, right. Like you know where she is.”
“I live with her brother. She calls him all the time. Of course I fucking know where she is.”
Dami doesn’t question the weirdness of my request. She isn’t exactly Wolf Hall’s deepest thinker. I’m a little astonished when she actually starts to rattle off examples of her friendship with Mercy, though. “Okay. Well, first things first, there was the time Mercy and I were flirting with the same guy at an Edmondson party, and we decided the only fair thing to do would be for the both of us to take him home. I—”
Fucking no chance whatsoever that I want to hear that story. I tune Damiana out, focusing all of my attention on Chase. She’s stunning, washed in the afternoon sunlight. Her pale skin is cast with a warm glow. Her cheeks are the color of rose petals, for god’s sake. She looks like a painting of some kind. One of those elegant, slightly diffused romantic pieces from the turn of the last century. Out of nowhere, I realize that she looks like the woman from Gustaz Klimt’s ‘The Kiss,’ dripping in gold.
She’s fucking beautiful.
And she’s about to come all over my cock. I can tell. I can feel how close she is. She has her facial expression under tight control now, but I can see how close she is in her eyes, too, and that alone is enough to drag me closer toward my own orgasm.
She can’t help herself. She jerks against me as it starts, her hips rocking once, twice, before she manages to stop herself. Her eyes snap closed. Her head falls to one side and down, away from Damiana. Her jaw clenches. Her hands fist the front of my t-shirt, and I feel the rolling wave of her orgasm as her pussy tightens around my dick like a fist.
Holy…fucking…SHIT.
I start to spill inside her like some fucking fourteen-year-old who can’t control his shit.
I can’t control my shit, though.
I fucking can’t.
My ears roar. My blood pounds through my veins. It takes a monumental effort of will, but I keep my eyes open. I watch her, unable to look away, unable to save myself from the weird, dramatic sensation of falling as I witness her silently coming apart on top of me.
She’s breathtaking.
“And you can’t tell me you’re not friends with a girl after you’ve sucked a dick that was inside her pussy three seconds earlier. That’s the very definition of friendship.” The sound of Damiana’s grating voice hits my ears again, and my annoyance peaks.
“Washington State,” I growl.
Chase’s eyes gently flutter open.
“What?” Dami says.
“Washington fucking State. Some small town. Raleigh or some shit. That’s where Mercy is. Now for the love of God, please fuck off and leave us alone.”
Slowly, Chase turns back to look at me, skin flushed, eyes bright, a look of small wonder on her face. She knows I just came inside of her. She felt me, just like I felt her.
“Never heard of it,” Dami says. She rustles next to me, gathering up her shit, but I don’t even look at her as she gets to her feet. Neither does Chase. We’re so fixed on each other that neither of us are seeing much of anything else at all.