Fuel the Fire (34 page)

“TAKE IT OFF!”

The howls of approval sit far into the back of my head. My skin heats like we’re having sex on the bar. Are we? This
feels
like he’s fucking me, right here, right now. Everyone is watching.

He never falters. Never even balks. He acts as though it’s just us here, as though this is the easiest adventure he’s ever taken.

“Connor…” I say, not so much in warning just in place of expletives and exclamation marks that blare inside my brain. He teasingly pulls down the hem of his pants, inch-by-inch, revealing the band of his navy boxer-briefs.

I quickly steal a glance at my sisters, and they all have their fingers pressed to their wide smiles. Lily’s eyes look ready to pop out of her head.

I internally experience all of that and a pulsating arousal that screams
fuck me, fuck me, fuck me!
 

Connor switches hands on my head, holding me with his left one—for Connor, his left hand is his more dominant hand.

 Loren comes behind Connor, and he pulls down his pants and boxer-briefs enough to show off his bare ass. Connor is grinning at
me.
I must wear every emotion that pounds at my mind.

Lo pinches his ass. “Happy St. Patty’s Day, motherfuckers!” Everyone cheers and raises their pints and green cocktails. He lifts Connor’s boxer-briefs back, but I’m aware that Connor has my head entirely stationary, in line with his cock.

He thrusts against my cheek three times, my entire body combusting, and a strangled moan latches in my throat, the noise smothered by the euphoria around us.

I break through the tie restraint, and I grasp his thigh with one hand and a little higher with the other. His ass flexes beneath my palm.

I’ve frozen.

He lowers, kneeling on either side of me again, and while my head spins in a million different directions, his lips meet mine, the force—the power returns. Though it’s never left. It just fills me orally, his tongue parting my lips, his arms pulling my chest into his body.

I can’t keep up. I fall into wherever he directs me. Into the headiness that he supplies me. I just hold onto his biceps, and he slides off the bar, bringing me with him, setting me on my feet.

He’s still kissing me, still wrapped up against me.
Yes
, I think. He manhandles me the way I love to be manhandled, and I accept him, every action, every flick of the tongue. My lips sting beneath his, my skin flushed, the alcohol not even coming close to the effect that Connor has on me.

“DO IT AGAIN, CONNOR COBALT!” the nearby shout breaks into my actions, and I squint at the harsh light of camera flashes, coming in waves once again. My husband is still shirtless, his belt unbuckled and pants unbuttoned, but his slacks rest in the proper place, covering his ass from view.

Connor holds my face caringly, his grin lifting higher and higher. “You liked that.”

I smack his chest, still breathing heavy, and he’s hardly even winded. He seizes my hand and kisses my knuckles. I realize I didn’t even need to be on-the-floor wasted to accomplish a bigger public display than most people will ever commit to in their lifetimes.

He made me feel safe.

Comfortable. He’s done this before, switching an event onto himself so it eases me into it. His confidence has a way of seeping straight through me, and I love this person in front of me…a man that I
always
want to be with.

I splay my palms flat on his bare chest, and he hugs his arms around me, even if I don’t really reciprocate it with my arms around him. I just keep my hands right here.

My tipsy-self almost wants to tell him
, you’re so hot. I want to bang you. You’re bangable, you know? Your hair is perfect. Your lips even more so.
I keep opening my mouth, but even the thought of uttering an overly sweet compliment tastes strange and wrong.

So I land with this, “I hate you.”

He grins more. “So much so that if I stayed up there for three minutes longer, you would’ve climaxed.”

I scoff. “No…” I trail off, remembering the pulse of my body that was climbing towards a peak.
You would’ve orgasmed on a bar, Rose. In front of everyone.

I believe it, but I just raise a hand to his face to shut him down.

He clasps my wrist, and he lowers his lips to my ear. “I’ll take care of you tonight.”

Translation:
Keep drinking if you want.

I do want.

And then I watch his eyes slip off me, and I follow them to Ryke. Everyone laughs around him. Even Daisy looks like she feels better with a brighter, more genuine smile. However, he wears a dark questioning glare, pinned on us.

It says:
why the fuck are they doing this? Did they lose a bet? It doesn’t make fucking sense…

What we can’t reply:
we’re doing this to draw attention off our kids and onto us.

This might be the night where Ryke refuses vague excuses and fights for a real answer.

[ 32 ]

CONNOR COBALT

Daisy and Rose stumble down the hotel hallway together, drunkenly laughing and clutching onto each other for support. They both took tequila shots until the pub closed, and they’ve been singing “My Heart Will Go On” by Céline Dion, all incredibly out of tune.

I’d enjoy the whole scenario more if Ryke wasn’t beside me, silently overthinking my striptease back in the pub. I can practically feel his mind at work as we walk behind the girls, and he steals reticent, cautious glances my way, hoping I’ll meet his eyes and regurgitate every secret I have.

I’m not that easy to crack.

The girls trip over each other near our hotel door, and they collapse in a heap,
giggling.
I rub my lips, trying not to laugh since Rose never makes this noise. It’s a rarity that I’ll remember—it’s one that I do adore.

I stop in front of them, staring down as they look up. “Girls,” I say, passing Ryke the hotel keycard.

Daisy with glazed eyes says, “Rose wants a cupcake. Don’t you, Rose?” She pets Rose’s cheek.

Rose wears a pleased smile. “Yes…cupcakes, please.” She holds out her hand, as though waiting for me to kiss her wedding ring or deliver her a treat.

“How about bed, darling?”

She makes a face at me like I offered her dirt in a bag. “That’s a horrible present, Richard.”

I clasp her forearm and help her up, but she staggers against me. It’s easier for me to carry my wife, so I cradle her in my arms and kick open the door before it closes, then Ryke helps Daisy the same way.

“We’ve decided on a sleepover,” Daisy declares behind me, her arms wrapped around Ryke’s neck as he carries her into the room with one king-sized bed.

I set Rose on the hotel bed and she sprawls out and hugs a pillow. “No boys allowed,” Rose adds a requirement, which further leaves me alone with Ryke. We have
four
hotel rooms, and I hoped the girls would want to talk with each other for another hour and then let us split them apart.

Clearly that’s not happening in my favor.

Ryke obliges and actually tosses Daisy on the bed beside her sister. She laughs, and Rose spreads out her arms as though she’s suddenly at sea, sinking on the Titanic. Her hairband is lost in the depths of the white comforter.

I lean over my wife and comb her hair out of her face, and her eyes narrow at me, even glazed they still contain heat. Blood pools in my cock. I can always tell when she’ll start her period because my body grows more primal, attracted to every physical move she makes.

She emits pheromones around this time, and the chemicals usually send me over until I fuck her—but tonight is different.

She looks closely at my lips. “Why do I love you?”

I rile her. “If you really want me to list all the reasons why, I’ll be here all night.”

She tries to cover my mouth with her hand, and she misses completely, swatting air beside my head. I laugh.

I notice Ryke sitting on the edge of the bed with Daisy lounging drunkenly across his lap. “Big bad wolf…” She reaches up to touch his hair but her arm sags limply next to her. “Eat me.”

It’s a provocative, intoxicated statement that I do my best to block out.

Ryke lowers his head to her, kissing Daisy once…twice and then he says, “Every fucking day, sweetheart.”

“Where’s Lily?” Rose asks me.

“Her hotel room with Lo.” They’re fucking, something I’d prefer to be doing with Rose, instead of sharing Ryke’s company.

“Where’s Poppy?”

“Her hotel room with Sam.”

“Where is Willow…and where’s her boyfriend?” Rose swats the air for answers. I clasp her hand.

“Lo’s sister didn’t want to go out,” I remind Rose. Willow turned eighteen last week, but Lo said that she preferred to spend the night at her apartment and read a comic book. “And she doesn’t have a boyfriend.” I know Rose must be referring to Garrison.

Rose snorts and tries to wave me off, but I have possession of her hand. “I’ve seen them flirt,” she says matter-of-factly, as though that’s evidence enough.

“Your logic isn’t sound, darling.” I tug her dress down when it rides up her thigh. I’d let her be, but Ryke is on this bed too. “We flirted for years, and you never called me your boyfriend.”

Her mouth falls and eyes flame. “What we did wasn’t
flirting
.”

I arch a brow. “When I was seventeen you said you wanted to perform an autopsy on me, to
crack
open my ribcage and squeeze my heart until it burst between your fingers.” What is that—if not flirting?

She lifts her head off a pillow to near me, propping her elbows on the mattress. “That was me hating you, Richard. I dreamed of your
death
.”

“You dreamed of clutching my heart,” I rebut.

“Of
killing
you,” she emphasizes.

I lean closer to her, our eyes locking. “Vous m’aimiez.”
You loved me.

She breathes shallowly and collapses back against the mattress, conceding early, mostly due to the alcohol. Her heavy-lidded eyes fight to stay open longer, just to glare at me.

When I turn to look at Ryke, he’s staring between Rose and me with more suspicion than I’d like to meet. “You know,” he says, “for so many years, I’ve never fucking understood why you both occasionally use
vous
instead of
tu
.”

My muscles still stay flexed, even if this is a pointless topic for me.

Rose answers before I do. “It’s formal.” We’re both not natives of France. Since we usually only converse with each other, we do what we want.

“You were fucking dating and now you’re married,” Ryke retorts. “Your relationship is informal.”

“We weren’t always dating and we weren’t always married,” I explain now, referring subtly to our days in prep school where we were competitors. “We began as formal and so now we switch between the two whenever we like. We’re well aware of the rules. They just don’t apply to us.”

Rose is grinning from ear-to-ear.

She says she hates when I’m conceited, but I’m more than certain she takes pleasure in the real me, even if I’m an arrogant prick.

Ryke shakes his head like he wishes he didn’t ask, and then Daisy rolls off of him, closer to Rose, and the girls begin whispering together.

I stand off the bed the same time as Ryke, and we exchange a look of recognition.

We have to spend actual alone time together, beyond just passing each other in the morning and conversing sporadically for ten minutes. No Daisy. No Loren. Nothing that bridges us together.

Wonderful.

[ 33 ]

CONNOR COBALT

I finish taking a shower after Ryke. We spoke a few words earlier that basically confirmed we’d be spending the night in this hotel room together. We don’t hate each other enough to hassle the front desk at 4 a.m. for an extra room on St. Patrick’s Day. And I’m not foolish to believe Ryke would just drop his suspicions if we separated.

He’ll bring them up sometime, so he might as well let it out tonight.

After I brush my teeth and put on pajama pants, a light still floods beneath the door. I assume he stayed up to question me, and I never really thought he’d go to sleep without broaching the topic.

I quietly exit, passing a mirror-covered closet and entering the main portion of the modern hotel room: a desk, a chair and one king-sized bed, nothing more. Before Ryke sees me, I catch him on his side of the bed with his knees bent, something hidden behind them.

He’s in gray cotton track pants, bare-chested with a dark tattoo along his shoulder, rib, and hip. When one of his knees falls, I spot his scar from the transplant surgery. It begins right below his sternum in the exact center of his chest, and it stops before his belly button, veering beneath his ribs, almost like the shape of the letter L.

It now accompanies the small scar on his eyebrow from the Paris riot.

I’ve never viewed people as physical canvases for their life, revealing time and memories outwardly like Ryke, whether by choice or by circumstance. I may be a blank slate, but not all people are.

I move closer, and he drops his other knee, his head rising. That’s when I notice the book in his hand.
He’s reading
. Strangely, I’ve never seen Ryke read before.

He stuffs the book behind his pillow. “I have to ask you something,” he tries to distract me.

My curiosity has escalated, and I’m not about to let it go. I head over to his side of the bed, and he immediately stands and blocks my passage to his pillow, his jaw hardening and features darkening.

I’ve never been intimidated by him.

“I have to seriously fucking talk to you.”

I know.
“Why are you so ashamed of what you’re reading?” I question, knowing it’s not about shame.

“Fuck off.” He scowls. “I’m not ashamed of anything, so don’t twist this your way.”

I am twisting it my way, but I’m not done yet. “If you’re not ashamed, then you shouldn’t have any problem showing me the book.”