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  Jasper slung his arm over Blake’s shoulders, talking close to her ear and making her giggle. Riley swallowed past the new lump in his throat. Jasper’s hands on her did something to him, no doubt. Sometimes it was mild jealousy, sometimes it was rabid anger.

  Riley stayed in his spot, hidden in the darkness, half inside the house, half out. He was playing a dangerous game with himself, curious to see how he’d react to his two best friends.

  He watched as Jasper took her hand, spinning her around the living room. He pulled her close, his palm pressed to her lower back sliding closer to her ass. Riley could feel his loose muscles slowly start to tense, the ease from his run dissipating.

  Jasper dipped Blake dramatically, gripping her thigh and hiking it up to his hip. Riley’s jaw clenched, his nails digging into his palms. He willed himself to stay put, to stay still. He needed to see how far they’d take their flirt. He needed to see how far he could be pushed without snapping. Blake laughed as Jasper righted her, those blonde waves bouncing around them.

  Riley could smell her sweet shampoo, making it even harder to stay rooted to his spot. Jasper’s fingers tightened on her hips, urging her to sway to the beat, both of them smiling like they didn’t have a care in the world. Like Riley wasn’t mere feet away at war with himself. Jasper’s lips brushed her shoulder, his eyes closed.

  And there was Riley’s line. He could tolerate the touching, the flirting, the banter, and giggles. What he couldn’t seem to stand was Jasper’s mouth on her flesh. Riley stepped into the light, his chest heaving, his heart pounding. He wanted to cross the room and rip Blake from Jasper’s hands. He wanted to drag her upstairs and lock her away, safe from his jealousy and his packmate’s dick.

  “There you are.” Blake skipped away from Jasper, launching herself into his arms. She placated his bad mood without even knowing about it. Feeling her against him made the tension slowly start to seep out of his body. “I was beginning to wonder if you got lost out there, alone and shivering in the mountains, contemplating eating your own arm to stay alive.”

  Riley couldn’t help but chuckle at her comment. So completely her. “Nah, those mountains are my playground, doll.” He let her hop to her feet, looking over her head to Jasper. He spoke to Blake, but his glaze never wavered from his packmate. “Come on, I’ll tuck you into bed.”

  Jasper rolled his eyes but held up his hands, surrendering to Riley’s unspoken threat.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Blake

  Riley followed her up the modern floating steel staircase, across the landing and down the long hallway with doors on both sides. Blake had gotten lost more than once today, trying to find her way around Jace and Axie’s mountainside mansion. The house was gorgeous and the views were breathtaking. She’d grown up in Colorado, but there was something so much more majestic and mysterious about the woods surrounding the compound where she was being held. She wasn’t a prisoner, and she didn’t feel like one. It was odd, though, the threat to her safety, the need to stay locked away inside from the bad men who wanted to hurt Riley and his family.

  Riley joked that Blake was dramatic, but her life had never reached this level of unreal. Criminals, secure compounds, safe houses, threesomes. Ugh. That threesome. She didn’t regret it, because she rarely regretted anything she did. What was the point? There were no time machines, no way to go back and undo it.

  Would she if she could? She wasn’t entirely sure. She knew her night between Riley and Jasper had altered their friendship. She wasn’t stupid. She could see the underlying tension whenever the two males were in the same room. The way they made her feel though was unlike anything else she’d experienced. Blake was pretty sure she was ruined for all other men, for the rest of time.

  “What are you thinking about? I don’t think you’ve ever been this quiet for this long since we met.” Riley reached past her, throwing open her bedroom door and trailing inside after her.

  She spun around, collapsing on the decadent queen-size bed. “Our threesome.” There was no point in lying.

  Riley groaned, perching on the edge of the mattress, his head hanging. “I thought that night didn’t leave the cabin?”

  “I thought so too.” She crawled toward him, resting her chin on his shoulder. “So why are you irritated every time Jasper comes near me? I already told you I don’t want a repeat, and I don’t want him. Don’t you believe me?” She was almost insulted to think he didn’t. Blake wasn’t into Jasper. Sure, he was freaking drop-dead gorgeous, like every other male in this damn makeshift family. She wasn’t lusting after him, though.

  “I do.” Riley turned, his plump lips in a pout. “I know Jasper, and I know what’s going through his mind every time he looks at you, every time he touches you.”

  “How is that any different from any guy, at any bar?” Blake wasn’t conceited. She also wasn’t one to deny her appeal to the opposite sex. Riley had watched her get hit on plenty of times, and he’d never seemed to care before.

  Riley sighed, his gaze searching hers. “Because he knows what it feels like to have you. He knows how you taste, the way you sound when you come apart.”

  His words were turning her on, which she was sure wasn’t his intention. She couldn’t seem to help it though, his low tone flooding her brain with images of how it’d felt to be shared by them. The heat from the fire, the feel of their skin against hers. She took a shaky inhale, glad her sweater was covering the chills erupting on her arms.

  “It’s hard to forget, right?” He licked his lips, making her already-on-the-edge hormones stir to life.

  “Yes.” She wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to forget their night together, nor did she want to. That was a memory that would keep her warm for the rest of her life. “That doesn’t mean I want to do it again, Riley. I promised you, and so did Jasper. The only person who keeps bringing it up is you.” Blake wasn’t trying to be cruel, and she wasn’t trying to upset him. She simply needed him to see she and Jasper were searching for their own dynamic, no ulterior motives on her end.

  His eyes fell to his lap. “I’ll get over it.” He sighed, putting on a smile she was sure wasn’t real. “We were supposed to have some space from each other, and that got shot to shit. It’s an adjustment, but I’ll get there.”

  “So you’ll stop looking at your friend like you want his head to implode and his dick to fall off?” She grinned when she got an honest chuckle out of him. “He’s a flirty guy, but I’m pretty sure it’s all innocent, sourpuss.”

  “Jasper is a lot of things, but innocent isn’t one of them.” Riley let her pull him down to lie next to her, her head on his shoulder. “He’d jump at the chance for a repeat.”

  “Well, a promise is a promise, and I don’t break those.” Blake might be a dramatic ball of energy and flirty glances, but she was a good friend. She kept her vows, and she refused to hurt the people she cared about. No sex was worth losing Riley over. She wouldn’t even recognize her life without him at this point.

  She felt him turn his head, so she moved back to meet his gaze. “If you hadn’t promised me, if I told you I was okay with it, would you want him?”

  “Not without you.” The words flew from her lips without thought. That’s how true they were. They didn’t even need her permission to exist. She reached up, letting her fingers trail across his lightly freckled cheek. “I wanted the two of you, the experience, not him.”

  Riley flattened her hand against his skin, his eyes closing and his chest rising with a deep inhale.

  Blake rested on her side, her body touching his. “Can I ask you something?” When he nodded in response, she felt the bristle of his beard beneath her palm, which was still on his face. “Why do you share? Are you into him?”

  Riley shook his head. “It’s like we told you. A few weeks into our freshman year, we went to a public school party. They hated us, but they tolerated us all the same. There was a girl there, a senior. She was beautiful, cool, aloof. Every guy at that party was drawn to
her, but she wanted us. We were horny kids, we didn’t know the first thing about sex, but we talked a big game. She said it was the both of us or nothing, so we went with it.”

  “You were babies.” Blake frowned, fighting the urge to go find that chick and beat her ass.

  “We were.” Riley scoffed out a little laugh. “I can see the wrongness of it all now, the alcohol she poured down our throats, the coaxing she did all night. But at the time, we were only thinking with our fourteen-year-old dicks.”

  “That’s how it started. Why do you still do it?” Blake scrunched nose. “I mean, I get it, two dicks is hot as fuck.” She giggled when Riley tickled her in punishment. “But do you ever, you know, go at it alone?”

  Riley turned on his side, mirroring her position, palming her thigh when she threw her leg over his. Touching him was so easy, so natural. It had been from the moment she’d met him. She enjoyed being wrapped in his scent, his clothes, his arms. He felt like coming home, and she would never give him up.

  “I don’t know. I guess we sort of developed a reputation after that night. We liked it, it was fun, it was taboo and an adventure. It became our thing. Neither of us are into dudes. We aren’t into each other like that. We’ve been with girls without each other, not often though.”

  Riley had told her from the get-go that his friends were his family, and Jasper was his brother. Those two took it to a whole new level. “Do you want to be? Or are you planning on sharing for the rest of forever?”

  Riley’s eyes seemed to widen at her question. “The rest of forever…no. We can’t share forever.”

  “Does it make you sad? The thought of letting that part of your relationship go?” She tucked her hands under the hem of his shirt, using the seemingly constant heat of his skin to warm her cold fingers.

  He smiled, pulling her closer and tucking her under his chin. “It’ll be different, but no, it doesn’t make me sad. All childish games come to an end, right?”

  Blake didn’t answer him, and she knew he didn’t expect her to. She breathed in deep, filling her lungs with his scent. She felt warm, safe, protected. “Stay.”

  He hugged her tighter in response and she felt her eyes grow heavy. Riley had that effect on her. Calming her boundless energy.

  Relaxing her without even trying.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Blake

  When Blake woke up, Riley was climbing out of her bed. At some point in the night, he’d shed his shirt, his bare back a wonderous sight paired with his gray joggers. She would never set out to ruin their connection with something as trivial as sex, but she could damn sure appreciate the show.

  She propped herself up on her hand. “Sneaking out? How fuckboy of you.”

  “I knew you’d wake up and announce how famished you were. I figured I’d go start on some breakfast.” He pulled on his discarded sweatshirt, adjusting it to fall just right. “Was I wrong?”

  Blake couldn’t help but smile at how well he knew her. “Of course not. I’m so hungry I’m about to launch myself out that window and go take down a mountain lion a la Edward and Bella style.”

  “There it is, such a dramatic little doll.” Riley winked at her on his way out the door.

  Her shaky inhale as a reaction to her best friend was happening more and more since she’d arrived at the compound for safekeeping. Blake wasn’t a girl who swooned, but Riley was certainly making her feel slightly light-headed these days. Still. Her convictions and promises to him and herself remained steadfast. Once they were back on campus, things would go back to normal. She was sure of it. Her fan-girling was merely a by-product of their circumstances.

  And maybe the fact that he’d slipped so expertly inside her last week.

  Blake fell back into the pillows, allowing herself a few stolen moments to remember her time sandwiched between the two Greek gods. Jasper was all sexy chuckles and ego, with the skills to back it up. Riley? He’d been like a barely controlled predator. She’d felt conquered by his touch. Slayed. He was rougher than she thought he’d be. He was the man women write romance novels about. Kind in the streets and kinky in the sheets.

  The knock at her door interrupted her arousing thoughts. Axie’s head poked into her room. “Do you want to build a snowman?”

  Blake laughed. “What?”

  “Doesn’t have to be a snowman.” Axie stepped into the room, twirling around as she finished singing the Disney song. “We’re stuck on the compound. I thought it would be fun to stick a six-pack in the snow and build an army of anatomically correct snowmen. You game?”

  “Hell yes, I’m game. That sounds like the most fun.” Blake climbed out of bed, threw on some clothes, went to the bathroom, doing it all quick before pulling her blonde curls into a messy ponytail on top of her head. “I promised Jasper I’d go on a hike with him. Can we do it after?”

  He asked her last night while they’d been dancing, after he’d gotten back from his run. She knew Riley probably wouldn’t be happy about it, but that was all the more reason to go. She needed to make sure Jasper understood he was never getting back into her panties.

  “Sure.” Axie sank down onto the mattress, one eyebrow raised in question. “Only you and Jasper?”

  “Only me and Jasper.” Blake narrowed her gaze, knowing the real reason for Axie’s cocked brow. “Riley is my best friend, and Jasper is his family. In a couple short weeks, the three of us will be back at UNC. I want to find my own footing with Jasper, not hop on his dick.”

  “Again.” Axie’s beautiful face crept into an almost wicked smirk.

  “Ugh, they told you about the cabin.”

  “Jace did.” Axie tossed the throw pillows into place. “He may walk and talk like a criminal mastermind, but he gossips like a little old lady at bridge club.” She sighed, her hands going to her trim, jean-covered hips. “Can I ask you something?”

  “You want to know what it was like? Having the two of them?” Blake wagged her eyebrows suggestively. She really liked Axie. They were two peas in a pod and instant friends.

  “God yes. I want to ask you so freaking bad.” Axie glanced down at her ring finger, her lips pouting as she wiggled the massive diamond, throwing sparkles onto the ceiling. “But my fiancé’s head would actually explode if he ever found out. So I won’t.” She glanced up, meeting Blake’s gaze. “Do you have a thing for one of them? Both of them? Or is it strictly platonic all the way?”

  Blake understood the question, and the concern. Axie was looking out for the people she cared for, loved. Blake was doing the same thing. She sat back down on the bed, remembering their time in the truck. The ease in their laughter, the fullness she felt in her heart. The rightness of it all.

  “When Jasper brought up that he and Riley share, I knew what he was after instantly.” Blake rolled her eyes at how transparent he had been. “No one brings up something like that unless they’re feeling you out. It’s like guys who ridiculously talk about anal on the first date, you know?”

  “Totally.” Axie nodded, a shared look of annoyance between them.

  “I was intrigued. I mean, the two of them? Who wouldn’t be?” Blake believed people should try everything once. Life was meant to be lived. “But I also knew if Riley wasn’t down, I was out. I didn’t want Jasper without Riley, not for one second.”

  “So you’re into Riley?”

  “He’s my best friend. I’ve never really thought too hard about why we didn’t morph into anything more.” It was almost as if they both friend-zoned each other the night they met. She’d been having too much fun to care. “Now, I’m too scared to lose him, to lose what we have. It means too much to me. I’m not a great relationship girl, never have been. I’d only screw us in the end.”

  Axie nodded. “I get that, believe me.”

  “Says the engaged chick sporting a diamond, a mansion, and a drop-dead gorgeous fiancé.”

  “I wasn’t always this girl.” Axie’s gaze scanned the perfectly decorated guest room. “I was hell-bent o
n escaping Haxton, Colorado. I wanted to be free of this town and everything that tied me to it. I was a good time, a fun memory. Definitely not wifey material.”

  “What happened?” Blake was genuinely curious about Axie, about Riley’s whole family. She wanted to know them. She wanted to know their history and their secrets. She wanted to belong with and to these people, the way Riley did. She was almost jealous of all the moments that existed here before she met them.

  “I know it sounds so cliché, but Jace happened.” Axie sent her a small smile. “The minute he touched me, I was his. He became my escape, my freedom, my everything. His life is here, his family is here. So here is the only place in the whole damn world I want to be.”

  Blake playfully rolled her eyes. “You’re right, that is so cliché.” She reached out and squeezed Axie’s hand. “But it’s also incredibly sweet and inspiring.”

  “Sweet and inspiring?” Jasper came into the room, launching himself on the bed between the two girls. “Are you talking about my dick?”

  Axie popped him on the back of his head while Blake hit him in the stomach with a throw pillow. “No one is talking about your dick. Get out of here.”

  Jasper chuckled. “No can do. Blake and I have plans.” He turned to Blake. “You still down for that morning hike?”

  She nodded. “Yep. Just need some cold-weather gear. Axie, do you have anything I can borrow?”

  “Downstairs, mudroom closet. Take what you need.” Axie pointed to the door. “I’ll scour the house for phallic objects while you’re gone and then we’ll start on those snowmen.”

  Blake high-fived her on the way out of the room.

  Jasper was hilarious. Axie was a badass. Jace was a mastermind, and Riley was the best thing that she ever demanded be hers.