Page 74 of Messing With My Brother's Best Friends

“OK, so now that’s cooking—” Van started to move towards the fridge to pull out a beer.

“We need to start on the potatoes.” I threw a peeler his way before grabbing a knife to start prepping the pumpkin.

“Kendall should be home by now.”

Connor had been eyeing his phone the entire time, trying to play it cool and failing utterly. The time she usually came home passed, then another half hour, then another.

“She’ll be here when she’s ready,” I said as I sliced into the bright orange flesh of the pumpkin.

“I’m going to send her a text.” Van and I looked at each other behind Connor’s back, shaking our heads slightly, right before Connor caught us. “What? What? I need to make sure she’s safe.”

He needed to take a fucking breath and a big guzzle of beer, something to take the edge off, but he wouldn’t. Eye on the prize, that was Connor, and right now, Kendall was everything. I felt a moment of sympathy for the bloke, remembering the way it had felt to hold her in my arms all night. I kept grabbing her far too tightly, sure she was a dream that would slip away. But she wasn’t. I remembered the way she looked under me, unable to stop thinking about her struggling to take me, then finally surrendering. Letting me in, letting me go as deep as I could, right before—

“You gonna cut that pumpkin or fondle it?” Connor asked, shooting me an uncomfortable look.

“Remembering what it was like, huh?” Van elbowed me out the way. “Oh, Kendall…”

He mimicked caressing the pumpkin with all the reverence we’d shown last night, making porn-star worthy groans all the while until I shoved him right back.

“Are the potatoes in the pot of water?” I growled. “No? Then move your fucking arse. I want dinner ready and waiting for our girl when she walks in the door.”

“Our girl…”

Van’s smile faded, but something much deeper rose in his eyes. The kind of joy that no expression can properly communicate. It felt like we were coming in out of the cold after too many long, shitty years, and while it stung a little to finally thaw out, we couldn’t help but warm our hands on the fire that burned in response to Kendall.

“Our girl—so let's do this right.”

Chapter 39

Kendall

“Evening, lovely ladies.” Alan strode in through the door, dropping his briefcase on a chair then leaning down to give Barbie a kiss. She met his lips and gave him a big smooch. “Po pia!” He snatched a little spring roll from the pile before Barbie could claw it back. “My favourite.”

She let out a low growl, hunching over her food like an angry dog before stabbing a perfectly lacquered nail at the kitchen bench.

“Which is why I ordered some for you.”

“That’s why you’re the best.” He took in the messy spread of takeaway containers and the open bottle of wine. “Wine and Thai food. What’re we celebrating?”

“Well, today I—” I started to say.

“Kendall broke her drought and got laid by not one guy, but three!”

Barbie had been shrieking that for some time, the little bitch. We were going to have her irate neighbour knocking on our door shortly. That or the lady would be shooting me dark looks on the ride down in the elevator.

“So Bang-aggedon happened?” Alan did not seem at all surprised. “You know what that means, Barbs…”

“Don’t call me Barbs…” Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open. “No, no, no, I didn’t agree to that at all.”

“I told you it would happen, and you said if it did, you’d clean the bathroom for the next month,” he said with an impish grin. “No take backs. We shook on it, remember?”

“Yeah, but that was just after sex, and you had just dickmatised me. You know what happens after you give me multiple orgasms.”

“Um, ew.” I wrinkled my nose and then went back to slurping the noodles in my laksa.

“We’ll talk about you discovering the delights of good dick later,” she said before turning back to her boyfriend. “A promise made under duress isn’t worth the paper it's written on.”

“And a verbal agreement is enforceable by law.” He pressed a kiss to her crown before sitting down beside Barbie. “So, Kendall, do I need to cross examine these guys, find out what their intentions are? I don’t have a rifle, but I could probably get one of those plastic replica ones that looks pretty convincing when I lay it across my lap and quiz each one of them.”

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