Page 31 of Set Me On Fire

Was that how I looked? Like I was a starving wolf and she was the last scrap of meat? Did I look that desperate for just one glance, just one bit of attention from Millie, even as she resolutely avoided all our eyes. I felt a strange kind of camaraderie with my teammates, even as something selfish wanted to shove every single one of them out of the way.

“Are you done?” Millie replied belatedly, looking up with a familiar gleam in her eye. Girls at school knew better to mess with Millie because she never backed down.

“Not even a little bit.”

Charlie was always the one with the jokes, full of bullshit, but I didn’t see that now. He moved the coin back to ‘hot seat’ and left it there.

“Something you want to confess?” Her smile was brittle and I wanted to tell her she didn’t need to play anymore. We could all walk away from here, alone or…?

“Something I want to ask,” he replied, not looking away for a second.

“That’s not?—”

“How’d it feel, kissing two guys in this room?”

“Charlie…” Knox and I looked at each other when we growled the same thing at the same time, but Millie held up a hand to silence us.

“You want to know?” Charlie nodded in the face of her challenge. “It was amazing. It was hot and sexy, and when I kissed Knox, kissed Noah, all I could think of was them.”

“But when you stopped…?”

I wanted to point out that Charlie had already asked his question, but Millie was too quick for me.

“When I stopped?” She lifted her glass and drained it before daring to stare at each one of us. “I know I should feel embarrassed, ashamed, that this is slutty kind of behaviour. I should worry about what you think…” Millie’s brows creased for just a second, and I felt like I could see her thought processes happening in real time. “But I don’t.”

Charlie leaned forward, tapping the coin again and that had Knox and I leaning forward. We both knew what his bullshit could entail and felt a need to protect Millie from it.

If she would just accept that help.

“So what do you want?” He didn’t pay any attention to either or us, only Millie. “What do you really want? If no one could get hurt and there were no consequences?”

That wasn’t possible. Even with all the beers I’d had, I knew that, but Knox and I weren’t playing anymore. We’d both made our moves, made clear what we wanted, but these two kept on playing without us. Millie grabbed the coin and flipped it, and I wished, willed it to land on my phone call dare, sure that the truth would cut through the suddenly close atmosphere of the room.

But it didn’t.

Fuck Dave and his sleazy bullshit. I should’ve stepped in and done something earlier, because that damn coin, it landed on ‘kiss the person next to you’ again. I could barely look her way, not sure if she’d choose me or Knox, but I needed to know. My heart beat a rapid tattoo in my chest as she rose to her feet, and for just a second, hope bloomed as she walked my way.

And past me to Charlie.

Fuck…

I watched her straddle his hips, her hands running through his hair, just as she had done to mine, and I could almost feel it the moment her lips crashed down on his. Mine moved in sympathy, remembering the way it felt. Had I gripped theback of her neck like that, let out a small sound of pleasure, of gratification, as she shifted against me? I forced myself to look away. Watching them made my cock throb like an aching tooth, but my heart ached as well. My eyes found Knox, and if I wondered how he was taking this, it was written clearly in his expression. He watched the two of them with a strange kind of hunger, as if he wanted to be the one doing the kissing.

When he realised he could be.

He jerked himself to his feet and I did as well, ready to step between him and them if that’s what it took. Millie didn’t belong to any one of us. She could kiss who she pleased. I wanted it to be me, but I’d fight the team leader if she decided she wanted Charlie. Her little moans of pleasure were like fingers around my cock, tugging it too slowly to get me off, but stoking the desire higher, even as I went to intercept Knox. I was too slow, the beer making my reflexes sluggish, but I needn’t have worried.

He didn’t storm over to hit Charlie or drag Millie away. Instead, as I drew closer, I watched his hand slide up her back. The way she arched up into that caress, her shirt inching higher, it drew me forward. I couldn’t look away, not when Knox shot me a look laden with meaning I couldn’t understand, right as his hand collared her throat.

“Is that nice, Millie?” She pulled away from Charlie, looking up blindly at Knox’s purr, and he tipped her head backwards. “Is he making you feel good?”

“I’ll make her feel a whole lot better if you keep her just like that,” Charlie mumbled, pressing kisses to her neck, her collarbone.

“Is that what you want?” Knox asked, watching her lick her lips and then blink, seeing him clearly now. “You felt so damn right the night I carried you away from the fire. I thought it was just the adrenaline, the fire, but it wasn’t.”

She stared into his eyes as he put it all fucking out there, what she’d made him feel.

So why wasn’t I doing the same?

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