Page 109 of The Risk

“Power’s still not back,” I point out.

“No, really? I thought the candlelight was just setting the ambience for our threesome.”

“We’re having a threesome?!” Brooks exclaims as he bounces back into the room. He looks like an elated little kid. “For real,Connelly? You didn’t want to have a threesome with Kayla but you’ll do it with your girl and—oh dear God, why am I complaining? Shut the fuck up, Brooks,” he scolds himself.

“Kayla?” Brenna echoes.

“His girlfriend.”

“Not my girlfriend.”

“You were going to have a threesome with them?” Brenna narrows her eyes.

“Not at all.” I glance at my roommate. “And make sure Kayla knows that, because I don’t need her ambushing me naked in the kitchen anymore.”

“Oh no, a naked girl in the kitchen! We need to install an alarm system! Someone get us a guard dog!” He gives an exaggerated eye roll. “Anyway. Are we doing this?”

I let him down not so gently. “We’re not having a threesome, now or ever. This new ass-flashing craze of yours is bad enough.”

Brenna’s gaze strays toward the windows again. “I should probably go soon.”

“Wait until the power’s back,” I say gruffly. I don’t like the idea of her being out on the roads. Several traffic lights had been out on our drive home, and I spotted more than one fender-bender.

“What time is it?” she asks. “If I’m going to leave, it needs to be sooner rather than later.”

I lean forward to check her phone. “It’s almost ten. Maybe you should—” The screen suddenly illuminates with an incoming call, and since I’m looking right at it, I can’t miss the name of the caller.

“Eric’s calling,” I tell her, my tone harsher than I intend.

My peripheral vision catches Brooks grinning at me. Yeah. He knows exactly how I feel about this.

“You’d better get that,” I prompt.

Her expression is suspiciously stricken. She snatches the phone and hits the Ignore button.

“Who’s Eric?” Brooks attempts to sound casual but fails. I’mglad he asked before I did, though, and the wink he gives me reveals it was intentional. I nod back, appreciating the solid.

“Nobody,” she says tightly.

Well, that tells me nothing. Is she seeing somebody else? Does she have a roster of guys she hooks up with, a bench full of McCarthys?

The hot jealousy burning my gut is not a pleasant sensation. I’m a competitive guy, but I’ve never competed for the affections of a woman before. Because no woman has ever chosen another man over me. That sounds pretentious and I don’t care. The idea of Brenna seeing other dudes is not okay with me.

Which creates another first: I’ve never been the one to initiate the are-we-exclusive conversation. How does one even bring that up?

When her phone buzzes with a voice-mail alert, I feel even testier. “Are you going to check that?”

“No need. I know what he wants.”

The unwelcome jealousy burns hotter. “Is that so?”

“Yup. Whose turn is it now?”

“Mine,” Brooks offers. But as he sorts the tiles on his tray, Brenna’s phone rings for a second time.

And then, after she ignores it, a third time.

“Just answer it,” I mutter.

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