Page 66 of The Obedient Lie
His jaw was locked. His hand still braced across my chest like he needed to hold me back—like if he didn’t, we’d both do something we’d never come back from.
I felt it too. The pull.
It wasn’t just lust.
It was rage-inducing desire.
It washow dare you look that beautiful when you’re not ours yet.
She bent one leg, toe grazing the inside of her thigh, the movement so fluid it could’ve been choreographed by God himself. Her fingers curled into the mat, her back rising with a slow inhale, then relaxing into the exhale.
As if she hadn’t just torn two men apart bybreathing.
I didn’t realize my hands had curled into fists until my nails dug into my palm.
“She thinks we’re still at the game,” Bastion mutteredfinally, voice low, wrecked. “She thought she had the room to herself.”
She did.
Until now.
My voice was stuck in my throat, a single word pushing to be said but never forming:Ours.
That was the word.
Ours.
Ours.
Ours.
But we’d never said it.
Never touched her.
Never given her permission to look like that in front of us.
And she’d never given us permission to feel this wrecked over her.
She rolled onto her back, completely unaware, arms above her head again. The curve of her stomach was soft, perfect, flushed from the heat of the stretch. That same crop top rode higher, exposing the undercurve of her breasts—just barely. Just enough.
I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood.
Then she opened her eyes.
And looked.
At us.
Directly.
The relaxation drained from those beautiful doe eyes in an instant. Gone. Like someone had snapped a spell. Her pupils sharpened, her mouth parted in a soft gasp, and she scrambled upright with this panic-flushed urgency that only made things worse.
Because I couldn’t stop staring at her lips.
That soft pink mouth I’d memorized a thousand different ways—parted, bitten, painted in gloss, wrapped around astraw, wrapped around her own goddamn pen when she was nervous in class.
But now?
