Page 33 of The Mountain
And under it all, running like a steady, beautiful current, is the knowledge that this is happening. That we’re all together.A family, Matty had said.
I want it so bad, I feel the longing in my very bones.
“Well, love,” Liam interrupts the rambling of my thoughts, and I lift my gaze to his with a frisson of nervous anticipation. But he’s looking at Lily, not at me. “What are you going to do?”
His lips quirk in a smile, but his eyes are serious, gray storm clouds threatening thunder. Beside him, Antoine’s expression is schooled, expressionless. His green eyes blaze with hunger though, and I can see the wild fluttering of his pulse, the panted breaths through slightly parted lips.
“Um…” Lily squirms in my lap, making my breath catch. She looks up at me in silent question, and for a brief, panicked moment, I’m worried that she’s going to say something about it. To misread my physical response to the weight of her and Liam’s words as something more. To ask for something that I don’t want to give her. “What should I do?”
When I don’t answer, she turns to Matty, her expression full of silent question. And that’s when it hits me.
We’re sitting on a knife’s edge, the six of us.
Talking about ground rules and having open communication—that’s good, but it’s just words. We need to show her we can do this. And maybe, maybe she needs to show herself she can do this too.
That it’s okay for her to take what she needs.
“What do you want?” I ask her, pressing my lips to the side of her head. She smells like snow and pine and the lingering hint of sweat from a day teaching. “What do you need?”
She rocks her hips against my thigh, and I smile to myself, even as a mixture of arousal and discomfort rushes through me.
“Honestly?” She tilts her head back, twisting around to look at me. Her hazel eyes are wide, a mixture of desperation and vulnerability. “I feel like these guys have been edging me for days and I’ll die if I don’t come.”
Liam laughs, that same open laugh from before. It hits me then that I don’t think I’ve ever heard him laugh before today. Not a real laugh like that, anyway.
“What’s edging?” Matty whispers, leaning toward Antoine. And this time, it’s my turn to laugh.
“It’s not funny,” Lily whines, but she’s smiling too. A tentative, hopeful smile that tells me maybe we’re doing this right, after all.
“If you want to go join him, you can,” I murmur, dipping my forehead level with hers. “No one will judge you. No one will be upset.” My eyes lift to Antoine, and his throat bobs.
“C’est vrai, ma puce.” His eyes drop to the table. “I’m okay with it. I promise. I… I got upset before, and that was wrong of me.”
Lily shakes her head vehemently. “No. Don’t apologize. I don’t want you to feel like you can’t tell me how you feel. If you get jealous—if you need more from me…” She wrings her hands, looking around at all of us. “I want to do this right.”
Her eyes flick up to mine, expression open and full of longing. It echoes the longing I feel in my own chest, pulling me toward her like a band, like our souls are meant for each other.
“Trust me. You’re definitely doing this right.” I give her a reassuring smile, then add: “This is new for all of us, okay?”
She nods, then glances past my shoulder, to the darkened hallway where Eddie disappeared moments before.
“If you’re wanting to get some, you better get in there before he blows his load,” Liam announces unceremoniously. “He’s pretty quick when he gets going.”
Antoine wrinkles his nose, giving Liam a disconcerted look. “Do I even want to know how you know that?”
Liam chuckles. “We share a room.” He shrugs, then looks between me, Antoine, and Matty. “You guys telling me you don’t jerk off at all? Not even at night?”
Matty’s cheeks flare red and Antoine stiffens. I feel my own cheeks prickling. At what the fuel for my fantasies has been, night after night since Lily moved in. Liam’s teasing descriptions—those are barely the tip of the iceberg.
Last night, I imagined watching Lily between the four of them, her body writhing in mindless pleasure, their hands making their mark over her soft flesh. I imagined Liam deep inside Antoine, the way Antoine’s eyes would widen with each of Liam’s thrusts. Liam would reach forward, taking Antoine in hand, guiding him to Lily’s open mouth, that pink tongue darting out to taste his precum, lapping gently.
All the while, Matty would be staring in wide-eyed awe, half terrified but mostly desperate to join in, his hands skating tentatively over Lily’s heated flesh. In my imagination—in the world where I exist without fear of censure—I tell him what to do, how to touch her. How to cup her full breasts and tug at her nipples. How to part her swollen lips and find that tight bud between them, throbbing and desperate to be touched.
And Eddie… I imagine he wouldn’t need any instruction at all, except maybe a curt reminder not to just take all the pleasure for himself…
“You guys are killing me,” Lily says, half groaning, half laughing. “Okay. Fine. Fine. I need to take a shower anyway…” She scrambles off my lap, pausing to give me one last questioning glance.
“You got it,” I say, my voice sounding gravelly to my ears.
