Page 42 of Bear
I pull to a stop, catching her forearm in my hand and spin her to face me right in the middle of a crowded walkway, causing her to gasp aloud. Students immediately circumvent us, but I pay them no mind. All I see is her.
Brow furrowing, she opens her mouth to say something, and I take full fucking advantage of it. Pulling her body to mine, I grasp her head in my hands and plunge my tongue between her lips in a vicious, brutal claiming. She lets out a tiny moan as she melts into me, but it doesn’t faze me a bit. I nip and pluck at her lip with my teeth, savoring the way it makes her heart race faster. My tongue swoops in again, tasting the sweetness of whatever lollipop she must have sucked on during class. Cherry, I think. Fuuuck. It makes me want to throw her down on the grass, rip her clothes off, and sink inside her pussy. For a fleeting second, I actually consider it. Maybe I’m still drunk. It’s a good thing we aren’t fucking driving home.
Lennon whimpers as my thumbs slide over her jaw, and I tear myself away to look at her. Her eyes are stormy, radiating nothing but longing and lust. Her breath feathers softly over her lips as she stares at me. “What was that for?”
My lips twitch into a smirk. “Just in case you thought a goddamn thing had changed.” I bring our foreheads together, speaking quietly to her as the student body continues diverting around us. No one would dare tell a Bainbridge Hall brother to get the fuck out of their way, though I’m sure it’s in their thoughts. “Lennon, you’re the only person who understands even a fraction of my damage. It might be selfish, but I don’t want to lose that—you—even if the way I react to you sometimes scares the fuck out of me. You’ve dug your way inside my soul, and I don’t think you’re ever coming out.” The admission claws at my heart, the dark chaos inside screaming.Nooo!But there’s no way to deny it at this point. I feel so desperately connected to her, even if it’s in the most twisted part of my heart.
She takes a few deep breaths before she whispers, “Even if there’s something very real happening between you and Duke?”
And there it is. I’ve been nervous, thinking it’d be awkward to discuss him with her. But I wasn’t prepared for the understanding look in her eye or the soft expression on her face. I shake my head. “Neither of you is a substitute for the other.” I wet my lips when she doesn’t say anything, and my lungs constrict, making it hard for me to continue. After another moment, I manage to blurt out, “Am I making any sense, or am I fucking this all up?”
“You aren’t fucking up. But you promise, if—”
I shake my head, cutting her off. “Don’t. Because that’s not happening.”
She blinks rapidly, reaching for my hands, but I don’t want to hold hands. I want to hold ontoher.She frowns at first when I let go, but then I wrap my arm around her waist and press a slow kiss to her lips. For once, we’re in a really good place.
* * *
As we approach the house,she stops in the driveway, glancing upward. She knows which window is Duke’s. “Do you think he stayed home?”
I shrug, glancing toward the garage, but the bays are all closed, so it’s hard to say if he has one of the other vehicles or if he’s sequestered himself in his room.
“I went in to talk to him. After you left,” Lennon murmurs, eyes still glued to the window above.
Nodding, I sigh. She needs to be aware that even though the three of us sometimes have issues, we still talk to each other, and definitely keep each other in the loop. It’d be a piss-poor idea to let her think there are any secrets among us. I huff out a laugh.Wait, therewasone big secret, but that seems to be out in the fucking open now.Slowly, I scrape my teeth over my lip. “Yeah, I know you did.” And as I suspected they might, her eyes dart to mine in question. “Bear told me this morning.”
She seems to take that information in stride. “Oh. Okay well, I asked him about the Stella thing. He blew me off… and that’s putting it mildly.” With her teeth clenched, her gaze finally shifts away from Duke’s window to me. Our eyes connect, and I can see in hers that she was disappointed in his reaction… and continuing lack of explanation.
But to be fair to him, itisSeptember 5. And we all know it.
“Maybe it’s not the best day to ask about that,” I muse, curling my hand around the back of her neck. I brush my fingers briefly over the fingerprints I’d put on her. A thought wanders to the forefront of my mind, one that both disturbs me and arouses me. I actuallylikeseeing my mark on her just as much as I liked the feel of my hand circling her neck and the way her pulse jumped against my palm. I’m one sick fuck sometimes.
She pins her eyes on me, a stubborn fire lighting her eyes. “I get that, and I should have known better, but he and I—” She sucks in a breath. “Ugh. Never mind. It’s shitty that he keeps calling me Stella if he’s not going to admit whatever it means to him. Because I agree with you. It has freaking meaning behind it, and he’s let me think all along it was an insult.” She reaches up, taking my hand from her neck. “Let’s go inside.”
My eyes flick to hers, my voice husky and rough when I grit out, “Yep. It’s fucking naptime.”
With that, we head into the house. As if we’re on the same wavelength, Lennon doesn’t argue when I take a tour of the lower floor of the house, then peek out back, checking to see if Duke is on the patio. He isn’t anywhere obvious, so we climb to the second floor to check his room.
His door is wide open, the room empty. Not much we can do if he isn’t here. I have an idea that he may have gone to visit Juliette’s grave, so I try not to worry too much. Like Bear said earlier—some space and time to clear his head might be the best thing for him.
We stand in the middle of the hallway semi-awkwardly. I’m unsure what Lennon needs right now from me, if anything. My forehead creases as she squeezes my hand and begins to let go. And at first, I let her, though it hits me square in the chest—it’s not what I want. I want her with me, no matter the warning bells that begin to clang furiously in my head.
She takes an uncertain step toward her room, then stops, glancing back toward me. “Mase?”
I clear my throat, setting aside the leaden feeling in my gut. “Yeah?”
“Can I sleep with you? I hate lying there all alone.” Her eyes plead with me, even as she tries to hide her anxiety with a smile.
I draw in a breath. “Fuck yeah you can.”
TWENTY-ONE
LENNON
I’m pulledout of a peaceful sleep by a deep, gravelly groan. It’s followed by a fitful gasp, and then some mumbling I can’t quite make heads or tails of in the slumber-induced fog I’m in.
“No.Nooo.”The sheer agony in those words is like a punch to the gut and has a frown pulling at my face. But my head is still hazy.Am I dreaming?I take a couple of slow, steady breaths, waiting—hoping—I can fall back into a peaceful sleep and I’m not about to veer headlong into a nightmare.
