Page 158 of Good Losers (Lochkelvin Academy)

54

Finlay’s mouth swings open; I watch its slow descent as my heart thunders down my veins.

“How fucking high are you?” Finlay whispers.

“Not very,” Rory says, sounding quite contrite about it. “The taxi ride sobered me up somewhat. Something about having your very essence sucked out in front of everyone really wakes a guy.”

My mind whirls, thinking back on it, of my lips hungrily devouring Rory’s cock in the shadowed cab, the dark yellow glow of the dim spotlights faintly highlighting me. Afterward, the insatiable bite of pessimism as it’d feasted on my growing regrets…

If I’d known the obscenities that were about to transpire in the hotel suite afterward, I wouldn’t have wasted so much time tussling over my anxieties.

But still, Finlay doesn’t move. He fixes Rory with a concerned look, like he expects him to snap free of this exceptional magnanimity at the worst possible moment — perhaps, in Finlay’s mind, when he’s buried to the hilt, balls deep inside me. I squeeze my thighs together at the thought.

“You’d be doing him a favor,” I note, my voice soft from the bed. Finlay’s eyes dart toward me. “Don’t you get it yet? He gets off on this. He gets off on watching me be used by his friends.”

“No,” Rory counters instantly, and Finlay’s eyes slide back to him so fast it’s as though looking in my direction had been a minor transgression. That he’s remembered who his true master is, the one from who he takes his official orders. “I get off on seeing you happy. I get off on knowing you’re mine above anyone else. And right now,” he adds in a pointed tone, with a contemptuous glance at Finlay, “I’m not getting off at all.”

They stare each other down, Finlay and Rory. The tension between them is so thick, so tangible, it’s as though a blanket has been lifted down into the room to smother us all. Even the eventual defeatist sound of Finlay’s swallow is distant, distorted.

“No funny shite, aye?” Finlay says upfront, as though Rory’s remotely interested in entering a bargain. “Because I huvnae… I huvnae been wi’ the sassenach this way before. We never shagged because I didnae want tae disrespect you. But that same respect goes for noo, and I dinnae want you pulling the same shite you did for Luke and Danny-boy, just ‘cause being a sadistic prick gets ye aff. The lass means too much tae me for that.”

My heart throbs at the honesty in Finlay’s roughened voice.

Rory’s pale gray eyes regard him with interest. “I have a feeling,” he says in a wry, reluctant voice, “that the saint would clamp her legs around you like a buggered vise if I were to even suggest such a thing. Unfortunately, like all the best Lochkelvin students, she’s developed a troubling habit of thinking for herself and following orders only when it suits her.”

A smile flickers at the edge of Finlay’s mouth, and finally he turns to look at me. A wing of jet-black hair falls into his eyes. “Well, then. How could I deny myself someone like that?”

Unlike the others, Finlay doesn’t so much walk into bed as leap. He lands with a bounce beside my half-naked body, wrenching his ripped Clash tee over his head by its baggy collar. He tosses it aside just as I hear the patter of his plastic aviators falling to the carpet, forgotten.

I stroke the smooth vinyl of his crazy leather disco pants, admiring the curved swell beneath the placket. The thought that it’ll soon be inside me floods me with nervous anticipation. I’ve wanted Finlay to be in me for so long — all those long nights spent exploring each other’s bodies, and always, consistently, stopping before we could properly unite.

Finlay had never once considered it, no matter how much I whined and hungered for him in those long summer nights like a volatile, feral animal. Finlay had never once thought about sneaking, lying, pretending, because his respect for Rory had been too great. Yes, he’d play with me. Yes, he’d give me orgasms and pet me. But there was always a line that would not be crossed, and entering me had been it.

And this is how our temperance is rewarded. This is, perhaps, how it should always have been: our bodies uniting under Rory’s watchful gaze, alert to the multiple frissons of erotic tension within this strange trio-within-a-group.

Finlay’s green eyes smile openly at me, and it feels like basking on a sun-warmed meadow.

“Can I get her naked?” His words are for Rory but his gaze is on me. My breath catches in my throat at the question.

“If she wishes,” Rory answers diplomatically, and my heart melts at his words, at his gentle permission that I may do whatever I so please, that I am the one with my own agency no matter how hard Rory cracks the whip.

Finlay’s warm fingers slide up the sides of my body, trailing up the notches of my rib cage before gliding urgently beneath the elastic of my bra, as if in a bid to touch more of my skin as soon as physically possible. In a playful move, he tugs down each of my straps, one after the other, and watches me intently. Apparently there’s something about me wearing a scarlet lace bra with its straps falling down my bare arms, my neck exposed for him, that’s diverting enough for Finlay to stop and admire for a long moment.

I’m captured by his gaze. I feel everything: the soft feather of my hair as it grazes my neck, the da-dum of my heartbeat as it thuds inside the locked box of my chest, the swift absence of Finlay’s breath.

With his green eyes hot on mine, he extends an arm to my back and positions himself behind me. He kisses my nape with a tenderness that’s followed by a shocking bite. I groan aloud, in full view of Rory as his friend and fellow chief feasts on my flesh. A soft kiss followed by a bite is Finlay all in one, I realize distantly: the fond romantic, the fighting wildling.

I arch into Finlay’s mouth, tilting my head back onto his shoulder, making it so that he gets the best access to my body. Finlay deftly undoes the triple clasp that secures me in place. He’s never done this to me before; I rarely wear normal bras never mind fancy lingerie, but tonight has been an occasion too special to avoid it.

The cups fall first, dropping to my stomach, dragging the lace straps with them as they land in the angle of my elbow. Finlay kisses his way down my right arm, scooping my hands through the straps and exposing my breasts completely. I swear there’s a moment where he stops breathing, his lips soft beneath my shoulder as he gazes down at me.

I hear him swallow behind me, a catch so dry he has to do it twice. “God, sassenach,” he whispers huskily, the scratch of his stubble grazing my skin. He doesn’t clarify his statement but lets his hands do the speaking for him: his large, callused palms, decorated with ink like a shimmering rainbow fish, wind around my upper body from behind and together they squeeze my breasts.

He’s not delicate. It’s a fierce, furious touch that sends moans from my mouth straight into Rory’s listening ear. More than any of the others, more than Luke and Danny, Finlay’s making a fight, a claim, in front of Rory’s ever-watchful eyes. The combination of his hands and his mouth saysI’m just as good as you — in fact, I’m probably better —and Finlay’s sheer boldness, his impertinence toward Rory in matters relating to me, is enough to encourage me to let go.

Because I want to see.

I want to see Rory riled up.

---