Page 15 of Pleading Innocence

I still hadn’t sat down because I didn’t want Chris to get any more comfortable than he already was. I wasn’t sure how long I could keep holding myself together.

“I love what you’ve done with the place,” Chris said, and I internally rolled my eyes.

I looked at the blanket I was using earlier as I watched TV before Mario showed up. It was hanging off the couch and some cushions were tossed aside as a half-eaten bowl of chicken and veggies sat on the coffee table.

“If I knew you were coming, I would’ve tidied up a bit,” I said, bending over to pick up some of the cushions off the floor. I heard Anthony clear his throat, but luckily Chris didn’t seem to catch it.

“Are you kidding me?” Chris said. “You don’t have to do all that. I got this place for YOU. I want you to be as comfortable in it as you can be. It’s your home, your space to do with it as you’d like. You do not have to clean up for little old me.” He grinned. “I’m just glad you like it and are at home in it. You do like it, don’t you?” he asked, looking a little worried.

I grinned. “I love it,” I said, going in between him and Anthony to give him a hug because it meant a lot for me to hear that. “Thanks, big bro.”

As I was getting up, my ass brushed up against Anthony’s arm. I shuddered from the rush of the needed release that was building up through my attempts to resist him. He took in a swift breath before he got up from the couch and made his way across the room. He hadn’t really spoken at all since he’d gotten here, which was not like Anthony at all.

I reached for the bowl of leftovers because I needed an exit from the living room before Chris started to read too much into both of our actions and I rushed over to the kitchen. Except the kitchen was next to my bedroom and I didn’t want to give Chris a reason to go inside there.

I grabbed some cold water from my fridge and offered some to them before gulping down the water so fast it burned my throat, because I was overheating and needed something to take away the redness from my skin. Something had to keep me from passing out as I waited for Chris to walk away from the kitchen and back into the living room where it was closer to the exit.

Chapter 11

Anthony

Fromtheverysecondshe opened the door, I was fighting an erection. Her skin was fresh from makeup highlighting her delicate freckles. Her reddish-orange hair flowed straight down the length of her back and over her shoulders, slightly messy. She smelled good enough to eat and her striking green eyes looked at me with a hunger matching my own. Funny enough, though she stretched and played the part of a woman just rousing, I noticed that her skin wasn’t puffy as if she’d just woken up, except for her lips that looked more plump than usual. And her eyes weren’t glossed over as if they’d just opened not too long ago.

Not that I doubted that she’d look just as ravishing with puffed up skin from sleeping. I was feeling myself overcome with the desire to see what she’d look like in the morning. That was new for me since I didn’t make a habit of spending the night with a woman and waking up to her the next morning. I just didn’t want to risk the clinginess. But seeing her like this in pajamas, the top clinging to her hardening nipples, I felt the urge to bed her and never leave her sheets ever again. I found myself envying Mario for having seen her that way, being with her any time of day.

She was glowing and her skin was plump with the blood of a woman well-sexed. Yet she didn’t look tired. She was revving to go again. I could see it, I could taste it, and it was driving me insane. It was so frustrating that I couldn’t tell her how I was feeling about her since I was not one for mincing words. But Chris’s gaze was digging into my very soul, watching my every move. Even if he wasn’t outrightly staring at me, I could feel his eyes and it made for the biggest tug of war ever inside my body. It was hard trying my best not to speak to her, not to acknowledge her, to pretend she didn’t exist for Chris’s benefit. It was impossible.

Though I was teetering on the edge of losing my fucking life and my best friend by even glancing in her direction, I couldn’t stop myself from trying to figure out how I’d manage to get her alone. With the way Chris was like a hawk, waiting to pick up on the slightest cues, the fact that he even let her sit between us was shocking. Because when her body touched me after holding myself back with difficulty, I was sure something was about to pop right on up and give me away on the spot. I had to jump up to get my body moving and redirect the blood somewhere else.

There was no fooling me that she was alone in this apartment before we showed up, though she did a pretty good job of hiding him. There wasn’t a trace of him anywhere except for the telltale signs of her body. I fucked her before and knew what she looked like after. Either that or she was fucking herself in her own bed. Or on that couch with the blanket spilling over onto the floor. The thought of either was priming me, getting me ready to go, ready to pound the fuck out of her pussy while she clung to me and cried out my name. It had been far too long since I’d tasted her, touched her, felt her moving over me.

Fuck, just the thought of her touching herself and fucking herself was tightening my balls. I had to start pacing up and down the apartment in a show of ‘boredom’ to get my body to focus on something else. Something other than her fucking herself or watching her get fucked by Mario while she sucked my dick. I was taken back to that day in the file room where we’d all taken turns drilling her—me, Mario, and Jared.

Jared. She seemed to be handling leaving Crawford & Beam quite well, though I doubted he would be spending any of his nights over here. He didn’t know what he was missing out on, but I sure did.

Did I feel like an asshole with my best friend standing right here while I was thinking about how all of his trusted best friends fucked his twenty-one-year-old younger sister? While I was thinking of kicking him out of the door so I could fuck her, right this moment? Yes. The guilt settled somewhere deep inside me. But overriding that guilt was the thought of her over me, riding this dick. I couldn’t let myself think about how wrong it was to be sneaking around behind his back, not when I watched the way her body reacted to me. When her ass brushed up against me, I wasn’t the only one the contact affected. She shuddered and her breath shook. She was trying as hard as I was to hold herself together.

I tried not to lick my lips as I pulled my eyes swiftly away from Tiffany’s hot body. I made a show of pulling the soft sleeve of my black shirt up to check my expensive-as-hell silver watch for the time. The face of it looked like the inner workings of a car, like an engine, and I wasn’t sure why, but it made me feel like I was on a spacecraft or some shit. It made me feel pretty badass.

I cleared my throat.

“Uh, it’s getting late, huh? We should probably get going,” I said to Chris. “The drink was impulsive and, uh, I’ve gotta head back to work soon.”

I had no intention of going back to work, but I had to separate myself from him to make it possible for me to be alone with her. My heart beat along with the ticking of the hand on my watch as I waited for his response.

He pulled out his phone and checked the time, kicking up an orange brow. “Hell, I think you might be right,” he said.

Okay, that was a good start. My pulse raced. Man, I was really hoping he didn’t send me along on my merry way and suggest that he stay back himself. Chris turned to Tiffany, who pulled her eyes away from me. Not understanding my motive, I noticed a sense of disappointment in her questioning eyes. She didn’t want me to leave, and I didn’t want to leave, but I couldn’t tell her that. That would be easily remedied though if this played out according to plan.

“You sure you’re all right?” Chris asked Tiffany.

She nodded far too excitedly, her eyes bulging a little with anxiety, and I remembered that Mario was locked up in her bedroom or her bathroom. I was assuming it was one out of the two doors in the small hallway next to the kitchen. Both doors were facing each other. Both pale yellow. I wondered which one Mario was in and whether he’d fallen asleep or something. Was my guy even still alive? I fought against the need to laugh.

I had to give him props. He was doing a hell of a job remaining quiet and I tried not to picture what the hell he was doing to pull off such a task. Plus, I knew his ass also had to be getting back to work pretty soon. But if I let my mind conjure up images of Mario in there with his ears plastered to the door trying his best not to make a sound, sweating balls, hoping Chris left sooner rather than later, I’d erupt in laughter. And Chris would certainly be suspicious of what the hell I found so funny at random while we were standing in Tiffany’s living room with her goldish couch and bright blue accents against white walls when she’d just lost her job.

I would have to figure out a lie to tell him and was already pissing myself with lies right now without adding another one to the mix, so I turned my face away from them both, busying myself with looking at the hanging lights, waiting for the suppressed giggles to pass.

Mario and I were both going to be late for work but if Jared asked what the heck we were doing, we could lie and say we both were out meeting with a client, or we could tell him the truth and watch him squirm. Because what kind of a diddly head did someone have to be to not fight for a woman like Tiffany? Although he was being the only sensible one out of the three of us, since Mario had gone ahead and joined me over on the dark side, probably pissing himself in fear at the moment.

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