Isabelle hurries to me and gives me a kiss, slipping out of my arms before I can settle into it, and gives Beast the same treatment. “Right on time.”
I cross my arms over my chest and give the women a mock serious look. “Did you start the party without us?”
Aurora presses her hand to her chest and gives me an innocent look. “Would we do that?”
“Yes.”
She laughs. “You’re right; we totally would. But we didn’t this time.”
Isabelle takes both my hand and Beast’s and leads us into the living room. It looks like someone decided to have a slumber party with the space covered in pillows and blankets. I eye the space as she tugs us down to sit on either side of her. “We have a perfectly good bed in the next room over. Why are we sitting on the floor?”
She gives another of those laughs that sounds so fucking happy, I swear my heart grows three sizes. “We’re going to play Seven Minutes in Heaven.”
“If it’s only seven minutes, someone is doing something wrong,” Beast says.
Isabelle shakes her head. “Come on, you know what I’m talking about right? Didn’t you ever play this game in high school?”
Beast and I exchange a look. Neither of us had what a person could call a traditional high school experience, and we’d both had bigger things to worry about than attending parties in some kid’s basement. “No.”
“Never.”
She sighs and looks at Aurora. “I knew it. We’re going to have to show them the ropes.”
I’m not sure why she’s decided that this is the route she wants to take tonight, but I’m willing to play. I slouch back against the couch and stretch my legs out. “What are the rules?”
Aurora sits primly in the spot across from Isabelle. “Normally, the two people involved go into a closet or something and make-out for seven minutes while everyone giggles and speculates about them.” She smiles slowly. “But we’re not teenagers, so Isabelle decided to make it more interesting.”
Isabelle picks up right where she left off. “No closets. We do it out in the open.” She’s practically vibrating with excitement. “Anything goes for the seven-minute duration.” She pulls a bottle out from beneath the pillow next to her. “This is how we pick.”
“Anything goes…”
She huffs. “Yes, Gaeton, Aurora and I have our established safe words, and if you and Beast change your mind, we can stop.”
I grab the bottle from her. “Fuck like that’s going to happen. Let’s do this.” How many movies have I seen with Spin the Bottle and this kind of shit in it? It always seemed like that kind of thing happened in another world. I don’t care that I didn’t experience it as a teenager. This shit is a thousand times better. I set the bottle in the open space on the floor in the middle of us and give it a spin.
It lands on Isabelle.
She wastes no time crawling into my lap. “Set the timer, Aurora.” And then she’s kissing me, all soft and sweet and so fucking perfect. There are still days when I wake up, half sure that this is all a fever dream, that only in my fantasies am I really allowed to call Beast and Isabelle mine in truth. Moments like these have it all rushing back to me. She’s mine. He’s mine. This is really happening.
I slide my hands up Isabelle’s thighs and grip her ass, urging her to grind against me. As if we’re really just teenagers making out. It’s tempting to escalate things, but I kind of like the idea of playing the slow game, of dialing up the heat in seven-minute increments until we all lose control.
All too soon, Aurora says, “Time.”
Isabelle lifts her head. Her lips are plumped from our kiss and she’s breathing just as raggedly as I am. She gives one last agonizing roll of her hips, rubbing herself against where my cock is trying to burst out of my pants, and then crawls back to her spot.
She spins the bottle, and it lands on Aurora. Beast and I exchange another look, and I can’t read the expression on his face. He’s turned on, sure, but there’s something else there beneath the surface. He says, “Time starts now.”
Isabelle practically tackles Aurora to the ground. Aurora’s played with us on a semi-regular basis since that first night, and it’s always like this with them. They go at it like they might never get another chance again, like one of us will step in and stop them if they don’t hurry it up. Since that’s a fantasy we’ve played out more than few times, I can’t really blame them.
And it’s one hell of a show.
Aurora’s got her hands up Isabelle’s dress within the first minute, and she’s got Isabelle coming all over her fingers right as Beast says, “Time.”