Meraki’s eyes flicked up at me and the corner of her mouth turned up a little. Not enough to be obvious, because Meraki was anything but obvious. She made people work for her affection. Whether she knew she was doing it or not, it was hot as fuck.
“Hey!” Her shoulders straightened and she shuffled out of Luca’s arm a little, patting the empty side next to her. “I didn’t think you were coming tonight.”
When I sat down, I turned my attention solely to her, until both of our eyes clashed together hard enough to make my pulse race. Meraki and I danced around the line that we had drawn to keep our boundaries clear, but we’d never spoken about it. Not after the first and only time we had sex—also known as the time we don’t talk about. Literally.
The flirting, the light touches, the long eye contact from across the room at parties while I had Cece under my arm and she had—well, Luca’s over hers. All that shit remained to one side. Even though it made my palms sweat with angst and my fucking dick rock hard just thinking about all the shit I could do with her now and would do to her no matter who was around. It stayed to that side.
But now, with her green eyes on my gray, I could almost feel the shift between us. Like the desperation to have her outweighed the chance of losing her.
Her perfectly tweezed brows curled in, and I was once again fucking paralyzed by her raw beauty. She whipped her head forward, tearing our connection. I traced the sharp curve of her jawline with my eyes, inching my hand closer to hers until our fingers touched. I winced when ardent flames spread from her to me, but I swallowed it, because I didn’t give a fuck anymore. I wanted her. Now. And I’d have to be a dead man before I ever let Luca put hands on her. Motherfucker.
“What made you come?” Luca asked from the other side of Meraki.
Just the thought of him not knowing that she and I had already had a complete conversation between us without any words spoken, out of sheer chemistry and connection, left a smug smirk on my face. No one knew that Mer was my first and I was hers, because we took a fucking blood oath—literally—to swear to never tell. We laughed after and remained best friends, because we loved each other too much to live without the other. I licked her virginity from between her thighs right after she sliced me across the chest. She licked up every drop while riding my ass into early the next morning. Luca was fucking irrelevant to what she and I had.
I ran my tongue over my bottom lip to stop from smirking too fucking wide as my fingers found their way into the belt loop of her jeans. I tugged her closer to me while reaching for a beer in the cooler.
“That thing she does with her tongue…”
Luca rolled his eyes, his pale cheeks flushing red, but it wasn’t him I was watching as I cracked my can. It was Mer. Her lip lifted just a little to see a sharp glimmer of her teeth. But fuck, I wanted her, and I needed to get her out of here so I could show her exactly what the fuck I meant, and I needed to do that before Cece saw me.
I placed the beer on the ground. “Ari wants to know if you wanna watch the rugby tonight.”
Mer didn’t turn. Her tongue snuck out and stuck to her upper lip as if lost in thought. When the corner of her mouth curved up, I knew I had her.
“Yeah,” she replied, turning to face me. Her eyes collided with mine, and there it was again, that conversation between us. “I’ll come.”
I leaned into her ear, my fingers sprawling out over the bare slit showing her back. “Yeah, you will be. Preferably all over my tongue.”
Grabbing her by the hand, I pulled her up to her feet and didn’t bother turning to wave off Luca. I had Meraki in my hand, my bike ten steps away, and honestly, I didn’t care if we fucked or not. Just being near her was enough to balm the frenzy of not having her near. Pretty sure I’d die from this woman one day, but I’d be taking my final breath by fucking hers out of her. I wanted to bury myself in her and never fucking return.
I knew people were following us, watching us once again. Here we go… Niko was dragging Meraki away from a party before anyone could come near her… but what they didn’t know was this time was different. This time I was going near her, and this time I wasn’t sure I’d be able to let go.