“Is that why your breath smells like cock?” Ivy asks as she pushes past me to stare down Hillary. “I was wondering, but then again, it always smells that way.”
Red-hot anger flares across Hillary’s cheeks. “We just kissed-“
“Uh, huh. I believe that about as much as I believe Ezra said any of that shit. Especially since it was Damon you were making out with. Or did you not know that?”
Hillary flinches. “No, it was Ez-“
“Really?” Ivy laughs. “You sure about that? Can you tell me whose dick you smell like right now? Do you know? Whose pubes did you just use as dental floss? Because I know the answer to that. Everybody in the pool house knows. But the joke is you don’t. So do you have anything else to say around my friend? Or would you like to go back inside and ask the twins which one just played you?”
Tears shimmer in Hillary’s eyes that she blinks away, her chin tipping higher in feigned confidence.
Her eyes flick to me as a sneer curls her mouth, but rather than saying a word in her defense, she hisses, “Fuck you all.”
We watch as Hillary and crew storm off, a dangerous feeling fluttering inside me that I know I need to quash.
Hope, no matter how unwarranted, is infectious. It’s pernicious, all soft and warm, a ray of sunshine striking cleanly through a thick carpet of dark clouds.
I shouldn’t hope for anything.
Still, I do.
“Was she really kissing Damon?” I ask, my voice weaker than I like.
Blue eyes flick my way, Ivy’s thin shoulder shrugging as she wraps her arm with mine to walk me into the house behind Ava.
“I have no idea. I just said that to piss her off.”
The hope I feel dies a tragic death, but I refuse to mourn its demise. It’s better not to have it. Not to care. Especially when secrets have a way of getting out into the open, and I have a future to protect, even if I don’t want it.
Once inside, the loud music assaults us, neither Ivy or Ava feeling as heavy as I do. They’re not afraid of having their hearts broken, aren’t burdened by the knowledge they have no control over their lives.
Ava is going off to Yale when we graduate, and Ivy is still undecided, but at least they have options I don’t have.
“Gabriel’s already piss drunk,” Ivy whispers in my ear, laughter coating her voice. “I told you I have nothing to worry about tonight.”
I glance over at where most of the Inferno guys are seated and roll my eyes at the girls standing or sitting around them, desperate for attention.
Ivy is wrong if she thinks Gabriel hasn’t planned something. The second we walk into the room, his emerald green gaze lifts and seeks her out.
Amused by how the two of them always look for each other without realizing it, I make the mistake of glancing left to find another dangerous stare locked on us, this one a pretty amber color with green flecks you can only see when up close.
My first thought is Ezra, but the truth is it could be either of them. I can’t claim to have superiority on Hillary. I never really know who is tugging me into a room, whose lips brush mine, whose voice whispers words in my ear that make me melt.
“I need to go,” I say, yanking my arm from Ivy’s hold.
She turns to stop me, but I’m too fast as I weave my way through the crowd of bodies, cutting through them like a warm knife through butter. I have no idea where I’m going, just that it’s away from Ezra or Damon or both.
Unfortunately, the best laid plans and most innocent of intentions have a way of going south fast.
I realize it as a hand locks over my arm, my body melting at the touch, my brain short-circuiting as I’m dragged into a separate room, my eyes clenching closed as a door shuts.
My back presses against a wall, the cool temperature of the plaster sinking through my dress to tease my skin. The heat of warm lips running up my neck is the perfect counterpoint to a wave of cold tremors racing through me.
“You were going the wrong way.”
A smile tugs at the corner of my lips, both happy and bitter. “I don’t think away from you is the wrong way.”
Fingertips tempt my skin as they skitter over my neck to move my hair. I’m so out of my element with him that I could be floating in space, my legs kicking and arms doing a breaststroke even though there’s no water to propel me back to Earth.
His warm palm slides up the line of my jaw, his thumb sweeping over my cheek.
“It is.”
And then his lips are on mine, the tip of his tongue flicking out to taste my mouth. I hold it closed, refusing to kiss him back, refusing to speak, refusing to let his touch render me boneless and stupid.
My refusal means nothing.
Not with the heat surging through me.
Not after my mind loses the ability to function.
Not after I stop caring for once that I was raised only to comply with the future my parents decided for me.
“Who are you?” I ask because I always ask.
He grins against my mouth. “Does it matter?”
Instantly I remember what Ivy said to Hillary, the tears in Hillary’s eyes, the fact that Hillary had been kissing one of them at some point before I arrived tonight.
It’s a blessing when I realize that none of it matters. That regardless of what I do right now, and regardless of who I do it with, I’m still going to marry someone I don’t want.
“No,” I whisper, my heart thudding against my chest when his lips grin against my mouth.
Cupping my face with two hands, he nips at my bottom lip, his voice a growl. “Good.”
My mouth opens, and his tongue dives in.
I let him kiss me without caring which twin it is, because in the end, when I’m married to a man I don’t love and living a life I don’t want, none of this can matter.
Emily
I don’t know what I’m doing.
Or why I’m doing it.
Or even how, for that matter.
I just am.
Maybe it’s to rebel against my pre-ordained destiny. Or to flip the finger to my parents. Or to steal from Mason all the things he doesn’t want and that I don’t want to give him.
He’s a boy...
That’s just the way it is...
And so is the person kissing me now. Can I be blamed when he’s just doing what boys do?
A thousand excuses and explanations roll through my head, one after the other, a parade of them, complete with dancers, and floats and large balloons that people fight to keep under control in turbulent weather.
I’m angry, and I don’t know why it matters now. I’m desperate, which is why my fingers curl over shoulders wider than mine. I’m turned on because I’m letting someone touch me when I know I shouldn’t.
Damon or Ezra.
It can be either of them, and I’m not sure I care right now.
Because this isn’t about the boy. It’s about me taking back what destiny and family obligations have stolen.
A low sound vibrates in his throat when I pull my lips from his and tilt my head. It’s all the permission he needs to run those lips down the line of my neck, to flick his tongue over the taut tendon. I shiver against the new sensation, caring more about rebelling than who this even is.
I should care which twin I’m with.
I want to.
This entire thing started with Ezra, but I don’t really know him. We haven’t talked much beyond the secret moments we’ve stolen, haven’t done more than kiss and touch, his hands greedy and mine demure. I haven’t let his fingers explore places they shouldn’t, haven’t yet crossed that line.