Chapter 213: Jake
We get back to the motel about an hour after that. The door clicks shut and she’s on me—fist in my collar, mouth on mine, that soft, wrecking little sound she only makes when adrenaline finally finds a home. I stagger one step, then catch, turn us so her spine meets the wall and my palms find that familiar strip of skin at her waist beneath the hem of her top.
“Color?” I breathe against her lips, because she's ours, but we’re careful.
“Green,” she says, already chasing me back in. “Please.”
Reid swings the chain across the door, kills the gap in the curtains, and closes on her other side, heat at her shoulder, one hand sliding into her hair to tilt her for me. I take her mouth deep and slow until her knees go loose; he claims the line of her jaw and the soft place beneath her ear, biting her lightly, but hard enough to make her gasp.
She tastes like coffee and victory; she kisses like she’s starving. I laugh once into it because I know the feeling and then stop laughing because she drags her nails along the back of my neck and I forget how to do anything but give.
“Bed,” she whispers, voice rasped raw with want. “Now.”
I lift; she jumps—legs cinching around my hips like she was made to fit there—and for a heartbeat the friction makes my brain go white. Reid strips the duvet back with one arm while I carry her the three steps to the mattress. I set her down and follow, bracing above her on my forearms so she feels the weight without the crush. She hooks me closer and devours me, kiss after kiss that turn slow into greedy and greedy into something that scalds.
Reid climbs in on her other side, a mirror of me, and we become gravity, bracketing her in heat. We pass her back and forth without leaving her—my mouth, then his, then back to mine—each kiss a little darker than the last, each breath a little more ragged. My hand slides under her shirt and rests at her stomach, hot and steady, not taking, just owning the tremble in her breath; his palm skims up her ribs and stops at the edge she likes it to stop, a reverent pause that has her arching like she’s giving permission to the whole room.
“More pressure,” she murmurs, and I give it—my thumb circling lower, harder, lazy patterns that make her hips tilt. Reid threads his fingers into her hair and tips her chin just so; the angle turns her into a live wire under our mouths.
“You’re perfect,” I tell her when we break for air and she can’t quite find words. “Look at me.” She does—green gone midnight, pupils blown—and I feel my self-control go to its knees. “Good girl.” The praise paints her cheeks hotter; Reid groans into her throat because he likes that as much as I do.
We slow it down only to reset the fuse and then light it again. She rolls to her side between us and I kiss her from behind, slow drags along the slope of her neck and the hinge of her shoulder while Reid takes her mouth, patient and wrecking at once. She turns back and I catch her, lips parted, breath like a prayer; he goes lower, mouth finding the soft edge of her collarbone through cotton, teeth just a hint, a promise wrapped in restraint. She fists my shirt and hauls me down; I let her, because that’s the whole point.
“Still green?” I ask against her cheek when she starts to float.
“Green,” she says, a little desperate now. “Don’t stop.”
“We won’t,” Reid answers, the words a vow in his chest. His hand lands next to mine over her stomach, our fingers large and dark on her skin; I feel her exhale shudder beneath both our palms. We work together without talking—my mouth when he needs to breathe her in, his when I need to look at the face that ruins me, our hands alternating their pressure until her spine curves and her laugh breaks into something shameless.
Time gets weird. The AC hums; the room warms in waves. She kisses me until my lungs mutiny, then turns and kisses him like she’s learning a new language and intends to be fluent by morning. Every few minutes one of us makes a useless attempt at patience—“slow down”—and she ignores it, dragging us back into her with a greedy, gorgeous little sound that makes every rule in my body go soft.
At some point I slide a thigh between hers and let her ride the pressure through cotton; at some point Reid pulls her knee across his hip and kisses a path from her temple to the corner of her mouth that leaves her sighing like she’s being worshiped because she is. We keep it there—filthy and sweet, focused on her until she has to clutch at both of us just to remember what breathing is.
When she finally slumps into the pillows, cheeks flushed, lips swollen, hair a halo of chaos, I can’t stop touching her—one more drag of my mouth along her jaw, one more kiss at the corner of her smile, one more slow sweep of my hand over her stomach to feel the aftershiver. Reid kisses her forehead like he’s signing his name, then claims her mouth again, softer now, a seal instead of a spark.
“Color?” I ask, grinning because I already know.
“Green,” she whispers, wrecked and radiant. “Always green with you.”
“Careful,” Reid says, but he’s smiling the same way I am.
“Careful later,” I murmur, stealing one last, lingering kiss that tastes like her and the life we’re building. We’ve got a world to conquer tomorrow. For a long, hot, shameless half hour, the only thing that exists is the way she sighs into our mouths, and the way it feels to finally take what’s ours.