Prologue
Mallory
I always realize I’m not a good drunk after I’ve gotten drunk. It’s not that I get sick, or become a blubbering mess, it’s that every single one of my inhibitions melts like ice cream in a broken freezer. And this impromptu vacation is the last possible place I should be letting down my guard, let alone losing all common sense.
And yet, here I am in the fanciest lobby, in the fanciest hotel in Beverly Hills, waiting for my best friend’s boytoy to book a room for the three of us because we got day drunk and can’t drive back to his house in Venice Beach. The hotel room costs over a thousand dollars for the night, by the way. Not that Tate Garrison even blinked at that price tag. He didn’t. He’s rich. And talented, and funny, and charismatic, and sexy, and built like a book cover model. See? I shouldn’t be drunk right now. With him. And Diana. His bed buddy and my best friend.
Diana is cool as a cucumber and without a care in the world. Being day drunk makes her cute and confident like she belongs in a five-star hotel with marble floors and a chandelier bigger than my car. She’s currently got one of her long slender arms draped across Tate’s broad shoulders and she’s holding my hand with her free one. I’m standing like I always do when I’m with these two, off to the side.
The hotel clerk, who looks like she should be on a runway for one of those designer brands lining the Rodeo Drive, isn’t fazed by a professional hockey player and two small-town girls in Target dresses booking a room for one night with no luggage. Maybe she’s seen this before but I haven’t. And it’s weird enough that it registers in my brain, but the tequila from the margaritas and the vodka from the martinis is numbing my ability to care. I need to sleep this off, even if it means sleeping in the bathtub while these two bang in the bed.
The clerk slides two key cards in a delicate paper envelope toward Tate. “Enjoy your stay at the Beverly Wilshire, Mr. Garrison, and do not hesitate to contact us if you need anything.”
“Thanks.” Tate winks at her with those ridiculous eyeballs of his. They were the color of my favorite crayon when I was a kid. Robin’s Egg Blue, which is really equal parts green and blue like the Caribbean Sea. I once drew him a Valentine’s Card and colored in the eyes of the guy on the front with that color. I never gave it to him, though. I wonder where it is?
“Where what is?” Tate asks.
I blink and realize we’re in the elevator and both Diana and Tate are looking at me quizzically. I guess I said that last bit out loud. God, I hope that’s all I said out loud. I ignore them and look around the small, yet glamorous elevator. It has old-fashioned mirrors and a carved wooden bench to sit on. “This elevator is fancier than my parents’ house.”
Tate laughs. Diana pulls me into a hug. “Wait until you see the room.”
“For eleven hundred bucks it better be a freaking palace,” I mumble as the elevator doors slide open and we all stumble out into the lushly carpeted hall.
The room, is in fact, designed like a palace with fine furniture, a marble bathroom bigger than my current bedroom in my teeny Silver Bay rental apartment. The bed looks like a freaking cloud, with a million pillows and a thick duvet. Too bad I won’t be able to find out how it feels. The bed is their domain.
I walk over to the blue velvet chair in the corner by the window that overlooks Tiffany’s on the corner of Wilshire and Rodeo. I lean over and push on the cushion. Seems comfy…
“What are you doing, Mal?” Tate’s drunk voice is better than his sober voice, and his sober voice is deep, slightly throaty, and warm like he’s got some sexy secret he’s sharing with you every time he speaks. But his drunk voice is all that with this tremor of… something dark. It’s delicious.
Just wondering if I crash here or the bathtub, I want to explain but I can’t because it would make things awkward. Even drunk me knows that. So instead I flop down on the chair and throw my legs up on the matching ottoman. “I need to sit.”
“Fair.” Tate chuckles and wanders away from me. Diana kisses his cheek as he passes her and then he disappears into the bathroom.
Diana flops down on the bed, like she’s belly-flopping into a pool, and immediately lets out a sinful groan. “Oh my God, this thing is beyond comfortable.”
“Cool,” I mutter and my eyes flutter shut.
“Get over here and try it out,” Diana insists. “Especially if you’re going to pass out.”
“Beds are for bed buddies. I’m just a plain, old, regular buddy,” I explain.
“You are ridiculous.” Diana giggles. “It’s not like Tate and I can do anything anyway. You’re right there.”
“I’m a heavy sleeper,” I reply because I usually am when I’m drunk. I wasn’t drunk enough most nights on this trip though, and despite being across the hall with the door of my bedroom firmly closed, I could hear Diana’s moans while she was hooking up with Tate the last two nights. Last night it sounded like she orgasmed three times.
“What?” Diana asks and her voice is closer, but I’m too tired to open my eyes and see if she got off the bed. “Why are your cheeks pink?”
“I’m drunk.” Which is true but also a lie. I’m blushing because I know that on the final round between her and Tate, at four in the morning last night, I masturbated to the sounds of them fucking, imagining it was me under him. “Anyway, sorry I’m crashing this potentially romantic night in a fancy hotel. I can Uber it back to his place alone. I’m a big girl.”
“How many times do I have to tell you,” Diana laughs, “Tate and I don’t do romance. We do sex. Sex with zero attachment or commitment.”
“Mmm… if you say so,” I murmur because sleep is tugging hard at my consciousness. This chair is actually pretty comfortable. “If someone made me moan that loud when I orgasmed, I wouldn’t take it casually.”
This time the chuckle is deeper and directly above me. Sobriety shoots through me like a bullet as I realize that one, I said that out loud, and two, Tate heard it. Luckily I have the common sense not to let my eyes fly open. I pretend I’m still sliding into sleep. My heart is racing with embarrassment, though.
“Mal? Mallory?” Diana calls to me but I act like I’ve died and don’t respond or even move. “She must have passed out.”
“I can’t believe she said that.” Tate chuckles and I hear him move across the room. “We should have been more quiet.”
“Whatever,” Diana replies airily. “She knew we were going to hook up when she agreed to come visit you with me.”
“Still. I don’t want to embarrass her,” Tate replies.
“Why did you never hook up with Mal? Is it because your parents hate each other?” Diana asks and I hear a sound that might be kissing as the conversation stalls for a second or two.
“I don’t care what ancient grudge my parents have with Chance and Hannah Echolls. We aren’t the Hatfields and McCoys. I have always liked Mallory. She’s fun and sweet and hilarious when she opens up.”
“Also easy on the eyes,” Diana adds helpfully.
“She’s pretty,” Tate agrees. “There is nothing not to like about Mallory Echolls. But I think she’s the strings type, which is cool. It’s fine. It’s great, even. But I’m not… and can we stop talking about this. It’s fucking weird.”
The conversation stops and I let those words sink into my brain. I’m strings. He’s stringless. But he likes me. He thinks I’m pretty. I like that much more than I should.
“I bet if you tried, she might be down for just one night with you. After all one night is better than no nights,” Diana states and I can’t control it. My eyes fly open. The room is dark. Someone has drawn the black-out curtains across the window. Neither of them is anywhere near me, at least I can’t see them, but I don’t dare turn my head and alert them to my eavesdropping.
“Diana…”
“No, listen, I’m not being silly or stupid or even playing a game here,” Diana says and there’s a firmness that seems to override the drunkenness in her tone. “We’ve said all along we aren’t anything exclusive and never will be. You can be with whoever you want, whenever you want. I won’t be offended.”
“Stop,” Tate commands and there’s a kissing sound again. “Let’s sleep off the booze, like Mal.”
There are a few more kissing sounds and a giggle and a slap and another soft giggle but nothing else. At least not while I remain conscious, but I drift off suddenly, alcohol finally winning the war.
I don’t know how long I’m out but I wake up feeling like I’m floating, while also pressed against a very firm, very solid wall. My eyes flutter open. The room is still dark and now even the late afternoon sun that had breached the corners of the curtains earlier is gone. I’m moving through the room in a horizontal position and I realize that Tate is carrying me.
“What’s happening?” I whisper, wondering if this is some drunken dream.
“You’re sleeping in the bed,” he whispers to me. “You looked like a pretzel in that chair. I’ll take the… floor.”
“The three of us could share,” I say, showing once and for all why drunk Mallory is a danger to herself and others. “I mean, the bed is more than big enough, even with you being the size of a small house. We can all play nice, right?”
“I can if you can.” Tate lifts both his chestnut eyebrows. “And you always do, don’t you, Mallory?”
“Play nice? Yeah, I do. I’m the nicest nice girl you will ever meet,” I ramble and then he’s leaning over and placing me gently on the bed. “Marriage material. Sweet and serious and all those things hot guys like you don’t find attractive.”
“Mallory…” he whispers my name.
“Shh!” I scold. “I’m drunk. Nothing I’m saying is supposed to be acknowledged… or even remembered.”
The bed is as comfortable as I thought it would be. It feels like being bear-hugged by a cloud. I moan as my whole body relaxes and I start to drift off again. Then I hear Tate’s voice in my ear and his breath against my cheek. “Tell me I can share your bed, Mallory.”
“You are welcome in my bed anytime,” I murmur.
He crawls over me, to the center of the bed. Now he’s the filling in a Mallory-Diana sandwich.
“Oh baby girl, if only that were true,” is the last thing I hear before I slip back into a deep, drunk sleep.
I wake up hours later, with a thick, slightly throbbing head. I’ve got my back to the rest of the bed and Tate’s big heavy arm is draped over my waist. I’m his little spoon, curled right into his torso like a needy cat, and it feels… like a desperate, irrational, impossible dream come true. I don’t move a muscle. I just close my eyes and enjoy the feel of his breath tickling my neck. But then, after a few minutes, I feel him inhale deeply and stretch a little, without really moving positions. His hand also stretches and flexes, his palm now flat against my abdomen, just below my belly button.
And he flexes his hips and oh my God his erection pushes into my left thigh just under my butt cheek. Desire floods my veins. I just felt Tate’s dick. I shouldn’t have, but I did. And, like it or not, I’m over the moon with happiness about it.
But then his lips are on the base of my neck, pressing purposefully. His hand, fingers extended across my abdomen, is sliding lower, toward the hem of my long sundress, which has bunched up under the covers and is gathered at the tops of my thighs.
Alarm, as thick and heavy as the desire I feel for him, courses through me. He thinks I’m Diana. That’s what’s happening here and I have to stop it. My hand moves to cover his before he can slip under the bunched-up fabric. “Tate. It’s Mallory.”
His fingers still. His breathing stops and then his lips lift off my skin so he can speak. I’m expecting an ‘oops’ or a ‘sorry’ but what I get are two words that will change my life forever. “I know.”
Prologue
Tate
This is crazy. Full-blown, deep-end crazy. I mean, I am breaking all my own rules. I don’t fuck around with women who don’t do one-night stands. Mallory doesn’t. She made that clear once in high school. We were all hanging out at Diana’s house. Diana and I weren’t hooking up yet, there were like ten of us just hanging out, playing cards, and being lazy bums eating crap food and drinking beers we snuck from Diana’s mom’s boyfriend’s stash.
Grady had just gone on a date with a girl and he was saying there was no spark. I said there didn’t need to be a spark to hook up. Mallory flat-out, in total seriousness, asked why you would want to hook up with someone you didn’t have feelings for. I said, “Because it feels good. Sex is fun without feelings and I don’t have time for feelings. I’ve got a career to start.”
She looked away from me. Diana announced that Mallory wanted, “Sparks and butterflies and true love.”
And that’s when I realized Mallory was off-limits.
I never let myself entertain the thought of being with her again. When she would join the gang at the lake in a tiny bikini, I would remind myself of that conversation. When she would smile at me and the light from a summer bonfire would make her hazel eyes glow amber, I would remind myself of that night. When she would say something so witty or downright funny that it made me grin so hard I could feel it in my chest, like my heart was smiling too, I would repeat that night in my brain.
She is not on the same page as I am. We want different things. She’s hot, smart, and sexy and I would love to fuck her, but she wants more and I don’t have more to give right now. Maybe never. I am yet to see myself as the settling-down type. Mallory is long-term or no-term, as her dating history has proven.
So why did I just kiss her neck and why are my hands all over her? And why am I harder than a steel pipe right now? I could blame the alcohol but that would be a cop-out. I’m a big boy and I know how to handle my booze. I also have a rule, which I have yet to break, that I don’t hook up with drunk girls (at least not the first time). I want their brains at full capacity so they know what they’re agreeing to. Mallory is not sober. And I know she isn’t agreeing to this.
That thought sobers me instantly and I start to pull away. But then she grabs my hand and presses it to her stomach again, keeping me in place. I freeze. She seems frozen too, like she may even be holding her breath.
“I… we shouldn’t,” Mallory finally whispers. “It’s crazy.”
“Stop overthinking it, Mal,” Diana says, and Mallory and I pull apart instantly.
Mallory sits up, turning her head to look at Diana, who is on the other side of me on the bed, on her side with her head on her elbow. Diana looks ridiculously calm and unbothered. “He’s attracted you, and lord knows you could use a great lay. Tate did you know in two years, Owen never made her come.”
“Di!” Mallory barks and immediately covers her flushed face with her hands.
“Oh come on, Tate is the closest thing you have to another bestie,” Diana replies, sitting up. “You confided in me, you can confide in him.”
This is definitely a powder keg of complications, but yet somehow I’m doing nothing to stop the situation or change the conversation. I feel like, deep down, something is shifting between us and if I play my cards right, I’ll get what I want. And what I want is Mallory. Right or wrong, I want her. Just once, of course.
“You never came with Jones?” I question, my eyes laser-focused on Mallory. Dear Lord, she looks hot as hell with her mussed hair and the spaghetti straps on her sundress hanging off her arms.
I always call her ex by his last name. I think she assumes it’s just a hockey player thing, she knows we all call each other by our last names a lot, but the fact is I never liked Owen Jones enough to call him by his first. Dude irked me from day one. And they didn’t date for two years. It was only twenty months. I know. I counted. Because he annoyed me.
“I did come,” Mallory confesses in a strained whisper like it physically pains her to tell me this. “Just not because of him.”
Now I find myself sitting up too. This is too interesting of a plot twist to take lying down. I turn my torso to face Mallory, blocking out Diana who is stretching her arms above her head.
“She had to play with herself or it was a no-go.”
“Jesus, sober you are going to have a lot of apologizing to do to me,” Mallory hisses at Diana and covers her face with her hands, again.
Diana reaches across me and tugs Mallory’s hands away. “Enough with this bullshit. I’m telling you, Tate’s a remarkable lay and I’m down with sharing. I mean, he’s not even mine to share but if I’m what’s making you say no, don’t. Watching you and him could be fun.”
Mallory’s mouth drops open and she stares at her best friend like Diana’s lost her fucking mind. I don’t because Diana and I have had a threesome before. This past summer with a girl who worked at Last Call, my uncle’s bar in Silver Bay. Diana is bisexual and told me flat-out, but I realize now she may never have told Mallory.
“What are you on?” Mallory asks Diana. “Because at this point, you must have taken more than a margarita to be suggesting this.”
Diana laughs and I glance over my shoulder to see her hands sliding down her body provocatively until they settle between her thighs over the dress’ fabric bunched there. “Life,” Diana announces. “I am high on life. And I think it would be fucking hot to touch myself and watch you two mess around.”
My head flips back to Mallory. And that’s when I see it. The way her pupils dilate. The way her hands twist in the duvet. The way her skin gets pink and almost dewy. The way she won’t look me in the eye and digs her top teeth into her bottom lip. She’s turned on by what Diana said. She wants me. This. Now.
I smile and a chuckle rumbles up. The sound is low and comes out of me in a way that isn’t funny. It’s… feral. Finally, Mallory lifts her eyes to mine.
“Are you seriously considering this?” she whispers, a tremor shaking her tiny voice.
“Considering making my gorgeous, fun, incredible friend, come?” I ask, and a prideful smile flickers across her lips before she bites it back. “If Di is right and you didn’t come from someone else’s touch the whole damn time you were with Jones, I would be honored to fix that for you.”
Mallory’s eyes flicker to Diana and I glance over and see my bed buddy’s fingertips are dancing across her thighs, on an upward trajectory to the apex between her legs.
“Mallory, eyes on me,” I say in a soft but commanding voice. She obeys. “Do you want me to make you come?”
“I… but I … I mean… you’re with her,” Mallory whispers, her face flaming red now.
She shifts her hips and I have to believe it’s because her panties are wet. Because she wants me so bad she’s already aching for it. Please, dear God, let that be the case.
Diana gets up stands at the foot of the bed, and says, her voice strong, “He wants to. I want him to. And you do too, Mal. Just admit it. Just this once.”
I reach up and place my hand against Mallory’s cheek. Her skin is hot and soft. Our eyes lock. I don’t rein in my hormones, I let them dance all over my face—the desire, the need, the lust I’ve had on the back burner for her since the day we first dared to break family protocol and talk to each other at the summer town fair where both our Dads were playing in a street hockey charity tournament.
She finally sees it, and more importantly, believes it. But she doesn’t say anything. Mallory just leans in and kisses me.
God, it’s good. Needy and urgent and fuck me, if the first touch of her tongue doesn’t make my blood pressure spike so fast my heart flutters in my chest. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anyone more. And the truth is I won’t even have her tonight. Not the way I want. This has to be just a taste. It may be all I will ever get, so I better do it right.
I respond, full throttle. My hand growing possessive and wrapping into her hair at the back of her neck. I lean my whole body into her, pushing her back onto the mattress. Somewhere in my brain, I know Di is watching this, but it doesn’t really register. All I can concentrate on is how good this feels.
We spend a long moment just making out, with my body over hers, my hips pushing down into her and hers pushing up into me. Her hands roam my back until they find the hem of my shirt and then she urgently tugs it off of me. When it falls to the floor, she shoves her hands into my hair and lets out this mewing sigh that lights every last hormone in my body on fire.
I grab her and move us in one bold, rough movement. Now she’s straddling me, sitting up. Her eyes dart to Diana who is on the chair Mallory had been sleeping on earlier—which feels like a decade ago now. I don’t want her to think about Di. I don’t want her to think about anything but me and how I make her feel, so I grip one of her thighs with one hand and lean up and cup a breast with the other. She gasps and arches into my touch, her eyes snapping closed. Good. Block out your friend in the corner, baby girl, this is only about us.
I want so badly to pull down the top of her dress, reach into her bra, and pinch her nipple between my fingertips, but I don’t want to expose her to Diana. I know they’ve been best friends since grade school, and have probably seen each other naked a million times, but this feels different. And I don’t want to share my first sight of what I’m sure are Mallory’s perfect pink nipples and round, perky tits with Diana.
So I fight that urge and instead slide my other hand under her bunched-up dress and press into the thin fabric of her underwear covering her hip. I hold her still and rub my hard aching cock against the space between her legs. She snaps her head down and stares at me with wide, wondrous eyes. I pull my upper body off the bed and move my hand from her breast to the back of her neck, pulling our heads together.
“You feel what you do to me, Mallory?” I move my mouth to her ear and against the shell I whisper, “Wanna know a secret? This isn’t the first time you’ve made me hard, baby girl.”
“Baby girl.” She whispers it, shocked, awed, enamored. I don’t give my bed buddies nicknames. It’s too intimate, so I have no idea where that just came from, but I have to admit I love the way she reacted to it. “Say it again, Tate.”
“Tell me I can make you come, baby girl,” I whisper in between licking and sucking the column of her neck. “Tell me you want me to make you come.”
“I want you to make me come, Tate.”
Oh my God, this is everything. Wrong or right. Good or bad. This is everything. Her fingers lace into my hair and her hips buck against my shaft making me ravenous with need for her.
Both of my hands are under the hem of her dress now, moving swiftly, fingertips skirting the lace edging of her panties. I want to slip my hand right into them, but I fight the urge and slide around to cup her ass in my palms instead. Her butt fits in my palms like it was sculpted to be in my grip.
“You okay?” I hate myself for asking but I have to know for sure this is still okay. “Say stop if you want this to end.”
“I don’t want this to end,” Mallory huffs out in a needy breath.
Diana giggles. She sounds far away. My head tilts and for a second I see her. She’s in the chair by the window, her legs spread, her dress hiked up and fingers dipped under the thin material of her black thong.
Diana is fingering herself while her bed buddy fools around with her best friend. The reality hits me with a start but then Mallory leans down and covers my mouth with her own. Her tongue seeks out mine and all I can do is flip her onto her back and kiss her until I can’t even remember my own name let alone where we are or who is watching.
My ache now is growing physically painful. I know I can’t fuck her here, now, probably ever, but my dick wants what my dick wants. I’ll have to give it a stern talking-to later. For now, though, I shift so I’m lying on the bed beside her, my back to Diana, and I reach for my button and fly. Mallory watches me and I can feel her tense up beside me. She might want to fuck me too, but she doesn’t want it here, like this, either. “He just needs a little more space. I promise he isn’t joining the party. This is about you getting off, not me.”
Undoing my pants gives me some relief and my cock pushes only against the fabric of my boxer-briefs, which helps a little. Mallory is staring down at the outline of it and she reaches over slowly with her hand, a fingertip pressing into the wet spot from my pre-cum.
Her eyelashes flutter and her tongue slips out across her bottom lip as she stares with abandon. She is fucking mesmerized by my cock and I swear to God something inside me sparks and catches fire like a faulty wire burning any hesitation to ash. I grab the back of her head and yank her into another kiss. She throws her leg on my hip and I grab her ass and grind against her like my life depends on it.
This horizontal humping session goes on for a while, and by the time I move my lips to her collarbone, Mallory is panting and, like me, has lost all sanity. “Touch me. Hurry. I already feel like I might come and you haven’t even touched it.”
“Touched what?” I ask, panting, playing dumb, but my hand moves over her hip and dances under the edge of her underwear just below her belly button. I make sure to keep the dress from moving too much, so it still covers her from Diana’s view.
“You know.”
“Say it.”
“Tate…”
“Say it, baby girl.”
“You haven’t touched my pussy,” she whispers feverishly. “Please, touch my pussy. I want to come from your touch.”
Mallory Echolls is my new favorite lay.
My lips bite down on her collarbone as my fingers dip into her underwear. I hear a muffled moan from the corner but I don’t dare look at Diana. I don’t want to think about her, only Mallory, and the wetness on my fingers as I explore the most private part of her beautiful body.
When my first finger slips into her she moans my name in a way that I will remember for the rest of my God damn life.
I have lost all rational thought. All self-preservation. All logic. This is going to ruin everything but I’m too greedy and horny to care. I push a second finger into her and slide my thumb over her clit. “This is too good to be true,” I whisper against her ear. “You’re too good to be true.”
Mallory responds by gripping my shoulder and lifting her hips, pushing into my hand. I rut my erection against my thigh, seeking any kind of contact I can. We kiss again, my mouth more urgent and demanding, whereas my hand is gentler but just as demanding somehow. My thumb keeps a steady rhythm of circles against her swollen clit. I have never wanted to taste a girl as badly as I want to taste Mallory right now. I want to yank those panties down, shove that dress up, and bury my tongue deep into her hot, wet heat. I want to worship her perfect cunt and let her come all over my face.
But the soft moans from the corner of the room make that impossible. Jesus, this is sexual purgatory. I’m caught between heaven, which would be having no audience and just being able to have my way with her, and hell, which would be not having Mallory at all. If purgatory is all I’m being offered, then I’m not turning it down for hell.
Her nails dig into the skin of my shoulder blades and she mews and cries my name. A whimper really. Her eyes are pinched close, her head tilted back, and I pump into her again and press my thumb into her clit, and growl in a voice I don’t recognize. “Break apart for me, baby girl. And look at me when you do it. Look at me, I need you to see me. And watch when I suck you off my fingers afterward.”
Her eyes fly open. So does her mouth. And a moan escapes as I curl my fingers inside her and rub that spongy spot… the one that so many men never bother to find. She goes rigid all over and then liquefies all at once. “Tate, oh God, you… I… yes…”
I watch her writhe and pant and whisper incoherent prayers and enjoy the feel of her body pulse and pull against my fingers. My cock jerks and shudders and I punch my hips against her thigh one more time and come. I come. In my underwear. Jesus Christ this woman just made me come like a middle schooler having a wet dream.
Mallory watches as my fingers slide out of her body. She follows my hand as it travels up to my lips and I open my mouth and suck her come off my fingers. She lets out a shaky breath and I savor the only taste I will ever have of her on my tongue and wonder how it will ever be enough.
And then I feel hands on my shoulders. Diana’s voice in my ear. “Boo. I wanted to taste, too.”
Diana’s undeniable presence is a cold bucket of water on this steamy dream we just lived. It hits me hard, and Mallory even harder judging by the way every muscle in her body tightens and she pulls away from me, scurrying off the bed like a scared kitten.
Mallory looks at Diana, blinks, and rushes into the bathroom. I turn and find Diana, her dress straps half down her shoulders, her breasts exposed, standing beside the bed. I roll off the bed and stand up. Diana cups the front of my underwear. “Ooh! What the… did you come? Was she touching you too? I couldn’t see. You guys didn’t give me a good angle.”
I slap her hand away, less forcefully than I want to, and turn away from her, racing to do up my pants. “Diana, stop.”
“Stop what?” Diana whines. “I just want my turn.”
I ignore her and rush to the closed bathroom door. I lean against the frame. “Mal? Please don’t freak out. Please.”
The door flies open and she storms past me before I can stop her. She grabs her purse and shoes, which are by the foot of the bed and walks quickly to the door. No, not walks, jogs. Runs.
“Mallory! Wait!” Diana calls.
“No.” Mallory’s voice is hard and unfamiliar.
“Do not freak out, okay?” I say again calmly, which is absurd because my heart is bouncing around my chest like a prize fighter dodging punches and I feel so filled with panic I’m lightheaded. “This was fun. That’s all. No need to lose it.”
“I am aware that you…” Mallory pauses and for a heart-wrenching second, I think she might cry. “I know that this probably isn’t the first time you’ve given a woman an orgasm in front of witnesses, but it’s the first time I’ve done… anything like this and… I just… it’s not who I am. I don’t… I… I regret it.”
“Don’t say that,” Diana whines.
“I didn’t… please don’t say you felt forced.” I think I might puke.
“No. I did it willingly and now I’m leaving willingly. Alone.” Mallory yanks the door to the hotel room open. “I don’t want to see… either of you again for a while.”
She disappears down the hall and I stand there, filled with nausea, watching the door slowly swoosh closed behind her. I cover my face with my hands before raking them into my hair. “Fuck.”
“She’ll get over it,” Diana promises.
But I know in my heart she won’t. I know in my heart I’ve ruined my friendship with Mallory Echolls. And any faint, silly, far-off hope that one day, when and if I was ever ready, the friendship would turn to more.
Fuck.
RELEASING MAY 28, 2024