God, the way he was talking was so sexy! So crazy and wild and sizzling fucking hot.
“You’re… going to take it… whenever…”
“No,” he interjected, gliding a thumb over my clit. The movement caused me to buck so hard my ass left the leather seat. “Say that you’re ours.”
“I’m yours,” I repeated breathlessly.
“Whose?”
“All of you. Any of you.”
“When?”
“Whenever you want,” I gasped. “However you want…”
He kissed me again, swirling his hot tongue past my hungry lips. I sucked on it gently. Sifting my fingers into the mass of hair at the back of his head, I pulled him even harder against my face.
This is fucking CRAZY.
“I’m your girlfriend,” I said, when the kiss was finally broken. “I want to be your girlfriend…”
“You are.”
“And you’ll be my boyfriends,” I reiterated, as the butterflies exploded again. God, it all sounded so strange! So unreal, so foreign, so incredibly heat of the moment. “All of you. The three of you, together...”
I was bucking and grinding now, against his entire hand. Roderick’s mouth was locked tightly over my left breast. His hands were touching, cupping, caressing. His tongue was driving me crazy.
“My God,” I swore out loud. “You keep this up, I’m gonna co—”
“Shit. Oh SHIT.”
The words didn’t come from either of the guys alongside me. It came from the front seat.
“GOD DAMMIT!”
My eyes fluttered open, even as the car surged beneath me. Bryce was gunning the engine. Racing us recklessly up the driveway, hurtling the car toward the looming shape of Southhold Manor.
It took me only a split-second to see why.
“OH NO!”
Something was on fire.
Thirty-One
RODERICK
I flew from the car before it even rolled to a stop, and hit the ground running. Even so, Camden was ahead of me. He was always fast. Even before his training.
“Get the water!”
The blaze before us wasn’t the manor itself, thank fucking God. It seemed localized to a single pallet of material. A shipment of lumber brackets, used mainly for cross-bracing. Even so, it was a big one.
And it was right next to a half-dozen other pallets, filled with all sorts of similarly combustible materials.
“HURRY!”
Camden was already gone, sprinting out in a wide arc toward the nearest water hookup. I could only pray that a hose was still there. The crews working on the garden renovations had been moving them to the back of the construction site. If they hadn’t returned them…
The heat from the fire grew hotter as the flames licked the sky. With the wind picking up, it lit up the entire front of the mansion with a hellish, orange glow.
“Roderick!”
Karissa’s voice carried over the roar of the flames. I spun in a circle, unable to locate the source of her cries.
“WHERE ARE YOU?”
No answer. I peered again, but the smoke was making it difficult to see.
“KARISSA! WHER—”
Bryce ran up beside me, stopping just short of the burning pallet of lumber. His hands were opening and closing helplessly. The look in his eyes was murderous.
“We have to find her!” I shouted into his ear. “She might be in—”
“HERE!”
I whirled and there she was, dragging the mother of all fire extinguishers. The thing was at least as long as her leg. I didn’t even know where she got it.
“Help me…”
Bryce and I grabbed the thing, and together we ran for the fire. I pulled the pin. He directed the discharge nozzle, and I squeezed down hard on the trigger.
WHOOSH!
A thick white powder exploded from the end of the nozzle, filling the whole area with smoke. We advanced together, into the heat. We sprayed the base of the pallet first, then worked our way up the side.
But the flames were just too much. We were barely making a dent.
Damn.
“I’m here!”
Camden’s cry was labored, like he’d just run a marathon. He was dragging a contractor-grade hose, stretched out behind him. Relief crashed over me as I realized water was rushing forth from the end of it.
“Hit it from the other side!” I yelled. “Bryce, help him!”
Karissa was already on it, grabbing the center of the hose and pulling it in the right direction. The resulting slack helped Camden move quickly. He put his thumb over the nozzle to widen the spray, and began soaking the pallet from the opposite end. Gradually, over the course of a minute, the flames began dying down.
“Stay with it!”
The flames licking sideways were gone, and so was the danger of the fire catching on somewhere else. The heat dissipated as the fire began to die.
YES!
I didn’t breathe again until I knew we were in the clear. When it was finally more smoke than flame, I said a silent prayer to the patron saint of firefighters. If there actually was one.
“Fuck…”
I sprayed until the canister was dry, and no more powder came out. Camden eventually dropped the hose.
“That could’ve been bad,” Bryce muttered.
“No shit.”
“Really bad.”
I shook my head, exhaustedly. “I know!”
“I mean, we just got here in time,” he said. “That thing had to have been set just minutes ago.”
The realization was sobering. It forced me to look around.
“It’s okay,” Karissa declared, walking toward us from the smoldering pile of charred wood. “I just checked it. It’s totally out.”
Camden stood behind her, nodding vaguely. “Still. If we hadn’t been here…”
“But we were here,” I said thoughtfully. “And maybe that’s significant.”
“What do you mean?”
The voice came from Karissa, who looked like she’d been through a war. Head to toe she was covered in soot, her red dress gashed all the way open on one side. Her hair — which had been so pretty at the beginning of the night — was a particularly spectacular disaster.
“You look like hell,” Bryce joked.
“Thanks.”
“I mean your hair—”
“Wasn’t set up for a night of dancing and firefighting,” she growled dismissively. Turning again, her eyebrows narrowed as eyes locked on mine. “What did you mean by significant?”
I tried spitting out the taste of the flames, but eventually realized it was a futile effort. All of a sudden I wanted my toothbrush.
“I mean we got here just as the
