LOGINNora’s POV The knock at two did not sound like a question. Miles opened the door with his own key card. David had not thrown the latch. I was still in the dress, half off one shoulder, asleep on top of the covers because taking it off had felt like admitting the night was over. “I said I would not wait in the hall,” Miles said. David’s voice came from the chair by the window. He had put his slacks back on and nothing else. “Then get in the bed or take her down the hall. Those are still the options.” Miles did not take me down the hall. He pulled the dress the rest of the way off me and dropped it on the same chair as the jacket and the boutonniere. I was bare and sore and already wet again from waking up to his voice. He shoved his boxers down and climbed over me. David watched from the chair like this was the second half of a speech he had started on the dance floor. Miles pushed into me in one stroke. I was still open from earlier. The sound I made was small and wrecked. He
Nora’s POV “Four twelve,” David said. He did not wait for Miles to answer. He opened the door and put his hand on the small of my back and I walked in because my legs had already decided. The room was dark except for the city leaking through the curtains. King bed. Chair by the window. The door clicked shut and then it did not stay shut. Miles came in behind us without knocking the first time. He shut it himself. “You said first,” Miles said. “You did not say alone.” David shrugged out of his jacket and dropped it on the chair. “Then watch. Or wait in the hall. Those are the options.” Miles did not go to the hall. He leaned against the desk with his arms crossed and his boutonniere still crooked and his eyes on my mouth. David turned me. “Zipper.” I reached back. He pushed my hand away and pulled the zipper down himself, slow, from the top of my spine to the low curve of my ass. The dress loosened and stayed on because he wanted it on. He peeled the straps down my arms until
Nora’s POV “I am cutting in.”Mr. Kane did not ask my date. He did not ask me. He put his hand on Miles’s shoulder, waited the half second it took Miles to look at him, and then he took my waist like the song had always belonged to him.Miles’s jaw flexed. He let go of me anyway. That was the part that made my stomach drop. He walked off the floor toward the bar without making a scene because this was his cousin’s wedding and his father did not make scenes. He just took things.The last slow song was already halfway gone. The reception had thinned. Someone had dimmed the lights over the parquet and the band was dragging the chorus out like they got paid extra for it.Mr. Kane pulled me closer than a father of the groom’s side was supposed to pull his son’s girlfriend.“You have been avoiding me since the ceremony,” he said against my ear.“I have been with Miles.”“You have been with Miles in my house for six weeks. That is not the same thing as being with him.” His hand sat too low
Quinn“Brooke.”The name is on the screen and Miles is still inside me. The phone glows on the coffee table like an accusation. I reach for it. He catches my wrist and pins it to the cushion and thrusts so deep I forget how to grab anything.“Leave it,” he says against my mouth. “She is in Denver. You are on this couch.”He does not pull out. He never got on the floor. He fucks me through the light of her text, slow filthy strokes that make the leather kiss my stomach. I can see the preview without opening it.Flight still grounded. Love you. Tell Miles I said night.He reads it over my shoulder and laughs once, quiet and mean, and drives in harder.“Tell Miles I said night. You can tell me in the morning with my cum in you.”“Get off me.”“No.”His hand covers my mouth again. He hooks my thigh higher and starts using me like the house belongs to him. The blanket slides off the couch and hits the rug. Cool air on my ass. His sweats are around his thighs. My shorts are gone. Every thru
Quinn.“I will take the floor, Quinn. You take the couch.”Miles says it in front of Carol like he is a good man. Brooke’s fiancé. The one with the ring already bought. The one whose flight-sister is stuck in Denver until morning. Carol smiles and hands him a spare pillow.“Such a gentleman,” she says. “Brooke picked well.”I should correct him. I should sleep in my own room. The couch is in the living room because the guest bed is a pile of laundry Carol never finished. I sit on the cushions Brooke picked last Christmas and pull the blanket up like that will save me.He makes a nest on the rug. Close enough that I can hear him breathe. Carol shuts off the hall light.“Night, you two. Lock up in your heads. I am dead.”Her door closes. The house drops into that fake quiet houses do when everyone is still awake behind wood.I stare at the ceiling. I have wanted him since Brooke brought him home in July. I have no right to want him. I keep my hands on top of the blanket.“You asleep?” h
SADIE. I left the door unlocked. Three nights in a row I “forgot” something of his on purpose. Monday it was the grey hoodie I slept in with the sleeves pulled over my hands. Tuesday it was the practice tee I wore to brush my teeth so he would see it if he passed the hall. Wednesday I put the twelve back on after Mom went to bed and lay there in the dark waiting for the hinge to move. It moved. Reed stepped in and shut the door with his shoulder. No light. Just the shape of him and the quiet click of the lock. “You are not even trying anymore,” he said. “You told me to leave it open.” “I told you I would collect what you steal. You keep putting new ones out like a trail.” He stopped at the edge of the bed. “Sit up.” I sat up. The jersey hung off one shoulder the same way it had at breakfast. He grabbed the hem and pulled it over my head in one motion. Cool air hit my breasts. He dropped the twelve on the chair with the hoodie and the tee he had already taken back the nights be







