Page 18 of Mischief Mayhem
“There’s no look,” I said, my voice entirely too squeaky to be believable.
“Who were you in there with?” Wheels asked, his smile widening.
“It could have only been Lore or Hollywood,” my brother added, narrowing his gaze at me. “But I saw Lore leaving with Cassie later in the night, so . . .”
“Hollywood is on a celibacy streak,” I quickly added. “I kicked him out after he won the pot.” My phone buzzed, drawing my attention, and thankfully, Ru’s name appeared across the screen. “I have to take this.” I got up and walked down the hallway to my room to answer it. “Hey, what’s up?”
“Hey, any chance you came come by the Beacon later today? We’re finally picking out marble, and I want to make sure I get the one you said to get last time.”
“Sure.” I clenched my eyes against the barrage of images assaulting my hungover brain. Hollywood whacking off. The sound of his deep moan. The way his lips formed around my panties.
I gasped. My panties!
He still had them. Either that or they were in the side room, lying on the clubhouse floor.
Fuck, this was a mess, an utter disaster. It could have been anyone in the club, and it had to be him?
“V?” Ru asked. “You still there?”
“Yeah.” I brought my attention back to reality and finished the conversation with my friend before hanging up and leaning back against my door to slide down to the ground.
Fuuuccckkk . . .
I didn’t know what to do now. Should I text him? He hadn’t reached out to me. Did he even remember? Did I want him to? I might be better off leaving well enough alone. If he didn’t bring it up, I wouldn’t . . . just like last time.
My cheeks flamed harder as I remembered the fifteen-year-old version of myself—young and naive and sheltered by three older brothers that hadn’t let a boy so much as look at me, let alone date me. I’d gone to my first house party as a freshman. The juniors and seniors were already drunk by the time I got there, but I’d gone to school with most of these people all my life, so it wasn’t the first time I’d seen them wasted.
I’d spotted Hollywood as soon as I walked in. At seventeen, he hadn’t prospected for my father’s MC yet, so he went by his given name, Matt Hudson. He was already the most attractive person anyone in Madison County had ever seen, so he got spoiled by any woman he met. No one said no to Matt Hudson, and anyone on his arm was a lucky bitch.
Of course, I knew better. He was my brother’s best friend, the one that fucked girls with little abandon, the one that bragged about his exploits at our dining room table like it was celebrity gossip. I’d heard stories about the asses he’d fucked and the mouths he’d destroyed, and I wondered how much of it was hubris. But to see the way the most popular girls hung over him, he’d probably been telling the truth.
Sometime later in the night, after I’d had a lot to drink, I agreed to play Seven Minutes in Heaven. This was my first party, so I wasn’t sure of the rules. In the first round, I ended up blindfolded and stuffed into a closet in one of the upstairs bedrooms with promises that Teddy, a boy I’d been crushing on since fifth grade, would arrive soon.
Time dragged agonizingly by, and my heart pounded while I waited for him to join me, panic ripping through my veins. Perhaps he didn’t want to spend time with me. Perhaps he didn’t even know who I was.
Why did I agree to play this stupid game anyway?
After what felt like a year in that tiny space, I decided they must have been playing a cruel joke on me. No one was coming. They were all standing out there laughing at me, the idiot freshman who fell for their?—
The door opened and I gasped, straightening as I jumped back.
“She’s already in there,” someone said before shutting the entry.
Teddy’s scent hit me next—deodorant, cologne, cigarettes, and whiskey. Musky. It wasn’t what I associated with him, and up until that point, I didn’t know he smoked.
“Are you here?” he whispered, and I thought I recognized the voice as his.
“I’m here,” I whispered back, relieved he’d come at all.
A hand grabbed my shoulder, sliding down my arm to my palm, where rough, callused fingers intertwined with mine and lifted to his mouth. He kissed my knuckles, softly . . . tenderly . . . like he knew who I was and wanted to worship me. A tremble shot down my body as I raised my palms to his face, touching the cloth around his eyes. He, too, had been blindfolded, but he grabbed my hands and brought them back to his shoulders, taking a step closer to me, backing me up against the bare wall at the end.
“You’re shaking,” he murmured.
“I’ve never kissed anyone before,” I blurted like word vomit. I hadn’t meant to say it. Now he’d think I was some naive virgin who hadn’t even had the nerve to kiss someone, let alone spend seven minutes in a closet with a blindfold over their eyes.
“Now, I know that’s a lie.” He chuckled, and the sultry laugh sounded familiar . . . too familiar. Not like Teddy, but perhaps deeper. I ignored those suspicions, trying not to psych myself out. “But it’s okay. I’m good at that part.”
With no other warning, he cupped my chin and connected his lips to mine. They were soft and demanding, and oh, a delicious sensation shot down the back of my legs and up my spine. I was fifteen and I had never really kissed anyone, so I had nothing to compare it to. Our connection escalated to making out, his big palms massaging my tits, and eventually, he kissed his way down my throat and over my chest, kneeling in front of me.