Page 256 of The Lies We Play

“I know,” I say.

She lets out a shaky breath. “Stop being emotionally competent when I’m naked. It’s unsettling.”

I smirk. “Noted.”

I lean down and kiss her.

Not to quiet her. To tell her I heard every part. The want. The limit. The fear that a limit might cost her something.

It doesn’t.

When I pull back, Halston’s gaze is already on mine. Something passes between us. A decision. A question. A need with nowhere clean to go.

His hand moves to my jaw.

For a second, I think he’ll kiss me.

Instead, his thumb brushes my lower lip, slow enough to make Liv’s breath catch.

Hal leans closer, his mouth almost touching mine. “You know what I want.”

I do.

Fuck, I do.

My hand slides to the back of his neck. “Say it.”

Liv’s breath catches again. Her eyes move between us, need and tenderness tangled together across her face.

Halston’s jaw flexes.

“I want you inside me,” he says, and the words come out raw enough to strip the room down to skin and breath. “While I’m inside her.”

Liv makes a soft sound.

My whole body goes tight.

Halston’s thumb is still on my mouth. His eyes are dark, exposed in a way he almost never lets himself be.

I kiss him then.

Hard.

Not because I have to take charge. Because he asked for something true, and my body has no other language big enough to answer. He opens beneath me with a rough exhale, and Liv’s hand comes up to my back, holding me there, pressing me closer to him as she lies beneath us, watching us love each other for her too.

When I break the kiss, Halston looks wrecked—just how I feel.

Liv reaches for both of us, one hand on my arm, the other at Halston’s chest. “No condom,” she says, and the blush that follows is immediate, fierce, adorable. “We’ve done this. Nothing’s changed. I’m still on Depo. We’re still clean.”

Halston’s mouth curves against her cheek. “You rehearsed that.”

“I condensed it for efficiency.”

Halston kisses her, and while he does, I reach for the lube. He is still watching me when I slick my fingers, and there is no shame on his face. Only want. Only that dangerous, trembling restraint that makes me want to give him everything and ruin him slowly enough that he remembers who did it.

I touch him first with my hand on his hip, grounding him.

“Tell me if you need me to stop,” I say.