Page 148 of Final Drive

Zane’s arm comes around me while Beckett crouches in front of me so he’s below my eye line instead of standing over me. He doesn’t touch me. I know him well enough now to know how much that restraint costs him.

“Say the word and we watch television.”

“I don’t want television.”

“Then tell me what you want.”

“That’s the one thing I can’t do right now.”

Beckett studies me for a second, then nods like I’ve given him exactly the answer he needed. “Good. Then don’t.”

He stands, takes the cup out of my hand, and sets it on the desk out of reach. It’s such a small decision to have somebody else make for me that the relief is almost embarrassing.

“Rules. There’s one word, and it isn’t no, because you’re going to say no to things you want out of habit and I’m not spending all night trying to guess which kind you mean. It’s hold water. You say that, everything stops. Not slows down. Stops.”

“Hold water.”

“Say it back to me at any point tonight and I’ll drive you to another state.” He looks at Zane. “Hollis.”

“Hold water.”

“Blake.”

“Hold water,” Cameron says from the window.

“Second rule. You don’t run this.”

“I don’t run anything anymore.”

It comes out with more behind it than I meant. Beckett hears all of it, but he doesn’t let me turn one night into the rest of my life.

“Tonight you don’t run this. That’s a smaller sentence, and it’s the only one I’m making tonight.”

Then he kisses me.

There’s nothing careless about it, but there isn’t anything tentative either. Beckett has kissed me a hundred times with an audience and made a joke out of almost every one. This isn’t that. His hand closes around my jaw, thumb tucked under the corner of my mouth, and he takes his time until my hands find his shirt and twist into it.

His bond comes alive under my sternum, flickering the way it always does, on and off and on, quick as a struck match. I feel the exact second it catches and holds.

The mattress shifts behind me. Zane’s hands settle on my shoulders and his mouth finds the top of my spine, and the sound I make disappears into Beckett’s mouth.

“There she is,” Zane murmurs.

Beckett doesn’t even break the kiss. “Hollis.”

“I’m being supportive.”

“Be supportive with your mouth closed.”

“That’s contradictory.”

Beckett finally pulls back, his forehead resting against mine while he breathes harder than he wants me to know. “Arms up.”

I put my arms up, and he pulls my shirt over my head while Zane gathers my hair before it can catch in the collar and drops it over one shoulder. Their hands don’t collide once. Three weeks ago they couldn’t share a doorway without turning it into a territorial dispute, and now they’re moving around each other like they’ve practiced.

I narrow my eyes at Beckett. “You talked about this.”

“I don’t know what you’re referring to.”