Page 33 of Lovefool

Axel cups his hands around his mouth. “Boo. You’re boring her, Cap. Who’d want to talk about work at a party?”

“I happen to think work is interesting, thank you very much. And unlike you heathens, I’m not trying to scare her off ten minutes in,” Crew retaliates.

Foster—who I’m beginning to think is the resident troublemaker of the group—links his fingers together and cracks them. “Let me show you how it’s really done.”

Shit. What happened to baby steps?

When I glance over at Sutton, his cheeks are dusted in a light shade of carnation pink, and he squeezes my shoulder, which may or may not be voluntary.

“Harlan, truth or dare?” Foster asks, his lips quirking into an untrustworthy grin.

Poor Harlan pauses, stuttering like a satellite getting recalibrated.

Self-doubt simmering on the back burner, his last-ditch effort to save face is not in vain. “Truth,” he chooses, narrowing his eyes at his teammate.

Honestly, it takes balls to resist peer pressure.

Intrigue seeps into my synovial cavities like liquid silver, cooling, hardening. I take a page out of Harlan’s book and act before I think, snuggling closer to my own personal heater despite the numerous eyes on me. When I’m with Sutton, my thoughts are nothing but shipwrecked pieces of debris.

“Where’s the craziest place you’ve ever had sex?”

Harlan’s whole face turns a shade away from death, rendered speechless by his friend’s betrayal. No layman’s terms for the sexually inept, just a cold, hard question. I take it that Harlan is more private with his personal life than some of his friends.

The underside of his neck grows red. “Um, I don’t know, a bed?”

Foster pretends to tsk in disappointment. “A bed? That’s it? Not the back of your friend’s minivan in the Wendy’s drive-thru at three in the morning?”

“Oh my God, were other people in the car with you?!” Harlan exclaims.

“That’s not important. What is important is that we get you pumpin’ in other places than your bedroom. The couch, the shower, the kitchen table.”

I think all these options—while pretty tame—are starting to give Harlan hives. I love some public sex myself, but it’s not for everyone. One time I had a quickie in the elevator of an old hotel because it had a million floors. The guy I was with just pressed all the buttons, went to town, and prayed that nobody was stupid enough to use a death contraption from the 1900s for transportation.

“People eat off of that.”

A rumble of a laugh stirs in the pit of Sutton’s chest and vibrates through me, and the hydrated crackle in his throat opens a floodgate of hormones inside of my body that I have to bat away like pesky inconveniences. His bergamot smell—compounded by that impressive mullet curling down his nape—is bound to make me lose my panties by the end of the night.

The chatter of the party falls on deaf ears, muffled underneath my current daydreaming detour. If I hadn’t gotten stupid wasted, I could be riding his cock like a cowgirl in the back of his car.

There’s a light jab in my side that shears the fantasy away and brings me back to the present. Merit is in the hot seat now, mulling over the pros and cons of each avenue before ultimately choosing dare.

Harlan seems like a pretty reasonable guy. I doubt he’d dare her to do anything borderline dangerous.

“I dare you to kiss the hottest person in the room,” Harlan says.

A smile breaks over Merit’s lips, and she leans over to share a kiss with Crew while the party explodes into hoots and hollers. It’s teeming with passion, but it isn’t clumsily urgent. It’s calculated, rehearsed. They kiss like they have all the time in the world—like they’ve learned to quell their baser instincts to make room for unconditional love.

Merit now focuses on my not-boyfriend with dark, kohl-slathered eyes. “Sutton, truth or dare?”

I feel his whole body stiffen, almost as if he wasn’t expecting to be picked on. When he glances at me for reassurance, his whole expression screams help me.

I’d put him out of his misery if I could. Sutton has never struck me as the type to enjoy party games.

“Truth,” he blurts out, intentionally—or unintentionally—giving our bodies some room to breathe.

Merit, thankfully, takes a page out of Harlan’s book and keeps the interrogation to a minimum.

“Do you have a crush on anyone?” she inquires, failing to smother a smile when Crew rubs his hand back and forth over her shin. The two are so disgustingly obsessed with each other that I simultaneously loathe and love them.