Page 174 of Rising Heat

“You doing okay over there?” Tyler asks, leaning in just enough that I know he knows exactly what’s happening.

“Great,” I swallow. “Totally great.”

“You look a little warm.”

“It’s crowded.”

Tyler’s laugh brushes my ear.

I grab the menu off the table just to have something to focus on as Mack’s thumb traces a slow circle on my clit above my panties.

I am going to die in this booth. People will have to explain this to emergency services.

“I’m gonna look at appetizers,” I announce to absolutely nobody.

Tyler’s hand slips beneath the hem of my skirt to rest lightly at my hip as I lift the menu in front of my face, and at almost the exact same moment, I feel Mack ease my panties aside.

Both of them.

In a booth…with our friends. At the table.

These are the choices I’ve made.

I stare at the appetizers section with the kind of concentration usually reserved for final exams while Mack slides a finger in my slick center. Tyler follows a different path, taking over for Mack’s thumb and rubbing with the kind of pressure that is going to be a genuine problem in the next thirty seconds if they don’t⁠—

My grip on the menu tightens.

Nobody is looking at you.

You are sitting normally.

You are a normal person having a normal time at a bar. You are absolutely not about to⁠—

Mack adds another finger with maddening patience while Tyler never breaks his rhythm, and my entire body locks up so suddenly I have to disguise the sound that escapes me as a poorly timed throat clear.

My free hand clamps around Mack’s forearm beneath the table, my knuckles turning white against his shirt.

Tyler doesn’t miss a beat. He slips an arm around my shoulders and pulls me into him, kissing me right there in the middle of the booth, his mouth swallowing the sounds I’d been seconds away from making while my body gives out in one sharp, dizzy wave that leaves me gripping the edge of the table trying desperately to resemble a functioning person.

Oh my god oh my god oh my⁠—

Tyler pulls back slowly, his thumb brushing once across my jaw before turning back toward the table like kissing me senseless in the middle of a bar was a perfectly normal thing to do. Underneath it, Mack’s hand settles back onto my knee with two light pats.

I look over just in time to catch the corner of his mouth lifting over the rim of his beer.

Cocky bastard.

Coop is openly staring at us. Even Marco’s looked up from his phone, and across the table Bex is watching me over the rim of her drink with an expression I’ve known since we were twelve.

Oh, no.

“Well…” Coop says.

“Coop,” Mack warns.

“I wasn’t going to say anything.” He raises both hands. “Darcy, you good over there?”

I just had an orgasm in a public booth. I am, in every conceivable way, the furthest a person has ever been from okay.