Page 40 of To the Grave

Not that I’d told Jace that. He’d made me suffer. He could wait.

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

I was glad they left it at that. Jace didn’t have an opinion and I wondered if it was hard being back, wondered how much he’d suffered while he’d been away, because he’d definitely suffered, I could see it in his eyes.

I forced myself to swallow my sympathy for him. He’d chosen to disappear — to pretend to be dead. I hadn’t had a choice in the matter. He’d known he would come back eventually. I’d been completely in the dark, forced to sit with the reality of never seeing his stupid gorgeous face again, never feeling his arms around me or his body on mine.

My pussy throbbed with the memory of our insane fucking in the kitchen the night he came back. I was hungry for him —for all of them together again — but not ready to give in to the primal demands of my body.

Not yet.

They did the dishes while I retreated to the sofa in the living room to knit. Later, they joined me and put on a movie — something with a lot of shooting and explosions — and I settled into a relaxing food coma. I didn’t want to admit how nice it was to do something as ordinary as sit in the living room, the TV flickering over their faces while they made comments back and forth.

Otis sat next to me on the couch, leaning forward to tinker with one of the antique mantel clocks that wasn’t working while he listened to the movie. I was mesmerized by his fingers as they manipulated the tiny wheels and levers. I knew what those fingers felt like inside me, could recall the memory of his calloused thumb on my clit while he finger-fucked me.

I shifted, trying to quell the pulsing in my cunt, and glanced at Wolf, sitting at the other end of the sofa.

Big mistake.

He was restringing his guitar, his arms flexing as he twisted the pegs on the neck. He was completely oblivious to my stare, focused on the task at hand, but I felt like someone had lit a match at the center of my body.

What the fuck was wrong with me? It had only been a few days since my steamy night with Wolf and Otis at the inn — and Jace had fucked me so hard in the kitchen the night before that I was still sore — but I was horny as fuck.

I looked over at the chair next to the sofa and found Jace staring.

Not at the movie. At me.

His green eyes blazed with hunger, a smirk playing at the corners of his full mouth.

Like he knew exactly what I was thinking. Like he was thinking it too.

Maybe it was having them back together again, knowing what they could do to me when we were all naked. Maybe it was knowing Jace was alive, the dull ache of my grief replaced with the fire of anger and indignation at what they’d put me through.

I didn’t know, but whatever it was, it was pretty inconvenient. I’d been determined to make them pay, determined to keep my distance, for a while at least. Now I felt like I’d be lucky to make it to morning without fucking them all until their dicks fell off.

Chapter 29

Daisy

Aweek later I was sneaking around the back of the high school with Wolf and Otis, trying to stick to the shadows.

It was after midnight, the big lights around the brick building casting large circles of light on the grounds. We avoided them as we made our way to the back entrance, the one I’d used with Cassie and Sarai on the few occasions when we’d skipped class to go to the river. Blackwell High was too small to bother with security cameras, but we didn’t need someone passing by on the street to see us and decide to call the police.

“Jace should be here,” Otis said.

“You know that wouldn’t be smart,” Wolf said.

I was torn. I understood why Jace had decided to stay out of view — there would be way too many questions once everyone in town realized he was still alive, and attention was the last thing we needed right now — but Jace was already in a weird place. We hadn’t talked alone since he’d come back, but I could tell he was struggling and I wasn’t sure isolation was the best thing for him.

“I hope he shows up,” Otis said as we approached the back door.

Hewas Dylan Jeffries, some guy the Beasts — and Blake — had known in high school that now worked as a night janitor.

“He’ll be here.” Wolf glanced at his phone. “We’re a couple minutes early.”

We huddled around the back door, breath emerging from our bodies like clouds of smoke in the chilly October air. It was almost Halloween, the store windows in town decorated with cobwebs and orange lights and black spiders, something that had only added to the creepiness of sneaking around at night.

I shivered and Wolf reached out to rub my arms. I didn’t object, both because I was cold and because I’d been dying to feel his hands on my body, to feel all their hands on my body.

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