Page 83 of Code Word
“More than boyfriends?” He chuckled. “Like what’s the next level?”
“Best friends. Lovers,” I said, then cringed at myself. “I dunno. We’re just together. Like together-together. Boyfriends works by definition, but does it feel... lacking to say that?”
“Lacking?”
“Well, yeah. It’s not strong enough. We would technically be boyfriends, dating, exclusive, I dunno. I don’t like labels.”
He sat up. “Okay, wow. You just?—”
I sat up too. “Okay, wow, what? Was the wow at the boyfriend thing or the exclusive thing? Because, Luke, I absolutely one hundred percent am not sharing you with any-fucking-one.”
Luke laughed, took hold of my face, and kissed me. “I’m not sharing you, either.” Then he made a face. “Well, I’m kinda sharing you with my sister, but not at the same time.”
“What?” I pulled back. “Ew. No. Luke, what the fuck?”
“I just mean that you and her have... well, you’ve?—”
“Okay, stop. I’ve already told you what we did. I can’t change that. But we never... Becca and I, we?—”
“It’s okay, Blake. She told me.”
“Told you what?”
“That it wasn’t . . .”
“That it wasn’t what? Good? Did she say it wasn’t good? Oh my god.”
He barked out a laugh. “No. She said it wasn’t love. She said the intimacy part wasn’t earth-shattering because the emotional connection just wasn’t there. And she said it wasn’t... frequent.”
“Oh wow. Not earth-shattering. That’s great. Tell me,when we go to family dinners, will there be scoring cards like the Olympics diving?”
Luke laughed again, seemingly unfazed. “I dunno. I kinda feel better after talking it out with her though. Like it’s all out in the open. I don’t want secrets or her thinking we can’t talk about it.”
“Well, there are some things I’d rather you don’t talk about. Not earth-shattering? Did she really say that?”
Laughing, he pushed me down on the lounge chair, crawled over me, and kissed me. “I told her we haven’t done much, but what we have done has been pretty fucking good.”
“Oh dear god. You told her that?”
“Yep. And she said of course it would be, because we have an emotional connection.”
“Well, yeah. Of course. But did you have to tell her that?”
He chuckled, not horrified at all, and kissed me softly. “And I told her we had plans to do a whole lot more and I’d keep her posted.”
I gasped. “For the love of fuck, Luke. Noooo.”
He laughed, but then ran his nose down my neck, back up to my ear. “I will defend your honor,” he murmured, his voice low and warm. He sucked my earlobe in between his lips. “I will prove her wrong.”
I shivered and my breath caught, my brain short-circuiting. “That’s great,” I said, panting. “Is that a sibling rivalry thing? Because I gotta say, you win.”
He chuckled, and his warm breath sent another wave of shivers through me, my whole body a trip wire. With my hands on his hips, I pulled him down onto me as he kissed my Adam’s apple.
“Holy fuck,” I rasped. I was getting hard, my body wanting, needing, unable to get enough of him.
But then he stopped and met my eyes, his smirk filthy. “I’m hungry,” he said. “Get up and put a shirt on. We’re going down to the bar at the end of the beach.”
Then he crawled off me.
