Page 710 of One More Kiss

Talia turned her head and narrowed her eyes. “Swill? What is this, some saloon in Deadwood?”

“Don’t judge me. I’ve been binging weird shit on HBO to get out of my own head,” Lexi shot back.

“Next thing you know you’re going to start sounding like Al Swearengen and call everybody cocksuckers,” Talia warned.

“Sounds like you’ve been doing some binging yourself,” Lexi said with a satisfied smile.

“I like the simplicity of it. Clean up the bloodstains, throw the body to the pigs. The good old days,” Talia said with a wistful sigh.

“You guys think you could hang up the chaps and six-shooters and join us here in the twenty-first century, please?”

“I warned you about that shit. It all arrived at the party in a backpack. You never drink shit with no label that came out of a backpack,” River said, despite having both earbuds in.

“At least it wasn’t Crux’s backpack. For all you know, with the access he has, he could have liquified remains or some shit,” River said.

Time to get this conversation back on track. “You had to have been blitzed out of your mind to do the middle school bump and grind with the medical examiner’s son. I don’t care how good-looking he is. Have you forgotten that his mother knows just what to do with the body?”

“No, I haven’t forgotten.” Snapping her laptop shut, she tossed down her earbuds and took a big gulp of her coffee. “I just, I don’t know, wanted to live dangerously for a few minutes.”

I raised my cup and took a small sip, testing the temp on the off chance the coffee had been set to boil. Monty was a cheap son of a bitch and still hadn’t replaced the one unit with the rogue burner despite the complaints and threats to sue. “Never drink shit that comes out of any backpack. Even with a label. We’re better than that. We come from powerful, successful families. Don’t bring us down with that kind of desperation. You want to live dangerously? Lose the incognito window on the home WiFi and watch some porn. Replace the mayo in your burger with toothpaste.”

Talia shivered and scrunched up her nose. “That’s vile.”

“Yes, and could potentially ruin her favorite food for life. That’s commitment.”

Lexi ran her fingers through her smooth blond hair and looked around the table, but never really at us. “Look at us, having an inane conversation and avoiding the elephant in the room.”

River’s mouth pinched and she glanced around. “You know we can’t talk about it.”

“Not that,” Lexi said, rolling her eyes. “I’m talking about the body they found.”

“What body?”

“I’m not supposed to talk about that either,” River said.

“Wait, what the hell is going on?”

“Not here,” River said, her eyes shifting around the room, her mouth tight. She slid her laptop into her bag and tucked her phone in the front pocket of her hoodie. “Meet me in twenty at The Underground. Go to the back door and knock three times slow followed by five quick knocks. Tell Gunnar to bring you to the hive.”

“What the hell is…” But before I could finish, River slipped from the booth and took off out the door.

“Damn, she’s been holding out on us,” Talia said, gathering her stuff.

“Yeah, she has. And apparently has a whole underground system with secret knocks and hideouts. She’s got some explaining to do,” Lexi said, her words sharp and bitter.

And I’d been holding out on all of them. I’d never told them what happened that night. Every time I lay in my bed at night, in the dark, I turned over the events in my mind. The way he touched me, how his unskilled and rushed movements mirrored the clumsy college guys killing any desire I had to be touched. Not that he’d gone far, but it didn’t change how the two forever linked in my mind.

Instead, I focused on his screams. His desperate, ragged breaths. Thick blood soaking through his jeans and pooling in his groin. Night after night, I languished in the fantasy of blood and pain until it was the only way to make my pulse race.

The only thing that could make me wet and wanting.

He changed me that night. A worthless bottom-feeder barely touched me, but he changed me. I loathed him for having that power. For callously altering my course.

For stealing the way back to who I was before.

Comfort eluded me. These new desires whispered to me in the darkness, relentlessly hammering at me, willing me to submit to them.

A knot of tension formed between my shoulder blades and wariness shimmered through my gut as our tight unit tipped on its axis.

The secrets standing between the four of us made us weak.

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