Chapter 278: 278 | Take Her to the Special Place
Addison stared at me. Three full seconds. The lollipop clicked against her teeth. Her fingers stayed frozen at the lace top of the stocking where I’d told her to stop.
"Fine."
She dropped onto the couch beside me. Before I could process what was happening, she swung both legs across my lap. The stockings were warm against my thighs through the denim. Her weight settled there, casual, completely at odds with what her body was doing to my pulse.
She leaned back against the armrest, one elbow propping her up, and looked at me with those violet contacts that couldn’t hide the genuine heat building behind them.
"What do you want to take off then, Jace?"
My name in her mouth sounded like a loaded gun with the safety off.
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t, actually, because Addison had already moved past waiting for a response. Her hands came up to her own chest, palms flat against the black lace of her bra, and she cupped herself with slow, deliberate pressure that made the overflow of her 36F bust push upward against her fingers. She kneaded once, then again.
Her head tipped back just enough to expose the line of her throat where two thin silver chains caught the light from the string lamps outside the window. Her lips parted around the lollipop stick and she pulled the candy free, setting it on the coffee table without looking. Her eyes never left mine.
The kneading continued. Her thumbs grazed across the lace where her nipples pushed against the fabric. The contact made her breath catch in a way she tried to hide by biting the inside of her cheek.
She wasn’t performing. That’s what hit me. Belle performed, played the role of the seductress because it gave her control. Aurora performed because she loved being watched. Addison wasn’t doing either. She was showing me something real and daring me to look away.
I didn’t look away.
"Or." Her left hand dropped from her breast. She brought it to her mouth and dragged her tongue across three fingers, slow and wet, coating them until they glistened in the warm light. The sound was obscene and she made zero effort to disguise it.
Her tongue was pink against pale fingers with black nail polish. The visual was so pornographic that my brain temporarily forgot how to operate the controller I wasn’t holding anymore.
That wet hand traveled down her stomach, across the flat plane of her abs where a tiny silver barbell piercing glinted in her navel, past the waistband of the black lace panties, and pressed directly against herself through the fabric.
"Or bottom?"
Her fingers moved once. A single slow circle that made her eyelids drop to half-mast and her hips shift against my lap. The lace darkened where the wet fingers pressed. I could feel the movement through the stockings draped across my thighs. Every nerve ending in my lower body woke up simultaneously and started sending very aggressive messages to my brain about priorities.
Aurora made a sound beside me. Not surprise. Recognition. Like she’d been waiting for this exact moment since the ferry ride to Ventura, since the lingerie store, since the first time she’d mentioned Addison’s name and watched my face for a reaction.
"Jace."
I needed Aurora’s permission for this. Not because I was afraid of pissing her off, but because I wasn’t about to blow up the delicate social architecture I’d spent days building. One wrong move would shatter the dynamic between the three of us and leave me worse off than when I’d started.
I looked at Aurora. She sat cross-legged on the couch in her sports bra and shorts with her orange hair spilling over one shoulder. The playful spark that usually lived in her green eyes had been replaced by something deeper and more focused. She watched me the way you’d watch a performance you’d been waiting months to see.
"Take her to the special place."
My mouth opened before my brain caught up.
"Alone," she added before I could ask.
I studied her face. This wasn’t jealousy. This wasn’t Aurora being territorial or testing me or playing some complicated game I didn’t understand yet. This was her giving me a green light with neon arrows and a fucking instruction manual.
Next to me, Addison’s fingers continued their slow circles through the black lace. Each exhale came out with a tiny sound attached to the end of it. The death metal still played from the portable speaker but the volume had dropped low enough that the growled vocals sounded almost soothing from this distance.
The TV’s character select screen cycled through idle animations. The abandoned controller sat on the coffee table next to a half-eaten lollipop and Aurora’s empty coffee jelly cup.
"You sure about this?"
Aurora reached over and touched my face. Her palm pressed warm against my jaw. Her thumb traced along my cheekbone with surprising tenderness. She leaned in and kissed the corner of my mouth so softly it barely registered as contact. Her lips tasted like strawberry gloss mixed with whatever champagne she’d been nursing during the game.
"I’ll have my time when you get back."
The sentence contained a promise and a permission slip and an instruction manual all at once. Aurora pulled back and settled into the couch with a calm that was either genuine contentment or absolutely Oscar-worthy composure. She tucked her legs beneath her and reached for the TV remote like the evening was just getting started rather than fundamentally changing shape.
I turned back to Addison.
She watched the exchange between Aurora and me with her wet fingers still pressed against herself. Her chest rose and fell with breaths that had grown noticeably deeper. The flush that started at her collarbones now reached her cheeks.
Beneath the heavy eyeliner and the goth armor and the permanent scowl, something raw and wanting lived in her expression. She looked like a girl who’d been dared to jump off a cliff and had already committed to the leap but hadn’t hit the water yet.
I held out my hand.
