Revenge Kisses

by Addison Moore

  Ava and Grant take the seats next to me, and Harper falls onto my lap right where I want her, right where she belongs.

  “I am the lucky one around here.” I press a kiss to her cheek and linger. Every last square inch of this woman is so perfectly soft.

  “I’m Lucky.” Lucky smirks over at the two of us. “But for the sake of semantics, I’ll admit you’re pretty lucky too.”

  The waitress comes by with a round of drinks, and it’s Laney Capwell. “It’s on the house”—she gives a quick wink to Harper and me—“as a thank you for helping me find my dream home.” She leans in. “I just knew you two would work things out! And thanks to you, Baya and Bryson are already in escrow with the house down the street. Any time you want, all-you-can-eat fries are on me.”

  “I think I love you!” Harper says as she bubbles with laughter. “And I love him for sure.” She gives my ear a quick nip as Laney takes off.

  Lawson leans in and lifts his glass, and we do the same. “To another semester. May it be better than the last.”

  “Hear, hear!” I touch my glass to Harper’s. “It already is.”

  I look out at my sea of friends, at this sea of love, and I know we’re all damn lucky to have one another. And with Harper in my life, I’ll be feeling the love from here on out.

  The night wanes, and Harper convinces me it’s time to split by way of those heated kisses she’s dripping down my neck. Just as we hit the door, a familiar brunette with a face I see in the mirror stomps in.

  “Trix.” I pull her in and offer a spontaneous hug. “I’ve missed you.” There. That’s the truth. Our little experiment of spending more time apart has failed miserably and left me miserable in turn as well. “I still need your nagging, annoying, lovable as hell presence in my life, and I can finally admit it.”

  Trixie and Harper share a laugh and it warms my heart, and just as quickly breaks it because Trix hasn’t quite warmed up to her yet.

  “I’m sorry.” Trixie shrugs as she looks to Harper. “I was mean and nasty, but I love my brother. He’s the other half of me.” She bites down on her lip the way she does when she’s about to cry, and I panic for a moment. As history has proven, whenever one of us cries, the other is not far off. It’s biology, genetics, or lousy timing—take your pick. “I guess it kills me that he sort of looks at you that way.”

  Crap. She’s got me. It’s true. “Hey—in no way are you being replaced. I love you. And just because I have room in my heart for one more person doesn’t change that.”

  “Wow,” she marvels, blinking back tears. “Who died and made you the king of mush?”

  “So, we’re good?” Harper gives Trixie’s sleeve a quick tug. Her eyes are glittering with tears too.

  “Yes.” Trixie makes a face. “You know, I never really liked Janelle. I don’t know why, but we never clicked. Maybe you and I can hang out sometime—without the giant toad following us around. I’m in Cutler Tower, so maybe you could meet me at Hallowed Grounds once in a while? I’ll tell you all those deep, dark secrets Knox is too ashamed to let out.”

  “Don’t you dare.” I glance to Harper. “Not that there are any.”

  “I’m definitely taking you up on it. And by the way, I’m in Prescott Hall. I’m sharing a room with an old friend of mine.”

  Trixie’s eyes explode in size. “I thought you two—”

  “We’re not living together,” I offer. “Harper thought it was best to take things slow.”

  “I’m all about the mysteries and mud masks, if you know what I mean.” She winks at my sister. “Plus, I’ll probably still be at his place more than mine anyway.”

  “Like every night.” I frown at my sister. “So don’t use that key I gave you, just in case.”

  “Eww.” She looks as if she’s ready to puke. “Well, I’d better get in there. My new roommate is already on the prowl, and I have some catching up to do.”

  A groan comes from deep within me. “No, Trix. Stay away from the boys. The guys in there are animals.”

  “It’s true.” Harper laughs as if she knows firsthand, and she does. “They’re all hungry, ravenous bears, and they’re hungry for human flesh—especially young, tasty girls with long legs and big—”

  “All right”—I wraps my arms around Harper—“this is my baby sister we’re talking to. Let’s keep it G.”

  “I’m no baby.” Trixie eyes the crowd as if she’s going in for the kill.

  “Whoa, slow your roll. This isn’t high school. You’re not going to run in there and tease some poor kid to death. These boys move fast and you don’t. I want to keep it that way.” I know for a fact Trixie is a virgin. She’s saving herself for love, not giving it away to any idiot she sees. “Stay away from the frat boys. Hell, stay far away from the jocks. And whatever the hell you do, don’t come near those eligible idiots I hang out with. You need a nice kid—someone untarnished by life, and there’s no one who fits the bill at Briggs. Sorry, sis. You’re out of luck.”

  Trixie’s mouth opens slow in some incredulous sarcastic smile as if everything I said was laughable. “Maybe you’re the one out of luck, Knox. I’ll see you both later.” She dives into the crowd, and I lose sight of her. A part of me wants to dive right in there, wrap my arms around her and keep her safe from all the hurt, all the psychos in the world, and that’s just the dudes at Briggs.

  Harper inches me to the door. “Boy, you are going to die a slow and agonizing death when she finally finds the one.”

  “Not true. I happen to know for a fact Trixie’s personality is inhospitable to the male species. There’s no way she’s finding the one at Briggs. She’s a castrator, a walking dominatrix. No dude is going to want to hand over his balls just because she says so. I’m safe right through grad school with her. Trust me on that.”

  Harper bubbles with a laugh as we step out into the balmy night air. A floral perfume replaces the scent of pizza and beer as the rowdy bar gives way to the final Saturday night of summer vacation.

  “It’s been a long, hot summer,” Harper moans low and sexy as hell, and my balls ache just to hear it. “Sylvia is in desperate need of a massage. Do you think Will might be able to help her with that?”

  “Will is already up and looking forward to it. I might sneak a few kisses to Sylvia myself.”

  “Sylvia will most definitely hold you to it and to her. She happens to have a mean crush on you, but don’t tell Will. They seem to have a pretty good thing going.”

  “They do, I agree.” I spin her around until we’re standing in front of the mascot of the establishment, an old oversized black bear that stands more than ten feet tall. “I think we have a pretty good thing going too. How about a quick selfie for old times’ sake?”

  She whips out her phone and snaps it. “Done and done.” Her thumbs dance across the screen like lightning, and she holds up the caption for me to see.

  “Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Girl seeks revenge. Boy gets girl back. Revenge zero. Love plus two. Hashtag scariest photobomb ever.” My chest rumbles over her as we share a quiet laugh. “It’s perfect. Just like we are.”

  “We are perfect, aren’t we? Isn’t it ironic something so whole and beautiful came from something broken? If our relationship with the two that shall not be named kept plodding along, we never would have been linked the way we were.”

  “By hatred and fueled by revenge.” I nod into this. “The universe sure has its mysterious ways. I think it’s a good lesson. Next time things look like they’re in the shitter, it might just be the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”

  “So essentially—hard to see at the moment.” Her cheeks turn bright pink. “Confession. That first night at the mixer when you were making me insane—I thought you were a perfect specimen. And it turns out I was right as usual.”

  We share another laugh and I scoop Harper up and carry her down the street, bouncing her in my arms as we share kisses, and hopes, and dreams.

  With Harper near me, all of my hope
s and dreams have already come true.

  I can’t wait to see what the future holds.

  I know for a fact I’m holding my future.

  ***Read Red Hot Kisses (3:AM Kisses 15) Rush and Trixie’s story NOW!*****

  Preview of RED HOT KISSES

  (3:AM Kisses 15) Addison Moore

  Edited by Paige Maroney Smith

  Cover Design: Gaffey Media

  Copyright © 2017 by Addison Moore

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to peoples either living or deceased is purely coincidental. Names, places, and characters are figments of the author’s imagination. The author holds all rights to this work. It is illegal to reproduce this novel without written expressed consent from the author herself.

  All Rights Reserved.

  This eBook is for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this eBook with another person, please purchase any additional copies for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Copyright © 2017 by Addison Moore

  Hot and Bothered

  Trixie

  “Rushford Knight is a hearty meal, and this girl is starved for a bite of that beefcake,” shouts a starry-eyed blonde with a Go Mustangs T-shirt tied in a knot at the base of her triple D knockers. Her lusty soliloquy elicits the giggles of the sorority hos surrounding her as they strut by in their matching six-inch Fork Me heels. I happen to recognize the lusty, busty ditz shouting the proclamation above the noise and the music. It’s Miranda Smirnoff—no relation to the vodka fortune, has always been a year ahead of me in school, thus the fact she’s a sophomore to my freshman at Whitney Briggs University. She was a special little gem at our old high school that everyone worshipped—a gem that put out on the regular. She’s essentially a skank, and, seeing that she’s at Briggs where skanks are a dollar a dozen, she’s now more common than a fruit fly.

  “Disgusting,” I snip as I lean toward Sunday, the beefcake in question’s sister. She’s a stunner, and it’s not just because she won the genetic lottery. Sunday has a beauty vlog that eats up her week and our nonexistent bathroom storage space with the truckload of cosmetics necessary to make her the web success she is today.

  Sunday and I are cellmates doing time together at Cutler Tower for a sentence of approximately four long years. As fate, or perhaps the collective efforts of our overprotective brothers would have it, we scored one of the few rooms in Cutler that comes furnished with the birth control loft beds. And since the aforementioned beds are entirely engineered of balsa wood and chewing gum from the coeds of yore, there’s no way either of us is getting any action in that thimble of a dorm. Not on those rickety beds anyway. The carpet came equipped with a series of mystery stains that resembled a sanguine bodily fluid, and that quickly ruled out any rug action for either of us as well. And the bathroom? It makes the restroom on a plane look like a cavernous shopping mall you could lose a small child in. Hey, they don’t call it Chastity Tower for nothing. My brothers smiled for a week once they were apprised of my assignment.

  Both Sunday and I are new to Whitney Briggs and all of its superfluous sexual cavorting, thus the trepidation we shared in showing up tonight at this thorny, horny frat house to begin with. Beta Kappa Phi is pumping with hard rock music so loud that it’s rattling the walls and windows. Not to mention the fact there’s enough cologne and perfume to ignite an asthmatic in just about anyone.

  The coeds continue to crowd Rush as each one offers a salacious smile, just begging to be his pick for the evening. Rushford Knight, Sunday’s older although not wiser brother, is a known sexual assailant who has the girls at WB lining up around the block just to have a quick bounce over his pogo stick.

  I can’t help but smirk. “Such a nice little cult your brother has going.”

  Sunday belts out a short-lived laugh as she tosses back her strawberry blonde hair. There’s a gleam in those lemon-colored eyes that suggests she knows it’s true. “It’s fake news and alternative facts, I tell you. And if you go around spreading rumors, I’ll tell everyone your formal name is Beatrix.”

  “Ha!” I bark out a laugh at the moniker-based threat. I’d shout it from the rooftop myself if I thought anyone really cared. But Rush? I don’t have to start rumors. We both know his reputation is wrecked on all seven continents. “Please, that boy has a female following that spans three state lines, and you know it. Hate to break it to you, princess, but your big bro has become an inadvertent clap-trap around these parts.” Not to mention the raging malignant narcissism that takes over his body whenever he offers those bedroom eyes and crooked smile your way. Sure, Rush has a face that every deity in the universe would gladly bow down to, but that boy’s reputation precedes him in every single demented dimension and dominion.

  I spot my own big brothers from across the room and give a wild wave. Rex is older than me by four years, and he happens to be tonight’s star quarterback for the Whitney Briggs Mustangs.

  Knox, my twin, older by a few minutes, is my doppelganger in male skin, same inky black hair, same marbled violet-blue eyes. He was tonight’s star linebacker that brought home the win, so the entire school—read the entire female population—is exuberant to be in his presence. But as it stands, both of my big bros are taken.

  Sunday leans in as we spot them headed this way. “Is it ever not weird?”

  I frown as I look directly at the weirdness itself. Rex happens to be madly in love and dating our new stepsister, Scarlett. And, at the moment, she has her arms lassoed around his waist, letting the masses know that the school’s star quarterback is very much taken.

  “Quasi-incest is never not weird.” I shake my head just as Knox and his girlfriend, Harper, get to me first. I offer my twin a giant hug, happy to note that he’s showered and dressed in clean dry clothes, absolving himself of the sweat attack he had on the field. “Well done. Looks like it’s official—you’re Whitney Briggs’ favorite mascot.”

  “Very funny,” Harper snarks, stealing a hug of her own. Harper Shelton is one of those girls whose beauty isn’t even at a human level. I’m not sure what my brother did to the universe to get someone like her to even look twice his way, but lucky for him it worked heavily in his favor. Actually, my brother didn’t have to do a thing. He’s gorgeous and sweet and has a heart of solid gold. Harper and her beauty queen looks are simply lucky he chose her.

  “She’s just up to her old Trixies.” Knox offers a sly wink at the play on my name.

  “Hey, have you guys seen my sis?” Harper hikes up on her tiptoes trying to scan the crowd.

  “Harley?” Sunday hikes up on her tiptoes as well and joins the search. “She’s here somewhere with Serena.”

  Serena is Sunday’s cousin, who also happens to be Harley’s new roommate. Serena was a Barnes’ girl—as in the all-girls school down the road, but she quickly came to her senses before landing a single stuffed animal in her dorm and hightailed her not-so-innocent self to this testosterone driven side of town. I can’t say I blame her. WB beats Boring Barnes any day of the coital week.

  “Who are we looking for?” Rex comes up with that killer grin of his, and I wrap my arms around him tight.

  “You did great! I’m so super proud of you!” I squeal as I offer up a bionic squeeze.

  “Hey”—Knox pulls me back—“how come he’s great and I’m the mascot?”

  “Because I know how your mind works.” I glance to Harper. “Trust me, he’s mascot material.”

  Scarlett breaks up the party and offers up a hug of her own. Scarlett Kent, my recent stepsibling acquisition, is a redheaded beauty with precision cut features and a presence that commands attention wherever she goes. Her father married my mother a while back, and she and her siblings have been a permanent fixture in our lives ever since. And have I m
entioned she’s just that nice? I guess I can’t fault my brother for falling for his legal sis. Yes, it’s weird, and definitely gross, and seeing how perfect the two of them are together, it was as unavoidable as gravity.

  Sunday bounces in her shoes. “Speaking of great big brothers—here comes mine! He’s off-limits by the way.” She says that last part while smacking me over the arm.

  Both Rex and Knox bark out a laugh at the thought.

  “She’s right.” Rex sobers up real quick and pegs me with a look that says keep away or grab a shovel and dig your own grave.

  Knox shakes his head. “Like that would ever happen. You’re my baby sister. Rush knows better than to even look at you crooked.” He leans in with that smug look I’ve never appreciated from him. “Every dude on campus knows better than to look at you crooked.”

  He pulls Harper in, and she wrinkles her nose. “Besides, he’s too much man for a girl like you.” She fans herself as if the same were true for her. “Heck, he’s too much man for every girl in this school combined. Rush should come with a warning sign on his forehead.”

  Our little circle erupts in laughter. Too much man, my ass. But then, that is what his thirsty ego would want the masses to believe, isn’t it? As if. Rush Knight is too much of a man tramp for me to ever look at twice.

  Knox sobers up right along with Rex. “Trixie’s a good girl. She stays out of trouble.” He gives my shoulder a tweak, and I scowl at him. He so knows how much I hate it when he talks about me as if I weren’t in the room. “She’s outright boring when you get down to brass tacks.” He gives a little wink, and I avert my gaze.

  Scarlett wipes a tear from her eye from laughing too hard. “Trixie doesn’t want a player. Trixie doesn’t need a player.” The emphasis in her voice cites her incessant need to treat me like a six-year-old. Scarlett doesn’t have a little sister, so technically, I win. Or more accurately, lose. I scowl over at her redheaded eminence. She’s not the only one who can toss around an emphasis.