Kiss Me Twice Part 1

by Lauren Hawkeye

  I grinned. I was all for true love, which made my gaze wander back to Mal, ignoring the bickering going on behind me.

  Yeah, no doubt about it, he looked good, and I was admiring that he looked good. I just didn’t know what, if anything, to do about it.

  Three people naked in a bed... yeah, there was going to be some accidental touching. Maybe even some not-so-accidental.

  But even apart from not knowing quite what to make of these feelings?

  It took a huge amount of trust for Adele to enter into a relationship with two men, given that it was two men who had taken such horrible advantage of her. She didn’t entirely realize it, but Mal and I spent a lot of extra energy making sure that we focused on her, and did nothing that would freak her out.

  If that focus shifted? I wasn’t sure how she’d deal.

  “Want a granola bar?” Mal peered over his shoulder at me as he tucked a few snacks into his backpack.

  “Thanks, mate.” I held out my hand, but instead of tossing it to me, he walked it over. Our fingers brushed, leaving a spark in their wake, and I met Mal’s eyes, startled to find a hint of answering heat mixed in with the wariness.

  Mal didn’t jerk away either, regarding me thoughtfully before returning to his task. I turned my attention back to my band, only to find four sets of very curious eyes.

  I didn’t rise to the bait, instead just glowering and tearing open my granola bar. “Hurry the fuck up, Pax. If this is the way you do foreplay, it’s a wonder your girls don’t die of old age before you get them to come.”

  A muffled snort of laughter sounded from Malachi before the raucous jeers from Wyatt, Levi and Mercedes. Pax shot me the fingers, then leaned back, stretching, placing his hands behind his head.

  The move made his massive muscles bulge.

  I wasn’t not attracted to it.

  What the fuck was broken in my head?

  “So you remember the gig we played at Java the Hut a while back?” Pax smirked in my direction. I remembered it only too well—it was the night I introduced Adele to the rest of the guys.

  The night I first had sex with her.

  The night all three of us were together for the first time.

  “Well...” Forgetting about drawing out the suspense, all but bouncing up and down in his seat, Pax looked around before he continued. “When I was updating the website last night there was an email.”

  “Was it another sonnet about Wyatt’s eyes?” I grinned at Wyatt, who rolled the eyes in question before shooting off his own insult.

  “No, it was the receipt from AllThingsAnal.com.” At this, the most serious member of our band grinned, and I couldn’t help but bark out a laugh, even as my gaze darted to Mal quickly.

  Don’t even go there, Marshall. Just... don’t even.

  “Shut the fuck up.” Clearly not pleased to have his thunder stolen, Pax rushed on, his words tumbling over one another. “It was the bloke behind Quarry Music Management. He wants to chat with us about an offer of representation.”

  “Huh?” That got my attention. None of us had to ask what Quarry Music Management was; they were a small company, but they represented some massive names.

  We were all silent for a moment as we processed this, and I could feel the blood start to pump through my veins.

  “Did you check it out? Was it really him?” Levi twined his fingers through Mercedes’, a slight frown marring his expression.

  I knew exactly how he was feeling.

  Pax, who not only maintained our band website but had some legit hacking skills, nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah. I traced it back, and it looks like it came from the Quarry server. Plus he’s not asking for money or anything. He just wants to meet up with us and talk.”

  “Damn.” This was Wyatt, who took off his glasses and rubbed his hand over the bridge of his nose. “Quarry represents InkSlinger. Adam Kincaid.”

  “Fuck yeah, they do.” Pax sat up straight, cracking his knuckles. “He said he’s been following us and another college band—some guys called Random Acts of Crazy out of Boston. But he wanted to talk to us first.”

  He looked directly at me. “He said he’d been on the fence over who to pursue, but your rendition of Three Little Words that night sold him. And if we sign with him, he wants to set up a tour and a video shoot right away. Something cool that he thinks he can get to go viral.”

  “Wow.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say, though my mind filled with the exact memory that he was referring to.

  I’d stood on that little stage in the coffee shop where my girl worked, right after Adele and I had first had sex. I’d watched her snuggle up with Mal, saw that she was just as much his as she was mine, and had known that I’d do whatever it took to be with her... even if that meant I wouldn’t have her all to myself.

  Turning my head slightly, I looked across the room and meet Mal’s eyes. He remembered that moment, too.

  It had seemed so simple then, if three people falling together was ever simple.

  And now? I wondered as another lick of that heat passed between us.

  Life was about to get a hell of a lot more complicated.

  The caged excitement between the rest of the guys tried to tear my attention back to the moment, and I couldn’t help but feel the same way.

  This was it. This was why we’d toured so relentlessly, why we moved halfway across the fucking world to pursue our dream.

  But...

  “So what do you think?” I found myself asking Mal. I could feel the energy of the rest of the group shift, and it made me uncomfortable.

  They were liberal dudes—and knowing that Mercedes put those stripes on Levi’s arm told me that she fit right in. But the world was set up two by two, not two by three.

  I got the sense that if my relationship interfered with our big break, it would not go over well.

  Mal shrugged, though I could see the shadows that appeared in his eyes. “How long would you be gone? I’d probably just stay with Adele while you were away.”

  This caused a bolt of jealousy to shoot through me. It was completely irrational, because I was supposed to trust both of them equally.

  But the notion made me feel... left out.

  “How long?” I repeated to Pax, who narrowed his eyes at me as if daring me to disagree with what he was about to say.

  “Two weeks, give or take.” He nonchalantly chugged the remainder of the beer in his hand.

  “We’ll have to talk to Adele.” I threw this back at Mal. I heard the slightest noise of protest from Levi, and turned to glare at him.

  Fuck this. I’d found a person—people—who made me happy, and I wasn’t about to do anything to fuck that up.

  “But we—I mean she—wants this for you.”

  I didn’t miss the way Mal corrected himself, and I didn’t care for it. It was a Freudian slip, showing me that just the notion of something upsetting our equilibrium made him want to retreat.

  “What’s Mercedes going to do?” I demanded of Levi.

  He tugged on her hair, and opened his mouth to reply, but she covered his lips with her palm, answering for herself. “I’m going to come with you guys.”

  There was no hesitation, no asking the opinion of the rest of us. She was Levi’s woman; of course she was coming.

  For a moment, I wished that things could be so certain for Adele, Mal and myself.

  “We will all get paid.” Pax tossed off a sum that made my jaw drop.

  Holy fucking shit.

  That kind of money—Mal and I could move out of this hellhole. I could afford new equipment.

  I could buy Adele a ring.

  Whoa there... Tearing my eyes from Mal, I nodded at Pax. That was a craziest fucking thought I’d ever had... but still.

  “I’ll talk to Adele.”

  Chapter Two

  MALACHI

  Usually I liked my night classes. I enjoyed sitting in the lecture hall long enough to really dig down into the material, and I always seeme
d to retain the material better in the evening.

  But tonight I was distracted, big-time. I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that Dorian was going to potentially be away for a solid chunk of time.

  Part of me—a part that I wasn’t particularly proud of—was shouting at me that this was the perfect time to make a full play for Adele.

  But that wasn’t sitting right, and though it made me really, really uncomfortable, I couldn’t lie to the innermost part of myself.

  I didn’t like the idea of Dorian not being around.

  I hadn’t missed the pointed looks of the other guys in the band that afternoon when Dorian had asked me what I thought about him leaving. Pax and Wyatt were single, and took full advantage of the girls who were dying to fuck a guy—any guy—from Three Little Words. And Levi had Mercedes, but she’d left home and seemed to be living the adventures she’d never had by travelling around with him.

  They didn’t get it, what Dorian and I had with Adele. They really didn’t get the bond between us two guys. And they’d never forgive Dorian if he held back from this opportunity.

  Hell, I didn’t want him to hold back, and while it was his place to tell Adele, I already knew that she wouldn’t want it either.

  This was Dorian’s dream. Neither of us would stand in his way.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.” The professor striding up to the front desk had to be over six feet tall in the heeled knee high boots she was wearing. Everything about the dark-haired, middle aged woman was severe, from her pencil skirt to the tight way she pulled back her hair, and when she wheeled her gaze around the room I felt myself unconsciously sitting up straighter in my seat. This was not an instructor that I wanted to piss off.

  “Welcome to Introductory Constitutional Law. I trust you have downloaded your outline for the semester. As you can see, there will be two midterm exams, and a final exam, each worth twenty-five percent of your final grade. You will also see that you will have three research projects to complete. These three projects together will account for the remaining twenty-five percent of your grade. These projects will be completed in pairs of my choosing, and you and your partner will receive the same grade.”

  She cast another of those scary looks around the room, and I found myself momentarily taken aback. Jesus. Was it really necessary to lay it out so harshly?

  “Listen now as I call out your partners, who have been assigned randomly, just as you may one day have to work with someone who is not of your choosing in a court of law. I will not accept requests for different partners. Let me repeat, I will not accept requests for different partners.”

  Rolling my eyes internally, I busied myself flipping through the course notes that I’d downloaded before class, listening with half an ear to the names being called. I was not looking forward to an entire semester with this woman.

  “Enson, Peter and Block, Marguerite. Murphy, Annika and Keller, Susan. Hunter, Malachi and Price, Emma.”

  “What?” Jolting, I almost shouted, an outburst that wasn’t at all typical for me. But...

  Surely that was a mistake.

  “Is there a problem, Mr. Hunter?” The professor looked down her nose at me, and while I registered that it was kinda creepy that she knew my name already, I felt my face flushing at the outburst.

  “No. No problem.” Sitting back down, I twisted in my seat.

  It couldn’t be her. That would be the flukiest thing ever.

  Probably there were lots of girls out there named Emma Price.

  But the little prickles on the back of my neck told me that I wasn’t that lucky. My eyes scanned the lecture hall, searching for that perfect blonde ponytail... and there it was. On the other side of the hall, middle of the section.

  Icicles formed in my veins. Emma fucking Price.

  My ex-girlfriend. The girl I almost proposed to. Sitting right in the same fucking lecture hall as me.

  My partner for the semester.

  Oh, fuck.

  Clearly embarrassed though displaying none of the shock that I felt, she cast me a little finger wave. I nodded in return, slumping back down in my seat, ostensibly to pay attention to the Prof. But in truth, I heard very little of what she had to say over the next three hours, which pissed me off, because I was paying a boatload of money to this school to pay attention.

  Still, by the time we were dismissed, and the students started holding up sheets of paper with names written on them, looking for their partners, I’d calmed down. A little. Yeah, this was going to be really freaking weird. But we were adults. We could handle it.

  But thinking that didn’t help me dislodge the tight ball of dread that had formed in my stomach as I crossed the room to where Emma was still sitting, packing up her book bag.

  She smiled up at me tentatively as I approached, and I couldn’t stop the words that left my mouth.

  “What are you doing here?”

  She reared like I’d slapped her, her ivory skin flushing dark pink. “That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?”

  I was instantly irritated, and even more so because I knew that was a shitty thing to say. I tucked my thumbs into the pockets of my jeans, rocking back on my heels, studying the woman I’d almost married.

  She was as pretty as ever—tall and slender, with boobs that were always just a nice handful, and what I knew firsthand was a very nice ass. Her skin was still soft and creamy, complemented by classic golden hair and sapphire blue eyes. I could remember all too easily why I’d been attracted to her—I’m a guy, after all.

  But the last time we’d been together, I’d been under the impression that I would never see Adele again, and had been hell bent on moving on.

  Now?

  I couldn’t look at another girl and not miss the fire of my woman’s hair, the strength beneath the fragility—everything that made her, her.

  It probably wasn’t nice to say that to my ex, though—the ex that I had to work with for the rest of the semester.

  “Sorry.” I finally said, raking a hand through my hair, not caring that I was messing it up. I’d just channel Dorian and pretend I’d done it on purpose. “But last I heard you were on your way to Harvard Law. I’m a little surprised that you wound up... here.”

  Especially because I’d decided on my choice of schools after we’d parted ways.

  Her face colored—she’d never been able to hide anything. Her expressions had always played over her features like a movie.

  “I took last semester off.” She didn’t offer a reason why. “And I was able to get a full ride here. Harvard, not so much.”

  Something wasn’t adding up. Her parents had plenty of money, and Harvard was... well, it was freaking Harvard.

  “You knew I was here.” This wasn’t a question. I was all ready to be confrontational—I was not interested in rekindling this relationship. But to my shock, Emma rolled her eyes, slinging her bag over her shoulder as she stood.

  “It’s called Facebook, Mal. Ever heard of it?” Clearly I’d irritated her, and I thawed a little—just a little.

  I cared about her, once upon a time. There was no need to be an asshole just because that was in the past.

  But I was not letting her off quite that easy. “Why did you apply here, then, if you knew I was here? I thought you were pretty mad at me.”

  We’d ended things more amicably than we could have, sure. But I also knew that I’d shattered Emma’s immediate dreams of a big, beautiful wedding and everything that came with it.

  It just didn’t make sense to me that she would willingly come here. It wasn’t like we were still friends. We hadn’t spoken since.

  Emma squirmed a bit under my stare. “I told you already. I got a full scholarship here.”

  “Em.” I slipped into the nickname I’d once had for her almost effortlessly, mentally cringing when her eyes softened.

  “Fine. My parents are having financial troubles, okay? That’s it.” She held up her hands to emphasize her point. “They couldn’t a
fford Harvard. And last time I talked to your mom, she mentioned that your school had lots of scholarship opportunities. I applied and got in. That’s it. Nothing sinister. I promise.”

  “You still talk to my mom?” I was slightly horrified by this admission. I loved my mom, who was battling cancer. She was the reason I lived in a cheap ass apartment—so that I could funnel extra money her way.

  But she was also super conservative. When Emma and I had broken up, it was hard to say who’d been more torn up—Emma or my mom.

  Emma’s family was wealthy, with political connections. To my mom’s eyes, she would have made the perfect trophy wife.

  If my mom knew that I was involved in a relationship with two other people, she might have just given up completely... which was why I hadn’t told her. Yet.

  And clearly that meant she saw nothing wrong with paving the way for Emma and I to get back together.

  “You heard the Prof. We can’t switch partners.” Emma had clearly been following my line of thinking, and did not look at all pleased. To be fair, my lack of enthusiasm wasn’t super flattering to her. “Let’s just set up some dates to get together and start working. Don’t worry. I think I’ll be able to keep my hands off your body.”

  I could hear the humor she was trying to throw in, but it didn’t quite cover what I thought was a genuine thread of bitterness.

  I hated hurting anyone. And it wouldn’t hurt Adele for me to at least not be a complete ass to Emma.

  “Fine. Let’s set up those times.” We compared schedules and set up our first meeting and a rough plan to divvy up work. And we parted on surprisingly positive terms.

  But as I headed out of the lecture theatre and turned my feet toward Adele’s condo, I couldn’t help the trickle of unease that had worked its way and just wouldn’t leave.

  ADELE

  I was prepared for a gruelling practice when I got to the gym, roller skates tied together by the laces and slung over my shoulder. And even while my thigh muscles whimpered, knowing what lay ahead for them, I found myself looking forward to the sweet burn.