The Shacking Up Series

by Helena Hunting

“Well, I’m glad you came back to Vegas. You’re certainly the highlight of this trip.” He pushes his chair back. “Can I get you another drink?”

  I have to assume that’s his way of ending this very personal conversation. When he returns, he not only has a fresh bottle of champagne, he also has a can of whipped cream, a plate of strawberries, and a bottle of chocolate syrup.

  “I’m ready for dessert. Are you?”

  “I thought there was ice cream. Aren’t we going to need bowls?”

  A dark smile pulls up one side of his mouth. “I don’t think that will be necessary since I was planning to eat dessert off of you.”

  Chapter Nine: The Morning After

  Cosy

  Being Griffin’s dessert was an enlightening, orgasmic experience. One that resulted in the need for a shower, which led to more sex, and then a sleepover.

  Griffin is a cuddler. Like a super hardcore, don’t - let - me - go - all - night kind of cuddler. I’ve never slept beside someone who literally wants to spoon the entire night. It’s kind of sweet. It’s also a little unnerving.

  Since I don’t have any regular clothes to wear, we order room service for breakfast and eat it in bed. I have a shift at STW at noon, and Griffin offers to drive me to my place so I can grab a change of clothes and then take me to work. He’s happy to lend me a T-shirt, which is more like a dress on me, so I don’t have to put on my gross, sweaty one from yesterday, or wear a dress out of the hotel.

  Just like yesterday, we take a special elevator to a special exit. His car is waiting when we step outside.

  “When can I see you again?” he asks as he pulls into Sunday morning traffic.

  “I have a late shift at STW tomorrow, and an evening seminar on Wednesday.”

  “You’re free Tuesday?” He threads our fingers together.

  “I am.”

  “Can I take you out for dinner? You can stay at my place again, if you want.”

  “Sure, but I’m only staying at your place on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We have an orgasm battle.”

  He glances at me from the corner of his eyes. “That sounds fun. What exactly does an orgasm battle entail?”

  “We see how many times we can get each other off.”

  “I like this. Are there any rules or restrictions?”

  “You can only use your own physical body.”

  “Sounds reasonable. What’s the prize?”

  “Whoever wins gets to pick what we do on our next date.”

  “You know I’m going to win, right?”

  “That’s what you think.” I glance out the window, hiding a smile. It doesn’t matter if I win or lose, it’s that he’s willing to play the game with me at all that I’m most excited about.

  When we get to my apartment, I tell Griffin I’ll be back down in a few minutes.

  He cuts the engine. “Or I could come up with you.”

  “Uh, I guess that would be okay.”

  “Unless you don’t want me to.” He looks almost hurt, which I don’t want.

  “It’s not that. My sister is still crashing on my couch, and she’s not exactly what I’d call appropriate most of the time. I’m not sure if she’s home or not, but since it’s before noon, I’m going to say there’s a strong possibility she’s there. Let me shoot her a message so she knows I’m bringing you up with me. She still might not wear pants, though. She thinks they’re optional.”

  “That’s . . . interesting.”

  “She is definitely that.”

  I message to let her know I’m coming up and that I have someone with me, so if she’s home, can she do me a favor and make sure she’s wearing some clothes?

  She texts back a thumbs-up, which I hope means she’s dressed.

  I’m grateful that the elevator is working today. Griffin plays with the end of my braid on the ride to the eighth floor. “If I win the orgasm battle, I get to pick your outfit for dinner.”

  “And if I win, I get to pick yours.”

  “I love that you think it’s even a remote possibility.”

  “You have yet to experience my oral skilIs, Griffin. I was a twenty-two-year-old virgin until last night, which means I’ve had a lot of practice at everything else.”

  His eyes darken. “That turns me on and makes me feel irrationally violent at the same time.”

  “You think because you conquered my pussy, it’s yours forever.”

  Griffin backs me up against the wall and cups me through my shorts—the ones from yesterday. They’re disgusting, but I didn’t have any other options. Griffin offered me a pair of his boxers, but I’m a lot smaller than he is, so they’d fall off.

  “I’ve been all up in this sweet little pussy with every part of me that counts. It’s marked as mine until further fucking notice. Next time I’ll leave a few hickies behind as a reminder.”

  I’d like to be affronted by that very possessive statement, but instead, I’m really turned on. Which is unfortunate because as excited as that makes me, I’m sore, and I’m not sure if I can handle stimulation in that particular area for the next twenty-four hours.

  Thankfully, or not, the elevator dings. Griffin steps back and takes a deep breath, smoothing his hand down his chest. My knees feel weak as I lead him down the hall to my apartment. I see the peeling wallpaper through his eyes and wonder if maybe it would’ve been better if he stayed in his car. Too late now, I suppose.

  I unlock the door and usher him down the narrow hall. It smells like cherry vape in here again. I hate it when Nev smokes that stuff in my apartment. It gets in all my clothes and hair and takes forever to get rid of.

  “Nev!” I call out. “I’m just stopping in to get changed. I have company, so make sure you’re decent!”

  “I’m decent.”

  I find her in the kitchen, putting an empty jug of orange juice back in the fridge. She’s wearing a pair of boy shorts, which cover most of her butt, and a white tank with no bra and gaping armholes. Not my idea of decent, but it fits hers.

  Griffin appears behind me. “Nevah, this is Griffin. Griffin, this is Nevah.” I motion between them. “I have to get changed for work.”

  Nevah’s expression shifts from curiosity to something more like recognition. I turn to Griffin. His eyes are wide, and I don’t think it’s because my sister is half naked.

  “Black Tesla,” Nevah says.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Oh shit,” Griffin mutters.

  I look between them. “Please tell me you two don’t know each other.” My stomach sinks and then rolls, because based on the way they’re looking at each other, they most definitely know each other. In ways I don’t want them to.

  “You were at the Lemonade Stand a couple months ago, weren’t you?” Nev says to Griffin, possibly oblivious to how awkward this has gotten. “And you drive a black Tesla.”

  “Did you hook up with my sister?” This is so much worse than last night when I thought he was a cheater. Nev will sleep with anyone who drives a nice car. I love my sister, but she has no sense of self-preservation when it comes to men.

  When Griffin doesn’t answer right away, I look to Nev. “Did you hook up with him?”

  She gives me her sorry face. “He had a Tesla.”

  Griffin rubs the back of his neck. “I didn’t know she was your sister.”

  “Oh my God!” I throw my hands up in the air then push on his shoulder. “You need to go. I can’t even . . . this is so fucked up.”

  “Cosy, please. I was really messed up that night.” He lets me push him out of the kitchen and down the hall.

  “And that makes it so much better. You slept with my sister—”

  “I don’t know that for—”

  “I do. You have a nice car. Oh, God. You fucked my sister in your car! And I’ve sat in there. I need you to go.”

  He plants his feet, which means I’m pushing on him but he’s going nowhere. “I think we need to talk about this.”
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br />   “I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t want to think about you banging my sister in your car!” I rub my temples, wishing I could erase the image of Griffin, naked, doing it with my sister, but now it’s in my head, and I can’t get rid of it. “Please just go.”

  He looks so panicked and remorseful. “Can I at least call you later? Will you answer?”

  “I don’t know. I really . . . This is a lot, Griffin.” I motion between us and then to the kitchen. “I had sex with you, and now I find out that you’ve had sex with my sister. It’s a bit of a mind fuck, and I need to figure out how to deal with that.”

  He does that thing where he grabs his hair with both his hands and tries to pace, but there’s nowhere for his huge body to go in the narrow hall. Now, he looks defeated. “Okay. Yeah. I get it. I’m really sorry.” He jams his hands in his pockets. His hair is a crazy mess. “I don’t do one-night stands. It would’ve been a lapse in judgment on my part.”

  “Yeah, looks like a lot of those seem to be happening around here.” I open the door and wait for him to step out into the hall. “I’ll talk to you later. Maybe.” I close the door before he can respond and flip the lock. I look through the peephole. He’s still standing there.

  He clasps his hands behind his neck and does some weird jerky thing while he repeats fuck several times in a row. He makes a fist, and for a second I think he’s going to knock. I don’t see how he can fix this since he screwed my sister and then me, but something strange happens in my chest as I watch him walk down the hall, away from my door. A few seconds later he’s back. He grabs the doorjambs and shakes his head, griping to himself that he’s a fucking idiot. Once again he lifts his hand to knock,his expression determined, but his phone rings.

  “Motherfucking fuck.” He pulls it out of his pocket and shakes his head, looking up at the ceiling. He brings the cell to his ear. “Hey.” This time he disappears down the hall and doesn’t come back.

  I turn around to find my sister standing at the end of the hall, leaning against the wall, eating a chocolate pudding cup. “So that’s kind of crazy, huh? Like what are the chances we’d ever hook up with the same guy?”

  “You’re not helping, Nev. I gave that guy my virginity, and now I find out he’s slept with you too.”

  “Whoa, wait, what? Since when were you still a virgin?” she asks with a mouth full of chocolate pudding.

  “Since until last night.” I brush past her into my room. I’d like a few minutes to have some kind of breakdown over this, but now it’s twenty after eleven, and I’m never going to make it on time if I take the damn bus.

  She follows behind me, her shock evident in her high pitch. “Why didn’t I know that?”

  “I don’t know. It’s never come up.”

  “But I’m your sister, I should know these things. I just . . . wow. I figured you slept with that douchebag what’s his name back in your junior year of high school.”

  I head for my closet. “He broke up with me because I wouldn’t sleep with him.”

  “What a dick.”

  “Seems like I’m good at finding those.”

  “I’m so sorry, Cosy, but to be fair, I’ve slept with a lot of guys, and he has a sweet car, so I guess it’s not that wild, right? I mean, yeah, totally unexpected, but I can see how it would happen.”

  “Are you trying to make me feel better or worse?”

  She sets the chocolate pudding cup on my nightstand and sighs. “I know I can’t take it back, but I would if I could.”

  “But you can’t and neither can he, so I guess that’s that.”

  “It doesn’t have to be.”

  I shoot her a disbelieving look. “I can’t be with someone who’s been with my sister. That’s just . . . twisted.”

  “Was it good?” she asks.

  “What?”

  “The sex? Was it good?”

  “Was it good for you?” I shoot back.

  Nev raises one bony, bare shoulder, her expression somewhere between remorse and sadness. “I must’ve been pretty wasted because I can’t remember, which I guess is too bad, since Gary is pretty hot.”

  “It’s Griffin, not Gary,” I snap as I flip aggressively through my shirts, looking for an STW one. I yank it off the hanger. “And yes. It was better than good. It was fucking amazing. I came during sex the first time I ever had it.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. And he was incredibly sweet and attentive, and now it’s all fucked up!” Dammit. I’m on the verge of tears.

  Nev takes me by the shoulders. “Hey, listen to me. Banging in a Tesla was on my bucket list, and he fit the profile. He never called me. There wasn’t a second date. You and I both know I’m a party girl and someone’s arm candy and that’s it. It’s obvious this guy is digging you. I mean, look at all the effort he’s putting in. Don’t let his lapse in judgment with me ruin what sounds like a great first for you.”

  I hate that my sister talks this way about herself. I hate that she thinks this is all she’s worth—a fuck in a pretty car with a pretty man.

  “It’s weird, Nev. And awkward.”

  “It’s only awkward if you make it awkward. Get dressed and I’ll drive you to work.”

  “My car isn’t running right now.”

  “Yeah it is, I fixed it last week.”

  “How?”

  She does jazz hands. “With these. Now get your ass in gear. You can tell me all about how he romanced you into giving up your V-card. And I want to know more about the orgasms.”

  Chapter Ten: Fuck Up

  Griffin

  My life is generally pretty drama-free unless it involves my family. My brother Lex is the one who always got into shit as a kid, usually with my cousin Armstrong. Last year, Lex took it to a whole new level when he slept with Armstrong’s jilted bride on her honeymoon—she went alone since Armstrong decided to get a blow job from someone who was not the bride at the reception. Then Lex proceeded to fall in love with her. Now they’re engaged.

  Like I said, the drama is usually reserved for other members of my family.

  So I have no idea how to deal with this unprecedented situation.

  What is the likelihood that in a city this huge, I would hook up with someone and then unknowingly devirginize her sister?

  Pretty fucking unlikely, I should think.

  Things I remember about the night with Nevah—not much. I’d bought her drinks, and we’d done a lot of shots. I was seeing double by the time I left the bar. I decided a nap in my car might help since I’d been dumb enough to drive there. She followed me outside, freaked out about my Tesla, and asked if she could sit in it. Which is the point where everything gets fuzzy.

  And now look at the clusterfuck that it’s caused.

  Housekeeping still hasn’t been by when I return to the hotel, so I’m faced with all the reminders of Cosy and our night together. I scrub a palm over my face. I need some advice. I call the one person I actually trust not to judge me too harshly for this—Lincoln.

  He’s currently out in Guatemala on one of his community outreach projects, so it’s a crapshoot whether he’ll have decent reception.

  Thankfully he answers on the third ring. “I was just thinking about calling you. What’s up, cuz? You still living in Vegas sin?”

  “Hey, yeah, still in Vegas. How’s Guatemala treating you?” I drop down on the couch. I can smell Cosy on the fabric.

  “Hot as Satan’s balls in a jockstrap after a football game, but good otherwise. You okay? You sound off.”

  “You got a few minutes to talk? I have a situation, and I’m not sure how to handle it.”

  “Yeah. Sure. Of course. A work situation?”

  “No. Personal.”

  “Please tell me it doesn’t have anything to do with my brother.”

  “Not this time.” Armstrong is Lincoln’s younger brother. Linc has done everything he can to separate himself from his family, including moving around to different countries to avoid them.
He’s more like my brother than he is Armstrong’s.

  “Okay. That’s good. Lay it on me.”

  It sounds pretty damn shady in my head, so I can only imagine how it’s going to sound out loud. “So you remember that bachelor party I had to host a while ago?”

  “The one where you drew the short straw and had to go to a porn shop with the hot salesgirl?”

  “That’s the one.”

  I fill him in on everything with Cosy.

  “Sounds like you’re into this woman. What’s the situation?”

  “So last night she stayed over—”

  “—and she wanted to peg you?”

  “No, asshole. Can you shut up and let me get the rest of this out?”

  “Shutting up. Continue.”

  I wait a few seconds to make sure he’s not going to interrupt again. “And this morning I drove her back to her place. She has a sister who’s staying with her.”

  “Okay.”

  “And it turns out, I hooked up with her when I first got to Vegas.”

  “You’re shitting me.” Lincoln’s disbelief is completely understandable. I don’t do hookups.

  “I wish I were. It was that night that Imogen called and wanted to talk or whatever. I went out, got shitfaced, and apparently screwed a random in my car, who happened to be this girl’s sister. The worst part is, I had zero recollection of anything from that night until she recognized me this morning.”

  “Well, that’s messed up. I’m guessing you won’t be seeing the sister again, either one.”

  “You don’t think this is fixable?”

  “Uh . . . I guess it depends on how close they are?”

  “I think they’re pretty close. Her sister is staying with her right now.”

  Linc exhales heavily. “Oh, man.”

  I pace the room, reminders of Cosy everywhere from the messed-up sheets to the champagne bottles and the empty whipped cream canister. “I like this girl, woman. I like her.”

  “Is she worth the trouble? You’re going to be there for what, a couple more months? What exactly are you trying to fix?”

  This is the part I’m not excited to share, so I half mumble it. “She was a virgin.” I’m met with a long stretch of silence. “Linc?”