I shake my head.

“I’m convenient and quiet,” she tells me, “because you’re not a slut or a whore if you’re doing it with a girl one night during a naughty sleepover, right?”

I want to tell her she means so much more to me, but she and I both know whatever happens between us won’t last.

So I play along. “No one will ever know I’ve been touched,” I tell her.

My future husband will never know what really turns me on.

But for now, I’m hers. “Open your camera,” I say.

She stares at me.

I take her phone out of her hand, still unlocked, and open her camera app. Turning it to selfie mode, I switch it to video and put it out to the side, fitting us both in the frame. She looks into the camera and I meet her eyes before hitting record. Slowly, I dip my head into her neck.

I leave little pecks at first. Soft kisses on her warm skin, my gaze flickering to the camera every once in a while. She watches me on the screen, and it only takes a moment before her chest starts rising and falling faster and harder and she tips her head back.

My kisses grow stronger—taking in more of her skin, using my teeth, sucking… I glide my tongue up the nape to her ear, seeing her watching the screen out of the corner of her eye.

I trail wet kisses up her neck, over her jaw, and then take her mouth in a few short nibbles. “I liked it when you fucked me,” I gasp loud enough for the video. “I want to do it again.”

She shudders, and I take her hand, sucking one of her fingers into my mouth.

She turns her head, forgetting the camera and watches me blow her. In and out, I suck, flicking and swirling my tongue and showing her what I want to do. “I want to bury my head between your legs under the sheets,” I tell her.

Her mouth falls open like she can’t breathe, and she reaches up, taking my face again, forehead to forehead as she stares at my mouth like it’s a meal.

I stop recording, smelling the spearmint on her breath from her gum. Reaching around, I slip the phone into her back pocket and hold her tight to me. “I’m in your hands now,” I whisper. “That’s how much I trust you.”

She can shatter my world any time she wants with that video. I will happily give her that power to prove that I’m willing to risk almost anything for a few more months with her.

I wrap my arms around her, burying my face in her neck and holding her close. “We always think that if we can have the one thing we want, we’ll be happy, but the wanting never ends, does it?” I say, muffled in her neck. “There were things I wanted before all I wanted was my brother back.”

I’ve wanted her longer.

She clasps my chin in the crook between her thumb and index finger, nudging my eyes up to her. “What are you doing to me?” she murmurs.

But I get smart. “Nothing yet,” I whisper. “But I’d really like to do that bury-my-head-between-your-legs-under-the-sheets bit.”

And she loses it. She moans, slides her fingers underneath my tank top, and pulls it up and over my head. It falls off my body, but before I have time to feel the chill on my breasts, she yanks my body in, grips the back of my neck, and fuses her mouth to mine, kissing so hard a roller coaster does a barrel roll between my thighs. I suck in a breath between kisses, pressing my breasts into her, and squirming as my hands roam, because I can’t get close enough or feel enough to be satisfied.

Liv’s hands slide under my skirt, and I smile through the kisses, unable to contain my excitement. Christmas never felt this good.

She leans into me, and I fall back onto my hands, her standing over me as she runs her hand up and down my torso. She cups my breast and meets my eyes before she pinches my little, pink nipple. An electrical current shoots through me, and I clench my thighs, moaning.

Yes.

“Liv, did I see you come up here?” someone calls out.

I pop my eyes open, hearing the wooden door hinges creak, and I dart up, ducking into Liv’s chest before I can see who’s behind her.

“Liv?” a man’s voice says again.

“Get out,” she tells him.

One of her brothers?

There’s nothing for a moment, and then I hear him again, his tone amused this time. “Damn, who you got there?”

“Trace, seriously,” she barks over her shoulder. She holds my naked shoulders as I cover my breasts and huddle into her body. “Get out!”

But he doesn’t. He steps up behind her and meets my eyes.

“All right,” he says, smiling. “Way to go.”

“Fuck off,” she blurts out next.

“Okay, okay.” He shrugs and leaves, the door shutting after a moment.

“He won’t say anything,” she tells me. “I’ll make sure of it.”

I put my arms around her again. I don’t care about that right now.

I hop off the table, pushing her back until she falls into an old, wooden chair in the corner. Pushing my panties down my legs, I step out of them, climb on top and straddle her, and see her eyes fall to my breasts.

I love watching her watch me.

She slouches down a little in the chair, gripping my hips, and I don’t need instruction. I start to roll my hips, grinding on her through her jeans, rubbing my pussy up on her fly. Heat floods me, and I know I’m wet as the rough fabric of her clothes feels so good against my bare skin.

I glide my fingers over her hands and up her arms, but I feel the bracelet she always wears and trace the snake wrapped around the hourglass. I can almost make out its fangs as I hold her eyes.

“I like it when you bite me,” I tell her. “With your teeth…and your words.”

“I couldn’t stop myself anymore.”

“Why?”

She leans up and takes my face in one hand, nearly grazing my lips with hers. “Because sometimes two wrongs make a right, Clay.” She breathes hard. “Because venom works slowly but surely and I was so tired of not fighting for my life. And because one of the ingredients in anti-venom is venom, and sometimes you need poison to counteract the poison.”

“And if the anti-venom doesn’t work?” I tease.

She plays with my skirt. “Isn’t it?”

I smile. Oh, yes, it is. She pushed back, and I’m not at all unhappy about where she pushed me to.

She drops back again, her eyes zoning in on me bare and open as I dry fuck her, and I thrust my hips, still slow but deeper and deeper. Her hands trail over my ass and up my skirt to my stomach before steeling on the joint between my hip and thigh. Her thumb rubs circles on my clit as she bends her knees just slightly and stretches her legs behind me.

Can she feel it? Even with her clothes on? I want to get the hell out of here, but I don’t want to stop.

I roll and roll, battering my hips into her until her nails pierce my skin, and I wince at the pain but love it, too.

She grabs the back of my neck and pulls me in, growling in a whisper over my mouth, “It’s not over between us until I’m wearing something you can really ride.”

A shiver shoots down my spine, and she doesn’t have to elaborate.

“After that, you can go fuck a guy,” she taunts. “But you and I will know nothing is better than this.”

I kiss her, her confidence tasting possessive, and I like it.