Things Liars Fake (#ThreeLittleLies #3) (15 page)

Over my bra. Over the swell of my breasts.

My body strains up to meet his touch.

His head dips. He reaches down, grabs my ass in both his palms and hauls me to the dresser.

Lips. Teeth. Skin.

Tongue.

“I’m a horrible person,” I gasp. “This is so wrong—your grandmother is downstairs.”

He stifles my protests with his mouth, his sexy,
smart
, skillful mouth… we can’t get our tongues deep enough as he lifts me with a grunt, knocking a lamp to the carpeted floor with a loud thump and sitting me in the center of his dresser.

The light bulb hits the ground and shatters.

He rocks his hips into me, pounding the dresser into the drywall as we paw at each other, rattling the framed High School diploma hanging above the Debate team medals that jingle and sway on their hooks.

We don’t notice.

We don’t care.

He feels so good, he feels so good, he feels so
—

“U
h, Daphne
might
want to put her shirt back on. Just sayin—”

“—And fix her hair.”

The twins stand in the open doorway of Dexter’s old room, identical expressions fixated on us, unreadable. Completely pokerfaced—as if they hadn’t just walked in on Dexter and I in the middle of us dry humping against the wall and tearing at each other’s clothes. As if my shirt wasn’t open and my breasts weren’t threatening to spill out of my bra.

Like this kind of thing casually happens every Saturday.

I fumble blindly for the buttons on my shirt, fitting each tiny pearl through its hole, mindlessly shoving them through, desperate to match them up but not taking the time to actually do it properly.

I need to get my breasts covered.

The twins saunter a little farther into Dexter’s room, past the dresser I’m perched on to study the spines of his collection of high school yearbooks.

“Mom sent us looking for you, F-Y-I, so don’t get your boxers in a twist. You know the drill: we can’t light the candles or sing Happy Birthday until everyone is—”

“—Present and accounted for,” the twins parrot, prattling on as if nothing was amiss.

“And since they think you’ve been MIA for the past…”

Amelia checks the time on her phone.

“Twenty minutes.”

“—Even though
everyone
heard the loud banging coming from up here.” Lucy crosses her arms and purses her lips. “What the heck did you think you were doing?”

Amelia snorts. “You should know better than this Dex, going at it in
this
house? Remember how thin the walls are? You can’t even—”

“—Whisper without someone hearing it through the vents.”

They stare at us, Amelia raising her eyebrows and Lucy tapping her foot on the carpeted floor.

“Well?”

“Are you coming downstairs or what?”

Dexter and I stare after them as they airily saunter back out into the hallway, not a care in the world. And that thing I said before about
adoring
them?

Yeah.

Forget I mentioned it.

T
hings go from bad to worse when we descend the stairs, my cousin Elliot waiting at the bottom, hand wrapped around the finial post of the wooden rail.

He starts in as soon as the twins usher Daphne into the kitchen, out of earshot.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Dexter.” Elliot hisses, grabbing my arm the second I round the staircase in the foyer. He strong-arms me through the hall, cornering me near my dad’s office. “Were you
seriously
fucking your hot girlfriend with a party going on?”

I register
hot
and
girlfriend
, cataloging them in my brain for future use. Aggravated, I give him a glower.

“Why would you even ask me that?”

Elliot claps a hand on my shoulder, emitting a low whistle. I shrug him off. “Several reasons. One: she looks thoroughly
fucked
. Or drunk, and Aunt Georgia isn’t serving alcohol. So which is it?”

“Would you please stop using the word fuck when you’re talking about Daphne?”

Elliot crosses his arms, pleased with himself. “Two: I notice you aren’t denying fucking her.”

I shake my head, pushing away from the wall, willing him to walk away.

He doesn’t comply. “Three:
everyone
heard the moaning. I’ll admit, it was pretty hot and I was getting off on it until your Dad cranked the stereo and your mom did that weird laugh thing she does when she’s about to lose her shit.”

My back turned to him, I walk towards the kitchen leaving him trailing after me. “We weren’t having sex in my room so shut the fuck up about it.”

He’s skeptical. “Well then you should have. Christ, man up, dude. Your girlfriend is a hot piece of ass. What she sees in you is—”

“—None of your business, you douchenozzle.” An agitated feminine voice interrupts from behind, startling us both. I expect to find Daphne coming to my defense when I spin on my heel, but instead I find…

The twins.

Great. More drama; just what I need.

“You’re being a real dickshitter,” Lucy scowls. “Why are you always such an ass?”

Elliot’s eyes bug out of his head at their foul language. I mean—all dressed up in their conservative birthday dresses, they hardly look like the truckers they’re beginning to sound like.

“What the hell Dex—are you going to let her—them—talk to me like that?”

The twins cross their arms and Amelia
hmphs
. “Are you even listening to yourself?”

Lucy laughs. “All we need to do is go back in the kitchen and tell Aunt Tory you’re—”

“—In here using profanity and talking shit about Daphne.” Amelia’s own use of profanity is not lost on me.

“Maligning her.”

The girls nod. “If you scare her off after we worked so hard to get her here…”

Lucy makes a slicing gesture across her neck with her hand:
dead
.

“Wait. How do you know the word malign?” Sorry, I can’t help asking.

“Maligning?” The twins cross their arms and roll their narrowed eyes, speaking at the same time. “AP English.”

“What’s AP English?” Elliot probes.

More eye rolling. “Advanced Placement.”

This gives me pause. Because, “If you’re in AP English, why’d you write such a shitty letter to Daphne when you hijacked my email—you know what? Never mind. I don’t want to know. Jesus you two, please just go back to your party.”

Both my sisters stand tall, unflinching. “We’ll wait here while you finish him off.” Lucy gives her chin an encouraging nod in Elliot’s direction.

Finish him off? “Okay tiny Godfathers, bring it down a notch. This isn’t the mob.”

Elliot glances at me with disbelief still etched across his brow. And pity. “Shit man, are they always like this?”

I chuckle, smacking my cousin on the back and moving him towards the party. “Unfortunately, yeah.”

God, I really do love those two
.

Crazy little weirdos.

“S
o, this is me.”

“Yup, this is you.” Dexter taps on the steering wheel with his palm, glancing out the window up at my condo. My little front porch light glows in the dark, illuminating my dark gray front door and the adorable painted snowman leaning up against the brick wall. The light also bounces off the lenses of his glasses, making it hard to read his expression.

Pulling his car neatly into a parking spot in front of my awning, I unbuckle my seatbelt but make no move to exit the vehicle when he shifts into park.

The engine idles.

The radio is silent.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go do something? It’s still pretty early.”

Nine o’clock on the dot on a Sunday night.

“Don’t feel obligated to continue this farce of an evening.” His chuckle is sardonic and patronizing. “Although I do appreciate the sentiment.”

Farce? Obligated?

“Obligated? I thought this was a date.”

Dexter laughs again, pushing his sexy tortoiseshell glasses up the bridge of his nose. The buttoned up collared shirt beneath his winter jacket peeks through, and my eyes travel of the column of his neck to his strong jaw line.

The place where I want to put my lips.

“Dexter, if Elliot said something to upset you, I—”

“—Let me stop you right there.” He twists his body to face me from the driver’s seat. “Nothing—and I mean nothing—Elliot says upsets me; it’s the fact that he
says
anything at all and there’s nothing I can do about it. He’s not some guy off the street. He’s family. So as much as I want to smash his face in, I can’t. Because my freaking grandmother is usually in the other room.”

He’s pissed off and agitated and
passionate
.

“Elliot’s always been like this, and thank god it’s not just with me. He’s a dick to our cousin John, too, and Little Erik who’s what—ten years younger than him? What an ass. You don’t do that shit to a kid.” He lets out a puff of frustration. “Anyway. I’d love to deck him, but I never will, and that’s the pisser of it.”

Ass. Punch. Dick. Deck.
Pisser
.

Oh my god, why is this turning me on?

There’s something wrong with me, I know it. Maybe it’s been too long since I’ve had sex and I’m going through some kind of withdrawal, where mundane words trigger dirty, dirty thoughts.

I watch words and sentences come out of Dexter’s beautifully sculpted lips, but I stop hearing them all, so lost in thought. So lost in the thought of him taking me inside and—

My head tips to the side and I study him.

I look up.

“What’s… that
look?
”

Crap, he’s studying me now, too, but his look isn’t one of desire. It’s one of confusion.

I know, I know, it’s shameful! But he’s so kind and patient and sweet and handsome and I like him and I want... everything. I want everything with him.

I need to know if he wants it too, but…

Guh!

“Why don’t I walk you to the door.”

Of its own volition, my head gives a nod.

Grabbing my purse from the backseat of his Audi while he jogs around to open the passenger side door, I step out, one leg after the next. Put one foot in front of the other as we walk unhurriedly to the front door.