“Right,” he says. “Sorry about that. I guess we did kinda make things hard for you when you first got here.”
“That’s all the apology I get?”
“I can eat your pussy later,” he offers.
I roll my eyes. “You do that all the time.”
“Exactly,” he says. “I apologize on my knees every night. Sometimes five or six times.”
“Okay,” I say, laughing through my embarrassment. “You don’t really have to apologize. I got you sent to juvie. You deserved a little revenge.”
“Which is why you apologize on your knees sometimes,” he says. “Though I have to say, I can never tell what you’re saying with your mouth stretched around my cock.”
“Shut up,” I say, swatting his arm.
We arrive at the fountain, where Saint is watching us approach, a fierce scowl on his face.
“Glad you could finally tear yourself away from your honeymoon long enough to join us,” he snaps, standing and stalking away. He’s gripping his paperback so tight it’s rolled into a tube.
“What crawled up his ass?” Angel asks. “I know it wasn’t Heath. Bet he’ll be smiling ear to ear when they finally break that seal.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Come on, M. You can’t be that naïve. Even you’ve gotta have seen the tension between those two.”
I swallow hard. “Like… There’s something bothering them?”
“Oh, they’re bothered, alright,” Angel says, hugging me close to his side. “Hot and bothered.”
“I don’t think my brother…”
But I remember a hundred playful jokes between them, the wrestling matches, the cute nicknames. I thought they all did it—Mom always said “boys will be boys” when I complained they were horsing around too roughly so I couldn’t join in or when they broke the coffee table in an all-out brawl that I was sure was serious, since they all came up red-faced and breathing hard at the end. Then they laughed, and Mom banned them with her new rule, “no roughhousing in the house.”
It was all three of them then, even random boys from the team who came over to hang out with my brother. More recently, though, I think of the touches I’ve seen, the way they look at each other a little longer than they look at Angel before they break eye contact. I thought it was some secret understanding between them, nothing more. When they tasted me from each other’s mouths, I thought it was the Master’s command. When Heath was shot, and Saint stayed by his side even when Angel took me home, I thought it was so Heath wouldn’t be alone. And when he grumbled for us to hit the lights on the way out, and just before the room was plunged into darkness, I saw him reach for Heath’s hand, I thought he was offering comfort to a friend.
“Are you saying my brother’s gay?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper. Even I know better than to out someone. My heart hurts for Saint if he is. His parents would disown him.
“Nah,” Angel says. “Just… Maybe a little bit for Heath.”
“And Heath?”
“Is a complicated fellow,” Angel says. “Mind you, this is just speculation. I don’t care what they do. That’s just what I’ve seen.”
I mull that over while we make our way to the campus lawn, a big green space between the lecture hall and the boys dorm. They’ve hung a huge white screen from the side of the building, and a projector is set up on the grass, showing a static image of the school logo while students trickle in and claim spots in the shadow of the building near the front or in the last rays of evening sun at the back.
We meet Heath in the middle of the lawn, where he’s laid out a big, waterproof picnic blanket. Angel sits down with him and pulls me down between his thighs, letting me use his chest for a backrest. Instead of joining us, Saint talks to a few football players and then one of the other Hellhounds. He doesn’t come to join us until the movie starts, and then he sits on Heath’s other side, so we can’t talk to him. I know it’s dumb, but it feels like he’s avoiding me.
Midway through the movie, Angel grabs one of the other blankets and throws it over us. I think he’s being sweet and noticed I was cold, but a minute later, I feel his hand creeping up my thigh. I push it away, since Heath is right beside us, Saint is next to him, and more importantly, a few hundred students are all around us.
“Come on, babe,” Angel whispers, nipping my ear. “You’ve been pressing on my dick for an hour. I’m in blueball hell.”
I try to lean forward away from his lap to give him some relief, but he tugs me back, wrapping an arm around my middle. His soft, warm lips trail over the curve of my throat, and shivers race through my body. He works his hand higher, sliding my skirt up my thighs until he can bury his hand between. I gasp, then bite down on my lip, not wanting the others to hear. Heath pulls the blanket over him and tosses the edge onto Saint’s lap, putting us all under the same blanket.
Unbothered, Angel tugs aside my panties and traces his finger up the seam of my lower lips while his teeth tug gently at my earlobe. I squirm against him, but he opens me and slips a finger into the wet heat of my folds. I whimper, and he moans quietly against my neck, then drags his fingertip down, coating it with my arousal, before slowly pushing it inside. My thighs tremble, falling open for him, and my head falls back on his shoulder. I lose myself to the slow, deep pump of his finger, in and out, up my slit, around my clit, back to my opening, deep inside me.
“Can you stop fingering my sister in public?” Saint asks, loud enough that my eyes snap open. My gaze darts around, and my cheeks burn like hellfire when I see at least a couple people around us giggling and whispering and casting glances our way.
“Why?” Angel asks with a smirk. “Jealous?”
