Used While I Pretended to Sleep novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Hands in the Dark

Denton's careful hands and Abel's rough ones teach her that a sigh and a turn can steer them, and Byron takes her hand and her squeeze stops his thumb.

Abel's hand stopped at my knee.

"Not like that," Byron said from the doorway.

His voice was low and rough, and I had never heard it sound like that.

"Rules, Abel. We said them in the truck."

"Fine, fine. Denton first. He's the careful one."

Abel moved his hand away, and the mattress dipped as he went around to the foot of the bed.

I lay still with my eyes shut and let my breathing go long and slow.

Denton took off his glasses.

I knew the small click of them folding, because he did it at every serious moment of my life.

He did it at my mother's funeral.

"Roxy," he whispered.

He did not wait for one.

His palm slid under the hem of my t-shirt and lay flat on my stomach, warm and entirely steady.

I had never been touched there by a man.

Not like this, with no one watching my face.

My skin jumped under his hand, and I held my breath so hard it hurt.

"She moved," Abel said.

"Reflex," Denton said. "The tablet doesn't turn off the nerves."

He moved his hand up an inch at a time.

He pushed the shirt up over my ribs, and the cool air raised every hair on my skin.

When his fingertips reached the edge of my bra, he stopped.

He waited there, and I understood that he was asking.

I had read about this kind of waiting in books and thought it was made up.

It was not made up.

My body answered before I could decide anything, a slow tilt of my chest into his palm.

Denton made a low sound in his throat.

"That's not a reflex," Abel whispered, delighted. "That's a girl who likes it."

"Shut up," Denton said, so softly it was almost kind.

He unhooked the front clasp with two fingers, and the cups fell open, and the night air touched me.

I felt every one of their eyes.

I felt the heat climb my throat and spread across my face, and I thought, they will see, they will see me blush, I'm done.

Nobody said anything.

Then Denton lowered his head, and his mouth closed over my breast.

It was slow, and wet, and so gentle that a sound rose in my chest before I could swallow it.

I let it out as a long, drowsy sigh, the kind a sleeper makes, and turned my face into the pillow.

Denton went rigid.

Then he pulled harder.

My hips lifted off the mattress a half inch, and I could not stop that either.

"Christ," Tucker said, from somewhere near the door.

It was the first thing he had said, and it came out hoarse.

I felt a second weight on the bed, big and rough, and Abel's hand closed over my other breast.

He squeezed too hard, and his thumb dragged.

Everything in me pulled away from him.

I turned my head and rolled onto my side, one knee drawn up, the way I always slept, and I sighed again, long and annoyed.

Abel's hand fell off.

"Easy," Denton murmured. "You'll wake her."

"She's out cold, Denton."

"Then she can still hurt. Slower."

I lay on my side, shaking inside, and I understood something I had not known one minute ago.

When I turned toward a hand, it stayed.

When I turned away, it stopped.

Every man in that room believed I was gone, and not one of them could tell the difference between a sleeper's twitch and a girl choosing.

I could steer them.

The thought was so large and so strange that I nearly laughed.

I rolled back, slowly, onto my back, and let my knee fall open a few inches.

Denton's breath caught.

His hand left my breast and traveled down the line of my stomach, over the waistband of my shorts, and rested there, heavy and warm.

"Byron," he said, rough now. "Come here."

The bed dipped by my head.

Someone sat on the mattress beside my pillow, and I smelled cedar and boat varnish and the clean wool of the sweater my mother used to steal from him.

Byron.

He did not touch my body.

He reached down, found my hand where it lay open on the sheet, and held it in both of his.

His hands were huge and scarred and warm, and they were trembling.

I didn't understand it.

The man who had asked them up here was shaking, and holding my hand, and not looking at anything else.

Denton's fingers slid under my waistband, and Abel whispered something filthy, and my whole body went tight and bright and aching.

My fingers closed around Byron's.

I didn't decide to do it.

I squeezed once, hard, the way you squeeze a hand in a hospital room.

And Byron's thumb, which had been moving slowly across my knuckles, stopped.

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