Nowhere to Hide (Masked Men Novellas)

Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

Archer

Fuck, I’m an idiot! What have I done?!

While I have no regrets over last night... fuck, I’ve dug myself into a hole. Now I can’t tell her how I feel about her without revealing we are the masked men—or that we own a sex club. And I can’t call my best friend and ask his thoughts because, well, his sister is naked and cradled in my arms. There is zero chance I’m telling Kennedy, as while the asshole talks a big game, I know she affects him exactly like Tai and me. He would punch me in the face for sure. My only option is Tai, but I would really hate to hurt him.

Riley stirs as I trace patterns on her back, then she opens her eyes and blinks up at me. Her hand flies over her mouth and I chuckle.

“I don’t care about your morning breath, Rye.”

“I do,” she mumbles into her hand.

“You could always just sit on my face,” I suggest, her cheeks go bright red and her big brown eyes widen in surprise.

Mark my words: one way or another, before we leave here, this woman will have sat her perfect pussy on my face and tried her damn best to suffocate me. She just doesn’t know it yet.

“Then how about you put on a suit and meet me down at the lake for a morning swim?”

“It will be cold,” she says.

“Riley Jacobs, I explicitly remember you complaining every single year about how your mom wouldn’t let you go into the lake until lunchtime. So you bet your fine ass you are getting up and we are going swimming.”

Her face lights up like a Christmas tree. “You’re right,” she says.

As she sits up, she tries to take the sheets with her, so I wrap my hand around them, pulling them back. Riley looks at me with a small scowl.

“Don’t hide your body—it’s a work of art. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a fucking moron and needs to get some prescription glasses.”

She softly smiles and gets out of the bed. I see how she still tries to hide herself from me as much as she can. I get out of her bed and find my cotton pajama pants from last night on the floor. Though fuck knows they will have a stain on the crotch from my dick leaking precum like a tap last night as I ground up against her. I shouldn’t have come back last night. As the masked man, her feelings were safe from me; she knows it was a service.

“I’ll meet you downstairs. We can have a bite to eat and then a swim. I’m starved after last night.”

She nods with her back to me as she slips into her bikini. If I’m being honest, my suggestion of a swim was so she would come downstairs with me still inside her. It’s like an invisible claim over her, which is a fucking shitty thing to do, but I can’t seem to find it in me to care.

As I slip out her door, a throat clears, and I almost jump out of my skin. Looking up, I find Tai standing across the hall, leaning against the wall.

“I never imagined you’d be doing the walk of shame,” he whispers.

I stalk over to him and grab him by the arm, dragging him away from Riley’s room and the shared bathroom where I hear water running. Kennedy must be in the shower.

Tai chuckles as I drag him down the stairs. “You’ve done fucked up,” he says with more laughter.

“Don’t you think I fucking know it? Please, can we not tell Kennedy just yet? I don’t need him to say I told you so. I don’t even know why I did it. One minute I was wearing the mask...” Tai’s eyes widen, and his mouth opens, then snaps shut. “Don’t even say it. I played into Kennedy’s bullshit. When I saw her email reply, I only planned to tie her up and eat her pussy—and I did that—but fuck , you and Kennedy fucking made her so goddamn wet. I went to check on her after, to make sure that she was okay, but her smell, and her just-fucked hair, and a comment she made had me all over her like a damn rash. Now I don’t know what the fuck to do. I complicated things so bad, I can’t do it again—I would have to tell her about the masks and the club. But I’m telling you, man... she felt so right .”

Tai puts his hand on my shoulder. “Stop stressing, just wait and see how things play out. I think we need to sit her down before we leave and tell her about the sex club. We at least owe her that much. If you still feel strongly about it, we can tell her about the masks and leave it up to her what she does with the information. We have a few days left before anyone flies in, so let’s enjoy our time here with her. But know if Kennedy finds out she’s fair game without the masks, he will pursue her if only to prove a point.”

Tai follows me into the kitchen and waits while I get myself a coffee. “Do you think we could try sharing her?” he asks as I turn to face him. “I just mean, look at Kennedy and me, we fuck each other mainly because of convenience. We could never have a girlfriend each, most wouldn’t be okay with what we do. I could never give him up, plus add in the number of hours we work, and no sane woman would want to be neglected like that. It’s not the first time Kennedy and I have spoken about it, and if you would admit it to yourself, you enjoy watching us.”

“I never said I didn’t enjoy it, but there is no way in this world Kennedy is putting his monster cock anywhere near my ass,” I retort. “It doesn’t do it for me, but I can appreciate watching. Sharing one woman has its merits, but... fuck, we are getting ahead of ourselves. She probably wanted to get into bed with her childhood crush to live out the fantasy, but since she signed up to the website, maybe it was also a good time to cross me off her list.”

Tai laughs at me. “Stop over thinking shit—that’s my job. Let’s play it by ear and see what happens.”

I hand Tai his coffee, and as he takes a sip, he chokes. “Riley Bear, that bikini is... wow.”

I turn to see Riley’s body on display as it flushes with heat. Tai is not wrong, her curves are accentuated, and the skimpy swimsuit highlights her natural shape. Her breasts almost spill out of the top, and the bottoms emphasize her waist, showing off the dip in her hourglass figure perfectly. I hate that she doesn’t know she is stunning.

“Thank you. It’s taken a while to be confident enough to even wear a bikini, but I thought screw it—if people don’t like it, they can just not look.”

I walk out of the kitchen so I can adjust the hard-on in my shorts. Riley walks over to make herself a coffee and Tai cuddles up behind her and whispers in her ear. She looks over her shoulder at me and I smile. I bet the asshole told her he knows we fucked. After I wink at her, she turns back around to get her coffee and Kennedy joins us.

“Holy fuck,” he says, stopping dead in his tracks beside me. “Why the fuck do you look so happy?”

I shrug and the asshole whacks me on the dick. “Liar,” he whispers, wearing a shit-eating grin. “Your dick is hard.”

“It’s not my fault,” I whisper back. “Riley in a bikini does things to me.”

“What are you two whispering about?” Tai asks, with Riley walking out of the kitchen behind him.

“Nothing,” I say, holding my dick. “Kennedy whacked me in the junk.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Are you really all going to be immature about the fact I slept with Archer? We’re all adults now.”

Kennedy turns to me, a murderous glint in his eyes. “You fucking what?! Riley, close your eyes.”

Tai tries to cover Riley’s eyes, but she swats him away in time to see Kennedy sucker punch me in the nose. Blood drips down my face as I charge at Kennedy, wrapping my arms around his waist. He topples backward, and we both fall to the ground. I straddle his waist and he blocks my first punch with his forearm, but the second connects with his lip, busting it open. Riley screams and Tai grabs me under my arms, dragging me off Kennedy.

“Fuck you!” I spit at Kennedy, wrestling against Tai’s hold. “You don’t get to dictate what we do.”

“Is that right? This is exactly why we agreed to stay away from her.”

Riley gasps, and we all freeze, turning to look her way. “You agreed to stay away from me?” The wobble in her lip and tears glazing her eyes break me.

I shake Tai off me and walk toward her. “Rye Bear, it’s not as bad as it sounds,” I protest.

“Not as bad as it sounds? So you didn’t all decide what was best for me without talking to me about it?”

“Nope, that about sums it up,” Kennedy says, while getting to his feet. “What did you think would happen, Riley? That we would all fall head over heels in love with you? And what would have happened to us when you picked? That you and the one you chose would have lived happily ever after while the two you left behind watched on?”

“Kennedy, don’t be a dickhead, or it won’t only be Archer throwing punches,” Tai snaps.

“No, it’s fine,” Riley says, stepping up to Kennedy. “Fuck you, Kennedy, for thinking I would have wanted to come between your friendship. And fuck you for thinking you can dictate who I do and don’t fuck now. I’m twenty-one, not seventeen. You have Tai, flaunting and fucking him any chance you get. Both Archer and I are adults, and we knew what we were doing. Did I risk breaking my heart all over again just to feel wanted? Yes, I did. But he looks at me like I’m special, and beautiful, so sue me for liking how that felt.”

Kennedy puffs his chest up and I ball my hands into fists. If he so much as scares her, I will kill him.

“You want to feel beautiful and seen?” he says, taking her chin in his hand and she looks up at him defiantly. “We have always fucking seen you, Riley, and that is the problem. Do you want to hear that at twenty-one it killed us to walk away from you? How we all agreed to stay away because we were all too damn selfish to let you choose only one of us? Are you ready to deal with the fact that we had to fuck our way through socialites, and circles with more wealth than sense, to fund our sex club?”

Riley blinks away her tears. “The shitty thing is, I would have been right by your side and supported you all. Just as friends. I would have been your biggest cheerleader, but instead I went off to college alone. Even things with Tillie were not the same because I could tell she wanted to talk about you, but she never did. She distanced herself that first year and I’m thankful we found our way back to each other.” Riley reaches out and presses her hand to Kennedy’s chest. “You might lash out and use your words to hurt people, but inside here, I know you’re different. You care even if you go about it the wrong way. But words stick—remember you can’t unsay things.”

She drops her hand and walks away, leaving the three of us standing there shattered.

“This is bad,” Tai says, running his hand through his hair. “So fucking bad.”

I go to follow behind her, but Tai grabs my arm. “Let her have some space. Kennedy threw a lot at her, and she might need some time to process it.”

“Fuck,” I say. He is right—she needs time to think, and me barging in won’t fix anything. My phone buzzes, alerting me to an email, and I pull it from my pocket.

Tai looks over my shoulder. “She is really pissed. She has sent another request. Maybe we should just ignore it.”

“I have a better idea,” Kennedy states.