Come Out Swinging (Reach for the Moon Book 2), Sam Hall [leveled readers .TXT] 📗

house, when you were out, my skin was crawling. I paced the floor over and over, until Zack shouted at me. Went for a run, tried to work out this itch under my skin, but smashing the bag, running until I was gasping, it didn’t do it. Maybe it’s too soon, maybe you’re not ready for this yet…”

He pulled away slightly, and I hated the stab of fear that created, but instead, he picked up my hand and grazed his lips across my knuckles.

“I’ll back off a bit. I don’t want you to feel like a bone being fought over by two dogs.” Those deep brown eyes held mine effortlessly.

I just stared at him blankly as he pulled back, grabbing the cue, and leaned over the table. He winked as he was about to take his shot. Mason fucking Klein winked at me before belting the white ball with his cue.

Chapter 13

So this was some kind of unique torture.

Somehow, we were caught in an endless round of games of pool, our focus narrowed right now to the table, the balls, and each other. No one actually touched all that much, only accidentally. Getting too close as we moved around the table, not pulling back far enough as the other person took their shot. It was death by a thousand glancing touches, and I was going out of my mind with it.

The plentiful drinks, their constant attention. In a moment of clarity, I thought I saw the purpose of it. Mason and Aidan, they were redirecting my focus away from the situation with Nance, letting me lay down my burdens for just one night, because I’d have to pick them up and fight things out tomorrow.

Which left me to wonder, what did I do with the rest of my night?

“It’s your shot.”

The two of them watched me stand there, leaning on my cue, watching them and the table with bleary eyes. Alcohol didn’t affect shifters the same way as humans, not unless you drank a shit ton of it, and I had.

“Time to finish the game,” Stevie said, appearing on my right with a tray full of empties. “I’m closing up.”

“Winner decides what happens next,” one of the guys said darkly. Both of them watched me so, so closely as I bent down, the white ball feeling like it wavered and shimmered in my line of sight, so I just breathed in and out as the alcohol in my blood burned off. Its edges, its placement, the angles I’d need to strike to get the last ball in slowly came to me as I shook off this fuzzy caul. As I took a deep breath in, then out, I could feel it—the need, the desire to shank the shot, lose the game, give the choice over to them and chance, to see what it all would lead to.

But I wasn’t a girl willing to pull her punches anymore.

I drew my arm back, adjusted the angle of my cue slightly, and then made my shot. We all watched the white smack off the cushions and careen across the table before clacking against the last ball, sending it slamming into the side pocket. When I stood up, I was smiling, face flush with…what?

“Well done, kid,” Stevie said. “Now,” her eyes slid to the two guys, “none of you are driving home tonight. It’s a cab, a call, or keys.”

“Keys?” I asked.

She fished out a pair from her pocket and shook them. “I’ve got an apartment upstairs you can sleep it off in, or whatever it is you’re gonna do. I’ll be at my house, so you can make as much noise as you like.”

“We’ll take these and let you know after we’ve packed the table away, yeah?” Aidan said in his client managing voice, all professional calm. He didn’t look real professional right now, hair mussed, T-shirt and jeans rucked from playing pool, eyes fixed on mine.

“Sounds good. You’ve got until I put all these in the glass washer, then I make the call to the alpha residence.”

I watched the bunch of keys slap into the palm of Aidan’s hand, jumping when Mason’s mouth brushed my ear.

“You won, so lady’s choice.”

Was it though? It was all hot and sexy right now, both of them looking like they’d love to enact my every fantasy, but their words, their looks of pain came rushing back in. Of Mason’s reticence, his feeling of going against my father’s wishes, his newly freed desire for me, of Aidan’s agonised reveal of his aching knot. Zack had let me play at casual sex with him back at the gym, but it wasn’t really. He’d always intended to take things further. I couldn’t just be a girl, picking up a couple of guys in a bar for hot meaningless sex.

Or could I?

“So what if I choose just this?” I waved my hand around vaguely. “Just bodies and pleasure and…” My words faltered as I saw their fingers tighten around their cues, faint cracks coming from the wood in protest. “What if we just go upstairs and see what happens, but when we wake up, nothing’s changed? I’m not making lifelong commitments tonight, I’m not in the right headspace for that, so if that’s all that’s on the table—”

“Rack the balls, I’ll put the cues away,” Mason said, the two of them moving as one to tidy up the pool table.

There was something similar to the time I’d been chased through the forest in the way I walked up to the flat upstairs. Stevie had her own place, but she used this when she needed somewhere to crash, too tired to drive home, or for friends like me. I turned towards them, feeling them hot on my heels as I opened the door, and stepped blindly inside, caught on their combined gazes. They tracked my every move, fanning out to hunt me down as neon lights pooled in through the long windows, colouring our flesh and lighting our way to