The Best Kind of Forever (Riverside Reapers Book 1)

AERIS

Drink or Dare: a rite of passage for twenty-somethings, and a surefire way to get drunk.

Or: a fool’s way into spilling their guts.

When Hayes told me that we were going to hang out with the guys tonight, I was expecting a movie and some snacks, but nothing this hardcore.

“Guys, this is Aeris. Aeris, these are the guys,” Hayes introduces us.

I wave awkwardly to the room full of ripped, intimidating hockey players. I was nervous to meet them before, but now I’m one ill-timed comment away from panicking.

“Hi, Aeris,” they say in unison, like they’re greeting a newcomer at an AA meeting.

Josette—Casen’s girlfriend—was going to join us, but she had to work late tonight, so it’s only me in a house full of six guys.

“So you’re the girl who has our boy pussy-whipped,” Gage says, making the color in my cheeks deepen.

Hayes flips him off, but he’s wearing a matching blush.

The coffee table is lined from end to end with red solo cups, a dare on the bottom of each one. If you get a dare you refuse to do, you have to drink.

Everyone’s gathered around in a sort of football huddle, and the seriousness on each of their faces has me already regretting whatever stomach-turning ride I’m about to embark on.

Gage eyes everyone up and down like he’s a lion gauging the weakest gazelle in the herd. “You guys all know how this works. Remember: no dares will be completed without consent from the other party, if necessary.”

“So, who wants to go first?” he asks, mischief curling around his words.

Oh, God. Kill me now. Have my cart go off the tracks in some Final Destination-esque death scene.

Kit doesn’t even look fazed when he volunteers himself. He picks up the cup situated farthest from him, holding it over his head so he can glance at the dare.

“Give a lap dance to someone of your choosing. Clothes optional,” he reads, the mirth in his eyes ascending to dangerous levels.

Most of the faces around the circle look curious, but a few are fearful. I don’t blame them. I’d be terrified if I was on the receiving end too. And Kit doesn’t strike me as the type to back down from a dare.

No, no, no. I’m the only girl in the entire group. Please don’t pick me. Please. Don’t. Pick. Me.

The second Kit looks at me, a low rumble comes from Hayes’ chest.

“Don’t even think about it,” he growls, eliciting unfettered laughter from the group, and Bristol and Casen seem to share some kind of complicit look with each other.

Kit holds his hands up in surrender. “Your girl is safe, H.”

Your girl.

That doesn’t sound half bad.

Warmth pumps through me at the term of endearment, my breath and heart boxing it out in the ring of my ribs.

“Are all of these dares sexual?” I whisper to Hayes.

Hayes flashes me that trademark grin of his. “God, I hope not.”

The arrogance in his tone isn’t a good sign, but neither is the heat pooling between my legs. Thank you, Hayes’ stupid audiobook narrator voice. Why does he have to be irresistible all the time? And why am I hoping that I get a dare just as sexual as Kit’s?

Look, we’ve kissed, but we haven’t done a lot of sexual stuff with each other yet. It’s not that I don’t want to—trust me, I do—but I only want to initiate it if he makes it clear he’s on board.

“Fully, do you give me consent to give you the best lap dance you’ll ever experience?” Kit asks, glowing with excitement.

Fulton’s laugh is brittle. “Me? Really?”

“Yes, you.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re about as virginal as the olive oil we have in the cabinet.”

Fulton grumbles something under his breath, but he doesn’t refute Kit’s statement. “Fine. Yes, I give you consent.”

Kit claps his hands together. “It’s your lucky day. I’ve been practicing my Magic Mike moves, and you won’t even have to pay me anything.”

Everyone retreats from the huddle and sits down on the couch except for Kit, who’s dragging a kitchen chair into the center of the living room. He extends an arm out and bows, and with a sigh, Fulton shuffles over and takes his new throne.

If I had walked into the room right now, with no context, I would’ve thought Fulton was involved in some sort of hostage situation. His hands are gripping the ever-loving life out of his seat, and his face has turned this sickly white color that looks strangely akin to a zombie bite victim.

“Please don’t get any of this on video,” he groans.

“Too late,” Gage says, already holding up his phone camera, flash on and everything.

And with a beat, the ridiculously raunchy music starts playing, and Kit begins to sway his hips from side to side. He sticks one leg out, then slowly rolls up, making an effort to wiggle his ass and push his chest out. Oh my God. It’s like I’ve been transported to a strip club in Las Vegas, but not a good one. A scary one. A very scary one.

I don’t think we’re a minute through the song—that’s how long and torturous this feels. This would be a good type of psychological torture for governments to employ wherever torture is even legal these days.

“I’m scared,” I mumble to Hayes.

“Really?”

I’m so close to Hayes’ body that I can feel his breath against my skin, can pick up on the exact moment the slow-burning desire in his steel-blue eyes kicks up.

“I don’t know. This is pretty hot,” he jokes, throwing an arm over my shoulder.

The contact alone has somehow launched my thoughts into the ozone layer, and my arousal is up there in orbit with all the secret things I fantasize about Hayes doing to me. He’s so pretty. The kind of pretty you never get tired of looking at. But I think he’d look a lot prettier with his head between my thig—

“Oh, no. He’s taken his shirt off,” I hear Hayes whisper, and my eyes snap up to find Kit, in fact, with his shirt off. Then I’m met with a lot of olive, inked skin. And abs. Abs stacked on abs. He’s whipping his shirt around his head like a lasso, simultaneously grinding on Fulton with an undulation of his hips.

I can’t hold back my laughter anymore.

“Take your pants off!” Gage shouts giddily, and his request is followed by some agreeable catcalls.

“Do not take your pants off!” Fulton yells, glaring at Kit.

Kit shushes him with a finger, then finishes off the number by bending down and twerking in his face.

I don’t even know what to say, but then the song fades out and Fulton claims his spot on the end of the couch. Wheezing laughter breaks out between Bristol and Casen, and the two are red in the face with each knee slap and windshield wiper chortle.

Kit slips his shirt back on, throws a few kisses to the crowd, then slumps down in the adjacent armchair. “That was fun, Fully. Same time next week?”

“If we’re doing this again, you better feel me up next time,” Fulton mutters.

Once Casen catches his breath and wipes the tears from his eyes, he stands up. “I’ll go.”

Each step is imbued with hesitancy as he approaches the cups, and he picks up the fate that lies in that plastic, red hole of doom. “Eat a raw egg or take a shot of ketchup,” he announces.

My face screws up in disgust.

“Yeah, no. That’s a big, fat no.” Casen downs his drink as quickly as he can, nearly sputtering when he comes back up for air. “Jesus. Is this straight tequila?”

“Yes, yes it is,” Kit replies with a proud nod.

Casen rolls his eyes before sitting back down, and Bristol jumps to the table, snatching a cup for himself. “Let your teammates go through your hidden camera roll and post something to your Instagram.”

“Ohhh, this is a good one,” Kit snickers.

Bristol hands his phone over to Hayes. “I’ll let Hayes choose one, with agreement from everyone. But it has to be appropriate, and it can’t get me in trouble with Coach or my agent,” he explains, armed with a dark look and an even deadlier scowl.

Everyone scrambles around Hayes, and some conspiratorial murmurs wend their way into the atmosphere. Hayes throws his head back, a raucous chuckle barging out of him. He’s picked the most horrifyingly unflattering picture of Bristol he could find. It’s a photo of him taken with one of those fisheye lenses, and he’s in nothing but a speedo, eating a banana, with his bare feet hogging the whole bottom half of the frame.

He shows the phone to Bristol. “Dude, why does this exist? Like, I get taking it for fun. But why would you keep it?”

“You’re not uploading that to the internet,” Bristol growls, grabbing the device out of Hayes’ hands.

“Twenty-four hours. After twenty-four hours, we’ll take it down,” Hayes negotiates, holding his arms up. Some of the guys have to hold back their laughter.

“It’s really not that bad,” I pipe up, biting back the inelegant chuckle that’s storming inside of me. I don’t know why Bristol didn’t delete that image the second he took it. A Navy SEAL team couldn’t waterboard that picture out of me.

After a minute of arguing from both sides, Bristol begrudgingly agrees to twelve hours, and the guys are losing their minds as all the likes start to flood in.

Fulton’s smirk is infectious, and he points at the screen like an iPad toddler. “Look, this comment says, ‘Bristol, I want to suck on your toes—’”

“Okay! Aeris, I think you should go,” Gage says loudly.

I swallow the coil of anticipation in my throat, reaching for the drink that’s going to get my blood rushing in either one of two ways—humiliation or arousal.

The second I read the dare, I want to will this nightmarish experience out of existence. This was a bad idea. It’s like when you make the wrong decision in a story-based videogame, and you have to live with a domino effect of consequences.

My heart feels like it’s been drop-kicked out of my chest, and I chew my bottom lip. I can’t do this, can I?

“What does it say?” Casen asks.

Here goes nothing.

“Lick whipped cream off the person sitting next to you. Anywhere below the neck,” I recite, my pulse hiccupping, mortification a missile aimed directly at me.

I consider the potential outcomes. One, and the most reasonable option, is that I drink and don’t subject myself to this twisted game. Two, I pick Bristol, and things become really awkward. Or three—and my favorite option—I pick Hayes.

Gage’s mouth parts into an O shape, same with Kit’s.

Heat erodes my insides, and not the good kind of heat. The feverish, disgusting, sticky kind of heat that dials my libido up a few notches while simultaneously making me feel like I’m a second away from passing out.

“What will it be, Aeris?” Gage asks.

“I…”

I want to do the dare. I want to lick whipped cream off Hayes so badly, in some X-rated places if we didn’t have an audience to entertain. Luckily, before I can answer, Hayes says with a wink in my direction, “If she wants to do it, I’ll be her willing participant.”

I’m as quiet as a church mouse when I nod my head.

I blink, and there’s a can of whipped cream in my hand, and Hayes’ shirt has already been discarded. Oh, how I’ve missed staring at those magnificent muscles of his—the glistening bulge of his pectorals to the clean-cut ridges winding through his abs. Hayes Hollings is ruination, and he wears sin like the snug fit of a leather jacket around his shoulders.

Kit sticks two fingers in his mouth and whistles, and the rest of the guys eagerly wait for me to make the first move.

Gage shakes off thermal waves of my concern. “Don’t worry. None of this is going on camera. Right, guys?”

“Right,” they all respond.

There’s a driving need in Hayes’ eyes, one that rips my own desire from deep within me, and it trembles in my bloodstream, making me want to take his mouth and kiss him with raw abandon.

I spray a line of white confectionary down his hard stomach, watching as his body contracts from the cold. I can’t hear any of the guys when I’m trapped in his intoxicating thrall, which is a good thing for both my dignity and the slicked surface of my pussy.

Without thinking, I dart my tongue out to lick up the whipped cream, exploring those eight squares of muscle with each drawn-out flick. Hayes throws his head back against the couch, and I’m close enough to hear the quietest moan rising at the base of his throat. He adjusts his hips ever so slightly as I feel his length hardening against my breasts.

What I wouldn’t give to have the rest of the guys evacuate the premises as soon as possible. The gusset of my panties is soaked by the time I’ve cleaned the broad sweep of his skin. Lust-fueled flames whirl in my chest, descending into my gut, and my thoughts feel like they’ve all fractured into a million different pieces. I can’t believe I just did that.

Kit fans himself. “Wow, that was…”

“Damn, is anyone else hot in here?” Gage teases.

Hayes’ pupils seem to swallow his irises, a hungry gleam to them. The rest of the guys have already moved on to Fulton’s dare.

I rise to my feet, ready to reoccupy my spot next to Hayes, but he grabs my wrist and stops me.

“Sit on my lap,” he orders, his tone rife with urgency.

Before I have the chance to protest, he yanks me onto his thighs, and the force evokes a surprised yip from me.

“What—”

His lips play along the shell of my ear, and his breath fires off electrical impulses in my brain. “Don’t move, or the guys are going to see the raging hard-on I have right now, and I’ll never hear the end of it.”