Free Sweet Thursday by Mari Carr Page A

muscles of his thighs so hard, he knew she was leaving bruises.
    As he pulled from her mouth, Justin moved quickly, rising and turning her onto her stomach. He shoved into her once, twice, before Lily screamed and Justin’s ass flexed with his own orgasm. Killian couldn’t take his gaze away from the sight of the two of them gasping for air as they reached the pinnacle.
    After a few moments, Justin rolled to the side, Lily whimpering as he left her body.
    “Did I hurt you, Lil?” Justin asked with such concern, Killian kicked himself for calling his friend a heartless prick at the reunion. Watching him with Lily had proven Justin was just as worried about her welfare as he was. She was theirs to care for and he knew it was a task they both took seriously.
    “No,” Lily whispered. “Just sort of fucked me to death. It’s okay though. I liked it.”
    Justin laughed as Killian sat down on the edge of the bed, running his hands along the supple skin on the back of her leg.
    “Must’ve been good,” Justin teased. “You just said the F word.”
    Lily groaned but her eyes remained closed. “Nap,” she said, and he and Justin chuckled as her breath deepened and she drifted off to sleep.
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    Justin stood from the bed and pulled off his condom. “Let me take care of this and get a warm washcloth from the bathroom. She’s bound to be sore when she wakes up.”
    Killian nodded. “I’ll try to get her between the sheets.”
    Justin laughed and slapped him on the back. “Fuck this one-night thing. She’s staying the whole weekend.”
    “Maybe even longer,” he whispered when Justin disappeared down the hall and he looked at Lily asleep on his bed. “Maybe even longer.”
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Chapter Five
    It was still dark outside when Justin stirred. He wondered for a moment what had woken him, and then he felt it again. Lily’s hand moved slightly on his stomach, her warm breath tickling his chest hair. He glanced over her shoulder and could see Killian spooning her from behind. A quick peek at the clock told him he’d only slept a couple of hours.
    He struggled to put the events of the night into some sort of order he could understand. He’d gone to the reunion hoping for a quick hookup, maybe with some old high-school girlfriend. He’d envisioned an easy night of slap and tickle, a few shits and giggles between the sheets and then his trademark fast escape. Instead, he’d found Lily, the one woman from his past who’d always seen through him, seen straight to the core and still found something redeemable, something good inside.
    His mother had taken off when he was small, so he’d grown up in the most masculine home on the East Coast—just him and his dad. They’d existed on takeout, eating every meal on paper plates in front of the TV. It was Lily who’d introduced him to the concept of eating at a table, showing him there was actually a proper way to set one. She’d taught him how to make lasagna and how to make a bed with hospital corners. She’d helped him pick out his tuxedo for prom and gone with him to the florist to order the corsage for his date. For four years, she’d taken it upon herself to expose him to things his mother should have shown him.
    When he’d admitted he didn’t know how to dance, she hadn’t laughed. Instead, she’d taken his dilemma to heart and, in typical Lily fashion, she’d researched an answer. He grinned as he recalled her showing up outside his door the Saturday morning of prom…

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    “What are you doing here?” he’d asked, surprised to find Lily armed with a CD
    player. His dad had taken off to check out one of his jobsites.
    “I’m going to teach you how to dance.” She walked in and immediately started clearing garbage off the coffee table.
    “How to dance?” Justin followed her around and started picking up the mess too, used to Lily cleaning up whenever she came over to visit.
    “Yeah. I mean, I don’t really know how to