Beautiful Broken Rules (Broken, Series #1)(28)

I needed to stop where this was going. I grabbed his face and looked into his hazel eyes. “The point is Jaxon and I are fine. We aren’t fighting, no one’s moving away. Are you kidding me, we begged you for two years to move in next to us. We aren’t going anywhere now that we’ve finally got you.” I laughed and smiled, happy when he laughed along with me.

We were interrupted by a familiar voice. “Dude, what the hell, I thought we were meeting up at the lifeguard stand?” Jaxon was standing above us, looking down at me but talking to Cole. He frowned at my position in front of Cole and I slowly moved my hands down from his face. I hated that I felt awkward about my close friendship with Cole in front of him. I moved back to sit next to Cole’s side again.

“Chill out, *, I came across Sleeping Beauty here, and stopped to talk,” Cole responded while swatting at Jaxon’s legs.

I shoved at him and said, “I wasn’t sleeping, I was just enjoying the sun.”

Jaxon gave me an angry, confused look. “Sleeping? Emerson, you can’t sleep on the beach out here alone.” His voice was hard as he sat down next to me with his legs stretching out in front of him.

“Don’t worry. Next time I feel the urge to sleep on the beach, I’ll invite you along,” I replied while winking at him. He looked shocked that I would say this in front of Cole. “He knows, Jaxon. Apparently you were pretty obvious last night.” I punched him in the arm. He grabbed the hand that punched him and pulled me into a scorching kiss.

“Ugh, okay guys, gross. Seriously, I don’t need to see your friends with benefits action live. I’ll see y’all at the game tonight.” He got up and started jogging back down the beach.

I was barely paying attention to Cole, because Jaxon’s lips hadn’t left mine yet. Eventually, I broke the kiss and pulled back. “You can’t just kiss me, whenever! I have rules,” I said nervously.

“I know your rules, and kissing was nowhere in there. Kissing doesn’t mean we’re dating, don’t stress,” he teased nonchalantly. “Besides, you didn’t seem to mind when I did this to you last night.” He proceeded to run his tongue along my neck beneath my jaw.

I’d never thought about someone kissing me outside of sex. In fact, that had never come up. I mean some of the guys would kiss my neck occasionally, but I’d never actually let them kiss my lips unless we were in the bedroom. I’d never had an opportunity to make a rule for that. “You’re okay with this, even knowing that I will at some point sleep with someone else?” I felt like kissing on occasion would lead to him having feelings for me, and then I would have to cut him off. I didn’t want to. I enjoyed Jaxon far too much to cut him off, but I couldn’t risk breaking his heart in the process. So that’s what I would have to do if I felt like that’s where it was leading.

“As long as that someone else isn’t my best friend or my twin brother, I can try and deal,” he finally said, although I felt like there was a lot more he wasn’t saying.

“Damn, and here I thought when my time was up with you I could still have my fun with another smoking-hot Riley brother,” I badgered him.

Instantly, he had me lying on the beach with his mouth above mine, “Not funny.” I laughed at his seriousness until he kissed my smile away. I combed my fingers through his hair, the way I always saw him doing. He pulled back and stared in my eyes.

“When you say you’ll try to be okay with it, what do you mean?” I don’t know why I ask questions I don’t want to know the answer to.