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Curious Series #3
Envious
Here was the messed up thing inside me — guys who wanted to tell the world they liked me? They did nothing for my pulse.
Guys who belonged to someone else? Who looked at me only when they thought no one else would notice? I didn't like it, but it got me.
Just that chance to make them change, you know? To make them into the kind of guy who'd tell all his buddies I was the one.
Maybe that's what got me about Jack. He'd belonged to Ella.
Now he was mine. And even though I'd stolen him in the most primitive way possible, some part of him still belonged to her.
But the real problem was, some part of me belonged to her too.
ENVIOUS is the third book in the CURIOUS series. This is a 40,000 word contemporary NA MFF romance. Mature scenes intended for adult audiences only.
Guys who belonged to someone else? Who looked at me only when they thought no one else would notice? I didn't like it, but it got me.
Just that chance to make them change, you know? To make them into the kind of guy who'd tell all his buddies I was the one.
Maybe that's what got me about Jack. He'd belonged to Ella.
Now he was mine. And even though I'd stolen him in the most primitive way possible, some part of him still belonged to her.
But the real problem was, some part of me belonged to her too.
ENVIOUS is the third book in the CURIOUS series. This is a 40,000 word contemporary NA MFF romance. Mature scenes intended for adult audiences only.
- GenresRomance
150 pages, Paperback
Published January 18, 2022
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October 14, 2021I'm so excited! ENVIOUS, the third book in the CURIOUS series, will be out on Sunday! Here's a sneak peek until Amazon gets the Look Inside going, but watch out, it's a little NC-17 right from Hailey's jump:
Ella
In fairytales, after long struggles, terrifying odds, and deep heartache, the princess always gets the prince. She lives in a huge castle. Everyone loves her. She has babies and lives happily ever after.
I was raised to be a princess, and you'd think that was easy street, the knowledge that no matter how hard my life was in this moment, it would eventually resolve with the safety of a castle and the love of Prince Charming.
I even knew who Prince Charming was. I even knew where he was.
Like, right at this moment, as I stumbled in the dark, with a tear-streaked brave face, hoping nobody noticed me fleeing the scene? My Prince Charming was going for round two with…
There was no name for her in fairy tales. Because Princesses only had Prince Charmings. They never had whatever Hailey was to me. Not a princess, not a prince, not an evil stepsister or a loyal maid.
She was whatever you call the third part of the relationship I desperately longed for. My own, secret, happily ever after.
"Hey, everything OK?" Theo jogged up to me, expression set to concern. Shit. "Look, I'm an asshole, saying what I did about Jack cheating. I wasn't even sure, until…" He trailed off, eyes drawn to the clubhouse, then back to me.
Embarrassed, I swiped my cheek, hoping to erase the tears before he noticed. Theo reached out and grabbed my hand. Like he one hundred percent had my back, he murmured, “Jack's an asshole.”
I shook my head, forcing a smile. “Everything’s fine. I just had a little too much to drink.”
“But…” His eyes trailed to the door again.
Leaving Theo, I went back to the main door of the building Hailey and Jack were in and fished a key from my ring, locking it. Emergency regs meant you could always push open a locked door, so it wasn’t like I was dooming them to a night in the clubhouse.
“Come one, let’s finish the game,” I said, and by the time I turned around, my voice sounded completely normal.
This is what it’s really like to be a princess: You are always on some parade float, and everyone’s watching, so wave your hand and smile for the crowd because you have One Job, Princess, and this is it: Make sure everyone believes the fairy tale.
“What time is it?” I asked Theo, although I could have checked my own phone.
“10:45.”
"Ooh," I feigned surprise. "I think security comes early tonight, to supervise a late-night cleaning crew. Because of the concert Saturday.”
If you knew anything about the workings of the country club, my excuse was flimsy at best, but that’s the other part of being a princess. You can wave your magic wand and people get this glazed look and believe you. Because you've been training them to your whole life.
“Yeah, well, pool party would be kind of a bust anyway, with the wind.” With that jovial way he had, Theo sauntered down the pathway, calling, “Olly-Olly-Oxen-Free!” in his booming voice carried by the whipping wind. “Get your pants on, everybody!”
Slowly, most of our friends emerged from wherever they had been hiding— behind the Snack Shack, the bushes edging the putting green, the shadows of the storage shed. I group texted and the rest came in from the shadows.
Jack and Hailey appeared conspicuously apart, Hailey from the parking lot side of the building and Jack around the other side bordering the fairway. They looked guilty as hell, bodies flushed, lips swollen. I wondered if I looked that way as well, if Theo had noticed.
Thinking of that, how someone might know, made me instantly so sick to my stomach I could’ve thrown up. What had I been thinking? And what had I risked? Because one thing that never ever happened in a fairytale was falling in love with two people and still getting a happily ever after. The princesses that made choices like that ended up eaten by monsters.
I caught up with Theo and made him stay near me the rest of the evening.
#
The last thing I did that night was stop by the one all-night drug store in town. Three a.m. and full of humiliation, I snuck into the fluorescent overhead light nightmare, scurried to the back, and bought a packet of Plan B. The bored, graveyard shift pharmacist handed it over no problem, but I was still full of stinging embarrassment that someone might recognize me. A lot of people in this town knew me. I pulled my hoodie low.
I drove through the dark streets to Hailey's house and slid the bag into her mailbox. Then I texted her what I’d done. I didn't think I could see her again. I was dying to see her again. I waited in front of her house as long as I dared, hoping she'd come out.
When she didn't, I realized they were still together, without me.
I went home alone, crawled into bed, and cried myself to sleep. Not because Jack had had sex with Hailey in front of me, not because I had loved it, that it had been the best, but because it had to be the last time. I would lose everything if anyone found out.
#
Chapter 2
Hailey
“We have to go after Ella,” I panted, body still trembling.
Jack nodded, kissing my shoulder, the sweat of his forehead against my neck.
My insides clenched, an aftershock of orgasm I couldn’t control, and he groaned, half sliding out, half getting squeezed out of me. A moment later, straightening his clothes, finding his shirt as I ducked to pick up the swimsuit pieces.
Distantly, the sound of the door opening as Ella left the building. I needed to clean up, the smeary wetness in my bikini bottoms.
Creampie, I’d heard some girls laugh in the locker room once. I bit my lip, feeling possessive. I had that part of him inside me still. So different from a condom, where everything was neatly taken away, the guy’s mess to handle.
And then once, on the internet, some random joke about babies being a fully baked creampie. Dread sank over me. What had we done?
Halfway through getting dressed, he kissed me again. Like he knew we had to go, but he couldn't stop himself.
“We are so stupid,” I whispered.
Ella had mentioned getting some Plan B. She always knew what to do.
Jack took my face between his warm hands, calloused from work. He looked me dead in the eye. “We are not stupid.”
There were tons of emotions flying all around. But for a guy to say I wasn’t stupid, especially when it came to relationship choices, got me in a tender place.
I wondered if some part of me was determined to get knocked up to a guy I couldn’t keep, end up a single mom like my mom. Maybe part of me had been expecting Jack to be angry and blame me for what we'd done, and so I’d just said it first.
“Yeah, OK, let’s go get her,” I said, all business, not quite able to look at him. That was the other thing I was afraid of—if a good guy ever fell for me, I’d figure a way to mess it up.
Getting our clothes right, we crept through the dark hallway, back the way we came. Our eyes had adjusted, and with all the big windows and EXIT signs, it was easy to see our way around.
Jack froze next to me, crouched slightly.
Through the glass doors, Ella stood just outside talking to Theo.
“Come on.” He took my hand and pulled me back from the entrance.
“What, embarrassed to be seen with me?” I couldn’t believe I said it. It just popped out. I thought it was going to sound like a joke. Total doom slide into social horror— it came out like I was jealous.
“No,” he said, still looking toward Ella and Theo like he was trying to make out their conversation. “But I don’t want to embarrass Ella either.”’
My cheeks felt hot and cold. Was he doing the right thing? Or was I just lying to myself? I mean, the fact I was potentially an embarrassment didn't feel great, even though I knew what he meant— he was Ella's boyfriend.
I tried to focus on what it had felt like when the three of us were together, how nobody had been cheating on anyone, moving like we were one, like we all belonged to each other. Of course, the memory of Ella running away overwhelmed everything.
“How are we going to get out?”
“Doors only lock from the outside,” Jack said. “Let’s go out the front entrance.”
We backtracked through the country club. “What about an alarm?”
He reached for my hand, squeezed. “Well, I guess if there is one, we’ll be busted.”
I squeezed back. He grinned, seeming surprised. We went to the fancy front entrance, where people came through when there was a grand function and Rolling Green had valets going full tilt. “I don’t see any wires.”
Maybe all the wires were inside the walls.
“Here goes nothing.” Jack pinched his face in this total adorable way, like a kid about to pop a balloon, and pushed the lever.
The doors opened with nothing more than a cool gust of air from outside, blowing my hair back. “Come on.”
He pulled me through. The doors swung closed behind us. Jack checked it. Locked.
He let go of my hand.
“You go that way, I’ll go this way,” he said, and reality washed over me. We’d go back to the group and pretend we hadn’t just been together, and it would be our delicious secret…
Except it kind of seemed like maybe the secret was out. Theo had accused Jack of cheating in front of the group. Ella had run off. I'd run after her.
I told myself rumors and accusations, drunken fights—they were all part of stupid summer parties. Acting as though nothing had happened would keep people from remembering. Could I even recall the last time someone accused someone else of cheating at something like this if there wasn't a big fight about it? Nope.
Except that wasn’t true at all, I thought as I crept around the exterior of the clubhouse, Jack going one way and me going the other. I could remember every scandal because that's what parties like this were all about—the juicy gossip and what happened the next day. I thought of how Theo leaned in to talk to Ella the way he did. It seemed clear he had accused Jack of cheating because he was making a play for Ella.
And sure enough, when I made it around the last corner and back to the group, there they were: Theo and Ella.
Standing in the dark, semen still slippery in my bikini bottoms like some porno equivalent of Cinderella’s glass slipper – the last thing I had left at the stroke of midnight—I watched Theo and Ella talking and my heart burned with jealousy, the ties of the swimsuit Ella had gotten for me tickling the outside of my thigh as they moved under my clothes.
Sometimes my brain tried to insist my feelings were based on logic instead of the chaos of my heart. For example, I knew I was supposed to like guys. So my brain tried to convince me I was somehow jealous because I had feelings for Theo, or that I was possessive that he'd been after me.
But the truth was, I was only jealous of Theo in the sense that he was where I wanted to be. I wanted Ella for me and Jack, and the only thing close to jealousy about Theo I felt was wondering if he’d been using me the whole time, dating me to get close to her.
I took out my phone. Texted Ella.
Me: I’m sorry.
I deleted the words, unsent. I wasn’t sorry.
I was glad I’d had sex with Jack. I had low hopes our threesome would last. But honestly, that was based on my low hopes I could make any relationship last.
The one upside of low self-esteem was that made me live more in the moment. I wasn’t guaranteed any kind of happily ever after, but at least I’d had this. I couldn't pretend I regretted it.
I texted,
Me: Where are you?
I watched her look at her phone and slide it back to her pocket unanswered. Theo kept talking to her. This tremble went through my heart. What if we'd lost her?
I couldn’t face her in front of Theo, because I knew she'd never be her true self in front of a witness. Or maybe I was fooling myself— if I never got up the guts to talk to her, she could never break my heart by telling me we were over. And looking at her from a distance, so happy with Theo? I was suddenly afraid maybe I had crossed a line and destroyed us.
I texted Ella,
Me: Do you want to taste me now?
Ella
In fairytales, after long struggles, terrifying odds, and deep heartache, the princess always gets the prince. She lives in a huge castle. Everyone loves her. She has babies and lives happily ever after.
I was raised to be a princess, and you'd think that was easy street, the knowledge that no matter how hard my life was in this moment, it would eventually resolve with the safety of a castle and the love of Prince Charming.
I even knew who Prince Charming was. I even knew where he was.
Like, right at this moment, as I stumbled in the dark, with a tear-streaked brave face, hoping nobody noticed me fleeing the scene? My Prince Charming was going for round two with…
There was no name for her in fairy tales. Because Princesses only had Prince Charmings. They never had whatever Hailey was to me. Not a princess, not a prince, not an evil stepsister or a loyal maid.
She was whatever you call the third part of the relationship I desperately longed for. My own, secret, happily ever after.
"Hey, everything OK?" Theo jogged up to me, expression set to concern. Shit. "Look, I'm an asshole, saying what I did about Jack cheating. I wasn't even sure, until…" He trailed off, eyes drawn to the clubhouse, then back to me.
Embarrassed, I swiped my cheek, hoping to erase the tears before he noticed. Theo reached out and grabbed my hand. Like he one hundred percent had my back, he murmured, “Jack's an asshole.”
I shook my head, forcing a smile. “Everything’s fine. I just had a little too much to drink.”
“But…” His eyes trailed to the door again.
Leaving Theo, I went back to the main door of the building Hailey and Jack were in and fished a key from my ring, locking it. Emergency regs meant you could always push open a locked door, so it wasn’t like I was dooming them to a night in the clubhouse.
“Come one, let’s finish the game,” I said, and by the time I turned around, my voice sounded completely normal.
This is what it’s really like to be a princess: You are always on some parade float, and everyone’s watching, so wave your hand and smile for the crowd because you have One Job, Princess, and this is it: Make sure everyone believes the fairy tale.
“What time is it?” I asked Theo, although I could have checked my own phone.
“10:45.”
"Ooh," I feigned surprise. "I think security comes early tonight, to supervise a late-night cleaning crew. Because of the concert Saturday.”
If you knew anything about the workings of the country club, my excuse was flimsy at best, but that’s the other part of being a princess. You can wave your magic wand and people get this glazed look and believe you. Because you've been training them to your whole life.
“Yeah, well, pool party would be kind of a bust anyway, with the wind.” With that jovial way he had, Theo sauntered down the pathway, calling, “Olly-Olly-Oxen-Free!” in his booming voice carried by the whipping wind. “Get your pants on, everybody!”
Slowly, most of our friends emerged from wherever they had been hiding— behind the Snack Shack, the bushes edging the putting green, the shadows of the storage shed. I group texted and the rest came in from the shadows.
Jack and Hailey appeared conspicuously apart, Hailey from the parking lot side of the building and Jack around the other side bordering the fairway. They looked guilty as hell, bodies flushed, lips swollen. I wondered if I looked that way as well, if Theo had noticed.
Thinking of that, how someone might know, made me instantly so sick to my stomach I could’ve thrown up. What had I been thinking? And what had I risked? Because one thing that never ever happened in a fairytale was falling in love with two people and still getting a happily ever after. The princesses that made choices like that ended up eaten by monsters.
I caught up with Theo and made him stay near me the rest of the evening.
#
The last thing I did that night was stop by the one all-night drug store in town. Three a.m. and full of humiliation, I snuck into the fluorescent overhead light nightmare, scurried to the back, and bought a packet of Plan B. The bored, graveyard shift pharmacist handed it over no problem, but I was still full of stinging embarrassment that someone might recognize me. A lot of people in this town knew me. I pulled my hoodie low.
I drove through the dark streets to Hailey's house and slid the bag into her mailbox. Then I texted her what I’d done. I didn't think I could see her again. I was dying to see her again. I waited in front of her house as long as I dared, hoping she'd come out.
When she didn't, I realized they were still together, without me.
I went home alone, crawled into bed, and cried myself to sleep. Not because Jack had had sex with Hailey in front of me, not because I had loved it, that it had been the best, but because it had to be the last time. I would lose everything if anyone found out.
#
Chapter 2
Hailey
“We have to go after Ella,” I panted, body still trembling.
Jack nodded, kissing my shoulder, the sweat of his forehead against my neck.
My insides clenched, an aftershock of orgasm I couldn’t control, and he groaned, half sliding out, half getting squeezed out of me. A moment later, straightening his clothes, finding his shirt as I ducked to pick up the swimsuit pieces.
Distantly, the sound of the door opening as Ella left the building. I needed to clean up, the smeary wetness in my bikini bottoms.
Creampie, I’d heard some girls laugh in the locker room once. I bit my lip, feeling possessive. I had that part of him inside me still. So different from a condom, where everything was neatly taken away, the guy’s mess to handle.
And then once, on the internet, some random joke about babies being a fully baked creampie. Dread sank over me. What had we done?
Halfway through getting dressed, he kissed me again. Like he knew we had to go, but he couldn't stop himself.
“We are so stupid,” I whispered.
Ella had mentioned getting some Plan B. She always knew what to do.
Jack took my face between his warm hands, calloused from work. He looked me dead in the eye. “We are not stupid.”
There were tons of emotions flying all around. But for a guy to say I wasn’t stupid, especially when it came to relationship choices, got me in a tender place.
I wondered if some part of me was determined to get knocked up to a guy I couldn’t keep, end up a single mom like my mom. Maybe part of me had been expecting Jack to be angry and blame me for what we'd done, and so I’d just said it first.
“Yeah, OK, let’s go get her,” I said, all business, not quite able to look at him. That was the other thing I was afraid of—if a good guy ever fell for me, I’d figure a way to mess it up.
Getting our clothes right, we crept through the dark hallway, back the way we came. Our eyes had adjusted, and with all the big windows and EXIT signs, it was easy to see our way around.
Jack froze next to me, crouched slightly.
Through the glass doors, Ella stood just outside talking to Theo.
“Come on.” He took my hand and pulled me back from the entrance.
“What, embarrassed to be seen with me?” I couldn’t believe I said it. It just popped out. I thought it was going to sound like a joke. Total doom slide into social horror— it came out like I was jealous.
“No,” he said, still looking toward Ella and Theo like he was trying to make out their conversation. “But I don’t want to embarrass Ella either.”’
My cheeks felt hot and cold. Was he doing the right thing? Or was I just lying to myself? I mean, the fact I was potentially an embarrassment didn't feel great, even though I knew what he meant— he was Ella's boyfriend.
I tried to focus on what it had felt like when the three of us were together, how nobody had been cheating on anyone, moving like we were one, like we all belonged to each other. Of course, the memory of Ella running away overwhelmed everything.
“How are we going to get out?”
“Doors only lock from the outside,” Jack said. “Let’s go out the front entrance.”
We backtracked through the country club. “What about an alarm?”
He reached for my hand, squeezed. “Well, I guess if there is one, we’ll be busted.”
I squeezed back. He grinned, seeming surprised. We went to the fancy front entrance, where people came through when there was a grand function and Rolling Green had valets going full tilt. “I don’t see any wires.”
Maybe all the wires were inside the walls.
“Here goes nothing.” Jack pinched his face in this total adorable way, like a kid about to pop a balloon, and pushed the lever.
The doors opened with nothing more than a cool gust of air from outside, blowing my hair back. “Come on.”
He pulled me through. The doors swung closed behind us. Jack checked it. Locked.
He let go of my hand.
“You go that way, I’ll go this way,” he said, and reality washed over me. We’d go back to the group and pretend we hadn’t just been together, and it would be our delicious secret…
Except it kind of seemed like maybe the secret was out. Theo had accused Jack of cheating in front of the group. Ella had run off. I'd run after her.
I told myself rumors and accusations, drunken fights—they were all part of stupid summer parties. Acting as though nothing had happened would keep people from remembering. Could I even recall the last time someone accused someone else of cheating at something like this if there wasn't a big fight about it? Nope.
Except that wasn’t true at all, I thought as I crept around the exterior of the clubhouse, Jack going one way and me going the other. I could remember every scandal because that's what parties like this were all about—the juicy gossip and what happened the next day. I thought of how Theo leaned in to talk to Ella the way he did. It seemed clear he had accused Jack of cheating because he was making a play for Ella.
And sure enough, when I made it around the last corner and back to the group, there they were: Theo and Ella.
Standing in the dark, semen still slippery in my bikini bottoms like some porno equivalent of Cinderella’s glass slipper – the last thing I had left at the stroke of midnight—I watched Theo and Ella talking and my heart burned with jealousy, the ties of the swimsuit Ella had gotten for me tickling the outside of my thigh as they moved under my clothes.
Sometimes my brain tried to insist my feelings were based on logic instead of the chaos of my heart. For example, I knew I was supposed to like guys. So my brain tried to convince me I was somehow jealous because I had feelings for Theo, or that I was possessive that he'd been after me.
But the truth was, I was only jealous of Theo in the sense that he was where I wanted to be. I wanted Ella for me and Jack, and the only thing close to jealousy about Theo I felt was wondering if he’d been using me the whole time, dating me to get close to her.
I took out my phone. Texted Ella.
Me: I’m sorry.
I deleted the words, unsent. I wasn’t sorry.
I was glad I’d had sex with Jack. I had low hopes our threesome would last. But honestly, that was based on my low hopes I could make any relationship last.
The one upside of low self-esteem was that made me live more in the moment. I wasn’t guaranteed any kind of happily ever after, but at least I’d had this. I couldn't pretend I regretted it.
I texted,
Me: Where are you?
I watched her look at her phone and slide it back to her pocket unanswered. Theo kept talking to her. This tremble went through my heart. What if we'd lost her?
I couldn’t face her in front of Theo, because I knew she'd never be her true self in front of a witness. Or maybe I was fooling myself— if I never got up the guts to talk to her, she could never break my heart by telling me we were over. And looking at her from a distance, so happy with Theo? I was suddenly afraid maybe I had crossed a line and destroyed us.
I texted Ella,
Me: Do you want to taste me now?
February 8, 2022
More interpersonal dynamics among our throuple that threaten to tear them apart before they can come together
January 22, 2022
In Envious we FINALLY get more POVs to this story with the addition of Ella as well as Hailey POV. We learn that Ella's family has strong religious connects and that is what's driving her desire to hide her feelings for Hailey. However, this book essentially desolves the throuple part of this storyline as Jack and Hailey start to explore their relationship together while Ella retreats into herself in attempts to save herself from coming out.
Theo starts to become a pseudo villian, but also an attempted ally to Ella. This is all to play into the end fair scene which thrusts us into yet ANOTHER book. These 4 books could have easily been two.
Theo starts to become a pseudo villian, but also an attempted ally to Ella. This is all to play into the end fair scene which thrusts us into yet ANOTHER book. These 4 books could have easily been two.
March 17, 2023
This was the weakest book so far. But please don’t mistake that to mean the book is “bad.” It’s not.
Like most books in the middle, this one dragged out plot points, until tension builds in the end. (Cliffhanger)
One thing I found particularly frustrating In this book was the lack of communication and miscommunication being the main source of “drama.”
It drives the plot forward, and so it’s not just drama for the sake of it, but I found it to make the book weaker than the previous 2.
All in all, it’s not a dealbreaker. I’ll be continuing the series.
Like most books in the middle, this one dragged out plot points, until tension builds in the end. (Cliffhanger)
One thing I found particularly frustrating In this book was the lack of communication and miscommunication being the main source of “drama.”
It drives the plot forward, and so it’s not just drama for the sake of it, but I found it to make the book weaker than the previous 2.
All in all, it’s not a dealbreaker. I’ll be continuing the series.
March 17, 2023
Envious book 3/5
I so enjoy the series, and I wasn’t thrilled with this book, but I wouldn’t say it’s “bad.”
Here is the thing that frustrated me the most in this book:
Nobody communicates. And while it’s great tension, it’s really hard to take anyone’s “side.”
Savage creates a cast of flawed characters, and those flaws make me want to put them all in a room together until they resolve their lack of communication.
I so enjoy the series, and I wasn’t thrilled with this book, but I wouldn’t say it’s “bad.”
Here is the thing that frustrated me the most in this book:
Nobody communicates. And while it’s great tension, it’s really hard to take anyone’s “side.”
Savage creates a cast of flawed characters, and those flaws make me want to put them all in a room together until they resolve their lack of communication.
January 31, 2022
"The fear it will end because all things that are too good to be true always do."
January 5, 2025
i understand them all i fear— BUT WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT ENDING?!:?/! DO YOU WANT ME TO PASS OUT!:?/!:?/!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews