"Wren, wait up!" Dani panted while groaning to keep up with Wren. "Why exactly are we hurrying like the city guard is after us?"

Wren didn’t slow his stride, instead he eyes fixed on the road ahead.

"The person that had run past us right outside the boutique... that was Zoe. She was crying, Dani. I just want to know what’s going on with her."

’Even though she’s been nothing but completely rude to me since the moment I stepped into that house...’ Wren thought. ’She did help out with cleaning the ground floor of Langford Lodge this morning so the least I can do is make sure she isn’t in actual danger.’

"Oh, that grumpy woman..." Dani said rolling her eyes but picking up her pace to match his. "Yeah, I guess that’s okay. A little weird that she’s crying in public, though."

They continued their brisk walk with the residential outskirts of Harlow coming into view.

Immediately, as they were about to reach a wide crosswalk intersecting the main road, a figure caught their attention.

The two of them could clearly see Priya standing near the corner and she was wearing a thick dark hoodie pulled up over her head even though the mid-afternoon heat was raining down on them.

Dani’s face lit up with recognition. She immediately waved her hand frantically at the black-haired woman with the striking golden spray scattered across her air.

"Hey! Priya! Over here!" Dani yelled.

Priya jumped while her shoulders tensing violently.

The woman turned to them, her eyes wide beneath the shadow of the hood and a surprise flashed across her features but instead of returning the greeting, Priya immediately spun around, running frantically back the exact way she had come.

Her sneakers slapped against the asphalt until she completely disappeared down the winding road before Wren and Dani could even reach the crosswalk.

Dani blinked, lowering her hand slowly. "Well, that was rude. Why the hell did Priya run away like we were carrying a plague?"

She paused with a sudden wicked gleam entering her eyes.

She turned to Wren with a profoundly lewd look spreading across her face. "Wait a minute... did you two do the deed? Is she doing the ’walk of shame’?"

Wren stopped for a fraction of a second, giving her a look of utter confusion.

"What is wrong with your brain, Dani? Priya has a boyfriend. Why in the world would she spread her legs for another man, let alone someone she just re-met yesterdayt?"

"Hey, you’re hot, and city boys have a certain appeal!" Dani defended, shrugging her shoulders.

They began walking on the crosswalk.

Wren faced forward, walking properly and keeping an eye on the road, while Dani spun around on her heels. She turned her back to the direction they were heading, walking backward with her face turned directly to Wren with a cheeky grin on her lips.

Wren opened his mouth, wanting to tell her it wasn’t safe to walk backward on a street, but he stopped himself.

He glanced up and down the road.

There were absolutely no cars on the road right now, unlike the heavily congested streets of Bostara. He guessed it was fine, as long as she didn’t trip on a loose piece of gravel or the curb.

"I’m just saying," Dani continued, kicking her boots lightly against the asphalt as she walked backward. "Priya has a real crush on you, literally everyone sitting at the table could see it yesterday. She was basically undressing you with her eyes and Derek is going to absolutely hate you now, if he doesn’t already."

"I really don’t care," Wren sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "And as long as Priya does what she wants and keeps me out of her relationship drama, I will be completely fine."

Dani puffed out her cheeks. "Well, Priya better not break up with Derek. If she becomes single, she’s going to be competition."

She suddenly spun back around, closed the distance and tightly hugged his arm against her chest.

She looked up at him through her lashes and continued by saying, "Because I am going to keep Wren all for myself."

Wren couldn’t help but chuckle at her sheer audacity.

He looked down at the top of her blonde head. "Maybe you should try growing a little taller before claiming ownership over me."

Dani gasped, she was genuinely offended. "You’re mean! That’s a low blow!"

She let go of his arm and responded by punching him hard in the side.

Wren laughed off the hit with the dull impact barely registering against his ribs but that only infuriated her more. She punched him again, and again, her small fists hammering against his side all the way down the street until the house finally loomed into view.

...

"I’m home..." Wren said, his voice echoing slightly as he pushed open the heavy wooden door of the house.

It felt exactly like when he had showed up here early this afternoon except now, he could actually hear sounds.

He stepped into the foyer and kicked off his shoes, lining them neatly against the wall, and so did Dani, who just nudged her boots off carelessly.

As they stepped deeper into the house and got into the living room, the atmosphere shifted drastically and both of them froze.

They could hear the loud agonizing sounds of crying and yelling coming from upstairs.

Wren winced.

They quietly climbed the wooden stairs with the floorboards creaking softly beneath their feet and stopped in the hallway right next to her room.

Diana was standing outside the closed wooden door of Zoe’s bedroom.

Her posture was slumped, her hands resting flat against the wood as she knocked gently with her voice trembling.

She was pleading, saying that Zoe should let her in, and as her mother, she just wanted to talk with her daughter and understand what was wrong.

However, Zoe immediately crashed out from the other side.

"What the fuck is there to talk about?!" Zoe screamed with the sound of something heavy hitting the door from the inside making Diana jump back. "I got cheated on! My girlfriend slept with a fucking man! Not even another woman! A man!"

Another loud scream followed the statement, a sound so full of frustration and heartbreak that it made both Wren and Dani flinch in the hallway.

’Is she a child?’ Wren thought. ’This girl is in college, isn’t she? So why is she doing this? Throwing a tantrum and screaming at her mother who is just trying to help?’

Diana stared at her daughter’s door as her eyes shone with tears.

She let out a shaky, defeated breath and moved away from it. She looked completely drained, ignoring Wren and Dani entirely as she walked past them with her head down slowly going downstairs.

Wren watched her go looking at her retreating back with a deeply worried expression.

He turned to Dani, shifting the heavy, matte-black bags in his hands. He carefully took the specific paper bag holding onto the sundress, separating it from the rest.

He gave the rest of the heavy bags to Dani.

"My room is up front at the end of the hall. Could you help me keep them in there? I’m going to check on Diana."

Dani took the bags with a grunt with a nod and Wren didn’t waste another second.

He held the paper bag containing the sundress tightly in his grip and ran downstairs to find her, leaving Dani standing completely alone in the hallway, forced to listen to the relentless, pathetic sounds of the crying girl behind the wood.

’Fuck you, bitch...’ Dani thought, her lip curling in disgust.

As she walked down the hall, passing Zoe’s room, she swung her foot out and kicked the door hard on her way passing while holding the heavy bags.

’Why the hell would you be crying so loudly?’ Dani thought while marching toward Wren’s room. ’You got cheated on, so what? Get over it.’

Dani knew being cheated on hurt, logically. Not from personal experience, of course, since she had never really been in a relationship before but if it didn’t hurt, then why would women and men constantly come online on TokTik, recording themselves in their cars and start crying to millions of strangers?

Personally, she wasn’t interested in relationships.

They seemed messy and full of unnecessary drama. Well... unless Wren was involved. Maybe she had gotten a crush on him when she was still a child, much like Priya or maybe she just had a very simple, biological preference and liked hot, tall men with broad shoulders.

All she did know was that if she wanted a first relationship, then it absolutely had to be with Wren, or it simply wasn’t worth the hassle.

She walked over to the door up front and since her hands were now entirely full with the heavy bags, she lifted her leg and kicked it open.

The room was a mess with a bunch of his older trousers were littered aggressively on the bed, tangled up with a few faded shirts.

She assumed that Wren had been frantically finding something to wear before he left for the boutique and simply forgot to clean up his room in his rush.

Dani stepped inside and closed the door behind her with a backward kick of her foot with the the latch clicking securely into place.

’At least one good thing came from that grown-ass woman crying downstairs. Hehe~’ Dani thought, a profoundly lewd look replacing her annoyance.

The good thing in question was the undeniable fact that she now had unlimited unsupervised access to Wren’s private room for the entire time that he was gone comforting his stepmother.

She walked over and unceremoniously dumped the expensive paper bags full of clothes on the bed, letting them rest alongside the discarded trousers.

’We’ll arrange this when he gets back...’ she thought dismissively.

Immediately, the lewd grin on her face widened until her cheeks hurt. She rubbed her hands together like a cartoon villain and began thoroughly searching around the room for anything remotely interesting.

’I’m sure that Wren has a few lewd magazines hidden somewhere...’ she thought, her eyes scanning the corners of the room. ’Or maybe it was all just on his phone... city boys usually have gigabytes of that stuff.’

She decided to start with the obvious spots.

She looked through the nightstand drawer first. She pulled it open eagerly, but her face fell. She saw nothing other than his ID card, a charging cable, and the Sparq receipt she gave him.

She aggressively closed the drawer with a huff and instead went straight for his large wooden wardrobe.

She pulled the doors open with her eyes darting over the contents. The trousers section had clearly been pulled out and rummaged through, but the shirt sections were perfectly arranged, and even some of the shorts were neatly folded.

Dani reached out, grabbing a handful of the hanging shirts. She took a deep sniff and brought out her face with a heavy deflated sigh.

"Damn it," she whispered.

They all smelled distinctly washed.

She needed something that Wren had actually used today which was something that carried his scent.

While she would absolutely love to stay hidden in his closet until he came back and took off those clothes he was wearing, she seriously doubted she would be able to stay here undetected until he did.

’I need something nowwww...’ she groaned internally with a dramatic sigh.

She stood in the center of the room, tapping her chin. The drawer was a bust. The wardrobe was clean. Where did men hide their dirty secrets?

Dani slowly lowered her gaze and she decided to look under Wren’s bed.

She dropped down to her hands and knees, ignoring the dust, and peered into the dark space beneath the mattress.

Behold, once her eyes adjusted to the shadows down there, she saw something. It was a pair of dark trousers, wrapped up tightly as if it was a ball, shoved hastily toward the back leg of the bed frame.

She reached her arm out, her fingers brushing the fabric and pulled it out into the light.

Sitting back on her heels, she began unfolding the balled-up trousers, peeling back the layers of denim. As the fabric fell away, it revealed something tucked safely inside that immediately hit her with a heavy scent and it smelled strongly like sweat.

Two things were hidden inside, to be exact.

First, there were a pair of black, athletic shorts. She lifted the fabric up to her face, pressing her nose into the material, and took a deep whiff of it.

Instantly, a hot drop of blood dropped down from her nose, landing on the carpet. They smelt heavily of Wren’s sweat, it was a scent so intoxicating that it only made her brain twitch with overstimulation.

However, as she pulled the shorts away, her eyes locked onto the second thing hidden in the bundle.

There was another thing here... a pair of delicate lacy women’s panties.

Dani froze with her breath hitching as she leaned in closer. They weren’t just dirty; they had prominent white stains on them, too.

She slowly lifted the delicate silk up to the light to inspect them. The white stains were a lot with thick patches dried directly onto the crotch of the fabric like a stiff crust and even covering the edges of the lace panties too.

She looked down at the dark trousers she had just unrolled and noticed they also had a few matching, flaky crusts on the inside of the fabric.

A slow grin stretched across her face.

’Is this what I think it is?’ she thought with her heart hammering against her ribs. ’If it is... then this is Wren’s dried cum and... panties...?’

Her mind raced as she connected the dots with flawless perverted logic. He lived here with Diana and Zoe.

’That means he’s doing something very, very indecent to his stepmother’s panties.’

Automatically, she assumed that Wren wouldn’t be caught dead being interested in a pathetic crybaby like Zoe, so the delicate lace had to belong to the older mature woman downstairs.

Another thick drop of blood dripped down from her nose, falling directly onto her lap, as she stared intently at the delicate silk panties that had been heavily stained with Wren’s dried cum.

’It won’t hurt to taste it... just a little bit,’ Dani thought with her tongue darting out to wet her lips.

All the romance and lewd novels she had read online always said that cum was sweet, or at least had a distinct flavor, so she desperately wanted to know it too.

With her hands trembling slightly with anticipation... Dani lifted the stiff crusted fabric directly to her mouth.

’Itadakimasu.’