Total pages in book: 184
Estimated words: 186756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 934(@200wpm)___ 747(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 934(@200wpm)___ 747(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
I swallow. “You will –”
“If you’re going to say that I’ll find someone like that,” he says with his jaw tensed, “then I’ll ask you to just not.”
I was going to say that, yes.
But after this all I say is, “It’s not a bad thing. To want that for you.”
“To go as feral crazy for a girl as my lovely twin brother who, let me remind you, is known as the Cold Thorn?” He pulls a face. “Nah, I’m okay. I’d much rather see him suffer than suffer myself.”
I keep silent but I do hope, in my heart, that he meets someone who makes him feel the way his brother makes me feel. I know it’s not all good but I wouldn’t know the good without knowing the bad.
So I’ll take it.
I’ll take every single emotion that he’s made me feel ever since I clapped my eyes on him under that pink magnolia tree. Every single torturous emotion just so I can experience the wonderful ones too.
Maybe that’s why love is a drug.
And people get addicted to it despite the heartbreak.
They get addicted to the highs despite the torturous lows.
Despite knowing that there’s a chance they wouldn’t get the same devotion back.
So when the dance is done, I look his way again. He’s still as a statue but I feel his gaze blazing. Keeping my eyes on him, I excuse myself from Shepard. I watch as he sets down his beer bottle on the nearby table as well and pushes off the wall.
And then keeping our gazes locked I walk toward him.
With every step that I take, he grows even tighter, even heated.
So much so that I can feel the heat of him all the way over here.
I wonder how the world isn’t melting off from it.
I wonder what he’ll do to me when he gets his hands on me. And since he can’t touch me where people can see, I veer off the path and make a beeline for the exit. And I know he’s following me because I can feel that heat of his at my back. In fact, I think he’s crowding because as soon as I get out in the winter, he’s right there.
He’s right there to grip my elbow and spin me around.
To pin me against the brick wall and surround me in his heat as he comes over me, looms and leans and hovers over me like a dark shadow, blocking the moon.
“What was he saying?” he growls lowly.
I grip his face. “It doesn’t matter.”
“He was touching you.”
“Stellan, it doesn’t matter, okay? It doesn’t –”
“Why was he touching you?” He keeps growling, his face a collection of sharp angles and angry lines. “You’re not married yet.”
“It doesn’t –”
“You don’t even have his ring on your finger.”
“Just –”
“Because you’re still in fucking love with me.”
At ‘me,’ he borderline punches his own chest and I wince. But before I can say anything, he goes on, “Tell him to keep his hands off you. Or I will.”
“Stellan, no.”
“And I will make it hurt.” I keep shaking my head as he continues, “You know what I did to Isiah the other day, don’t you? I can do it to him. I could do much worse to him.”
When he still won’t stop, I come off the wall and inch closer myself. I tip my face up, my fingers still on his hard and dense jaw. “Stellan, baby, stop, okay? Come back to me.” I press my lips to his throat because he’s so freaking tall that I can’t get to his lips. So I skim my lips over his skin as if calming a beast as I whisper, “Just come back. Come back, please. I’m here. I’m with you. I’m not with him. It doesn’t matter if he touched me. You’re the only one I want. Your touch is the only touch I crave, please. Don’t be mad. Don’t –”
He fists my hair then and yanking my head back, he kisses me. And as much as I like his kisses, I realize this is belt day.
The day he uses his belt on me.
I call them belt days but he refers to them as bad days. Days where he’s more restless than usual, where he wants to withdraw into himself. Where he’s angry and agitated. I don’t know what causes them. Sometimes he wakes up that way; sometimes things will happen at practice that may make him that way.
Either way I think I’ve come to at least recognize the signs, if not the triggers.
Although in this case, I know what triggered his bad mood.
Shepard and his shenanigans.
Again I wish there was a way for me to fix this between brothers but I can’t. All I can do is give him my wrists to bind and my throat to fuck.
Which is what I do.