Year 28

by JL Mac

  “This,” he growls, reaching to force me to stare straight ahead at the shameless woman in the mirror who is grinding herself against Sy’s cock with parted lips, flushed cheeks and nipples drawn tightly into peaks, visible through my bra and dress. “… Is home,” he growls as his cock slips between my thighs. He drags his flesh slowly between my legs making me shiver with need.

  “Please,” I find myself whispering in a voice I don’t recognize. No man has ever made me feel this needy and desperate. Sy’s normally playful demeanor is replaced by a man turned feral. The tip of his cock presses forward between my slick heat and he pauses there, letting the promise of release tease my entrance. I nod my head, silently giving him my permission to take my body as he wishes. His hands hold my hips in a bruising grasp. Angling my hips back toward him pleadingly, I tease him with my needy center, slickened with desire. He tilts his hips and drives home, forcing me up on my tiptoes until my arches ache. My mouth rounds in an O shape and all breathing stops for one painfully long moment as Sy stays fully rooted in me. He pistons his hips, driving into me with abandon.

  “Rae,” he growls into my ear. My body hums for him, impending ecstasy simmering through my veins.

  “Yes,” I moan. “You feel so good, Sy.” My voice is thick and breathless and alien even to my own ears.

  “You’re mine, Rae,” he breathes, a wrinkle of determination caught between his dark brows. “Always have been,” he adds on a particularly powerful thrust. He pauses, searching my face in the reflection in the mirror.

  Before I even realize it I’m nodding my head and murmuring a throaty, “Yes.” At that, Sylas loses control, his pelvis slapping hard against my ass with each plunge he takes. His strong fingers dig into one hipbone just as his other hand reaches around the front of me. His rough fingers stroke my most sensitive spot with a gentleness that belies the brute he is. Ginger but firm ministrations encourage the gathering firestorm in my stomach. Something akin to nearing the top of a roller coaster’s big drop is evoked in me. It’s like the distinct metallic clinking of each move, ascending inch by inch higher and higher still.

  Then comes the magnificent drop.

  My stomach bends and seems to explode as my breathing halts completely, my lungs ache, my eyes water, my mouth rounds, my cheeks burn as I fall and fall and fall completely apart. My flesh quakes violently. Spasms that reverberate through my bones work Sylas’ remarkable cock, urging him toward his own release. I can’t breathe for the longest moment, my vision dims and then all at once I break the surface of my ecstasy, gasping for precious sips of oxygen. My eyes are glued to our reflection in the mirror. I watch him drive forward several more times, his fingers digging roughly into the flesh of both my hips as though he thinks I could vanish. Then his penetrating molten gaze locks with mine in the mirror and his jaw locks, his breath hisses through his teeth. “Mine,” he growls with such passion that I feel its echo transcend through him and into me as he meets his release, spilling himself into me.

  “Don’t you want to return to this? Don’t you want to come home? To me?” he asks hoarsely.

  It wouldn’t be the first time—and it won’t be the last—that I wished in vain with every molecule of my being that I could return to Sylas Broussard.

  But in vain is precisely what my wish is because nothing, not even Sylas can change the hideous truth and the fact that I could never be his again. We are tainted. Our paths in life are meant to remain on different courses, even if he doesn’t realize it. Even if I wish with all that I am for different.

  Raegan

  17 years old…

  Enough is enough. I can’t handle this weird, vacant space in my life that used to be brimming with Sylas. He’s like dark matter. He’s everywhere and nowhere all at once. He touches and fills up everything, even the bits you can’t see. He’s a tattoo on my skin inscribed in invisible ink. No one else can see it, but I do. I more than see his presence, I feel him there. Every little edge of my life is territory that Sylas has planted a flag showcasing his insignia on.

  It’s been a week. I have spent an entire week drowning in all consuming misery, self-doubt and awkwardness at school. Nothing fits. Nothing is right. It’s all turned on its head without him.

  The rumor mill is alive and well at Palmetto Grove High School. The first couple of days people at school just kind of cautioned a glance my way, their eyes quietly forming their opinion on why Sylas and I were no longer an item. Once the marinating phase wrapped up the rumors began to swirl like fog along the highway. But one thing was certain. I hadn’t spoken a word of it to anyone and I had to assume Sylas hadn’t either because of all the rumors, none of them held the truth. I’ve tiptoed through school, doing my best to seem focused on my academics and nothing more but the uncomfortable void in my world has gotten the best of me. I have officially had enough.

  “Maybe…” I speculate, mumbling to myself as I merge onto the two-lane state highway toward his house. “Maybe… maybe I wait to go to college or something. Maybe I could do online classes that way I can move wherever he is. Maybe we just do this thing long distance. I mean… argh!” I grumble slamming my palm against the leather sheathed steering wheel. My brain is rolling like a numbered ball in a bingo cage and I can’t seem to iron out what the solution is. I know I have to try and I had better do it quick because the drive is little more than a six-minute trip from my house to his. I don’t want to change everything about my life or my plans to accommodate his military aspirations but I could try. Maybe he will never get deployed to some godforsaken war. We could take it a day at a time and see where things land. It was all I had to offer him and maybe he’d slam the door in my face and maybe I deserve it for breaking up with him so brashly but I’ll just go talk to him. I could and would compromise for him—if that’s what he wants—if I am still what he wants.

  “Don’t walk, run, run, run on down to Buck Davis Ford Motorplex while inventory is still high and prices are low! Go, go, go!” The obnoxiously loud man screaming through the radio grates on my tattered nerves. While I wait at the light only two blocks from Sy’s house, I jab my finger at the radio on my dash. I cycle through every pre-programmed station finding nothing that doesn’t make me more frustrated so I flick the knob, powering it off all together. I take a deep breath and lean back into my seat.

  Get it together, Rae. It’s just Sy. He’s your best friend. You’ve seen him naked for crying out loud! Just going to talk it out. That’s the adult thing to do.

  I puff out a lungful of air and focus my attention on the light but my eyes land on a familiar Jeep across the intersection. I gasp seeing him there directly across from me. The moment the surprise dissipates I realize he’s tossed his head back with laughter and so does his passenger. Brooklyn Jones. Apparently whatever she’s said to him has been incredibly funny because I can tell he’s doing the belly laugh thing he does when he’s really laughing hard. It’s this sort of wheezy, breathless sounding chuckle that is impossibly infectious. He has an excellent belly laugh and I hate that she’s privilege to it right at this fucking moment. She’s smiling broadly looking over at him with obvious flirtation, her hand up on his shoulder rises, touching his cheek adoringly. The jealous bitch in me wants to march across the road and rip her right out of my seat and roll her into the intersection. That’s my spot beside him in his Jeep and she’s a manipulative, rotten bitch! The light switches to green and I immediately put on my indicator and turn right, leading away from Sy and all my plans for mending what we’d both screwed up.

  Chapter 20

  Sylas

  The thing people say when you’re really in a predicament comes to mind. “In for a dime, in for a dollar.” I may as well be in for the whole goddamned bank account because… damn it all to hell, Rae still has me wrapped around her perfect little finger.

  This clawing anxiety in my chest has me feeling like I’m racing against a clock I can’t see and fighting a concealed enemy dressed in plain clothes. Rae is here, but
she’s holding back. I can sense everything she won’t say. It teases at my awareness like a dream I can’t quite recall the details of but I am sure it took place.

  Rae is harboring demons that I would willingly help her fight if she’d only trust me to join the battle. But that’s the crux of it. A person has to exhibit confidence in another to expose the weak parts of themselves. It takes courage to drop your armor and expose the tender underbelly where wounds can easily be fatal. I know this firsthand. Two deployments to Afghanistan imparted me with more than a Purple Heart and a few wicked scars. I know what my wounds are and how they came about but Rae’s wounds are illusive to me. The trauma of Teddy’s death and then my enlistment is something I’m aware of. I remember it keenly. It seems like yesterday that she grieved Teddy’s death with her head against my chest and her heart in my hands. Even as a punk kid I knew the value of it.

  Whatever Rae is battling now is a different sort of bird. Her outburst at Sheryl’s Rib Shack made my gut knot and my heart drop with knowing. I said or did something that was a trigger for her and seeing her eyes widen and her skin pale, her hands wringing, it killed me. It also drives me to find a way to help my girl. I’ll draw her in, earn her trust, and encourage her to let go of whatever it is that is haunting her. I’ll do it as gently as I can but if it comes down to it, like I fear it will, I will have to do what I have always had to do with Rae. Back her into a corner until she gives in.

  As promised, when we get back to Cattail Parish, Rae leaves her hideous little rental car at my cabin and hops in my truck. We get to marking things off my long list of errands to run on behalf of Mrs. Oppenheim, and the fundraiser event.

  Sitting in the front seat of my truck, her nose stuck in that phone of hers, I steal every look her way I can. She hasn’t mentioned it and I haven’t pressed her to discuss it with me but I can already feel her leaving me again. The chasm she left I my life before echoes with the hurt that ten years has done little to heal. Mingling with old heartbreak is the promise of new hurt and it fucking blows.

  Rae isn’t just some woman. Rae was my best friend, my lover, my first love and I had it in my head that she would be my wife one day. I want to convince her to stay in Palmetto Grove. It’s a pie in the sky dream, I know but it doesn’t stop me from dreaming of it. It won’t stop me from trying to make her want me in the way I want her.

  Rae’s phone rings and she answers sounding nothing like the Rae I know. “Good afternoon Dominic,” she says crisply. “Yes. I see,” she hums and her jaw ticks. “Okay, I will turn it on now. Thank you Dominic.” She hangs up, tucking her phone away.

  “Do you mind?” Rae asks pointing to the stereo.

  “Go for it.” I shrug my shoulders and keep my eyes on the road. Rae scans the satellite radio stations, clearly looking for something specific. News radio fills the cab of my truck and I groan internally. I hate the news and I only watch it when Sylvie or Momma text message me a link of Rae on a program where she’s demolishing some poor fuck on national television. Those I watch. News in general, hard pass.

  “… In that sense Senator Sweeney has a definite edge. Being chairperson of the intelligence committee, participating in as much oversight as she has, and the key role she has played in significant legislation in the recent past make her the ideal person for her party to prop up in the next several months as presidential campaigns begin coalescing. By my estimation she would be a dark horse in the next presidential election should it come to that.”

  “You make several good observations there, Bennett,” another over-rehearsed personality-voice begins. “But the thing that gives me pause is the rumor regarding Senator Sweeney’s tentative campaign team. As you know, it was leaked that she’s already putting together her A-team and Senator Cline’s Raegan Potter is on the short list according to my sources. This is a potential issue for Sweeney due to Miss Potter’s rumored affair with another campaign manager said to be on Kilpatrick’s short list for campaign manager. If I’m correct, this individual is married and if that’s the case, it’s reasonable for Senator Sweeney to call into question Miss Potter’s ethics. The relationship between the top two political strategists currently in politics—both of which are across the aisle, so to speak—is a conflict of interest at the very least.” My head snaps to Rae. She cusses under her breath and her lips do this twitching thing. She flicks her nails one past the other. It’s a habit of hers I recognize as being a good time to pick at her to find out what’s got her panties in a twist.

  “Preston, I assume?” Mentally I begin working the puzzle out. He’s got to be why she doesn’t even entertain the idea of coming back home, back to me. Jealousy and anger bloom in my blood.

  “He’s not married,” she says curtly, switching the radio off. “So don’t look at me like that.”

  “I’m not looking at you any kind of way.”

  “Mhmm,” she hums noncommittally, texting away on her phone.

  “So you’re seeing him?” I hate the way the question feels in my mouth. I hate the surge of jealously coiling in my gut. I hate the thread of doubt in my mind that reminds me that adult Rae is a Rae I don’t exactly fully know and I am in no position to guarantee that she wouldn’t have an affair with a taken man or that she’d sleep with me while seeing someone else back home.

  “Not exactly, no. As a rule I don’t date,” she explains coolly. Realization hits me and a sense of possessiveness over Rae has me clenching the steering wheel too hard, the leather creaks in my hands. “Oh. Got it. You aren’t dating but you have a friend with benefits,” I state, nodding my head.

  “Are you exclusively with Preston or…?”

  “I’m not discussing that,” she mutters with a scowl. “I don’t have a boyfriend and I don’t sleep around Sy,” she finally offers with a disgruntled huff.

  “Good to know,” I deadpan.

  “Come on, don’t ruin our time together by hating some guy that doesn’t hold a candle to you,” she flirts, batting her long lashes at me, her plump lips tipped up smiling. She’s beautiful and persuasive. It doesn’t surprise me at all that she is so successful. Raegan walks into a room and people sit up straighter. She’s the kind of woman men conquer for, women despise, and seemingly impossible tasks shudder at when she sets her sights on them. She’s as gorgeous as she is driven. While we wait at an intersection, I grab my phone and scroll through my playlist for the right song.

  “Hey Jealousy” by The Gin Blossoms rings out from the speakers—I turn it up loud and roll my windows down, blasting the notes out into the Louisiana air. Rae snorts, then full on laughs, clutching her stomach, her eyes watering and just like that I’m grinning like a fool, wrapped around her finger and my inner conflict is forgotten as I watch my beautiful Snow laugh and dance in my shotgun seat with her hands above her head, hanging out the passenger window. She whoops loudly and wriggles her exquisite ass. I take a mental snapshot because in my experience, perfect moments with Rae are shooting stars. Rare, brilliant, fascinating, impossible to ignore, and always over way too damned quick for my liking.

  Chapter 21

  Raegan

  Jealousy is one of my least favorite human traits and the pity of that is it is entirely unavoidable. Jealousy is no more avoidable than taxes and death. Anyone that swears to not be the “jealous type” is full of shit or has deluded themselves enough to actually believe that they aren’t the jealous type and in that case they are in fact both jealous and mental. Everyone gets envious. Even me. Even Sylas judging by the scowl he was wearing in the truck on our way to pick up Mrs. Oppenheim’s grocery order. However, unavoidable or not, jealousy is a vile toxin, capable of producing devastating effects on people. It skews judgment and clouds normally clear minds. It turns an average person into an over-confident-bad-choice-machine. I would know.

  Sylas is walking out of the store, one bag hooked on his arm when someone shouts at him. “Hey Sy!” a petite brunette woman shouts from across the grocery store parking lot. It’s a good thing t
he windows in his truck are rolled down because I’d die sitting here without the breeze coming through the open windows. Sy stops by the hood of his truck and turns to see who has called him. She scurries over to Sylas with a little boy at her side. His small hand is folded in hers and his wide brown eyes peer at Sylas with pure adoration. For a moment my mind takes a jealousy-induced foray into considering the notion that Sylas could have a kid. This little guy could be his.

  “Oh, hey Lisa,” Sy says, wrapping his arms around her for a hug. He lets her go first. I can tell by her hesitation that if he’d wanted to hold on to her, she would have allowed it. That little observation makes me grit my teeth for a moment and instantly an action reel of every moment in high school featuring Brooklyn Jones rolls through my mind.

  “Hey bud! How’s soccer going?” Sy asks scooping the boy up. My gut twists. No way would he keep such a detail from me, right? That would be a huge secret to keep to yourself.

  Like you aren’t storing a few huge secrets of your own? Self-Loathing whisper-shouts.

  “Good! I made two goals last game,” he announces excited through his missing front teeth.

  “Dude, whoa! You’re a pro!” Sy holds up his big hand for a high-five and the little boy slaps his little palm against Sy’s.

  “Yeah, he’s doing great. Thanks for helping to get him on the team even though the season had already kicked off. With the move and everything we missed the sign-up deadline, and everything was just so chaotic and well… you know. I appreciate it.” The woman’s cheeks turn a rosy pink as she gives Sylas her thanks, taking the opportunity to brush her hand down his muscular arm, her hand lingering on his forearm for a beat too long to be considered a friendly caress.