Wolf (A Little Red Riding Hood Retelling) (Brother's best friend romance)

by J. A. Wynters

  I park the car and she leans over, her fingers trace my jaw and her lips press against mine. My body jerks away, betraying me.

  She gives me a quizzical look, “You okay?”

  I clear my throat, “Yeah fine, just have to make a phone call. Go inside, room 678, start without me, I’m right behind you.”

  She smiles again and swipes her hand over my soft cock as she pulls away then gets out of the car. I watch her walk inside. Her ass swings and she’s all curves. On any other night I would have had her half naked and barely breathing in the front seat, but as I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I find a trace of her lipstick on my lips. I wipe it away.

  She’s the wrong shade of red.

  I sit in the car for another minute then drive away.

  37

  Ten Years Ago

  Wolf 18, Red 16

  Red

  My heart pounds so hard, I think it’s going to crack a rib. I’ve never been so nervous. My body is in such a state of anxiety, it feels all over the place. I want to cry and laugh and sing and bounce off the walls, but all I do is check my light lipstick in the mirror for the hundredth time and go to the window.

  People have started trickling in, Hunter made such a big deal of this day; I’m both delighted and annoyed.

  I check my dress for the hundredth time, smoothing it along my belly.

  A knock at the door brings me out of my reverie, and I turn to the door; Hunter is standing there, all smiles, “You look stunning, Red.”

  “Thanks.” I run into his open arms, and he holds me tightly for a second then kisses the top of my head.

  “Have a great time tonight.” He says and my heart skips a few beats, as heat rushes to my face.

  He waits for me to lead us down the stairs. Fairy lights hang along the railing and the lounge has been transformed into a dance floor by pushing all the furniture out of the way. There’s a table full of alcohol I can’t drink along the wall.

  I know we—he—can’t afford this. But he’s asked me not to worry about it, and just for tonight, I don’t … because I don’t care. All I care about is what comes after, when he gets here. When he does all those things he promised. When he makes my sixteenth birthday really sweet and really unforgettable.

  My cheeks flush with my thoughts as I take the last step.

  The house fills up. I don’t recognise most of the people, they’re not my friends. But when Wolf Bennett and Hunter Evans throw a party, the whole world will show up.

  The night grows rowdier. I spot Hunter with a girl. She’s hanging off him and keeps kissing his neck, she reeks of desperation.

  I make my way to the drinks table and sneak a beer, just to take the edge off. My body is so strained, I’m finding it hard to breathe. This party isn’t really for me. It’s fake, the only thing that’s real is the way that Wolf makes me feel.

  I grow tired of the party and I go to my room. The music vibrates through the floor and makes my bed rattle. I sit by the window like a lost girl and watch and wait as time drips by. It’s nearly midnight when I finally spot him. My heart leaps from my chest.

  He staggers into the back yard and high fives a few of his friends. They laugh and someone shoves a cup into his hand, he gulps it like its water.

  I run to the mirror and look at myself again. I pull down on my dress, adjusting the waist, and run my hands down to flatten the crinkles. I fix my lipstick and look at myself one last time.

  I suck in a galvanising breath.

  This. Is. It.

  I run to the window and search the garden, he’s not there. I take another long sweep, but I can’t spot him in the sea of unfamiliar faces. I rush downstairs and search the house, going from the kitchen and lounge looking everywhere, but I can’t find him.

  Wolf

  I watch her from the shadows—she’s sitting at the window waiting. For me. Waiting for me to keep a promise I never had any right to make and her brother is going to force me to break, breaking her with it.

  I watch from my dark corner while the party is going on in full swing; she couldn’t care less; she doesn’t want this. She wants something else. Me.

  My body caves and hollows as I take another sip of the sour whiskey I stole from my dad. I’m going to have to be really drunk to be able to put her through this.

  To put myself through this.

  She scours the party one more time then disappears. A few moments later she’s downstairs and my breath stalls. She looks fucking stunning in a light blue dress that hugs all the slight feminine curves of her body. My own grows rigid. We’re not children anymore.

  She moves around the room, among strangers that don’t really care about her, not the way I do. Her smile keeps falling away when she thinks no one is watching—except that I’m watching. I can’t take my eyes off her. She’s exquisite and my body is a war-ravaged city where two promises want to tear each other down, each more deadly and poisonous than the other. No matter whose side I chose, someone will get hurt, and I will be the big bad wolf in the middle of the bloody mess.

  I swig the bottle and gulp down another sip—bravery in a bottle for a coward like me. I should go and talk to her like a man, instead I’m hiding in the shadows planning her demise. But it’s not my fault, it’s hers; she made me feel things I have no right to feel.

  Even if I want to feel them.

  I wait. I wait until I can barely stand and barely think, until I have had enough to drink to hope that some of the guilt will obliterate itself by morning—enough to help me forget what I’m about to do.

  She’s back at her window, her shoulders slumped. This party abandoned her long before she abandoned it. Her frantic eyes keep searching, and I’m about to show her what she wants to see.

  Me.

  I step out of the darkness and lunge myself at a group of familiar faces; I don’t care who they are, they’re standing just below her window, and they have more alcohol to help numb everything.

  My stomach coils and twists as I dare to glance up and notice her window already empty.

  I trudge through the group and make a beeline for Angela. She’s been at me for months, begging me to have her, throwing herself at me at any given opportunity—and tonight she was going to get her wish at the cost of a splintered promise.

  She smiles as she sees me coming, and I smirk at her. Her cheeks flush and I grip her wrist all the while keeping an eye out on the steps. When you’re my size you’ll stick out in any room, and right now I need to remain unseen.

  I yank Angela with me into the kitchen and bend down to her ear, “You want me?” Bile rises in my throat.

  She looks up at me, her eyes grow, pupils dilate, and her mouth spreads in a smile as she nods.

  I pin her with my body, and she wraps her hands around me, prying them beneath the fabric of my shirt. I peak behind the door and spot Red again. She’s standing like a perfect statue at the bottom of the stairs, her long neck craned, searching. Her beautiful face flawless and wondering and a shy smile that splits my fucking heart in two. She’s devastatingly stunning and innocent, and I’m going to ruin her.

  My heart falters, but I don’t. I wait for her to rush to the garden then yank Angela off the wall and trudge up the stairs. She’s like a rag doll being dragged behind me, and she hurries giggling.

  I bypass Hunter’s room and stop at Red’s. I lean my forehead against the wooden door, all the muscles in my jaw dancing as I grit my teeth and steel my resolve.

  I push her door open and pretend that not every single hair in my body stands with tension. She’s everywhere, her sweet, delectable smell and innocent youth.

  Angela runs around me and lands on the bed giggling.

  Red’s bed.

  My eye catches the notepad on the bedside table. I pick it up. My vision blurs as I study the drawing. My breath hitches at the wolf boy looking back at me.

  He has my eyes and my mouth and parts of me that seem so good, all moulded together into a wolf drawing. We are one
in the same. A man and a beast. Except that once she sees me here, in her bed, she will know I’m only one of those things.

  I put the pad down as Angela spreads her legs for me, “Come here big boy.” I fucking hate it when people call me that. I suck in a long inhale, wishing I’d had even more to drink, then step closer to the bed.

  She pulls me to her and rips at my shirt, and I let her.

  Her eager mouth nips at me, and she leaves endless kisses on my neck and chest. I’m not into it; I’m barely hard, I’m barely even here, I know where I want to be.

  “I’ve wanted this for so long,” Angela’s voice rips me into the past.

  “I’ve wanted this for so long,” her sweet sing song voice tugs at my heart, and her shy smile cuts into me.

  “Me too.”

  “Fuck.” I grumble as I think about Red, how her body should be the one beneath mine, how it should be her mouth I’m devouring. And I want her so badly my body wants to believe. I become so hard I’m in pain, and I deserve it except that I don’t care. I tear at Angela’s shirt and rip it open; her perky little tits bounce around and she squeals in surprise. Like a fucking little piglet.

  Her tits feel all wrong and she tastes all wrong, and everything is all wrong and a second later Red bursts through her bedroom door and the world freezes.

  “Get out.” Angela screams as Red stands there. The colour draining from her beautiful face, which bends and crumples as her eyes burn so hot into mine, I feel like she’s branded me.

  “It’s my room,” she whispers a broken sound. “Get out.”

  Her eyes glisten with tears and her shoulders collapse while she just stands there and stares at me.

  I watch her break as I stand up to my full height and loom over her. She wrenches her eyes away from mine.

  “Oh, come on, don’t be a baby. Let us finish.” Angela is still talking as a single tear slices down Red’s cheek, and it’s all I can do not to take her into my arms and put her back together.

  “Please just get out.” Another quiet request that’s worse than any other sound. I want her to scream or break something instead of just rip apart on the inside. I’m watching her destruction, the one I orchestrated, and there’s not a thing I can do about it.

  I grab Angela’s wrist and rip her from the bed that’s now rippled and ruined. Red turns sideways, and Angela giggles as she walks by her.

  She just stands there, frozen in time in this moment, for all of eternity—and I know it’s too late to take it all back, to resew the slash I’ve just ripped into her soul.

  But I started and now I have to finish. The price has already been paid; the interest is just to ensure there will never be any refunds.

  “Happy birthday, Red.” I smirk at her as I walk out of the room, feeling like the piece of shit I am.

  Angela is waiting for me, leaning against the master bedroom that’s been abandoned for months. The door creaks as she opens it and giggles again, “This room is free.” She steps in and I let her, while I make my way back downstairs and out the front door.

  Soon enough, she will work out I’m not coming back.

  My body aches, a searing devastating pain, like I’ve torn a giant hole inside of myself that’s leaking everywhere. We were two pieces of the same cloth and now we’re nothing but rags.

  I shuffled home vowing to never step foot in that house again.

  Red

  The door closes behind them and I’m alone. Only the distant sound of music and laughter keeping me company, until even that fades away and the quiet grows longer, until I all hear is my insides snap like brittle glass, branching out inside me before imploding. The shards tear at my heart.

  I stand until I feel so insignificant, I can’t breathe. Till all I can see are his eyes, the way he blinked away all his emotions—all but indifference. My knees give way and I slump against my wall. My bed tainted, my room tainted, my dreams nothing but a jester’s joke.

  The sobs tear out of me in violent, angry cries. The tears fall through my fingers in hot desolate rivulets that smash into my dress.

  Pain slices my inside as I try to find air through my ragged breaths.

  I keep my eyes shut and look inside myself, searching for the chambers of my heart, watching as they beat ever slower. My heart is a deserted, old castle locking its doors for a final time, drawing down its curtains and shutting out light, where it will sit forever abandoned.

  Thick thorny ivy wraps itself so tightly around it, it will be kept sealed forever, and the mere suggestion of using it will rip holes so big into my flesh, I’d know it would not be worth the pain, the agony, the anguish.

  I watch my heart stop beating, knowing it will always remain empty and derelict , but will always stay safe—because no one would dare pierce that much ivy, that much growth, sustain that much damage to fill it up ever again.

  When it’s done, I open my eyes and water the ivy with my tears and cry until they too, turn to dust.

  38

  Hunter 18, Red 16

  Red

  In the morning, my door creaks and I feel his presence. It’s bulky and warm and I’m desperate for him to come closer and stay as far as humanly possible.

  “Red?” Hunter whispers into my dark room.

  “Yeah?” I whisper back, but mostly because I’m afraid that if I speak loudly, he’ll hear everything I’m trying to hide.

  “You awake?” I can hear the chuckle in his voice.

  “No.” I keep whispering, wanting all the loud noise inside my heart to die down so it could listen to my head and remember that if we just keep really still and really quiet we just might survive this.

  My mattress dips with his weight as he sits on the edge of my bed. “Did you enjoy your party last night?”

  “You mean your party?” I can’t tame the bitterness that creeps into my voice.

  He sighs. It’s long and heavy and guilt stabs at my coiled stomach.

  “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  I wait.

  “I’m leaving at the end of the year, with Wolf.”

  I suck in frozen air and wait for more.

  “It’s only to Southport. Wolf’s parents have a house there, and it’s only a twenty-minute drive to the uni…” his words drift off as a hot tear rolls free and sinks into my pillow.

  “When?”

  “At the end of the term. I figured I can get some summer work there. Get settled.”

  I nod as another tear leaks from my eyes and slides over the bridge of my nose, diving into my sheets.

  “We’ve spoken to Wolf’s mum, you can move into their house. They have heaps of space and you’ll never be alone or hungry, you can finish school.”

  I let my eyes shut, sealing all my pain inside behind the darkness of my lids.

  “Can you say something? Please?”

  I don’t.

  I feel shredded like I’ve been torn to pieces; everything hurts, from the tip of my nose to my hardened nails, to my teeth and my feet and my heart. It slows, wanting to suffocate in its own misery.

  Hunter sighs again and the weight disappears from my mattress. “I’m sorry Red, I just want more for myself than this.”

  I tip my head once hoping he’d catch the movement. He does deserve so much more, he’s always given up so much, always sacrificed. I’d tell him I’m proud of him later when my heart remembers how to pump blood into my body instead of black angry ink that burns my veins and taints everything.

  “I’m making breakfast,” he says and then I know he’s gone.

  39

  Present Day

  Red

  Wolf has vanished. When I get home after work, there’s no sign of him and when I wake up, his door is shut. I’m not brave enough to wake him, not yet.

  It’s been two days since he’s been inside me, since my body burned beneath his touch, and I know he’s being cold.

  I should have expected this.

  The club is thumping, and the line is long. I
cut ahead and get a bunch of filthy looks from dressed up girls that give Dean and Rob googly eyes.

  “Hey Red,” Rob smiles at me and cradles me in his giant arms.

  “Hi.” I smile at both boys, earning a few more death glares from the line of desperate women. It makes my insides glow, “I’m looking for Wolf.”

  They exchange a brief, well-practiced look that they think I don’t notice. “He’s just dealing with a situation at the moment.” Dean reaches for the gold clip that holds the rope in place. The way he says it makes my stomach churn. “Want to wait inside for him? I’ll get you a drink?”

  “No thanks,” I flash him another grateful smile. “Just tell him I stopped by.”

  “No problem.” The boys grin at me as I walk away, feeling like one of his pathetic conquests, the one that can’t let go. My stomach knits itself into twisted knots and I cringe. We both knew what it was, I should have never allowed myself to hope for more.

  Wolf is nothing but a predator, whose touch and teeth and mouth crush hope to mere dust.

  I call Ethan. It’s time to make things right.

  Wolf

  The boys tell me she’s been in to see me, and I feel a rush of guilt and relief. I’ve been avoiding her, running like a fucking coward.

  I get home late, only when I’m sure she’s asleep, and hide in my room till I hear her leave. I can’t allow myself near her. I can’t be in the same space, because if I am, I will tear her apart.

  I want to mark her. Brand her like I’m marking my fucking territory. My fucking property. I want everyone else to smell me on her and know they need to keep their hands off—which is why, if I’m going to keep my promise to Hunter, I need to stay away—because next time we’re together, I’m going to let all my barriers fall, and there’s no fucking way in hell I’m stepping behind them again, not now that I’ve had her, tasted her, and know without a shadow of a doubt that Red belongs to me.