Sinful Secrets Box Set: Sloth, Murder, Covet

by James, Ella

  “Fucking God…” He finds my breast and starts to suckle at it.

  “Someone woke up horny.” I giggle.

  “The way you smell…” He inhales deeply, and I wrap an arm around his head.

  “My Bear…”

  We find ourselves in the classic “69” pose. Barrett tortures me with his soft, hot mouth and wicked fingers. In return, I take him deep into my throat and tease his balls until he’s blowing hot breaths on my swollen pussy; he’s got a finger hooked inside me, but his tongue can barely move. For my part, I’m shaking, collapsed on his face because my legs can’t hold me. As his breaths pick up, I start to throb harder.

  Our groans mingle in the soft, still air until my body draws up and I start to spasm hard around his fingers. At that moment, his cock throbs.

  “Ahh…”

  I love the way his hips shake and his hands squeeze my thighs. I suck until he’s finished and let him rest inside my mouth for a moment before I draw off. I love the dazed look on his face as I look over my shoulder.

  “Lie beside me.” He holds his arm out, and I snuggle in.

  * * *

  Barrett and I get dressed and start on eggplant parmesan. We fill the kitchen with our smiles and laughter, and then Cleo and Kellan show up, and they help us. Someone opens two bottles of pinot noir, and we wind up eating around the counter. Finally I shoo them to the table, where we talk until we’re all old friends, and then we move into the den and play Cards Against Humanity. Somehow it’s midnight; Cleo and I are braiding Barrett’s hair, and Kellan, in my armchair, looks half asleep. After Barrett extricates himself from us, I show Cleo my scar, and she “ohhh”s, and Barrett says he’ll go next door to get the place ready for them to spend the night.

  “You don’t need to,” Cleo tries to tell him, but he waves her off. “No prob,” he murmurs, and I watch him get his jacket on and slip into his boots. He looks kind of drunk, and very handsome.

  “Be back in a few,” he says, and with one final glance at Kellan, zonked out in the chair, and one soft-eyed look at me, he goes.

  I get my fleece blanket and lay it over Kellan’s long body. Cleo steps over to the chair and drapes herself along its puffy arm, curling herself around Kellan’s upper body without actually touching him.

  “You guys are so phenomenal together.”

  She smiles, and I look at Kellan, then back to her. “Is he going to be okay?” I ask softly. I only ask because I’ve been drinking. Maybe that’s why she answers.

  “Yeah. I mean, I hope.” Her eyes gleam, and she touches her forehead to his shoulder. “I love him. He’s mine…and I could never…” She lifts her head off him and shakes it once. She inhales deeply, and I step over and hug her. It’s a drunk sort of hug: an awkward head pat. But I mean it.

  “I’m so sorry. Not because I don’t think he’ll be okay, you know? Just…I know it sucks to worry.”

  “Do you?” She looks over her shoulder at me. “Like—with Barrett?”

  I think of mentioning the nightmares, but it feels like a betrayal of his privacy, so I only nod.

  “I know he had a rough time after he got back.”

  I nod, although what I really want is to pounce on her and make her tell me everything she knows about him.

  “Preaching to the choir,” she says.

  “Well, kind of, but there’s always more. I missed almost all of— everything with him so far. I want to know everything abut him.”

  “Do you love him?”

  I blink. My face feels hot. My stomach twists. “We just met.” The words are raspy, like my heart knows they are false.

  She laughs. “If that matters, it’s news to me. Girl…” She grins. “I can tell. I’m happy for him. You too! When we met him at the airport…” She shakes her head and sighs. “I don’t know who was worse, him or Kellan. He was…so sad.” She shakes her head again, her eyes filling with tears. She laughs and wipes under her eyes. “I’m a weepy drunk. But really, everything about him was like…so sad. He looked so tired. You just wanted to hug him, you know?” She giggles. “You do. Anyway, they had him on a thousand types of medicine and he looked like a zombie.” My heart clenches, but she doesn’t seem to notice. “He was like…” She bites her lip, as if she’s thinking hard. “His eyes were kind of flat… You know that look?”

  I nod, trying as hard as I can to keep a poker face, so she’ll tell me more.

  “Anyway, I just worried about him. It was Kell who noticed all the meds and he got off them. I wanted Barrett to come back home with us, but he ended up in Breckenridge.”

  “Barrett?”

  She nods. “He spent the summer up there somewhere in the mountains, in this cabin.”

  “In Breckenridge?” My throat tightens.

  “Mmm-hmm. Some isolated cabin. I might be wrong about that part. Maybe it wasn’t isolated, I just see it as it was.” She shrugs, her eyelids drooping. “We were worried, though.” She yawns. “He just had that kind of look.” Another comical yawn, during which a strand of dark hair falls into her face. Cleo pushes it away. “A look like he needed some hugs.” She sighs dramatically. “I tried to give him some.”

  “Thank you,” I whisper past my aching throat.

  She gives me a tired, kind smile. “You look all sad now. Gwenna, it’s like night and day now.” She shifts so her butt is balanced on the chair’s arm, but she’s facing me, her back to Kellan’s sleeping form. “Let me tell you, Gwen…this Barrett here is like, the best Barrett.”

  I giggle. I don’t even know why. After a minute, we both start laughing and can’t stop. Cleo leans forward, tossing an arm around me. That’s how Barrett finds us, slumped against the back of Kellan’s chair.

  Cleo wakes up Kellan, and he gives Bear and me a sleepy smile. I can’t help noticing his arm’s around Cleo’s shoulders. Looking at the two of them, at Kellan and how good he looks, you’d never guess, but since I know, I think I notice all the small things. God, it must be so scary for Cleo. And Kellan, obviously. I say a prayer that his cancer stays away forever, and they have a long, wonderful life.

  Then we’re closing the door behind them. Barrett kisses me. He rocks his boner up against me, driving me gently against the wall. We hump there before winding up on the floor, having frantic sex.

  “I’m half drunk,” he says as we lie there, satiated, afterward. His husky words are filled with comical wonder, like he doesn’t quite know how it happened.

  I laugh and kiss his scratchy cheek. “I am, too. Stay with me,” I murmur. “Don’t go next door.”

  “I wasn’t going to.”

  He gets to his feet, and I look up at him.

  “You’re mine.” I giggle.

  He scoops me up, trying to hold me carefully against his chest without throwing me over his shoulder or carrying me lamb style. I can tell by the way he moves that he’s trying to be careful with me, but he is drunk.

  I giggle some more. His steps are slightly unsteady.

  “My mule,” I cackle.

  My mind whirls. Isn’t that what Elvie used to say? If I got ugly, he’d send me away on a mule?

  “You’re my mule,” I whisper again. Goodness fills me, soft and warm and right as rain.

  Chapter Eight

  Barrett

  “Barrett?”

  The clear, sharp voice is out of place. It doesn’t go with what I’m seeing: Gwen’s small body, crumpled, her hair spread around her head, her blood leaking on the roadside. I hear my name a few more times, but it’s just background noise. I’m consumed with what is wrong with Gwen. I’ve got this feeling I should know, but my brain’s sluggish. I don’t understand. How did she get here? Her face is white and slack. Her lips are stained with dark liquid that drips out of the corner of her mouth and down her throat, into the snow.

  I drop down beside her, but my knees sink into the warm puddle of blood, and I have to turn away. My stomach lurches. I cup my hand over my mouth. After a second struggling to shut my stomach down, I rem
ind myself that I’m an Operator—and this is Gwen; I love her! Then I put my hands under her hips and shoulders and lift her.

  As I pull her onto my lap, warmth spills over my lap. My throat constricts.

  “Oh God…” My hands loosen their grip on her. I almost drop her; then I hold her to my chest and sob.

  “Gwen…oh God… Oh God, oh please…”

  “Barrett—I’m okay.” The voice is distant: background noise.

  Our bodies shake together. “Oh my God…Breck. Gwen…”

  “Bear… Baby. It’s me—it’s Gwenna. Open your eyes, baby… Look at me.”

  I’m looking up at Gwen. Relief transforms her features as she clasps my cheeks and pulls my face toward her.

  I wrap my arms around her.

  “Bear…that’s right.” I feel her hand stroke my cheek, feel her rocking me. I blink around. The lights…

  “That’s right.” Her voice is a thick whisper. “You see the lights?”

  I hear her, see them, but…the snow. I smell the salt and I can feel the blood and Ly and Mom and Breck…all dead. I feel myself shaking, am aware some distant somewhere that Gwen’s arms are around me. I’m shaking…and trying not lose it.

  “It’s okay....”

  I blink and realize I’m lying in Gwen’s lap with my arms around myself. One hand is clutching my face. Shaking…

  I try to think of something I can tell her, but my mind feels stuck. Oh, fuck. Freaking out like this…

  I told myself I wouldn’t—

  I frown up at her. She looks…fine.

  A shiver moves through my shoulders. Her face blurs, so I can’t tell if she is…

  “Gwen?”

  Her eyes are gentle. “Barrett?” Her arms pull me closer. I close my eyes and grit my teeth and try to breathe. It’s all still there—the things that blow me open…and the blood…and…

  “Come here… Let’s lay down.” She does, and I half fall on her.

  I wince, trying to shift back on my arms so I’m not lying right on her.

  “It’s okay,” she whispers, holding me against her.

  I can’t stop the flow of tears. Can’t forget what I saw. I can see the blood on her mouth. I cut my eyes so I can see her face—she’s lying on the pillow—searching for the damage that I fear will be there...

  I find her brows are drawn together. Her hand cups my cheek as she searches my face.

  “Hang on a minute, baby…” Gwenna sits up. I shift onto my side, feeling unsteady and weird. She’s gone for a moment, and then she’s moving in my field of vision with a big blanket. She spreads it over me. It’s oddly heavy

  “That’s my weighted blanket.” I watch her out of the corner of my eye as she pulls it up to my mid-back. My eyelids seem to grow heavy with it. Gwenna doesn’t seem real.

  “Okay, now…” She does her best to wrap her hands under my arms and tug me up against her, guiding my head to her soft belly. I can feel her body curl around mine. “Feel that blanket? It’s keeping you here…with me. You’re okay here. Nothing is the matter in this time and place, okay?” She holds me tightly as her whispered words flow through me. Things feel like they’re swirling around me.

  I smell the blood. Regret and horror swell like balloons in my chest, until I can barely breathe enough to whisper, “I’m sorry.” I feel my body tremble, and I feel so fucking bad to burden her like this. I shut my eyes. “I love you.”

  My stomach plummets as my raspy words make their way to my brain.

  I’m off the bed so fast, the room careens; into the bathroom where I lean against the wall and brace my hands on my knees.

  Fuck!

  My mind is racing, even as my throat feels like it’s closing up. I think of crawling out the bathroom window.

  Get a fucking grip. I stand up straighter, scrub the heels of my palms over my eyes. Even as I stop my leaking eyes and regulate my breathing, something hard and cold encases my chest.

  It’s not going to work; it’s never going to work. I can’t keep it together…

  I hear Gwenna come into the room. Can see the shape of her, but I can’t look at her. My eyes shut of their own accord, but I force them back open. Force them to meet her wide, brown ones.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I make myself take in the look on her face: kind. I grit my jaw so hard it sends a bolt of pain up my temple.

  “Barrett…” Her voice is so soft, I can hardly hear it…but I see her mouth move. I feel her step closer to me.

  “I’m wrong for you,” I manage. My voice sounds raspy; weak.

  I watch her eyes absorb the words: the way their dark pools seem to deepen.

  “Bear…” She steps so close our bodies touch and runs her fingers up my cheek. She strokes my temple. Her eyes flare, demanding things before she even says, “You love me. You said so. And you know what? I love you too.” Her fingers curl against my cheek. Her eyes flash. “I love you too.” Her voice cracks. “It’s scary to say, even though you just said it. Barrett…” She wraps an arm around me, pressing her softness against me, looking up into my face as she speaks softly. “I think I knew I loved you when I brought the wine over that night. I felt scared and kind of…helpless. Like what I was doing was out of control and maybe stupid. And I couldn’t stop.” Her voice goes raspy. “You know why?” She blinks.

  I shake my head.

  “Because I love you. I love everything about you.” Her hands grasp my wrists. “I like your arms and legs…your hands.” She brings one up to her face, turning my hand so her lips can brush over my palm. “There’s this callous right here—” Her mouth tickles the spot between my left hand thumb and forefinger that used to mark me as an Operator. “I like it,” she murmurs, her eyes burning mine. “I like your long fingers. I even like your little fingernails.” She smiles gently, and squeezes all the fingers with her own.

  “You know what I like the most, though?” She sounds breathless.

  I swallow.

  “The thing you know best, you can’t do it anymore, Barrett. You lost your vision in one eye, you lost basically a life, and what are you doing? Taking time for some random girl next door. Teaching her hand-to-hand. Making her care about you.” She shakes her head as sorrow fills her eyes. “You keep running from me… I knew you were getting up at night.” Her lips press into a thin line as she shakes her head again. “Don’t you think I care?”

  “You don’t know me.” The words are hoarse. My jaw aches, referring pain up to my ear. She doesn’t know me. If she did, she’d never love me. She wouldn’t be able to, and in my honest moments, I can see this with terrible clarity.

  I feel a clawing sensation deep inside my chest.

  “I don’t know you well enough to take care of you?” Her eyes glimmer. She frowns, and I watch her throat move as she swallows. “Barrett—this is when we met. This is how things are right now. I love you because…I do. I want to be here with you. What bothers you about all that?”

  I look down at my feet as my eyes throb with building pressure.

  “Talk to me, baby.” Her voice is so soft; it makes my chest feel like it’s ripping open.

  I look up at her, even open my mouth, but all I see is warm love in her eyes and I just…can’t. I shudder. Gwenna holds me to her, and it’s horrible. It’s wonderful. I want it so much. More than the sum of all the good parts of me.

  “All I want is to make you feel better,” she says in her sweet, soft voice, “but I feel like I can’t get to you, if that makes any sense.”

  I inhale deeply and let the words inside my head croak out. “I don’t see why you want to.”

  The world is still while she looks into my eyes, seeing through my soul. “Bear, because you’re mine. I feel it. You are mine to hold and take care of and check on…and fuck. I want to hold your hand. I want to know about you. Why? Who cares why? I’m not asking. I don’t have an answer, either. Who does? Why’d you say you love me?” Her throat moves as she swallows; her eyes twinkle as she hoarsely ask
s me, “Did you mean it?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why do you love me, Barrett? Is it the color of my hair? The baked goods?”

  I lick my lips. “I like your smile,” I rasp.

  Her face slackens, and I can feel her gaze grow a little more serious under the weight of what I think must be self-consciousness. I run my fingers over her jaw.

  “I think it’s sexy… You.” How do I convey to her that there is only one Gwen, only one sweet, kind, sexy, crooked smile. “Your eyes,” I manage. My throat feels full, but she looks somber, so I push past it and give her some of me, whatever I can muster. “Your eyes make me feel…better. About life. The way you look in leggings.” I stroke her ass. “So fucking hot. The lights on the ceiling.” I kiss her temple. “You’re good, Gwen. You’re so good, I can’t help but love you even though I know I shouldn’t.”

  “Trust me, baby…” She trails her lips over my cheekbone. “You’re good, too.”

  Her breath is warm and sweet. I shut my eyes. “Don’t say that.”

  “I’m going to keep saying it,” she warns me in a murmur.

  A strange panic burbles in me. I look at her and I feel my heartbeat in my shoulders and my throat. “I gave pain, and I deserve it. That’s the way it works. There’s nothing good about me.”

  If she’s going to be with me, she should be warned.

  The ache—in my head, my jaw, my chest—fuzzes into numbness as I try to breathe. She melds her soft body around mine.

  My hands, on her shoulders, shake. The two of us are locked together, her tethered to me and it’s so wrong. So wrong.

  “You seem like a dream…to me.” The words swim in my head; unsteady words. “Rewrite the story…” I clear my throat so my voice isn’t as cracked and get the nerve to look down at her. “You said I have to rewrite what happens… But I can’t. Because I don’t deserve it.”

  * * *

  Gwenna

  “Does Kellan think that?”

  He frowns.