The Other Brother (Snow and Ash Book 3)

by Heather Knight

  “Well, can you blame her?”

  Rage overcomes fear, and I whip around to glare at the speaker. The dumpy-looking woman with the fuzzy hair shrinks back, her face pale and a hand at her throat.

  “Coming?” Kent asks, and I hear a hint of relief in his voice.

  “Yes.” I raise my chin and grip his hand firmly. I sweep the room, searching for other signs of disrespect, and the contempt I sense shifts to wariness.

  We pass through a series of hallways and enter the private area reserved for the Barry apartments. I don’t think I’ll ever find my way around this massive place.

  “Don’t be nervous,” he says as we climb the stairs. “I promised I wouldn’t do anything you don’t want me to do.”

  “Okay,” I say stiffly. “Thanks.”

  I read glumness in his sigh.

  I’m disappointing him already. I try to think about all the people who won’t get murdered in the constant raids between the Barrys and the Masons. Doesn’t help that sick, shame-filled feeling that settles in my stomach. If only I could be normal.

  Kent opens our door and reveals a room dimly lit by a small fire. In the center rests a queen-size bed with mahogany fence-post-like slats at the headboard and footboard. On the lower corner lies a pair of women’s flannel pajamas.

  You can’t get more sexless than flannel pajamas. I almost giggle, but I’m too embarrassed by this obvious communication that there will be no sex tonight.

  “I’m going to take a shower.” He indicates the bathroom door with a nod of his head. “Do you need anything in there first?”

  “I just want to brush my teeth.” And pee.

  I grab the pj’s, scuttle into the bathroom, and do my business. In record time I’m changed and back out again.

  He looks like he’s trying to decide whether to laugh or throttle me.

  I flick my eyes at the bathroom and squeak, “Yours.”

  His lips thin and he turns away.

  I take the nearest side of the bed and pull the covers up to my chin. The Barrys rule an area smack-dab in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains. Can’t they find a few sticks of firewood?

  When Kent emerges from the bathroom, he’s wearing sleep pants but he’s bare-chested.

  Holy crap. The body on this man. Every inch of him is chiseled. Even his chiseled pieces are chiseled. If I was the type of woman who could feel anything whatsoever, I’d attack him. And he’s so graceful. For some reason this comforts me.

  He climbs into the opposite side of the bed, turns away from me, and settles himself in to sleep.

  Slowly, as it sinks in that this is it, I begin to relax. When the heat from his body reaches me, I want to scooch closer to him. He doesn’t scare me at all.

  Well, all that much.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “No way. No way in hell.” I turn to go, but he catches my hand. We’ve just left dinner, where, I might add, he keeps feeding me evil things like chocolate cake and mashed potatoes.

  “You will,” he insists, pulling me back toward my seat. “I require it. Now be quiet and sit still.”

  I shake my head. “This is terrible! Do they know we’re here?”

  He frowns. “No, of course not.”

  I flick the window a glance, and my face goes hot. “This isn’t right. It just isn’t right.”

  Kent’s expression grows stern. “I’m in charge. I say what’s right. Now keep your voice down or you’ll scare the bejesus out of them.”

  I sink into my seat, utterly mortified. We’re sitting, audience-style, in front of a two-way mirror. I think that’s what you call it. We can see them, but they have no idea we’re here. By them I mean the couple that’s making out right in front of us. They think they’ve been awarded a night at the Biltmore House for some kind of accomplishment. Ha!

  I cross my arms over my chest. “Remind me again why you’re making me do this?”

  He sighs. “Because you don’t know what it’s supposed to be like between a man and a woman. All you’ve experienced is hate. Look. See there, how he’s cradling her face?”

  I flick them a glance. Shit.

  “He’s being very gentle with her,” Kent observes.

  The guy sweeps his hands back into the girl’s hair, down her back, and with a flick he unhooks—mother of God—her bra.

  The girl doesn’t protest; she shrugs out of the garment like it’s in the way, and she tilts her head back as the guy cups her breasts and traces a trail of kisses down her neck. He squeezes and massages her boobs, runs his hands over the tips, and strokes and pulls her nipples. The girl’s eyes flutter shut, and she arches into him.

  I shift in my chair, desperate to find a more comfortable position. They’re, you know, doing it.

  Kent puts his arm around the back of my chair like it’s no big deal, but I go absolutely stiff.

  “She’s pressing herself to him,” he says softly. Why does his voice have to sound so damn sexy? “She wants to get closer to him. Why?”

  “Because she’s normal.” Unlike me.

  He shakes his head. “Because he’s making her feel good. She knows he wants to please her, and she wants him to.”

  “Mm hm.”

  I try not to be interested as the guy takes the tip of one breast in his mouth and gives it a long suck, but moisture seeps out from that place between my legs. I need to look away, but I can’t. He does the same to the other side, and the girl holds on to him like she’s afraid he’ll stop. I kind of get it. I don’t want them to stop either.

  “Have you ever felt anything like that?” Kent strokes my shoulder, not in a creepy way but like he’s trying to soothe me.

  “No.” I don’t look at him. I kind of hate him for putting me through this.

  He turns to me, and those gray eyes of his seem curious. “Ever been kissed and thought it felt nice?”

  “No.”

  His brows shoot up. “Ever?”

  I let out a puff of breath. “Are we going to go through a whole list? The answer is no. All right? I don’t feel that,” I say, gesturing toward the scene in front of us.

  Kent grimaces, shifts in his seat, and returns his attention to the scene.

  The couple is now completely naked. I can see the guy’s penis, and although it’s not overly large, I feel that familiar panic eat my gut. When the girl gets on her knees and takes him in her mouth, I clap a hand over my mouth.

  How can she do that? How can I watch this?

  Kent takes my hands, both of them. “Look at me,” he commands.

  But my eyes are stuck on the couple.

  “Look at me,” he says, enunciating each word, and this time I obey.

  I’m shaking.

  “Has he touched her in any way that looked hateful?”

  I glance back at the couple. The girl is bobbing her head over the man’s unit. He pushes the hair back from her face oh-so-lovingly. He arches his neck.

  “No,” I admit, my voice shaking.

  “Is he forcing her to do anything?”

  “Not that I can tell,” I whisper.

  The man steps back, pulls the girl to her feet, and presses her down on the bed. He parts her thighs.

  Just like hands once parted mine. Like when I screamed and pleaded as several sets of hands anchored me in place and a man pressed his dick to my—

  Kent squeezes my hand as the girl takes the man’s penis and guides him to her. Something the size of a bus crushes my chest.

  The man slides into her, and soon they are rocking together. Her head falls back, and her lips part in what is obviously a moan of pleasure.

  Watching them, all I feel is remembered pain, flesh scraping flesh as body after body invaded mine. I suffer all the humiliation from when they made me get on all fours and suck one man’s cock while another man plowed into me from behind. I remember the sticky, sweaty stink of my body when they were done with me as I lay naked on the floor, covered with blood and semen.

  I squeeze my eyes shut. My heart ha
mmers in my chest, and I’m angry. So angry. I want to be normal. I want to feel like that girl feels. I can’t. Tears flood my eyes, but they’re not from sorrow. They’re tears of rage.

  Gritting my teeth is the only way I can keep from screaming. I shoot to my feet, intending to run from the room, but Kent pulls me down on his lap.

  His lap.

  I want to hit him. I want to scratch his scarred face. I know he has to see this in my expression, but instead of letting me go, he brushes back the tendrils of hair that escaped my tight braid. “I know what happened to you was terrible. I know you suffered and you still suffer.”

  “Then why are you doing this to me?” I breathe.

  He looks to the couple. They sweat together, and they rock and rock and rock. It’s clear even to me that they’re both on the verge of ecstasy.

  “Rape is control,” Kent explains. “It’s a man’s way of showing a woman that she’s less than human. Making love happens between two people who love and respect each other. When there’s love and respect, it’s not ugly.”

  “You don’t understand. I want to be normal. I’m just not.”

  I wrench my hands from his and scramble to my feet.

  With a sigh he lets me.

  We walk back to the Barry wing in thick, suffocating silence.

  As usual my pj’s are laid out for me. This time they’re still long sleeved, but the top is silkier, thinner, and it’s matched with a pair of sleep shorts. Our bedroom is much warmer than it’s been over the last two weeks. Someone must have finally found some firewood. At least tonight I won’t have to burrow with the covers practically over my head.

  Is this on purpose, though? The pj’s aren’t sexy or anything, but he just made me watch live porn. He doesn’t expect me to miraculously want it now, does he?

  Oh shit, if he does…damn.

  He emerges from the bathroom bare-chested, but he’s wearing those sleep pants. Nothing has changed. When he climbs into bed, he still keeps his distance.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he says, and he sounds as though he means it. “I just want you to know it’s not always like that.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut. I’m failing him. He’s being so kind, and I’m not giving him even an inch. “I know.”

  I want so much to creep closer to him, to find comfort in him, but it’s just not possible.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Really, Kent? Really?”

  He’s been making me watch people have sex for weeks now. I no longer cry when I see a dick, but it’s just so damn, well, uncomfortable. If you want the truth, I’m kind of offended. Tonight the two people are tossing each other around like starved lions on meat.

  “I just want you to see that it can be different.”

  “Oh, it’s different, all right.” The girl starts humping the guy’s leg like a dog.

  I clap a hand over my mouth and stifle a giggle.

  Kent turns to me with raised brows. “You think this is funny?”

  “Well, I mean, look at them.”

  The guy is sitting on the edge of the bed, fully clothed, and the naked girl is riding his boot as though it’s an enormous dick.

  “Hot,” he says with a hint of a smile. He never smiles more than a very little. I think it bothers him that his scars limit the way half of his face moves.

  I shake my head. It’s not rape, that’s for damn sure. But what the heck? “Whatever happened to love and tenderness?”

  He wags his head. “I just wanted you to see that it’s different for everyone.”

  The girl clutches the guy’s boot between her thighs and grinds her privates against it. She throws back her head, and even through the almost soundproof wall, I hear her roar of ecstasy. It’s so dirty. It’s so…

  I clear my throat.

  “Does she look unhappy?” Kent asks, sliding his arm around my shoulder.

  “No but…”

  “Is he forcing her?”

  “Definitely not.” If anything, the guy’s the one in trouble.

  The girl unzips the guy’s pants and roots around for his dick. He raises his backside off the bed, and she rips his pants down to his hips. His member springs free, and she claps her lips over the tip and begins sucking him like a Popsicle.

  I’m no longer upset by the sight of naked people. Watching them have sex is intensely embarrassing, but it doesn’t frighten me the way it did in the beginning. I know if Kent tried to do any of those things to me, though, I’d freeze like a stone.

  “Bianca.” The way he says it, his voice thick and full of passion, sends shivers through me. He doesn’t touch me. Well, his hand’s on my shoulder, but that’s nothing. His voice, though…it calls to something ancient within me.

  I swallow and raise my gaze to his. One half of his face is handsome, the other half disfigured. I want to trace kisses over the ugliness, to take away the pain and embarrassment I see every time he turns his head when someone flinches.

  He brushes more stray tendrils away from my face, sending tingles through my chest. He flicks a glance at the window. “It’s about trust. These two. They aren’t kissing and caressing each other, but they’re giving each other what the other one needs. That’s respect, Bianca. If he needed her to suck his cock like a Hoover, but she just licked it like an ice cream cone, he’d be disappointed. She pays attention to him, though, listens to his body and gives him what he needs.”

  My breasts feel full and tender. He’s actually wrapping me in a hypnotic spell.

  I glance back at the scene. The girl is riding the guy’s cock. Actually she’s straddling him, and he’s arching his hips up into her as though he can’t possibly wait for the next stroke.

  My body longs to be touched. It needs to be loved in every way possible. I wish with every cell I have that my mind would let me.

  I lick my lips. “What do you like…I mean, when you’ve, ah, what do you…” My voice chokes off. I’ve stabbed myself in the chest with a knife built of awkwardness. What the hell am I doing? “Never mind.”

  His chest expands, and his pupils go wide. My mouth dries in response, and something in my belly contracts. I look away.

  He runs a hand from the top of my head down my back. He swirls his hand around as though just touching me in that simple, innocent way fills him with pleasure.

  “I like it rough,” he says, his voice hoarse. “I prefer to be in control, and I want my woman to put her trust in me completely. But it would depend on the girl. It would depend on the situation.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  A few days later I’m having my bath when I hear the bedroom door open and quietly shut. I don’t worry. This time of the morning the only person who would come in is the cleaning woman, and she’d know by the closed door that I’m having my bath.

  A few minutes later, as I’m running the washcloth over my neck, I hear a groan. I freeze. Then I hear another one.

  What is that?

  Another groan comes, this time louder, and it’s not the cleaning woman. It’s a man’s voice. As quietly as I can, I get to my feet, grab the towel off the toilet seat, and wrap it around myself. I step out onto the bath mat, cringing as rivulets of water drop off my feet and back into the tub. I go still, expecting the groaning to stop.

  “Oh yeah.”

  It’s Kent. It’s definitely Kent. I’m horrified and fascinated at the same time as I creep to the bathroom door. I hesitate. What if he’s hurt? What if he’s…

  As softly as I can, I crack the door open.

  My husband lies naked on the mattress. He’s placed several pillows under his head, and his legs are spread apart. He’s using his hand to… Oh my God, he’s masturbating. His cock stands stiff and tall, a good seven or eight inches if I estimate correctly, and it’s thick, thicker than any of the men I’ve seen before. His strokes are slow and measured, and it looks to me like it’s a soft grip. He changes the tempo to quick and fluttery. What does it feel like for him?

  I should stop looking. Oh man. I need to
get the hell out of here. What if he sees me? How embarrassing. What if he thinks I’m spying?

  I am spying.

  His eyes are closed, though, and he slides both hands down his legs, then brings them back up again. He cups his balls in one hand and spits into the other. Then he rubs that hand around the rim of his cock.

  “Oh baby, suck it. Suck it!”

  I raise a hand to my mouth as an answering jolt licks deep in my belly.

  My pussy throbs as I imagine wrapping my lips around his member, the way that other girl did it, as I imagine rimming his cock with my tongue and then sliding him down my throat. Almost as if in response, Kent groans again and arches his hips off the bed. He begins working himself faster, and there’s a new timbre to his moans. Moisture seeps from between my legs. I can almost imagine him using those hands against my breasts, using that huge cock of his to fill me. A river of moisture drips out of my cunt.

  I picture pressing myself against that hard, chiseled body and wrapping my legs around his hips. I want to pull his head to my breasts as he licks and sucks them, and I know he’d do it until I sighed with pleasure, just as those other girls did. Those other girls all get to have it. Unlike me, their minds let them have what their bodies want.

  It’s not fair. I want to make love with a man and have it fill me with joy, not revulsion and fear.

  Kent’s breaths come quicker now, and his moans grow louder. His legs go rigid, and his feet dig into the mattress. His face screws up, and he lets out an explosive grunt. Jets of white cream shoot from the tip of his cock and onto those chiseled abs of his. Even after, when nothing more comes out, he continues stroking himself until finally he drops his head back onto the pillows with a sigh.

  As quietly as I can, I pull the door shut.

  I’m shaking. The towel drops to the floor as I raise my hands to my breasts and give them an experimental caress. I’ve filled out some since I got here. What with all the carbs and the reduction in my exercise, all the work I’ve put into being athletic is disappearing fast. Right now, though, I don’t care. I wet a finger and rim one of my nipples. It feels good, really good. I give it a tweak, and my head drops back as it sends a loud message to my womb. My pussy begs for attention, and I slide a hand between my legs and begin to stroke myself. The feeling is exquisite, and I squeeze my thighs together. There’s no way I can stop now. My breaths come fast and heavy as I feel tension build inside me. My legs tremble, and my clit begs and begs for more. When I finally come, I have to grit my teeth not to scream.