by Hawk, Maya
“Uh, huh,” I tease. “It’s okay if you wanted to come see me. You don’t have to make up excuses.”
I slip my key into my lock and let us in, tossing my keys in a bowl on the console after kicking off my shoes.
“Make yourself at home.” I yawn. I’m exhausted, but seeing Lauryn has given me reason to fight that tooth and nail. “I’m going to shower.”
By the time I emerge from the shower, she’s sitting on my couch rifling through an old yearbook. She looks up at me and flashes a slow grin. We had a lot of good times together when we were younger. “Found this on your bookshelf over there.”
I take a seat next to her. She’s flipping through the back where there’s a picture of the two of us our sophomore year – before we stopped speaking to each other. We’re covered in face paint that matches our school colors and running down a football field hand-in-hand.
“I miss us.” She says it in one dreamy sigh. “The old us. I miss the people we were before life got shitty and complicated.” She runs her hand across the slick pages, as if she could possibly touch a memory. “Why didn’t you try to stop them?”
I lean back, running my hands across my thighs.
“When you found out about our parents, why didn’t you try to tell them not to do that? Why didn’t you threaten to tell or make them realize they were destroying lives?” She sounds like a broken little girl when she talks, and I realize her pain, though well over ten years old, is still as fresh as the day it all began.
“I did,” I say. “Your dad clocked me across the face.”
“That’s how you got that black eye?” she asks, her voice tapering off. “You said you got in a fight with Cody Preston at school.”
“Nope, that was DeVonn,” I say. “He socked me and told me I could never see you again if I breathed a word to anyone. Shit, Lauryn. I was embarrassed. I didn’t want you to think I was weak or that I couldn’t fix things for you.”
She leans against my shoulder. I take it as her way of apologizing for being wrong. I accept in silence.
“Look, I could take the beatings,” I say. “But I couldn’t take not being able to see you. And then that happened anyway, so…”
She nuzzles against me, breathing me in. “My mom never did remarry. She’s taken a vow of celibacy. For the last ten years, all she’s done is tell me that men are evil and that we’re all better off alone. She didn’t even like James, and let’s face it, at face value, James can be extremely likable.”
“Fucking James,” I say with a snicker. “You confront him yet?”
Lauryn nods. “It didn’t go the way I hoped it would. There were no bloody knuckles and broken noses, but I think he leaned a lesson. I’m going to let him squirm for a few days before I call HR and report him for abusing his company card. Bye-bye bonus…”
“That’s rather generous of you,” I say. “I’m sure you could do a lot more damage than that.”
“Oh, no, that’s where you’re wrong. Money is everything to James. I’m going to hit him where it hurts. He’s going to miss that bonus, believe me. And he’ll have to explain to his darling Colette that he’s officially jobless.”
“Remind me never to cross you,” I tease, slipping my hand around her back. I’m holding her, and my heart is racing. It feels good to hold her, to be close to her again. Seeing her smile is reassuring. I’d happily let her cry on my shoulder, but she doesn’t appear to be sad. She almost seems relieved about the whole thing. “You never wanted to marry him, did you?”
She slinks a single shoulder upward. “I don’t know. I thought I did? I-I don’t know.”
“It’s hard for you to admit the way you feel about things.” I want to reach for her hands but I don’t. We’re not quite there yet, and I don’t want to scare her away the moment she’s finally warming up to me. “Why is that?”
“It’s how I survived the last ten years,” she admits. “Never dealing with my emotions. Never dealing with reality.”
“Which was?”
“That I missed you. That I was hurting. That as much as I convinced myself that I hated you, I really still loved you.”
She trembles slightly, as if years of buried emotions are working their way from the deepest parts of her to the outermost parts. It’s difficult for her to be so honest.
“Loved me like a…stepbrother?” I test her.
She blows a breath between her lips. “I hated you as a stepbrother. Let’s set the record straight on that.”
“But you loved me as…”
“I loved you as…I don’t know.” She rubs her hands against her jeans, creating warm friction.
“You can say it.”
“I loved you as…I don’t know. I loved you. I was in love with you. There. I said it.” Lauryn’s face flushes, and her lips twitch. Her eyes snap to the yearbook in her lap, which she shuts in haste.
“You should’ve said something when you had the chance,” I say. “I had no idea.”
“Really?” She turns to me. “You had no idea? After that summer we shared? All the things we did? We were together every single day. Couldn’t keep our hands off each other. I gave my virginity to you.”
“And it was a fucking fantastic gift.”
She elbows me. “God, you really are dense.”
“Not as much as you think,” I say. “I’m not sure that I knew what love was back then, and I’m not sure that some seventeen, eighteen year old punk should go around saying those kinds of words. Look, all I knew was you were the only thing that mattered to me back then, Laur. And you still are. I know now that that was love.”
She bites her full bottom lip, her eyes half-open and falling toward my mouth. She’s right there, on the edge. I just have to give her a good push.
“I want to kiss you, Lauryn,” I say. “I’m going to kiss you.”
“No,” she says. She swallows, her lips parting. “I don’t know if I’ll want to stop once you start.”
“Then we’ll keep going,” I say. I lean into her, grazing my lips across hers. “I want it, Laur. I want you. Don’t you want me too?”
Her eyes squeeze shut, and she nods. “I want you, Sut.”
My hands cup her sweet face. I claim her mouth as mine, forcing her lips apart and sucking her tongue as our lips dance. Her breath heaves and she sinks back into the sofa. I take the opportunity to pin her under me, tearing off her top like the inconvenience that it is. Anything that stops me from taking Lauryn from here on out shall henceforth be demolished and ruined.
She’s mine.
Now and forever.
“But isn’t this weird?” she sighs, pulling away. “We’re stepbrother and stepsister. Technically.”
“No, it’s not fucking weird,” I groan. My hands are working the waistband of her leggings, slipping down between her thighs. My cock hardens, and the metal ball of my piercing rubs against my boxer briefs. I’m literally aching for her, and if she doesn’t give herself to me in the next five minutes, I’ll have a medically concerning case of blue balls.
“But, like, right now, you’re my stepbrother, and you’re about to fuck me,” she says with a teasing grin. She knows what she’s doing. She’s torturing me on purpose and loving every second of it.
“It’s kind of hot,” I say, pressing my lips into the hot flesh between her full breasts. They’re spilling out of the lace cups of her bra, the pinks of her nipples beginning to peek out. Her breasts are perfect: round, natural, and generous. I pull a cup down and take a nipple in my mouth, running it between my teeth enough to wake it up. She sighs in response, pressing her head against a throw pillow. “Besides, first you were like my bratty kid sister, and then you were my friend, and then you got boobs and got all hormonal, and then I thought you were hot so I fucked you like crazy, and then we became stepsiblings, and now I’m going to fuck you, like I did back in high school, only now we’re adults. That means we can do whatever the fuck we want.”
I unhook her bra, setting her free, and she sli
des her leggings and panties down, kicking them off. They fall in a heap on the floor, and her hands lunge for the button of my jeans. My boxer briefs hardly contain my erection, and she wastes no time unleashing me from my confines.
“Still pierced,” she says with a pleased smirk. Her tongue runs along the inside of her upper lip.
“All the better to please you.” I dip down, kissing her hot and wanting mouth and feeling her smile.
“You know that was a dare,” she said. “I never expected you to really get your cock pierced.”
“You should’ve known better than to dare me to do anything,” I whisper. “I dared you to get your nipples pierced and you chickened out.” My mouth trails down her neck, peppering soft kisses into her soft flesh and stopping above her heaving breasts. I take a nipple in my mouth and bite down just enough to elicit another heavy sigh. “But that’s okay because you shouldn’t fuck with perfection.”
“Dare me to do something else,” she begs through breathless sighs. “I’m not in a mood to care about consequences right now…”
“Let me fuck you up against that window,” I whisper. I gaze up over her head, where floor to ceiling windows lead out to my balcony. “I want the whole fucking world to know you’re mine.”
I climb off her, pulling her up and over to the window. I press her against it, her hands splayed out as she braces herself. My hand travels between her legs, spreading them until I find her slit. I stick a finger in, followed by another.
“So fucking wet,” I moan. “God, Lauryn.”
She bites her lip and presses a cheek against the glass. It’s still daylight out and her hot, naked body is pressed against the glass for the whole world to see – or at least my neighbors across the street.
“Fuck me, Sutton,” she pleads.
“Are you on the pill?” I ask. I’m a doctor. I need to know these things. “Are you clean?”
“Just had a check up the other day. I’m clean. I haven’t been with James in weeks,” she pants. “And I’m on the shot.”
Her eyes squeeze as she waits. My right hand grips the base of my cock, pumping it and angling it between her thighs. My free hand grips her taut low belly, guiding her onto my cock slowly, the way she liked it in high school. Her body is tense, and the second she sheaths me, her body melds against the glass.
“Holy shit, you’re tight.” I grip her hips and pump myself into her. Her breasts bounce with each thrust, and I watch our reflection in real-time. Lauryn’s hands slide down the glass, leaving streaks as she rocks her hips against mine. My left hand travels to the front of her hips, trailing down until I find her clit.
Her mouth moans in response to my fingers, and I temporarily pause to make her taste herself. “Taste what I do to you, Lauryn. This is what you’ve been missing all these years.”
My hands grip her hips, and I pump ferociously into her, her body bucking wildly and letting me know she’s getting close. I don’t want her to come yet. I don’t want to come yet. I don’t want it to be over as soon as it started, but neither one of us have a choice. Our bodies have taken over, and our bodies have declared that they want each other.
My balls tighten. I come inside her, emptying myself as she squeals and moans, her hips churning and writhing against my stiff cock. When we’re done, I spin her to face me, taking her face in my hands and tasting her lips again before she has a chance to breathe a word. Knowing Lauryn, she’s already psychoanalyzing this and trying to make sense of something she has no business making sense of.
It is what it is, and it’s a beautiful fucking thing that I have no intentions of letting go of no matter what.
SEVENTEEN – LAURYN
I’m naked. My ass is plastered against the glass of Sutton’s living room and remnants of our sex drip down my slick thighs. My pussy clenches as the remainder of my orgasm fades into oblivion. I’m trying to catch my breath, mourning the loss of the way his cock – and his piercing – felt inside me.
Sutton is well-endowed. His cock fills every fiber of me with each thrust, and his piercing rubs against just the right areas. I’d almost forgotten what a real, man-given orgasm felt like.
I’m still reeling.
James who?
Stepbrother what?
Nothing matters now as Sut stands before me, his arms hooked around my waist and a dreamy, satisfied smile is captured on his handsome face. If we were laying in bed, now would be when we spooned. Or maybe we’d shut out the lights and fall into an orgasm induced coma together.
My mind switches, swimming through a lusty haze and emerging back to reality. I want to ask how many people saw us fucking. I want to know who all saw my breasts bouncing as my stepbrother fucked me against the glass for the entire downtown Miami population to see.
Sut takes my hand, leading me back to the sofa where he sits down. He pulls me onto his lap. We smell like sex and the soap from his shower that still permeates off his warm skin. His cock is slowly turning limp, but it’s still pressed against my wetness. I could easily go for round two if he wanted.
“I have to work tonight,” he says. “I haven’t slept in over twenty-four hours. You can either come back to my room with me and keep me warm with that tight body of yours, or you can make yourself at home while I sleep.”
Our eyes lock, and I debate on whether or not I should tell him I’m moving back to L.A. It’s probably not a good time to tell him, after he just fucked me and is staring at me like he wants me to have his babies, but I can’t string him along. I didn’t come here expecting to fuck him or expecting for us to reveal that our love for one another was still going strong after all these years.
He deserves to know.
“I’m moving back to L.A.” I tell him. I hold my breath, waiting for his response. My eyes close, and when they open, he’s still making the same face. It’s expressionless. I don’t know if he’s angry, shocked, hurt, or confused. Or maybe he’s nothing.
And then his jaw clenches. “You’re not letting that asshole run you out of town, are you?”
“James? Oh, God, no.” I vehemently shake my head. “Seeing how passionate you are about your job makes me want to find my passion. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life peddling drugs to doctors. That’s not my dream.”
“What is your dream?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.” I pull in a breath and brush my hair from my face, which reminds me, I have sex hair. I haven’t had sex hair in years. I haven’t had hot sex in years. Vanilla sex doesn’t give you sex hair. “I spoke with my mom this morning. I’m going to live with her while I figure things out.”
I trace along his chest, my finger gliding along every ripple and muscular indentation, and I notice as it rises and falls with each steady breath. His skin is soft and tan and warm, baked by the Miami sun and sculpted by hours in a gym. His face falls, his lips forming a straight line.
“What?” I ask. “Say it.”
“You’re running, Lauryn.”
I climb off his lap, gathering my clothes from the floor. Now it feels silly to be buck-naked and having this serious discussion with him.
“I’m not running.” I step into my panties before tugging my leggings up. Eyeing the space around us, I see my bra hanging from the back of a chair.
“You can’t figure out your passion here?” He stands, redressing.
“I don’t have a job here,” I say. “Not anymore. I’m resigning.”
“I’ll take care of you.” He waves his hand in the air. “Live here. Live with me. Figure out your passion here.”
“Sutton…” My mind is made up. It was made up before he ever kissed me and told me he still loved me. It was made up before he took me against the glass and made me his for a short, passionate moment in time.
He heads toward me, steady as a freight train, and frames my face with this hand. His thumb runs along my bottom lip before he plunges in and presses his mouth against mine, hard. It’s desperate and sexy all at once.
He pulls his mouth from mine, leaving hints of his flavor on my tongue. “You’re never going to learn, are you, Lauryn?”
“Learn what?”
“You’re never going to learn to trust your heart, and that’s really unfortunate for you.” He releases my face and steps away. His silence concerns me because Sutton Pierce is anything but silent. He should be fighting for me. He should be pushing my buttons. He should be begging me to stay. But he’s not. He says nothing, disappearing down the hall into the darkness.
A door slams. I show myself out.
EIGHTEEN – LAURYN
It’s been two days since I walked out of Sutton’s apartment. Two days with an ache between my legs and a heaviness around my heart that won’t fade no matter how much I try to ignore it.
And now I’m standing at the head of a conference room, waiting for him to walk in so we can present to Miami-Dade OB-GYN group. My heart thumps hard inside my chest, and my palms sweat against the smooth plastic of the PowerPoint clicker.
“Presentations make me nervous too, honey,” an older female doctor says. She tugs on the pearl necklace at her throat. “You’ve got nothing to worry about. No one here bites. Except Dr. Bonnano.”
She chuckles to her herself and turns to her left, making idle chat with another physician. They pass around the tray of organic brownies I brought and unscrew caps on the Fiji water bottles I lugged in.
Sutton better not bail on me.
I grab my notes, not that I need them. I have this stuff memorized. I know it like the back of my hand. The clock behind me reads three past twelve.
“Ma’am, with all due respect, we’ve got patients to see,” a grouchy older doctor says at the opposite end of the table. He has a slow, southern accent that makes me think he’s from Savannah, Georgia. “Mind if we get on with it?”
That’s the thing about being a drug rep. People think it’s some fancy job where you get to shower your doctors with gifts. They think you get to drive around in a fancy car and charge the whole world on your corporate VISA. It’s not like that at all. At the end of the day, we’re just salespeople. And at the end of the day, that’s how we’re treated.