Taken aback, I shot a confused glance his way. “Sorry for what, Blake?”
“Because I . . . when we . . . I don’t know.” He stopped speaking and abruptly walked out of the room. I heard a door close somewhere in the house and it only added to my confusion.
“Blake?” I called his name into the darkness but got no response. “Blake?” Still nothing.
I sat there for a while staring at the flames, unsure of what just happened and why he would storm off, but honestly, it was hard to care when I was wallowing in my own self-pity. I looked around the place and was glad for the quiet.
Normally, the house would be alive with activity. Blake, Dad, Maggie, Grandpa, and I would be involved in a highly competitive game of some kind while the smell of Grandma’s pies filled the air. It was almost as if we were the perfect family. Almost.
Though I would have never admitted it out loud, I had some leftover resentment toward my dad for marrying Blake’s mom. Maggie had tried hard to be a mother to me, but I refused to call her Mom, and she never pushed me to. Don’t get me wrong, I was glad to see my dad happy and I knew he deserved it. For nine years, it had been just the two of us. My biological mother died of a heart condition when I was only three years old. Dad told me her health had declined so fast that there wasn’t anything that could be done.
Dad spoiled me and treated me like a princess. I think part of it was to compensate for being gone for work a lot. He’d also made sure I spent plenty of time with his sister, Bridget. He would take me to see her at the library where she worked. Sometimes he would leave me there while he ran errands or did whatever it was that he did back in those days. Aunt Bridget used to sit me in a chair behind the counter with a big pile of books, where I remained for many contented hours.
When Dad found Maggie, it was at a time when I needed a mother, so I was grateful to have her in my life. It had always been hard to not have a mom, but when a girl starts to reach her teen years, things get very confusing and dads aren’t much help with explaining it all.
I didn’t dislike Maggie. I just didn’t like that Blake’s mother had to marry my dad, thus crushing my hope of ever being with the boy I loved. Even at twelve years old, I knew that I wanted him to be mine one day. As I stood across from him at the altar while our parents exchanged wedding vows, I accepted the harsh reality that what I wanted and what was possible were two separate things.
Chapter Six
Something soft touched my skin and instantly warmed me. When I opened my eyes, Blake was placing the comforter from my bed on top of me. I hadn’t realized that I’d fallen asleep on the floor in front of the fireplace. There was a slight chill in the air because the flames had died down, so Blake set to work on rebuilding the fire.
The house was still dark and outside the window the snow was falling steadily. The only sound around us was the soft crackling of the flames mixed with the wind from outside. Blake stared blankly ahead as he poked the fire, his lips drawn tightly together and that dimple on his cheek made a welcomed appearance.
“Blake,” I said as I sat up while tugging the blanket closer around me. It really was quite cold in there. “Are you okay?” He jerked his head in a nod but didn’t speak as he backed away from the fire and sat with his legs bent and elbows resting on his knees. I could see the chill bumps across his forearms so I scooted closer and wrapped my blanket around him. He hesitated, and I thought for sure that he would back away. Instead, he gathered the material around his shoulders, and I let my body relax next to his.
“Blakey.” I sighed and rested my head on his shoulder while wrapping my arms around his waist. When my fingers skimmed the ridges of his abdomen over his T-shirt, he hissed and stiffened. “What’s wrong?” My heart sank as I lifted my face to look at him, and for the first time, I could smell that he’d been smoking, the droopiness of his eyelids confirming it.
“So many things, Tay.” He swallowed hard then wrapped an arm around me, pulling me close as I let myself melt against his side. We sat together, staring at the flames for a while until Blake got up and grabbed several large cushions from the couch so we could rest against them. I pushed away the feelings of guilt as I allowed myself to enjoy the moment and lie there alone with him.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” I said, referring to the almost kiss we had outside of the restaurant.
“Tayia, you didn’t do anything wrong. It’s my fault. I can’t seem to keep my shit together,” he said as he stared up at the ceiling.
“Blake, why would it be your fault?” I asked softly. When he only snorted in reply, I sat up and turned to him. He was lying with his arm thrown over his eyes as he clutched the blanket to his lower half. “Blake?” I straddled him and tried to pull his arms away. That’s when I felt the hard bulge in the front of his pants against my inner thigh. Before I could process what that meant, he quickly lifted me off him.
“Wait. Give me a minute, please?” he asked without looking at me.
“A minute to do what?”
He threw out a hand in an exaggerated gesture to his lower front area that had been hard against me. My cheeks flushed with embarrassment. I really was inexperienced when it came to things like that. I just wanted a hole to open in the floor and swallow me up.
“God, I’m such an idiot.” I flopped against the pillow beside him and covered my eyes. I had no idea how we would recover from this. I’d just given him a hard-on. “I’m sorry that happened, Blake. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“The problem, Tayia, is that we were just doing what came naturally.”
“Natural? How is it natural? You’re supposed to be my br—”
“Don’t. Don’t say it,” he cut me off as he sat up. “Our parents got married six years ago, but you’re no more my sister than the sky is green. It’s the circumstances we’ve been dealt, and I keep telling myself to not go there.”
“Wait? You keep telling yourself not to . . .” My mind was reeling with this revelation. Blake had feelings for me, too? Somehow, it was comforting to know that I wasn’t the only one feeling this, but at the same time, the knowledge of it made the ache even worse.
"“I know I shouldn’t feel like this, but I can’t help it.” His voice was so low that I could barely hear him.
“Me, too. I’ve tried hard to ignore it,” I admitted shyly.
“Tay?” There was confusion on his face mixed with something else I couldn’t quite identify. “Tayia, you . . .”
I nodded helplessly.
“We are so fucked.” He laughed humorously then fell back against the pillow again.
“Yeah,” I agreed and scooted a little closer to him. “But for the record, I’ve always felt this way. Even before our parents married.”
“I remember.”
The day our parents combined houses was when it all became real. My dad and I moved from our rented house and into the home Maggie owned. Knowing that Blake’s room was just down the hall from mine was unsettling. Sharing the same space with him had been torture. I was obsessed with making sure my bedroom door was always bolted shut, so much so that I had gotten good at lock picking after finding myself on the wrong side of my own carelessly locked door. With time, it got easier to accept my fate and that life wasn’t always fair. But sitting there next to Blake after all that was revealed, it was hard not to wonder whether it was fate that was keeping us apart or something else entirely.
“What are we going to do, Blake?” I clutched the blanket closer and stared blankly at the dancing flames.
“I don’t know, Tay.”
We lay there for a while, listening to the crackling of the fire. All I could think about was touching him, and I wondered if he would let me.
“Can we hold each other and pretend for a while?” I asked quietly, hoping like hell that he wouldn’t reject me.
He looked over at me, and I saw that his eyes were a bit cloudy, except I didn’t think it had anything to do with being stoned. Finally, he nodded and pulled me ag
ainst his side.
“Since we’re pretending, can I do this?” He pulled my leg back over his hip and I nodded. “What about this?” He buried his head into the side of my neck and my heart began beating rapidly, but I managed another nod. His fingers lightly grazed the small of my back just under the hem of my shirt, and I closed my eyes, allowing myself to feel the moment. I lifted my hand and began to thread my fingers through his hair, loving the way the silkiness felt against my hands. The bulge between his legs was back and I positioned my hips so that I could feel it against the place that was beginning to throb. His lips brushed the side of my neck until I felt the warm wetness of his tongue as he slid it along my skin. The sensation felt so good that I wanted him to do it again, so I told him so.
“More,” I begged.
Blake didn’t hesitate as he rolled us so that I was on my back with him resting between my legs. The slow licks of his tongue were gradually accompanied by light nips at the area around my pulse, which he pinched with his teeth. When I threw my head back, he lifted a hand to my head and increased the pressure of his bites, causing me to moan, and then he flicked his tongue over the spot he’d just bitten.
He worked his way up my jaw line until his lips hovered near mine in hesitation. The wild look in his eyes I was sure mirrored my own. Passion mixed with internal conflict. The right thing to do would be to stop this. To get up and go into my room and wait for our family to arrive. But at that moment, the only thing that felt right was being here with him.
There would be consequences, of that I had no doubt, except I was having a hard time caring about anything else but the way his eyes smoldered as he looked down at me and how his bottom lip looked so succulent. Unable to resist tasting it, I lifted my face and traced his mouth with the tip of my tongue. It was exactly what I wanted to do, and for the first time, I gave in to the impulses I had been fighting for so long. Blake responded by pulling my bottom lip into his mouth and sucking lightly while I arched into him and moaned.
“God, Tay.” Blake rested his forehead against mine and shut his eyes tight. “Tell me to stop. Please tell me to stop.” But I didn’t want him to stop, so instead, I brought my mouth to his. He instantly responded. The moment our tongues met, I swear my heart was set free, and for the first time, I felt like I was truly breathing.
He turned us so that I was lying on top while his hand cupped the side of my face. This should have been my first kiss. It was everything I imagined in my dreams. My heart pounded wildly in my chest as I slid my tongue against his unhurriedly as we switched the angles of our heads but never lost the connection of our lips. Blake’s hips rocked underneath mine as I positioned myself so that I could feel him against my needy center, and I couldn’t stop craving the friction we created with his jeans against mine. I was so wet, and I felt for sure there was a puddle forming below my zipper, but I didn’t care. What we were doing felt so good, and I didn’t think I could stop if I wanted to.
“Blake,” I moaned.
“Ah, if we don’t stop, I’m going to come in my pants,” he groaned and brought his hands to my hips to still my movements. Feeling devastated by the loss of sensation, I immediately offered a solution.
“Then take them off.”
“Tay . . .”
“Take your pants off, Blake. Please.”
Chapter Seven
“We can’t.”
“Why not, Blake?” He glared at me, and I knew he was referring to the big, purple elephant in the room we were pretending didn’t exist. “Who’s going to know?”
“We’ll know.”
“Yes, us. Only us.” I brought my mouth back to his and kissed him ravenously. I had no idea if I was doing any of this right, but I didn’t care. I was doing exactly what felt good and taking from his body what mine craved.
He flipped us again so that he was on top and stared down at me with hunger and want in his eyes. He was weighing the situation in his head, and it worried me that he might decide on a different outcome than the one I was hoping for. Finally, he started speaking.
“This has got to stay just between us, Tayia. For now, okay?”
“Okay,” I agreed. His lips curled into a smile, causing his dimple to appear, so I lifted my head and placed a kiss there. “I’ve always loved this dimple,” I murmured against his cheek.
Blake reached down and pulled my sweater over my head and then the thin cotton camisole underneath. At the same time I was lifting his shirt and admiring the ripple of his abdomen and the small script written across his ribcage, he reached a hand between his shoulder blades and jerked the shirt off before tossing it away.
He leaned down and placed kisses over my collarbone, down my chest, and over the swell of my breast that was still covered by my white lace bra. He undid the clasp before tossing the bra away then his eyes grew dark with lust as he lowered his mouth and flicked his tongue over one of my nipples. I grabbed the sides of his head as he swirled his tongue then greedily sucked at the tight peak. This was a first for me. Never had I ever shown my breasts to anyone, much less had someone’s mouth on them. The sensation was overwhelming and scary, yet at the same time, I wanted more, so I threw my head back and closed my eyes as he alternated between each breast . . . flicking and pinching, sucking and biting.
“Blake,” I moaned his name. I wanted more, I felt as if my body would explode, except I wasn’t exactly sure what I needed to set off the detonator until he unbuttoned my jeans and slid his fingers into my panties. “Ooh.”
“Tayia. God, you are so wet.” He pumped his fingers in and out, and I immediately moved my hips in time with his hand. “Do you know what you do to me?” Blake said before kissing me hard. My senses were on overload as I gasped and tried hard to pull in air. I pulled my mouth away to see that his cheeks were flushed and his eyes hazy with passion. It felt amazing to discover that he was just as turned on.
I looked down at the motion of his forearm, the muscles tightening and twisting with each movement. My half-lidded gaze traveled to his face where I saw that he was also looking between my legs as he worked me into a fevered state of arousal. His tongue darted out to wet his bottom lip and I felt my inner walls begin to contract.
“Yes, baby. Come for me,” he rasped as his stare met mine. The raw passion I saw there was my complete undoing as I welcomed the colorful explosion of light and carnal bliss that took over my being.
When I opened my eyes, Blake was staring at me.
“You have no idea how badly I’ve wanted to see that look on your face. You are so beautiful.” He buried his face in my neck, and I could still feel the stone-hard erection straining in his pants as he rubbed it against my leg.
“Blake, your pants are still on.” I undid his button, unzipped the fly, and shoved both his jeans and boxers down. Once he kicked them away, there was a moment of awkwardness and uncertainty. I was topless with my pants unzipped and he was naked. When Blake’s hands began to slide my pants down and I lifted my hips to let him, I knew this was going to happen.
He lowered himself until he was resting between my parted thighs and I could feel the warmth of his skin against my wet and throbbing sex. I wanted him so badly. Even though I’d only had an orgasm a few moments ago, I was ready all over again.
“Tayia.” Blake cupped my face with his hands. “Listen to me. I love you.” My breath caught as he continued. “This is not pretend for me. I don’t know what’s going to happen later, but . . . God, I can’t think. I want you so badly, more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.”
“I love you, Blake, and I won’t ever stop. No matter what happens.”
“No matter what happens, Tayia. It will always be you.” I felt the head of his erection at my opening, and I widened my legs to welcome his entrance. Slowly, he inched himself inside until he reached the barrier I knew he would find and I tensed. When he stopped, I opened my eyes to meet his passion-filled gaze.
“Ready?” he asked, his voice sounding strained as he braced hi
mself above me with his arms. When I nodded, he lowered his mouth and kissed me until my body relaxed, and then with one measured thrust, he claimed my virginity. He remained still as I adjusted to being full of him, the sharp pain gradually subsiding the more I moved my hips and got lost in the way our tongues were gliding together.
“Tay, you feel so good.” Blake placed a hand on the back of my thigh as he pulled me to him with each pump of his hips. I closed my eyes as my orgasm built every time he hit the spot way down deep. The way he claimed my body had me moaning and whimpering. I didn’t even recognize my own voice. Sounds I’d never made before were filling the room. I couldn’t believe this was happening, and when I opened my eyes and saw the love and lust in Blake’s eyes, I lost it.
“Oh, oh. Blake. Blake,” I said his name over and over as waves of pleasure consumed me. My tight channel clamped down on him with every tremor, his groans growing louder as he rocked faster.
“Tay. Ah. Tayia. No condom. Want to come inside you so badly. Can’t.” He pumped a few more times before he pulled out of me and came in warm spurts on my stomach as he groaned and grunted before collapsing on top of me.
I brushed away the damp hair that covered his forehead as he pecked kisses over my face, on my lips, and down the side of my neck. Our hips moved together as the stickiness from his cum spread over the lower half of our stomachs, and I kind of enjoyed the feel of it.
“Are you okay?” Blake finally asked as concern spread over his satiated face.
“I’m perfect. I love you.” I smiled up at him.
“I love you, too.” He smiled back before shifting off me. When he moved, it was the first time I was close enough to read the script tattooed on his ribcage.
“Be with me always. Take any form. Drive me mad.”
I instantly recognized the quote from Wuthering Heights, one of my favorite books. I’d always wondered if the reason I loved the story so much was because, in some ways, I felt our story was destined to be just as tragic. Instead of speaking, I ran a finger over his skin, tracing the words with my fingertip. Blake stared at me for a while, not speaking, but his eyes told me that those words were meant for me. Speechless, I kissed his lips, feeling incredibly touched by the moment.
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