by Dani René
Benjamin.
He appears to be the youngest of the four of them. He’s older than me, but I don’t know by how much. At least ten years, I’d guess. He is built strong, like the twins, but he has wavy brown hair and his hazel eyes look sharp now. Different from the soft way they regarded me in the forest. Unless my mind was playing tricks on me.
My body turns the last quarter turn until I come face to face with the man who must be James. He appears to be the oldest of them all. You can tell that these men all come from the same brood. They’re built very similarly and it’s clear they know a thing or two about manual labor. James has the same hair as Benji, but his eyes are black as coal and cold as ice.
My eyes grow wide and my happiness fades when they meet his. The brutal look painted on his face terrifies me. My arms wrap themselves around my body to try and still the shaking fear within me.
“I—,” I begin.
“Silence!” he shouts in my face.
The force of his anger pushes me back into the wall behind me. Only, it’s not a wall. It’s one of the other men. One of the twins. He encloses me in his arms and walks me forward again, so I am in front of James once more.
“What makes you think you have the right to speak?”
“I—I’m sorry, but if you’ll just let me explain—”
Smack!
This time he silences me with a backhand across my cheek. The sting is worse than any pain I’ve ever felt, including the time I was thrown from my horse. I just want a chance to tell them who I am. To let them know that I chose to be with them, to live the life they live. That I couldn’t imagine staying in that castle one more night knowing they were out in the world somewhere.
“James.”
I hear Benjamin speak to my right. My tongue snakes over my bottom lip and I taste blood.
“Unless you want to be next, Benjamin, I’d suggest you keep your mouth shut.”
I don’t miss the way he cringes when James calls him by his full name. As if he doesn’t like it. It makes me wonder why. I think it’s a beautiful name.
James walks forward until we’re chest to chest. He nods at the brother behind me, who lets me go. I try to keep my eyes locked with his, but I chicken out. This stare is too brutal, too severe.
Turning my eyes to the floor, I chide myself for backing down so quickly. I blame it on my starvation and fatigue. I am too weak to fight back. Maybe once they calm down, I’ll be able to let them know who I am. Just as I claim defeat, I feel a tug on my hair. James grabs a hold of my blonde locks and directs my attention back to him.
“You dare turn away from me when I’m talking to you, little girl?”
“I didn’t mean to disrespect you. I’m sorry,” I say, defeated.
I notice him examining me a little more closely than before. His dark, coal colored stare moves from mine to the tiny, star-shaped birthmark just above my right eye. The skin between his brows furrows slightly when he sees it. Does he recognize me? People have always told me that I look just like Mother. Does he see her when he looks at me?
One of them said that they take what they want from women before they kill them. Is that because of me? Because I, a woman, am the reason they were sent away?
“Not sorry enough. But by the time I’m finished with you, you will be.”
James’ words chill me to the bone, but I try to let my eyes speak to him. To let him know I’m not a threat. I want him to see the love within them. I need him to know that he can trust me and I’m only here to try and make things right. This may very well be my last second, minute, hour, or day on this earth. I will never be able to give back the lives that were stolen from them the second I was born. I just hope they give me a chance to explain myself. Maybe I can make them understand and they will let me into their world. If so, I’ll spend the rest of my life caring for them and letting them know how much they mean to me.
Chapter Three
Benjamin
“James, I really need to talk to you. Alone.”
I stare at my brother with a serious look. He releases the hair of the gorgeous girl, who is the spitting image of our mother, and walks out of the kitchen into the dining room. Following James, I glance behind me once more, just before exiting the room.
I think back to the moment we found her, lying on the ground in the woods. She looked so tiny, curled into a ball. Her hair fell over her face, so I wasn’t able to get a good look at her, but I was drawn toward her. As if there was an invisible thread connecting us to one another. I knew we couldn’t leave her there. Now that I can see her clearly, the pull that I felt makes sense.
She is the most beautiful girl that I’ve ever seen in my entire life. We keep to ourselves as much as we can, but we do have to go into town from time to time. Sometimes we pick up a female companion along the way. I’m not proud of the fact that I’ve seduced my fair share of pure women with no intention of marriage, but sometimes a whore just can’t scratch the itch. So no, we don’t send them to their graves in the literal sense when we’re done with them, despite the joke Henry made earlier. We just send them back into town, ruined for any man that should want to take her as his wife.
Out of all of the girls that have walked through our door, none of them are as striking as the one standing in our kitchen. And none of them have ever made me want to paint her ass red with my hand as much as she has either.
My mind has never been so jumbled before. I want to both care for her and make her pay for Mother’s and Father’s sins at the same time.
“What is it, Benji?” James asks, irritated with the disruption.
“I,” I look back at her once more, just to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. “I think she’s our sister.”
I expect him to laugh in my face, but he doesn’t. That’s when I know he sees it too.
“I thought so, too. I thought I was crazy.”
“She looks just like…” James’ expression turns ice cold as I nearly speak of the woman who turned her back on us.
I watch as he takes another, closer look at her. When he begins to march back into the kitchen, I grab hold of his arm.
“What are you going to do?”
The overwhelming feeling of needing to save her coursed through me. Do I want to save her because she’s our sister? Or do I simply want to prolong her ruin? Deliver it slowly, methodically, over time the way that her existence ruined us.
“Where the fuck do you think you get off questioning me? I’m going to take her outside and put an end to her life, just like she put an end to ours.”
“What if we keep her around?”
“What the fuck are you talking about? She’s the one who started all of this.” He waves his hands, motioning to the surrounding house.
“Think about it, we can get a lot more done throughout the day if we have someone here to do the cooking and cleaning. Tending to the garden.”
I watch as his brain churns, considering the words I’m speaking.
“And... she can be here when the nights get lonely. It’s been quite a while since we’ve had a girl here,” I say in desperation for James’ pardon of her.
Did I really just say that? She’s our sister. Is it still wrong to be with her, even if no one finds out? If there isn’t anyone around to feel shameful in front of? Do I really care? How much difference is it, really, between a sibling and a cousin? Kings have forced generations of Sutherland men to marry within the bloodline, to keep it pure, to keep it royal. Blood is blood, no matter how diluted. This isn’t very different from that. Besides, outside of the four of us, blood has been meaningless for years.
I watch as James thoroughly considers my suggestion.
“Don’t tell her we know, understood? I want to know why she’s here. Find out what she was planning to do, thinking she’s got us fooled.”
He doesn’t wait for my answer as he turns his attention back to the girl.
“Come!” he commands.
She takes a moment, a
s if she were gathering her courage, but she listens to him.
“You’re to stay here until we’re through with you. Whatever any of us tells you to do, you’re to complete the task without question or complaint. Doing so will cause punishment.”
She nods in response.
“The correct response is ‘Yes, my Lord’.”
I see James’ pants twitch slightly as he barks his order. Her cheeks flush.
Beautiful. Disgraceful.
“What’s your name?”
“Jocelyn.”
Mother’s middle name. I watch James’ expression as the realization sets in further. I see Harry and Henry look at one another out of the corner of my eye. They know it too.
“Does anyone know you’re here?”
“No, my Lord.”
“Don’t lie to me, girl.”
“Only one person knows I left my home, but they don’t know where I was going.”
“Well, you better hope no one comes ‘round looking for you. If they do, you’ll be the reason for their last breath.”
“Yes, my Lord,” she chokes out through tears.
“Benji will show you around the house. Do as he says. I expect supper on the table no later than seven this evening. Harry, Henry, follow me.”
With that, he walks away.
“Come with me,” I say to her. “I’ll show you where you can get cleaned up.”
I don’t linger in the room temperature water for too long. Cleaning my body as thoroughly as possible, I hop out and wrap myself in the cloth that Benji left behind for me. I look around the decent sized washroom. Like in the kitchen downstairs, I am happily surprised by how well my brothers have fared on their own.
I wish James would have given me the chance to tell them who I am earlier. I should have just spit it out and suffered the consequences for speaking out of turn again. But perhaps it’s better they don’t know. If they did, would I be dead by now? If I can prove to them that I’m not here to hurt them, that I can be of assistance to them, will they let me live when they finally find out who I am?
Ringing the water from my hair over the tub, I can smell the floral essence of the oils that Benji put in there. I take a deep breath, breathing in the pleasant aroma, and try to let my mind relax as much as I can. I wonder why they have the oils to begin with, though. I wouldn’t think that men such as them would have something like this on hand.
My thoughts are interrupted shortly after by the sound of a knock on the door. Before I get the opportunity to allow him entry, the door opens and Benji walks in. Appalled that he would barge in on me, I open my mouth to yell at him, but I’m distracted by his stare. Watching his eyes roam my body, I notice the appreciation in his gaze. Even more surprising than his reaction is the warmth I feel, deep in the pit of my stomach, knowing I’m affecting him.
This is my brother.
It’s wrong and it’s dirty, but that does nothing to keep the tiny seed of desire from blooming within me.
“We don’t have any proper clothing for you at the moment,” he breaks the trance I’ve gotten into. “but I will go into town tomorrow and trade some of our goods for a dress. In the meantime, you can wear this.”
I take the cloth that he hands to me and hold it up to see what it is.
A men’s shirt. I can feel my cheeks grow flush thinking about being draped in only a short, thin cloth, surrounded by four men that I don’t know and who are able and willing to do whatever they please to me. Especially with the way Benji just looked at me.
Trying to remember my place, I take a deep breath. Maybe if I follow all of his instructions, he will give me a chance to explain myself.
“Thank you,” I say to Benji, whose amused expression makes me question his intentions for me.
Expecting him to leave, I’m shocked once again when all he does is turn his back to me. It could be worse. If it were James, I’m positive he would be watching me. I release my hold on the cloth that I am wrapped in and put the shirt over my head. Somehow, I manage to tangle myself in it. When I find my way through the shirt, I gasp in horror.
Benji is staring at me over his shoulder. Looking at my body, his eyes are thick with lust, causing the warmth inside of me to stir again. Quickly, I straighten the material, pulling it down past my ass. The neck of the shirt is wide, and it hangs off of me, exposing one of my shoulders to him. I look down and realize that my nipples can be seen through the thin material. I can feel my cheeks flush with embarrassment.
“Don’t be ashamed,” he responds to my actions, turning the rest of his body toward me. “You’re stunning.”
My eyes widen slightly. No one has ever even called me pretty, let alone a word as strong as stunning. Butterflies flutter through the heat deep in my belly and the feeling throws my brain off balance.
I know I told them I will do whatever they want me to do, but I don’t know if I can handle the idea of liking it. Of liking the compliments they throw my way. Of liking the feeling of their touch. Like when one of the twins held me in his arms downstairs, or when James tugged on my hair the way he did, keeping my attention on him. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but there was a burning inside of me that scared me more than their possessive touch did.
I’ve felt something similar to that once before with one of our stable boys. One of my ladies shared a story detailing a rather depraved, sexual escapade she’d had. It made me curious and he was horny, so it worked out in both our favors. But that was a flicker of a candle flame compared to the inferno threatening to rage out of control from deep within me now.
Benji steps closer to me and gently takes my chin in his hand. Leaning down, he places a tender kiss to my lips. His tongue skates across my bottom lip, slipping into my mouth and taunting me.
My brain is screaming at me that this is wrong, to push him away and run far, far from this place.
My heart is breaking, knowing his life was stolen from him.
The inferno is raging. I don’t know whether I am more turned on, or angry for what he’s been through.
I allow myself to kiss him back. I surrender myself to him, knowing it will never be enough, but it’s all I have to give.
A second later, he breaks the kiss and stares at me with a look of confusion. My eyes follow his back and forth as they travel between mine. He’s trying to make sense of why this captive little girl is giving herself so freely.
It’s my penance.
Maybe if I keep telling myself the same lie, over and over again, I’ll start to believe it. Believe that I’m doing it because I feel like I have no other choice and not because I can’t seem to stop myself.
“I don’t usually do things like this,” I say to him, not wanting to explain any further and hoping he lets it go.
“Are you still pure?”
The question catches me off guard.
“Yes.”
Desire pools in his stare and I think he’s going to take me right then and there. I inhale another deep breath, knowing that I’m not ready to take that leap, but trying to convince myself I am.
He closes his eyes and mimics my breathing. This is it. When he opens his eyes, he’s going to pull me into the bedroom. Or maybe he’ll take me right here, in the washroom.
He opens his eyes again, but the look is gone as quickly as it came.
“Come on, I’ll show you the rest of the house.”
Jocelyn
After Benji shows me the rest of their manor, he leads me back into the kitchen.
“Do you have any questions?”
I have so many questions; I don’t know where to begin. I don’t know what to ask that will keep me out of trouble either.
“How long have you lived here?”
Anger shadows his face and the muscle in his jaw twitches. He stares at me for a few moments before answering.
“About ten years.”
“Is it just the four of you?”
“Yes.”
That’s odd. I would have thought they
’d want to stay together as a family. Or perhaps they’ve given up on that since the only one they’ve known cast them out. But there are so many bedrooms here. Why then?
“There are a lot of bedrooms for just the four of you,” I say, terrified that he’s going to think I’m being rude.
I should use this time to explain who I am and why I’m here, but I have to know. My eyes plead for him to explain more. I need to know where the rest of my brothers are.
Are they safe?
Are they happy?
“There were twelve of us at one point,” he says sharply.
He stops speaking and I want to ask him what happened, but I’m afraid. He examines me carefully. Like he’s paying close attention to my reactions. Before I can open my mouth, he walks me into the countertop behind me and boxes me in, placing his palms on the surface.
My stomach rolls with unease as the warmth I felt before mixes with crushing guilt.
“Four of them didn’t quite see eye-to-eye with James. They moved away, fell in love, got married. The other four died. Black plague.”
His gaze pierces mine. Tears slice through my eyes and I am powerless to hold them back.
“I’m so sorry,” I can’t hold it in any longer.
I need to tell him.
“What do you have to be sorry for?” his expression darkens, again.
The way he asks me, it's as if he already knows the answer. As if he’s challenging me, waiting for me to tell him exactly why it’s my fault, just so he can hear me admit it out loud.
As I reach my hands up to wipe the tears from my eyes, he takes hold of them in his large hands.
“Say it,” he commands, twisting my arms behind me.
I try to force the words out of my mouth, but fear and heartbreak steal my breath away. He knows who I am. What I did. He’s going to hurt me, they all are, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
Tears roll faster down my face now.
“Why are you sorry?” he shouts.
“It’s—it’s all—my fault!” I get out between sobs.