“Sam,” Ana screams, almost toppling under the weight of our father as he staggers into her, and then they’re both down on the floor. I ease our father off of her and check his pulse. There isn’t one. His eyes are open, frozen wide in horror.
I tilt his head back and check his airway and then I breathe for him, pounding on his chest in a series of compressions. Between breaths I shout for Ana to dial triple zero. Sue comes tearing into the room, and Lil follows; she must have been with Sue outside.
Ana’s blind with her own distress and hasn’t seen her daughter come in; I’m sure if she had she’d have taken her from the room. Instead, Lil watches me work over her grandfather’s lifeless body until my arms ache, my wrists jarring with each compression and the ambulance officers—two guys I know well through the fire department—ask me to move out of the way. I don’t, at least not until they push me aside in order to take over.
They place the tube of a handheld defibrillator in his mouth, and continue with compressions for another ten minutes, but it’s too late. Mike calls it, and I want to punch him. I wanna hit him so bad for doing something I’ve seen him do maybe a hundred times—for doing his job. The difference is this time it’s my dad he’s calling it for. It’s my dad’s life he’s giving up on.
Ana wails, Sue clutches Lil tighter, and I lose it completely. I rush Mike as he’s standing to pack up his equipment, taking him to the ground. His head smacks against the lino of my sister’s kitchen. I only get one good hit to his face before Darren pulls me off him. I lurch back, fully prepared to elbow him in the face but the dude’s huge and pins me in a stranglehold.
“Easy, Sam,” Darren warns in my ear. I let myself go limp and Darren eases the two of us down to the ground. “I’m not gonna let you go until I know you’re not going to attack anyone else.”
I shake my head and then a sob rips from my chest. Despite what my dad said just a few seconds ago, it doesn’t feel natural, it feels animal, alien. But if I don’t let it out, I’ll start fighting Darren too, so I open my mouth and scream into my hands, rocking back and forth on my knees as I stare at my father’s lifeless body. Beyond him, Mike slowly climbs to his feet. Despite having the daylights knocked out of him, he doesn’t look angry, just contrite and respectfully apologetic.
I rock back on my heels and bury my face in my hands. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it, Sam,” he says, and his voice sounds muffled, as if I may have broken his nose. I’m afraid to look, so, like a coward, I stare down into my palms. “I’m sorry for your loss, mate. Bob was a good man.”
I nod and sniff, and then I crawl across the floor, take my sister in my arms and we sob together, knowing that the man that bound his blood with mine and hers and made us a family is gone, and now it’s just the two of us, orphaned.
Eventually, Elijah and Jackson show up, as do Holly and Pepper. I don’t know who called them, or even why we’re all still here, crowded into this room. All I know is I can’t stand to be in here a second longer. Without a word, I leave. I step out into the morning sun and take a deep gulping breath and then I run. I don’t care that my feet are bare, or that I’m in jeans and a T-shirt and it’s already thirty-five degrees outside. I run, and I don’t stop until I’m crumpled in a heap in the middle of the football field, screaming into my hands, the hot sun beating down on my back and burning my skin.
I WALK up the stairs and find the door shut. Pepper yanks it back as I’m turning the handle and throws herself into my arms. Reluctantly, I wrap mine around her and breathe in her sweet scent. I’m sweaty and hot, and grime from the muddy football field and dirty street covers the soles of my feet. I need a shower. I need a drink. I need to call my sister and make sure she’s okay, but first I have to deal with the fact that my dad is dead. More tears sting my eyes, and I pull away. I don’t want Pepper to see me cry.
“You should go to Holly’s,” I say gruffly.
“I’m not leaving you, Sam.”
“Not even if I say please?” I bite back. She flinches. “It’s so rare for you not to run, Pepper, I almost don’t know what to do with you.”
Her eyes are red from crying and I wonder why. Her dad isn’t dead. Just mine. She still has two of them. Her dads will witness the huge momentous occasions in her life: marriage, the birth of her children, maybe even their weddings and births. I can’t help driving the knife deeper, wounding myself further.
“You could quit being an arsehole. That might be a start.”
“And here I thought you liked the arseholes,” I say moving forward into her, challenging her. She steps back, but I suspect it’s only because she doesn’t want to get trampled, not because she’s actually backing down. Pepper might be a lot of things, but meek and mousy isn’t one of them. I back her into the end of the sofa and stare down into her puffy, sad eyes. “Isn’t that what you do? Isn’t that your thing? You choose the arseholes because it makes it that much easier on your conscience to leave them in the middle of the night. Did it even sting, even a little bit to up and leave like that? Did you think of me even once in all the years you were trying to avoid me?”
“I thought about you all the time, Sam,” she says earnestly.
She’s so fucking full of shit.
“Bullshit. If you had, you’d have called me, or come home. If you felt even a fraction of what I did, you wouldn’t have stayed away all this time.”
“I thought of you every god damned day.”
“Stop. Just stop lying,” I shout. The sound bounces all around the air-conditioned loft and I pinch the bridge of my nose to avoid erupting again in a violent fit of rage. “Go home, Pepper. I want you gone by the time I get out of the shower.”
I push past her and head for the bathroom, but her small angry voice stops me in my tracks. “Fuck you, Sam.”
I turn and face her. “Fuck me?” I demand, stalking back towards her and towering over the top of her tiny five-foot, four-inch frame. “Fuck me? Fuck you, sweetheart.”
She folds her arms over her chest and raises a brow in challenge. “Is that what you need, Sammy?” Her hands come to the button of my jeans and she pops it open, unzipping my fly at the same time as she drops to her knees. She releases my cock and takes the head in her mouth. Pleasure spikes through me, sharp and bittersweet, and I capture her hands in a vice-like grip, pulling her off me. I don’t know why that thought makes me want to cry just as hard as I did on that football field thirty minutes ago.
“My father just died,” I say, my voice cracking on that last word.
“And you’re still here,” she whispers, eerily echoing the words he’d said to me earlier. I search her face, wondering why she’d say that. “Let me take the pain from you, Sammy.”
And I want to. God, do I want to. I want to feel anything but this sadness. This hollowness. Pepper leans up on her tiptoes and pulls my face down to hers. She presses her lips to mine and bites when she finds me unresponsive. That just pisses me off. I pull away and the smug look in her gaze fuels my fury over everything, and I combust. I burn up and explode into a million little pieces.
I give in.
And even though it’s completely wrong, it feels like the only right thing I’ve done in years. I lift her up and force her to wrap her legs around my waist. Shuffling the couple of steps to the coffee table, I lay her down on it, shift her panties out of the way, position my cock outside her entrance and shove inside her. Hard. Pepper gasps, but I’m not sure it’s the same gasp of pleasure I make. I thrust in again, a little gentler this time, but she digs her nails into my back so deep I’m sure she’s drawn blood. This pisses me off too, so I grunt and thrust inside her again. She cries out but it’s a sound of pain, not pleasure. I attempt to pull out, but she digs her heels into my arse and claws at my arms this time. I suppress the urge to strangle her. As much as I want her, as sick as I am of fighting my feelings and as good as it feels being inside her, this isn’t right. Not this way.
Pepper slaps my face. The
sting snaps the last of my resolve. She doesn’t need the cutting words that follow, but she says them anyway. “God damn it, Sammy, fuck me. Or do I need to call Jake to come show you how it’s done?”
“Fuck you.”
“Yeah that’s right, fuck me,” she says, and her eyes are cold, narrowed and glittering with challenge. Her mouth is set in a hard line, her chin lifting defiantly. I grab the end of the table for leverage and thrust in until the end of me hits the end of her. She’s warm, wet, and tight. It feels fucking amazing, and wrong all at the same time. “Fuck me, Sammy.”
And I do. I fuck her until her whole body tenses with each thrust, I fuck her until tears are streaming down her cheeks, and I know there’s no way I couldn’t be hurting her. I fuck her until my brutal thrusting causes me to come inside her, emotionally exhausted and physically spent. The bitter edge of ecstasy is short-lived though, and when I finally open my eyes and look at her tear-streaked face, guilt eats me alive. I feel worse than I did before, so much so that I can’t even meet her gaze. I can’t do anything but slide free from her body and stand up. I feel sick. I hate that she wanted that from me. I hate that I enjoyed it so much. I hate her for asking me to do this, and I hate myself because it felt so fucking good.
I can’t even look at her. I just stalk off to the bathroom and slam the door. I wish I’d installed a lock the second she moved in.
Jesus Christ, I didn’t even use a condom. I know I’m clean. I haven’t slept with a woman in a year, and I was tested just after that shit ended quicker than it began, but I don’t know if Pepper’s on the pill, and I don’t know fuck about her sex life. Tears prick my eyes again and I choke back a half-laugh, half-sob as I think my dad may be getting his wish to be a grandfather sooner than he, or any of us, had thought.
I run the water in the shower and step beneath the scolding hot spray. Heat needles my sunburnt neck and scratched back. My head pounds from the heat, the pain, and the release. I stand beneath the spray and let the water swallow my tears.
The door opens and closes quietly, and then a fully-clothed Pepper steps beneath the spray. Immediately she turns down the hot water, pushing me back against the cool tiles. I don’t fight her. I’m numb. Spent. I become completely pliant as Pepper picks up the soap and washes me. She starts with my arms and torso. She bathes my abs and cock, but the action is not sexual, despite my dick standing at attention. She scrubs the dirt from my feet, and tugs my head down in order to work the shampoo through my wet hair. I bend at the knees to make it easier on her when it’s time to wash it out.
When she pushes me back against the tiles a second time, I pull her to me. “I’m so sorry, Little.”
She presses a kiss to my lips. “Shh. We don’t need to talk about it.”
“I hurt you. That’s something we need to talk about because it’s something I never wanted to do.”
“I asked for that pain, Sammy. And I’d do it again.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m the only one who can take it from you.”
“I don’t know, I did a pretty good job of punching Mike Moore in the face when he called time on my dad. He was pretty good at taking it.”
“You punched one of the ambulance officers?” she asks, and leave it to Pepper to be the only woman impressed by that.
“I’ll probably get fired over it.”
“I’m sure he won’t press charges. You’re like the golden boy of Sugartown. No one can stay mad at Sammy Belle for long, right?”
“Except you,” I say, glancing down at her perfect tits straining against her tight wet T-shirt. I palm her breast, feeling the softness against my calloused hand. “Your clothes are getting soaked.”
“I have more.”
“I wish you didn’t,” I say, before the thought even really filters through my conscience.
Pepper grabs the hem of her shirt and pulls it up over her head, throwing the sopping cloth down into the shower cubicle floor. She slides her skirt down her legs and her underwear soon follows. I grab the soap and rub it between my hands, creating a lather that I cloak her body in.
Jesus Christ. Between the bubbles, the hair, and the tattoos, she looks like a centrefold.
I can’t resist slipping my hand between her folds and gently stroking her swollen clit. Pepper turns and leans against me, her back to my chest. I run my hands down soft breasts, over hard nipples, flat stomach, and over the smooth, soft lips nestled between her legs. She widens her stance, opening her legs to my gentle caress.
“Harder, Sam,” she begs.
I lay a soft kiss to the nape of her neck, and whisper, “No.”
“Please?”
“No, Little. This time we do it my way.” I grind my erection into her arse and double my assault on her gorgeous pussy.
“Something tells me I’m going to like your way very much.”
“Oh, I think you will, especially if you’re a fan of multiple orgasms.”
“Who isn’t?”
I shut off the water, and scoop her up in my arms. Carrying her to the bedroom, I don’t bother drying us off; I don’t have time for that. I toss Pepper down on the bed, smiling as she shrieks in protest.
Pepper cocks her head to see me better. I stand before her unabashedly, letting her take in every inch of the body that I work hard to keep in shape.
“Jesus, Sammy, you’re a damn Adonis,” Pepper whispers as I grab her ankles and spread them apart, exposing her sweet pussy to my view.
I trace her ink with my tongue. The skin beneath is raised, and if you look close enough the silver slither of tiny scars can be seen beneath the pink roses that climb across her lower abdomen and unfurl over her completely bare mound. I close my eyes when I realise that her cutting didn’t end that day I found her on her bed and she’d been rushed to hospital.
I glance up and find her gaze fixed firmly on mine. There’s sadness in her eyes, maybe regret, and definitely shame.
“Little.”
“I couldn’t stop. I know it’s what you wanted, what everyone wanted. I know you couldn’t understand it, but I had to. It was that or open up my veins, and I didn’t want to die, I just wanted to feel something other.”
I take a deep breath. It hurts me to hear that, but it hurts worse knowing that I could have been there for her, I could have taken that away and given her that other that she so desperately needed. If only I’d paid more attention. If only she’d let me in. If only she’d stayed.
Slowly, I glide my fingertips over the raised flesh, worshipping each little line that she meticulously cut into her skin. My voice is thick with emotion when I say, “There aren’t as many scars here.”
“That’s because it hurt like a bitch. That area is pretty sensitive—”
I try to keep the anger from my voice when I say, “Do you still?”
“No. I haven’t felt the need to cut for a little over two years. I found a much more artistic way to exorcise my demons.”
“Tattoos,” I say, piecing it together.
She nods. “Plus the nice little cocktail of meds helped.”
“And the piercing?” I ask, and again, she nods. I dart out my tongue and flick the diamond jewellery, lapping at her clitoris. Pepper shudders, her hands digging into the muscles of my forearms, her hips bucking beneath my hands, as I take the piercing and that sweet bud into my mouth and gently suck. Her thighs tighten around my head and she gasps.
A thought occurs to me then. “Who did this?”
“One of the guys at work.” Pepper sighs, and grinds her pelvis into my face. I press her back on the bed and separate my mouth from her.
“You let one of the guys you work with pierce your pussy?”
“Oh, would you relax? I was finished with my clients for the day and decided to finish my own tattoo off at work, since it’s always easier at the shop. I couldn’t do that last bit on my own. It hurt. A lot. So Mace finished it for me. He’s a good artist, but he’s a great piercer. I’d always wondered what it wou
ld be like, so I let him do it.”
“Mace? You let a guy named Mace pierce your vagina?”
“He’s a great guy, Sammy. Why are you so worked up over this?”
“What happened after the piercing?”
She rolls her eyes. “Nothing. We said good night and went home.”
“Did you fuck him?”
“Are you kidding me right now?”
“Answer the question.”
“Okay, a) I’m a professional. I don’t fuck my workmates. And b) Why are you tormenting yourself with this? It was ages ago. This”—she gestures wildly between us—“was a distant memory. I hadn’t seen you for five years, Sam.”
“Trust me, I know exactly how long it’s been since you came home.”
She sits up, cupping my jaw with one hand as she searches my gaze. “What does that mean?”
“It means I haven’t stopped thinking about you. It means that in five years while you were off fucking someone else … I couldn’t get past it. I couldn’t let you go.” I register the wide-eyed shock on Pepper’s face before I roll over and sit down on the edge of the bed, facing away from her.
“Then don’t,” she whispers, and wraps herself around my back. I press a kiss to her forearm. “Don’t get past it, Sammy.”
“You don’t mean that.”
She unwraps herself from around me and pushes my shoulders back, until I’m lying on the bed, and then she climbs into my lap and straddles my hips. Her crazy pink hair falls down in a curtain around us. I can’t help but run my hand through it and pull her to me. Her face is all I see, her lips mere inches from mine.
“Quit fighting,” Pepper whispers, her warm breath washing over my mouth. I want to breathe her in until she is me and I am her, and this inferno of love, hate, anger and torment engulfs us both.
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