by Angel Lawson
I don’t feel comforted by this in the least. If they’ll listen to Tristian and Dimitri, then they’ll listen to Killian, too. “He’s going to be mad when he comes back,” I realize, panic breaking through the bourbon’s haze. “He’ll blame me. He’ll punish me again. He has a key to my room and he’s strong enough to—”
“He’s not coming back tonight.”
“How do you know?” I ask Tristian, feeling on the verge of hysteria. They didn’t know what he was going to do before. Killian is nothing if not unpredictable.
Tristian watches me, those icy blue eyes searching mine. “You can sleep in my room, if you want,” he offers, sounding both hopeful and uncertain. “Killian wouldn’t try anything if you were with one of us.”
The thought makes my stomach churn. It’s not a simple feeling. I’ve always been haunted by that night in the laundry room, but tonight, the memory feels so fresh and raw. Those cold blue eyes might be looking at me differently now—softer, less malicious—but they’re the same eyes that held mine as he forced me to take him inside. As he hurt me. As he used me.
Slowly, I shake my head. “No, thank you.” Tristian nods, looking unsurprised. Without really needing to think about it, I add, “What about Dimitri’s?”
Tristian’s mouth snaps closed. “Rath’s?”
Nodding, I look to Dimitri. “Please?”
He blinks at me, looking startled. “You want to sleep in my room?” At my nod, he gives Tristian a stunned, anxious look. “I’m probably going to practice some before I go to sleep.”
“That’s okay,” I assure, feeling embarrassed at the request. “I like to hear you play.”
Frowning, Tristian says, “I have a couch, too. I can even put on some music for you.”
I wrap my arms around my middle, ducking my head. Softly, I confess, “I want Dimitri.”
There’s a long moment of silence, and I know if I looked up, I’d see them having some sort of conversation with their eyes. Maybe I’ll pay for this—for rejecting one in favor of another. Right now, I just can’t seem to care.
Tristian releases a long sigh, standing from the couch. His voice is a little too even—a bit too casual—when he says, “Alright. I’ll see you both at breakfast,” and leaves the room.
I peek up at Dimitri, who’s giving me a carefully neutral look. “Is he mad?”
He lifts a shoulder. “Maybe. Nothing he won’t get over, though. We’re not—” He pauses, eyebrows knitting together as his dark eyes hold mine. “We’re not like Killian.”
You’re not, I don’t say. Dimitri’s never forced me to my knees for him. He’s callous and impulsive and as prone to tempers as any of them, and he isn’t blameless in anything. But he’s the only one who’s ever asked—ever cared if I wanted it.
It’s a testament to the sad state of my life that Dimitri is the best guy involved in it.
I follow him up the stairs, passing mine and Killian’s room, and then Tristian’s. As soon as I step inside, I know I made the right choice. This room had been the place I’d escaped to in my head as Killian used me. The soft, comfortable lighting. The way everything was a little unkempt. The sounds of the music. The way his bed always looks, warm and inviting.
Dimitri pauses in the middle of the room, reaching up to scratch the nape of his neck. “Uh, I guess…do you want me to sleep on the couch?” He phrases this like a question he finds odious.
I suppose this—handing the decision of his comfort over to me—is probably exactly what that’s like. “I don’t care,” I admit, shuffling my way to the bed. “I think I’d like sleeping beside you.” It’s a difficult thing to give away, but the bourbon has made my tongue a little loose.
Apparently, it did the same for Dimitri. “I had this teacher,” he suddenly says, face shadowed. “Third grade. Mr. Yelchin. My mom worked for months to get me into this academy. The teachers were supposed to be real cream-of-the-crop types.” His eyes grow hazy, as if lost in a memory. “When I had…issues reading, he’d call me names. Tell me I was stupid. Hit me with the ruler. Make me stand up in front of the class and embarrass myself.” His fists clench, jaw tightening. “I still let it get to me sometimes. Pretty fucking stupid, right?” It’s asked like he’s looking for agreement, but there’s something in his eyes—haunted, ashamed—that’s asking for the exact opposite.
I happen to have some experience here. “I don’t think that’s something you can help.”
He nods, like he was expecting that answer. “I hope…” he pauses, frowning. “I hope tonight wasn’t like that. For you.”
Swallowing, I reply, “Me too.”
The look we share says that we both know it will be.
Like a switch flipping off, he turns away, shoulders tensing. “I don’t fucking cuddle.”
I pull the blankets back. “Okay.”
“I mean it,” he says, voice firm as he takes the piano bench. “Don’t be wrapping around me like a goddamn octopus. I need my space.”
The notes reverberate through the room before I can agree, slipping between the sheets. His bed is just as comfortable as it looks, and I settle at the edge, making sure to leave him plenty of space. Houses like this one are drafty and cooler than usual, but I instinctively know that I’m going to wake up sweating buckets if I fall asleep in Tristian’s clothes. After a long moment of internal struggling, I reluctantly decide to take off the hooded sweater and pants, fishing them out of the blankets once I have. I lay them in a tidy lump on the floor beside me, curling up to listen to the music.
It lulls me instantly to sleep.
I’m still hot.
I don’t know what time it is when I surface from a deep, dazed sleep, but the room is dark. All the lamps are off, nothing but the soft glow of a computer screen illuminating the room. One twitch is enough to send my chest into a panicked frenzy.
I can’t move.
I squirm against the thing that’s pinning me down, breaths coming faster, before I realize it’s an arm. Specifically, Dimitri’s arm. Confused, I blink down at the dark dusting of hair covering his forearm. I’m still at the edge of the bed, in the exact same position I’d been in when I fell asleep. I’ve always been a hard sleeper, not prone to tossing and turning, which is why I hadn’t been worried when he warned me against taking his space.
And now here he is, engulfing me in his arms, his steady, even breaths tickling the top of my head as he sleeps.
Not a cuddler, my ass.
I come to find that I don’t really mind it. So much, in fact, that I wriggle back into him, only feeling a brief spike of anxiety at the way he clutches me closer in response, his arm seeming as immovable as steel. It’s a jarring, almost frustrated yank. Apparently, he’s just as greedy and irritable in sleep as he is awake.
It doesn’t take very long for me to succumb to sleep once again, filled with the scent of him, surrounded by the hardness and warmth of his body.
For the first time in a long while, I’m not awoken in the morning by my alarm.
I rise from the fog of sleep slowly, like climbing my way out of a thick cloud. It’s made both easier and more difficult by the gentle groan in my ear, something firm and persistent pressing rhythmically into my backside.
Before I even have the presence of mind to stiffen in worry, I realize that Dimitri isn’t completely awake, either. He’s still curled around me and his movements are slow and uncoordinated, purely instinctual.
I know he’s awake when he falters, stilling.
His fist flexes against my belly, a rough sound escaping his throat. “Ugh,” he croaks, a thread of disappointment present in the sigh that follows. “Sorry. Morning wood.” He goes to roll away, stretching his legs, but I reach out, grabbing his arm to stop him.
Pausing, he haltingly sinks back against me, the feel of his cock obscene and obvious against my ass.
He fingers the hem of my shirt, voice still soft with sleep when he whispers a surprised, eager, “Yeah?” into my neck. He presses a gent
le, uncertain kiss to the skin there, thrusting against me. “You want it?”
Swallowing, I give him a nod, even though I don’t know what I’m agreeing to. I just know that it feels good—that the only time any of this has felt good, completely absent of shame or hurt or regret, is in this room, with him. I want to touch someone—be touched by someone—who I’m choosing. I want to wash the memory of last night away with something that’s not tainted and twisted.
I want to take my body back for one godforsaken moment.
There’s a new energy in the way his fingertips dip beneath my shirt, inching up. It may be stupid of me, but his motions seem slow and dubious enough that it fills me with the oddest assurance.
Like maybe he’d stop if I asked him to.
His hand finds my breast, fingertips brushing over the warm flesh before engulfing it in his palm and squeezing. “Fuck,” he breathes, driving his hips into mine. His thumb finds my nipple, sending a shockwave of electricity right between my legs. “Like this?” he asks when I gasp, stretching my neck.
I go easily when he rolls me to my back, shucking my shirt up. His eyes are still glazed with sleep when he looks down on me, taking in my exposed breasts. He watches his hand on them, gathering one up into his warm palm before ducking his head to suck at it.
My head digs back into the pillow, body writhing at the sensation. His mouth is an impossible point of fire, tongue flicking lazily at my peaked nipple. Even when it’s just his lips, his lip rings rub against me in a novel way, making my back arch in response. The moan I give sends him into motion, frantically shoving the blankets away as his palm rubs down my thigh. He grabs below my knee to hook my leg over his hip, jostling until he’s settled in the cradle of my thighs, thrusting his hardness against the cotton of my panties.
It’s all a little too fast, rapidly becoming devoid of the slow, sleepy aura it began with. But the sharp zings to my center from the way his cock grinds against me are making me not really care. I scrabble at the warm skin of his shoulders, which I’m realizing now are bare. Dimitri is shirtless, clad in only a pair of loose boxer shorts. His back is warm beneath my hands, muscles rippling with the way he surges into me.
His kiss is impatient and demanding, but strangely comforting. The pointed jerk of his body as he grinds against me, the restless sweeps of his palm on my breasts, the sharp, deep kisses are all proof of his eagerness. For the first time, I finally understand everyone’s words. Ms. Crane. Tristian.
Eventually, you might learn to use that thing between your legs…
Your problem is that you haven’t embraced your sex appeal…
There’s power here, I realize, seeing the pinched, hard look on Dimitri’s face when he pulls back. There’s weakness in the crush of his brow as his eyes take in my body. When I sweep my hands down his muscled back, he arches against them, chasing the touch, mouth parted as he rocks into my thighs.
“You like that, don’t you?” he asks, breaths coming harder. “You like how my dick feels.”
He doesn’t go beneath my panties, keeping the barrier up. It’s surprising he doesn’t go further. He could, and the big secret is that I’d probably let him. But I don’t need it. Neither does he. I can feel it in the hardness sending my clit into a frenzy. I can feel it in his movements, impatient and hungry.
Nodding, I wet my lips, bucking my hips into him. “Yes.”
His eyes flash in a sharp satisfaction. “God, I can’t wait to fuck you. I bet you’d get so wet for my dick.” He ducks his head to watch our hips moving together.
Unthinkingly, I follow his gaze, belly seizing at what I see. The head of his cock has completely escaped the waistband of his boxers, a bead of clear fluid falling from the tip as it drags against my panties. I grind up into it, desperate for the friction.
Groaning, he adds, “Fuck, sometimes it’s all I can think about. Getting my dick inside you. Drives me fucking crazy.” I know he’s babbling now, lost in the same mindlessness that’s driving our hips together. “Want to bend you over and fuck you hard. Make you scream my name.” He puts his mouth to mine, hovering there as his jaw clenches. “Say it,” he demands, his thrusts growing urgent and a little too hard.
Digging my fingertips into his shoulder blades, I’m momentarily lost in the chase. This ball of electricity building in my belly is so close to exploding that my knees are trembling against his thighs. He’s got me pinned to the bed by nothing more than the press of his dick.
“Say it,” he growls, hips rolling. “Say my fucking name, Story.”
It hits me like a tidal wave as I fall from the precipice. My strained, “Dimitri,” is some crooked combination of gasp and yelp, but it makes him grunt hard in response, his hard cock slamming against me. There’s no invasion, just two bodies working together. Shifting, rubbing, quivering.
He holds his hips against mine and I can feel it. The twitch. The shift of his flexing muscles. The warmth against my belly as he erupts. It makes the orgasm that much sweeter, the way his palm cups my cheek as he breathes quick and damp into my neck. It feels kind of like gratitude.
Yes.
There is definitely power here.
I leave while Dimitri showers, still feeling weak-legged from our…encounter. I’m only halfway out of that dazed headspace when I run into Tristian on the second-floor landing.
His eyes jump down to my chest, the hooded sweatshirt back in place. Something hard and pleased crosses his features before it’s erased. “Good morning,” he says, shifting his grip on the bags he’s carrying. “I was just about to come see if you two were up. I didn’t know if you had your phone and Rath is always forgetting to set his alarm.” Much like Dimitri’s jaw, Tristian’s lip looks worse in the light of day—swollen and scabbed.
“We, uh,” I can’t contain the hot flush that instantly comes over me, “woke up.”
“Oh,” Tristian says, realization clear in the blink of his eyes. He gives me a look. “Is this something I need to hassle him about, or…”
I shake my head, eyes widening. “No! Not like that.”
Not like Killian.
“I see,” he answers, face going carefully blank. “Can we get in there?”
I follow his nod to my door, easily slipping through the crack I’d made. Tristian is wide, however. I have to scoot the desk out some more to make space for him to enter.
When he does, he eyes the remaining dress scraps still left on my bed. “I guess we’re done with the sun dresses.” He moves them aside to dump the bags on my bed in their place. “That’s okay. I went out early to pick up some things.”
My stomach fills with dread. “Like what?”
To my shock, he begins laying out pairs of jeans. They look snug, but not unbearably so. Then, he produces some shirts. Not halters or tanks or anything ridiculous. Just shirts. There’s a cardigan, too. A pullover sweater. Loose pajamas. A pair of comfortable-looking shoes.
He gestures to the choices, reaching up to rub at his neck. “It’s not a lot, and you’ll still be expected to look a certain way most of the time, but you should have something…else. Sometimes.” Turning to smirk at me, he adds, “Not that I don’t enjoy seeing you in my clothes, because that’s pretty fucking hot, Cherry.”
I finger at one of the shirts. “Tristian, this is…” Nice is on the tip of my tongue, but I’m not so sure it’s merited. Letting me wear clothes I’m comfortable in sometimes shouldn’t be something to gush about.
He doesn’t let me finish anyway. “Oh, and there’s more.” He reaches into another bag, pulling out a fresh bouquet of daisies and extending them to me.
I eye them suspiciously, confused. “Flowers?”
His smile grows stiff. “Well, I noticed you liked the paper one I got for you, so I thought I’d try the real thing.” Slowly, I take them, the plastic wrapping crinkling as I give the bouquet a dubious sniff. “I also got you this,” he adds, pulling a smaller paper bag from inside the larger one.
When I open it up, I fi
nd a huge cherry Danish waiting within. It’s still warm. Warm and full of sugar and processed preservatives and whatever else he hates.
I look up at him—at that stiff smile on his handsome face—and level him with a slow, “Tristian.”
His smile flattens. “You’re mad at me. I get it. I told you I wouldn’t let him hurt you again, but I had to stand there while he did that.” Running his fingers through his hair, he looks away, agitated. “I couldn’t do anything. We have to project a united front. It’s dumb frat-house bullshit, but it’s important.”
I set the bag and flowers down, dragging in a hard breath. “I was never naïve enough to think you’d stop Killian from hurting me. Dimitri, either.”
He raises an eyebrow at me. “You don’t seem to be holding it against Rath.”
“And I’m not holding it against you.” I find that it’s true. I’ve known the score here, ever since I walked in that door. I’ve never been stupid enough to think otherwise.
“Then why are you so cool with him, but—” He instantly freezes, expressions flattening into something hard. “It’s because I did it, too.”
I don’t bother denying it, reaching down to skim a finger over a daisy’s soft petals. “It brought back a lot of memories.” I head what Killian said to him out there.
“Making her suck a dick in front of our brothers wasn’t a concept you had a problem with three years ago.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Tristian is silent for a long moment, standing stiffly in the middle of my room. He shifts, burying his fists in his pockets. “Would it help if I said I was sorry?” Scoffing, he adds, “I guess it wouldn’t hurt.”
I shove the daisies aside, meeting his gaze with as much steel as I can muster. “You can say you’re sorry. You can tell me you regret it. You can ask my forgiveness. Say what you like, it still happened.”
He shrugs, saying matter-of-factly, “I don’t believe in regret. And I believe in forgiveness even less than that. But I do believe in owning up to my shit.” He walks closer, those blue eyes pinning me. “I was in a bad place. I’m not going to bullshit you by saying I’ve turned a new leaf, or that I didn’t enjoy it. I never really thought of you outside of that. I never wondered about what it must have been like for you. How badly I made you feel. To be honest, I just didn’t care.”