Summer Girl (Summer Girl #1)

by S. Love

  “That won’t work, you tucking into yourself like a hermit crab. Push me, Lyla, and I’ll push back fifty times harder.”

  I roll my eyes at the glass. “You’ve been getting your own way for too long.”

  “And that isn’t about to stop now.”

  “There is such a word as no,” I turn to him and say.

  He smiles in profile. “Really? Never heard it.” I jerk my leg away when his hand clamps around my thigh, but he squeezes my skin, immobilizing me in place. “Stop fighting me, Lyla. You won’t win. You don’t know how.”

  “What is it about boring old me that appeals to you the loudest? Because Falcon got there first, or Garrett? What is it you think you’re getting out of me? Are you bored? Is that what started it? Have you been through every other girl and I’m the only one left to test-run and grind down?”

  “You blow a lot of hot and cold,” Ozzie points out in amusement, dodging every word I just said to him.

  “You’re psychotic,” I point out myself.

  An hour after suffering through Ozzie, the slate-colored roof tiles of the Osbornes’ home steeples the horizon. I’ve got all day ahead of me, and I’m spending every hour immersed in work. I’ll find any job to channel my energies into. Flip the cushions on the overstuffed, buttery-silver couch no one sits on. Clean the old wax off the surfboards and recoat Ozzie’s in a thick, dripping layer of olive oil.

  I don’t care what it is as long as it doesn’t involve another human being or heir to this estate. I just want to be alone. To not have my brain short circuited by Ozzie, rewiring it to his specific specifications and degenerate way of thinking.

  Blowing past him, into the house, I deposit the Barbies onto Mariah’s bed before I do anything else. I take a load off in my room and let the residual dust from last night and the ride home settle. I pull out my book and try my damndest to get invested in the cheesy storyline, but my mind can’t focus for longer than a sentence. If I really pull it together, an entire paragraph. I tap out at a whole page, closing the book and flopping back on my bed.

  When the dust’s as settled as it’s going to get, I drag myself to sitting, change into my uniform—Cindy and Ray could still walk through the door without a moment’s notice—and get to work.

  It’s your standard mess left over from two teenage boys who haven’t mastered the art of putting shit away after themselves, and I breeze through a light cleanup, then while away a few hours in the yard, tossing soil, watering the roses, and cutting back the hedges. I’m no gardener, but the repetitive, mindless task is, dare I say it, soothing, and time slips away from me before I’ve realized it.

  I dust the unused living room, admiring the beauty of the large, open space with its tall windows overlooking the churning ocean and white-golden beach.

  The vacuum keeps me company for ten minutes, and I drag that thing everywhere. Down the lining of the curtains, above the curtains, under the cushions, across the fireplace. Wiping my arm across my brow, I shut the vacuum off, the house easing back into a calming silence.

  Dragging the vacuum through the foyer, I tuck it away in the laundry room, hanging the cordless piece of machinery on its hook on the wall.

  Sweating now, I reward my hard work with a ten-minute break. Seventy percent of the day’s light has migrated below the skyline, a shimmery, dreamy peach hue cresting over the treetops and steeped cliffs.

  I place my hand on the French door handle, opening it a few measly inches and then freezing on the threshold.

  To the left of the yard, underneath the showerhead that’s built into the house brick, water cascades over Falcon’s naked, sculpted body. Both arms are up by his head as he pushes the water through his soaking hair, his face tipped to the ground, water running under his feet and down the small, round drain.

  I suck in my breath, stumbling backward on my heel so he doesn’t see me spying on him like some kind of creeper when he’s oblivious to my walking out on him as he rinses off the surf and sand from his tan skin.

  Successful in getting my breathing under control, I take a step forward, peeking my head out just enough that I won’t get caught. I pull the door in slightly, concealing myself behind the glass.

  My throat closes up when he soaps himself, one hand around his long, thick length as his efficient cleaning routine slows into long, lazy tugs, until he’s steel beneath skin.

  Expression tensing, his eyelids close and he tips his head back under the spray, pointing his face up to the sky. I develop a blinding pulse between my legs as Falcon jerks himself carefully, his forearm repeating the same up and down motion as everything from my shoulders downward slackens to liquid.

  His jaw clenches, water running between his lips as his eyes drop to his hand, his arm straining, muscles clenching. The dimple in his ass cheek pops as he grates out a guttural noise that sounds like he’s in pain, bracing one hand against the side of the house.

  And that’s when I get out of there, my blood boiling in my veins and my hair sticking to the back of my neck. I’m so worked up I can barely get one foot in front of the other without tripping over my own two left feet.

  I launch myself up the stairs, using the wrought-iron banister to hold me upright, my heart thundering in my chest. I make it to my room, fling the door closed and press my back against it.

  But the ache between my legs refuses to be ignored. Glancing around my room like I’m about to indulge in something unforgivable, I work my panties down my thighs, bending my knees one at a time and stepping out of them. I slide my hand between my legs and close my eyes, holding it there in hopes the ache will go away on its own, without any intervention from me.

  No surprises, it doesn’t.

  I walk over to my bed and lie on my back, propped up on my pillows. My legs fidget as I drag whatever comes to mind that isn’t Falcon outside in the shower. I didn’t hang around for the grand finale, but the overture to the closing scene was hint enough at where he was headed. It was too private to watch, but the mental picture of him stroking himself to release restokes the flames, and my fingers find their way back down to soothe the growing ache.

  I clench my thighs around my hand, squeezing my eyes shut just as tight. This is too wrong, even for me. And I’ve been part of some questionable shit over the summer. Everywhere I turn in this house, I’m confronted with some form of sex. It’s in my face always, and I’m only human. Lately, not a very good one.

  Oh, well. If I’m going to hell anyway…

  I give into myself and move my fingers, bending one knee to bring my leg higher up the bed. And then my bedroom door bursts open.

  Chapter 32

  Caught red-handed, my whole body locks up in whiteout panic. My heart thumps once, hard, as Ozzie plows into my room despite the door being shut and him not thinking it appropriate to knock first before stampeding in here.

  The second he comprehends what he’s caught me in the middle of, I’m flooded with heat from his deprecating look, his disapproval more than I can take. It only gets worse when I realize he isn’t alone.

  “Topher,” Ozzie snipes, but his steel gaze is bolted on me. “No one comes in here.”

  Topher steps into the doorway behind his brother, uncertainty in his eyes as he hesitates. His gaze coasts to me for a single beat, but then he’s closing my bedroom door, leaving me in all my vulnerability alone with Ozzie.

  Despite myself, and the predatory hunt Ozzie’s started, I clench my muscles, slipping my hand from between my thighs. I tug my stiff dress back into place, and Ozzie proves in the next two seconds I’ve wasted my time.

  Snatching me by my ankles, I squeak helplessly as he drags me ruthlessly down the bed. He spreads my legs and traps me by my thighs under his arms.

  “Ozzie, stop!” I brace myself and lurch forward, the restraint of my awkward position preventing me from ripping out Ozzie’s hair. He fits himself more snugly at the juncture of my thighs, raises his eyes to offload a fleeting, sinister look, and then sinks his tongue into
me, drawing all my heat to that spot with his mouth as I lay flat on my back, warring with my emotions.

  Ozzie’s stronger than me, and he exerts that strength in how possessively he pins me to the mattress, his hands below my hips securing me in place while he uses his forearms to hold my legs still.

  My bedroom door swings inward. The heat of Ozzie’s mouth detaches from me, insufferable emptiness replacing his tongue and frustrating me even more.

  Like they’ve played out this setting a hundred times before, Topher strolls casually into the room and sits down by my head. My eyes widen when he cuffs my wrists in his hands and pins them to the bed at my sides.

  “If you’re here for a taste, she’s as sweet as she looks.”

  I glare at Ozzie in repulsion, his bland expression worse than anything I could’ve witnessed on his face. He just doesn’t care. Is there anything he won’t do to prove he’s a dick?

  Topher says nothing in response, and I take advantage of his silence by tipping my head back on the bed and searching his face for eye-contact. He doesn’t give it to me, though, almost as though he’s afraid to.

  I go for Ozzie instead, my frustrations mounting over being held down. He meets my eyes with an unamused, edgy look, not letting up on his icy grip.

  “You want to get off, Lyla, I get you off. You want to fuck, you fuck me.” The pad of Ozzie’s thumb sweeps between my lips, a jolt of pleasure killing off another brain cell as flutters swirl free and loose in my belly. My body doesn’t know whether to wave the white flag in defeat and enjoy what Ozzie’s doing, or kill itself in combative resistance.

  I try to raise my knee from the bed, only for him to force it back down. At his leisure, like we’ve got all fucking day, and he isn’t holding me against my will, Ozzie starts to unbutton my dress. Now I’m completely bare and on full display for not just him, but Topher.

  The same thumb Ozzie was just torturing me with dips inside me, just the tip. The start of the invasion. Enough of a threat there’s no telling what the hell he’ll do next or how far he might take this. I want it, though, whatever it is. Now who needs psychotherapy?

  “Just do it! What are you waiting for?” I grit through my teeth, tears of shame and need and dirty, depraved lust leaking from the corners of my eyes. “Do your fucking worst.” Goading him isn’t one of my smarter moves, but I’ve had just about all I can take of his bossy, domineering bullshit. Now I want to know what he’s truly made of. Whether his bite matches his bark, and he has the balls to go through with what he loves hanging over my head.

  “Don’t fucking challenge me. I’ll always accept.”

  I see it in Ozzie’s eyes as they blacken with devious intent that all hope’s lost, and I give myself over to the torture, surrendering my body so Ozzie can dull the ache and set me on fire.

  Except, he leaves me teetering on the ledge, drawing irritating circles at the top of my right thigh deliberately close to where I want him to touch. Where I’m going crazy for him to put me out of the misery he’s buried me in.

  I yank my wrist in Topher’s hand, prepared to finish the job myself, but Topher pulls me against his chest and draws my arms up around his neck.

  “Topher,” I plead, because now I’m just not thinking at all. He can do it. I don’t care.

  He lowers his head over mine, covers my lips with his, and opens his mouth to kiss me.

  I groan into the kiss as Ozzie draws out his movements, only giving me the very tip of his tongue in short, infuriating lashes. I concentrate on my breathing, on Topher, and not how good this feels because it shouldn’t feel that way. I didn’t ask for this, for either of them to be in here. Ozzie took it in spite of me telling him to stop. He came in here with the intent to strip me bare and put me under his thumb where he’s decided I belong.

  Monsters don’t live under your bed, only rearing their grotesque heads when the lights are out. This monster roams freely in broad daylight, armed with his surfboard and bad attitude.

  Ozzie’s lips close over my throbbing skin, he sucks, and I buckle inside, sickened with myself when I moan and fist Topher’s hair, deepening our kiss.

  One intrusive hand snakes up my stomach, intense pressure over my bellybutton, just another method to keep me in captivity. I try to stop it from happening, push the urges down, down, and dull my overstimulated senses, but my body seizes and that white-hot sensation rushes through me, Ozzie’s mouth sending me to the darkest, deepest depths I’ve never sunk before.

  On an anguished cry of pleasure that’s as blisteringly electrifying as it is appalling, I topple into blinding light, every muscle in my body heaving and grappling with an orgasm that shreds me to unrecognizable pieces. Topher kisses me through it, and I’m trapped at both ends. Suffocating.

  Ozzie buries his whole face in me, refusing to let me go or have even a second to rouse myself from this alternate reality. He grips my legs with no consideration for how much he’s hurting me. It’s like he can’t let me go, and his strength topples over into too much for me, my body too sensitive for his inexorable mouth. My muscles flame under his hands, my thighs stretched too far now I’m tumbling from the inconceivable height he’s pushed me to.

  The second Ozzie releases me, not an ounce of remorse on his stupid, malicious face, I break the kiss and propel myself forward like a deranged rocket, directing myself right at him. The fucking asshole catches me in two arms, the twisted smile on his face so out of place I contemplate wiping it off with my fist.

  He makes a production of licking his lips, holding me away from him by my forearms, backing up to the closed French doors that open onto the balcony. When his back’s to the glass, I drag my eyes over his face, into his soulless eyes and blandly innocent expression. He’s a black, bottomless void of phony bullshit.

  Weakened by him, I let myself go limp, the hollowness I see in him sucking the hope right out of me that I’d unearth the faintest degree of repentance for taking from me what wasn’t his to take.

  He wrestles my arms to my sides, overwhelming the final strand of my spirit and not letting a second slip through his fingers to assert his authority over me. “I told you, didn’t I? You push me, I’ll push back.”

  I twist my face to reflect the repulsion he fills me with. “I knew you were sick, but I didn’t realize you were this far over the fucking edge of insanity.”

  “I’m breaking you in gently,” he says with a crooked smirk, as though we’re two friends and he’s drawing me into the private joke.

  I latch onto the only weapon left at my disposal. “I’m telling Falcon.”

  Ozzie shrivels up at the mention of me and his older brother. He’s hated it from day one. His fingers dig into my arms, his veiled control slipping. “I wouldn’t if I were you.”

  “You aren’t me.” I smirk triumphantly. It feels good to hit him where he doesn’t like it. Me and Falcon together is his weak spot, and I’ll kick him in it until he’s incapacitated. I feed off his weakness from the same jugular he feeds from mine.

  In a vindictive move, he yanks me against his chest, bends his head and kisses me. I taste myself on his lips before he pushes me away from him like I’m a disease he’s trying not to catch.

  I watch my bedroom door in distrust long after it’s closed, and my knees give way to the rest of my body as I slump against the glass and slide to the floor.

  Work and Mariah are the only reasons I leave my room at all the next day, and Talia’s words from when I agreed to take this job loop in my head, her warning to watch myself with the wolves carrying more meaning now I’ve experienced the worst of this family. Yet, somehow, I don’t think yesterday was the worst. I would be an idiot not to prepare myself for darker days to come.

  There is a way to get myself out of it, though, and that’s to quit. Give Cindy notice now and be out of this house by the end of next week. She can’t find a replacement for me in time, that’s not my problem.

  But leaving quietly is letting Ozzie get away with what he did to me, an
d I’m not keen on him surviving scratch-free. That isn’t fair, because there are scratches on me, and they’re all from him.

  “I like this one.” Mariah picks out School Teacher Barbie from the box. Her black reading glasses are in the polyester chaos somewhere. She’s still wearing her pencil skirt and pink blazer, her perky, plastic cleavage showing because she isn’t wearing a shirt underneath.

  I smile, but it’s watery and lacking. “I like her, too. She’s a schoolteacher.”

  Mariah sifts through the box. In the end, she loves them all. We play together for almost two hours, and dress Tina in a peach ballgown with sequins sowed into the billowing netting and silky corset top.

  Knocking at her bedroom door startles me, but it’s only Ray. He smiles as he walks into the room in a sharp, navy business suit and brown, shiny dress shoes. He’s rarely dressed like this, so it looks like it’s been a day in the office and not getting mucky on one of his development sites.

  He parks himself on the undersized stool at Mariah’s vanity table. “You girls having fun?”

  Mariah’s curls bounce around her head as she nods.

  Ray returns his daughter’s sweet smile, then slides his gaze to me. I know it isn’t possible, unless Ozzie told him himself, but I feel like he knows I’m different now. Like I’m wearing last night as a second skin and he can see it. I feel like everyone knows, and there isn’t water pure enough to make me clean again.

  “I’ve noticed how well the two of you have been getting along.” Ray’s voice penetrates my confinement of guilt.

  “I enjoy spending all this time with you,” I say to Mariah as she glances from her doll to me.

  “Good,” Ray nods, like that was exactly what he wanted to hear. “Then this makes what I was going to ask you considerably easier.”

  Ring. Ring. Alarm bells go off. I never even possessed an interior alarm system before the Osbornes steamrolled into my life. Now it’s constantly being set off.

  “When the summer’s over and your contract’s expired, I was wondering if you would think about extending your role, only as Mariah’s child minder instead. It wouldn’t be every day, and I’m open to negotiation on what days you can work. I am aware you’re still a high school student, and your studies and homework come first, as they should.”