Oblivion (Alphaholes #4)

4. Evan

4

EVAN

S he’s drunk. Although in truth, I’ve seen her drunker.

Like that night in the woods when I pushed my hard dick into her ass and pinned her body against mine. That was the last time she looked at me with stars in her eyes. Since then, she only glares at me like I broke something in her, the same way we broke Starling.

Tonight though, the more she drank, the less she looked at me with hate, and the more I drank, the less important the reasons I’ve stayed away from her seem to be.

I knew the first time I met her that I felt something. Now I’m pretty sure I’m in love with Sammy Hartley. My dick is always hard for her. My chest aches when she walks away from me, and I feel violent when I see her with another guy. But more than all of that, I want her to be happy, and I love her enough to know that I’m not capable of that.

In my world, orchestrated matches are common and preferred by our social circle. Money breeds money, and marrying anyone below your own social stature is basically considered a cardinal sin. It’s rare for people to marry for love, and yet my parents weren’t the result of an arranged marriage. They met in college—although they vaguely knew each other before—rejected their parents’ choices for each of them and got married instead.

My mom left a couple of weeks after I was born and never came back. Since I was old enough to hold a conversation, we speak once a year, roughly around the time of my birthday—but never on my actual birthday, because she can never remember when it is. When I was younger, I once decided to ask her why she left me behind instead of taking me with her when she left. She told me that she never wanted kids but agreed to have me because she felt pressured into providing my dad with an heir. She said the expectations that were piled on her by marrying a Morris were more than she could handle, and that when she left, she never even considered taking a child she didn’t want with her.

I think maybe I should have felt hurt by her words, but truthfully, her answer made sense to me, and I never missed having her around because she’d never been there in the first place. I had my dad, and Bastian, Clay, and Hunter’s parents who helped to raise all of us.

My entire life I’d known that my dad would pick a wife for me when I was older. My brothers were all told the same thing, and until Bastian saw Starling, none of us ever considered that there was anything wrong with having an arranged match.

Starling coming into our world changed everything. When we encouraged my dad to flirt with Starling’s mom, Cassidy, we never imagined they’d actually fall in love or get married. And I never considered that my new stepmom would be so determinedly against me not picking my own bride.

Although I’m grateful that Cassidy is advocating for my right to choose my own future, a part of me wishes they’d just take this choice out of my hands. Because if they don’t, I’ll spend the rest of my life craving Sammy and never allowing myself to have her.

Sammy belongs to Starling. They’ve become the best of friends. In another life, my stepsister might be excited to have me fall in love with her bestie. But in this life, my brothers and I have already taken so much from Starling that no matter how much I want Sammy, I won’t do anything that would risk their friendship.

It physically hurts me to let Hunter be the one to hold Sammy upright on the way to our cart, but I know she wouldn’t want me to be the one to touch her. Watching her in another guys’ arms makes me feel physically sick, but I can’t warn my brother away the way I’ve warned off every other guy who’s come near her since the day we met.

I’m too drunk to drive the cart back to our house, but I wait until Hunter has Sammy sat in the back seat before I get into the other cart, watching her obsessively until we get to the house.

“I’m fine. I can walk,” Sammy giggles as she stumbles through the front door and straight toward the stairs.

The others watch her for a minute, but when it seems she’ll be fine going up the stairs alone, they all head for the kitchen. I’m sober enough that I know I should eat before I go to sleep so I’m not crazy hungover in the morning, but drunk enough that I allow my body to follow my wild one up the stairs instead.

“I know you’re there,” she says, once we hit the second-floor landing. “I can feel it when you’re watching me.”

“I’m just making sure you don’t fall down the stairs,” I slur. Fuck, maybe I am a little drunker than I thought.

“I don’t need you to take care of me,” she snaps, her anger dampened by her glassy eyes and hard fucking nipples.

“I’ll still do it anyway.”

Huffing like an annoyed toddler, she spins around and nearly lands on her ass as her upper body moves quicker than her wobbly legs can cope with.

Rushing forward, I curl my arm around her waist and catch her before she hits the ground. My dick twitches when she starts to giggle, an unexpected burst of sound that lightens the tension that seems to compound between us whenever we talk.

Enjoying the sound of her albeit drunken happiness, I lift her off her feet, encourage her to wrap her legs around my waist, and start climbing the stairs, grateful that even drunk, I’m still stable enough to hold her.

Instead of arguing, I feel her sigh, relax, then rest her cheek against my shoulder. Not giving her the chance to remember she doesn’t want me to touch her, I ascend the stairs until I reach the door that leads to her bedroom.

Sebastian had the turret that used to be a storage room converted into a bedroom last summer before he tricked Starling into coming here. But after they officially got together, she moved down to his bedroom and invited Sammy to take her unused room.

Pausing outside the door, I watch as Sammy fumbles to get her keycard from her purse. Instead of taking her purse from her, I pull out my cell and unlock her door from the app Clay installed on my phone.

Every lock in the house can be opened remotely, but I have no idea if Sammy is aware that even if she locks her room, we can all still access it. Maybe she’s too drunk to react, because she doesn’t seem overly perturbed as I push open her door and climb the small staircase that leads to the highest room in the house.

Sebastian decorated this room with the sole purpose of taunting Starling. The wallpaper is hand-painted birdcages with tiny birds locked inside, to remind Starling that she would always be locked in the cage he created for her, and that only he held the key to her captivity and freedom.

My gut clenches at the reminder of the awful mindfuck we helped Sebastian pull Starling into. Seeing Sammy’s things in this room, surrounded by all these cages feels wrong, because no matter how much I want her, I’ll never do what my brother did. I’ll never cage her or try to clip her wings.

“You can put me down now,” Sammy says, amusement lacing her voice. But she doesn’t try to free herself from my arms. Instead, I feel the soft huff of her breath as she exhales against my throat.

“I know,” I whisper.

Reluctantly, I lower her to her feet, hating every inch of distance I put between us.

A small hand reaches out when I start to turn away, her fingers gripping the fabric of my shirt. “I’m not making it up, am I?” she asks.

“What?”

“When you look at me, it feels like you want me, but then you turn away, and I wonder if I’ve imagined it.”

“Sammy.” Her name sounds like a warning and a caress, and I wish I could just lie. That I could tell her it’s all in her head, that we’ll only ever be friends, but as much as I wish I could, I can’t force the words from my lips.

Sadness fills her eyes. “Just tell me,” she begs.

“You haven’t imagined it,” I confess, hating myself for my weakness.

“Then why do you always look away?”

“Because, I have to.” Each word is ripped from my soul, but I have to say them. I can’t let this give either of us hope.

“Why?” She steps closer as she asks me a question that I’m not sure I can answer. Can I tell her it’s because I’m worried I’ll hurt her? That I’m terrified I’ll become the thing that I’m most scared of. That she’ll become an obsession that I’d be willing to obliterate if it meant she was mine.

When a single tear slips from her eye and rolls down her cheek, something shatters inside of me, and before I even realize I’ve moved, she’s in my arms, my tongue in her mouth while my rock-hard dick strains to get inside of her.

Her perfect, lithe body molds to mine as I wrap myself around her, getting as close as I can get without being inside of her. But I want that. I want to touch her, claim her, devour her. If this is my last moment on earth, then I’ll die a happy man, knowing that with her in my arms I’ve felt true peace and happiness.

I don’t know how long our kiss lasts. It could be a second, it could be a year. Perfection like this isn’t measured in the same way as the mundane moments when I’m not joined with her.

I’m not sure when or how, but my hand finds its way up her skirt, my fingers pushing her wet panties to the side until I can touch her. Her low moan of pleasure fills my mouth as I push two fingers into her heat, wishing it was my dick, but knowing that it doesn’t matter what part of me touches her, that it’ll still be utter perfection.

“Evan,” she whines, pushing herself closer to me, begging for more, even as I finger her cunt, her wetness trickling over my knuckles.

“Come for me. Let me hear you,” I growl.

“I can’t. I’ve never,” she whispers, her voice catching as my finger finds her G-spot, massaging until her eyes roll back.

“You will. You can,” I rasp, scraping my teeth over her jaw as her body tightens, poised for release.

When she comes, I wish the moment would run on repeat for the rest of eternity. It doesn’t matter that my dick is so hard I’m seconds away from blowing my load in my pants. It doesn’t matter that she’s not mine and never can be. All that matters is that in this instant in time, she’s perfectly and blissfully happy, and I gave her that.

Scanning her face, I watch the pleasure start to fade. I hate it, but no matter how much I want it to, time doesn’t just stop.

Blinking slowly, a wide smile curls the corners of her mouth. “That was…” She trails off, like she can’t come up with a word to describe it.

I don’t want to, but I slip my fingers free of her heat, bringing them to my lips and sucking her taste from my skin.

“How do I taste?” she asks, shyly.

“Like everything,” I confess.

I know I should, but I don’t stop her as she lowers herself to her knees. I don’t tell her no when she unfastens my pants and pulls my dick free. I don’t tell her to stop when she wraps her lips around my cock and sucks everything good from my body. I don’t refuse when she tells me to come on her chest. I don’t stop myself from coating her full tits then moving upward to brand her lips and chin with my cum as well. Then I don’t feel even an ounce of remorse as I pull my cell from my pocket and take a picture of her covered and owned and claimed in my release.

Worse still, I don’t stop myself from pulling her into her bed and holding her in my arms while she falls asleep.

But when I slip away from her as the sun is starting to rise in the sky, I know that leaving her is far worse than all of my other sins combined.