Chapter 34
She dabs cotton wool onto my knuckles; the alcohol burning my broken skin, making me suck a breath through my teeth with a hiss.
“Sorry,” she says, her touch featherlight. “But I’ve got to clean them.”
I’m sitting on the edge of the bathtub as she tends to my wounds. I’m stoic, watching her work as she methodically wipes the blood, cleans the cuts, and inspects them carefully before wrapping them up.
“I still think you could do with some stitches,” she whispers, her voice hoarse and broken. She clears her throat amidst the silent house. We are being careful not to wake James and Maria.
“They’re fine.” I clench my hand into a fist, the skin stretching and pulling against the slices. “See? Fine.”
“It doesn’t have to be fine all the time, you know.”
“You would rather me be honest?” Our eyes meet, and her icy blue eyes stare at me intently.
“Always.”
“I’m really angry,” I admit. She reaches out and tilts my head to check the cut above my eyebrow. She pinches it together and places a butterfly bandage on it. “Ouch.”
“Sorry.”
My heart beats wildly in my chest, and every touch of hers sends electric currents through me. I really fucking wish she would stop touching me, because her smell, her heat, her bare skin.
I want it all.
“I hate that he did what he did,” I whisper, and she pauses.
Her eyes briefly meet mine before she goes back to tending to my wounds.
“I hate that whatever he said made you feel you had no other choice but to do it. I hate that he made you feel however he made you feel to the point it had you sobbing in my arms.”
She stops, staring at me so intently and swallows, her eyes no longer tear filled, but clear and glassy as she listens.
“I hate the thought of his lips on yours. I hate the thought of your lips on his. And do you know what I really fucking hate?”
“What?” she whispers, her hand frozen above my eyebrow as she hears everything I’m saying to her, feels everything I’m saying.
I reach out and wrap my arms behind her, so my fingers can touch the bare skin on her thighs beneath her shorts.
“I hate that I wish it had been my lips. I hate that I want you how I do. I hate that he has hurt the one person who I love more than anything else in this whole entire world, Lucy. I hate that he hurt you. I hate it. It makes me sick to my stomach. I hate that I have all these feelings for you, and that I don’t know how to process them.
I hate that I know that it’s wrong. I hate that I can’t have you, and I hate that he did. ”
She sucks in a breath, and I clench my eyes shut.
“I hate my life; I fucking hate everything about it apart from you.” When I finally open them, I stare and see how my words have affected her.
She blinks, it’s slow.
My heart beats, it’s rapid.
She’s frozen to the floor.
Her forehead has a cute frown line. Her eyes are wide and lips parted where she breathes shallow breaths, because her heart is beating as wildly as mine.
Everything is silent around us, but there is so much noise between us.
Hurt, pain, anguish.
Lust, love, loyalty.
So many fucking goods mixed in with the broken and the bad.
I pull her towards me, my fingers tracing up under the shorts to the curve of her cheeks.
“Please tell me to stop, Luce.” I barely recognise my own voice. I move my hands onto that fucking round arse that’s as perfect as a peach and hold them there, enjoying her curves against my touch. Enjoying how her eyes have widened in surprise.
She doesn’t tell me to stop, though. She steps between my legs and drops her hands to my shoulders, staring down at me.
“I beg you, please tell me to stop.”
But she doesn’t. Even as I stand up and tower over her. As she peeks up at me through her lashes.
“I’m not telling you to stop,” she whispers as she reaches her hands behind my neck and sinks her fingers into my hair. “Because it would be a lie.”
She pulls me towards her face and places her lips on mine.
They feel amazing. Her body is amazing. It’s all amazing.
We’re on her bed now, and our mouths and tongue entwine in a dance that has my heart fill with hope and happiness, and my dick so hard.
She arches her back and moans into me, as I trace my hand down her breast onto her stomach, and to the top of her shorts.
I hesitate.
She opens her eyes, those ice blues meet mine, and she nods before taking my mouth in hers again.
This is stupid, my head says.
This is reckless, my gut says.
This is perfect, my heart says.
I unbutton her shorts with shaking fingers, and pull them down her body, as she reaches forward and lifts her t-shirt over her head unclasps her bra and lays completely bared to me.
I’m kneeling in front of her, staring at her curves, rubbing my lip having an internal argument with myself.
She’s 16, but she’s always looked older.
She’s 16 and I shouldn’t be doing this.
She’s 16. She’s also your foster sister.
She’s also my everything.
She sits up to kneel and reaches for the button of my jeans as she pulls her lip between her teeth.
“There is one person that can make everything about today disappear.” Her voice is seductive. “I want you, Owen. Just like you want me. Don’t stop, don’t think, just be.”
I let her undress me.
I let her kiss my neck, my jaw, my chest and my heart.
I let her pull down my boxers.
I let her grip my hard cock.
I let her put a condom on me.
I let her pull me onto her.
I let her line me up.
I push myself in.
And I make us both forget.