2. Callum #2
"I wasn't intimidating anyone. I told him you had a ride. That's a fact."
"You looked at him like you were going to break his arm."
"I thought about it."
"Callum!"
"Clara." I turn in my seat to face her. The angle puts us close—close enough that I can count the individual lashes framing her eyes, close enough to see the pulse jumping at the hollow of her throat.
"That kid doesn't see you the way I do. He sees a pretty girl at a bus stop.
He sees a weekend hookup. He doesn't see—" I stop myself. Recalibrate. "He doesn't know you."
"And you do?"
"Better than he ever will."
Her lips part. Her breath catches. I watch the flush spread from her cheeks down the column of her throat, disappearing beneath the neckline of her oversized sweater, and I think about what's underneath that sweater—soft, full, heavy with milk that only I've tasted—and my hands tighten on my thighs.
"This is insane," she whispers. "You're eleven years older than me. You're my stepbrother. Yesterday was—yesterday shouldn't have happened."
"But it did."
"That doesn't mean?—"
I cup her jaw. My hand spans the entire lower half of her face, my thumb resting against her cheekbone, my fingers curling along the hinge of her jaw. Her skin is impossibly soft. She freezes, lips parted, brown eyes locked on mine and so wide I can see my own reflection in them.
I lean across the console and press my mouth to hers.
She makes a sound—a small, startled inhale that I swallow whole.
Her lips are soft and uncertain, barely moving, and I realize with a sharp, electric clarity that she doesn't know what to do.
She doesn't know how to angle her head, how to open for me, how to breathe through it.
My stepsister has never been kissed. I'm the first mouth she's ever tasted, and the knowledge lands in my bloodstream like a hit of something narcotic.
I go slow. Patient. I tilt her jaw with my thumb, adjusting the angle, and brush my lips over hers once, twice, teaching her the rhythm.
On the third pass she softens, her mouth opening just enough for my tongue to sweep her lower lip, and a tremor runs through her that I feel in my fingertips.
I deepen the kiss by degrees—tongue sliding against hers, tasting her, learning the inside of her mouth—and her hand comes up and grips my forearm, not pushing, just holding on.
My free hand slides under the hem of her sweater.
She gasps into my mouth. My palm travels upward over warm, bare skin—the dip of her waist, the flare of her ribs—until my fingers find the underside of her bra.
I press higher. My hand cups her breast through the thin fabric and I feel it immediately: the weight, the fullness, the slight dampness soaking through the cotton.
She's leaking again.
I pull back from the kiss just far enough to look at her. Her eyes are glazed, her lips swollen and pink, her chest heaving.
"Clara." My thumb grazes the damp spot on her bra. "Why are you lactating?"
She blinks, and the haze in her eyes sharpens into mortified horror. Red floods her face—not just her cheeks, her entire face, from her hairline to her chin.
"Are you pregnant? Is it because of him? That boy?" I nod toward the bus stop outside the window.
"What?" Her voice cracks. "No—I don't even like that guy, I've never—he's in my history class and that's the first time he's ever—" She's sputtering, tripping over the words.
"I've never done that before, not with him, not with anyone.
I've never even—" She stops short, and something dangerous crosses her face, something raw and exposed.
"I never even had my first kiss. At least not until you took it just now. "
The words hang in the warm air of the car between us. Her chest rises and falls in quick, shallow bursts, and her brown eyes glitter with a combination of fury and humiliation and something else she can't quite hide.
"So you're a virgin." I don't frame it as a question. "My stepsister is a virgin."
She opens her mouth. Closes it. The realization of what she's just admitted crashes across her face in a slow, devastating wave, and she turns so red I can practically feel the heat radiating off her skin. She looks away, jaw tight, fingers twisting in the hem of her sweater.
I lean across the console again. My hand finds the back of her neck, pulling her gently, and I press my lips to hers a second time.
She resists for exactly one second before her mouth opens under mine, warm and yielding, and I kiss her with slow, thorough patience until the rigid line of her shoulders loosens.
When I pull back, I keep my forehead against hers.
"Our parents can't know about the lactation. Not right now. Not until we figure out what's causing it."
Her brow furrows. "I?—"
"Which means I'm the one who handles this." I hold her gaze. "Let me take care of you."
She doesn't say yes. But she doesn't say no. Her eyes search my face, wavering, and that's enough for me.
I reach beneath her sweater again, and this time I push the fabric up past her ribcage, exposing the plain cotton bra that's already spotted with two dark, wet circles.
I unclip the front clasp and her breasts spill free—full, heavy, nipples tight and flushed dark, beaded with tiny white drops that catch the dim afternoon light filtering through the tinted windows.
The parking lot outside is empty. Nobody can see. It's just us.
I lower my mouth to her left breast.
"Ahh—" Her hand shoots to my shoulder, gripping hard enough that her nails bite through my shirt.
My lips close around her nipple and I suck, a long, steady pull that floods my mouth with warm, sweet milk.
Her back bows in the passenger seat, pushing her breast deeper against my face, and I take more of her areola into my mouth, sealing tighter, drawing harder.
The milk comes in pulses, matching the rapid rhythm of her heartbeat. I swallow, and her whole body shudders.
"Oh—oh God, Callum—" Her voice is wrecked, breathy, barely above a whisper.
Her fingers slide from my shoulder into my hair, gripping the strands at the back of my skull the same way she did yesterday, and I growl against her skin because the sensation of her holding me to her chest—feeding me—sends a bolt of raw possession straight through my core.
I work her left breast until the flow slows, my tongue circling her nipple between each pull, pressing flat against the sensitive peak and lapping at the milk that seeps out in thin, warm trickles.
She's squirming in the seat, thighs pressing together, small desperate sounds falling from her lips between each breath.
"Mmm—I can't—ahh?—"
I switch to her right breast. This one is fuller, heavier, and when my mouth seals around the nipple, the letdown is immediate and strong.
Milk floods across my tongue and I swallow in thick, rhythmic gulps, my hand cradling the weight of her, thumb pressing into the soft outer curve to angle her nipple deeper into my mouth. She cries out.
"Ahh—ahh—please?—"
She doesn't finish the sentence. Her head falls back against the headrest and her grip tightens in my hair and I drink from her in long, unhurried pulls, savoring each warm mouthful, feeling her body tremble and jerk with every draw.
Milk escapes from the corner of my lips and runs in a thin line down the underside of her breast, pooling in the crease where soft flesh meets her ribcage, and I chase it with my tongue before returning to her nipple and sucking harder.
"Oh—oh God—" The moan tears out of her, loud enough to fill the car, and her hips lift fractionally off the seat before she catches herself.
I don't stop. I drink until her right breast softens under my mouth, until the flow ebbs to a thin trickle and then to nothing, and I give her nipple one last slow, dragging suck that pulls a shattered whimper from her throat.
Then I switch back to her left, finding it has refilled slightly, and I draw the remaining milk out with patient, measured pulls while her body shakes beneath me.
When I finally lift my head, my lips are wet and her breasts are flushed and soft, the nipples swollen and glistening.
She stares at me through half-lidded eyes, her chest heaving, her hair mussed against the headrest. Her expression is dazed, undone, caught somewhere between shock and something she isn't ready to name.
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and hold her gaze.
I will never let another man near her.