16. Erik
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
erik
Seventeen-Years-Old
Her scream cuts through the wall.
The controller in my hand hits the floor. I'm already up. In the hallway. At her door. My shoulder catches the frame as I push through into her room.
She's on her side, whimpering, her cheeks creased and flushed against the pillow. My cock stirs. It’s fucking annoying how easily she makes me hard.
Blood pumps through my body.
I get dizzy from it.
I sit on the edge of the mattress. She is wearing a tight white camisole. I can see her bare thigh poking out from under the sheets, but I know she’ll have knickers on, and I bet they’re white…
They’re always white.
They should be white.
I should wake her up. My hand moves to the sheet instead, and I draw it down slowly, carefully, watching inch by inch, exposing...
Her tits.
Her bellybutton.
I exhale hard as I stare at her slender figure.
She is beautiful. Goddammit, if she isn't the most beautiful goddamn girl in this goddamn world, and I have to watch my friends leering at her and telling me what they'd like to do to her, but they don't know her.
They don't know what I know. They haven't earned her trust.
They haven’t held her while she cries, don’t listen to her secrets, don’t watch her play guitar for hours. I do that! They don’t watch her walk around their house in her underwear and eat all their cereal—I can be trusted. She chose me.
She came to us in October, when I was twelve.
I remember her flinching when the front door closed behind her for the first time.
Good, I’d thought. I knew her story. Knew she’d been hurt by her dad.
Then she looked up at me on the stairs, and I stared.
Wide-eyed. At this little girl with her blonde hair.
I gripped the banister. I never, ever, in my life felt anything so powerful as my desire to be the one she trusts.
The only one.
I don’t have to share.
To be the one.
I wanted to hate her once, just once, for taking over my family, stealing their attention and love.
I wanted to resent her, because she ruins so much.
My sleep. My plans for college. My relationships with girls, with friends who look at her like I look at her.
I haven't slept well since I was twelve—she took my sleep as well.
That's okay, Bebe.
Because I have you.
She was like a broken kitten, so quiet, so timid. So adorable. Those traits never actually shifted into anything else, but physically she has changed, is changing. Every year she becomes more beautiful and smiles only for me, tucks herself behind me, choosing me over and over—relies on me.
It's me and her.
So now as I look down at her, my fingers twitch with the need to touch her. That is how she heals, and she's crying. She needs my touch. The touch game. It was my idea. My touch heals her. Every time. My parents wanted to take her to a psychologist, but I knew better.
We practiced the touch game over and over. It was my touch that saved our family. It was my touch that she trusts. Without me, no one can get close to her.
I remember her first Pap smear.
My cock thickens as I recall it. It's thanks to me that they were able to perform that check. It's thanks to me that they were able to keep her healthy.
The night before it was scheduled, she said she was fine, but I knew better. I was just a kid, but I knew she needed my touch. That I needed to touch her there first, so she would allow the doctor to do it.
We played the touch game.
In her bed.
One.
Two.
Three. I stroked between her legs. I remember that she was wet, but I didn’t understand what that meant at the time.
I do now…
She didn't flinch then. I did it twice. She gasped the second time but didn’t move.
Of course she didn’t—I’d healed her. I wanted to do it again, just to be sure, but she whispered, ‘thank you, Erik,’ and closed her legs.
She said I'd shown her she could bear it. The doctor should have thanked me too. He wouldn’t let me hold her hand.
Fucker.
I imagined choking him.
The door to her bedroom suddenly slams shut, pulling me back to the now. In her room. She's looking up at me, and damn if she doesn't seem glad to see me. A soft smile.
For me.
Of course.
She blinks, long lashes sweeping her pale cheeks. Her eyes are weary and raw, searching my face as she surfaces from her nightmare.
"Erik?" she whispers.
"It's me, Bebe."
She sniffs, rubs her nose. "Did I wake you again?"
I frown. Of course, you woke me. You were fucking crying and thrashing again. "Yeah."
As she props herself on her elbows, her tits move beneath her tight white shirt. “Sorry.”
I swallow. "Don't be. It's what I'm here for." I crawl in behind her, and she lets me hold her against me. I feel her breaths through her back, trying with desperation not to think about how close her arse is to my cock, and how much I want to press myself into her.
The next day when I wake up, she's gone and I'm alone in her bed, surrounded by pink and books. I stretch out and look at her guitar in the corner. She sings to me. She has the most beautiful voice. My chest squeezes. I lift my hand and rub it, feeling my affection for her almost painfully.
I wander downstairs and she's sitting at the table, swinging her bare legs underneath and smiling at me with Coco Pops stuck between her white teeth. She seems happy.
"Morning," she says with a mouth full of cereal.
My cereal.
She frowns up at me; I realise it's in response to my scowl. "Sorry," she says, looking sheepishly at her bowl. "I didn't mean to wake you up yesterday."
"I know." I breathe through tight lips, holding something in—I don't know what—consciously trying to relax my face for her. My Bebe. "It's fine."
"You're such a teenage boy these days. Don't you have more than a two-word vocabulary?"
"It's fine… Blesk."
She giggles.
“You can wake me up anytime.” Because you’re mine. I know this. I knew it the moment I saw her. Just as I know how to breathe, I know Blesk Bellamy is mine.