Chapter 7
She opened the door because not opening it felt like screaming.
Cole had the scar and the grin. Ryan had a bottle he was not supposed to have in the hall, glass sweating on his fingers. They smelled like a cousin’s garage, like cold air, like mint gum covering beer.
“See?” Cole said. “Decent. Cardigan and everything.”
“I was on the computer,” Lina said. “I am going to sleep.”
Ryan leaned on the frame, looking past her at the laptop’s dark screen, the notebook, the socks on her feet. “Dad’s meeting. Mom’s at Aunt Chris. House is ours. Don’t be a clerk about it.”
They came in without waiting for a word that meant enter.
Cole dropped on the bed. The mattress jumped; the guest-room frame clicked against the wall. Ryan set the bottle on her desk next to the vocabulary lists. Condensation made a ring on the wood. Lina stood by the laptop as if Tomas might rise out of the black glass and make them smaller.
“Wrestling,” Cole said. “Ryan owes me from the game. You referee.”
“I don’t know the rules.”
“There are no rules,” Ryan said, and hooked an arm around her waist from the side.
Play. He pulled her onto the bed. She laughed because the alternative was a sharp noise she did not want them to own.
Cole grabbed her ankle. White socks. Ridiculous.
She kicked and they let her kick, then caught the kick and held it, grinning like brothers who had done this to cousins and thought cousins and exchange students were the same species.
“Stop. Please. This is my room.”
“Guest room,” Cole said. “Family house. You heard Dad.”
Ryan tickled her side, fingers digging in just enough.
The laugh came out of her helpless, angry at itself, the same laugh she had given when he asked if Lithuanian girls were quiet.
The cardigan rode up. Cole’s hand found the strip of skin above her skirt and paused there, heat, five fingers, then spread.
Lina’s laugh died in her teeth.
Ryan kissed her.
Beer and mint and the shape of a joke that had decided to be serious.
She turned her head and hit Cole’s shoulder; Ryan found her mouth anyway.
Cole made a pleased sound and gathered her wrists above her head, loose enough that she could have torn free if she used all of herself, tight enough that she understood he did not think she would.
“Ryan—”
Ryan kissed her deeper. Lina’s body did the Saturday thing, the washer thing: freeze first, then a traitor answer. A small kiss back. Then another, because the first had already happened and the door had no bolt and the laptop was off and thank you had been training her mouth since the airport.
Cole let go of one wrist and palmed her breast over the shirt. Small B-cup. Nipple already tight from the wrestle, from the laugh, from shame. He rubbed a circle. She gasped into Ryan’s mouth and Cole laughed under his breath.
“Knew it. Quiet ones.”
They got rougher in inches. No more tickling.
Ryan’s knee pushed between her thighs and stayed.
Cole’s hand slid under the shirt, skin on skin, and found the puffy nipple the way Mark had in the basement, except Cole was twenty-one and not trying to be a gentleman about it.
He rolled it. Pinched once, light, testing.
Lina shoved at his chest. He moved back an inch and came forward again, mouth on her neck.
“We can go,” Ryan said against her lip, and did not go. “Say it like you mean it.”
She meant it.
The sentence lined up behind the lid where she kept thank you and I’m fine and strange, not bad.
Cole pulled the shirt up.
Lina crossed her arms over her chest. He waited, scar catching the desk lamp, grin gone thinner.
The wait was its own pressure. Her arms loosened.
He moved them. The shirt bunched under her chin.
The small breasts sat in the guest-room air, nipples standing straight, too pink, too obvious.
Ryan swore softly, almost respectfully, and put his mouth on one.
Lina’s back arched off the pale spread. A sound came out of her that was not a referee’s sound and not a church sound. Ryan sucked. Cole watched, then took the other side with his fingers, clumsy-eager, thumbing the peak until her hips twitched.
Ryan’s hand went down.
Over the skirt first. Then under it, along her thigh, to cotton that was already not dry. He pressed with two fingers and made a noise in his throat.
“Christ, she’s—”
“Don’t say,” Lina whispered.
Cole said it anyway, laughing into the skin of her shoulder, a filthy little word that did not exist in her mother’s kitchen, and the play was gone.
The hall outside was empty of parents.
The boyfriend was rain on a dead screen.
The twins were on the guest bed like the house had been waiting for this hour since the paper at the airport that had her name on it, and Lina’s thank-you mouth was running out of lids.
Ryan pulled her panties to the side and looked.
Lina turned her face into the pale spread.
Cole would not let her hide. He held her chin, thumb on her lip, so she had to see Ryan bend between her thighs.
The first lick was flat and wet, straight up the middle of her.
She kicked. Ryan caught her hips and did it again, slower, tongue opening her.
A squeal went into Cole’s palm. She was slick in a way that shamed her more than the unlocked door—hot, obvious, coating Ryan’s mouth when he sucked at the little peak.
“Christ,” Ryan said against her. “She’s soaked.”
Cole got his jeans open with his free hand.
The sound of the zipper was loud in the guest room.
He was already hard, thick enough that Lina stared and forgot to close her mouth.
He painted her lower lip with the head, wet, and she said wait and then she didn’t.
Wait had not stopped the basement. It did not stop this.
She took him in clumsy, too much at once, glasses slipping down her nose.
He hissed and gathered her hair, not yanking yet, just holding her there so she had to learn the taste of him.
Ryan stood only long enough to shove his pants down. When Cole pulled out of her mouth, a string of spit followed. Ryan put himself on her tongue instead. Saltier. A different angle. Lina gagged, pulled off, gasped, eyes wet, and Cole laughed under his breath and guided her back.
“One then the other,” Cole said. “Don’t think. Just suck.”
She did. Cole. Ryan. Cole again. Her lipstick-less mouth went shiny.
Ryan never took his hand off her pussy—two fingers sliding in the wet, curling, then his mouth back on her while she had Cole down her throat.
She made a broken noise around the cock.
Ryan came up and kissed her, filthy, her own taste on his tongue pushed into her mouth. Cole watched and swore.
They dragged the skirt down her legs. The panties went with it. Socks stayed on. The cardigan hung off one wrist like a flag she had surrendered. Cole pushed her knees toward her chest. The small breasts flattened and then sat up, nipples tight, spit-dark from Ryan’s mouth.
“Tell us to stop,” Cole said.
Lina’s voice was already wrecked. “The program—”
“That’s not stop.”
He pushed into her.
Tight. Slick. The head stretched her and she squealed into Ryan’s mouth.
Cole went in to the hip and stayed there a second, breathing hard, then fucked her in short stamps that made the bed frame click the wall.
Wet sounds. Skin. Ryan fed her his cock when her mouth opened on a cry. She drooled on the spread.
They swapped without asking.
Ryan in her cunt, deeper, a grind that hit something that made her hips jerk.
Cole in her mouth, holding her hair now, guiding.
Then again the other way. A thumb pulling a nipple until it stung.
Lina came on Ryan’s cock with a shocked cry she tried to swallow and could not.
Her pussy clenched, obvious, greedy. Both twins laughed, pleased, and kept her knees apart so she could not hide the shine.
“Good,” Cole muttered. “Quiet girl.”
Her glasses sat crooked. Through them she saw the desk, the sweating bottle, the notebook with *I want the library* in neat ink that belonged to a different girl.
Ryan pulled out. The emptiness clicked. Cole rolled her onto her side, hooked her top knee forward, and pushed back into her pussy from the front.
“More,” Cole said to his brother, not to her.
Lina knew what more meant. She shook her head. Her mouth said please. Please was not no—not after the kiss she had returned, not with her own slick on Ryan’s chin.
Ryan spat on his fingers, rubbed her ass, pressed a fingertip, then the head of his cock. Pressure. Too much. She squealed into Cole’s shoulder and Cole kissed her hair like comfort and did not pull out.
“Easy,” Ryan said.
He was not easy. He was slow enough that the inch happened. Burn. Stretch. Lina’s eyes went wet behind the glasses. Cole fucked her pussy in tiny strokes while Ryan worked into her ass, and the guest room filled with the obscene tight sound of both.
“Breathe,” Ryan said. “We got you.”
They had her.
Two cocks. One small body. Socks on. Shirt at her throat. The fridge downstairs dumped ice.
Lina held the headboard slat until her fingers hurt and let the twins invent a use for a girl who had wanted museums, her mouth open, her boyfriend still rain on a black screen six feet away, her thank-you lid finally off.
They found a rhythm that did not care about her list.
Ryan seated in her ass, Cole in her pussy, the stretch a single thick ache.
Lina squealed into the spread. Cole gathered her hair and pulled her head back so the sound came out clean.
Ryan’s hand landed on her ass, a spank that cracked in the guest room, then another.
The sting made her clench both of them. They groaned like she’d done it on purpose.
“That’s it,” Cole said. “Again.”
Ryan spanked her in time. Lina’s small breasts shook. Tears stood in her eyes and did not fall. Cole’s other hand came to her throat—not crushing, a collar of fingers under her jaw, enough that her breath went thin and the squeal turned high and helpless.
“Good girl,” Ryan muttered, driving in. “Quiet girl. Not quiet now.”
They used her like that until the bed walked an inch toward the wall. Wet. Slap. The wetter sound in her cunt. Lina came again with Cole’s hand on her throat, a broken cry, pussy fluttering, ass gripping Ryan until he cursed and slammed deep.
He finished in her ass with his forehead on her back.
Cole pulled out of her pussy, stripped her mouth onto him, and came on her tongue in three pulses. “Swallow.”
She swallowed because her mouth was already full of it.
Ryan pulled out slow. The empty burned. Come leaked out of her onto the pale guest spread, a mess she would have to live with. Cole wiped her lip with his thumb.
They zipped up like the referee hour was over.
Cole tapped the notebook. “Library tomorrow. We’ll wait at the wall if you want. Or we won’t.”
Ryan took the bottle. “Don’t tell Dad. He’ll get weird.”
Lina sat up. Shirt crooked. Socks still on. The cardigan on the floor. Her glasses fogged. She did not answer.
They left. Hall laugh, thinner now. A door. Music.
She waited until the house was only pipes.
The shower was scalding. She washed between her legs until the water hurt and still felt open—pussy slick, ass sore, throat marked by a hand that had not quite choked her and had been enough. She did not look in the spotted mirror.
Clean sheets were in the hall closet. She stripped the guest bed with shaking hands and hid the stained spread in the bottom of her suitcase like a crime. She remade the bed. She dragged the chair to the door.
The laptop sat dark.
Tomas would wait until morning.
She opened the notebook.
She wrote nothing.
The pen left a dent in the page.
Sleep did not come so much as collapse. In it the bed still clicked the wall. In it someone said *family house*. In it she swallowed and said thank you.
Morning would be the bus if her legs worked.
She pulled the socks back on under the blanket, a child’s armor, and stared at the hook on the door until the hook blurred.
The twins were children, she had told Tomas.
The sheets in the suitcase said otherwise.
Lina closed her eyes.
The program liked simple stories.
This one would have to stay in the basement of the house, under the guest room, under the chair that still would not hold.