Chapter 8 #3
"Almonds it is," Margot says. The conversation is back. "Green beans with the almonds. The corn pudding. The roast. We'll figure out a dessert later. I want everyone to have a thing."
"Actually, Wren likes a lemon tart," I offer, because it is the only true thing about Wren I can produce on short notice on account of my brains being so scrambled by my ridiculously cruel stepbrothers.
"Lemon tart it is."
"I make a decent one," Bane says.
"You do not." Margot’s eyes go wide as she leans over the island.
Bane puts his hand over his chest, his mouth agape. "Margot. I am wounded."
Zero snorts. "Don’t believe him. He buys one from that bakery on Sixth and tells people he makes it."
Margot nods her head with an easy smile. “Well if I’m not making it then I don’t care where it comes from. I’ll take all the help I can get.”
Bane's phone buzzes on the counter.
He glances at it. Sighs. Wipes his mouth with the napkin.
"Margot. I actually have to head downtown. Cohen pushed our meeting up."
"On a Sunday?"
"He thinks he's important. I have to humor him."
"Go, go. Take a sandwich for the road."
"Already wrapping it."
Bane gets up. Wraps a second sandwich in parchment. Drops a kiss on the top of Margot's head on his way past her. She smiles and I know she appreciates the gesture. Feeling loved–welcomed–embraced. Bane loves so easily and fully it’s hard not to want to be near him.
He gets to the door. Then turns back.
He looks at me for a beat. The smallest possible curl at the corner of his mouth.
"Be good, Maxie."
He leaves. The front door clicks shut. The kitchen, which was loud, is quieter.
Margot is rinsing her plate at the sink. Zero is finishing his apple. I am staring at my empty plate trying to figure out what to do with my entire body.
"I'm going to lie down for a bit," Margot says, drying her hands. "I think Liz exhausted me. You boys good?"
"We're good, Margot," Zero says.
"Max, sweetheart, drink some water. You're flushed again."
I clear my throat. "I will."
She kisses the top of my head on her way past and leaves the kitchen.
I sit at the island for one beat.
The bond between Zero and me is going so loud I can feel it under my ribs. The bond with Bane—now somewhere in a car on a highway—is a softer pulse, present but distant. The bond with Atlas, in another time zone, is the third low constant.
I'm hard in my shorts. Have been since the side yard. Through the sandwiches. Through every kind of mustard everybody wants. Through the corn pudding and the bakery joke and the iced tea and Zero's eyes on the side of my face for an entire meal.
And my cock… is their fault.
They wound me up. They watched. They sat me down at an island in front of my mother and made me eat a sandwich with one of them three feet away whispering filth into my ear.
I want to be furious about it.
I can’t be.
The thing I am, that I’m still figuring out about myself is: that I am allowed to want.
That wanting and asking are not the same thing and I have only ever really practiced the first one.
That a year ago I would have gone upstairs and dealt with this in a shower with my forehead against the tile and never said a word to anyone about it, and that approach was, on consideration, not really working for me.
Bane is gone.
Zero is here.
I look at the pitcher of iced tea sweating on the counter and I think, with a small clear voice that has not been in my head before:
Ask.
I'm up.
Carrying my plate to the sink. Rinsing it. Dropping it in the rack. Zero is still at the island, watching me, not bothering to hide the fact that he's watching me. I walk past him on my way out of the kitchen. Don't look at him. Don't break stride.
"Your room. Five minutes."
I keep walking.
I'm in his room in three—because despite the cool delivery of my exit line, I am not a person currently capable of waiting in another room for five whole minutes when I have just told my stepbrother I am about to come find him for sex.
His bedroom is exactly where I need to be right now.
Big. Unmade bed. The blackout curtains half-drawn.
A jacket on the back of a chair. The room smells like him—the gunpowder-and-coffee scent that drifts out from under his door at all hours of the day and night—and underneath that, faint, the soap I smelled on him an hour ago.
He showered before he came outside this morning.
He showered, probably knowing he was going to tease me.
I stand in the middle of his floor in my filthy shorts and my sweaty t-shirt and the last of the stubborn dirt still under my fingernails, and I think:
I just summoned him.
I just practically told my stepbrother to come fuck me in the kitchen, in my mother's hearing—well, no, she'd left—with my sandwich crumbs still on the counter, and I walked out without looking back to check if he was going to come.
This is who I am now, apparently.
But this is also who I want to be.
The bedroom door opens.
Zero leans against the frame.
He stands there, one shoulder against the wood, his thumbs hooked in the waistband of his track pants. His eyes go slow down the length of me—sweat-stuck t-shirt, dirt on my forearms, hair sticking to my forehead, the bond mark at my throat livid—and back up to my face.
Zero smiles. "You got here fast."
"...yeah."
"Couldn't wait the five minutes, baby?" He crosses his arms over his chest.
"...no."
"Mm. Walked through this house still smelling like my brother and couldn't even wait. I swear you know exactly what you’re doing. Filthy thing."
"Zero—"
"Get over here."
He shuts the door behind him without looking. Stays leaning against it, thumbs hooked in his waistband, watching.
I cross the room.
Three steps. The bond between us is hot. Every muscle I've been holding tight for ninety minutes—in the garden, at the kitchen island, in front of my mother—unlocks all at once. I stop a foot from him. He's watching me lazily like he always knew I’d end up in his grasp like a moth to a flame.
"Closer."
I take another half step.
His hand comes up. Slides around the back of my neck. Pulls me the rest of the way in until my chest is against his and his mouth is at my ear.
"Tell me what you want."
"...I—"
"Out loud, baby. I want to hear it."
"...I want you."
"You want me for what?"
"I want you to—"
I can’t make the words come.
His other hand finds my hip. Fingers slipping under the hem of my t-shirt to graze the skin above my waistband. His thumb on my neck finds the bond mark and presses.
"You came up here dirty from the garden and didn't even wash your face. Don’t be shy now, baby. Want me to what?”
"...Zero."
"Mm?"
"...don't make me say it."
He grins. "Sweetheart. I am absolutely going to make you say it." The hand at my hip tightens. "Out loud. With your words. Tell me what you want from me."
"I want you to—" my throat closes, opens—"I want you to fuck me."
"Sore?"
"...yes."
"While you're still feeling him."
"...yes."
He makes that sound again. The low pleased rumble I felt against the back of my neck on the patio. He leans in. Presses his forehead against mine. His eyes are dark.
"Christ, baby. You're gonna ruin me."
"Zero—"
"I’ve been hard since I saw you bent over those weeds. Do you know how much self control it took not to pin you down in the dirt and fuck you like the slutty little omega you are?"
"I—"
"You're mine for the next hour."
I bite my bottom lip as my cock twitches, aching in my pants.
"Strip."
I strip.
The t-shirt drops to his floor. My shorts and briefs go in one motion. I step out of them. Stand in the middle of his bedroom, naked, sweat-cooled, the bond mark at my throat livid and the ache between my hips a small steady metronome under everything else.
Zero exhales through his nose then pushes off the doorframe. He tips my face up, capturing my lips before I have time to breathe.
He kisses me filthy.
Open. Wet. His tongue in my mouth tasting, tasting whatever I am, whatever I’ve been carrying around all morning—garden dirt, sweat, the iced tea, the cheese from Margot's plate.
He hums against my mouth like he's settled into a meal.
Pulls back. Drags his tongue, slow, up the side of my throat from collarbone to ear.
Tastes the sweat there. Closes his teeth, gentle, over the bond mark Atlas put on me and breathes me in.
"Fuck."
"...Zero—"
"You're salty, baby."
He licks me again. Lower this time. The hollow of my collarbone, where the sweat pooled and dried.
Across my chest. Down the line of my sternum where the t-shirt was sticking to me an hour ago.
His tongue is hot and unhurried and his hands have come up to hold my ribs in place because my knees have started to shake.
This his mouth is at my hip, the crease of muscle there. He drags his nose along the line of it and inhales.
"I'm going to put my mouth on every inch of it before I fuck you."
He does.
He drops to his knees in front of me. Hands on my thighs.
Mouth on my belly, my hip, the inside of my thigh where the sweat was still beaded an hour ago.
He drags his tongue along my hipbone. Sucks the salt off the cut of muscle inside it.
Buries his nose in the crease where my thigh meets my groin and inhales like a man checking a wine.
"Baby."
"...yeah—"
"You even fucking taste like a man who's been used."
I make a sound that’s pathetic.
He looks up at me from his knees. Pupils blown. His mouth is wet from my skin and his hair is sticking up where I have, at some point I don’t remember, put my hand in it. He grins.
"Fair warning, sweetheart. I'm not done tasting you. But before I get back down here—"
He stands. Slow. Drags himself up the front of my body, mouth never quite leaving me, until he's standing again with one hand at my throat and the other reaching down to cup his bulge.
"—you're going to do something for me first."