6
hannah
“You realize this isn’t even about you,” Andrew is saying to me.
I am not wearing anything under this shirt of Ellis’s, which is long enough to cover my ass, but sort of tight in the hips and chest area.
I’m guessing the shirt would be snug on Ellis, too, but—as broad as he is in the upper chest region—I think I might be bigger than he is.
I want to compare the next time he’s against me, not that it matters, I suppose.
He’s out of my league. I know this.
Anyway, it’s uncomfortable, knowing that the only thing you’re wearing could ride up and expose you to your big brother. I should have put on my underwear.
“You do, though, Hannah,” Andrew insists.
I sigh.
“He’s doing this because of her,” says Andrew. “Because of my wife.”
“Well, because of both of you,” I say. “He doesn’t like either of you, really, and it’s some vindictive thing. He wants you to feel as bad as he does, I guess.”
“Well, this is what I’m saying, then. Why would you be part of that? Do you want me to feel bad?”
“No,” I say.
“Let me tell you a little story about Ellis Cirillo,” he says.
“When Callie and me first started doing anything at all, just holding hands or kissing, she was really adamant that he couldn’t see it and couldn’t know about it.
I didn’t like that, and I told her that, but she would not have her mind changed about it.
She was insistent. Anyway, one day, he sees us kissing goodbye or something, and Ellis comes over to us, and I can see he’s entirely lost it, he’s hanging on by a thread.
He’s angry as all hell. He says she needs to come with him to talk, and I say no, that she’s not going anywhere alone with him, but she puts her hands on my chest and tells me it’s okay, she needs to do this, and she goes off with him.
When she comes back, she’s got a bruise on her neck. ” Andrew touches his own neck.
“He hit her?” I say quietly.
“I don’t know if he used his fists. He bruised her.”
I shift uncomfortably on my feet. Do a real good job for me, even if it’s a little painful, echoes his voice in my head. But I kind of liked it in some fucked-up and pathetic way. I liked hurting for him. It didn’t hurt a lot or anything, but… “She told you what he did?”
“No, obviously not.”
“She told you that he’s hurt her like that before?”
“Look, if I had evidence or something I could use against him, I’d get him locked up. I’d at the fucking least get a restraining order. He’s not stable, Hannah.”
Funny, because he said the same thing to me.
“I can see that you know this,” says Andrew.
“I can tell because of how you’re not looking at me, and how you’re not arguing with me.
You know I’m right. It’s not safe for you here.
He treats her like hell, and he’s in love with her.
You? He does not give a shit about you. He’s just doing this to you to make Calliope lose her mind. ”
I look up at him. “Well, I can’t go with you now. I’m not dressed.”
He looks at my bare legs. “Fuck,” he breathes.
“And I… Andrew…” I sigh. “I know this isn’t real, but this is all I’m going to get.”
“What?” he says.
“You don’t get it. You’re Andrew the alpha. You’ve always had Calliope. I’m the twenty-four-year-old virgin whose only boyfriend turned out to be gay. I know he’ll get tired of me after he’s had his little revenge game, but can you just let me have this while it lasts?”
Andrew furrows his brow. “You’re enjoying this.”
I don’t say anything.
Andrew shrugs. “He is… you know… he’s an omega. He’s got a certain magnetism, I’ll give you that.” He shakes his head. His voice comes out defeated. “You’re going to stay.”
“I said that I was going to stay.”
Andrews sighs. “You’re still going to text Mom.”
“Yes,” I say. “I will text her.”
“And you call me the minute he puts his hands on you in a way that you don’t like, you got that?”
I nod.
“And I’m going on the record that I don’t like this, and I want you to leave, and that he’s a jackass.”
“Yeah, message received,” I mutter.
“I don’t really think the message is received,” says Andrew. “But you’re an adult. I can’t drag you out of here by force or anything.”
Eventually, he leaves, and I shut the door behind him. I don’t have my phone down here, so I have to go upstairs to Ellis’s bedroom to compose a text to my mother, telling her not to worry, that I’m fine, that I can leave anytime, that I’m here by choice.
Ellis is sitting on the bed, still wrapped up in a blanket, not wearing anything else. Before I start texting my mom, he says, “You stayed.”
“I said I would,” I tell him.
After I send the text, I turn to look at him, and he’s lounging there with the blanket wrapped around himself, showing off one bare leg and a hint of his chest and stomach.
He looks like a fucking model, like he could be the middle of some magazine spread.
And I know he’s not mine, but he’s right there, and I guess I can touch him if I want.
So, I go over to test my theory. I stand next to him. First, I touch his shoulder, through the blanket.
He looks up at me, giving me a little grin, his dark curls in his dark eyes.
Then I move my fingers, trailing them up his shoulder until I meet the skin of his neck. I trace my fingers down the column of his throat, over his clavicle, down until I find his dark chest hair.
He just smiles at me, letting me.
We hold each other’s gaze.
“My brother says you bruise Callie,” I say.
“Only if she begs,” he says, but there’s something in his tone. “You want to talk about me and Callie?”
I lick my lips. He said that thing about her, and I shut him down. “You lost your virginity to each other, I guess?”
He nods. “Which is why we should probably give you a little break down there. I remember her needing a day or two.” His fingers wind between my legs and then he’s touching me there, gentle, questing. “Let me see,” he says in a low, low voice.
I lift my leg. He’s sitting on the bed, and he sets my foot down next to him on the bed, my knee bent. He ducks his head in to look at me between my thighs.
I let out a breath.
He feathers his forefinger around my opening. “You’re all right. Maybe a little red and swollen, but I don’t know if that’s good or bad.” One of his fingers slips inside me.
I make a guttural noise.
He removes it. He moves his hand and he tugs on my pubic hair, gently. “You don’t shave this, understood?”
“Uh huh,” I manage, but that makes me feel good. Of course, I don’t know why he likes it that way, but I like being anything he likes.
He pats me, pats my whole pussy, a sort of affectionate and intimate movement, and it makes something in me convulse.
“Sorry,” he breathes. He leans forward and plants a little kiss on the inside of my thigh, on the leg that’s lifted.
“I’ll try to be more careful with you. I do appreciate this, you know, Hannah? ” Another kiss.
I moan.
He chuckles knowingly, and his mouth moves over and he’s kissing me there, right there, on my clit.
I let out a startled sob.
He drags his tongue over me, gentle, wet, intense. Obviously, no one has ever done this to me, and—
His phone rings.
He jerks his head back and he picks up the phone. He answers it, putting it on speaker, and he puts his mouth right fucking back on my clit.
I don’t make noise, though, because I see who it is, who called him. I see her name on the screen.
Calliope.
He licks me. “Hey,” he says to the phone. “Your husband just left.”
“Oh, shit,” she says. “I’ve been avoiding him all day, and he’s going to be annoyed with me.
I just didn’t want to deal with him, you know?
Because I ended things with you, which is what he wanted.
So, I did what he wanted, and he’ll be trying to hide the fact he’s gloating, but I’ll be able to tell—”
“He’s not gloating, Callie,” Ellis interrupts, gives my clit one last lick, and—when I don’t make noise—he gives me a look and then moves away.
“He was here trying to get his sister away from me. He told her that I abuse you, also. I really wish you would explain to him that I’ve never given you bruises you didn’t want. ”
A noise of disbelief from the phone. “What the fuck, you jerkface? Yes, you have.”
Ellis looks up at me.
I move my leg so that both of my feet are on the ground, so that I don’t have my entire vulva on display for him. Everything down there feels incredibly sensitive and throbbing.
“No way,” says Ellis, still looking at me.
“You hurt me all the time,” she says. “You do not give a shit about my feelings. Case in point, this. What the fuck was that you sent me?”
He smiles, holding my gaze, and I don’t like that smile on his face.
It’s satisfied and more than a little cruel.
He’s enjoying the fact she’s upset. This is the man who I was just letting put his mouth on my most sensitive, most personal place.
This guy, he’s… unhinged. “I think you know what it was.”
“You liked it, then?”
“Did it sound like I was enjoying myself?”
“It sounded like she was.” Calliope’s voice rises.
Holy shit, he did not send that to her. My lips part, and I feel the knowledge rushing into me, as I flood with embarrassment.
He immediately breaks eye contact with me. “Obviously, she was.”
“I want to see you.”
“Fine,” he says. “Where?” He takes the phone off speaker and puts it to his ear.
I sit down shakily on the bed.
“Yeah,” he says into the phone. “No, I know… I don’t know, he’s your husband, you can fucking call him yourself… Yeah… Love you.” He hangs up.
Love you? I look at him with disgust and surprise and… and…
He points at me. “Don’t go anywhere. Just, um, watch whatever you want.” He gestures to the TV hanging on the wall across from his bed. “The remote is by the bed on the bedside table. Eat anything you want in the house. Do whatever. I’ll be back.”