Chapter 15 Nicolò
Nicolò
The house is in complete darkness when I arrive back at the Castellano’s, but a quick scan of the closet when I hang up my overcoat tells me Bambalina isn’t home, which is unusual.
I’m still wired after having had hardly any sleep and taking her to an asshole gynecologist, so I walk to the cocktail cabinet and pour myself a whisky.
An image of her bending toward me barely wearing that traitorous pink dress flashes across my mind. It took a whole half hour for my semi to go down after seeing those breasts practically begging me to—
Jesus Christ, I’m tired.
My body sinks into the couch, exhausted.
I’ve been awake for forty-eight hours straight, dealing with trackers, Russians and Bellucci’s and the concerning prospect of a mole in our family.
I’ve never experienced anxiety in my life but an unease has seeped into my bones, stiffening them.
Probably not anything a double shot of liquor can’t cure.
After taking a deep slug of burning alcohol, I close my eyes and rest my feet on the coffee table.
Tiredness is taking a toll on my mind, and for once, it goes completely blank.
I relish it for a moment before my consciousness drifts back to the living room and I feel something nudged up against my foot.
I open my eyes to see the little toe of my right foot resting against a thick brown book lying face down on the table. Probably Mom’s latest read. She gets through books like they’re going extinct.
Leaning over to pick it up, a smile tugs at my mouth.
What’s she reading now? Last time I opened one of her books, it was dragon porn.
I tried to tease her about it but she got surprisingly defensive.
Something about the quality of the writing being out of this world.
Yeah, I’m sure she reads that shit for the quality writing.
I suppress a snort and let the book fall open in the middle.
Hold up, this isn’t a book, this is a work in progress. Is Mom writing a novel now? I distantly recall her saying she wanted to. A small voice in my ear suggests this doesn’t look like Mom’s handwriting, but I’m so intrigued as to what she’s written I don’t really register it.
She normally loves this time of year. The leaves crunching underfoot, so many pumpkin lattes she has to let out her pants, burning log fires, watching the Halloween decorations go up around the neighborhood…
I smile to myself. This does sound like the kind of thing Mom would write.
But she can’t conjure up the same enthusiasm for it that she used to. Her mind is consumed by something else. And when I say ‘consumed,’ I mean absolutely eaten up. Entirely pre-occupied. Practically obsessed.
My brow dips, my backbone straightening. Is this is a story?
She can’t get him out of her head. Even when he was ignoring her, or being mean at dinner, she still couldn’t stop thinking about him, fantasizing about him.
What the fuck? I prop the book on a raised knee and read on with a little more focus. Something feels off.
He took Ava to the doctors this morning…
I freeze.
It was impossible for her to pay attention to what the doctor was saying—he could have put her on OxyContin for all she knew. She was just so aware of Brodie sitting beside her, his leg brushing hers.
Who the fuck are Brodie and Ava?
His fingers drummed on his thigh. He was clearly uncomfortable sitting in the doctor’s office with Ava, but she could’ve sat there for hours.
She kept imagining what would happen if those fingers slipped and grazed her leg.
What if they slipped again and stayed there?
What if he liked the feel of her skin? What if, beneath the cover of the doctor’s desk, he’d lifted the hem of her dress and felt his way to her pussy?
He’d have found her bare and wet, aching for his fingers…
I sit up fast, my feet slamming to the carpet, my forgotten whisky falling to the floor.
A burning sensation erupts in my chest and courses through my body, making my skin feel hot to touch.
The room is spinning, the words before me blurring into an illegible mass.
I knew this wasn’t my mom’s handwriting. Even though that voice in my head knows whose handwriting this is, I still flip the book over to see its cover.
Bambalina Castellano.
It’s a fucking diary.
Bambalina’s fucking diary.
I snap it shut and drop it onto the table as though it suddenly grew spikes.
On autopilot, I clean up the spilled whisky and pour myself another—larger—measure. I never use alcohol as a prop or to self-medicate, but then again, I’ve never found an account of something I did feature in someone’s imagination before. And definitely not in such a horny, erotic way. Christ.
A darkness grips my heart. Bambalina isn’t just ‘someone’ either. She’s my fucking stepsister.
I sit in the same spot on the couch, but I can’t relax, so I lean forward, resting my elbows on parted knees, focusing intently on the whisky swirling around the glass. Every few seconds, my gaze lifts to the book. When I catch it, I blink, shake it off and return to the glass.
But in my periphery, it seems to be glowing.
He’d have found her bare and wet.
What the fuck?
Is this really just a story she’s writing? The events read very closely to those that occurred only yesterday. But the star of that story was Bambalina. There was no Ava.
Is this a diary disguised as a work of fiction?
I recall the words, the sentences, the account of her trip to a gynecologist. To anyone outside this family, the story wouldn’t be at all recognizable.
To anyone inside this family, it would raise an eyebrow or two.
To me? It’s so close to home I may as well be sitting by the damn fire warming my feet.
Is Bambalina Ava?
Is Brodie me?
Sweat breaks out across my forehead.
I shake my head in disbelief. There’s no way.
I must have missed something, or misunderstood.
I wrack my brain for an explanation and settle on one.
Well, it’s clear, isn’t it? She wants to write a novel—a story.
And she’s simply drawing on real-life experiences to embellish it.
That’s all it is. That’s the only explanation.
There’s no way my stepsister would be writing about real-life fantasies in a book that, frankly, anyone could get their hands on. They’re fictional. They’ve got nothing to do with me.
My gaze lifts again. My fingers are sizzling with the need to feel the leather one more time.
Just one more time.
No. Jesus. I need to control myself. Whatever that book is, it’s none of my business. Opening it again would be like opening up a Pandora’s box of secrets. Bambalina’s secrets. Her thoughts, her dreams, her fantasies. Her dirty fantasies.
A full minute passes.
I stare at the book, imploring it to release me, but it doesn’t.
Another full minute passes.
And another.
Then, one swift movement and zero rational thought is all it takes for a large measure of whisky to assault my throat, a glass to be slammed onto the table, and the book to be back in my hands.
It falls open at the same page and I devour the words, ravenously.
He’d have found her bare and wet, aching for his fingers.
Ava can feel it now. His slightly coarse fingertips tenderly feeling their way to her folds.
She’s breathing heavily, trying not to betray to the doctor what’s going on beneath his desk.
But she needs Brodie to know that it’s okay, that he’s allowed to touch her there, even though it’s so wrong.
Ava parts her legs, letting the dress rise further up her thighs.
Brodie’s fingers explore her, drifting back and forth over her clit.
Ava wants to cry out to let him know how good it feels, but she can’t, so she just bites her lip.
Brodie pulls moisture from her opening up to her clit and rubs her softly.
It feels so amazing she struggles to hold in a sound.
Ava feels a climax hurtling toward her, but she needs more. Beneath the table she grabs Brodie’s wrist and holds it between her thighs. His touch drives her mad and she needs to finish. He slips two fingers inside her and she comes straight away.
Ava doesn’t even care what the doctor thinks anymore. Her head falls back and her desolate moan fills the office. The doctor’s eyes pop out of his head but Brodie doesn’t stop. His thumb caresses Ava’s clit and his fingers reach deeper, sending tendrils of relief to each corner of her body.
When Ava finally comes down, to the doctor’s shocked expression and Brodie’s hungry glare, she releases his wrist. Then she stands, tugs the dress down over her thighs and walks out of the room.
I lift my gaze from the book, very much aware I am sweating from every part of my body capable of sweating. When I glance down, my pants are wet.
My cock is leaking.
I let that thought sink in for a moment.
I am immeasurably turned on by reading my stepsister’s diary.
If my final destination wasn’t already Hell, it is now.
I close the book carefully and place it back where I found it. A deep realization infuses the existing unease in my bones. I need to keep my distance from Bambalina Castellano. How can I be in the same room as her again, knowing she has these thoughts and fantasies?
Just thinking about it makes my head shake in disbelief. I have to forget I ever read those words. I have to pretend they never existed.
I take my glass into the kitchen, leaving no evidence that I’ve been sitting in a room alone with that book, then, with some level of discomfort, I make my way up the stairs to my room.
I finally free my dick but I don’t touch it.
I can’t. That would be like acknowledging I’m turned on by my stepsister and her words.
Sure, I beat off to a particular image of her earlier today in the shower, but that was different.
That was a means to end—to get rid of an erection in a time-efficient manner.
This… knowing she thinks in dirty ways too…
makes me complicit, makes it a little more real, and that feels all kinds of wrong, and… dangerous.
In the quiet of my room, the usually dormant school ma’am in my head lets rip.
What business did I have picking up that book in the first place?
Of course it wasn’t a saucy dragon novel—anyone could have seen that.
A normal person would’ve checked the cover before diving straight in.
A normal person would’ve clocked the handwriting, realized it was someone’s private work and closed it immediately.
If said normal person had genuinely not imagined it to be anything other than a collection of innocent, creative musings, but then seen the words ‘bare,’ ‘wet,’ and ‘aching,’ they would have closed the book right away.
But fuck if I have ever been normal, as demonstrated by my inability to look away, even after putting the book down once. I actually went to the effort of picking it up again. I knew what it was, and still that didn’t stop me.
I read my stepsister’s account of an orgasm. Didn’t stop me.
I got the king of all hard-ons. Didn’t stop me.
I leaked all over my fucking pants. Didn’t stop me.
I’m a fucking pervert.
Lying in bed, despite having had no sleep for half a week, I feel more awake, more alive, than ever. The only conclusion I allow myself to draw is that I’m in shock. And I really am. I’m so stunned I can’t sleep.
So, I stare at the ceiling, implore my cock to soften, and wait for the sun to come up.