Chapter 8 #2
She sniffed, tucking her hair behind her ear as she looked up at me with an innocent face she’d perfected over the years.
One that had always had our mom blaming me or one of my brothers for something our brat of a sister had done.
One I didn’t believe for a second. “I don’t know what you’re insinuating, but Brady’s room had the fewest amount of paper towel cartons in it, so it was easiest to disperse the overflow to the other rooms. I could’ve put her in the one next to mine, but it’s bursting with your last mistake… ”
I clenched my jaw, my hands curling into fists as I stared down at her. Was there anything in the world that got someone more enraged than a headstrong baby sister who thought she knew best? If there was, I hadn’t yet come across it.
“You can give me your BS excuses all you want, but I know you,” I said. “And I know when you’re meddling.”
“I’m not—”
“Lay off, Addison,” I snapped. “I mean it. Stop fucking around in other people’s lives.”
With that, I stormed back to my room, slamming my door like I was fourteen all over again instead of a thirty-four-year-old man who normally had a better handle on his emotions.
On a groan, I dropped down on the edge of my bed. I hung my head, elbows braced on my knees, and admitted the truth to myself. My sister wasn’t who I was mad at. That award lay firmly on my shoulders.
I’d gotten myself into this mess. I was the one who’d written a book that had gone viral.
I was the one who’d accepted a lucrative publishing deal to finish out the series.
I was the one who’d been trying to juggle it all, while making an active choice to keep it from my family and the rest of the town.
There had been so many times in the past five years when I’d had the opportunity to come clean.
At first, I’d kept it a secret because of those whispers in the back of my mind, courtesy of our father.
We’d grown up in a house where genre fiction was a dirty word.
As a man who’d spent his life attempting to write the next great American novel, he held the viewpoint that if you weren’t reading the classics, you might as well not be reading at all because everything else was trash.
It was a bullshit stance that I’d since shed, but when I’d first started writing, I’d had no idea if my siblings had.
I’d been rightfully apprehensive over their finding out that I not only wrote fantasy, but erotic fantasy at that.
It wasn’t until years and half a dozen books later when I’d come to the realization that my siblings cared about that elitist outlook as much as I did.
Which was to say, not at all. But at that point, the hole I’d dug had gotten so deep that it had become easier just to keep going along with the status quo than it had been to come clean.
Then, suddenly, five years had gone by, and my tally of lies had just kept stacking up.
And now, with the resort in the limelight, I was worried about what would happen to its success if it became widely known that one of the owners of the resort and A.M. Kinsey were one and the same.
While it was great to hope that everyone in the world would be open and accepting about it, the truth of the matter was that just wasn’t the case. People judged harshly for far less, and I didn’t want my choices to negatively affect my family or the success we were just starting to see.
With a sigh, I stood and unbuttoned my dress shirt, ready to call it a night.
It was clear I wasn’t going to accomplish anything more today, and the best thing was probably for me to sleep it off—or attempt to, anyway.
And to do so while trying to forget the fact that the sweetest pussy I’d ever tasted was less than fifteen feet away.
I could hear her shuffling around in the bathroom as I stripped down to my boxer briefs, not bothering to tamp down my body’s reaction to her. My cock was hard and thick, thanks only to her remembered taste and those damn noises she’d made through each one of her orgasms.
Bracing my hands against the frame of the closed bathroom door, I hung my head and shut my eyes, taking a few deep breaths in an attempt to get my shit under control.
Normally, I’d take care of this problem in the shower, but that felt exceptionally risky, considering Avery and I now shared this bathroom.
But would she feel the same way? Or would she have no problem getting herself off in there with the detachable showerhead, pointing the pulsing spray against her sweet little clit? Teasing herself until she was crying out in pleasure, biting her lip in an attempt to stifle her moans…
I was just reaching down to adjust myself when the bathroom door flew open, and Avery walked out of the bathroom and straight into my chest.
With a yelp, she jerked back, confusion on her face that quickly morphed into anger. “What’re you doing in my room?”
I raised a brow at her and lifted my chin toward the identical-looking door on the other side of the bathroom. The one she’d obviously mistaken mine for. “Wrong door, bunny.”
She glanced around, her eyes shifting behind me until she took in my bedroom, clearly different from the one she was staying in.
Then her gaze traveled over me from my face and down my chest until her attention stuttered briefly on the beast that was dying to be let out of my boxers, before snapping her eyes up to mine.
“Right. I got mixed up. I’ll just—” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder, giving me another once-over before she spun around and headed back to her room.
With a groan, I cupped a hand over my eyes and shut the bathroom door, cutting off my view of her in the tiny shorts she wore beneath a threadbare T-shirt.
But it didn’t matter. The sight of her walking away was seared into my retinas, and I had no doubt it would be keeping me company as I attempted—and failed at—sleep.