1. Clara #2
Callum fills the doorframe with his shoulders, one hand still on the knob.
His blue eyes sweep the scene in a single pass—me standing shirtless with a damp towel pressed against my chest, the heap of wet clothes on the floor, the visible streaks of milk on my stomach.
His expression doesn't change. Not shock, not embarrassment, not the kind of awkward retreat any normal stepbrother would perform.
He steps inside and closes the door behind him.
"Get out."
"Sit down."
"Callum, I swear to God?—"
"Clara." His voice drops into that register that pins me in place, calm and absolute. "Sit down on the bed."
I don't move. My arms are shaking from how tightly I'm gripping the towel against myself, and the pressure of the fabric against my swollen breasts sends another wave of aching pain through me. My eyes sting. I blink hard and look anywhere but at him.
He crosses the room in three strides and stops close enough that I can smell his soap, his coffee, the faint leather of his watch strap. His hand comes up and wraps around my elbow—gently, but with enough weight that I feel the full span of his fingers circling my arm.
"You're in pain."
It's not a question. I press my lips together and nod, just once, because my voice will crack if I try to use it.
He guides me backward until the backs of my knees hit the mattress and I sit. The towel slips and I catch it, but not before he sees—the swollen, flushed skin, the wetness beading at my nipples, the way my body has turned into something I don't understand.
His jaw clenches. One tight flex of muscle beneath the stubble. Then he kneels in front of me.
"Let go of the towel."
"I can't—you can't just?—"
"You need to release the pressure. You can't do it by pressing a towel against yourself." His hands rest on my bare knees, warm and impossibly large, his thumbs tracing a slow line along the inside curve. "Let me help you."
"This is—you're my stepbrother."
The word hangs between us. His eyes don't waver.
"And you're sitting here in pain because you'd rather suffer than let someone help." He reaches up and curls his fingers over mine where they grip the towel. "Let go, Clara."
My hands open.
The towel falls to my lap, and I'm bare in front of him—flushed, swollen, leaking. I've never been topless in front of any man and the full weight of that crashes into me alongside everything else. I close my eyes and turn my face away.
He doesn't speak for a moment. Then his hand cups my left breast from underneath, lifting it gently, and the sound that comes out of me is something between a gasp and a whimper.
His palm is warm, his fingers careful but sure, and the pressure of his grip against the taut, aching skin sends a shock of sensation through my entire body.
"Lean forward a little," he says, low and close. "Toward me. That's it."
I lean. His other hand comes up to cradle the same breast, both palms working together.
His thumb presses firmly just behind my nipple and rolls forward, and the milk lets down in a thin, steady stream that drips onto the towel in my lap.
The relief is immediate and staggering—a deep, unwinding release that pulls a raw, involuntary sound from my throat.
"Ahh—" I grip the edge of the mattress with both hands, knuckles white.
"Good girl. Just breathe."
His thumb rolls again, deliberate and rhythmic, expressing the milk in pulses that match the throbbing ache.
Drip, drip, drip. The sound is obscene in the quiet room.
Each stroke sends relief cascading through me, and underneath the relief—tangled up in it, inseparable from it—a warmth that pools low in my belly and has nothing to do with pain.
He shifts to my right breast. His hand cups the full, heavy weight of it, and when his thumb finds the same pressure point behind the nipple, the letdown is faster this time. Milk flows freely, running over his knuckles, and I bite my bottom lip so hard I taste copper.
"Breathe," he repeats, and his voice is rougher now. Just a fraction. Just enough that I notice.
I open my eyes and look down at his hands on me—huge, tan, ink-darkened at the wrists—cradling my bare breasts with a competence that makes my face burn.
The milk is pale and thin, glistening on his skin, dripping into the towel.
His thumbs work in tandem now, both hands expressing from both breasts simultaneously, and the sensation is so intense I can't separate the relief from the pleasure from the shame.
"Oh God—" I breathe, and my hips shift on the mattress without my permission.
His thumbs press and roll, press and roll, and the milk flows in warm rivulets that streak down my stomach and soak into the towel.
My breathing comes in short, uneven pulls.
Each stroke sends a thread of sensation that starts at my nipples and tugs somewhere deep behind my navel, a connection I didn't know existed, and I grip the mattress harder because if I don't anchor myself I'll float right off it.
"There's too much," he says, his voice stripped down to gravel. "This isn't enough."
Before I can ask what he means, his mouth closes over my left nipple.
"Ahh—Callum—" My hand flies to the back of his head, fingers threading into his dark hair, and I don't know if I'm pushing him away or pulling him closer.
His lips seal around my areola and he sucks, cheeks hollowing, and the milk releases in a rush that I feel all the way to my spine.
His tongue presses flat against my nipple, working in tandem with the suction, and the relief is so acute it borders on something else entirely.
Something that makes my thighs press together.
He swallows. I hear it—the thick, wet sound of him drinking from me—and a moan tears out of me that I couldn't stop if my life depended on it.
"Mmm—oh God, oh?—"
Milk leaks from the corner of his mouth, a thin white line that runs down the curve of my breast and drips off.
He doesn't stop. His hand cradles the weight of me, tilting my breast upward to get a deeper seal, and his tongue circles my nipple between each long, drawing pull.
My back arches and my fingers tighten in his hair and I hold his head against me, feeding him, and the word for what this is—the honest, terrifying word—pulses in my skull but I won't say it.
He shifts to my right breast without lifting his head more than an inch, his mouth finding me immediately, sucking hard enough that the letdown hits fast and strong. Milk spills from my left nipple, untended now, running freely down my ribs.
"Ahh—ahh—" I'm shaking. My whole body trembles against his mouth.
When it's over—when the pressure finally eases and my breasts feel soft and emptied—he pulls back. His lips are wet. His eyes are dark and steady on mine.
I pull the towel against my chest and stare at the wall.
Something has shifted inside me. Not just the ache, not just the swelling—something deeper and unnamed that sits warm and heavy in my chest every time his gaze lands on me.
My body has changed in ways I can't explain or reverse, and Callum has crossed a line that neither of us can pretend didn't happen, and I know with a certainty that settles into my bones like iron that nothing between us will ever be the same.