Chapter Thirty-Six #2
“And then it’s off to the highest bidder as soon as she graduates RMU. God, the one that gets to breed her… fuck .” Someone said and they all laughed, and suddenly I had to find her.
She was in the pool. A red, extremely appropriate, two-piece on, and for the first time, I was angry, (not hard) that she was walking around with something that showed so much… leg. Christ, I was mad at her legs .
No. I was mad at those gross pricks in my dad’s office ogling an almost fifteen-year-old. And what the fuck were the ‘arrangement negotiations?’
“Raven, you should go inside up to your room.”
“ Me ? It’s the first nice day we’ve had in weeks, and you want me to go inside ?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck you. You go inside.”
“Raven, I’m not kidding. Get away from the window. Dad’s business partners are in there staring at you through his office window like old creeps. Go inside through the sunroom. They’re watching us now. Act like you’re mad at me or something I don’t know, just get away from the fucking window.”
There is a small panic that crawls on her face but for the first time, she listens to me. She grabs her towel, dries off, throws it at me like she’s angry, and rushes off with her middle finger in the air. “Fuck you!”
“Fuck you right back, sis !” It’s a lame comeback but I don’t know what else to say. I’ve never been mad at her, even when I should’ve been. I threw her towel down and jumped in, ignoring the look on my father’s face as he peered at me through the window.
Later on that night, I climbed into bed with her. It had stormed so often these last few weeks it was weird sleeping without her in my arms. When I went to hold her, I felt her little body shaking.
“What’s wrong, cookie?”
“Nothing, Axel. I’m fine.”
“Ray, look at me. What’s going on?”
She turns to face me, her head on her pillow and mine on mine.
“I just really miss my dad sometimes. I just… I think if maybe I’d been there.
He’d have given up drinking. My mom is so…
hard to please. I know he drank a lot to forget the things she’d say to him, the things she called him and treated him and sometimes I can’t help but wonder if it had just been us…
” She shakes her head as I wipe the tears from her face.
Those hurt me more. Her silent tears, I mean.
Because it means she’s hurting in a place I can’t reach.
Like when she was doing ballet. She wasn’t crying silently then because her feet hurt.
She was crying because she was miserable and her mom still made her do it.
She cried silently when her dad died, too.
Cried silently when she was denied going to his funeral.
Silent tears… her silent tears hurt me more because it means I can’t help. All I want to do is reach into her body and cradle her heart in my hands.
“I love you, cookie. I’ll never leave you.”
This makes her cry harder.
So I hold her tighter.
_______ _
“I applied to Berklee.” She says, leaning on my door frame, arms crossed over her chest, one ankle over the other. Her hair is up in a ponytail that rests on her shoulder, cascading down like a dark chocolate waterfall. “And Julliard.”
We're eighteen now. About to graduate. My dreams have been crushed, but hers haven’t. She doesn’t know. I want to keep it that way. Except I can’t imagine being away from her for too long. I… I still need her. I want her. She’s still mine.
I sit back in my desk chair, twirling my pencil between my fingers, watching as she enters my room slowly, one step at a time like a black cat prowling closer.
She’s still in her school uniform, her black socks up to her knees, plaid blue and black skirt barely hitting the middle of her thighs.
The light blue button down is tucked in to the skirt, but I know what’s under the uniform.
I’ve seen her in bikinis and her underwear enough to have a lifetime of material for my spank bank.
But her, like this, in her uniform… it will always do things to me.
I know I’ll be in the shower later imagining her bent over, that little skirt shoved up to her back, tits hanging out and swaying, knocking together while I spread her ass apart and fuck so deep into her she can’t keep quiet.
It’s a thought that usually gets me to blow my load quickly.
I drop the pencil and spin in my chair to face her as she sits on the edge of my bed. “I thought you wanted to go to Rayne-Moore with me. Their music program is better than Julliard.”
She sighs and leans back on her hands, if she let her knees relax, I’d be able to see what I’m dying to see. “I’m not sure.”
“You loved their campus.”
She nods. “I did. It was creepy.”
“Come here.” She gets up and sits in my lap, arms going over my shoulders while mine go around her waist. I’ve had years of being able to control my hard-ons around her. “What’s got you so pensive?”
“You don’t think it’s weird neither of us applied and we still got in? ”
I shrug. “Not really. Dad went there. He's a legacy.” In more ways than one.
“That’s just it, little brother. I… I think I want to be out on my own. I know you’ll be playing football and you’ll be happy there. But I want to be away from…” she gestures to, well, everything. “All of this.”
“And me?”
“Never you.”
“Hmm.” I scoot down lower, so she sits better on my lap and let my hands fall to her hip and thigh. I love that crease where they meet. “Feels like it.”
She hugs me, putting her breasts in my face. It’s innocent to her but for me, it’s always been different. More . “I just feel like it’s time for me to break away.”
I stay silent when she pulls away, her scent in my nostrils, her ass in my lap, her breasts under my chin, my hands on her squishy parts to look up at her caramel eyes.
They make me dizzy. “If you go to RMU, I promise I’ll stay away.
I’ll let you have your own life. Just promise you won’t stop going to my games and I promise to go to your recitals. ”
“I would still go to your games even if I went to a different school. I’d still be close enough to make them.”
“But who's gonna protect you when it storms and there’s lightning?”
“Hopefully whomever I’m dating.” She grins.
I hold in my growl. But I do take it one step further and do the thing she can never resist. I clutch her tighter, furrow my brows and pout, lowering my voice to a whine.
I’ve noticed she can never tell me no when I become a fucking puppy for her.
“Please, Ray? Please don’t leave me yet.
Just do a year with me there and if you hate it after that, then you can transfer out. I promise I’ll leave you alone.”
“Fuck, Axel.” She groans, frustrated, rolling her eyes, and I know I’ve won. “ Fiiiiinnne. One . Year .”
Happily, I tug her to me again and pepper a dozen kisses on her cheek. “Yes! ”
“Ugh! You slobbered on me!” she says, wiping at her face and I tilt my head back and laugh. Fuck it, I don’t care. I always want her with me.
________
“ Negotiations have been settled, and the contracts have been signed. Their offspring will be the most powerful and wealthiest legacies of their generation. Not even God will be able to touch them.” My father sneers with pride but my heart crumbles in my chest, all blood draining from my head to my toes.
There’s no way. There’s no fucking way Raven signed her life away to Tyler. My hands curl into a fist as I stand from my chair in his office. “You said she was going to be mine.”
“I said, ‘If no other offers come as close to what we can build by staying in the family, then I’ll allow it.’”
Staying in the family. He makes it sound so incestuous.
It's not. She’s mine. She’s always been mine.
He knows this. He's known this since they first stepped foot in our house. Since the first time she sat at the foot of my bed and watched over me when I was sick, making sure my fever didn’t spike and brought me juice and watched cartoons with me.
She’s been mine since our first dance at their wedding.
She’s been mine since my eyes landed on her. Plain and simple.
“What’s going to happen to her?”
“Stephen has allowed for her to graduate with her degree in music. She’ll have two years to believe she has a choice in this, in which Tyler will try to woo her. And then when he fails, it’ll be known she has no choice.”
“She… but… she’s not going to go down without a fight.”
Father chuckles as if this is just a soft form of entertainment to him. “Stephen like his women with a little fight.”
“Stephen? You said she was negotiated for Tyler.”
He shrugs. “Semantics. Tyler has certain… tendencies that haven’t escaped Stephen. If Tyler can’t perform… well, then it’ll ju st be a marriage on paper and the heir will still be a Prescott.”
I can’t imagine her genetics being washed out by his. I can’t imagine her holding a child in her arms and they not have her eyes. “She’s not going to want this. She’ll flee. She’s a runner. She’s always been trying to escape you and Sofia… this life.” And for good reason, I don’t add.
The smirk on his face slides right off. “Then she'll die. The only way this contract does not go through… is death .” Hazel eyes harden as they peruse me from where he stands in the corner of his office, tall and somewhat imposing but if I were to stand, he'd have to look up.
“If she dies, life will continue on, son. But if Tyler were to die, she goes straight to Stephen.”
I don’t hide the disgust from my face.
“Always read the fine print, son. You’ll know this once you pass the bar and work for our company.”
That’s my future.
To be another lawyer on my father's executive team of lawyers while I learn Monroe Tech's policies and procedures inside and out so I can take over for him as CEO when he retires. My entire life is set for me. Nothing is mine.
Not even her.
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