Page 101 of Something Like Sunflowers

“Maybe you can help him,” she says, snapping the band again.

“Why do you do that? Snap that thing on your wrist?” She stops, her lips forming a small “O” shape, like maybe she didn’t think I’d noticed this habit. It’s cute she thinks I’d miss anything about her, as if she’s unremarkable in any way.

“It’s a therapy technique I was given after the crash,” she says, inspecting the frayed, black elastic around her arm.

“When my mind fills with things that seem uncontrollable and crippling, I snap this. It gives me back some of the control. It’s hard to explain, but it’s like my mind focuses on the sting because I told it to, and not on the things I obsess over.”

“They taught you to shock therapy yourself in counseling?”

“Um, I guess you could call it that,” she says, chewing her bottom lip.

So often I find myself jealous of this woman’s teeth for their proximity to her mouth, and I can’t control it any more than I can the weather. I reach out and run my thumb along her bottom lip, popping it free of her bite.

“I want to suck on this,” I say, and I feel the breath leave her lips as she gasps. “Can I?”

“Yes,” she says, her gaze wandering to the mounted rack along the stable wall that holds rows of thick farming ropes, and my smile widens.

“I want to show you something that requires full honesty and trust for both of us.”

She eyes me cautiously, like prey.

And fuck if I don’t like it.

I come to life around Devyn. The things I want to do to her body are as sinful as they are endless. But I’ll ask for forgiveness another day.

I reach out, tweaking her nipples through the fabric of her shirt. She lets out a sexy little sigh, and my cock instantly grows in response. I roll my thumbs along the hardened points until she drops her head, pleading for more of my touch, and I take advantage of what she offers as she arches her body back into my hold.

She tastes like oranges, as I kiss her bare collarbone, sucking and licking the skin as she moans my name. I pull away, watching the skin across her chest react to where I sucked in soft red welts, and I shoot my gaze back to the ropes lining my walls and groan, imaging how perfect she’ll look, wrapped up and coming all over my finger, binds pressed tightly against her soft flesh, as she takes her pleasure from me.

Fucking beautiful.

“Do you trust me?” I ask.

“I do.”

Chapter 37

Devyn

Iknow what we went through tonight was a lot, to say the least, but I’m happy about that.

I’m heartbroken for Samuel.

His life wasn’t easy when we were kids. He was so much younger than Hunter, too, just a year behind me, when their father started those awful benders, night after night away at an unknown bar in some other town. Envelopes would overflow from the letter box and fall to their doorstep.

I could never imagine what that felt like, being alone for weeks. Staying with friends. Never knowing. Never having any control or say in the matter.

Nobody would know where to find him. Not Hunter. Not Samuel. Not Aunt Sarah, who would swoop in to help every few years, but get pushed back out by their father when he’d return with a need to prove he’d change this time. Said his kids didn’t need her handouts.

But it doesn’t excuse what Samuel did. Or…what he didn’t do.

He didn’t save her.

And Hunter bears those scars for him. I could see as much in his eyes. He blames himself for his brother’s actions, just like he blames himself for the actions of a drunk driver who wrecked our relationship and our dreams all those years ago.

I won’t let him do that anymore.

Being back in Pine Forest has been hard for me, too. I had the memories and trauma shoved into a box in the farthest corner of my mind, packed beneath layers of bricks. Entire shelters. All self-constructed to keep me from remembering. From thinking. From…feeling.

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