Page 24 of Twins for the Mafia Heir

Slowly, Achilles’s hand loosens from the back of my neck. He’s pulling away. Too soon, this is way too soon-

I open my eyes, but it takes a moment for my vision to adjust to the moonlit room. Achilles stares down at me, his eyes so wide I can see the whites around the brown. He’s breathing like a bellows just like me, a bead of sweat rolling down his temple. He’s still throbbing inside me, and every time he does, it sends an answering pang through my body.

His gaze travels over my face, lingering on my lips. Is he about to kiss me? My own lips feel too dry, and I lick them in preparation. Achilles’s eyelids droop, his pupils blowing up. I suck in a breath, tilting my head up to be ready-

Achilles jerks back, pulling out of me so suddenly that I gasp at the loss. Achilles looks unfazed. He’s already off the bed and rooting around on the floor for his clothes. Because I had my eyes closed before, this is my first time seeing his long, tonedbody naked. It lasts mere seconds as he dresses with swift, jerky movements.

“Are you hurt?” he asks, without even looking at me.

I am, but not in the way he’s asking. “N-No,” I whisper. “I’m not hurt.”

“Good.”

He’s fully dressed again, but he doesn’t return to the bed. Instead, he drinks an entire glass of water from the pitcher on the nightstand, stomps across the room, and comes back. His eyes jump around the room, looking for something that I don’t even think exists.

My stomach sinks lower the longer I watch him restlessly pace. There’s a dissonance growing between the fading pleasure in my body and the feelings roiling around in my chest, and it’s starting to make me ill.

Finally, Achilles stops in front of the fireplace. I’ve never felt warmer in my life, but nevertheless he pokes around at the logs and grabs matches off the mantelpiece. In seconds, he has a fire blooming.

This silence is… suffocating. Now that I know what it feels like to be full, I’ve never felt emptier. I search my whole brain for something to break it, for a question to ask, but I don’t dare speak. Achilles is angry, and I can only assume he’s angry at me. Was it not as good for him? Was I a disappointment? Should I have done more?

I watch him settle into the armchair before the fire, clearly having picked his place of rest for the night. I can’t fathom how he can stand to feel what I’m feeling.

No- what the hell am I saying? Done more? I asked Achilles to give me my first time, and he agreed, and it was- incredible. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m a hostage, and a hostage imposter at that. Of course Achilles doesn’t want to draw thisout. This was nothing more than a service to him, one he felt obliged to provide me.

And just because this was my first time and it blew my mind and I don’t think I’ll ever be the same again- it has to be the same for me too. I can’t afford to befeelinganything.

“Go to sleep, Raleigh,” Achilles says from the chair.

I startle, realizing I’ve been staring at him this whole time. And he’s been staring back. The firelight turns his face into a mask split down the middle, one made of warm angles, the other a total void.

This time, he’s not telling me to take any sleeping pills. Does that mean he’s planning to stay awake, like a guard dog?

The alienation in my chest settles deeper, into my very bones.Raleigh.That’s right. That’s who I am. That’s who he thinks he’s just fucked. Not me.

I lay down on my side, my back to Achilles so he can’t see the confliction on my face. There’s a vice gripping my lungs, making it impossible to take deep breaths.

I refuse to believe I’m about to cry. I refuse to give up on my deeply ingrained habit of disappearing into whatever role I need to survive.

And above all else, I refuse to admit that, when Achilles was deep inside me and holding me tight, I forgot that I am absolutely nothing to him.

Chapter 13

Achilles

Ican’t stay in the armchair.

On the bed, bathed in moonlight, Raleigh has finally fallen asleep. I’ve listened to her breathing for every moment since I pulled away, waiting for it to stop sounding like stifled sobs and to even out.

Now, after hours of staring into the fire, replaying every second of my consummation with Raleigh and being flooded with guilt, self-loathing, and lust in an endless cycle, I give up on sleep as a concept and get to my feet. My watch tells me it’s three a.m., which both feels too late and too early.

How many hours of sleep have I had in the last four days? No, I shouldn’t ask myself that question. I won’t like the answer.

My feet almost take me to the bed automatically, but I train them toward the door. I amnotwaking Raleigh up for a second round, no matter how ready and willing my own body is. I tell myself it’s the deprivation of three years of sex that makes me crave more, and not anything to do with the woman herself. Not the shape of her body or the sounds she made when she came, or the way it felt to fill her up with my seed.

These are dangerous thoughts, and they need to be forbidden ones. I need to lock them away in the vault of my mind along with my most damning secrets and the bulk of my grief.

And I need to commit to never touching Raleigh again. For both our sakes.

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