Page 50 of Beneath the Dirt

“Is he home?” she asks, referring to my dad. Her question, full of disgust.

“Fuck you, Araceli,” I spit and finally her attention is where I want it…back on me.

“Excuse me?” She snaps her words as her neck follows suit. Bobbing her head causing her split-colored hair to sway, and the past does what it does best, haunts me with muses from the past.

“Look, hermano, it’s me and you. The saint and the sinner.”

Except I’m not the saint anymore. No one here is.

“You don’t give a fuck about him. So cut the small talk.” I remind her.

A smile tugs at her lips. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” she asks with fucking glee, a level of excitement that should scare me, and it would if she were capable of scaring me anymore. That privilege died the moment she made me realize she’s no better than my father.

She’s a manipulator, just like him. Only difference is the words she twists are her own, not written for her to recite, and she has the audacity to call her lies art.

“He has to be.” Her voice trails off, as if she’s trying to put pieces of the puzzle she isn’t fully equipped to put together in place. “He would’ve never let you keep the place like this. It looksabandoned.” She pauses, and the inflection in her voice on the word abandoned is impossible to ignore. She sounds, dare I say, aroused?

There she is. Brother’s gruesome little whore.

Gathering her wits about her, she continues. “What finally got him? Karma?” she asks sarcastically. She knows that he doesn’t believe in karma.Sky Daddywould never allow such a concept to exist. It’ll ruin his story.

I’m about to burst her bubble with the sad fact that Dad is still alive, but the sadistic part of me that she is just starting to meet wants to play with her some more. Tease her some more. What’s one more lie after we’ve been plagued with endless ones?

Fuck it.

“Heart attack.”

She laughs. Maniacal and sultry… and it travels right to my fucking cock.

Lifting her hand to the wall to her right, she finally pauses to play with the cobwebs scattered on the walls. “Was that before or after he saw the way you desecrated his house?” Araceli turns her head, the white-blonde side of her hair facing me.

“Before,” I say in a growl.

You’d know that if you didn’t fucking leave. If you didn’t fucking abandon me.

“Right,” her voice drags, sounding unconvinced.

Unable to stand the distance between us any longer. I demolish it. Charging at her, I don’t stop until I’m towering over her, with her body pinned to the wall, and those delicate fucking wrists of hers that I could easily squeeze and snap in fucking half up and over her head, locked in my possessive grip.

“Harlan,” she breathes.

I transfer her wrists to one hand, now taking my free one to her lips. First running an outstretched finger to her lips, silencing her, or trying to. Ignoring me and the power she and I both know I have over her, she fights me, moving her lips to speak instead of obeying my one-time warning to shut the fuck up.

My finger leaves her lips, but only for a second. Just enough time that it can meet the rest of my fingers as I wind up and smack her cheek before pinching my hand at her face, pressing her cheek into my hand.

A moan slips her mouth and her chest heaves violently. Up and down in rapid succession. Her quickening pulse ricocheting beneath my touch is a gift, granting me the invisible checkmate I was seeking.

I win. You lose, little sister.

“You look nervous,” I point out, which is something that I’m not used to making her feel, and something she most certainly is not used to feeling because of me. Her gaze is as polarizing and hypnotic as she is, but I can’t give in and lose the persona I’ve worked so hard to maintain…just for her.

Curious how she’s going to spin the truth this time. I let her go. She takes a step forward but doesn’t run…like she should.

“You lookreallynervous.”

“I’m fine,” she clips as she shakes her head, mumbling something to herself. “This was a mistake.”

“Aw, don’t say that,” I pout sadistically. “You can’t mean that coming to see me after I stole from you is a mistake? No, no. That can’t be it. You’re growing wetter by the second since you’ve infected my airwaves. I can smell that needy cunt from here. So that can’t be it. Ithasto be something else.” I begin to circle her. Picking up speed with each orbit I make around her body, hoping to make her dizzy. Throw her off even more. “Hmm, now what can it be that has that moral compass you buried so long ago rise to the surface of your equally broken conscience?”

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