Page 56 of Beneath the Dirt

I step in front of my brother, demanding that the ultimate sinner look at me. Not for who he wants me to be in his story, but for who I am.

His penance.

His damnation.

“Hammer,” I instruct, leaving my outstretched hand out, waiting for the wooden handle to graze my palm.

“What are you going to do to me?” he pleads.

“Payback,” I deadpan as I strike my clenched hammer-wielding fist down onto the top of his head.

His skull breaks with ease. The only simple thing that’s ever come from him. But I don’t want to only injure him—I want to annihilate him. For what he did to us, to them, and all the ones before.

Blood drips onto his forehead, staining his skin, begging me to continue, and I do. One strike after another. Blood for blood. Eye for an eye.’

Harlan slams the book closed and I flinch. “You know, for someone who claims to write fiction, I find itrather convenient or, I don’t know, ironic, that everything you write has some truth to it. Some, of course, more than others.”

This is ridiculous. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The cross part, yes, there is some truth to that. I mean, it was inspired by the first and last night that Harlan and I shared, but the torture scene he just read, that’s purely fictional.

He clenches his jaw. A notable knot forms in response as he shakes his head in disbelief. “I bet you believe that, don’t you? Tell me then, if it’s all fictional, then when are you going to tell me this isn’t the first night you’ve returned to the very property you swore you’d never return to?”

As I marinate on what he’s saying, all I can think of is what he’s conveniently forgetting. I never swore not to return. I was kicked out. Threatened to never return. There’s a difference. That’s not something he’d ever have to contend with, though. He partook in the same things I did that night at Heathen’s Cross, yet the consequences that I suffered were not the same as his. His father allowed him to exist while I was the one who was shunned. Not Harlan.

“This is the first time.” I defend myself because it’s the truth.

Harlan tosses the book on the floor and dust lifts from the soiled floorboards. Who knows when the last time this place was cleaned? Probably around the same time Harlan was who I remember him to be, an angel with an unsteady halo. It was always waiting to fall, but never did I think it’d shatter quite like his has.

“When were you going to tell me?” His question is full of venom.

I lift my brows at him, signaling for him to continue. I’m so confused. I'm so tired. I don’t know what he wants me to say, or what I can say to convince him that whatever he’s conjured himself into believing, isn’t true.

“Don’t play stupid with me. When were you going to tell me what you started and were too chicken shit to finish? Were yougoing to leave another mess for me to clean up when you do what you do best and disappear?”

What the fuck is he talking about?

He groans, increasingly aggravated. “Fuck, Araceli, don’t make me show you the camera footage.”

Sixteen

What the actualfuck is he talking about?

Apparently, my stunned silence is too much for him to bear. Either that or the vexation that’s been festering in him is in need of a release because his hand is practically clawing at his belt buckle, undoing it. “Unbelievable,” he groans, now slipping the belt through the loopholes of his pants, with such speed, the leather audibly whips at the still air. “I don’t know if I should be impressed by your acting skills or insulted by them. Playing dumb isn’t a good look on you. I mean, I’d still fuck but come on. Work with me here. I thought you were better than this? I always thought you were smarter than this somehow, but if you insist on acting like a stupid fucking brat, I think I have something that will get you talking.” His zipper sounds as he lowers it. “Or at the very least, this will get you to open your mouth.”

He laughs.

Well, time may have made him hotter, but this is pathetic. All this to get me to suck his dick.

Sure enough, the head of his cock meets my lips, forcefully parting them as he does, good on his promise to fill my mouth since I refuse to talk to him. Slowly, he stuffs my mouth with his cock. His shaft is so smooth; all of it except the unexpectedbarbell that presses against the roof of my mouth and onto my tongue. Mouth full of him, robbing me of my opportunity to speak, he holds himself in place, waiting for me to make a move.

The intense need to suck him in, and give him a taste of what I should’ve given him that night, floods me. Making me weak.

“You’re pathetic,” I mumble around his girth.

“No, no, no,” he clicks his tongue, thrusting his hips forward. Controlling the tempo he has fucking my mouth. With every thrust he makes in my mouth, I’m finding the will to not hollow my cheeks around him more and more difficult. “You, my beautiful, slutty, little sister, are the pathetic one,” he practically hisses. With each drive of his length in and out of my mouth, a dry sensation overtakes my mouth. It’s gritty. Rough. “You’ve wanted my cock since the day you laid eyes on me,” he continues as my mouth accepts its fate. The warm, wet hole he needs to get off with—and the one I want him to get off in. My eyes fall shut, and he continues to fuck my mouth. Though now with my submission hanging in the balance, every stroke of his cock elicits a response that feels almost out of body. The story he was just reading lays vivid in my mind.

The cross.

The blood.

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