Page 35 of Of Angels & Absolution

She sighs. “Money.”

“I don’t want you leaving campus to meet guys in the middle of the night,” I say. “Especially criminals. You don’t know what he could have asked of you—or taken without asking.”

“Like you?” she challenges, and I see a flash of that fire I remember so well. Sure, she was my pain-in-the-ass, goody-two-shoes little sister who wanted to bring back a pack of Starbursts when we shoplifted, but she stood her ground. She didn’t eat a single one, not even when we waved them under her nose tempting her to join us and made a big show of eating the pink ones, her favorite.

“Like me,” I say blandly.

“But you’ve taken nothing,” she says, standing and going to her closet. She opens the doors and steps inside, but I catch movement in a sliver of mirror. I watch her drop her skirt, then the jeans she’s wearing under them. I swallow hard and tear my eyes away.

She’s your sister.

I take the opportunity to ask her a question I’d rather ask when I don’t have to see her reaction, analyze it. “If you want to know what happened to Eternity, why don’t you just ask us?”

I can hear her moving in the closet, but I refuse to look, no matter how much I want to.

“Would you tell me?” she asks at last.

I swallow and glance at the mirror, and then I wish I hadn’t. Her back is turned to the gap in the door, but a stripe of light illuminates her bare skin, her narrow waist, the flare of her hips. She’s wearing full-coverage cotton underwear, almost aggressively unsexy. For some reason, that captivates me more than if she was wearing a black lace thong or another popular choice that one of the numberless, nameless girls I’ve fucked showed up in. Now that I’ve caught sight of her undressing, I can’t look away.

Her ass is only hinted at through the sturdy fabric, but I can see its shape, plump and round, can almost feel its weight in my palms as I support it, fucking into her slow and deep while her head falls back, her hair tumbling down her back, tears of silent agony dripping from her temples.

I pull one of her throw pillows into my lap to hide what she’s doing to me.

She reaches to grab a garment from the rack in her closet, her muscles stretching. Her back is toned, her ass, her thighs, her shoulders. I picture myself stepping in behind her, sliding my hands around her, cupping her heavy breasts, squeezing her nipples. I can hear the gasps and whimpers so clearly I think she’s really making the sound for a second. Then she drops one of her long nightshirts down over her body, and my cock strains against the underside of the pillow, and I know the moment is over. She opens the closet and marches back to the bed.

“Would you?” she demands.

I shake my head, trying to clear it, to remember what she asked instead of how tight she was around my finger or the sweet smell of her cunt.

“You wouldn’t?” she asks, watching me for an answer.

“Wouldn’t what?”

“I asked if you’d tell me what happened to Eternity,” she says, sounding annoyed, like I’m playing games with her on purpose. “The truth.”

“We didn’t do it.”

She scoffs and turns away. “And that’s why I didn’t ask you.”

I snag her hand and tug her back to the bed, for a half-second contemplating whether to toss the pillow and slam her down on my erection. But judging from how eagerly she smeared my dried up old cum into her pussy, she wouldn’t hesitate tomilk the fresh, warm stuff from my cock the moment she had a chance, and one of us has to be strong.

I just didn’t think it would have to be me.

I pull her down beside me, wrapping a tight arm around her shoulders. “We didn’t do it.”

She stares at her knees, bare below the hem of her oversized shirt. “You swear?”

“On our mother’s grave.”

“Your mother.”

“Ourmother’s grave,” I say again, my fucking chest hollowing out at the small, defeated tone in her voice.

She raises her gaze to mine, and I see all the hope and fear and confusion churning there, and for once, I don’t want to make it worse. I want to wipe it all away with her tears, kiss it better, the way I did when we were kids.

“Promise-swear?” she asks, just like she did back then. “Cross your heart and hope to die?”

“Stick a finger in my eye.”

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