Page 13 of Caged Heart
“If you need space to fuck my brother, say so. I don’t have a word or a heads up for you tonight.”
I rolled my eyes. “If I were fucking your brother, I wouldn’t be doing the same with you.”
“Thought you wanted him to be your boyfriend. You two danced like you were together and announced it to the world.”
“If he was my boyfriend, the last thing I’d do is fucking his brother, Ares.”
For a moment, his eyes focused in the distance as if retrieving data from his brain’s hard drive, but when he looked back at me, there was a look that I couldn’t decipher.
Amusement danced in his eyes right before he reached out and wrapped his hand at the nape of my neck, causing a deep and relieved exhale to leave from in between my lips the moment he leaned in closer, bypassing my lips to lightly caress my ear with his lips.
“Even if you were fucking my brother, the fact that you let me fuck you sober meant hormones and a warm body clouded neither of our actions….”
A million butterflies took motion inside my belly, their gossamer wings stroking my soul. Then, he spoke, and all those happy butterflies went still.
“I’d be the boyfriend, who’s not your boyfriend even when you have a boyfriend, that fucks you in your boyfriend’s bathroom because he can never fuck you like I’m fucking you.”
Ares spoke relaxed, his words drawn out and low, while he rubbed the base of my neck with his thumb where my pulse beat in hard spasms at his words.
My breath fell out softly from my lips as he waited until the door of realization slammed wide open on his words to me.
Chapter9
Ares
Adrunk Carmen has never bothered me or caught my attention before, but for some reason, well, the reason being we fucked, I’m now paying attention.
I’ve never noticed how her big brown eyes are always full of amusement or glee when she’s eating. She blushes a lot when my brother compliments her, but everyone knows she had a crush on him, even if he did, but it’ll suck for her when she figures out the attention she’s getting from him is for me.
“You’re staring.”
Jennifer held a possessive hand over my wrist as if something big was going on between us.
I’ve never cared about Jennifer’s need to show off before; usually, she just does it, and I ignore her, but right now, I know it’s for Carmen. I could have told her it was in vain if she had asked, and Carmen wanted Mars’s attention, not mine.
The longer I stared at Carmen, the more I noticed things I’d never seen. Like her birthmark under her left eye, was it always there? It’s not a large one, just a small one, and her button nose crinkled when she laughed about something.
Her jokes were always corny, so that wasn’t so hard to point out, but she laughed hard at them either way.
That was the thing. She laughed a lot.
Suddenly, the room grew dim, and everything fell away.
“I know your secret, baby brother…is this what you’ve been hiding from me?”
Artemis was back, and as she slipped her long, dainty talons in my hair from the nape, a chill tiptoed down my neck.
“You don’t deserve to be with anyone else, baby brother…you owe me your life. Did you want me to find our father and put her in his sight? Let him break her in for you? Let him touch her in the ways you’ve touched her?”
Artemis whispered against my ear and her forming a fist in my hair felt like my hair was being ripped from my scalp. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying not to feel her around me, her demons mixing with mine, trying to take me prisoner, again.
The crouching of my body that I had to do so our father wouldn’t kill me every night. The fists raining down on my body. The pain disappeared, but the wounds swelled with my hatred.
My eyes would connect with Mars as he watched our father beat me. He wouldn’t move and just stood there, staring into my eyes.
A hand tightening around my wrist had me opening my eyes. It was Jennifer’s manicured hand, but I couldn’t see her hand as it morphed into my father’s. I couldn’t see him, but I felt his hold on me.
The bitter taste of fear poured into my mouth. My sense of smell became amplified as his cologne drifted into this place. My nostrils flared, trying hard to get a whiff of something else, any other scent, to drive me away from his overpowering one. A thousand ants seemed to crawl over my skin as I began losing myself again.
