Carrying my plate to the sink. Rinsing it. Dropping it in the rack. Zero is still at the island, watching me, not bothering tohide the fact that he's watching me. I walk past him on my way out of the kitchen. Don't look at him. Don't break stride.
"Your room. Five minutes."
I keep walking.
I'm in his room in three—because despite the cool delivery of my exit line, I am not a person currently capable of waiting in another room for five whole minutes when I have just told my stepbrother I am about to come find him for sex.
His bedroom is exactly where I need to be right now. Big. Unmade bed. The blackout curtains half-drawn. A jacket on the back of a chair. The room smells like him—the gunpowder-and-coffee scent that drifts out from under his door at all hours of the day and night—and underneath that, faint, the soap I smelled on him an hour ago. He showered before he came outside this morning.
He showered, probably knowing he was going to tease me.
I stand in the middle of his floor in my filthy shorts and my sweaty t-shirt and the last of the stubborn dirt still under my fingernails, and I think:
I just summoned him.
I just practically told my stepbrother tocome fuck mein the kitchen, in my mother's hearing—well, no, she'd left—with my sandwich crumbs still on the counter, and I walked out without looking back to check if he was going to come.
This is who I am now, apparently.
But this is also who I want to be.
The bedroom door opens.
Zero leans against the frame.
He stands there, one shoulder against the wood, his thumbs hooked in the waistband of his track pants. His eyes go slow down the length of me—sweat-stuck t-shirt, dirt on myforearms, hair sticking to my forehead, the bond mark at my throat livid—and back up to my face.
Zero smiles. "You got here fast."
"...yeah."
"Couldn't wait the five minutes, baby?" He crosses his arms over his chest.
"...no."
"Mm. Walked through this house still smelling like my brother and couldn't even wait. I swear you know exactly what you’re doing. Filthy thing."
"Zero—"
"Get over here."
He shuts the door behind him without looking. Stays leaning against it, thumbs hooked in his waistband, watching.
I cross the room.
Three steps. The bond between us ishot. Every muscle I've been holding tight for ninety minutes—in the garden, at the kitchen island, in front of my mother—unlocks all at once. I stop a foot from him. He's watching me lazily like he always knew I’d end up in his grasp like a moth to a flame.
"Closer."
I take another half step.
His hand comes up. Slides around the back of my neck. Pulls me the rest of the way in until my chest is against his and his mouth is at my ear.
"Tell me what you want."
"...I—"
"Out loud, baby. I want to hear it."
