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It’s what men like me do. We don’t feel pain when we’re close to the ones we love and we’d die before we let anything stand between us and what is ours. When the rest of my reason starts leaving me, I clasp her harder, pushing myself into her to the brim.
“Don’t be afraid of my wrath,” I say against her skin and I take a steadier grip on her hair, watching her eyes flare when I shove her neck to the side. “Or my love.” Baring my teeth, I dig them into her translucent throat and I start coming, unable to control myself any longer.
She whimpers, thrashes, her hips furiously meeting mine and the pressure is too much. It intensifies instead of stopping and I groan her name, declaring my love and the possession I have over her. I shower her heavily, listening to her moans of release and then it all gradually subsides.
Holding her close, I pull away and there it is, shining on her throat. A pale red, beautiful mark and she wears it with pride, her eyes lulled, her pulse hushed and her heart pacified. She’s fully given herself away to me.
I smooth her hair away from her forehead and her eyes flutter and if I could I’d crush her in my hands and feel her melt between my fingers.
“Do you love me?” I ask in a low voice as if her response won’t make or break me. “And don’t tell me you do only because you think I want to hear it.”
Her eyes soften. “Yes,” she whispers and licks her lips. “I do. Do you love me?”
I nod because I might have marked her but she carries my mark on the outside. I carry her mark on the inside. On my heart.
I stroke her puckering lip, “I love you.”
“How much?” she whispers and I hide my face in her neck so that she won’t see the wetness in my eyes.
“So much that I am nothing without you.”
11
Zinnia
He’s nothing without me? A man like him?The notion makesmefeel powerful for once. We’re in my bedroom, lying in my bed under the covers with our bodies entwined and we’re propped up on soft cushions.
The help has stayed away this whole time. Either they don’t know what’s going on or they’re purposefully staying away, afraid to ask. Cold air steams through the broken glass in the window and only one lamp is lit. The one by the vanity and my lips curl into a smile at the sight of the velvet seat. I was in such a hurry to get away from Bram that I toppled it.
I hold down a snigger, stroking Bram over his hair and he might be pure menace in an expensive suit but he still likes to rest his dark head on my chest. He’s so docile now and I curiously trace my finger along his bulging muscles, enjoying that I actually can touch him now that the frenzy is gone.
“Bram,” I whisper, like I’m scared someone will hear even though we’re alone. “Am I really your sister?”
When he told me that, I didn’t even register. I don’t have a family. Not a real one anyway and then Bram, a wealthy northerner tells me that I belong to his kin. I couldn’t wrap my head around it in the tumult. I can barely even wrap it my head around it now. Then again I suppose that we look sort of similar, same colors but that’s it..., only that I know it can’t be true. It just can’t.
Pulling my body closer, he tugs me to him, his arms like munitions. “Step-sister,” he replies, a little sleepily and I feel my limbs relax. Or they do more than relax because they practically turn into goo.
“Oh.”
“You sound relieved,” he says and I nod, biting my lip that’s been shaking.
“Wouldn’t you be?”
He laughs darkly like only he can. “I suppose it is more convenient this way.”
That’s too put it mildly and I almost swat his chest for being so unscrupulous. “Tell me everything,” I say, swallowing but Bram doesn’t look up, just keeps resting his head on me.
“Your mother was a widow,” he begins and I can barely breathe, my fingers clutching to him like he’s a lifeline. “She was pregnant when my father married her. They were very much in love.”
Sadness tugs at me. I wish I could have gotten to know her.
“They named you Dove and when you were born we all fussed over you. Including me despite previously declaring my hatred over having a baby in the house.”
I would have laughed a little but my throat feels too thick and Bram strokes his hand down my leg and the tingles feel good because they soothe me a little.
“When you were two years old, my father went on a business trip and you and your mother accompanied him. Somewhere between the north and the south, their car got ambushed.” He silences. “They were robbed and killed.”
My heart thumps because I have always been told that I was in foster care because nobody wanted me.
