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I fucking hated this asshole. Just to piss him off, I sent him a picture of my empty bowl with strawberry leaves inside. After he’d left the kitchen, I’d taken the rest of the strawberries from the fridge and eaten them up in my room. They were my favourite fruit, and yet the experience of eating them had been ruined for me because every time I bit into one, I had a vivid image of him taking the strawberry from my hand with his teeth, his tongue swiping across my fingers. That had led to my dick getting even harder, hence my frustrating wank.
A minute later, my phone buzzed again, and I opened it up to find a picture that immediately made my blood boil. Cole was reclining on his bed, a joint between his lips, smoke curling lazily through the air. He’d included the caption “Thanks for rolling this. Saved me a job".
The bastard had stolen that from my stash.
So what if I’d had a few of his strawberries? He had to have gone digging through my drawers to find that, and that was a total violation of my privacy.
That was fucking it. Ignoring the pain from my bruises as I launched myself to my feet, I stormed out of my bedroom and down the hallway to confront my stepbrother.
8
COLE
I smiled to myself as I sent the selfie to Huxley. He was going to lose his shit, and I couldn’t wait. It was time to get us back on an even footing after that weird-as-fuck moment in the kitchen. What had I been thinking? I fucking ate that strawberry from his fingers like we were in a bad porno. I wasn’t sure who had been the most shocked—him, or me.
Predictably, there was a crash—Huxley’s bedroom door opening—followed by footsteps stomping down the hall.
“Hi, brother.” I waved the joint at him, and I could almost see the steam pouring from his ears. His blue eyes were dark with rage, highlighted by the purple bruising around them, and his fists were clenched as he stormed over to my bed. Before he could take a swing at me, which I just knew he was about to do, I quickly set the joint down on the small plate I was using as a temporary ashtray-slash-burn protection thing, and then threw my body into a lying position. With the mattress there to absorb the blow, the punch wouldn’t hurt as much. And as much as I wanted to fight back, I had to remind myself that Huxley had only very recently been in a car accident, so for now, I had to bide my time. Incapacitate him in the least painful way possible. Then give him the beating of his life when he was all recovered.
My sudden move caught him off guard, and his fist encountered empty air as he swung at where I had been just a second earlier, making him fall forwards. He threw his hands out to brace his fall, one landing on the bed right next to my head, the other landing on my shoulder, twisting it down into the mattress.
Despite being caught off guard, he recovered quickly, moving to straddle me on his knees and delivering a solid punch to my stomach, making me gasp. “You fucking bastard,” he snarled. “I wish you’d just—”
All my good intentions went out of the window as I reacted on instinct even though the air had been knocked out of me. Bucking my body up to throw him off, I shoved hard at his bruised torso. He howled in pain, falling to the side and smacking his back into the wall. I felt bad for about two seconds until he threw himself back on me, his nails scraping down my bare arms. A sound came from my throat that was halfway between a cry and a shout. His nails were short, but it still fucking stung as they dug into my skin. I grabbed a handful of his stupid bleached hair and yanked as I got my legs around him.
“Fucking get…off,” he panted as I held him in place, throwing my arms around him to stop him from using his own arms as leverage…or to hurt me again.
“Why the fuck would I do that?” I kicked the back of his shin with my heel as hard as I could. It probably didn’t hurt much, but if it pissed him off more, it was a bonus.
His head raised, and for a moment that bruised, hate-filled stare was so close to mine, I could have counted his individual eyelashes. If I’d wanted to. His breath ghosted across my skin, and I smelled strawberries.
My strawberries. “You ate my fucking strawberries. I can smell them on your breath.”
“Well, I can smell my fucking weed all over you,” he ground out, and then he dropped his head.
Then, teeth were sinking into my throat, and the sudden shock and pain meant my grip on him loosened. He scrambled upright, breathing hard, and I just stared up at him, open mouthed. ‘You bit me? What the fuck?”
“I’ll do a lot worse than that when I’ve recovered.” His tone was a low, threatening rasp, and fucking hell, the sound went straight to my dick.
No. That was not happening, not now, not ever.
I quickly pulled myself upright, which unfortunately meant that he was suddenly sitting in my lap, and our bodies were way too close for comfort. Even so, I got in his face, my hair brushing against his forehead as I spoke through gritted teeth.
“Yeah? I’d like to see you try. I can and will fight back, and you’ll look and feel a whole lot worse than you do now. Asshole.”
He scrambled off me, wincing as he did so, his hand gingerly clasping his chest. The remorse that I’d pushed away hit me again, along with a vivid flashback of his wrecked car and his face, pale and shaken, no matter how much he’d tried to hide it.
“Huxley. I—”
“Save it,” he hissed, making his way to the door. “Just stay the fuck away from me, and don’t take any more shit from my room.”
The door slammed closed behind him, and I fell back onto my bed with a groan, throwing my arm across my face.
I had the feeling that I’d just made things between us a hundred times worse. How did I fix it? Did I even want to fix it?
* * *
It was no surprise that I hadn’t been able to fall asleep. At two in the morning, I decided to go down to the kitchen and make a hot chocolate, something I vaguely remembered my mum doing for me a few times when I was little and had trouble falling asleep.
