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Except… that man is me.
I grunt, letting the bar drop to the ground with a clang, then load fifty more pounds on it. It’s more than I’ve scheduled myself to work with this morning, but I need the exertion to turn off these thoughts for a few moments.
It doesn’t work.
Ifucking hurt her, and my cock turned to steel when she begged me to do it. I like her pain. I crave giving it to her, and find a release that feels far more than just sexual when I see the pleasure and satisfaction she finds on the other side of darkness.
My thighs start to burn, and I realize I’ve lost count of this set, rising and dropping in perfect form, over and over, with more weight than I should be using right now.
I force myself to stop, wiping down each plate as I remove it from the bar and stacking them back in the rack before breaking for water.
And still, I’m thinking about Riley. She isn’t like anyone else I’ve ever known.
A part of me wonders if she really meant what she said to me. If she honestly likes the way I hurt her and the control I require when we’re intimate. But I’ve never felt as close to anyone else in my life, not even my brothers, and when I review the moments we’ve shared, I can’t find the lie.
She makes me feel like a different person. She makes me…feel.
I cap my water bottle and return it to the shelf near the door, then head to the corner where we keep the sandbags. It’s time for deadlifts. But halfway there, I catch my own gaze in the mirror and freeze, a strange emotion rolling through my gut.
Something’s different.
I lift a hand to my face, then let it drop. I still have my mother’s soulless eyes. I still have the face of a monster, but I don’t… see myself that way anymore. Maybe because Riley doesn’t, even after I’ve shown her the worst of the things I keep locked away inside me. Her acceptance, her… feelings for me, make it harder to hate the parts of myself I used to despise.
“You’re not a monster,” I whisper almost soundlessly, staring into the eyes I inherited from one.
Then I blink, and force my feet to move again. To grab the handles of the hundred pound sandbag and start a set of deadlifts. To clear my mind once and for all so I can find the focus and control that my morning workout always gives me.
This time, it works, and when I finally finish up and head upstairs intending to grab a quick shower an hour later, I’m not surprised when my feet lead me in a different direction entirely.
Toward Riley.
When she first came to live with us, I thought that trusting her was a weakness and I fought my brothers when I saw them succumbing to that weakness.
I was trying to protect them. To protect us all. But I was wrong.
Trusting Riley makes me stronger. Somehow, she’s become my anchor, the one person I can trust most in all the world. Not that I don’t also trust my brothers. I trust them with my life. But Riley is something different. She’s seen everything I truly am. I’ve exposed her to the darkness that lives inside my soul and come at her with my most depraved needs, and instead of shying away, she bares her soul right back.
I push open the door to her bedroom. She’s still asleep… and so are my brothers, one on either side of her.
I heard them last night. I still have cameras in this room. Knowing what they did together after she left me had me aroused to a level that required all my self-discipline to ignore, but I know what it is to find release with Riley’s body now, and now that I do, I no longer want it any other way.
I wanted to come join them last night, but I’m different than my brothers. There’s still a barrier between what I want and what I can allow myself to have, and while I won’t deny myself a relationship with her, the connection I have with Riley isn’t the same as what she shares with my brothers. It’s darker, and it would have changed what they did together if I’d brought that darkness into the pleasure they gave her last night.
Still, I let my eyes roam over the three of them hungrily. My brothers don’t arouse me, but seeing Riley between them, knowing she’s been filled and used and taken by them, that affects me in a way that makes me feel closer to all three of them.
I move toward the bed. They’ve kicked the blankets down, and Riley’s naked body is on display, all subtle curves and dark bruises and skin so soft it’s irresistible, made to be marked.
My eyes go to the scars I’ve left on her, a fierce pleasure flaring inside me as I take them in.
The scars aremymarks, and while McKenna’s will fade, mine are permanent.
There are new marks now too. Marks my brothers left last night that make her look even more beautiful.
When I reach the foot of the bed, drawn toward her like a moth to flame, her eyelids start to flutter, then slowly open, locking onto me. In the dim morning light, their whiskey-brown color becomes two pools of welcoming darkness, and I suddenly want, Ineed, to feel the unique connection I have with her again. The one that sets me apart from what she has with my brothers. The one that tells me I’m not what I once thought I was.
I need to remind myself it’s real.
I place a knee on the bed, and she rolls onto her back, silently welcoming me. I crawl up over her, never breaking eye contact, the sex-drenched scent of her sleep enveloping me like a drug.
