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When Drew handed me a stack of self-help books and disappeared into his office to sleep on the couch there, I threw them in the corner and quickly packed a few boxes and put them under the cover in the bed of my truck.
It was surprising when I looked around the house how much of it was Drew’s stuff or things he had picked out.
Matching furniture because Drew thought it looked classier. When I had wanted a battered old kitchen table at a flea market because it reminded me so painfully of one Torin had made for me, Drew had said it “didn’t fit with the aesthetic.”
Was that all I really had in the home? A few boxes of books and clothes? My precious stand mixer?
I lay in bed, unable to sleep, the thoughts and warnings whirling around in my head. Just when I had almost drifted off, I heard a noise.
I tensed, my heart starting to pound, my ears straining.
Had I mistaken it? Wooden floors did sometimes make settling noises.
Then I heard it again and I flipped around as a shadow passed over the moonlight streaming in the window.
A man was standing beside my bed, his body so big the room was plunged into darkness.
I smelled smoke and fire. I smelled wild and untamed.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I hissed at him. “You better leave.”
My brother loomed over me.
“You could have screamed when you first saw me in your room,” he said. “You didn’t.”
I felt him bend down to my neck and my skin prickled, expecting him to rip my clothes off. But he put his lips on my neck instead, the touch sending shivers all along my spine.
“I know what that means,” my brother said, and in one swift motion he had kicked off his boots and crawled over me, caging me tightly below him as he slid the strap of my thin tank top down, kissing my neck and shoulder. “You’re mine, sister.”
“I’m going to scream for help,” I hissed at him, but he only laughed at me, the first genuine laugh I had heard him make since he was arrested, the first laugh without any bitterness at all.
“You’re whispering,” he said, and the rumble of his voice on my skin made my blood sing.
I could see his midnight blue eyes shining in the dark. “I’m not yours. I just don’t want you to get arrested again,” I protested, and he laughed again.
“You’re a little fucking liar, Laoise,” he said.
He bent down to kiss me, the smell of him filling my nostrils, cigarette smoke, car oil, the sharp, wild smell of the mountains.
Then his hands were in my hair and on the back of my neck, his tongue in my mouth.
And I didn’t scream.
And he knew it.
His mouth was eager and exulting. I felt his dark triumph all along my skin, like a fire in my belly.
“I fucking love the way you smell,” he said. “The way you taste.”
“What do I smell like?” I asked.
I felt his nose on my neck, under my ear, as he bent closer.
“Like. . .sugar,” he said. “I don’t know what all the smells are. Something sharp and spicy, maybe peppermint?”
My stomach suddenly clenched with all of what my brother had lost, what he had missed in jail. I had a crazy desire to get out of bed and bake him a cake.
I put my hands around his neck and pulled him down to me, running my hands up his neck and through his thick black hair. I felt him groan against my mouth, his hands urgent on me.
