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And then his mouth was on my hair, on my neck, his hands on my throat, pulling me closer to him.
Epilogue
Christmas is in a few days and I’m baking in my kitchen. Torin repaired the porch, built us a new door, repaired the living room. It’s as good as new. Better than it used to look anyway. I can’t even smell the smoke anymore.
Mostly.
Sometimes I sniff and think I get a whiff of smoke and fire and terror, and my stomach clenches with the sick fear and memory from that night, the nauseating sound of the gun, the sight of blood on Torin’s arm, the noise he made as he fell down beside me.
Sometimes the memories wake me up, heart pounding, my shirt sticking to my chest with sweat. Then I have to reach for him, snuggle into his big arms, nuzzle into his neck, until he wakes up hard and ravenous, rolling me on my back and sliding between my legs to fuck me as I whimper his name.
Torin
And he holds me tighter, his teeth on my neck, sucking and biting me, teeth grazing on my nipple, sucking so hard I’m marked up as his, and he fucks me until I’m coming, the pleasure of my brother’s cock taking away the fear and terror that he had been ripped away from me.
Just the memory makes me look up from my baking until I spot him in the yard, his dark hair standing out starkly against the covering of pristine white snow. He’s chopping wood for the fireplace. As usual, his strength is unflagging, his arms tireless. As he straightens up, the blue fleece pulls tight against his shoulders, and I feel the familiar tug and heat start to pool in my belly.
Love and lust and heat and dark need and it’s wrong, it’s bad, but I don’t care.
I am going to fuck his motherfucking brains out when he comes inside.
While I wait, I bend down to the oven to check my cakes. Chocolate raspberry cake and chocolate bundt cakes in the oven, candy cane cake already cooling on the table, waiting for me to mix up peppermint icing.
I hear the crunch of gravel and I look up with a frown of surprise.
It’s a cop car.
For a moment, I stare fixedly at the sight, my eyes narrowing. Then I turn and put on the tea kettle.
By the time the officer, a kindly-looking man in his 60s with a handlebar moustache, comes to the door the water is bubbling.
“Miss Reilly?” he asks tentatively.
“That’s me,” I say cheerfully, waving my arm inside. “Please come in. What can I do for you?”
“I just had a few questions to ask you about your ex-fiancé Drew,” he says, exclaiming in pleasure at the sight of the cakes before him.
“Certainly,” I say. “Have you heard from him yet?”
“No, we haven’t,” he says.
“Would you like a piece of cake?” I ask, grabbing a tub of homemade whipped cream to spread on it.
He hesitates, like he knows he shouldn’t. But he does anyway.
“Sure, would love that miss.”
I cut him a piece and push it over on a little blue plate with hand-painted flowers on it. Torin found it for me at an antique mall on one of our trips to the city.
There are a few moments of silence as he eats and I sip my tea.
“And you haven’t heard from him?” he asks.
They’ve asked me that before.
“No, I’m sorry,” I reply. “The last I saw on his Instagram he was headed down to Los Angeles.”
Smartass thought he was pretty clever, didn’t he? Posting that to make me let my guard down. But it means they’ve been looking in the wrong place for him. Dozens of people have come forward to say they saw Drew get off at San Francisco. Or Anaheim. Or LA. He didn’t, of course. He’s buried in pieces deep in Torin’s mountains.
