Learning to Drown (19 page)

“Who made you feel like you had to
carry the world strapped to your back?”

I lowered my head, shoulders
straining, refused to answer. I could feel them both watching me. Two looming
dark presences. Fallen angels, talented demons, affectionate predators.
Whichever you chose, the brothers were truly a mixed bag. Trustworthy and loyal
and jealous and angry. Pick one, pick them all, mix and match! I laughed at my
own internal dialogue. Earned myself another good smack on the ass, but Luke’s
cock was pressing hard and the tip of him was nudging my G-spot to a place of
deep and welcome relief.

And yet I said “No.”

“Who September?” Matthew this time.
Soft voice from a hard guy. It startled me so much tears came to my eyes but I
remembered my power.

“No, you, shut up.”

He shook his head, his eyes
unreadable. His gaze going from his brother to me to my breasts trailing over
the bright white sheets. The most surreal porn movie ever, I thought and
laughed again.

Lucas stilled. His cock still deep in
me, filling me. His big workman’s hands smoothing over my hot, pulsing bottom.
I shut my eyes, swaying on my knees, trying to move against him but he stayed
still like a stone, not allowing me any relief. “Who?” he said again.

I shook my head. My whole body had
taken up a fine tremor as I tried to push my emotions back down. I wanted to
confess. I wanted to give him what he wanted, beg him to finish me off, I
wanted him to know so that I wouldn’t be the only one to know any more. But I
shook my head and refused.

“Then we’re done.” Lucas started to
pull free and Matthew shook his head, gritting his teeth.

“No, please,” I blurted.

Lucas’s fingers gripped my hips hard,
I would wake with his fingerprints on my skin tomorrow, I knew. “Then tell me.
You need to tell someone. Have you ever?” He moved just an inch, maybe only a
fraction of an inch but enough to remind my body of how much it craved him.

I shook my head again and a small sob
bubbled out of me surprising even me.

“Tell him, Ember. Tell us,” Matthew
said. His eyes were almost kind, which did something to my heart considering
how much I had hated him just the day before.

Lucas moved again, bumping that
desperate bundle of nerves deep inside of me. My pussy clenched up tight around
him, wanting more, seeking more. “Tell me.”

“My mother!” I blurted. “My mother was
a drunk! A total fucking drunk!” Now that I was talking, it came out of me in a
an angry rush of words. Rage made my voice something more like a bark than a
voice. “She woke up and started drinking. She could barely get her shit
together to come to school events. And when she did I always ended up wishing
she hadn't.”

Lucas was moving again. His hands
soothing the stinging skin he had just punished, his cock surging deep, his
thrusts controlled so that he kept me just on edge without letting me come. I
looked at Matthew, so intent on my words he’d forgotten about his own pleasure.

“Go on,” Lucas said, gently pinching
the stinging skin on my bottom so that a small fresh blip of pain accented my
pleasure and I gasped.

“I raised myself. I didn’t want anyone
to know. My father died when she was pregnant with me, but she was never…” I
put my head down, the words I was pushing out of my mouth too heavy for me. I
felt suffocated and crushed with this unwanted emotion.

“She was never a mother to you,”
Matthew said, understanding me. He nodded, his dark eyes going to his brother
and then back to me. “But you had no one to step in and take over.”

“So you raised yourself,” Lucas said
almost tenderly. The shift in his voice made all the tiny hairs along the back
of my spine rise up. It sounded like love, that sound in his voice. But that
was impossible—and I knew—wishful thinking.

“Yes. I raised myself. I made my
lunch, set an alarm. Checked her every morning to make sure she hadn’t choked
to death on her own vomit. I signed my own papers and monitored my own grades.
I made sure she got the bills and I stood there when she paid them. Up until
five I had been partially raised by my mother’s sister. She came and stayed
with us off and on.”

“A surrogate mother,” Matthew
whispered. His eyes were on his brother, moving in and out of me. I dropped my
head and shoulders, shoving my ass high, letting him watch.

“Yes, a surrogate mother who kind of
taught me what it all should be like. I even went to stay with her on summer
breaks or when my mother got so bad. But then she got ill and couldn’t help.
She died when I was twenty.”

“And you kept it so that no one knew.
So that no one could help you. Because you kept it all together and so hush,”
Lucas said with absolutely no judgment in his voice.

I nodded and now the tears did start.
Not great giant swooping sobs like I expected but soundless tears rolling down
my cheeks.

“Turn on your back. Come on now,”
Lucas said and pulled free of me.

I glanced at Matthew as I turned. “You
may touch yourself, Matthew. You may come. I have no interest in telling you
what to do.” And I meant it. Right now I had zero interest in being in charge.

Lucas laid me back like a honeymoon
lover. I watched him, waiting for the play, waiting for the punishment of
letting Matthew off that easy. “Spread you legs,” he said, pushing them wide
even as he said it. Lucas, rubbed the length of my hole, making me crazy,
making me gasp. I was swollen and ready and so, so close. I knew it and so did
he.

“Lucas,” I said but that was all. Just
his name. Like a  password.

“Now you’re going to come about two
seconds after I slide into you, girl. We both know it. You’ve been on the edge
for a while now.” His lips came down on my forehead, my shoulder, he bit my
collar bone just enough to make me breathe out a deep stuttering breath.

“May I?” I asked without thinking.

He was telling me I would but the
question to me at that moment, as my body seemed to hum, eager and desperate
for release, was I
allowed
to?

“You may. But when you’re done, listen
to me. Don’t get lost in it. Listen to my instructions. Got it?”

“Yes,” I said and was shocked but
pleased when he bent and kissed me with a tender sweep of his plump lips over
mine.

I could hear Matthew in the corner. I
could hear the whispering sound of his hand on his cock. I could hear the
callused ridges of his palms moving over the silken head of his cock. It was a
secret sound and the fact that he was here to see my undoing was somehow
appropriate and seductive.

Lucas slid into me slowly. My body
gulping and grasping at his invasion. My hips sidled up to his hips, my cunt
taking him deep and with three thrusts, his hands holding my shoulders flush to
the mattress, I came. I came and he kissed me with an open mouth, swallowing
the bulk of my cries, stifling my verbal release. In my mind it was like he was
tasting my soul. Swallowing my cries to feel what I felt. Eating my sounds to
make me more his. The last spasms worked through me and he moved more softly to
give me time to steady.

Then his hands came down on my throat,
crisscrossed, his fingers forming a fat X. My eyes flew wide, I could feel
them. I could feel that cool air of the room stinging the whites of my eyes I
was so very scared. “I—”

“Shh, listen to me. I want you to come
again. I want you to trust me and I want you to come. You have to trust me,”
Lucas said and he started to move.

“He won’t hurt you,” Matthew said
quietly.

“Shut up, brother,” Lucas said, his
eyes never leaving me.

I nodded and felt the fingers dent the
flesh of my throat. Felt my pulse banging in my neck because it was trapped
under his fingers. Lucas moved faster, deeper, his movements more aggressive.
He was taking me and he would be the one to control my air. He would be the one
to determine how much I could have and if I had enough.

Little white dots crowded my vision
and beyond that the sight of his face filled my field of vision. The orgasm
that snuck up on me was sweet and profound and ripped through me like a sudden
summer storm. Lucas’s hands stayed firm around my throat, letting through just
enough air that I did not pass out and when I gave into that orgasm he gave
into his.

I laid there,
his hands on my throat, trusting a man I’d just met to know how much air I
needed. Talk about learning to drown.

Chapter 22

I heard Matthew come. The sound he
made, deep down in his throat like a grunt, was the same as the day before. A
thrill unwound in my belly at knowing he had witnessed my dismantling, my
confession and then my surrender. For once since I’d known him, Matthew turned and
left the room. Yanking up his jeans as he went, his back to us. Gone.

Lucas bent his head to kiss me. He
rested his forehead to mine, those dark eyes of his studying me like I was some
fascinating creature. I kissed the tip of his nose, touched the scar at his jaw
and then the one in his eyebrow. He sighed. Staring me down. His pulse jumping
at his throat. Then he turned his head to the door. “Matty!” Lucas yelled.

Matthew stuck his head through the
door, interested but annoyed. “Yeah?”

“You’re in charge for a few days. All
repos are yours. Keep the boat floating.”

Matthew frowned. “Where are you
going?”

“Look, if you can’t handle it…” Lucas
said.

“I can handle it fine, but where are
you going?”

“I’m taking a few days off. I’m taking
my abducted and abducting her up to the cabin.”

Matthew disappeared without another
word.

“The cabin?” I said. My heart jumped
to my throat but my body warmed to him. He was still pressed flat to me, just
barely keeping his body from crushing mine. I felt safe and suffocated, caged
and adored. There was no figuring it out.

“Yep. My father didn’t give us much
but there is a cabin. For when he went deer hunting. It was supposed to start
as a simple deer stand, but he kept going and a cabin was born. Pack your
stuff,” he said, no question in his tone. All command.

I stared at him. “What stuff?”

Lucas grinned and my heart seized up
for a moment. It twisted sideways in my chest and I wished for all the world
that Lucas Crow loved me. That he could love me, that this could be more than a
game. But I didn’t see that happening. I would not pass muster with a man like
him. Not in the long run.

“Good point,” he said and kissed my
nose. “Take a quick shower and then we’ll hit the store. We’ll get you some
stuff and get gone.”

“Why are we going?” I asked.

“We have some stuff to figure out. At
least, I do. And since you’re mine, you come with.” He tucked my breasts back
in my bra, wrapped one hand around my throat for just a heartbeat. Just enough
to remind me of that fuzzy, liquid orgasm. And then he left.

I took my shower wondering what it was
that he needed to figure out. And how I could figure out my own life.

* * * *

“I thought you weren’t sure you wanted
to share me,” I said quietly when Lucas piloted his pickup truck down the bumpy
dirt access road his house sat on.

“I didn’t share you, did I?” He’d left
the tow truck with his brother along with an emergency number in case Matthew
couldn’t get through on cell.

“Well…not technically…but—”

He shrugged his big shoulders, taking
a left and heading toward the mall. I needed everything. Barring some panties
and bras and one slut outfit, I had nothing. “I guess it was my way of
compromising. He got to be involved, included once more. With me and with you,
but he didn’t get to touch. He didn’t get to fuck you or anything else. No
touching. Right?” I nodded and he went on. “Matthew and I have done this fucked
up sharing thing for ages now. It was fun and almost a competition. We had our
toys and usually the women got off on the brother angle. It was a win-win
situation. But then you came along.” He bunched up his jaw as I studied him.

Here. At this moment. This was
something he did not want to tell me. So, of course it would drive me insane,
the wanting to know. “And?” The impatience in my voice was audible even to me.

He laughed softly but shook his head.
“And it’s different. That’s why we’re going off. We’re going to figure this
out. You’re going to figure if you want to stay with you quote unquote
jailer
.”
Lucas cocked a thumb at his own chest. “And I’m going to figure out just what
the fuck is going on in my own head.”

We hit the highway and he let the
windows down just a touch. Just enough to lift and tangle my hair. The rushing
hiss of air through the truck was white noise between us. “Doesn’t you being my
jailor take my choice away?” I said. We were quiet just long enough for me to
feel antsy and I watched the trees and other cars fly by. He finally spoke when
I was ready to scream or cry, it was a toss-up.

“Not in this instance, September. This
is a weird fucking situation and we’ll have to look at it the same as a
voluntary committal.”