Page 9

9

ZANE

I didn’t know what I was doing.

Fawn stared at me, clutching the blanket to her chin defensively, and I couldn’t blame her.

I’d walked right into her bedroom without even knocking, clearly still too fucking drunk to be thinking straight.

Or maybe too angry. I’d gone to bed exhausted but unable to sleep for the rage swirling inside my head, all of it aimed at my brother. And then I’d lain there, on the other side of a thin wall, and listened to Fawn cry until I couldn’t take it a second longer.

My feet had walked me in there before my brain had caught up.

I should have turned around and walked back out.

But I didn’t want to.

I rounded the bed to the side Fawn was huddled on. And then dropped to my knees at her feet.

She stared at me in the darkness, her face cast with shadows, her eyes almost black in the dim light.

“You shouldn’t be in here,” she whispered.

“I know.” But I didn’t move.

“Then why are you?”

“I don’t know.”

Except I did. And I think she did too. Her breath hitched in her chest, stuttering on the exhale. Her fingers shook, clenched in the blankets. They were messed up, untucked, half sideways, covering her torso but not her legs.

“You’re scared of me.” The realization was a punch to the gut.

“Yes.”

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Then why are you in here?” she asked again.

“Because you’re hurting yourself, and it’s killing me to listen to it.”

She shrank away but I caught her foot, pinning her in place.

Both of us stared down at my fingers sliding around her ankle. It was too dark to see them now, but I’d seen the bruises. The nasty purple marks on her skin I had no doubt my brother was responsible for. I pressed my lips to one without letting myself think about the consequences.

“Zane…”

But the smell of her skin was intoxicating. I dragged my lips up her calf, kissing her gently, holding her between both hands like she was precious. Because to me she always had been.

She didn’t stop me. If she’d asked, I would have, but her breath came hot and heavy on her lips, quickening with every touch as I moved up her thigh.

I raised the hem of her sleepshirt, exposing more of her skin. The blankets were pushed aside until I was crawling onto the bed and up her body, taking her sleep shirt with me.

My heart hammered too hard, something wild and reckless unfurling inside me.

A fuck you to my brother. He was ruthless in ways I could never be. He set traps, and I walked into them time and time again because I couldn’t just turn away when he threatened the people I loved.

But in here, in the darkness, I could give his woman what he never had.

I bit down on my lip at the sight of her breasts. “You’re so fucking beautiful, Fawn.”

I bent my head and flicked her nipple with my tongue.

She gasped, and I put my hand over her mouth, staring at her in the darkness. “You can’t make a noise.”

She nodded.

“I want to make you come,” I whispered into her skin, kissing the swell of her tits without her permission, even though I knew it was wrong. I drew my hand away from her lips. “Tell me to stop.”

Her gaze burned through the darkness between us. “I’m with Eddie.”

I stared at her. “Because you want to be or because he’s forcing you?”

She said nothing.

“I’m never going to force you to do anything, Fawn. Not even this. I’m dying to put my mouth on you, but if you tell me not to, I’ll walk away right now and we can pretend this never happened.”

Her face screwed up in agony. Another tear dripped down her cheek.

I brushed it away with the back of my hand. “I hate that he makes you cry.”

She swallowed hard, and her fingers wrapped around my hand on her rib cage. Slowly she moved it up to cover her breast. “Touch me.”

I stifled the moan that threatened to erupt from somewhere deep inside me. I squeezed her breast, flicking over the nipple with my thumb before lowering my head to suck on her.

I molded the other with my fingers, tweaking the tip of her into a stiff peak, ripe for my tongue. I switched, devouring her, licking her until her chest was heaving and she was pressing her thighs together, trying to find some relief.

I reared back on my knees, spreading her thighs and fitting myself in between them. Greedily, I hooked her legs over my arms, drawing her hips up off the bed and lowering my face to meet her sweet flesh with my mouth.

Her fingers clenched in the sheets at the first lick of my tongue over her clit. She writhed beneath me, moving her hips so tantalizingly my dick responded, straining beneath the borrowed sweatpants.

I ate her like she was the last meal I was ever going to taste. Like I was starving and she was a feast. Like I’d been waiting to do this for a decade. Because I had, ever since she’d first walked into my home on the arm of my brother.

I teased her little bud with the tip of my tongue, before opening my mouth to devour her pussy. I thrust into her with my tongue, fucking her in the way I would if I’d been willing to let my dick get involved.

But this woman knew nothing of being put first.

And I wouldn’t be my brother, using her body for his selfish gains. I didn’t want a thing from her, except her permission.

This was only about her. Getting her over a line she didn’t seem able to cross alone.

Her fingers came to her tits, and my dick nearly exploded, watching her tease her nipples while I tongue-fucked her pussy. I was so hard it hurt, and yet all I wanted was to taste her release on my tongue.

I laid her down flat on the bed, reaching up one hand to take over her breast, while plunging two fingers inside her with my other.

She gasped, and I looked up at her, over the thatch of hair on her mound, and gave her a warning with my eyes. “Be silent, baby,” I whispered.

I’d never called a woman baby in my life, and it wasn’t my right to call Fawn that now either, and yet the term of endearment had slipped effortlessly from my mouth on a growled-out whisper.

I was rewarded with one hand dropping to the back of my head, holding me in place between her thighs.

Like I would have wanted to go anywhere else. She was all I could see. All I could taste and smell, and everything about what we were doing, including the sneaking around while my brother was just downstairs, was turning me on.

Her thighs trembled around my head, clenching and releasing. Her pussy fluttered, and she threw an arm across her mouth, staring down at me, eyes wide but muffling the noises she so clearly wanted to make.

“Come for me, baby.” I slipped a third finger inside her and watched as she splintered apart.

Her back arched, the back of her head pressing deep into the too-soft mattress. I kept up the same pace, riding out her orgasm to completion and waiting for her to relax back onto the mattress, her eyes closed.

For the first time all day, the stress lines around her eyes relaxed. The clench of her shoulders and the hard set of her jaw disappeared.

I wanted to crawl into bed, wrap her in my arms, and tell her everything was going to be okay.

Except I couldn’t promise that.

So I slipped away in the darkness and went back to my room.

Alone.

And dreamed of doing it again, every night, for the rest of my life.