Tainted Butterfly

by Terri Anne Browning

  After rubbing his hands together in excitement, he grabbed two presents, handing one to Alicia and the other to me. “I hope you like them,” he grumbled, a sheepish look on his handsome face.

  The box wasn’t heavy. If anything, mine barely felt like there was anything in it at all. It wasn’t overly large, but it wasn’t small, either. Carefully, I tore the paper off while Alicia destroyed her wrapping and quickly dug her present out. It had always amused me, the way Alicia acted like a kid when she got a present. She couldn’t seem to wait to find the surprise inside, and now was no different.

  “Gray!” she cried when she pulled out a vibrant-red silk scarf. Red was her favorite color, and she was crazy about scarfs. “This is perfect, sweetheart. I love it. Thank you.”

  “I’m glad you like it.”

  I was still carefully unboxing my own gift. After pulling the top off, I found Styrofoam and carefully eased the two thick halves apart. When I saw the purple glass figurine of a butterfly, tears burned my eyes. It looked delicate and was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

  Alicia took a peek at my present and gasped at how lovely it was. “Gray, where did you find something so beautiful?”

  “I had it commissioned,” he said with a shrug, as if it weren’t a big deal.

  But it was, at least to me. He had been thinking of me when he had ordered this little butterfly; I had been on his mind. I had known that he missed me, but I couldn’t have imagined he missed me as much as I missed him. He was having fun. Living his dream of playing his music and partying every night. Why would he possibly miss me as much as I missed him?

  But this little butterfly?

  It showed me that maybe I was wrong.

  Maybe he could miss me as much as I missed him.

  ***

  We never had a big feast for Christmas day. To us, that was what Thanksgiving was for. Everyone was usually so tired from getting up early and the excitement of opening gifts that no one felt like cooking. Alicia had started the tradition of having Chinese for dinner, something I figured she had taken from A Christmas Story, but I wasn’t going to complain.

  I could tell that her head was starting to ache from the way she kept dropping things. She wasn’t a clumsy person, and I had watched her closely over the last few months, so I knew the signs of when she was about to crash and burn with a headache that left her moaning in her room.

  She tried to put on a brave face for Gray’s sake, but I could tell she was about to give up and go to bed even though it was barely six o’clock. As soon as the food arrived, she took one whiff of it and turned green.

  “I think I’m going to lie down for a little while,” she muttered, swallowing hard as she put a hand to her mouth to drown the smell of the food out.

  Gray’s eyes narrowed on her as if he were trying to read her.

  But I hugged her goodnight. “Sure. You rest up. I’ll clean up down here.”

  She gave me a weak smile before kissing Gray on the cheek and hastily leaving the kitchen. Gray stood at the counter, an eggroll in his hand, trying to slyly dip it in my sweet and sour sauce, but his gaze was still on where Alicia had just disappeared. When we heard her door shut upstairs, he turned his gaze on me.

  “She’s having a headache, isn’t she?”

  “Yes,” I confessed. “I told you and Jace she hasn’t been well in months.”

  He turned and leaned back against the counter, the eggroll in his hand almost forgotten. “I know, but when I’ve talked to her, she’s seemed fine. Cheerful, even.”

  “Because she doesn’t want to worry you.”

  “What does the doctor say?”

  I shrugged and stole his eggroll, which was still coated in a little of the sweet and sour sauce. “I don’t know. She won’t let me go to her appointments with her. She told me it was just migraines caused by stress from work, but she’s had a lot of migraines lately.”

  “And that’s all it is? Migraines?” He looked just as suspicious as I felt.

  But Alicia had never lied to me before, so I had to believe that she was telling the truth.

  “It’s what she said, Gray. Why would she lie?”

  “I don’t think she would lie. Just not tell you everything.” Something dark crossed his face, but I knew what he was talking about, what he was thinking. He was remembering the promises she had made him after his mother had died.

  The only ones who knew what had happened that night besides him were me and Alicia, and neither of us would ever tell a soul. Not even Jace knew the truth. It was one of the few things I hadn’t confided in my brother, but not even for him would I betray Gray’s trust.

  I scooted him out of the way with a bump of my hip so I could pull the rest of our food from the bag. I felt him stiffen for a second before he took the container of soup from my hand and hugged me. The move surprised me, but I welcomed it nonetheless, and wrapped my arms around his neck, hugging him back just as tightly as he was hugging me.

  “Kassa,” he muttered close to my ear, tension suddenly rolling off him in torrents.

  His voice sounded different, almost pained, but I was enjoying our hug too much to pull back and look at his face. “Hmm?”

  He inhaled deeply and slowly released me. “I’m starving,” he grumbled as he turned back to the food, but I didn’t miss his clenched hands and his tight jaw. “You want wontons?”

  The tension was still in his muscles, and I had this wild thought that he had been about to do something that could have changed everything. But that was crazy. I was just pushing my own feelings off on him, wanting something he would never in a million years want. But, just for a moment, I had thought…

  I stood there for a moment, just watching him, waiting, and wondering what had just happened. But then he stuffed a wonton in my mouth, successfully distracting me. I chewed and then stuck my tongue out at him, food and all.

  “Gross,” he laughed, as I had hoped he would, breaking the sudden unexplained tension between us. “Give me back my eggroll.” Lowering his head, he ate the last bite from my fingers, his sand-colored eyes bright with amusement.

  I wiped my fingers on his shirt, making the smile turn into a glower, and smirked up at him. “So, what are we watching? And if you say A Christmas Story, I’m going to punch you in the dick.”

  “You wouldn’t hurt me.”

  “If you torture me with that stupid movie, then yeah, I really will.”

  “Okay, let’s make this easier. What do you want to watch?”

  I scrunched up my nose at him. “I don’t know.”

  He shook his head, laughing at me. “Of course, you don’t.”

  “You pick?”

  “Lord of the Rings.”

  “I’m not in the mood for Frodo.” I began scooping a little of everything onto a paper plate so I wouldn’t have to wash dishes later.

  “Harry Potter?”

  “I just had a marathon of that last weekend, thanks.”

  He made an annoyed sound in the back of his throat. “Let’s binge Game of Thrones, then.”

  “You know I get sad when we watch Game of Thrones,” I said with a pout. “All my favorite characters die.”

  “Then you pick!”

  “I don’t know what I want to watch. You pick.”

  He grabbed me around the waist and growled. Turning me in his arms, he lifted me until my feet were at least a foot off the floor. “You are so annoying. Just tell me what you want to watch.”

  “How about a comedy?”

  “Which one?” he grumbled, watching me cautiously.

  “Ghostbusters?” I suggested, knowing that it was one of his favorite movies.

  “The original?”

  “Of course the original. And we can watch the second one, too, if you want to.”

  He slowly set me on my feet. “Okay, then. Was that so bad?”

  “Horrible,” I said, throwing a sassy wink at him. “Still love me?”

  “Always, little caterpillar.”
r />   ELEVEN

  Gray

  The credits were rolling, but I couldn’t bring myself to move from the couch. Not with Kassa’s head pillowed on my thigh, the soft butterfly throw I had given her as one of her many presents that morning tucked around her and her thick, golden hair spread over my lap. She was sound asleep, having slept through over half of the second movie.

  Fuck, but she was beautiful. I had always known that, and the night before, it had punched me in the gut, but all day, I had been noticing more and more just how gorgeous she really was. She had changed so much in the time we had been on opposite sides of the country, from the shape of her face to the new curves of her body. My body, the idiot it was, liked these new changes.

  Liked them too much.

  My brain liked them too, even if it was conflicted as hell. I kept trying to remind myself that this was Kassa, my little caterpillar. But, ten seconds later, all I could see was how perfect her tits were, especially when she wasn’t wearing a bra like right then. Or how good her ass looked in her yoga pants. And my dick would get hard. Harder than it had ever gotten before for a chick who meant more than anything else in the world.

  I hated myself for wanting her so much, for nearly making a move on her in the kitchen earlier that night when the food had arrived. She could never know how close I had come to kissing her, how much I had wanted to taste her mouth—and more.

  I stroked the backs of my fingers over her cheek, enjoying the contrast of her creamy skin next to my golden complexion. She had the lightest sprinkle of freckles along her nose and her cheeks, but when she wore makeup, they were covered up. Right then, her face was completely free of anything but beauty.

  Without thinking about it, I traced my thumb to the corner of her mouth, the tip skimming over the plumpness of her bottom lip. Her mouth fell open slightly, a soft sigh escaping her. The heat of her breath against my fingers nearly made me groan as I pictured sliding my cock between those ripe lips. My cock thickened and flexed, causing her hair to shift across my lap.

  I spread my legs a little wider to make the ache in my balls a little less painful. The movement made her stir. Her lashes fluttered, and then, suddenly, I was staring down into a pair of blue eyes that seemed to see all the way to my soul. Her smile only made her more beautiful as she looked up at me with love and trust shining out of those eyes I had missed the last seven months.

  “Hi,” she murmured, shifting her body so that she was in a more comfortable position. When her head moved, it brushed over the hardness of my cock, but she didn’t seem to notice the change in my body. “Did I drool on you?”

  “All over me,” I choked out. A fantasy of her licking my cock filled my head and I had to clear my throat. “Maybe you should head up to bed.”

  “Only if you come too,” she said with a pout. “You leave the day after tomorrow. I don’t want to miss a single second of being with you.”

  Dread felt like a hundred-pound weight sitting in my gut right then.

  Her lashes lowered when I didn’t immediately tell her yes, her face going blank. “Unless you had plans? I don’t want to keep you from going out with … friends.”

  She sounded jealous. With any other chick, I would have instantly found a reason to get away from that kind of craziness. I couldn’t handle a possessive, jealous girl. I stayed as far away from those kind of chicks as possible. But the thought of Kassa jealous made me feel smug as fuck.

  “No, Kas. My only plan is to soak up as much of you as I can.” Shit. The mental pictures the word soak produced in my head nearly had me groaning, but I fought it down. “Whatever you want to do, I’m all yours.”

  Pleasure filled her eyes as she stood. Holding her hand out to me, she asked in that angelic voice of hers, which to my too fucked up head right then sounded like a siren’s voice trying to tempt me to do such delicious things to her, “Come to bed with me?”

  Her question was innocent. It didn’t hold any hidden meaning, and she wasn’t asking me to come to bed and fuck her until neither of us could walk, but that was exactly what my brain pictured. It wasn’t what she meant, but I still took her hand and went upstairs to her room with her.

  She went into the bathroom as soon as the door shut behind us, leaving the door open while she brushed her teeth and washed her face. I stood in the doorway, watching her, taking in all the things I had seen her do a hundred times over the years, but suddenly finding them more … intimate.

  I didn’t do intimate. Ever. It was a dirty word to me. If a girl even hinted at that shit, I made a quick exit.

  So why did I like it with Kassa?

  “You can use my toothbrush if you want,” she offered, wiping her face with a hand towel. “I don’t have cooties or anything.”

  I took the towel from her and wiped a few drops of water that had rolled down her throat. After tossing the towel aside, I caught her by the waist and pulled her close without letting her feel how hard I was for her. “What are our plans for tomorrow?”

  “I want to just stay home and veg out on the couch.” Her fingers touched my chest, her short, smooth nails tracing over my shirt, but her heat touched all the way to my heart. “That okay?”

  “That is exactly what I wanted to do, so yeah, caterpillar.”

  “Aren’t you tired?” Concern made her blue eyes darker and those three unique shades stand out even more. “You were up before me this morning.”

  “I couldn’t sleep.” But I didn’t think sleep was going to come easily. Not with her lying beside me and all those fucking fantasies that had started playing on a loop through my head tempting me with something I wasn’t supposed to want.

  She pulled back, a smile on her face. “I’ll let you get ready for bed, then. Want me to turn the TV on?”

  “Only if you want it on.”

  She walked into her bedroom but left the door open. From where I was standing, I could see her as she crossed to her closet and walked in. She didn’t bother to close the door as she pulled her shirt over her head and then picked a shirt up off the floor.

  My throat went as dry as the desert as I watched her slide it on. I couldn’t see her tits because she had her back to me, but I caught sight of the side of her right breast. That little tease of her like that made me twice as hard. The shirt fell to her knees, and she pulled her yoga pants off.

  I should have looked away; it wasn’t right to watch her liked that. I felt like a voyeur as I watched her pull her panties off next and toss them into one of her hampers before she put a pair of sleep shorts on. When she came out of the closet, sweeping her hair up into a messy ponytail so it wouldn’t tangle while she slept, I recognized the shirt she was wearing. It was one of my old T-shirts I had left behind. She must have stolen it out of my closest while I had been gone.

  I liked the thought of her sleeping in something that was mine, that it touched her while she slept. Did she think of me when she wore that shirt to bed? Did she imagine my arms around her as it hugged her at night and kept her warm? Those were dangerous thoughts, and I quickly forced myself to get ready for bed, telling myself that it was only because I had missed our cuddles at night—and not the thought of getting to have her sweet body pressed against me.

  Five minutes later, I climbed into bed beside her. The television was tuned into some late-night cartoon channel we had sometimes watched together when neither of us could sleep. On nights I couldn’t sleep in the apartment I shared with Jace, I would turn this shit on. It would make me feel a little closer to Kassa for some reason, and I would fall asleep to it still going on in the background.

  I pulled my shirt off, making myself more comfortable, and as soon as my head was on her pillow, she was cuddling close, resting her head on my chest. Her arm dropped over my lower stomach and she fought a yawn back as she snuggled deeper against me.

  “Perfect,” she murmured sleepily.

  I turned onto my side, forcing her head to move to my shoulder, so that I could hold her with both arms. The hand tha
t had been on my stomach moved to my back, her fingers tracing little patterns over my skin much as she had on my shirt earlier in the bathroom. Little doodles of hearts, figure eights, and stars, almost as if she didn’t realize she was even doing it. Those soft touches soothed all the disarray my head was in, and I stopped thinking, needing to enjoy this moment with her.

  I touched my lips to the center of her forehead before tucking her head under my chin and closing my eyes, savoring this moment because I would need to live off it for the few months I would have to be away from her. “No. Now, it’s perfect.”

  ***

  I don’t know how I fell asleep so easily, not when all I had been able to think about was how fucking good it felt to have Kassa in my arms and how much better it would have been if we’d spent the night slaking the new ache I had for her low in my gut. Yet, somehow, as soon as she was asleep, I had quickly joined her and slept more deeply and restfully for the first time in a hell of a long time.

  That restful sleep came to an abrupt end the next morning around six thirty.

  Kassa woke me by rubbing her sweet body against me, her soft moans acting as like wildfire and setting my blood on fire. My eyes snapped open, and I looked down at our bodies. I saw everything perfectly because the TV was casting a blue glow across the bed. We were still on our sides and she was still very much asleep. But my top leg had slipped between her thighs and was pressed right against her pussy.

  Even through her sleep shorts and my sweatpants, I could feel how hot she was, how wet she already was. She worked her hips back and forth on my leg, her soft pants and moans making my body throb with a need I had never denied myself with other chicks. My cock lay hard and pulsing against my other leg, the tip coated in pre-come as her tits rubbed against my chest.

  My arms were still around her, and I lowered one hand from her back to her ass, clenching one curvy globe as I helped her press down on my leg. It was wrong, so fucking wrong, but in that moment, nothing had ever felt more right. I kept telling myself I only wanted to make her feel good, that she probably wouldn’t even remember it when she woke up. My fingers kneaded and massaged her flesh through her sleep shorts, silently urging her on as she worked herself back and forth, making her pussy drench more and more with every stroke of my upper thigh.