by Ivy Fox
“I can’t. I just can’t.” She sobs, lowering her eyes from the carnage she has inflicted.
“You’re a coward, Freya!” Tyler states, standing up from his seat, looking for the nearest exit from his impending heartache. “You want out? You got it, Princess!”
“Tyler…” she whispers, watching my brother’s malicious glare through blurred vision,.
“It is what you wanted, Freya. We don’t have to wait until the end of the week. It ends today.” Mason informs, not concealing the bitter smirk he has plastered on his face.
“Chaz?” Carter asks, pushing his dismayed twin out of his seat. “There is nothing left for us here. Let’s go, Brother.” Chaz shakes his head as if sweeping away his jumbled feelings. His face changed from broken to disgusted in a split second.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. See you around, Princess. Have a nice fucking life,” he says as a parting farewell and follows our elder brothers out the front door to go who-knows-where.
The suffering Freya feels is so crippling that she falls to the floor and weeps uncontrollably into her hands. I follow her and hold her weeping frame to mine. My chest feels as if it’s been ripped apart, and although I can’t see it, blood should be splattered all over the kitchen floor. With each howl she makes, I feel like something is clawing inside me and is tearing me to shreds. Everything is hitting me at once. Freya’s pain, my brothers suffering, all of it.
But I know someone needs to be the voice of reasoning here. One of us needs to have a cool head to maneuver this storm. We will not come out of this shattered. This is not the hurricane that will sweep our love to the air to be lost amongst the heavens. Our love can weather the storm. As long as one of us remembers to be true to our love, then the rest will come to remember as well.
“No one has to know our business, Freya. It’s ours. The way we chose to live our lives shouldn’t be dictated by others.” She continues to bawl, but this time, her hands find my shirt, and she weeps against my heart.
“If you’re not comfortable with that, you can do something else. Something that might solve this,” I say, testing her fragile state.
“What?” she asks, hoping for the miracle she craves.
“Choose one. Choose one of us.” But my solution brings a fresh batch of tears to her eyes.
“How can I do that? I can’t! Don’t you see? If I chose one of you, then your connection with each other would undoubtedly break. I couldn’t do that. It would end me knowing I came in between any of you.” I continue to pat her back as her watery tears soak my grey t-shirt to my skin.
“And besides, I couldn’t choose between any of you.”
“And why is that, Freya?” I ask already knowing the answer. Because she loves us all, her eyes want to shout. Because she’s been in love with us all her life. But just like Tyler said earlier, she’s too afraid to say these things out loud. And admitting to me how she felt, would only hurt her more. She believes that her love for us is her cross to bear. That it will be easier if my brothers hate her in the long run. I read her thoughts as if they were written down on paper, only to be stored and locked away so no one else can be privy to it. How she thinks it will be easier to pull away and move on if she has burned all the bridges linking us together. Even her craving to push me away is written on her forehead. Thinking that by doing so, her misery would be complete, and that I would heal through my hatred too.
“I should go,” she starts to say, pushing herself away from me, but I’m having none of it. Her thoughts won’t scare me away.
“Go where?” I ask, grabbing onto her tightly, leaving no room for misinterpretation. I will never let my princess go again. She’s going to realize that soon enough.
“I have enough money to last me a couple of days at some hotel in the city.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so, Princess. You’re not moving one step out of this house until this shitstorm is resolved.” I deadpan.
“But…”
“No buts, Freya. You don’t see a future in this, I get that. But don’t you see? A future without you in our lives isn’t much of one. My brothers are pissed, sure, but sooner or later they will come around and fight for you. Like I’m doing now.”
“Why aren’t you angry at me too?” she asks, perplexed at my cool demeanor.
“I’ve been angry at you for years. I don’t want to do it anymore. I much prefer to love you instead,” I confess. I pull her into my lap and hook her arms around my neck, wanting to engrave this moment in my heart for the rest of my life.
“I love you so much, Freya. Our lives are just beginning, Princess. Where you see no possibilities, I see the future I always dreamed about. You by our side.”
“Oh, Drew!” She whimpers, her head falling into the crook of my neck. I stroke her black hair to her waist and kiss her head, promising my undying devotion with each tender peck.
“Don’t give up hope, Princess. I promise hope won’t give up on you. Not while we’re at your back.”
Chapter 19
Freya
“Where are the boys?” I ask, once I make my way out to the pool area and establish Drew is on his own, typing away on his phone.
“They had to go into the city and do some errands for our dad. Why? Disappointed that you only got me?” he teases, lying about the true whereabouts of the other counterparts of my heart.
“No. They don’t like me much at the moment anyway,” I mumble, sitting on the lawn chair next to a sprawled out and relaxed Drew.
“They’ll come around, Princess,” he states again, his belief never unwavering. I wish I could feel as confident.
“You trust me, Freya?” he questions, with the first trace of doubt bubbling through.
“With my life,” I answer honestly.
“Then trust me, this melancholy that gripped you is just as bad for them as well. They are just as miserable as you are. And once you and my brothers realize this shit isn’t worth the torment, you’ll all see the big picture.” I shrug at his statement. Drew doesn’t seem to be living the same reality as we are. I envy his new found positivity as much as I hate it.
“They hardly spend any time home since our fight. I’m going crazy, and they don’t even seem to care.” I point out, hoping to shed some rationality to Drew’s outlook on our predicament.
“They care, baby. They care too much. To see you and not touch you is just too torturous of a thing for them to bare.”
“But they can touch me. I want them to. I want all of you to,” I tell him, my voice already panicking that I will never feel alive again like I did in their arms.
“You miss them,” Drew says, more as a confirmation than a question.
“Yes,” I say, swallowing my hurt down my throat.
“Let me take your mind off it for a while. Let me see that smile of yours.”
“I don’t know if you can,” I reply sincerely.
“Take your bikini off. Let me see you swim in our pool, the way God made you. I want to memorize every stroke you take.” Drew orders. A small simmering heat ignites in my stomach, and although stripping for him was not what I expected to shed my blues away, my body seems to disagree. I stand up in front of his chair and pull my t-shirt over my head, leaving my full breasts covered only by my red bikini top.
“Now your shorts, Freya. Take them off,” he instructs, and I abide by his command, pulling the shorts down my waist, then my thighs, all the way down to the ground.
“Such a good princess,” he praises, still seated coolly in his chair, but his hooded eyes show the fire burning in him.
“Now turn around, Freya. I want you facing the water instead of me.” And again I abide each instruction to a T.
I stand still in place, and when I feel soft fingers go up and down my spine, my whole body has a nuclear reaction to it. With ease, he pulls the string from my bikini on my neck and then my back, until the tiny piece of clothing falls to the floor.
My first instinct is to cover my bare breasts, but I
fight against it, knowing that this is Drew’s intention — for me to feel exposed and still protected by him. With expert hands, he tugs on the strings to my bikini bottom on both sides, and it too falls unabashedly to the floor. My breath is erratic, and my body resents that his only touch was one finger up and down my spine the whole time he was getting me naked. I hear him take a few steps back and sit back down on his seat.
“Turn around, Freya,” he edicts. I turn ever so slowly, my naked state in full view to anyone who would set foot outside. I’m met with an equally nude Drew, who is proudly stroking his shaft from balls to tip, enjoying his view.
“So fucking innocent, yet so fucking ruthless.”
“I’m not ruthless,” I say, stung by his remark.
“That’s what you’d have most of the world believe, but we know how ruthless you are, Princess. All these years toying with us, letting us look but never letting us touch,” he says baiting me.
“That’s not what I wanted.”
“No? What did you want then?” he asks, and I see pre-cum moist the head of his cock.
I bite my inner cheek down hard because I might fall into confessing what my heart and body always wanted. Them. All I ever wanted was him and his brothers around me, loving me, caring for me, protecting me, and taking me in every way that counts.
“Tell me, Freya, what do you want?” He demands, and I don’t know if it’s my nakedness that has me vulnerable or the desperate look in Drew’s eyes that does it, but I confess the only thing I ever wanted in a loud sigh.
“You. I want you. All of you.” The satisfied look on Drew’s face tells me this was all he needed to hear.
The realization that all I ever wanted was him and his brothers, hits me like a ton of bricks. Why am I self-sabotaging my happiness in the belief that outsiders will never approve of our love? Before, when I thought I was alone in this, it made sense to part ways. But now? Now that I know in my very being that they love me just as desperately as I love them, why should it matter what the outside world thinks?
No one’s approval will make my love any more solidified. No judgment or crude remark will make our love any less marvelous than what it is. This pain I’m feeling now, I would feel tenfold for all the remaining days of my life if I persisted in not living this love.
Sure it’s unconventional. Yes, our parents will probably be appalled at the idea, and friends and family might even want nothing to do with us, but they are not the ones living our lives. We are. We are the ones who decide how it should be lived.
The epiphany is so lightning-bolt clear, that I don’t even realize that I’m no longer standing, but cradled in Drew’s arms as he takes us down to the cool baptizing water. My smile is so contagious, that it brings Drew’s out, tugging broadly from left to right. When he kisses me and thrusts into me in one hard, merciless swoop, I see clouds dance in delight.
“You want us the same way we want you, baby. You are all that we need. I’m going to make it my mission for you to remember how you already have us. You always did,” he says through every thrust, his words vibrating through me, making my whole body shudder. His hard length buried inside me, as his hips drive punishingly into mine, makes me wetter than any liquid surrounding us. My fingers dig into his back, leaving my own mark on him, and then I grab his wild and mussed wet hair as my own anchor to keep me from falling off the cliff too soon.
Drew takes and takes until I don’t know what more my soul can give him. He curses underneath his breath and begs me to let go, with his own impending release demanding to be freed. And in this knowledge, my orgasm rips through my throat as I cry into the air and touch the same white puffy clouds above us.
My heart is feeling full with the vision of what my future will look like. No longer a sad existence, but a life full of promise. My limbs and soul are so sated that I fall asleep in Drew’s arms, right there in the Perry’s backyard pool.
I’m startled awake when I feel a hand covering my mouth, robbing me of oxygen. My eyes open wide of their own accord only to find a dejected black stare looking back.
It takes me two seconds to realize, not only is it pitch black outside, but that I’m back in my room. However, it’s no longer the sanctuary it once was, when I register that the stranger in front of me is not a figment of my imagination, but an unwelcomed intruder in my world.
Panic sets in as I start to wiggle free from his grasp, but my attempts are futile. Not only does he have his big meaty hand over my mouth, but I feel the full weight of his body on my mine. Faint whimpers are the only sounds I’m capable of letting out, even though I’m thrashing like a maniac to get this man off me. My body is still bare from my afternoon lovemaking with Drew, and having this savage touch my naked skin is making me dizzy with revulsion.
“Don’t make a sound,” he whispers in my ear. My stomach is so disgusted with his foul breath on my skin, I feel the bile moving its way up my throat.
My eyes search the room for Drew, my champion and protector, only to be horrified when I find him on his knees, bruised and bleeding on the floor, with two other men holding him down. I can’t make out their faces, but the sound of their laughter is like nails being hammered in my eardrums.
I wrestle harder to get from under the villain on top of me, wanting desperately to be by Drew’s side, but the black-eyed devil doesn’t relent his hold for a second.
Anxiety and fear no longer hold a place in me when I witness the hatred and panic plastered on Drew’s angelic face. My adrenaline kicks into overdrive, and my legs try to boot the man away while attempting to bite his hand at the same time. Cold sweat runs down my spine, as I feel his erection grow harder on my bare leg with my struggle to break free.
“Now, now girl. You’re being rude,” he continues to whisper, but everyone in this room hears him loud and clear.
“This was just supposed to be an in-and-out job. We didn’t expect to find you two here, but now that you are, you won’t mind if we have some fun, will you?” His breath trickling over my sensitive skin.
“Don’t you like to have some fun, girl? I doubt surfer boy over there knows how to show you a good time. But you’re in luck, my buddies and I do.” With each word the man utters, I hear Drew thrash harder with all his might, attempting to break the hold of the other two. Panic is seizing my insides at the thought of them hurting Drew even more.
“Now, if you’re a good girl and play, we’ll leave loverboy there still breathing after we’re done,” the devil says, reading the fear written on my face.
I squeeze my eyes shut, with nightmarish images – of what this villain is considering doing – plaguing my vision. Unwilling tears start to fall from the corner of my eyes. I feel a harsh tongue lick one tear away from my cheek, and even though my eyes are now tightly shut closed, I sense his smile on my skin. My fear overpowers my earlier bravery, and I’m now paralyzed still when another hand bites into my waist.
“That’s more like it. I knew you would see things my way.”
“Boss, this one right here isn’t too happy listening to how you’re going to fuck his bitch,” one of the men holding Drew has the audacity to say, and I lock eyes with my brave knight, wishing I could save him from the nightmare he’s sure to see.
“He had a taste already, and we’re guests. He should know better, it’s only hospitable to share,” the man on top of me spits out.
“Does that mean we can also have a turn?” his sidekick asks with malice in his tone.
“I don’t see why not? What do you think, girl? Think you can handle my friends and me at the same time? No? How about just me now and then my buddies in one go? I think you’ll like that plenty,” the dark-eyed devil says.
“You fucking asshole! You touch her, and I’ll kill you!” Drew mumbles out incoherently from his gagged mouth.
“Such hostility. Didn’t your momma ever teach you to share? This little thing is begging for a good fuck. So be a good kid and watch how the grown-ups do it. Maybe you’ll learn a few
tricks. I’ll have her moaning and begging for my cock in no time.”
“Bastard!!! You stay the fuck away from her!”
“Or what? Stay still, before my buddies decide to fuck up your pretty face a bit more, instead of fucking this fine ass. Just watch and keep your cool and we’ll be out in no time. But not without taking some mementos first. This house looked primed for the picking. We just weren’t expecting it held more alluring merchandise,” he says, this time pinching one of my nipples so hard that I’m blinded by the pain.
I hear Drew trying to fight his way free, and I know I should continue to do the same, but my brain refuses to comply. It’s frozen in the hell the man above me is promising. Memorizing each and every muscle that is touching my body. Burning into my memory his scent, along with the scratch of his thick black beard on my exposed neck and the pain of his nails sinking into my hip. All of it.
A small voice inside me pleads me to look the other way. Implores me to lock eyes with Drew to ground myself. But it’s useless. My mind can only focus on the jet-black haired monster on top of me. It can only register how fully exposed to his torment I am.
My silent tears keep spilling one after the other, and all I can do is pray these men are quick with their cruelty and their punishment, so I can feel Drew’s arms around me once again. His pained howler will be the soundtrack of this new misery.
Ironic how only a couple of days ago I was living in light. Heaven’s door wide open for me to enjoy, just for this event to cloud all my happiness.
The men I loved with every breath, showed me how much they cherished me. They cared and loved me with every caress. But now, my flesh crawls with this stranger’s touch. Hell beckoning to show itself in his eyes.
One hand moves away from my mouth, only for a forceful tongue to take its place. My survival instincts must not be all obliterated as I feel my teeth bite down hard. Another hand comes out of nowhere and slaps me to the point I see white lights fill my vision.
