Brothers Forever

by Tawa M. Witko

Chapter 13

  October

  Four Months Later

  I have been home now for a little over four months and have fallen right in line with Dimitri. We do everything together, just like before, except that now I get to beat people up on a regular basis and make sure no one messes with him. A couple of days ago, a few thugs came into the bar starting trouble. We handled them but I decided after that that I needed to approach Estelle. I can’t keep being a wimp when it comes to her. I need to make a move. I see her walking along the sidewalk and decide now is the time.

  “Hey, do you want a ride?” I holler at her but she ignores me.

  I am in my convertible BMW, trying hard to get her attention. She has ignored me every time I have seen her. I am not used to that. Most women can’t wait to get in my pants, or pocketbook. Whatever! Doesn’t matter, I’m still getting laid. But not her. The minute she walked into the diner, I was drawn to her. She had walked by me and my buddies, and didn’t even respond to all the cat calls she was getting. I actually felt a strong desire to kill Dimitri for staring at her and making comments about how he wanted to have sex with her. Not that we haven’t shared women before, but I’m not down with that with this one.

  I have been following her for about a week. I know her name is Estelle Webber, that she moved here from Ohio to go to school, and that she is attending the University of Chicago in some type of psychology doctorate program. From what I can tell, she isn’t dating anyone. Thank God! I’d hate to have to beat the crap out of someone and get picked up again so soon after my last arrest. Father would surely cut me off then. After all, he’s still not happy that I returned home from Harvard and immediately picked up where I left off with all my ‘hoodlum’ friends. Screw him! He can’t tell me what to do forever.

  “Are you really going to just pretend I don’t exist?” I ask as nonchalantly as I possibly can.

  She stops suddenly and looks at me, okay, glare is more like it.

  “How can I pretend you don’t exist when you keep following me?” She replies with a huff. “Look, there are plenty of girls impressed with all of this…”

  She starts waving her hands dramatically at the car and then at me and a smile creeps across my face. She looks so hot all angry, waving her hands around, and I have a strong visual of her underneath me, panting my name. I shift in my seat to readjust myself. I almost don’t hear the rest of what she says.

  “But I’m not! I have no desire to be one of your groupies, Charles Livingston.”

  She says my name with such disdain that I find myself at a loss of what to do next. I stare at her dumbfounded. I am torn between being excited that she knows who I am and distressed that it doesn’t make a difference. This woman is eliciting unusual and, prior to this past week, unnecessary feelings in me. I normally could care less what people think or do. But her being angry at me makes me completely uncomfortable. I smile at her, trying to go for charm, but she just puts her hand on her hip and looks like she is ready to deck me. I pull the car over and jump out, quickly making my way over to her.

  “What if I’m not looking for a groupie?” I ask softly, running my fingers down her face.

  For the first time in my selfish life, I know that it isn’t a line, that it is true. I want that with her. The thought of being with someone else repulses me right now. I need this woman and I realize with certainty that there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for her, which is kind of odd considering this is the first conversation we’ve had with one another. She closes her eyes and falters for just a second before she pushes me away.

  “You’re impossible,” she says with less conviction than she had before.

  “Come on, Estelle. I like you,” I say bringing my fingers over her lips. “I think you like me too.” I offer her my best smirk.

  She frowns. “I don’t know that I like you at all. All I really know about you is that I see you with a different girl every week.”

  She arches her eyebrow at me and I am simultaneously turned on and remorseful about my previous behavior. I just met her. How can she make me feel this way? Her eyes narrow slightly and her brows furrow.

  “And I see you and your little crew causing trouble everywhere you go.”

  Her features soften slightly as her fingers caress the stitches on my chin from the fight I was in the night before and my whole-body shivers at her touch. She moves her hand away and gets a determined look on her face.

  “I don’t have time in my life for a man who just takes and never gives, who believes the world owes him versus owing the world. I can get sex anywhere.” She looks down and breathes in deeply before looking me straight in the eyes. “The world can be a cruel place and I won’t be with someone who takes pleasure in hurting others. I deserve a man that will cherish me emotionally as well as physically. That will put me first in his life, someone who will hold me up when I am down, someone not so full of pride that he won’t allow me to hold him up when he needs it as well. Can you be that man, Charles? Are you even capable of that?” She asks indignantly.

  I am overrun with emotions as I contemplate what she is saying. I have been with lots of women and none of them have ever affected me like she does and we haven’t even had sex. She lets out a soft breath and starts to walk away and my world seems to stop. My heart is racing and my breathing is erratic as I reach for her. I can’t let her walk away. She turns to look at me and the depth of her eyes pierces my shallow soul, and I am taken aback for a moment. I don’t know what to do, so I do the only thing that makes sense to me. I pull her into my arms and kiss her softly on her lips, praying that she wants this too. Not knowing what I will do if she doesn’t. She slowly parts her lips and I deepen our kiss, moving my hands into her hair as she wraps her arms around me. I am filled with not only the desire to make love to her but to take care of her as well, to be everything she wants and more. And I know that whatever it takes I will show her that I am worthy of her love. When we finally pull away from each other, I cup her cheek, memorizing every feature of her beautiful face because at this moment in time I know that my life will never be the same.

  “Please, Estelle,” I beg. Yes, apparently, I am not opposed to begging for what I want. “Give me a chance.”

  She nods as she brings her mouth to mine again. She deepens the kiss and I feel it everywhere. My whole body is on fire and I know we better stop or I am going to end up screwing her right here against the hood of my Beemer and I don’t want to do that. Okay, well, let me rephrase that. I do want to do that but I want to make love to her first.

  “Can I take you out?” I murmur against her lips.

  “I was on my way to the library. I have some research to do,” she says somewhat breathless.

  “I could take you.” I kiss her lips gently.

  “You want to come to the library?” She asks, cocking that beautiful brow of hers.

  I laugh. “You know, I do have an MBA from Harvard. Just because I hang out with some unscrupulous people doesn’t mean that I am uneducated,” I say crossing my arms and tilting my head slightly.

  “I’m…I’m…” She looks down and shakes her head before looking up at me. “I’m sorry, Charles. I made a presumption about you. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  I smile and take her hand. “Well, how about you make it up to me,” I say wagging my brows suggestively.

  She slaps my arm. “You’re incorrigible.”

  I laugh as I walk her back to my car and proceed to take her to the library. I will admit, I haven’t been in the library in ages but seeing her studying intently, bringing the tip of the pen in her mouth and chewing on it as she concentrates real hard, I am completely aroused and find myself drifting off into fantasy land. Thinking of things she could do to me, right here in this library. Suddenly I feel a paper hitting me on the forehead, bringing me out of my daydream. I look up and she is smiling.

  “What were you thinking about?”

  I swallow and blink several times. I am slouching in the chair, which
is a little embarrassing, so I sit up quickly and try to discretely adjust myself. Oh, man, I hope I wasn’t moaning out loud. I notice she is still watching me and I just shake my head at her, unable to form any coherent thoughts just yet.

  “I see,” she states knowingly.

  We stay in the library for a few hours and I do my best not to fantasize about her, well at least not while she is actually with me. I will save that for tonight when I am alone. And just like that I’m aroused once more. I shake my head and notice that Estelle is looking at me strangely again. I smile at her and she grins before looking back at her papers. An hour later, she has packed up all her things and I am pulling down a street that houses several large apartment complexes.

  “Right there,” she tells me, pointing to the building across the street. I make a U turn, because I’m not going to have her cross the street in traffic, and park in front of it.

  I look up at the complex and smile. “So, are you going to invite me up?” I ask with a smile.

  She grins. “No, I’m not. I know you are probably used to women just ‘putting out’ but I want a little more than that.”

  “I can wait,” I say sincerely as I kiss the top of her forehead.

  She brings her hand to my face and kisses me, her tongue moving inside my mouth and leaving me wanting. She pulls away, kissing me softly on the lips and then opens the car door, but before stepping out of the car, she turns to me.

  “Goodnight, Charles” she says, stroking my face gently.

  “Can I see you tomorrow?”

  She stops and turns to me smiling. She then leans back into the car again and I lean forward to meet her kiss. After she pulls away from my mouth, she kisses the tip of my nose.

  “You better, Charles Livingston,” she says playfully.

  She gets out of the car again but this time doesn’t turn back and struts up the front steps to her apartment. I am left completely discombobulated. What the heck just happened? I glance at myself in the rearview mirror and see my flushed skin and wide eyes. I think I might be in love with this girl. I look back at the complex and have to fight the urge to go up there and see her again. I take a deep breath and shake my head as I pull away, heading back to the bar to see what Dimitri has in store for us today.

  Chapter 14

  November

  One Month Later

  I glance at the coffee table and pick up a book, The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud. I flip through the pages and set it down, looking at the books scattered around the table, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life by Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id by Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle by Sigmund Freud, Sexuality and the Psychology of Love by Sigmund Freud. Geez, what the heck is she reading? She walks out and laughs when she sees what I am looking at.

  “It’s for a research paper I am doing.” She leans down and kisses me lightly on the forehead.

  We have been dating for almost a month now and we still haven’t had sex. What ever happened to the three-date rule? I haven’t masturbated this much since I was thirteen! She has let me touch her though, a lot, but I have the sneaking suspicion that she is waiting to see if I am worth giving it up for. I had asked her before if she was a virgin and she told me no, which, to be honest, pissed me off. I mean, I know it was way before me but, just the thought of some other guy touching her made me want to pull out my knife and mess someone up.

  We have spent this month getting to know one another. Something that I have never done with any other girl. I don’t even know the names of most of the girls I have had sex with. That just wasn’t important. Not that they cared. They knew who I was and were using me just as much as I was using them. But, everything with Estelle is different. I want more with her and if that means waiting, I will wait. She has told me all about her family in Ohio and how supportive they’ve been, she has even told me about her friends and school. I have been a little more cautious in the information I have disclosed. I have talked a little about my parents, indicating that we don’t get along that well. I told her I don’t work right now because I am exploring my options. Yeah right! I also haven’t told her very much about Dimitri aside from the fact that we are childhood friends. I have carefully swayed our conversations away from him and what we do. I’m not ready to go there with her.

  “Did you decide what you wanted to see?” I ask.

  “I’d like to see that movie with Mikhail Baryshnikov. God, I just love him,” she says grinning. “I saw him perform once when my parents took me to New York a few years ago. He was amazing.”

  I frown. It figures she would want to watch some movie about Russia and how messed up it is over there right now. I glance at her and see that she is watching me.

  “You don’t want to see it?” She asks, looking downcast.

  “Ummm, no, it’s alright. Whatever you want, Es,” I say, standing up and pulling her close to my chest.

  She smiles radiantly. “Good, you can tell me if the translations are right. I always wonder that when I see a movie where they speak a foreign language. You speak Russian, right?”

  I nod. “Yes, I speak Russian and French.”

  “Really? I speak French as well. Are you fluent in both?”

  I nod and kiss her, wanting to change the subject, not wanting to talk about how I learned to speak Russian because that will lead to Dimitri which will lead to what I do with Dimitri which will lead to exposing Dimitri’s mob connections which will lead to me having to confess to her what I do with him.

  By the time we stop kissing, she is breathless. I tell her we should leave and we make our way to the theater where I buy our tickets. The movie is actually pretty good. I try to make out with her but she is too into the movie to let me get very far, so I finally give up and end up spending most of the movie whispering the English dialogue to her in Russian. She is squirming in her seat and breathing heavily. Hmm, she really likes that. I move her hair to one side and start kissing along her ear and down her neck, seeing her chest start heaving.

  “I want you so bad, Es,” I say sucking her flesh into my mouth.

  By the time the movie is over, I am seriously considering going into the restroom to relieve some pressure, but I don’t. I wrap my arm around her waist as we walk out of the theater and down the street to my car.

  “Where to, Es?” I ask as I start my car.

  She swallows and turns to me. “Let’s just go back to my place,” she says, her voice uneven. “Unless you want to go somewhere else,” she quickly adds.

  I smile. “No, I don’t mind going back to your place.”

  YES! That means we get to make out, maybe she’ll let me go a little further than just touching her. We head to her complex and I take her hand as we walk inside her building and up to her apartment. When we walk in, she excuses herself and I go and sit down on the couch, looking at the crazy collection of books she has on her table. I don’t even hear her come back in the room but she comes up behind the couch and starts kissing along my neck, sending goose bumps across my skin.

  “Mmmm, come here, Es. I want to kiss you,” I mumble.

  When she comes around to the front of the couch, I sit up quickly, my mouth gaping. She looks stunning and sexy and now I want her more than I can express. She is in this long, black, silk nightgown with lace that goes up the entire left side of her body, revealing just enough of her legs, hip, stomach and breast to make me want her beyond reason.

  “Do you like it?” She asks hesitantly.

  “Ты красивая.”

  She smiles when I tell her that she’s beautiful in Russian, even though she doesn’t know what I’m saying, and sits on my lap, kissing me softly. I honestly don’t know how can she ask me that? She is stunning. I pull away from our kiss and smile.

  “Of course, you know you’re gonna kill me in this outfit,” I say as I play with the thin straps on her shoulders, tracing my fingers down the V and touching the outline of her soft breasts.

  “Well, I was shooting f
or arousing you,” she says, moving her fingers to my shirt and unbuttoning the first few buttons. I place my hands over hers, stopping her movement.

  “Es, you always arouse me but I told you I can wait. I’m sorry if I made you think that I couldn’t,” I say looking down, feeling guilty for how I acted in the theater.

  “I want you, Charles. It’s okay,” she says, taking my hand and putting it on her breast.

  I start breathing heavily and move my hand to her face, pulling her in for another kiss. God! I need her so much but I have to steady myself. I place both hands on her face, looking at her red lips and her eyes, dark and wanting. Her hair is falling in her eyes, having come out of the clip she had it in. She is truly a vision. I smile as I move her hair out of the way.

  “I love you, Estelle Webber,” I whisper intently. “I have never felt this way before and I want to do everything right with you.” I take a deep breath and trace my thumb underneath her eyes, wiping the tears she is now shedding. “I love you.”

  “Charles, I love you, too,” she says, full out crying now.

  I kiss her again, holding her body close to me. I have never told a woman I loved her and never heard it said to me but, oddly, I feel completely at peace with it. It’s like a truth in a sea of lies, it just feels right and powerful. When she pulls away from me, I stare at her confused.

  “Charles, make love to me.”

  “I didn’t say I loved you so that you would make love to me, Estelle. Honestly, I want you desperately but I can wait.” Although my aching body would beg to differ I know I can do it.

  “I can’t. I want you.” She kisses me softly and then nods. “Make love to me.”

  I stand up, lifting her bridal style as I carry her to the bedroom. I lay her down on the bed and kick my shoes off as I rest my body over hers. I start kissing her gently along her cleavage as my hands move over the silky-smooth material of her gown and down the curves of her body. My mouth finds her lips again as I start kissing her with a passion I have never felt before. Her hands move to my belt, unbuckling it and then quickly unzipping my pants. I actually whimper when she starts touching me.