by Deb Rotuno
I did exactly what she told me, and I watched her entire being with fascination—her breathing, her tense muscles, and her barely there kisses, not to mention the place where my hand disappeared into her shorts. There was warmth and wetness and heat. There was smooth skin and hair, but mostly there was twitching beneath my touch, and soon it started to seize up all around me. All of it, including my name being breathed against my lips, made my dick throb behind my sleep pants. She was gorgeous, but she was sweaty and smiling lazily too. It was the best thing I’d ever seen.
Smiling at her, I asked, “You okay?”
“Oh, God, yes,” she sighed, reaching for me, for the edge of my pants, and I swallowed thickly when she touched me like I’d tried to recreate in the shower earlier. “So hard, Evan.”
Nodding, I fell back to the bed, and she shifted with me, looming over my face while she worked me over with her hand. I wanted to speak, but I couldn’t. I’d been so hard for her while touching her that her hands were rendering me speechless. I couldn’t think, especially when she pulled my pants down just enough so I could see what she was doing to me. She pushed away, keeping her gaze on me, but my breathing picked up more and more as her mouth neared the tip of my dick.
“Oh, shit, Dani…If you…I won’t…” I barely made sense to myself, so I had no idea if she understood what I was trying to tell her.
Her smile was soft and sweet, but her breath ghosted across my skin when she replied, “The whole point is to come, baby. It’s okay.”
It didn’t take much to make me lose my mind. Her mouth was wet and hot, and her tongue was evil, I was pretty convinced. And as soon as she started to sink down over me, I had to fight not to explode immediately, though I didn’t last as long as I’d hoped. However, it was longer than it had been in the shower.
I tried to push her back, but she kept going—up, down, swirling her tongue over and over—until I felt the telltale shocks in my belly, the tightening of my balls, and my breathing stop. My eyes rolled back, and I lost it completely. I felt a little bad when, after giving me a moment, she took a second to put me back into my pants.
“Damn, I feel boneless,” I said, grinning when she crawled back up my body to snuggle closer, and I noted that the feel of her bare chest against mine was amazing and comforting. But I rolled to face her. “I…You…You’re the best thing to ever happen to me,” I whispered to her, suddenly too serious, but I couldn’t help it.
Her smile was sweet, but her eyes watered a little.
“Seriously, you are. I…I was freaking the hell out, but suddenly you’re half-naked in my bed, and I’ve forgotten what the hell I was panicking over.”
Her laughter was adorable and musical, and she kissed my lips. “Then my work here is done, handsome.” She pulled back a bit, reaching up to rake her fingers through my hair. “I’m…I don’t want to go back to my room just yet. Can we read together just a little while?”
“Oh, yeah, definitely.” I reached for our latest book we were reading together. We’d finished the romance and moved on to a classic. Dani had never read any Alexandre Dumas, so we were slowly working our way through The Count of Monte Cristo.
She put her shirt back on, but we settled into our normal reading position—with her between my legs and me reading over her shoulder.
“Chapter thirteen,” I read to her. “An Italian Scholar. Dantes threw himself into the arms of his new friend…”
Chapter Fourteen
Evan
“GO, GO, GO!” Wes and Daniel whisper-yelled at the football game, and it ended in groans of disappointment when the player was tackled.
Dinner had been amazing, and I was so stuffed I could barely keep my eyes open. Dani and I had stayed up late. My face heated with the memories of what we’d done. We had also ended up reading into the wee hours, and I was pretty sure it was because neither of us had been willing to be separated just yet.
The kitchen was cleaned up, leftovers put away, and Aunt Tessa and Leanne were out back on the porch with hot cups of coffee.
However, it was the sleeping girl with her head on my chest who kept me right where I was on the living room sofa. I didn’t give a damn about the football game, and it wouldn’t have taken much for me to fall asleep with her, but I was enjoying the simple act of holding her.
“You know, Ev, you can move her,” Wes said softly with a chuckle to his tone.
“No, no…” I laughed, shaking my head and running my hand down her hair. “She’s fine.”
Daniel snorted, drained his beer, and stood. “I’m not sure she’s ever made it past halftime, but you don’t have to be her pillow, son.”
Grinning, I shrugged. “She’s helped me more times than I can count, so assuming the role of the pillow is an easy thing,” I stated honestly.
Wes chuckled and Daniel squeezed my shoulder as he left for the kitchen to grab another beer. My eyes started to drift closed as the game’s white-noise came back on. My nose was nestled in Dani’s hair, and her hand was gripping the sleeve of my thermal shirt. The weather outside was bright, clear, and crisp. To me, it wasn’t cold, but to the native Floridians, it was perfect Thanksgiving Day weather.
Sounds and light started to fade until the feel of my phone vibrating in my jeans pocket shocked me back awake. I shifted as best I could in order not to disturb Dani. And I smiled a little at the sight of my brother’s face on the screen.
“Hey, Ty,” I answered softly, and I had to pull the phone away from my ear due to the yelling and noise coming through the damn thing.
“I’m so fucking done, Evan!” he growled over the line.
I glanced up to Wes, motioning to help me with Dani. I carefully slipped out from the sofa, and Wes settled her onto a pillow before I stepped out the front door onto the porch.
The yelling didn’t stop, but I could barely understand what he was saying. “Ty! Tyler, slow down. What happened?” I asked, gripping my hair as I paced back and forth.
“What do you think fucking happened? He’s such an ass, baby brother. And without you there, without being able to keep you under thumb, he’s taking his fuckery out on everyone else. Oh, I knew…I just fucking knew he’d set his sights on Faith eventually.”
My eye twitched and my temper sparked. “What’d he do?”
The phone rattled, and suddenly Jasmine’s voice came over the line. “Hey, Evan.”
“Jasmine, what’s…what’s going on? Did he…Is he…?”
My worst fear was that he’d start in on the degrading bullshit, the physical punishments that never ended, or ground her until she had no social life or friends. Tyler and I gladly took all those things as kids in order to keep her safe, because she’d been the one good thing in the house, the one person who’d taken care of us when we’d come home after the wreck. She’d been the one person who’d had nothing to do with any of it.
“Evan, I need you to stay calm. And I need you to listen. Faith is fine. However, she’s grounded all to hell and back. He…took away everything—car, phone, makeup, clothes…Fuck, he went into her room and trashed her posters, her closet, her bookcase. He even yanked the home phone out of the wall.”
My mouth fell open. I knew Faith was sassy. I knew she was braver than Tyler and me any damn day, but I couldn’t fathom what she’d said or done to make him that mad.
“Why?”
“Because he found out about her applying to Edgewater…and about your Dani.”
My chest squeezed tight, and I had to practically fall down into the porch swing. “Okay…and?”
The phone fumbled again, and Tyler’s angry voice came back on the line. “I’m not going back, Ev. I can’t. You have no idea how close I came to killing him when he called my fiancée a fucking whore. I refuse to let him control us anymore, ’cause that’s why he’s so pissed—he can’t control us once we’re spread as far away as possible. As soon as Faith is out of that house, he’s shit out of luck, man, and he fucking knows she’s the only fucking reason we’re
still in contact. I packed up what I wanted out of my room. I can’t. I won’t. I will go to jail, little brother, I’m not even kidding a little fucking bit.”
“Shit,” I hissed, and I nodded because I completely understood it. I couldn’t bear the mere thought of our father saying something to Dani, to the one person who meant more to me than my own life. I’d also caught the word fiancée, but now wasn’t the time to ask. My brother was too pissed.
“Okay, I’ll deal with it when I go home for Christmas,” I stated, simply because there wasn’t much choice in the matter. There was a part of me that already felt numb at the prospect of it.
“Faith said you’d come anyway,” Tyler sighed, and I caught movement in my peripheral vision. “You don’t have to go back, Evan.”
Glancing up, I saw Daniel standing there, a shoulder leaning on the porch railing post. His face looked worried as he tried to cover it up by running his fingers over his beard.
Dani had told me that she’d told her father about the wreck, my mother, my dad, so I rubbed my face and sighed. “I can’t not go back, Ty. Not now. Now that he’s aiming Faith’s way. No. I can’t do that to her. If I don’t go home, he’ll be ten times as pissed off. I’d rather just…face it. Maybe it’ll take the pressure off her, yeah?”
“Damn, baby brother…”
“Just call me if you hear anything. Otherwise, I’ll be back in Key Lake in a couple weeks.”
Tyler promised he’d check on Faith as best he could. Even without the phone, there was still e-mail that Faith could access at school or the library. When the call ended, I sat forward on the swing, gripping my hair.
I felt the swing shake when Daniel took a seat next to me, and I glanced over at him.
“You okay, son?”
I shrugged a shoulder and then finally nodded. “I don’t have a choice. I knew I was going back, and I knew I had to check on my baby sister…” I trailed off.
“We all have choices, Evan,” he said softly. “Every choice we make affects everything and everyone around us. Then, there are things out of our control, like what kind of family we’re born into or the members who surround us. You can’t pick your blood relatives, son.”
Snorting humorlessly, I nodded.
“However, you can surround yourself with people who treat you better than family. I’ve learned that family doesn’t necessarily contain the family tree. You get what I’m telling you?”
“Yes, sir, but it wouldn’t be right, wouldn’t feel right abandoning her. He’s pissed because she wants to come here to be near me. He’s pissed because I asked my brother and sister to keep Dani a secret from him, for this reason. He’s…”
“Your father is emotionally and verbally abusive, Evan,” Daniel stated so firmly that my head snapped up to look at him. He was very clearly angry. “Maybe even a touch physical, but…He uses what you love against you. He’s probably done that his whole life, maybe even to your mother, but I’m just guessing there. However, he’s using your sister, using your brother’s fiancée—sorry, he was loud enough I could hear him—against you.”
“S’okay,” I muttered, gazing blindly at the wood porch floor. “I don’t know what to do. She’s my sister. She…she took care of me and my brother a-after the car accident, and she was only ten then! She’s always done it. I just…”
“Family—good family—is important. I’m not saying you’re to abandon them, not at all, but there will come a time when those choices I mentioned will come into play. You have to decide what’s best for you, son. You came to Florida for a reason, and I think that was an amazing and very intelligent first step of proving yourself to be a man, of separating yourself from something that in all reality could’ve made you a completely different person, but you are you. You’re a good man, Evan. You’re smart and kind. If you weren’t, then I wouldn’t have my daughter coming to me that first dinner saying she was keeping you.”
Grinning, I shook my head.
“You’ve won her heart, which is saying something, but you’ve won yourself a different type of family too.” He chuckled a little. “My wife wants to adopt you, my sister thinks you’re the most adorable thing she’s ever seen, and my nephew treats you like a brother. But it’s my little girl who means the world to me, and she’s decided that you’re it. You’re here, and you’re not going anywhere, so that means you, your well-being, and even your siblings are now part of the equation.” His lips twitched a little. “In order to keep her happy, I need to keep you happy, not that I wouldn’t, Evan, because you’re a damn good kid, despite what you’ve been told or what you’ve come to believe.”
“I don’t know what to do,” I sighed. “I don’t want to go; the idea makes me crazy, but I can’t…I have to and…”
Daniel gazed out over the front yard for a moment, finally looking back to me. “No one said you had to stay the whole Christmas break. And no one said you had to face things alone. That guest room is yours whenever you wish, and Dani…”
Swallowing thickly, I nodded. “I know, but I…I…” I sighed, looking over at him. “I know she wants to go with me, but I won’t…I can’t do that. I can’t bring her near him.” Daniel nodded, but I went on. “I moved here to get away from him, but I…I also knew I had to be there for my sister at least until she graduated high school. I’m…I’m hoping this is the last time. I…I don’t know what I’ll do if he stops helping with school, or even what’ll happen come summer, but I…I can’t do it anymore.”
“Good for you, son.” He gripped my shoulder. “Stupid son of a bitch…” He shook his head slowly. “I’ll never understand it. Your kids should be the people you treat the best, with the most patience, with the most love, because they’re who will be taking care of you when you’re old and pissing the bed.”
Chuckling, I nodded, but then I shrugged a shoulder.
Both of us glanced in through the window when an explosion of curse words and name calling filtered out to us.
“Oh, hell,” Daniel groaned. “Wes found the can of whipped cream.”
“You asshat!” I heard Dani’s voice snap and then the pounding sounds of footsteps and laughter.
Daniel chuckled again but stood from the swing, facing me. “When Dani brought you to dinner that first night here and told me she was keeping you, I asked her then about the holidays. It worries me to no end to send you home to a rough situation. I don’t like it—as a father or a teacher. I don’t see how a man could blame his child for something that was clearly an accident. But…I also understand your loyalty to your brother and sister.” He sighed, shoving his hands into the front pockets of his pants. “I understand, too, your need to protect Dani, so…” He grimaced, shaking his head. “I would…really like it if you kept in touch while you were gone. I don’t care if it’s Dani, Wes, or even myself, but…”
“I’d planned on it, sir,” I told him. “Dani made me make the same promise.”
“Of course she did.” Daniel laughed, and we both looked up to see a disheveled, grumpy-looking, slightly messy Dani step out onto the porch. “Oh, shit,” Daniel mumbled, shaking his head. “Did you kill him, baby girl?”
“No, but he’s currently taking a shower. An entire can of whipped cream may or may not have ended up in the back of his boxers.”
Snorting to a loud laugh as Daniel squeezed his eyes closed and shook his head, I opened my arms for her. Her disgruntled expression was just as adorable as the rest of her, but I tried my damnedest not to laugh when I reached up to wipe away a smear of fluffy, white whipped cream from her cheek and her nose.
Her fierce expression didn’t change as she glanced between us. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
Taking a deep breath, I said, “Apparently Thanksgiving at the Shaw residence went…awry.”
She narrowed her eyes, glancing again between me and her father. “That’s it! You’re not going! He’s not going, Dad!”
Smiling, I shook my head. “I have to go, pretty girl,” I stated as calmly as
I could. “I’m the reason things went crazy.”
She sighed impatiently, her nostrils flaring with her temper as I told her what had happened—about Dad finding out that Faith had applied to Edgewater, about Tyler and Faith keeping my relationship with Dani from Dad, and about how his temper was now focused on my little sister.
“Then I’m going with you.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I’d give you the world, Dani, that’s no lie, but I can’t put you in that situation. I won’t.” I was still shaking my head when Daniel shifted a bit behind her. “If I don’t go, my dad will be even angrier, and who knows what he’ll say or do…to any of us. If you come with me, he will…” I sighed, locking my gaze on Daniel for just a moment. “Dani, he’ll use you against me. He’ll focus on you to…Oh, God, if he said the things to you that he said to Jasmine, I…” I groaned, gripping my hair with one hand and touching her chin with my other. “Please, don’t ask that of me.”
Dani’s sweet face was a mix of hurt and worry, her eyes watering a bit.
“Don’t, please…Don’t cry. You have no idea how badly I want to take you, but I know what’s waiting.”
“What will he do?” Daniel asked from his perch on the porch railing.
“Lots of yelling.” I smiled ruefully, tapping my temple. “I’ve learned to tune it out. But I imagine the attic needs cleaning and wood needs chopping. I’m sure there will be things that need to be repaired.”
“He’s getting worse, Evan,” Dani stated.
“He’s losing them, and he knows it,” Daniel sighed, standing up straight and folding his arms across his chest. “I don’t like it, son. It feels wrong sending you back.”
“It’s a month—not even,” I countered, shrugging a shoulder. I wanted to tell them a month was nothing compared to the seven years I’d endured, but Dani would most likely lose it.
Daniel let out a deep breath, pushing off the railing to go back inside and muttering about idiots raising good kids.
