“I mean, do you blame him? After going to court like you did. After what you did to his daughter. And then just leaving when—”
“Carla,” I interrupted quickly, not sure what to say but needing her not to finish her sentence.
Cade saved me from having to come up with more. “Have you somehow forgotten that he beat me to a pulp the last time I was here? I barely walked out of here. He broke two ribs. My face was swollen for a month. And you’re talking to me about blame?”
“Rebellious behavior needs extreme parenting,” she said, her volume reasonable, unlike his. “You kept pushing him and pushing him. What did you expect your father to do?”
Abruptly, he slammed his fist on the table, making his soup spill on the cloth. “He’s not my goddamn father!” He stood up and threw his napkin on the table. “I’ve lost my appetite. I need a cigarette.”
I watched Carla as she watched him storm away, looking for signs that she was upset. That had been the position I’d assumed as a teen—the peacekeeper. The comforter. The one who made sure no one else set off Daddy’s temper.
Even in his absence, I found myself slipping back into the role. “It’s hard to be back here.”
Her eyes snapped back to mine. “You don’t need to make excuses for him.”
“I’m not. I’m explaining something about him. If you’re looking to know your son, I thought it might help.”
“So you know everything about the relationship between sons and their mothers, do you?”
“Carla… Please, don’t make this bigger than what it is.”
She ignored me. “And you know what’s best for Cade?”
“I didn’t say—”
“Is that why you haven’t told him? Because you know what’s best for him?”
I sat back, surprised she’d realized. Glad, too, since it would make this visit easier. Also, ashamed. Always ashamed.
“Or are you thinking about what’s best for yourself?” she pressed.
I stared into my soup bowl. “You know why I haven’t told him.”
“Well, I wouldn’t expect you to be completely honest about it. You never have been before. Why start now?”
The remark felt like a slap, but I tried not to react. It seemed like an especially bad idea since I didn’t know if she actually knew the truth or if she was just referring to the truth she thought she knew.
For half a second, I considered just telling her. Considered clearing the air and putting everything on the table, and maybe I would have followed through if it were just the two of us.
But there was Cade.
And she was right—I was looking out for what was best for both of us, which meant keeping my mouth shut.
“I’m not trying to tell you what to do, Julianna,” she said, her voice softer.
It’s Jolie, I said in my head. “No, of course you’re not.”
“But this affects me too. What if I had said something I shouldn’t?”
“You didn’t. And I hope you won’t. It would really mean a lot to me if you didn’t.”
She sat back in her chair, her expression thoughtful.
Like every other relationship in this household, my relationship with my stepmother was complex. For the most part, we’d understood each other, and when we didn’t, we’d given each other grace, knowing that the things a woman did to survive weren’t always easy to explain.
But that had been in the past.
We weren’t the same women we’d been, and maybe her understanding had reached a limit. “He’s going to find out eventually if you’re going to keep up this…” She searched for the word. “This couple thing—”
“We’re not a couple.” We’d had one night together, but I wasn’t stupid enough to think it meant anything. Not when he’d made it clear how angry he still was with me.
“You sure look together.”
“It’s temporary.”
“Does he know that?”
I started to answer then got caught up in the possibility she alluded to. What if he didn’t know we were fleeting? What if he wanted us to be more?
The bubble of hope quickly burst when I remembered why we could never be more. Because, as she’d just clearly pointed out, my secrets would eventually be revealed.
And this...this he could never know.
“I would have thought you would be happy to hear this was temporary,” I said, swallowing past the lump in my throat.
She didn’t hesitate. “I am. What the two of you are doing? It’s sick. It was sick then; it’s sick now. He’s your brother.”
And here was where my understanding reached its limit. “He’s not my brother,” I snapped. “He was never my brother. Just like you were never my mother.”
She sat up straighter, taken aback by my outburst. “Ungrateful. Both of you have always been so ungrateful.”
My first instinct was to backpedal. To apologize. To smooth her ruffled feathers and make her happy. Make her pleased.
But I was tired of those old habits. Hadn’t I left them behind? Wasn’t that why I’d run away and changed my name, so that I could be someone different? Someone who didn’t kowtow and adulate and soothe? Someone who didn’t stay and stay and stay, no matter what was said or done to me?
“You know what, Carla?” I threw my napkin into my soup bowl. “I’m not hungry anymore, either.”
For the first time in my life, I got up from that damn dinner table and walked away.
Eight
Jolie
I found Cade in his old bedroom, half sitting on the window frame with a lit cigarette, looking out over the front yard.
Leaning against the doorframe, I took advantage of being unnoticed and looked around. The room had been redone after he’d left years ago, and it had been redone again since I’d left. Now it seemed to function as a guest room, though I couldn’t imagine who would ever visit. The walls had been painted real-estate beige, and the twin bed had been exchanged for a double with tan and gray bedding that was neither masculine nor feminine. The area rug that I’d helped pick last time was gone as well, leaving the wood floor exposed.
I tried not to make anything of the fact that my suitcase sat next to his against the dresser. Maybe he was fully intending to take mine down the hall and just hadn’t gotten to it yet.
That was the scenario I should have been wanting, but a ridiculous flutter in the center of my chest said I hoped differently.
“Always the rebel,” I said, ignoring my stupid, stupid heart.
He didn’t startle at my presence, making me wonder how long he’d known I’d been standing there. After ashing out the cracked window, he held the pack out toward me. “Want one?”
His guilt-free smile made my stomach go topsy-turvy, and not just because his boldness made me nervous, despite my adult status and that I’d just been brave enough to leave the table downstairs. “No. I’m scared of getting caught.” I shut the door, though, and crossed to him, reaching for his cigarette. “So I’ll share yours instead.”
He laughed, and this time my stomach did a complete flip. He’d so rarely been joyful in this house, and every time he had been, it lit me up like a firefly because his happiness was not only infectious, it belonged only to me.
It was scary how much I liked that it only belonged to me now too.
I tried to keep my head on why we were here. “Did you check out his office?”
“You didn’t?” It surprised me when he shook his head. I’d thought for sure he would have done that as soon as he’d left me with his mother in the dining room.
“It was locked,” he clarified. “Another good reason we’re staying the night. I can slip down there after she’s gone to sleep.”
It needed to be him because he knew how to pick a lock, but I was the one who knew where he kept the spare key to the cabin safe and what it looked like. “We can slip down there together.”
I waited for him to protest, but he didn’t.
“This is new,” he said,
rapping a knuckle against the glass. It had been replaced after we’d been caught together with a window that only cranked open a few inches. “No late-night sneaking across the roof now. Yours got switched out too?”
“Naturally.” I took a drag from the cigarette and blew it out the opening, watching the smoke mix with my breath in the cold air. “Except he didn’t realize about the one in my bathroom.”
His grin turned sly. “Too bad it’s so cold. We could climb out for old time’s sake.”
It was a dizzying thought—going out on the roof always had my head spinning because of the height, but it was more than that. Recapturing even a sliver of that part of our lives was tempting. He’d been the most irresistible of drugs. A stimulant and an opioid all in one. One small hit, and I’d be paradoxically both soaring and numb.
But then I’d want more and more and more.
There was no more addictive escape than Cade Warren.
Was that really such a sin? Wanting to feel good? Finding pleasure and taking it? Finding love and holding it close?
Carla’s accusations from earlier clung to me, and despite knowing better than to let her get to me, she’d gotten into my head. “Do you think we were wrong?” I asked when I handed back the cigarette.
He looked at me quizzically as he took a drag. “For us?”
“We were related.”
“We weren’t related.”
“Related by marriage. We lived together.”
“So?” He offered me the cigarette again, and when I shook my head, he tossed it out the window.
“So it’s taboo.”
That devious grin returned. “It’s hot.”
Unexpected arousal trickled between my thighs. He’d never acted like the wrongness of our situation had been a turn-on. “Yeah?”
“You’re hot.”
My breath caught as he wrapped an arm around me and drew me to him, standing up at the same time. My body flush against his, I could feel exactly how hot he thought it was. How hot he thought I was.
“It’s funny,” he said, his finger gliding along my collarbone, hidden beneath my sweater. “I thought you were hot despite being my stepsister back then. Now, being my stepsister might be part of what makes you so sexy.”
His finger continued down, down, down. To my breast and tickled over my peaked nipple, drawing a gasp from me before he bent closer and danced his mouth over mine. “So. Fucking. Sexy.”
The taunting made me insane, and I thought I’d die when he only brushed his mouth against my eager lips. Once, twice. I was on fire when he finally let me have his kiss, and though it had only been hours since he’d had his mouth on mine, it again felt new, like something I hadn’t had in years. Decades.
It was intoxicating the way his lips pulled gently at mine, tugging and teasing before growing greedy, and the kiss turned sinful, his tongue giving an explicit demonstration of how deeply he wanted other parts of him to be buried inside of me. I gasped again when his hands slid inside my jeans and panties to grab my ass, and he hauled me against the rigid bar at my belly.
“I wasn’t sure we were doing this again.” It was true, but in the moment, I couldn’t imagine the possibility of not doing it, and what I really meant was a warning for myself. You really shouldn’t be doing this again.
It was a warning I had no plans to heed.
He nibbled along my jaw until his mouth was near my ear. “I hope that’s not a problem because I really have to fuck you.”
“I think I really need to be fucked.” The words dissolved into a whimper as he pushed a long finger inside me and discovered how wet I was.
“Oh, baby, you do. You really, really do.”
I spread my legs wider, inviting his finger to probe me deeper, even though the angle wasn’t the best, and my jeans were restricting, and what I desperately wanted was much wider than his single finger. He humored me—or tormented me, depending on how I wanted to look at it—for a bit, kissing me and fingering me until I paid him back for the torture by rubbing my palm over the granite bulge in the front of his pants.
Abruptly, he broke away, and I was somewhat satisfied to find him breathing as heavily as I was.
Barely three seconds passed before he tore off his pullover and then reached for the bottom of my sweater to draw it over my head. He tossed it to the ground then palmed my breasts while I worked on unfastening his button-down.
“We never got to fuck in this room.” He tweaked both my nipples at once, and I shivered from the jolt of pleasure-pain.
“There was that hand job that one Sunday.” His shirt was finally open, and I paused to kiss the eagle tattoo across his chest. “When Daddy was at the cabin, and Carla was taking a nap.”
“You kept stopping to listen because you swore you’d heard something.”
“That must have been the worst hand job.”
“The torture made me so fucking hot.” He reached behind me to unclasp my bra. Once he’d freed my breasts, he gathered them in his hands, bringing me with him as he walked backward. When the back of his legs hit the bed, he sat down. Then he spent the next several minutes adoring my flesh with his tongue and teeth and hands.
“You were never this hot,” he said after teasing one nipple to a swollen point. “And you were hot.”
“You’re misremembering.”
“You were branded in my memory hot. I’m not misremembering anything.”
My chest squeezed at his subtext—I never forgot you. I never moved on.
I knew it to be true without him saying it. Knew it as profoundly as I knew that I hadn’t gotten over him, and the ramifications of that honesty ached so much that I pulled away with the noble intent of putting an end to this before we were further consumed by this desire.
But as soon as I was out of his arms, I knew the only place I was going was back in them.
“I got something when we stopped for gas,” I said, giving a reason for my retreat by going to my bag and pulling out the box I’d purchased while he’d been in the bathroom.
He raised an inquisitive brow. “You didn’t think we were still doing this, and yet you have condoms?”
“I’d hoped we would.”
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out three single condoms, the kind that looked like they’d come from a restroom dispenser. “I’d decided we would.” He stood just long enough to toe off his shoes and finish undressing. “Get naked, and get over here.”
I stripped as quickly as I could, then grabbed a condom and straddled his lap. I’d never straddled him like this, never been the one to sheathe him, and yet there was a strange sense of déjà vu as I unrolled the latex over his length.
I might not have ever lived this, but I’d imagined it. Imagined it in detail. Imagined it happening in this room, in a smaller bed. Imagined it while…
Just before I climbed onto him, I was hit with a sudden memory. “You fucked Amelia in here.”
It was a statement because in my gut I was sure, but it was also a question since I’d never gotten him to confirm.
Seventeen years later, his mouth split into a guilty grin. “I did. I did.”
“I knew it!” That fucker. “I was so jealous.”
“Get on my cock, and then you can tell me.” He was already guiding me over his jutting erection, so all I had to do was sink down, and he was filling me.
“So, so jealous.” I bit my lip, the sudden intrusion of him dominating all other thoughts and sensations. It felt like I was being stretched past my limit, not just physically but mentally. Emotionally too. Every part of me going taut as he pushed his way inside me.
“So jealous,” he repeated. “I like you jealous.”
I was still adjusting to him when he clamped his hands on my hips and tilted me forward, coaxing me to move.
At his urging, I lifted myself up an inch, then dropped back down. Then repeated the motion, forcing myself to ride him when a part of me wanted to simply sit still and feel him twitching inside of me.
“Yes, do that,” he encouraged. “Bounce on my cock, just like that.” He helped me, digging his fingers into my skin as he lifted me up and down, setting a rapid tempo.
“Did you listen at the door?” he asked, his eyes pinned to where we were joined. “Did you hear how hard she was trying to be quiet?”
Did he really remember that? It made my stomach burn to think that he did, but lower, my belly felt tight, and my pussy tingled.
And to be fair, I remembered distinctly what I’d been doing, and it hadn’t been listening at the door. “I laid on my bed and pretended I was her.”
His eyes flew up to mine. “Fuck, are you serious? Did you fuck yourself with your fingers and imagine it was me?”
“Yes.”
He groaned, and I swore he got thicker inside of me. “What part of me did you think about? My fingers or my cock?”
Probably both, though I couldn’t remember for sure.
But my uninformed fantasies were not as interesting as what had been happening in this room at the same time. Certainly not as interesting as the way my core pulsed when I thought about what he’d done with her. “You tell me, Cade.”
Abruptly, he flipped me over so that I was on the bed, my legs wrapped around his waist, and he was bent over me. “You want to know what I did with Amelia?” His thrusts were slow and shallow. “Really?”
“I do.” I lifted my ass, wanting him deeper, but he held my hips in place and refused to give me all of him.
“We kept our clothes on,” he said, pausing to lick across my nipple. “We were wearing our school uniforms, so I got her panties off her.” Another pause, another swipe of his tongue. “She had that little school skirt on, which made her cunt easy to access.”
My pussy clenched with his coarse words.
“Then I pulled her onto my lap.” He kissed me. “And turned her around. Because when she wasn’t facing me, I could pretend the pussy riding my cock belonged to you.”
He shoved all the way inside of me, drawing a whimper out of my mouth that he swallowed with a rough kiss. His mouth stayed locked to mine as he found a new torturous tempo. The bed squeaked, the headboard thumped against the wall, and while a part of me worried Carla would hear downstairs, another part of me was sorry the whole school wouldn’t hear, and I urged him on.
Wild War Page 6
