by Ella James
She nods, eager.
I stroke her ivory white throat. “In the car,” I lie again.
Cleo shakes her head and pulls her lips down. “It’s not a car.”
Goddamn, her mouth like that. It’s fucking sexy, that little smirk. There’s something feline about it—like a smug housecat pondering a bowl of milk. I want to kiss it off her lips.
“What is it then?” I ask, turning toward the refrigerator before she sees my boner. I grit my teeth and start to rearrange my canned nutrition shakes.
“It’s a gas guzzler,” she says, coming to stand on the other side of the refrigerator door. I train my eyes on the label of one of the shakes, because I can feel her eyes on me. She’s so damn close, her gaze burns.
“Do you know the miles per gallon?” she asks.
I reach in and get two water bottles out, and I think of checkers. That’s all it takes to kill my boner, so I’m safe to turn around. “You really wanna know?”
“I’m not sure. Do I not?”
I tug the sleeve of her shirt. “Are you a tree-hugger, Cleo baby?”
“Don’t call me that.” Pink spots bloom on her cheeks.
I grin. “What—Cleo baby?”
“Yes.” She takes a step away from me. I step with her. She leans against the countertop, right in front of the sink. I come in close, so close our hips are almost touching.
I’m still grinning. “You don’t like it?”
“It’s... I don’t know.” She fusses with her hair. “It makes me feel like I’m... being teased.”
I rub my thumb along her smooth jaw, smirking because I can’t help myself. “Cleo baby?” I tilt my head at her. “That makes you feel teased?”
She leans back. “You are teasing me—right now. Don’t act like you aren’t,” she says indignantly.
“You never answered me. About the trees.”
She leans back toward me with reluctance on her face. I could step back to give her space, but where’s the fun in that? I know my breath smells good because I chewed a bunch of Big Red after my run earlier this morning.
I rub my fingers over the hemline of her tie-dyed shirt. “You look cute in tie-dye, Cleo baby. Like you belong in California with me, hugging redwoods.”
Her cheeks are even redder than before. I’m surprised, and irrationally charmed.
“I’m getting ‘The Lorax’ on my ankle next,” she says, and then presses her lips tightly together to hide a smile she wants to beam at me.
That makes me laugh. I don’t know why I find it so damn funny: that smug little smile she’s trying to hide, and the thought of that damned mustached Lorax on Cleo’s little ankle.
“Dr. Seuss.” She shrugs, her eyes alight, as if my amusement has infected her. “I’m his number one fan girl.”
I give her a grin, because fuck it, I can’t help myself. I notice a glint of something silver at her throat and pull a necklace out of her shirt. I see a small sloth hanging from the chain and lose my grin.
I guess my face must show my feelings, because Cleo’s eyes widen in response to what she thinks is disapproval. “Are you hating on my sloth necklace?”
“Hell no.” I fake a quick smile for her. “I’m a lover of the sloth.” I turn toward the pantry but I slide a glance her way. She’s folded her arms and is leaning against the refrigerator, looking skeptical.
“Have you ever heard of Save the Sloths International?” I ask. She frowns as I step into the pantry, looking for some shit for us to eat. “I’m one of its biggest donors. Same money that bought the Escalade—” I stick my head out, giving Cleo my most earnest look—“I’ll have you know, it saved three sloths.”
She steps toward me. “What kind of sloths?”
“The slow, tree-dwelling kind.”
“Sloths that live in... ?”
“Endangered locations,” I tell her. “Much of South America is being pruned by... well, you know—Mr. O’Hare.”
Her mouth drops open and her eyes widen. The shocked look quickly morphs into a smile. “You’ve read ‘The Lorax?’”
“I helped write it,” I tease.
“Kellan Walsh, you... sneaky trickster.”
I laugh. Sneaky trickster—that’s all she’s got? I step out of the pantry with an armful of food and shrug. “I’m a closet whore for Dr. Seuss myself.”
She shakes her head, still laughing, and then steps to take some of the food out of my arms. “Holy hell, Kellan. Do you think we have enough snacks?”
I lay out the array of food on the countertop, and Cleo starts to weed through it. “White powdered doughnuts—score!” She sets the two packs off to the side. “Twizzlers—these things are my super fave.” She pushes them into the pile, and I smile at her enthusiasm. “Teddy Grahams—hell yes, childhood! Olive would love these.” I watch as her smile falters, but she pastes it back on.
“KIND chocolate and peanut butter protein bar, yes, please. Hell yes, Nutella and these godly little dipping sticks. Kellan, you have great taste in junk food.” I laugh, and Cleo wraps her arms around her food pile. “You’re a shopping god.” She moves a pack of candied peanuts, a bag of Nilla Wafers, and a small bag of Doritos into the stack, rejecting two bags of pork rinds and one bag of Fritos.
“No pork rinds?” I tease.
“Hell no. Those things are sick. Pigs are super smart, you know.”
“But not when there’s bacon around, huh?”
She hangs her head. “I know. I’m evil.”
I laugh, and turn to get a grocery bag out of the pantry. “Manning left those here.”
“Ewww. No thank you. Pork rinds are a Southern thing I’ve never gotten behind,” she tells me.
I hold a plastic grocery bag open, and Cleo dumps her booty in. “This is going to be the yummiest sad day I’ve ever had.”
That makes me smile. I take the bag from her and set it on the counter, then I grab a stick of beef jerky from the refrigerator and peel it open.
“You refrigerate your beef jerky?”
“It’s the only way.”
“How about just not eating it?”
I shake my head and rip a bite off. “Protein,” I say between chewing.
“Eat an egg.” She wrinkles her nose. “Eat chicken.”
“I don’t do leftovers, Cleo baby. And I’m not up for cooking right now. Unless you want something?”
She shakes her head.
I finish off the jerky in three more bites and toss the wrapper. Then I grab a TwoCal out of the refrigerator, peel the aluminum top off, and dump it into a glass.
“That looks disgusting,” Cleo leans against the counter as I swallow the creamy liquid. Her eyes run over my navy blue Dr. Who t-shirt and my ragged ass jeans. “Is it for body building?”
I smirk. “You think I look like a body builder, Cleo baby?”
Her cheeks redden. “Stop calling me that.”
I sweep my eyes down myself. I know I’m looking pretty cut right now. Since May, I’ve been working out like a fiend and piling on the muscle mass. My body fat has got to be low as shit, and yeah—before I started dropping weight these last two weeks or so, my shirts had gotten tight as fuck tight around the chest and arms.
I can’t help a smug look. I toss back the TwoCal and set the glass in the sink, beside another empty one. Cleo peeks at them.
“You drank one of those earlier today, too? Like for breakfast?”
“You worrying over my diet, Cleo baby?”
She shoves me in the chest, and I wrap my hand around her thin, tanned wrist. I look down at her face—her teasing eyes, her playful smile—and all I want is to kiss those soft, full lips.
A heartbeat passes. Another as I try to bridle myself. Then I lean down, take her face in my hands, and kiss her like she’s the last thing I’ll ever taste. I kiss her with the power surging through my veins, with all the strength of my desire to protect her from this day. With all the want that’s burning through me—want of more than just her body. Want of days an
d nights, forgotten things like the weight of a woman’s body in my arms and the way the woods sound when the sun comes slanting through the trees like sheets of gold. Everything I long for, everything I can’t have, I pour into her mouth—and Cleo responds beautifully.
Her arms twine around my waist, pressing her soft belly against my bulge. I’m so damn hard, I just want to push myself against her until she spreads her legs and lets me in. Instead I slide my tongue into the softness of her mouth. Cleo gasps. It makes me smile around her lips, knowing that I can make my dirty girl gasp with just a slip of my tongue.
I explore her slowly, wrapping an arm around her back and cradling her head, so when I thrust my tongue into the hot, slick sanctuary of her mouth, she doesn’t have to work to stay upright.
I kiss her soft and slow, and longer, harder, until she’s gasping and my hand is squeezing her breast. Her back is pressed against the refrigerator, and I’m thrusting against her.
She’s rocking against me, too. She slides down the refrigerator door, and I take her in my arms and lay her on the floor. She’s panting. I can see her nipples poke out through her colorful t-shirt.
I kneel over her. “Do you want to be fucked on my kitchen floor?”
She starts to nod, and I crouch over her, pressing my lips against her temple even as I straddle her and rub my bulge against her softness.
“Know what I think would be better?” She blinks up at me, her eyes liquid and dreamy as I shift myself against her. “We’re going to do this sometime on the way there. I’m going to pick the spot.”
She pushes her pussy against my dick. “But it’s a—”
“A serious occasion?” I lift my hips off hers and work my hand into the elastic waistband of her leggings. “A sad one?” I ask, stroking her soft belly.
She nods. She looks down guiltily at my hand. My gaze rolls to her nipples, and when I don’t see their outline against her shirt, I help her up and lean her against the counter.
“Here...” I twist the top off the Snow Queen. I get a shot glass from the cabinet and fill it to the brim, then hold it out to Cleo. “I don’t think your sister would want you to have a shitty day. And you know what else I think?”
She takes the glass and shakes her head.
“I think you don’t have to feel like shit to commemorate someone who’s gone.” I think of Ly and his khakis and his button-up Polos with the sleeves rolled up over his forearms.
“You know why I ran for SGA, Cleo?”
She brings the vodka to her lips and holds it there. “No,” she whispers over the clear liquid.
“Because my brother loved rules and order. He was a dork who carried—” I swallow hard. “You know that calculator I had? That was his, and he loved that fucking thing. Our day school had a dress code, so we were all walking around like little CEOs but Lyon—he got off on that shit. He ironed his clothes and mine too, and Myra our housekeeper would always laugh at that. But he knew what he liked. He liked to feel like things were taken care of. He liked to be prepared. And when we started college he rushed, but he also went out for a spot on the USG Senate, because he loved that kind of shit. The boring shit? Lyon was all over that.”
She slams the shot back, then gives me a wide-eyed look, her lips caught somewhere between a sad smile and a surprised oval. “So you don’t like rules and order?”
I laugh. “Hell no, not those kinds of rules. I memorized Robert’s Rules of Order and it damn near killed me. That’s one of the things I did for Ly.”
“You ran for SGA for him.” Her lips tuck up, but it’s not a smile. It’s something more fragile.
I nod, and when I open my mouth to say something else, the words all lined up to come out are I’m more of a wood-chopping guy. Because—fuck me—I want her to fucking know.
For just this one dark moment in my spotless, stainless-and-granite kitchen, I want Cleo to know exactly who I am—and what my life is like. I want it so much I ache with it.
My jaw clamps shut, because I could never do that to her. I’ll do everything I can to ensure Cleo stays out of my sick mess. No one really earns this kind of hell on earth, but least of all Cleo.
Least of all Lyon.
I have to turn toward the sink so I don’t give myself away.
I suck a deep breath back and try to calm my racing pulse. Cleo must know because she doesn’t make a move toward me. She lets me have my space to mourn my brother, even though what I’m really doing is mourning her.
FOURTEEN
Cleo
The second Kellan and I start down the stairs, a black cat streaks across the lawn, between the porch steps and Kellan’s Escalade. My first instinct is to lunge after it, because that’s the kind of spaz I am, but Kellan stops me with a squeeze of my fingers.
“Are you trying to catch her?” He grins.
“Possibly.” I giggle.
“Wait here.” He lets go of my hand and disappears into the house while I watch the yard for a black streak. I don’t see one, so when Kellan re-appears with a bowl of diced chicken and sets it on the corner of the porch, I sink down onto the top stair and figure we’re waiting for nothing.
That second, the cat pounces on my head.
I scream, tossing the cat off the porch, and Truman bounds out the front door and down the stairs.
“Shit.” Kellan’s hands rove over my face. “Are you okay?”
I laugh. “I think so.”
“Okay—wait here.”
He chases Truman down and hauls the dog back into the house. While the door is shut, the cat jumps back onto the porch beside the bowl of chicken and curls into a ball, blinking her green eyes at me.
“Helen—you pussy!” I smile at my own ridiculousness and crawl slowly over to her. She scoots back a little, but she’s not going to leave the bowl of chicken. I watch her bend over to eat, taking note of how thin she is. But she doesn’t look mangy.
I scoot a little closer to her, until I’m close enough to hold my hand over her back. She peeks over her shoulder at me, then keeps eating.
Kellan comes out the door. He slides a hand into his pocket and leans his shoulder against the door. God, he’s hot. At a glance, he almost seems lanky, but his shoulders are so wide. And that face. He’s giving me that gentle smile of his, the one that tilts up a little on one side and is always accompanied by a twinkle in his blue eyes. The world indulgent comes to mind. I look at the bowl of chicken and smile back at him. He is indulging me.
He indulges me for five or so more minutes, until Helen seems to’ve had her fill. She looks skeptically at me, and I just smile at her.
“Not going in for a rub?” Kellan teases.
I shake my head and hold my hand out. He pulls me to my feet, and I’m pleased to find the cat’s still watching us from the corner of the porch.
“I don’t want to scare her off. I’m playing the long game here.”
He squeezes my hand. “Let’s play it inside for a second.”
“Mm, and why is that?”
He leads me through a formal dining room to the right of the stairs, and into a small half-bath, where he opens a cabinet and produces a bottle of soap.
“Antimicrobial. Aren’t you special?” I tease. “Looks like you’re a germophobe like me.”
“Strays can carry diseases,” he says, squirting soap into my palm.
“Helen doesn’t.”
Kellan gets a laugh out of her name, even though I’ve told him my intentions before, and I force him to spend the first thirty minutes of our car ride determining plans for Helen.
“If she’s there when we get back, I want to take her to the vet tomorrow. I’ll get her a purple collar, possibly purple with a leopard print pattern—” Kellan snorts at that—“and we can start litter box training.”
Kellan just laughs at me, and after hearing all about my grand plans, he tells me he’s allergic to cats.
“What a pussy,” I joke, miming claws.
He does a hilariously realistic “me
ow,” and I get a good laugh out of that.
The next twenty minutes are more subdued. We listen to a bunch of random stuff on Kellan’s iPhone—none of it overly sentimental, thank God—and when he pulls over on a gravelly shoulder to let a police car fly past, he asks me to turn my back to him. He tucks a few stray strands of hair into my bun and plants a warm kiss on my nape, and after that, he takes my hand.
We talk about robots, and sex robots, and sex toys, and Kellan tells me I should get a job as a spokeswoman for LELO, which I tell him would be a dream come true. Driving through the miles of flat, hot farmland outside Albany makes it a little harder to keep things light, but Kellan starts quizzing me, asking me silly things like pie in the face or whipped cream up the ass.
We stop so I can use the restroom at the first gas station in town, and he has a shot of Snow Queen waiting for me when I climb back into my seat.
As it burns its way into my stomach, I feel an awful ache for “R.”
I think the universe is trying to send me a sign, a show of solidarity or something... because we’re driving past a bunch of businesses on the main drag when “Sea Ghost” by The Unicorns starts playing. My stomach does a back flip, the way it does when I’m riding a roller coaster with loops.
I can’t look at Kellan. I just squeeze his hand and try not to cry, and of course I’m almost sure I will. I torture myself by imagining pretty, curly-haired Olive at school, talking with her friends, and Olive at the DMV getting her license.
Just as the first tear falls, Kellan pulls over at the mall in front of Books-A-Million, cuts the Escalade’s ignition, and comes around to open my door.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
And I do see. I see that he’s a naughty, naughty boy. Instead of taking me into the store, he ushers me into the back of the Escalade, lets the seats down, and urges me onto my back. He pulls my shoes and leggings off and moves my limbs into a spread-eagle.
He teases my tears away by kissing up and down the inside of my thighs, and then he licks my slit so slowly, I wrap my leg around his shoulders and ram myself against his mouth.
