Page 42 of Lost and Bound
At least the bustle of going upstairs, Nate and Arik rummaging through a hall closet, and Matt and Ian digging through another closet for clothes, made it impossible for anyone to try to talk about anything. Or have to avoid talking about all the things none of us wanted to acknowledge, either.
They’d given us a room way at the end of the hall, one that had its own bathroom. I tried not to think of it as another prison, another space I was expected to stay in until allowed out. I very deliberately didn’t ask about my own old room, or where my stuff had gone. No one volunteered the information, either.
Like the rest of the pack house, our assigned room had seen better days—those days being sometime around 1975. Matt and Ian’s dad had really, really liked orange at some point, and the curtains in our room wouldn’t have been out of place in a cheap highway motel, stains and all.
Still. It smelled like dust, mildew—and pack. I could live with it.
But I couldn’t live with the way they were all moving around me, working like a well-oiled machine while I stood there useless and extraneous. Separate.
I muttered something that didn’t even make sense to me, and escaped into the bathroom, flipping on the shower as high as it’d go to drown out the sounds of their voices. It didn’t work, though. I washed mechanically, listening to Ian’s footsteps coming back in the room, his grumbled explanation to Calder of what he thought might fit him in the clothes he’d brought. Matt went in and out, saying something about sandwiches.
I turned off the shower, and I heard the bedroom door shut at almost the same moment.
With an old scratchy towel wrapped around my hips, I stepped back out into the bedroom.
Calder and I were alone with the sandwiches, the old clothes, and the orange curtains.
I stood in the middle of the room, blinking at the closed door, at the dented brass doorknob. Like if I looked at it long enough, it’d open again, and one of my cousins would pop in and say, “Hey, just kidding! Get changed and come downstairs. We can catch you up on everything you’ve missed.”
A glance at Calder showed him standing by the bed, also staring at the door.
Looking as bereft as I did, in fact.
Christ, I hadn’t even considered, until this moment—because I was an idiot, obviously—that Calder might feel the same way I did. All the extra sleep had finally cleared my mind out a little, and for the first time in gods only knew how long, I could really focus it. Calder had just escaped too, after even longer in his cell than I’d been in mine. Even longer away from the real world. And Arik was hisbrother? Where had he been, while Calder had been imprisoned? He’d run to Calder when he first saw him, but now he’d retreated along with my family…
Oh, shit, and that hit me like a body blow. Notmyfamily.Arik’sfamily. Arik was far more a part of the Armitage pack, of the Armitage family, than I was, now. The pack leader’s mate, and probably the pack shaman, too, or close enough, or maybe sharing that set of duties with Nate. Either way, he had Matt’s love and trust—and a place here that I didn’t.
And Calder had never had one at all.
I cleared my throat awkwardly. “So Arik’s your brother?”
Calder started a little and turned to me. “Yes.”
I resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of my nose like I’d always made fun of Matt for doing, since it made him look like an old guy.
“I was hoping for a little more than that. Like maybehowyou’re brothers, since I heard Matt say you’re not related by blood. Or how long it’s been since you’ve seen him. Or maybe what the fuck you two talked about when you went out back alone. Or maybe why he doesn’t seem as happy to see you now that he’s had a chance to think—”
I stumbled back a step, accidentally biting my tongue and cutting myself off, as Calder lunged at me, looming over me with an expression on his face that told me he’d hadenough.
My back hit the dresser, knocking it into the wall with a thump and rattling the plate that held the sandwiches. I tasted blood in my mouth from where I’d bitten my tongue as I tripped. When I pressed my hands back against the dresser drawers, my sweaty palms slipped on the wood.
Calder loomed over me, mouth a hard, flat line, the heat and bulk of him penning me in.
He’d promised never to hurt me. He’d promised. I had to remember that, even as my heartbeat started to gallop and skip.
“We talked about this pack,” he rasped. “About how he trusts them, and doesn’t believe they’ll fuck us over. We haven’t seen each other in nearly fifteen years, and no, he’s not my brother by blood, but that’s the easiest way to describe what we are to each other. And I’m not sure he trusts me anymore, even though he was happy to see me and know I’m alive. Because I’m not the brother he remembers. Is that good enough? Any more fucking questions?”
Maybe I’d gotten better at reading him, or maybe he simply couldn’t keep his mask in place with his emotions running high, or maybe that realization—that he felt the same loss and confusion and longing and betrayal that I did—made it easier to interpret the harsh lines of his face and the tension radiating from him, pent-up violence and anger with nowhere to go.
I could give it somewhere to go. I could be the lightning rod for his aggression, and suddenly I wanted to be, with a fierce ache I couldn’t control. My cock leapt to life, draining all the blood from my head and making me dizzy.
I reached up and grabbed hold of Calder, burying my fingers in his thick tangles of hair, and yanked his head down, mashing our mouths together and thrusting my tongue inside.
Calder took over within a millisecond, fucking me with his tongue like he owned my mouth, his hands gripping bruises into my waist, thrusting me against the dresser with his hips grinding his cock into my belly. I moaned into his mouth, trying to get a leg up and wrapped around his thighs, arching into him like a bitch in heat, desperate to get him between my legs and on me, in me. To have him fill me up and pound the frustration and sadness out of me, give me something else to replace the yawning misery gaping in my chest.
He wrestled me around and dragged me to the bed in two quick strides, tossing me down and landing on top with enough force to knock the wind out of me. He bit at my lips, sucked my tongue, shoved his tongue into me, and I moaned again and writhed under him, digging my fingers into the muscles of his back.
Fuck, yes, this was what I needed, to have him fuck the thoughts right out of my head. Bruise my body, a different hurt from my aching heart and mind…
