Page 63 of Like Fathers, Like Son
“I know it’s cold out, but we could walk down by the stream? It’s not too far, and it looks like it’s bright out there today.” The sun was glaring in through a gap in my curtains, so it was a good bet.
Mum nodded, then frowned, leaning closer to me. “Is that a bruise on your neck? Did you bump yourself, love?”
Oh god. I reached up, following her gaze with my fingers. There was a definite tender patch on the side of my neck, where Blaze’s lips had trailed last night. Had he given me a hickey? Or was it from his punishing grip on my throat?
“Annie?”
I shrugged again. “No idea. Maybe I caught myself on something. So, about that walk?”
She nodded, and left me in peace to get up and dressed. In the bathroom, I checked myself over and found several small marks, that could have been from the tight grip of his fingers, or intentional hickey bruises. I leaned down to look at my thighs, grimacing at the slightly crusted patches of semen on my skin. Yeah, it definitely wasn’t a dream. Not at all.
Blaze really was here, and he’d really fucked me again. The chilling part was wondering if it was the first time he’d been in my room like that, since I’d escaped him.
Even more unnerving than that thought was the question of whether it would be the last.
37
Blaze
Iwenttoseemy family the next morning, because I needed a distraction from the way I was feeling. It wasn’t that I loved her, it couldn’t be, not really because I didn’t really think that was possible anymore, but I knew that I felt like an asshole for hurting her again. Something in me, some caveman asshole, just really wanted her pregnant, and that bastard took over once I was kissing her, and touching her.
“Bro, you look like you’re doped up on something.”Charming. I forced myself to pay attention to Ember as I closed the front door behind me. She looked… I want to saywell, but it was hard to tell with all the makeup, and piercings, and the way she was staring at me.
At almost seventeen, she was almost my height, and about as far from the kid she’d been as anyone could be. Being sexually assaulted by that asshole, on top of all the bullying, had been the last straw for her. The straw that broke the camel’s back.
“Yeah, kinda proving my point, dickhead.” She turned to head out of the room, and I grabbed her arm, releasing it in a hurry when she spun and jabbed a fist into my stomach.Shit. I might have been her brother, but nobody fucking touched her without getting clawed these days.
“Sorry. Honestly, I was just trying to get you to stay and talk to me. I won’t do that again.” My hands were up as I spoke, and I could physically see her body relaxing as her hackles went back down again.
She was permanently on edge because of that fucker, but I was her brother. I’d never hurt her like that. I’d… Jesus, apparently there was one woman I’d willingly hurt like that though.
“Sit down before you fall down, bro. You look like I just kicked you in the nuts, and I definitely held back from doing that, out of respect for you being family.”
“Thanks,” I muttered, dropping down on the sofa. “Where’s everyone?”
“Out.”
“No shit.” Ember sat across from me, because she never sat close to any of us, and leaned her elbows on her knees.
“What’s her name?”
“What?”
She smirked, the black lipstick looking macabre with the gesture, or more macabre than usual.
“You’re fucked up over a girl. Any idiot can see that, oh… it’s her, isn’t it? Anneka?”
Shit. Had my parents told her something about what I’d done? God no, she definitely would have gone for my nuts if they had. After what she’d been through, with that asshole cornering her in school, and assaulting her so many times, this would send her over the edge for sure. My god. I was the asshole now, or maybe I’d always been one. What I’d done to Anneka was so far over the fucking line.
“Seriously, Blaze, are you on something? You’re so fucking out of it.” She punctuated her comment by throwing a cushion at my head, and that helped a bit to clear my head.
“Uh… yeah, Anneka. I mean, it was always her, right?”
She pulled at her tongue piercing with her teeth.
“Are you guys together then?”
Jesus, were we? Was that the right word for me repeatedly forcing myself on the poor woman? Trying so hard to impregnate her whether she wanted it or not?
