Page 36 of Boy of Ruin
“We’ve got some faulty fucking plumbing in here, Mav,” Lucifer calls as his urine coats my mouth. “But at least there’s a goddamn toilet.”
“Jeremiah!” Sid is saying, her voice high-pitched. Scared. Unnatural. Her nails are still digging into my arm, my hands are around her throat, my thumbs against her windpipe, but that fucking bandana is touching me.
I release her, holding up my hands and stepping backward on the dark hardwoods of my room, breathing hard and gritting my teeth as I try to focus on the silver of her eyes.
Her long lashes.
Those swollen pink lips.
Her growing tits visible beneath her low-cut white tank. Those are getting bigger with every week that passes. And I want to touch her, and bite her and fucking hurt her, especially as my eyes rake over that bandana again. But I won’t.
I won’t.
It’s not her fault.
It’s not her fucking fault.
I swallow hard and drop my hands, aware that I’m completely fucking naked and I don’t get naked for anyone. Clothing is an armor.
A shield.
I long to disappear into my walk-in closet, to the right, to don a suit and fucking cufflinks and maybe even a goddamn tie, just to cover up. I work out without a shirt, I’m comfortable enough in my own skin.
But being completely unarmed, I don’t like it.
Especially as Sid’s wide eyes rake over the scar slashed across my ribs. From him.
I curl my hands into fists. “Do you need something?” I ask her, trying to calm my temper. To hold back.
For her.
Always doing every fucking thing for her.
She’s got her palms flat against the dark gray accent wall at her back, her spine pressed flush with it, too, but at my question, her eyes narrow. I see shadows beneath them, but they’re better than they were when she first came here.
Then, she was frail. Almost…sickly. Like she was when I first found her that night. That night they could have fucking killed her. The night she wanted to kill herself.
“Yes,” she says through gritted teeth, “Nicolas wants you.”
I arch a brow. “Then why didn’t Nicolas come up himself?”
At this, she bites her lip, looking down at her combat boots. It’s fucking April in North Carolina, hot as hell outside, but she insists on wearing those fucking boots. Her closet, in the room down the hall from mine, is packed with clothes I bought just for her. Her usual shit, hoodies and band shirts and ripped black jeans, but also…tasteful shit.
She hasn’t worn any of that.
“I was just going to tell you I made breakfast.”
My mouth drops open as I blink at her, stunned. I don’t think anything she said could’ve surprised me more than that. My sister, cooking.
She doesn’t cook.
I learned that in the year we spent together in that fucking hotel. We have staff to do it for us, but I enjoy making my own meals. Sid is a vegetarian. I thought she might enjoy it, too. Vegetarians always seem to want their hands and noses in the business of the fucking kitchen.
But not Sid Rain. She was content to dump a handful of spinach on a plate and call it a fucking salad.
Besides that, last night, I let another girl grind on me, right across from her. Despite our goodnights when I carried her upstairs after we got home, I was pretty sure she was still annoyed with me.
I kind of hoped she was.
