Page 4 of Boy of Ruin
I can’t breathe, my knees shake beneath me and I have to lean back against him for support. When he circles the flat side of the blade over my nipple, hard and tight from the rain and the cool steel, the irony isn’t lost on me that I’m looking to him for protection from…him.
“I think I told you not to come out here alone,” he whispers against my ear as a shiver slides down my spine.
The onslaught of rain has slowed to a light shower, but I hear thunder rumble in the distance. I see another flash of lightning making the dark forest eerie with the brief spark of light, and the outline of trees become unnerving. Haunting.
Jeremiah slides the blade across my chest, circling my other nipple and I close my eyes, fear, anger and lust warring within me.
He knows better than to touch me like this. But with his erection pressing into my back, a knife to my chest, I know better than to try and fight him right now.
With my foster brother, you choose your battles, or you end up fucking dead.
Still, when he finally drops the knife and I can breathe again, taking in great gulps of air, I relax marginally into his touch. Into knowing it was him out here, and not someone else.
He might be the scariest monster who could ever stalk through this forest, but as his hand softly cups my breast, his thumb smoothing over my nipple, I know that he’s my monster.
Even still, I grab at his hand, trying to pull it off of me.
I can’t do this.
I cannot do this.
Not to my husband.
I can’t break his heart more than I already have.
I start to struggle in Jeremiah’s grip, and I swear the hand over my mouth trembles.
For a second, I pause, my fingers latched around his wrist.
Is he shaking from anger?
Restraint?
Was that...something else?
But then his hand stills and he says, “Do you really want to fight me, after you disobeyed me?” He squeezes a handful of my ever-growing breasts—one perk of pregnancy I’ve discovered in my second trimester—and licks the side of my wet face. “You taste like a fucking brat,” he murmurs against me, “and brats need to be punished.”
He pulls at my nipple and I gasp against his palm, my eyes flying open, still trying to yank his hand down, but it’s impossible. The flex of muscle and tendons beneath my fingers is all that gives, and I know I can’t fight him that way. My brother is a fucking beast.
I raise my foot, ready to stomp on his, just like he taught me in our self-defense lessons, when lightning strikes again, flaring the thick of the woods in bright purple light.
I lower my foot, my mouth falling open, my pulse racing all over again.
Jeremiah runs his hand over to my other breast, kneading my flesh, but he notices my trembling and pauses.
“Sid,” he whispers. “Baby…”
“Jeremiah.” This time he moves his hand from my mouth and this time my fingers aren’t circled around his wrist to keep him off. Instead, I’m holding on tight as his arms band around me, to protect me. Because that wasn’t a hallucination.
It was the same hooded figure I’d seen the first time. The one I thought was my brother.
“What is it, baby?” he asks, concern threaded through his voice.
I take a shaky breath, feeling dizzy with fear as I whisper, “There’s someone out here with us.”
And I can’t help wondering…Is it him?
Living up to my namesake, I love the fucking rain. Thunderstorms, lightning strikes, I could watch a storm for hours if it’d let me. But as I turn away from the pane of glass that stretches from one end of the living room to the other, I catch sight of the most volatile storm I’ve ever seen in my life perched on the edge of the leather couch and huddled beneath a white towel.
