Page 57 of Heartless Stepbrother
CHAPTER ELEVEN
LUNA
Ididn’tmovefromthe floor for a long time.
The door stayed pressed against my spine, as if I needed its solid weight to keep me from coming apart completely. My breath slowly evened out, the tremors in my arms fading into something dull and exhausted, but my mind wouldn’t still.Thoughts flashed and spiraled and collided until they blurred into a frantic, looping storm.
Riley.
The water.
His chest against mine.
His fingers around the knot of my bikini.
The slow, devastating slide of fabric giving way.
His voice in my ear.
The look he wore when I pushed him back.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
I didn’t want to remember.
But my body remembered anyway.
The cold air on my bare skin.
The heat of his hand on my hip.
The moment I realized he wasn’t teasing anymore.
He was taking.
Not in the violent way he had earlier.
No.
This was worse.
He had taken with a smile.
With patience.
With the confidence of someone who knew I would come to him to get it back.
A quiet, humiliated sound slipped from my throat.
I pushed myself off the floor and stumbled toward the bathroom. The vanity light was too bright when I flicked it on, cutting the room into sharp, unforgiving edges. My reflection stared back at me, damp hair tangled, eyes wide and shining in a way I hated.
I looked like someone who had been touched.
Someone who had been shaken open and didn’t know how to close again.
I gripped the edge of the sink until my knuckles whitened.
This is nothing.
