Page 70 of Love Thy Brother
“I respectfully disagree.”
“Doesn’t mean you’re right.” River’s lightning quick temper seeped out of him in hot waves, driving me up from his lap. “Don’t they have anything better to do?”
“They were supposed to be out collecting protection money, so it depends where you fall... morally, and all that.”
I went for levity, letting my dad’s Peckham roots shine, but River remained unamused.
“I don’t want Kings outside my house for the rest of my fucking life. It has to end somewhere.”
I spread my hands. “I’m not arguing with that. Just trying to make sure it doesn’tendwith a firebomb through your letterbox.”
The only fire in the vicinity right now was River. He glared lava at me, fists clenched, body tight with emotions that were a world away from the rapture we’d given each other last night. “Nothing like that is going to happen.”
I laughed, dry and humourless. “Riv, they tried to flatten you with a Vauxhall Vectra last night. If you’d been alone, you’d be dead.”
“If I’d been alone, I wouldn’t have been there.”
“Yeah? Where’d you have been? Arse over tit in the Joker? Off your nut on K?” I didn’t shout, it wasn’t my style, but anger began to burn in me too. What the ever-loving fuck was it going to take to make him give a shit about himself?
River kicked the duvet away and sprang from the bed.
I waited for him to storm from the room, but he whirled to face me again instead, still clutching my phone.
“This always happens. Every time we get close, something shitty comes along and blows it up.”
“I know.” Couldn’t deny it. “But we don’t have to let it. Not this time.” I sat up and swung my legs over the edge of the bed. “If you just—”
“No.”
“Let me finish—”
“No.”
“You don’t know what I’m going to say.”
“You’re gonna tell me to let my brother murder the whole world so everything goes away. But it won’t, will it? It never does. There’s always a bigger wanker out there to fuck us up.”
He wasn’t wrong.
But he wasn’t right either. I stood, ignoring the wrench in my back and the dull pound of the bruising hammered into my kneecap. I backed River against the wall, caging him, swamping him with my bigger frame, like a thunder-shirt on a raging bull terrier. “You’re not listening to me.”
River twitched, desperate to shove me away, but I knew he wouldn’t. Not while he knew I was hurt. “You’re not saying anything I haven’t heard before.”
“How do you know? You won’t let me speak.”
“Yet somehow, you’re always fucking talking.”
Growling, I inched impossibly closer, my dick still hard. Harder, actually. River was a stubborn bastard, but god, he was motherfucking hot when he was angry.
I want him naked again.
Iwantedto spin him around and bang him against the wall.
Neither was plausible in this fractured moment in time, but I took comfort in the fact he was hard too, the head of his dick trapped in the waistband of the old Metallica sweats he wore.
Later.Maybe. This was River, after all. Chances were, he’d sling me out and not speak to me for a year and a half. But I clung onto the hope that he wouldn’t, not this time, and pinned his hands over his head, the way he’d done to me on the couch last night, gripping his wrists with one hand, the other going to his throat.
I splayed my fingers around his neck, applying the lightest amount of pressure, noting the twitch in his cock and the way his chest caved in.He likes that.And it made sense... that River liked it rough. I did too, but there were so many other ways I was gonna fuck him when our moment finally came.
