I hope she interrupts Micah and his cum-dumpster’s afterglow on the way out. My orgasm high lasted about four seconds, and I’m already back to rage. It pumps through me, my pulse still racing from the activity and every injury on my body screaming at me that that was a mistake.
The familiar feeling of self-loathing washes over me. I have the urge to go out there and drag Micah’s date out by his hair so this day can finally be over, but part of me knows that would ultimately make things worse.
Instead, I’m left hovering by the door. I get rid of the condom, but beyond that, I have no idea what the next step in my grand fucking plan for revenge is supposed to be.
Chapter Fifteen
Micah
I’m leaning against the kitchen counter, trying to catch my breath and watching Scott wipe the cum off his face when a random, half-dressed girl emerges from my bedroom and makes a beeline for the door.
“Um, hello?” I say, because I’m an idiot.
She freezes and looks at us both. There’s an edge of horror in her expression, and there’s no way she didn’t hear everything that just went down in here. I’m not ashamed, per se, because that was some phenomenally hot sex. But I would like to know who the fuck she is and why she’s in my house.
“Sorry.”
She mumbles the word and rushes past us, discomfort rolling off her in waves as she practically flings the door open and bounds through it. She doesn’t even stop to put her shoes on, she just grabs them.
Now that’s a bad end to a date. Which is what I’m assuming she is. Because my brother is a piece of shit.
“That little fucking brat,” I mutter under my breath, mostly to myself. Scott is busy trying to cover his junk with his hands and also not to combust with self-consciousness, if the color of his face is anything to go by. “Tadhg!”
I don’t get a response, but I’m not sure I was expecting one. Scott looks completely bewildered as I grab my briefs and tug them on, not bothering with anything else before storming toward the bedroom. He can get dressed or not as he pleases, I really don’t care.
“Tadhg Jonah Moynihan, you show your fucking face!”
I’m about to wrench open the door when he does it for me, almost making me fall through the opening. And there he stands—my stepbrother, ladies and gentlemen—bare-ass naked, covered in tattoos from head to toe, and wearing a smug, self-satisfied smirk that I absolutely see right through.
I’ve seen him naked or mostly naked many times since he’s been here because of how injured he’s been, but it’s so different in this context. The smell of sex is lingering in the air, and I swear he’s still half-hard from whatever he just did with that girl. I don’t appreciate the scene he’s trying to make, or the amount of discomfort that grips me because of it.
“Sorry, I was napping,” he says. “Can I help you with something, Bambi?”
The teasing tone to his voice is so artificial and undercut with cruelty. I know he’s trying to make a point here, and I know it’s not a kind one. I just don’t know what it is that he’s getting at.
“Don’t ‘Bambi’ me, and put your penis away, asshole. Why are there random women running out of my apartment half-dressed?”
Tadhg makes a nonchalant face. “I don’t know,Micah, why are you face-fucking dudes in the kitchen when you know I’m home? To prove a point? Some kind of big gay point?”
“The point is that it’smyapartment. It’s my life, my fuckbuddy, my dick, and you have no right to tell me what to do with any of it!”
The temptation to shove him is overwhelming, even though I’m not normally a violent person. But I know it would be like shoving a brick wall.
Instead, he begins to crowd me. The few inches of height he has on me, along with the mountain of muscle, suddenly seem much more apparent as he looms over me. The whole time he’s been here, he’s mostly been lying down and broken. But right now, this is him drawn up to his most intimidating self.
And it’s working, despite the fact that he’s still naked and smells like cum and drug-store perfume.
One of his hands comes to rest on my chest, and he walks me backward until I hit the hallway wall. With his face barely an inch from mine and an intensity simmering between us that I wasn’t expecting, he finally speaks.
“I’m trying to keep you safe. And instead of letting me, you’re shoving your fucked-up sex life in my face.”
The skin of his chest and neck is flushed with anger now. We’re right back to where we started; his obsession with keeping me safe. But there’s nothing to keep me safe from here. I don’t understand what wire is crossed in his brain, but whatever it is, he seems to be latching onto it with his whole heart.
Despite the digs he’s making, this doesn’t feel like homophobia so much as Tadhg just being… off. And as pissed as I am at him for acting like a petulant teenager, my adult-brain is still capable of seeing that this isn’t rational behavior.
Fuck, he isn’t really doing better, is he?
I bring my hand to rest on his, still over my racing heart, and hold it softly. I search his eyes for a hint of what’s going on in his head, but I come up empty. There’s just a storm of emotion there, but nothing I can piece together.
