I set my cockhead against his hole and start pushing my way into his body. With my free hand, I shove his leg up, opening him further. I hold him down, hold him wide, and start to fuck him.
It’s ugly. My pelvis smacks against him again and again. My cock plunges with sloppy, filthy sounds. I’m grunting and angry. He’s crying out against my hand, his shouts muffled by it. His hands twist against the fabric of my shirt where it binds his wrists.
I watch him writhe. I watch his cock leak precum. I watch it twitch and strain. When his balls draw up I know he’s close. I don’t touch his cock or let him touch it. He needs to come from me fucking him—and I can tell that he’s going to.
The first spurt of cum shoots onto his chest. He bucks under me, tightening on my cock, and shouts against my hand. I pound into him relentlessly as his cock spurts again and again, releasing ropes of cum all over his torso. It’s so erotic and he’s gripping me so hard that I start coming too. When my cock pulses and kicks inside him, he spasms under me, moaning and twitching, leaking more. He milks me hard until I’m straining against him with rough, harsh sounds. I’m shaking by the end, and so is he.
When I lift my hand from his face and untie his wrists, he wraps his arms around my neck and starts crying. I slide my hands under him and pull him up against me. I bury my face against his neck. All my anger is gone and all my frustration too. But the thing I couldn’t identify is still there, and I know it now.
It’s fear.
EIGHT
Roman
I want to stay in bed with Lucas while he sleeps, but I can’t. I’m too agitated. I need … fuck, I feel like I need to talk to someone. It’s a weird feeling and I can’t imagine actually doing it, but I can’t lie here either.
I carefully disentangle myself from Lucas. I’m not sure where my sweatpants went, so I snag something from the laundry basket. It’s my black slacks from the other night at Eclipse. On my way to the door, I spot my white t-shirt on the floor by the bed. It’s all twisted and stretched, but I put it on anyway. I glance at Lucas, but he doesn’t stir.
I slip out of the room. It’s evening, but the house is quiet. I take the stairs to the bottom floor. I’m heading to the gym by default, but the hallway takesme past Vitali’s office. The light is on and the door is open. It often is, and I usually just walk by, but this time I stop.
Vitali looks up from his laptop and stares across the office to me in the doorway. The office looks the same as when it was our father’s, but the man behind the desk is very different. Vitali can be cold and harsh like our father, but he’s a lot like our mother too. I see it suddenly in his eyes. The warmth. The worry. It’s been emerging for a while, I realize as I keep looking at him. With Quinn. With me too, though he’s more guarded. I’ve given him reason to be. But I think he’s tired right now. He’s not hiding it like he usually does.
When I walk into the office, surprise flits through Vitali’s dark eyes. He thought I would walk on by. So did I. But instead I go sit on the ornate velvet couch along the side wall. There’s an eighteenth century landscape painting above my head, a fancy coffee table in front of me, and a minibar on the other side of the room. There are bookcases with leatherbound books and other ornate furniture. It doesn’t fit Vitali at all. He’s very stylish, but this isn’t his style. His office at Eclipse suits him better. I wonder if he hates it in here. I guess I could ask him.
“Do you hate it in here?” I ask.
Vitali is very still behind the desk. I’m acting strange. He doesn’t know why I’m here. Neither do I.
Vitali says, “Sometimes.”
“He was an asshole.” There’s no need to specify who ‘he’ is. Vitali knows that I mean our father.
He takes a deep breath. It comes out like a heavy sigh. “Yeah,” he agrees.
“I feel like you forget that,” I say. I’m surprised at the words coming out of my mouth. I didn’t know any of this was in my head, but as I say it, I realize it’s been bothering me for months.
“Maybe,” Vitali concedes, then he scrubs at his face and says, “Yeah. I guess I do.”
“You know he cheated on her, don’t you? A lot.”
Vitali frowns. “Did she tell you that?”
“She didn’t need to. It was obvious.”
Vitali is silent for a while, frowning at his desk, frowning at nothing. Then he says, “Yeah. I guess it was.”
“I’m glad it’s you that’s here,” I tell my brother. “Instead of him.”
As the words leave my mouth, I realize how true they are—and how much I’ve needed to say them. But it’s as hard for Vitali to hear that as it was for me to say it. It just contains … too much.
When our parents died, Vitali was only seventeen, two years older than me, and suddenly responsible for a hell of a lot. He didn’t get to grieve, and I chose not to. That grief, if we had stepped into it, would have been complicated.
Vitali swallows hard. “I’m really—” He breaks off, clears his throat. He looks away from me then at me again. “I’m really fucking glad you’re here, Roman.”
Vitali said this to me once before, and it’s no easier to hear this time. The weight that I felt earlier today settles over me again, or maybe inside me. It’s heavy. It locks me up.
When it happens, when I go silent, I realize for the first time that part of what is always locked inside me are, actually, words. They don’t feel like words when they’re silent, but … I think that’s what they are.
