Page 105 of Painted Truths

My cock pulses in her mouth, my delight and male pride at making her climax so easily, giving me the confidence to do what I do next.

I grab her narrow hips, urging her to move onto the bed on her knees before kneeling behind her and lining my cock up with her wet centre.

"Do it, Rico."

Her voice sounds strange to my still very inebriated ears, deeper and huskier, and it's weird that she didn't call me Batman, as that's always been our thing. Still, my drunk, horny side doesn't care about that right now, so I thrust my hips forward, breaching her wet cunt as a long, low moan of exquisite pleasure leaves my lips.

It only takes a handful of pumps before I'm thundering towards coming hard in her tight sheath. When she screams her own pleasure, her pussy clenches around my dick, forcibly pulling my cum from my body as I groan my own release before falling forward onto her wet, sweaty back.

It takes several minutes to come down, my body still enveloped in her tight heat. It’s when I eventually lean back and am just about to withdraw, I see a tattoo on her lower back.

My heart beats so fast and loud that I can hear my blood pumping in my ears. The sound is deafening, forcing me to screw up my eyes in pain.

I know that tattoo.

Jerking back from her as though I've been hit by a thousand volts of electricity, I can see my release leaving her body, dripping down onto my bedsheets, and it's the catalyst for my reaction.

I turn to the side of the bed and begin to throw up violently. So violently that I don't stop until there are dark splats, which I fundamentally know are blood, on the towels that Cassidy had spread on my floor.

Once I've purged my stomach of everything, I know I can't delay the inevitable.

Turning to confirm my suspicions were correct, my horrified eyes meet the amber gaze of my stepmum as she sprawls unashamedly naked across my bed, a sadistic smile on her face.

"I'd like to see that cheating prick have a relationship with you now that you've fucked his wife."

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Olivia

"I grabbed some clothes off the mess on my floor, yanking my pants up while hopping toward Alex's room." Then, for the first time since he relived the most horrifying day of his life, Henry's voice breaks as he says his brother's name.

I drop a kiss on his knuckles, then lace his fingers through mine as I try to send the strength to continue from my body to his.

As though it's worked, he inhales a deep, steadying breath before continuing.

"Alex wasn't in his room, so I started to shout for him. I didn't have to shout for long before I heard his quiet cries from within my room." He swallows audibly as though he must force the following words past his lips.

"I found out later from Cassidy that he'd come to my room in the middle of the night, as he liked to do most nights. Cass had settled him back to sleep on the daybed. Since we've never spoken of it, I'm assuming he heard and saw most, if not all, of what happened, and the fact that I'd slept with his mum, my fucking stepmum… Jesus, Peach. Who could blame him for hating me?"

"You didn't." My voice quietly intrudes on his revelation.

His body stiffens behind me. "What?"

My heart breaks for this man who is so cool, calm, and confident, but who, underneath it all, is so utterly clueless that he blames himself for something that he had no control over.

"Henry, you didn't sleep with her." I keep my voice steady, but my tone is soft, not wanting to spook him. "She coerced you. She forced you.”

I can feel his head shaking behind mine, his arms holding me tighter. "No, baby. I fucked her. I did. There's no escaping it. Trust me. I've bloody tried."

"Would you have done it if you'd known it wasn't Cassidy? If you hadn't been too drunk to realise? If she hadn't insinuated herself into your bed and taken advantage of you, her stepson, for crying out loud, in some crazy attempt to ruin your father's life? To ruin his relationship with his sons?"

Confusion runs riot in his green gaze, and I know immediately that this thought has never occurred to him. Not once.

I know now, as surely as I know the sky is blue, that Henry DeMarco has seen himself as the villain in his own story for the last twelve years of his life and something inside me snaps, knowing I will go to the ends of the earth to fix what's broken.

"Henry, you understand what I'm saying, right? You are not to blame. You are the victim here, okay? Not the villain."

"Not the villain?" He sounds utterly incredulous at the idea.