I slapped my chopsticks down on the counter in frustration. “Why?”
“Because your mom just told me how grateful she was that in marrying my dad, she found a good big brother for you. She told me that family has to stick together, and actually thanked me for taking care of you.”
“But you did take care of me!”
Over, and over, and over again…
He cringed. “I seduced you…”
I snorted. “You didn’t seduce me. I seduced you.”
Jake, who was standing by the table, put both his hands flat on its surface, and eyed me. “That’s not how I remember it.”
I shrugged a shoulder. “Then you remember it wrong. And in any case it doesn’t matter. Because it’s not wrong, Jake. We’re not wrong together, you and me.”
To prove it, I reached for him, unzipping his pants and stroking him with my hand. He groaned, putting his hand on mine as if he wanted to stop me, but couldn’t bring himself to. “You’re not playing fair, Nicole.”
“Fair is your thing, not mine,” I said, getting off a little bit on the way he was trying to fight his desire for me, trying to hold it back, but not managing to hide it from me one bit. “Because I don’t care if it’s pervy. Yes, I want my stepbrother to put himself inside me, bare, and drain his balls. I want you to fuck me, Jake, and make me come.” With that, I dropped my panties, hopped up onto the countertop, spread my legs and began to touch my sore but already engorged pink parts. “Please, please, please, make me come on your cock again.”
If I hadn’t seduced him before, I did then.
He didn’t stand a chance.
Watching my fingers play where he’d sucked and fucked me earlier that night, he was mesmerized.
We did it right on the kitchen countertop.
And it was so good, his knees nearly buckled when he came.
I tried to screw him so well that he’d forget all the weirdness about our relationship, but I worried that we’d only screwed ourselves to such exhaustion that we were too tired to argue about it anymore. Either way, I was grateful to fall asleep in his arms that night. A place I felt safer than I’d ever been.
At least until the banging on the front door.
~~~
“Nicky!” I heard my name being shouted from the edges of my sleep, along with a battering from the direction of the living room.
And it took me a moment to realize what was going on.
“I know you’re in there, you cheating bitch!”
“Jake, wake up,” I whispered, my heart pounding as loudly as the bashing on the door. “It’s Carlos. He’s trying to break in.”
Then I realized, in my bleary state, that Jake was already awake. What’s more, he was already half-dressed, and was holding a gun in his hand. My eyes widened at the sight and I sat up in bed, staring in shock at the grim expression on Jake’s face.
An expression I’d never seen there before.
Jake looked hard. Serious. Deadly. And he put a finger over my lips as if to silence me. “Let him knock. Let him shout himsel
f hoarse if he wants. But if he breaks in this house to come after you, he’s going out in a body bag.”
I went rigid with fear, from head to toe, because he sounded like he meant it. Like maybe he even welcomed it. And by instinct I reached for my phone, finally eager to call the police for the first time in my life.
Then I remembered the phone was dead.
“Nicky!” Carlos screamed from outside. “Nicky, you either come out and face me or I’m coming in after you, you little whore.”
I’d never heard Carlos so unhinged before. And it reaffirmed all the reasons that I’d left him. But I also was afraid of what he might do if I didn’t go out and talk to him—or what Jake might do.
In the dark, I managed to find my pants. And a shirt. I didn’t know if it was Jake’s or mine, but I slipped it on. But as I started to rise from the bed, my lover shook his head. “Don’t even think about going to him, Nicole. He’ll hurt you, and then I’ll have to take him out.”
Okay, so while I admit, it was a little thrilling to have someone threaten to kill someone for me, it was entirely sobering to think it might not be an idle threat. Carlos was all bluster and bullying. But Jake? My nice guy had just turned into someone that ought never to be messed with.
All at once, a crash sounded in the bedroom.
I screamed, realizing that it was a broken window. And I ducked out of the way of the flying porch chair that Carlos threw inside.
After that, things happened so fast, it was a blur.
I remember Jake pulling me away from the window, and spinning me to the relative safety behind the bed. Then I saw Carlos lumber into the jagged window, kicking glass out of his way, calling me every name he could think of in English and a few in Spanish as well.
He didn’t get very far. I’d say he was a mere five feet into the room before Jake stepped out of the shadows, put Carlos into a headlock, and pressed the muzzle of his gun against my abuser’s forehead. “Big mistake, asshole. And I’m so glad you made it.”
~~~
Carlos went rigid with fear. I don’t know what he’d been thinking, breaking into someone’s house. I don’t know if he’d been thinking at all. But given the way his nostrils flared over the strong lock of Jake’s arm, he seemed to realize that he had, indeed, made a big mistake.