She lifts a brow, a small smile curving her seductive lips. ‘I suppose you don’t stick around long enough for them to ask.’
That’s true. I find myself hesitating when the answer is simple. ‘I got it young. I was stupid and...just a kid. I liked the idea of it.’
‘Hmm,’ she says. ‘There might be an answer in there somewhere, but I’m afraid I can’t decode it.’
When I close my eyes I can see the roses that my mother grew. I can smell their honeyed fragrance, intoxicating. I can hear the bees that flocked to the blooms, filling the garden with a background hum, especially in the sun-filled afternoons.
‘How old were you?’ she tries again, still tracing lines over the rose—to the left of my belly—her light touch mesmerising.
‘Fourteen.’
‘Fourteen?’ She pushes up on one elbow, alarm in her eyes. ‘That’s illegal, right?’
‘No charges were pressed,’ I drawl, amused at how scandalised she is.
‘But you were still a boy.’
‘At fourteen, I was definitely not “still a boy”.’
‘Okay, but didn’t the tattooist or whatever check your ID?’
‘I didn’t have any ID. I was fourteen.’
‘You know what I mean.’ She presses her hand to my arm, a light slap, designed not to hurt so much as to gently chastise. But I catch her hand, lifting her fingers to my lips, sucking one deep into my mouth then releasing it, biting the tip on its way out. Her eyes flare to mine and the familiar sense of desire begins to unfurl.
She is naked against my side, her legs tangled with mine, her breasts crushed to my chest. I like her like this. I have lost all concept of time but I think it’s past midnight. There is a part of me that seems to be dreading the fact she might go at any point. And that dread forces realisation—I want her to stay. Only so I can enjoy this, her, as much as possible on this night.
Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow without this insatiable craving for her.
Maybe I’ll be over her in the morning.
‘Is it a secret?’ she prompts, dropping her head and rolling her tongue over my nipple, her smile filled with cheek and query when she flicks her eyes back to mine. My harsh breath is involuntary.
‘No.’
It’s not. But, at the same time, only Jagger and Theo know. My brothers. My heart thumps painfully at the word brothers, and how long I took its usage for granted. How easily I believed what I was told. As a child, that’s our purview, but why didn’t I question it as an adult? Why didn’t I wonder?
Perhaps I did. I knew I was different. The black sheep of our family, different, wrong somehow.
Perhaps that was my instincts telling me something was wrong. That I was being lied to by people I had come to trust.
Acid fills my mouth and I crave Cora, I crave beer, I crave obliteration.
‘What’s wrong, Holden?’ Her hand presses to my cheek, the look of amusement gone completely.
I feel the darkness stirring in my eyes when I look at her.
‘Nothing.’
It’s a lie. We both feel it. She frowns, the flicker across her lips pleasing me. This is what I’m good at. Destruction, misery, grief, ruination. My special gifts, those I hold in abundance.
Her frown deepens. ‘You’re lying.’ She scrambles up, and my chest cleaves in two because she’s going to get out of bed and leave after all, and I’ll be alone with the thoughts and memories she’s invoked.
But she doesn’t leave. She straddles me, leaning forward so her generous breasts are crushed to my chest and her mouth just an inch over mine. But it’s her eyes that hold my full attention in that moment, eyes that are beautiful and magical and they completely enthral me.
‘You don’t have to tell me.’ Her smile is gentle, like she’s trying to coax a child out from under the bed after a nightmare. ‘I was just curious, but it doesn’t really matter.’
It doesn’t matter. None of this does. The marks of my past, scored across my flesh, are not important. Not to her, and no longer to me. The childish whims that led me to etch my feelings in my skin, almost as though I could ink them rather than experience them.