“Where’s my stuff?” I blurt out.
“In your car,” he replies. His eyes are on his empty mug.
“Why?” I demand. I want to stomp over there and force him to look at me as he kicks me out.
“Because you’re not staying.”
I knew what the answer was going to be, but it still hurts. It still makes me angry. It still burns in the pit of my stomach.
“Why are you doing this?” The question comes out plaintive, almost whiny, and I wish I could take it back.
He needs to see I’m an adult—not a child he can boss around, not a puppet he can direct. But how do I prove that when I’m sleeping in the same bed I slept in since I was ten, eating the food that he picked out, wearing the clothes that he paid for?
Abruptly, I twist around and replace the food.
“What are you doing?” He rises from his chair. “You said you were hungry.”
“I’m not.” My stomach grumbles in protest.
“The fu—hell, you aren’t.”
“I’m not eating any of your food.” I jut out my chin.
His brows crash together. “What nonsense are you saying? Of course, you’re going to eat. It’s not my food. It’s our food.” He stalks over and reaches past me for the fridge handle.
I move out of the way, not wanting any contact with him because I don’t want to make love to him at this moment. I want to hit him. Hard. “You just told me I can’t stay here, so obviously it’s not my place.”
“I…” He jams a frustrated hand through his hair. I try not to notice how his muscle flexes in his biceps or how the thin T-shirt fabric stretches across his very fit pecs. I try to keep my body from clenching in response to this very fine male body in front of me. I try to keep my heart from flipping over in delight at his closeness. I try, but my nipples tighten anyway and poke insistently against my shirt.
Leka doesn’t notice. “I meant you should go back to school,” he continues, eyes purposefully pointed over my shoulder. “You’re a kid. Kids belong in school.”
“By that logic I’m an adult. I have graduated and therefore am no longer a child.”
“An adult doesn’t stick her tits out demanding attention. That’s something a kid does.”
So he does see. He sees but still insists I’m only a girl. Resentment scalds my tongue. “Mary’s an adult and her tits are out there for everyone to see.”
“If I wanted you to be like Mary, I wouldn’t have sent you to Vermont,” he replies.
“Maybe you liked Mary so much you shipped me off so you could fuck her all the time without my bothering you!”
The words fly out on the wings of embarrassment and anger, but I don’t regret them because Leka roars back, “I haven’t fucked anyone!”
The admission snaps my jaw shut. He’s…not slept with anyone? Ever?
Before I can ask, Leka drags a large hand down his face. Defeat sits heavy on his shoulders as if this confession is more than he ever wanted to share. “You should go to bed. We’ll talk about this in the morning.” His eyes are fixed on some spot about five feet to the right of my shoulder.
“But—”
“Go to bed,” he growls.
I don’t get a chance to say another word because he doesn’t wait for me to leave. Instead, he flees, leaving me in the kitchen feeling flustered and giddy.
I don’t know what we were fighting over at the end, but I think I won. No. We won, I correct myself, because we are together.
27
Leka
Sleep evades me. I feel like I can hear every noise in her bedroom. The swishing of her coat as she shoves it off the bed. The snap of the elastic as she pulls her leggings down and drops them on the floor. The ping of her bra clasp as she frees her breasts.
My hands curl into empty fists and the blood in my groin pounds angrily. I try to ignore my cock. It’s mind over matter, I tell myself. If you don’t think about the thing that excites you, eventually the erection will go away.
But when I close my eyes, all I see is her, standing out in the kitchen with her tits pointing directly in my face, begging me pertly to suck them until they’re hard as erasers. The kitchen where she colored and packed school lunches and made ice-cream sundaes.
I’m a monster. I mentally lock my hands to my side. I can’t touch myself—not thinking about her like this. She’s my ward. I raised her. Imagining her naked, kneeling in front of me, pressing her face against my heated groin is all wrong.
I should take a spike to my brain, but then she’d be without anyone in this miserable world. I can’t have that.