She even kept the smile as she waited while I made a few passes over it to ensure that the dirt was packed down.
“It’ll just be a big ol’ mud puddle by the time it rains again, but for now it’s good enough,” I said. “Are you ready?”
She wiggled in her seat, and I groaned quietly as my dick continued to respond to her moving on my lap by getting harder at this very inopportune time.
When she shifted again, I knew she felt it.
Liked it.
Because she continued to wiggle, and her face was flushed as she waited to see what I’d do next.
“Audrey,” I warned gratingly, barely able to be heard over the low growl of the diesel engine.
I didn’t know what I was warning her about.
It could’ve possibly been the fact that my control wasn’t infinite. Or it could’ve been the fact that I knew she wasn’t ready for where I could see this heading.
Whatever the reason, I needed to put a stop to it.
Or I would have put a stop to it had she not spun around in the seat and touched her mouth to mine.
And then I lost it. Lost it so spectacularly, in fact, that I didn’t realize I was even holding on to her when her kisses went from sweet to a scream in three seconds flat.
I let go as the feeling of ice water running through my veins poured through me.
I sat back, gasping, and lifted my hands in confusion.
“Audrey?”
Her eyes were wild, scared and filled with something that turned my stomach inside out.
“Audrey, honey?” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
Her eyes finally found mine.
“It was the hands.”
I studied her face.
“What was?”
“I do better when I’m in control,” she whispered. “You put your hands on me, and held me to you. I’m so sorry.”
She covered her face with her hands, and her shoulders started to shake.
Realizing that she was crying, I placed one hesitant hand on the side of her face and tilted her head back.
“Baby, look at me.”
She did.
I swallowed, knowing that she was buried deep inside her head. Though she was looking at me, she wasn’t all there, and I knew that it’d take a miracle to get through to her at this point.
“My sister was raped by my best friend for years…two years before I realized that it was going on and stopped it.”
Her eyes snapped into focus, and I realized the moment she came back to me.
“What?” She licked her lips. “What are you talking about?”
I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the Plexiglas wall and looked at the ceiling of the tractor.
She shifted on my lap, and then placed her hand hesitantly on my cheek.
“Tell me.”
I swallowed, feeling my Adam’s apple bob, and righted my head.
“My best friend, Jay, used to beg me to ask my parents to have him over. Me, not caring, always asked. I never once stopped to pay attention to the fear on my sister’s face every time his name was mentioned. I was only thinking about my own selfish self, and never stopped to look around. To wonder why the hell she was making herself scarce when he was there.” I shook my head. “One night I woke up, thirsty as hell, and got up to get some water. I noticed that Jay was gone, but figured I’d find him in the kitchen eating or grabbing a drink. What I didn’t expect was to find him in my sister’s room, doing things to her that she never asked for.”
“Tobias…”
He shook his head. “I killed him.”
Her eyes widened.
“What?”
I nodded, swallowing thickly.
“I did,” I said. “Killed him with my bare hands.”
I finally found the courage to make eye contact with her, and such fierce pride was shining in her eyes that I found it hard to breathe.
“Ghost wanted to kill my rapist, too,” she whispered. “Brothers are good protectors.”
She placed her hand on my cheek and then leaned down and kissed me softly on the lips.
I didn’t respond, knowing that she was still too shaken up for me to do anything more than to allow her to do whatever she wanted to me.
She didn’t disappoint, but I couldn’t let her think that I was the good guy in this situation.
Because I wasn’t. Not even close.
“I should’ve been there for her,” I started again. “For years, I let that go on. He made her promise not to tell, or he’d kill me. He was serious, too, because she wasn’t a stupid girl. If she thought that the threat was real, she would’ve done whatever he wanted.” I looked away from her concerned eyes. “By the time I’d caught him, he’d raped her over forty times.”
Bile rose in my throat.
“After I…pulled him off of her, I started to beat him with my fists. Then when those started to hurt, I picked up a lamp and continued the assault until my brothers and father pulled me off of him. But at that point, he was already dead. For a while, they suspect.”
I finally worked up the courage to look at her, and the gratitude I read in her eyes was enough to undo me.
“She never recovered,” I whispered. “She wasn’t strong like you. She’d always been a gentle soul. She never talked back. Never did anything out of turn. Always asked permission to do anything, even go to the grocery store down the street and get something for dinner. She was what I would like to call forever young. She didn’t see the problems in the world. Always had her head in the sand. She went to counseling, but she was never the same as she was before Jay. She was there, but she did little more than just exist.”
“I’m not strong,” she whispered. “You may think I am, but I’m not. Look at what just happened.”
I brought one lone finger up and curled it around a stray piece of hair that’d slipped over her ear where she’d had it tucked. “You’re here. You’re living your life. You’re looking for an apartment. You’re doing more than just existing. It’s more than some do after what happened to you.”
Like my sister didn’t do, went unsaid. But I could tell she was thinking the same thing as I was.
She tried to look away, but I wrapped my hand around her chin to tilt her face toward me. “When you’re ready—if you’re ever ready—I’ll be here. Until then, I’ll be your friend.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Let’s go shoot.”
Chapter 7
Control your orgasm. It’s just a beard.
-Said no man ever
Audrey
The day to embark finally arrived, and I was both nervous and excited about the prospect of going on my first ever cruise.
“This your first time?”
I looked down at the older woman who was standing next to me.
“Yes,” I said, peeking around the partition that separated her balcony from mine and Tobias’. “Yours?”
She shook her head. “No. This is our seventeenth. We go on one once a year now.”
I smiled. “That’s exciting.”
The ship’s horn blew, causing me to jump.
I jumped again when I felt a warm body slide in next to mine.
“That’s the horn they blow when they finally take off. You’ll hear that every single time we leave a port,” the older woman explained, her eyes flicking up past my head to the man at my side.
“Ahh,” I said, tilting my head to stare at the man at my side. “Did you know that?”