Just a Note on a new Story

Just a note, I think I'm going to leave this story as is because I'm eager to get to another story, starring Sid.

It's a sequel to a story I wrote that you can find on either the Yahoo group hockeyfantasyfiction or on fanfiction.net called Hey There Cinderella, please check it out.

http://sidlovesmya.blogspot.com/

Breathe Chapter 17

Chapter 17 ~ Second Chance

“How the hell did you get in here?”

“Who the fuck is he?”

We both yell at the same time and yet hear each other perfectly. I decide to ignore her question, for now, deciding that the fact that she has some spider monkey’s dick in her should be my first priority.

“Rook, do me a favor and get your dick out of my girlfriend,” I sigh, giving him my elder brother Eric’s look of pure disdain. The one that he always gives the rookies, just so they know who’s boss. The one he used to give me and my brothers when he didn’t want us to question his grand plans, the ones that usually ended up with me and Jared catching shit for something. It always worked though, and it seems to work now as the tall skinny rookie, all arms and legs and neck, scrambles out of the tub, grabbing a towel off of the rack, which I rip out of his hands and offer to Tippie instead. His nudity I don’t really notice. I’m used to being around naked guys. Hers I enjoy, but not right now. Not in front of him.

“Pardon?” Tippie almost chokes as her eyes get even wider as I hand her the towel. “Girlfriend? What the fuck do you mean girlfriend?”

“How about we save the adult talk until your little friend here has found his pants and crawled back into whatever kindergarten class you pulled him out of,” I snarl, staring the tall geeky down as he scrambles to gather all of his clothes, forcing myself not to smile triumphantly as he shoots me an apologetic glance or two.

“He doesn’t have to go anywhere. You…you can stay. Jordan you leave,” Tippie snaps, wrapping the towel around herself and hugging it close around her body, her actions belying her words.

“He’s not an idiot, are you Myers? There’s three of us in the league, well maybe four if Jared gets his thumb out, and you may be tall but you aren’t too big to knock over are you Myers and you know what they say about guys as tall as you? They taller they are the harder they fall,” I add with a menacing glare. The one I use on opposition players across the face-off circle. The one Eric learned to fear during the series last season.

“You know my name?” the kid asks, his eyes round, a little smile tugging at the corners of his too pink lips. I have to laugh. Suddenly the fact that I know who he is seems more important than the fact that I should be kicking his ass right now.

“Yeah I do. I make it my business to know whose ass I’m going to be kicking next game and believe me, I’m going to kick yours all around the rink. But I’ll start kicking it right now if you don’t get the fuck out of here,” I growl, taking a step towards him that sends him hopping down the hall, one long leg into his jeans, the other still half into his boxers. I’d laugh if I wasn’t so damn pissed off right now. “You should learn to lock the door behind you,” I sigh, turning back to look at Tippie, her long ebony hair dripping down over her shoulders, a pool of water forming at her feet. “No matter how eager you are to get into some kid’s pants. It’s not safe. You are in New York, remember,” I add, reaching to pull another towel off of the rack and using it to rub her hair dry.

Astonishingly she stays still while I do it. Still and silent even though I can feel the tension vibrating off of her in waves. I can understand the feeling. What I want to do is scream at her, shake her, admonish her, but I don’t.

For one thing, I’m fairly sure it wouldn’t do me any good. The stubborn and angry expression on her pretty face makes that fairly clear. Secondly, she’s right. We haven’t exactly made the parameters of our relationship clear. Or at least I haven’t laid out my boundaries, yet. But I’m about to.

“I thought you didn’t just do random one night stands. I thought you said that I was your only one,” I begin, once I’m sure that everything she’s going to let me reach, for now, is dry. Folding the towel back up, I drape it over the rack and then turn back to see her dark eyes watching me, warily. “So what was Stretch supposed to do here? Make me jealous? Because if that was your plan then I have to tell you that it didn’t really work out that well. I mean, he’s just a kid. He might be a couple inches taller than me but he’d blow over in a spring breeze.”

“Fuck you, you don’t own me,” she snarls, but something in her face tells me that she’s not that upset with my finding her ‘in flagrante delicto’. There’s a fire in her eyes that I recognize and my body is already reacting to the challenge I see in the way she holds her chin high and her lips pursed.

“Is that what you want?” I whisper, taking the single step required to invade her personal space and grabbing hold of her shoulders, digging my fingers into her cool, pale flesh until she lets out a long low hiss and I feel a sort of shiver run along her skin and I know it isn’t just the water cooling on her skin that’s causing it. “Do you want me to mark you again? Own you again? Is that what you want?”

“Fuck you Jordan,” she hisses, but doesn’t try to get away, doesn’t even so much as twitch a single muscle.

“I plan for you to,” I reply with a grin, capturing her mouth with mine and kissing her, hard.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I’d had second thoughts the moment the kid started kissing me in the taxi. It was all sloppy and wet and the kid had absolutely no technique at all.

Sure, his hands seemed to know what to do and by the time we’d made it back to my apartment I was willing to admit that I wanted him to fuck me, but I also knew that either I was never going to want to see him again or he was going to need some serious training. Sure, there’s a certain amount of je ne sais quoi to the whole fumbling teenage heat thing, but it wasn’t what I wanted, not what I needed.

So I had to admit that I wasn’t that upset to see Jordan. Sure I was embarrassed, even humiliated, for a moment or two. Only until I could see that, despite how cool he was trying to play it, that it really bothered him to see the tall gangly youth in the place he obviously that as his rightful position.

My mouth even went dry as he ordered the rookie out. Just the way he did it, the self assured tone that was in direct contradiction to the way his hands shook as he ran the towel over my hair and shoulders. I even allowed myself a little grin as he knelt to dry my legs but bit back a sigh as the towel went up to my thighs.

By the time he puts the towel back on the rack and turns back to me, I’m nearly quivering with anticipation. God I’m such a whore.

“So what was Stretch supposed to do here? Make me jealous? Because if that was your plan then I have to tell you that it didn’t really work out that well for you. I mean, he’s just a kid. He might be a couple inches taller than me but he’d blow over in a spring breeze.” He sounds tough, and I have no doubt in my mind that he means it. The kid will definitely suffer an ass whooping for his troubles, but I’ve almost forgotten him already as I look up into Jordan’s blue eyes to see how hard he’s fighting to control the anger and the desire, to not let one win out over the other and I find that I don’t even care which emotion wins out, as long as he takes them out on me.

“Fuck you, you don’t own me,” I snarl, holding my head high, daring him to contradict me, and at the same time, to prove that he does. God help me but I want him to prove that he does. It’s all I can do to stand there and say nothing else, to not drop the towel and beg him to ravage me as his ice sky blue gaze roams over me, slowly, appraisingly, like he’s trying to decide where to start. His gaze is like a touch and it makes me want to squirm.

“Is that what you want?” His voice is husky and barely above a whisper as he takes a step towards me, a step that brings his chest into contact with mine and his long, thick fingers dig into my shoulders, almost painfully. But it’s a sweet pain. A pain that makes me shudder, almost makes me moan out loud and it’s all I can do to only take a long shuddering breath instead of begging him to do whatever he wants. “Do you want me to mark you again? Own you again? Is that what you want?”

I want to nod like a bobble head. I want to jump up and down and clap and say yes over and over again like an eager little kid. I want to moan and beg him to fuck me. Instead I steel myself and stare him down, leveling my gaze at him and biting back everything else.

“Fuck you Jordan,” I hiss back at him, hoping that my eagerness doesn’t quite show through and god help me, I love the spark of rage that lights in his blue eyes.

“I plan for you to.” He grins menacingly, but with a promise in his eyes that makes my knees go weak and if it wasn’t for his firm, nearly painful grip on my shoulders, I think they may have actually given out on me. Then he kisses me, pressing his lips down over mine hard enough to bruise but I don’t fight him then. I let him in, opening my lips and reaching for his tongue with mine. He moans into my mouth, like he’s grateful, just like a dying man would if offered water, and then he sweeps me off of my feet and carries me into the hallway. “Which one?” he asks, like he can’t make a whole sentence, and I know the feeling, I can only point. I don’t trust my lips to form anything that doesn’t resemble ‘fuck me’.

He backs into my room and lowers me onto the bed, kneeling over me as I let the towel fall open. He licks his lips, as if he’s getting ready to taste a feast, and then he falls on me like a rabid dog, biting and growling and I hear my own voice letting loose similar sounds of need as I rip and tear at his clothes, just as eager to get at him as he is at me.
He barely manages to kick his suit pants down to his knees before he pulls my hips towards him, impaling my body on his, and both of us let out a groan of relief and just lay there for a long moment, his forehead pressed to mine.

“No one ever gets to do this but me,” he whispers at last, his lips pressing to my temple, my eyelids, my cheek and at last my mouth. “No one, ever, promise me,” he whispers against my lips as we begin to move in unison. “Promise me Tippi,” he insists, his blue gaze searching mine earnestly as he holds his lips just over mine. At first I can’t say anything. The fear gripping my heart makes it impossible to breathe let alone speak. Then, as his body stills, waiting for my response, I feel the tears begin to spill as I nod.

“I love you,” I sniff, turning my face away so he can’t see how vulnerable I am when I say it but his big hand cups my cheek and turns my gaze back to meet his.

“And I love you. Only you, so much,” he breathes, kissing away my tears.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“I’ll figure something out,” I promise her as we stand in her doorway, my hand cupping her cheek, her eyes closes, a quirky little smile on her pretty face.

“You will? I’m the one with the job and the great apartment. How about you ask for a trade, straight up for Marc?” she suggests as her smile grows and her eyes opens to look up at me.

“I don’t want to play for the Rangers, are you kidding me?” I laugh, leaning down to press my lips to hers’ again, feeling my pulse double as her lips open and her tongue reaches for mine. Groaning, I push her back, knowing if I give into her that I’ll end up missing the train and end up in a world of trouble, probably even facing a suspension. Part of me thinks it would be worth it, but most of me knows that I can’t do it.

“So we’ll just see how it goes, for a while?” she asks, looking disappointed as I hold her at arms’ length.

“Kind of like I thought we’d agreed before?” I tease, raising my eyebrow only to have her roll her dark eyes at me.

“We talked about it, I don’t think we actually agreed on anything,” she replies stubbornly, meeting my gaze with one that I’m guessing she thinks looks defiant but I can see the playfulness leaking into her gaze and the slight upturn of her full, pink lips.

“Well I hope we have this time,” I reply seriously, raising my eyebrow again as I wait for her to answer me which she does, eventually by shrugging her shoulders and giving me that Mona Lisa smile that doesn’t really give too much away except that I’ve seen it too many times so I know that it only hides a bigger smile, a happy smile. “At least promise me I won’t come back from Buffalo to find you with some other rookie in my place.”

“Well I guess that depends,” she says, and I can see that she’s fighting not to let her grin grow any wider.

“On?” I ask, letting my fingers trail down her neck to her collarbone, watching the goose-bumps rise on her skin and her eyes flutter shut.

“If you really love me,” she says quietly and for the very first time I see insecurity flash through her dark eyes and it makes me wrap her up in my arms.
Kissing the top of her head I squeeze her tight.

“Crazy woman, I don’t think I could love you more,” I whisper, still amazed that the words are coming out of my mouth. I had no intention of settling down when came here tonight, but I suddenly feel like I don’t want to let go of her, don’t want to leave her and the way her arms are holding me tight, I’m hoping she feels the same way. “So no more rookies, promise me,” I add, tilting her gaze up to meet mine. She smiles, despite the tears shimmering in her dark eyes.

“I promise,” she says quietly, offering her sweet, soft lips up to mine.

Breathe Chapter 16

Chapter 16 ~ Back in the Saddle

The crowd stands and cheers as one, beer slopping over the rims of their cups, the sound of hands slapping and men congratulating each other like they had something to do with it filling the air. I barely look up at the screen, concentrating instead on the slightly stale peanuts in their small bowl in the middle of the table, like they’re the most interesting things on earth because I can’t look at the screen anymore.

Every time I see Marc, my chest begins to hurt, enough that I have to take a deep breath to ease the sharp pain that feels like a knife is being shoved through my ribs.

Every time I see Jordan, my mouth goes dry and a shudder runs down my spine.

Every time I see them at the same time, one or the other of them seem to be intent on putting his brother somewhere near the fifth row, preferably through the glass and with a stick embedded firmly in his back.

I just can’t watch anymore. It’s too hard. But I’m glad I didn’t actually go to the arena to watch this blood bath. Hearing the reverberation of the boards on the television, mostly drowned out by the general buzz in the bar, is bad enough. I think if I’d actually gone to the game, if I was actually sitting near those boards, I would have been taken out on a stretcher by now.

As it is, I’m wishing that I’d taken Ryan and Miki up on their offer to come to the bar with me. At the time it seemed like a better idea for me to do this alone, but right about now, I could do with the distraction, any distraction and I sure as hell could do with a second opinion on whether or not I should go through with meeting Jordan after the game like I’d promised.

Well, half promised.

That conversation hadn’t really gone that well. It had started out with just a couple of texts; Jordan offering tickets and my saying no, followed by him asking why. That’s when things got sticky.

I didn’t want to tell him Marc had forbidden me. Forbidden me, the thought him saying that still made me smile for some odd reason and yet I was willing to go along with it now. Not because he’d forbidden me, but just because it made sense. Like Jordan had said, blood is thicker than water and who the hell am I to appoint myself the oil in that situation? The last thing I want is to come between them and yet, glancing up at the screen in time to see Marc put his younger brother into his own bench head first, it appears that I already have.

Still, I know given time, this too shall pass and they’ll figure out some way to forgive each other, but only if stay out of it, which is why I’m sitting in a bar full of testosterone crushing peanuts with my fist.

Of course it’s tempting to let Jordan come over tonight and mess up my room and fuck my brains out and I’d probably feel better in the morning but I know I’d also feel guilty as hell and that would ruin any kind of chance at enjoying the afterglow, no matter how earth shattering the sex might be. The problem is I still haven’t told him that.

I’d told him to meet me here after the game, a decision I’m beginning to regret. I thought I owed him an explanation, but now I’m thinking about slinking off with my tail between my legs and going into the witness protection program. Not the bravest of stances certainly but from where I’m sitting, I would say it’s the safest and most sane option.

Of course it also seems like a shame for Jordan to take such a shit kicking for nothing but that’s probably just me looking for an excuse to get into his pants.
Sometimes I can be such a guy.

“Not a hockey fan?”

My hand pauses above a peanut shell and I look up. Way, way up, into a broad smile attached to a blonde haired, blue eyed giant.

“I like hockey,” I admit quietly, going back to taking my frustrations out on the peanut, crushing it below my fist and sending at least one of the nuts skipping across the table. I watch it hit the floor with a slight feeling of consternation. I’m glad I’m not actually paying for these things.

“But you’re not actually watching the game,” he points out unnecessarily as he slides into the empty chair across from me. I look over, and up, at him and find him grinning back at me. Narrowing my eyes at him I shrug.

“I can hear it just fine,” I point out, grabbing another peanut and raising my hand over it, poised to smash it but his very long, pale fingers snatch the innocent legume out from under my fist. I look up at him, my lips pursed, but he only smiles innocently back at me and snaps the shell in two, peeling it back to shake the nuts into his mouth.

“I’d hate to see you waste any more of these and I’m kind of afraid me or one of my teammates is going to slip and break something on one of them.” My hand pauses over the remaining peanuts in the bowl, mid air as I look back over, and up at him.

“Did you say…team mates?” I ask, to which the young blonde grins back at me and nods as he chews thoughtfully on the nuts. “Please tell me that you play for the Knicks or something.”

“Sabres actually.”

_________________________________________________________________________________

“What the fuck Marc?” I snap as I push open the door to the dressing room where he’s sitting alone, still in his full kit, staring at the floor.

“What?” he snaps back without so much as looking up at me.

“Have you ever gotten tossed from a game? I mean – ever?” I ask, standing over him, waiting for him to look up at me, but he doesn’t. He just keeps staring at the spot on the floor between his skates, an ice pack on his knuckles. I should fucking hope so too, I think as I press my own ice pack to the spot on my jaw where those knuckles connected.

“I dunno, maybe once,” he shrugs, sliding his swollen hand out from under the ice pack. I wince when I see the bruised and split flesh. Mom is so going to yell at us.

“Well I hope you’ve got it out of your fucking system. You do realize I’m going to have to do wind sprints in practice tomorrow for this. Thanks for that by the way,” I add with a sigh as I take a step towards taking a seat beside him on the bench but he stops me with a look that would frighten small children.

“Just because I’m not yelling doesn’t mean I’m not still pissed at you,” he hisses threateningly.

“Yeah well, she didn’t take my tickets to the game if that makes you feel better.” I’m guessing that it doesn’t by the way he rolls his eyes and shakes his head at me. “Look man, I’ve said I’m sorry and….”

“Fuck your sorry. Sorry doesn’t cut it Jordo. You and Jared, you’re always doing stupid shit and you think saying sorry makes it all better. Well it fucking doesn’t okay?” He snarls, kicking his skate towards mine. “Don’t see her anymore. That might make it better. Might,” he adds seriously as his gaze searches mine to see if I’m going to give in. For a minute, a long minute, I think about telling him how I’m supposed to meet her at a bar nearby but then I decide not to poke the bear some more tonight.“Whatever man. If you’re going to see her just…just don’t tell me…don’t tell me anything.”

Figuring that’s probably the closest I’m going to get to him giving me his blessing, I keep my mouth shut and back out of the room.

I may have been tossed out during the second period and had a fight with my brother that I’m sure is going to cause me more grief with my family but some good has to come out of all of this. I get more time with Tippi before curfew.

________________________________________________________________________

“No, no hockey players.” Downing the rest of my drink I push my chair back and reach for my purse but his long arm is there first and I’m suddenly standing there, looking up, way, way up at a purse snatching hockey player that’s tall enough to play center for any professional basketball team in the NBA.

“Do you want me to scream?” I ask, holding my hand out for my purse. I only realize that I walked straight into that one when the corner of his full lips turns up in a smirk.

“Maybe later,” he purrs, holding my purse towards me but still out of my reach. “But maybe you wanna dance or have a game of pool first?”

“So the part about no hockey players, that didn’t sink in…Stretch?” I ask, reaching for my purse again, only to have him pull it back and out of my reach. Not nice, so not nice. I pull my leg back, ready to give him a good solid kick to the shins but he laughs and shakes his head at me.

“So you’re telling me that you were checking out my ass since the middle of the first period and now I don’t even get to buy you a drink?” he asks, that big grin on his face growing wider as I feel my cheeks burn in frustration.

“I was…,” my voice trails away as I realize that I had been doing that very thing. I mean, not really intentionally but I had definitely had a couple of peeks at it while I was ignoring the television screens. “Well so what if I was? It wasn’t an invitation.”

“So an attractive woman like you, sitting on her own, checking out my ass…and you’re going home alone?” he asks, his eyebrows raising above his blue eyes as he lets the question hang in the air between us. I look up at his young, boyish face with its high sharp cheekbones and his full sensuous mouth and suddenly I think – why not? I’d been thinking all night how frustrated I was going to be, having to tell Jordan that I couldn’t have sex with him so why not?

“No,” I say quietly, holding my hand out for my purse but taking a couple of steps closer to this tall, tall young man, “you’re coming home with me. But I’m not playing pool or dancing and I don’t want to know your name either and I’m not telling you mine. No names, that’s my rule.”

“Well if that’s the rule then I guess I’ll just have to call you Goddess,” he says quietly as he wraps his long arm around my waist and goes in for a kiss. Arching my back and turning my head I give him my cheek and nothing more. Not here anyway.

“And I’ll call you Lurch if you keep this up. Now c’mon, before the third period, you’re blocking everyone’s view. Shit…what do they feed you kids these days? How the hell do you all get so damn tall? And don’t say anything about everyone being the same size lying down or I’ll leave without you.”

_______________________________________________________________________________

I scan the crowd again but don’t see her. Still, I delve into the crowd, searching table to table, but still don’t turn up anyone that even looks like her. Not that that’s really possible. I mean, how many six foot Asian goddesses are there?

Giving up, I take out my cell phone and try her number, listening more for something ringing around me but I don’t hear that or voice mail. The line just goes dead.

“Been stood up?” I look down at a curvy blonde wiggling her way towards me and just shake my head. If I still have even the slightest chance at having filet mignon, I’m not going to settle for a burger.

“No, pretty sure I just got my wires crossed. Thanks,” I add backing out of the bar and onto the street to hire a cab thinking that I’m glad I’d missed her earlier when I’d called her place. Her roommate had given me the address. I was going to send a car for her until she called me and told me she wasn’t going to make the game.
She probably worked even later than she had planned to, I think as I give the driver the address from my blackberry. She’s probably home getting changed. Girl s can take forever at that shit. I’ll just surprise her.

Besides, that’s just less time for small talk at the bar and more time we can spend fucking like energizer bunnies I think to myself as I settle back into the seat , grinning to myself.

__________________________________________________________

“Holy shit!” I breathe, feeling the slick tile against my back as he presses me against the wall, feeling the tiles rolling up and down my back as I he – for lack of a better term – bounces me up and down on his cock as the steam of the shower surrounds us. “Does your dick ever go down?”

“Not when I’ve got something as hot as you on it, no,” he grins at me as he nips at my bottom lip. Holding on for dear life, I tighten my grip around his neck and try to ignore the cooling water dripping into my eyes.

“I don’t suppose you ever get tired either?” I whimper as I feel him slide up into me or me down onto him. I can’t really tell which way is up now never mind anything else. All I do know if that his fingers and his neck aren’t the only long things on his body and I’m getting close to cumming for fifth time already and he doesn’t seem to need any recovery time at all.

“Not really,” he laughs, letting me down only long enough to press me face forward against the slick tiles, stepping between my feet and pulling my hips up so that he can push himself into me from behind. Moaning, I close my eyes and press my forehead against the tiles, which are still warm despite the water having gone cold.

“Oh holy shit it feels even bigger from that angle!” I groan, reaching up to grab onto the shower head with ne hand, anything to hold onto. Not that I actually believe Stretch will let me fall. My other hand reaches for the shower curtain, not even caring if I pull it down, but it isn’t there.

Opening my eyes, I look for the curtain but where it should be is Jordan, and he doesn’t look even a little happy.

Breathe Chapter 15

first and foremost thank you for all your comments, again, they're hilarious
keep them coming pls and pls if you're enjoying this, pass the word, thank you

Chapter 15 ~ Storms

“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” Miki asks, again, as she stands by the door in her warmest clothes, thickest jacket and mittens. New Years Eve in Times Square might be packed but it’s bitterly cold outside, and no where I want to be tonight, especially since she started seeing that lawyer from the third floor. Third wheel? No thanks.

“Popcorn, chick flick, chocolate fudge sauce and rocky road ice cream in the freezer, I’m good thanks,” I smile at her as she stares back at me, motherly concern in her eyes. “Honestly Mik, you go, I can totally entertain myself here. I promise you won’t come home to find me hanging from the shower curtain,” I add with a grin that makes her roll her eyes at me.

“Not funny Tip,” she sighs, shaking her head at me before grabbing a toque and a scarf from the table near the door.

“And I promise, I’ll put my iPod in before I go to sleep, just in case,” I add with a wink which makes her eyes go wide as she pushes her date towards the door. Laughing to myself I hit play on the dvd and settle back under a fleece blanket. Just me, Season Four of Gray’s Anatomy, my thermal pajamas and….

The buzzer on the door sounds as soon as the dialogue starts and I grumble a number of curse words under my breath as I hit the pause button. Putting my bowl of popcorn aside, I fold the blanket back and head for the door, still cursing.

“What did you forget? Your keys?” I snap, pushing the door open and immediately looking up, not down where Miki should be. Mostly because it’s not Miki, it’s Marc. “What are you..,” my voice trails off when I see the fury in his blue eyes but I barely have time to acknowledge that much before he has me by both shoulders and his lips are hovering just over mine.

I have to admit, even though I know I’ll have bruises later where his fingers are currently digging into the flesh of my upper arms, I’m a bit turned on by the whole silent aggression thing. Can I help it if I’m a little kinky that way?

“You can’t keep seeing him,” he growls at last, his blue eyes blazing like gas flames as they search my face. “He’s my brother. I…I forbid you.”

“You…forbid me?” I have to bite down on the inside of my cheek to stop from laughing. It just sounds so…paternal and ridiculous.

“Damn’t Tippi, this isn’t a joke,” he snarls, turning so that he can press me up against the back of the door, effectively using me to close it. “I love…no I loved you,” he adds, correcting himself mid sentence. Just hearing him say that makes the already heavy lead weight that’s been sitting in the pit of my stomach grow in size.

“No, I’m sorry, you’re right” I manage to wheeze while he presses against me and I can tell he’s fighting the urge not to shake me like a dog will its’ prey. Not that I can blame him. I’m sure he’d love to snap my neck and have done with me and I’m sure there isn’t a court in the land that would convict him if he did. Reaching up, I touch his cheek with my fingers and he closes his eyes. First as if he’s cherishing the moment and then his elegant Grecian nose wrinkles and he shakes his head.

“Don’t…don’t try and make it better,” he says quietly, but through clenched teeth and the anger In his tone is unmistakable. “I hate you right now. You can’t even…you don’t know….”

“But I am sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you Markie,” I whisper, feeling tears welling in my eyes, hating the reflection I see of myself in his eyes when he looks at me.

“Don’t. Call. Me. That.” Looking into my eyes and then letting his grey blue eyes search my face as if he’s looking for some sign of the person he used to love, he finally shakes his head and makes a face, like he smells something bad. “Is this what you like?” he asks, leaning in so that he’s whispering in my ear, so that his breath warms my cheek. “Do you like it rough? Is that it?” Letting go of my shoulder, he reaches up and gives a tug on my hair so that I have to face him. “Is this better? Is this what you want?” Biting my lip, I nod and then let out a whimper when his other hand reaches up and grabs a hold of my chin, his long fingers digging into the soft flesh of my cheeks as he stares at me like I make him want to puke. Tears pour down my cheeks but he doesn’t seem to notice, or maybe he doesn’t care. Instead he kisses me, hard and long, forcing his tongue between my lips, the rasp of his unshaven upper lip burning my mouth.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Firstly, just seeing her makes my chest go tight, my head swim and my stomach do things that make me worry about all the beer I’ve had at the bar with the guys, trying to work up my courage to face her.

Then, when the red mist falls and I have her pressed up against the door, all I can think of is Jordan touching her, kissing her, having her and I suddenly I want to do things to her that...that I shouldn’t. But when she whimpers, when her nipples poke at me through her pajama top and her eyes flutter closed I realize that she wants me to do those things to. She does actually like this. She does want me to take her, here, now up against this wall.

It’s all just like Jordan said. It’s all true I realize as I feel her leg slide up and around mine, pulling me closer, urging me on.

And I can’t do it. Just like Jordan said I wouldn’t be able to.

This isn’t what I want. I’m not this…I can’t do this…whatever this is.

“Please,” she whimpers, her hand sliding down between us, trying to stroke me to life through my jeans, but instead I let her go and turn away from her, shaking my head to clear the dark images of her squirming and crying from my mind. Because not me, that’s not what I want and it isn’t me I see her with. It’s Jordan. “Marc?” I feel her hands on my shoulders but I don’t want her touching me now. She’s…spoiled goods and worse than that. She doesn’t feel like she’s mine. She’s not my Tippi. Not anymore.

“This was a mistake, I’m sorry,” I whisper, taking a few steps away from her and then holding my hand up to hold her off when she moves to hold me. “Don’t Tipp…just…stay away from me.” When I look up at her she’s looking back at me wide eyed, her hands over her mouth, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Don’t…don’t you dare look at me like that,” she hisses, pointing at me and shaking her head in disbelief. “I am not some kind of…some kind of whore,” she adds, her eyes narrowing as I stare back at her, unable to keep the thoughts of her, together with my brother, out of my face. “I didn’t want it to happen. It just did and you…you’re not allowed to stand there and…and judge me.”

“Is that all?” I ask, unable to change my expression, to clear the thoughts from my mind. “You’re upset because you think I’m judging you? Because what you did wasn’t fucking wrong I suppose?” Her pretty face goes ashen, and her eyes go very round and then she turns away from me, covering her mouth with her hands but it does nothing to stifle the sound of her sobbing.

“I said I was sorry,” she says, her voice almost a moan as she crumples into chair, her pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them and pressing her forehead to her forearm. So flexible, I used to brag about that to the guys. Now I’ll probably never hear the end of it on the ice, how my little brother is fucking her.

“And you think sorry means anything? Do you honestly think it fucking changes anything Tipp? Do you?” She looks up at me, her pretty dark eyes red rimmed, but this time her soft lips are pressed into a thin hard line as she shakes her head.
“What do you want me to do?” she asks, resentment flashing behind her almost black eyes as she stares across the room at me. “If I could, I’d change it. But it’s not my fault that you’re…that you’re…,” her voice trails away as some of the determination leaks out of her expression. Like she can’t or won’t say the words we’re both thinking.

“That I’m boring?” I ask, Jordan’s words reverberating in my brain as I look at her now. ‘She likes it rough’ he said to me as he tried to explain why she’d come to him, why they couldn’t stay away from one another. ‘She likes it when I take control. Some girls are like that’. Her plump pink lips move but no words come out, but her eyes give her thoughts away. She can’t even argue the point. Or won’t. Either way it’s another brutal hit to my pride, if I even have any left.

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” she repeats, her voice barely above a whisper. “I love you.”

“But you’re not in love with me,” I correct her, noting the bitterness in my own voice when I look at her, wishing with all of what’s left of my broken heart that I could change this moment, but I know I can’t. Biting her bottom lip, she shakes her head and bursts into tears.

Part of me wants to comfort her. It feels like the right thing to do. But on the other hand, she broke my heart and part of me wants her to suffer for it. I just wish it actually made me feel better, but all I feel right now is empty and sort of…well evil. This isn’t even close to the same as giving Jordan a black eye. That felt good. That felt right. This…this just feels wrong.

So even though I know it’s going to make it hurt later, when I’m not a little bit drunk and when I wake up with a sore head, I get up and walk over and put my arms around her. She clutches onto me like a child would and it’s so hard to keep hating her. No…not hate. That’s too strong a word. I don’t hate her. I just wish I did.
________________________________________________________________________________

“Stay?” I ask when I’m finally exhausted from crying. Looking up into his ice blue eyes I see that he looks as exhausted as I feel. Shaking his head, he unwinds his lean athletic body from around mine and stretches, his long fingers brushing the ceiling. Watching him, I can’t help but wish that I did ache for him. I wish I understood it. He’s not so unlike his brother and yet, until he had me pressed against the door earlier, my body just never came alive for him. Not like it does for Jordan.

Jordan who is supposed to be taking me out on our first official date in a few days and will have to face his brother out on the ice. He’s asked me to be there, at the game. Seeing the hurt in Marc’s eyes now, I don’t know that I can.

“I don’t want a pity fuck, if that’s what you mean,” Marc states simply, looking down at me with a mixture of nearly exhausted patience and a deep sadness that makes me feel like I’m going to start crying all over again.

“I wasn’t…I just don’t want you to go like this. I don’t want you to hate me Marc.” I look up at him, hoping he can see the truth of my words reflected in my eyes. I feel the back of his hand brush my cheek and can’t help but lean into the warmth of it, wanting to feel more than I do, knowing that I don’t and never will.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, do you?” he says wistfully, a Mona Lisa smile playing across his lips as he cups my cheek. “I mean, we don’t want all of this to get any more complicated do we?”

“I’m not tied down to anyone or anything,” I say slowly, reaching up to close my fingers around his wrist, feeling his pulse jump at the touch of my skin to his. “And I do love you Marc,” I add, turning so that I can press my lips to the palm of his hand. Turning my gaze back up to meet his, I watch the fever spots begin to burn in his cheeks, the tips of his ears turning crimson as his breathing quickens.

“Don’t…don’t play me Tippie. This isn’t a game,” he hisses, but notice he doesn’t so much as flinch as I move my lips further up his arm, feeling his pulse quicken with each caress.

“I’m not in love with your brother either, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make love,” I suggest quietly without looking up at him, pushing the arm of his shirt up to the inside of his elbow and pressing my lips against the thin skin. “Even if it’s only once more, Marc, please?”

Why? Why am I doing this? Why am I torturing both him and myself?

Because I have to know. I have to know if I’m really right, if there really is nothing here to salvage. If my attraction to him is only that, attraction and nothing more, and that I can’t make it be what we both want it to be.

And I know it is what we both want, even if we really both know that this is ill fated, that this is already over and beyond repair. Because I really do love him and so I will give him the opportunity to use my body to get his revenge.

It’s the least I can do.
___________________________________________________________________________________

My hands shake as I cup her face in my hands and kiss her. I kiss her like it’s the last kiss I’ll ever give or receive. I kiss her like my life depends on it. Like her lips are oxygen and I’m a dying man. I kiss her and keep kissing her even though I know it’s stupid and that it won’t get me anywhere. I kiss her even though the visions of her fucking my brother are still playing somewhere in the back of my mind, mocking me.

I kiss her until we’re stumbling into her bedroom, leaving a trail of shed clothing on the floor behind us like some kind of crime scene. I imagine someone drawing chalk outlines around them later. But I don’t have time to sulk and feel guilty, not with Tippie pushing me onto her bed, her body falling atop of mine. All I can think about is her, her soft skin, her sweet mouth, her greedy hands moving up my back until I can feel her nails digging into my shoulders as I shove my way inside of her.

It goes against every inclination in my brain, to use her body like this but the red mist has descended again and only part of me has any control over what I’m doing as I bend her nearly in two. I know that my fingers are leaving marks on her thighs as I push them wide apart, barely giving even the most cursory of thoughts for her well being. She can stretch. I’ve seen her do it. Nor do I take even the slightest heed when I feel her shudder beneath me when I slam into her hard enough that I have tug her back towards me.

All I care about is getting even. All that matters to me is that I’ll make Jordan eat his words. It will be his turn to know that I’ve used her, that I’ve had her, and all I want in return is to have her scream my name the way Jordan says she screams his.

Even if it means doing the things I told myself I would never do, things that feel strange and alien. Things like pinning her arms to the bed, like biting her neck and shoulders hard enough to leave vivid red welts that I know will turn into bruises before morning.

I do it because I hate to lose and because I’ve grown up fighting tooth and nail with all of my brothers. I do it because two of my brothers have held up the Cup, have brought it home and even if they didn’t mean to, make me feel like I’m not good enough. I do it for my ruined Christmas day. I do it for the sake of my pride.

And as I do it, as I thrust my way inside of her, over and over again, I realize that I’m not in love with her anymore. That those feelings are gone, wiped away by the knowledge that she’s been with my brother and that she can’t look at me now. Her eyes shut tight as my body presses down over top of hers’, her face turned away from mine as my teeth dig into the curve of her neck. I care, but I don’t love her anymore. There are still some tender feelings left but they aren‘t love.

So even though her back arches and she cries out my name, I realize that it’s a hollow victory. I may have wanted revenge but what I really wanted, what I had really come for was her and that’s gone from me, forever.

“You see,” she whispers as her body wraps around mine, her voice breathless in my ear, “you can do it. You can do it for me.” I hold her for a moment, waiting to catch my breath and then I pull away, enough to look down into her glowing face and let her see just what she’s done to me. I watch her expression change slowly from satisfied to concern to sadness and then she truly does turn her face from mine. “Go…just…go.”

Without a word, I pick up my things, dressing quickly and leaving without another word.

After all, what more is there to say? It’s over. Really, truly over.

Breathe Chapter 14

Chapter 14 ~ Fools Like Me

The night is gray and cold and there isn’t a single flight out until the morning. Leaning my forehead against the floor to ceiling window, I find myself staring out at the mist and fog that’s blanketing the airport and comparing it the way my brain feels. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to make anything come out clear.

How did I get myself into this mess?

I always pride myself on being the one with the highest IQ in the room, of being able to look at a situation logically, analytically not reacting, not just acting out emotionally. I don’t just do things. My biggest impulse – ever – is shoes for crying out loud. I don’t just sleep with random men. I’ve always been too damn choosy.

Now, not only have I just slept with a guy I don’t know, but I’ve done it fucking twice.

I’ll be the first to admit that I have a history of fucking up when it comes to men. I either choose badly or I chase them away. Marc’s the first decent guy I’ve managed to hold on to long enough to almost make something with and now I’ve totally screwed myself out of that too.

With my eyes closed tightly, I try to imagine myself walking down the aisle towards him. Would I be happy? Would I feel content? Would he?
Does it matter?

Sighing, I shake my head. Of course it doesn’t matter. He won’t ever forgive me and I’m damn certain that I’ll probably never be able to forgive myself.

But that’s the pattern. I mean, this is the worst I’ve ever managed to completely fuck up, but it sort of goes along with the general pattern of my attempt at a relationship. Things are going along fine and then I figure some way of driving the guy away. I mean, usually it’s just fighting with them about something stupid and refusing to give in, to admit, even to myself, that I might only be doing it to prove that I’m better and smarter than they are.

And that is really just my way of trying not to let them see how insecure I really am. It’s just my way of protecting that little girl inside of me that desperately wants to be loved. The little girl whose parents didn’t know how to show affection, who never told their little girl that she was beautiful, never gushed about how accomplished she was, never told her that they were proud of her.

Which, my therapist tells me, is why I don’t feel worthy of love. Not even of like. So when I do face that emotional stuff, I push everyone away, even friends.

Like right now, I should be on the phone to Miki. I should be crying on the phone and telling her how stupid I am. She should be telling me that it will all be alright and that I’ll get over it and there’s plenty of fish in the sea. But I’m not because I know she’s in the bosom of her family, dogs and presents and grandparents and a big turkey dinner while I sit here in a cold airport terminal, all alone and I don’t really want to hear the whole happy families thing right now when I was so close to having it for myself. The Staals…all of them were so nice, and now they hate me.

I also just don’t want to hear anyone else tell me how stupid I’ve been. Maybe I don’t want hear her tell me that I’ve sunk my own ship, again.

Maybe later I’ll be able to tell her about it. Maybe she’ll forgive me for getting all wrapped up in my own shit and forgetting to even call her on Christmas day. She’ll probably even understand and everything will go back to normal, but I’ll know and I’ll feel bad about it and it will all come back eventually and we’ll fight about something else and this will come up….

I don’t do emotional. Emotional is scary. It’s alien.

Still, I knew Marc loved me and I hadn’t run away, at least not yet. I’d even been willing to talk to him about how I was having trouble connecting to him physically. I was willing to work on it because he was the best thing I’d ever had.

Like today, I can’t even remember a guy ever looking at me the way he did this morning when he was on his knee in front of me. He looked at me like…like I was the best thing in the entire world, like I was amazing, like I was beautiful and wonderful and he was happy and I ruined it all. I broke his heart.
Maybe I even broke my own.

I should just become a nun, except I’d probably be struck down dead if I went in a church right now. God would be like ‘are you fucking kidding me?’ and shoot a bolt of lightening right down on me head and turn me into a skid mark on the floor.

“Well I’m glad you can smile about something.”

I’m ready to give the finger to yet another smart ass security guard with their observations about a pretty girl like me all alone on a Christmas day, but the words freeze on the tip of my tongue when I look up into ice blue eyes that look as tired and worn out as I feel.

“What are you doing here?”
_________________________________________________________________________________

It had been easy to leave the house without being noticed. After all, I was the worst son in the world right now and a complete pariah with my brothers. Not that I blame any of them. I know what it must look like to them. I hope that later, maybe not tomorrow but sometime, they'll all be able to see it from my point of view. Maybe later, but for now, no one cared if I left in my dad’s old beat up Ford pick up and headed out into a sub zero wind chill and blowing snow.

Besides, it was partly my fault she was all alone at the airport. I could understand why Eric just dumped her at the curb like a bag of trash but I couldn’t let her sit there all by herself. No one in my family might think so right now, but I do have morals and feelings and besides that I’m not a complete jackass.

And I want to see her. Despite everything, I still want to make her see that we have something or at least we could have something.

So that’s why I dare the black ice and, having left without my iPod, I’m forced to listen to some static laced crap am station, knowing that there’s every chance of my getting there and having her tell me to fuck off. That’s the main thing on my mind as I turn the big rusty old heap into the empty parking lot. Will she tell me to beat it before I even get the chance to ask her what has me trudging through the snow and slipping and sliding across the sidewalk?

At least I’ll have a captive audience, I muse as the automatic doors slide open in front of me with a low ‘whooshing’ sound, followed closely by a flood of very welcome warm air. The heater in the old truck works, but not that well.

She’s not that hard to find. Other than a janitor or two, the place is deserted. She’s sitting along a row of seats staring out at the snow drifting across the abandoned runways with this strange blend of emotions on her face. From anger to sadness and finally a bemused little smile and that’s the look that suits her best of all.

“Well I’m glad you can smile at something,” I say, standing at the end of the row as she blinks up at me and I’m glad she doesn’t immediately throw something at me, which is a start. She doesn’t even look disappointed, like maybe she was hoping it would be mark standing in front of her and not me.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, immediately hiding a yawn behind her hand.

“Well I wasn’t exactly welcome at home, as you could probably guess,” I explain, which actually makes her almost laugh, but she bites down on the full bottom lip of hers, the one that I can still see my own bite mark on. How Marc missed that…, “and I know there are no flights out so…,” I dangle the hotel room key from my hand and shrug by way of a continued explanation. That’s when her eyes get dark and dangerous looking. “Look, no…expectations, but you have to admit…this isn’t exactly private,” I point out as a nosy security guard walks by, keeping a close eye on her I’d guess, “and it’s not like either of us are going anywhere tonight.”At this she at least shrugs and then nods, which I take as I agreement and move to pick up her bag. “By the way…I’m sorry we…I mean I ruined your Christmas.”

“It wasn’t just you,” she begins, putting her hand over mine and looking up at me with tired, sad eyes. “But thanks for saying it anyway.”
__________________________________________________________________________________

With neither of us having said much in the few miles it takes to get to the nearest budget motel, I’m almost beginning to wonder if he’s actually telling me the truth, that he’s not expecting anything and for some reason I can’t decide, even when I open the door and see twin beds, if I’m happy about it or not.

I should be, I tell myself as he puts my bag down on one bed and then goes to sit on the other, immediately picking up the remote from the top of the small television and turning it on. On the other hand, I start to dread the conversation I know will naturally follow if we don’t just have sex.

I’ve given it some thought, of course, in the couple of hours I spent in the airport. I might be emotionally crippled but I’m not entirely heartless. The man said he loved me. Not quite in the same romantic and sweet way his brother had declared his undying affection for me, but he had said it all the same and I can’t ignore it.

“I won’t move to Pittsburgh, before you ask,” I begin, tugging off my furry black Uggs and unzipping my ski jacket. “I like my job. It’s a really good firm and I have an office in Manhattan. I’d have to be out of my mind to give all that up. Besides I don’t even know you,” I add, just to put a cherry on the top of my refusal. I hear a sort of piggy snorting sound and look across at Jordan to find him smiling at the TV.

“You’re pretty sure of yourself,” he laughs, flipping through the channels at warp speed before leaving it on Much Music and turning back to me. “Look I’m not like Eric and Marc. I’m not looking to get hooked up permanently, so don’t go getting any ideas about rocks like the one my brother was offering, okay?”

“Good, right,” I smile, and then force myself to look away from the amused look on his handsome features. The boy sure knows how to make me feel about two feet tall. “I’m glad we cleared that up,” I add, reaching for a pillow and pulling it onto my lap. Right about now I feel like I need to be held or that I could do with a big fucking hole to open up and suck me away into some parallel universe where I’m not such a fucking idiot.

“That doesn’t mean we can’t…you know…date or whatever,” he adds, actually managing to wipe all of the sarcasm out of his voice and actually sound modest, even a little shy. Forcing myself to look back up at him, that confident, even cocky, young man is gone, replaced by someone who reminds me more of his brother. Shrugging, he continues, “I mean, we play in New York like…a lot, between Jersey, the Islanders and Buffalo…and I guess I could come up sometimes when we have a day or two.” I find myself smiling back at him, feeling almost as shy and awkward as he seems to be feeling, which is a pretty new feeling altogether.

“You don’t think you might actually get disowned for that?” I offer, unable to keep the smile off of my face or the thought of all of his brothers ganging up on him and beating him into an unrecognizable mountain of meat.

“Yeah, probably, but…they might get over it. I mean, they probably will. Bros before ho’s right?” Shaking my head I can’t stop myself from laughing.

“You did not just say that,” I snort, tossing the pillow across the room at him. “Who the hell are you calling a whore?”

“I meant blood’s thicker than water,” he laughs, holding his hands up defensively when I reach for another pillow to toss at him. “What? It’s true, we’re brothers. Hey, stop throwing shit,” he laughs, tossing one of the pillows back and then picking up one of his own and standing up on the bed in a defensive stance, swinging the pillow in front of him like a bat.

“Oh you are so going to get it for calling me a whore,” I threaten, grabbing two pillows and scrambling up onto the bed and wind milling my arms. “I am lethal with this shit, you’d better bring you’re A game Jordy boy.”

“Oh I can out reach you any day of the week. Any day of the week,” he laughs, using his long arms to reach across the space to tag my leg, hard, nearly sending me off balance.

“Oh, so you want to play huh? It is on like Donkey Kong bitch!”

And with that, the feathers flew until our arms were too tired to wield our weapons, or at least mine were. His had long since exploded and left the beds and floor covered with polyester fill.

“Feel better?” Jordan asks, lying on his back, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he tries to catch his breath, and because he’s laughing.

“I do, yeah,” I admit, unable to stop myself from grinning.

“Good,” he sighs at last, closing his eyes. “Because I’m fucking tired and I don’t know about you, but I could use some sleep.” He turns to me, his blue gaze searching mine and I nod, but there’s something in my stomach and an idea that keeps coming back into my head, no matter how hard I try to dislodge it.

“Can I…I mean, don’t get the wrong idea,” I begin, feeling my entire face flush as I stammer and stutter my way through the explanation, “but uh…can I…would you…you know just for like warmth or comfort or whatever?” I look up at him and am relieved to see him looking back at me with a serious look. I’m even more relieved when he nods and gets up off of the bed.

“I’ll even sleep above the covers,” he offers, as I tug off my sweater and wiggle out of my skirt before sliding underneath the sheets and pulling the one remaining intact pillow under my head. “I’ll just go and see if they’ll give us some more pillows. I’ll be right back.”

I don’t even remember the door closing behind him. As soon as my head hits the pillow, I’m out. After all, it’s been a fucking long day.

______________________________________________________________________________

I wake up with the feeling of fingertips dancing across my stomach. At first I’m pretty sure I’m dreaming, after all, I’ve dreamed of her often enough. Just because I’m sleeping in the same bed as her doesn’t mean I can’t dream of her too. But then the hands go north, rather than south, and let’s face it, I’m a guy, I’d always choose south. I open my eyes and look down at her hands sliding slowly up my chest until her thumbs are making slow, almost painful circles around my nipples.
Her eyes are intently following her hands but when I can’t hold back a groan any longer, her gaze snaps upwards to meet mine. Without waiting or an explanation, without even pausing to ask her what she thinks she’s doing, I wrap my hand around her wrist and push her hand down, moaning when she makes her fingernails dig into my skin.

The moan quickly turns into a soundless gasp for air as her fingers close around my dick and her other hand joins the party, stroking my nuts gently until I can barely breathe. I feel her lips close around one of my nipples and it’s almost like I have to hold onto her hair, like if I don’t I’ll just explode into a million pieces.
Just when I’m sure I won’t be able to hold back any longer she lets go and slides her hands beneath the elastic waistband of my boxers and pulls them down, and then does the same with her own little bikini style panties, tossing them both onto the floor. She opens her pretty mouth then, like she’s finally going to say something, but then seems to think better of it, and straddles me silently instead and then slowly lowers herself over me until our hips come into contact and my dick is entirely sheathed inside of her.

Reaching forward, she takes my two hands and guides them up to her chest, pressing them into the edges of the lace until I get the idea. Scooping her full breasts out, I begin the same torturous circles with my own thumbs until her eyes flutter closed and she tilts her head back and lets out a strangled sort of cry. We begin to move then, a slow rolling rhythm, as if by some mutual agreement neither of us wants this to end too soon.

Even in the full dark, I can’t help but admire her pale, ivory skin and the way it almost glows as she moves over me, her long dark mane falling down her back, its’ tendrils reaching around to brush my arms as she rides me. I push up into her, just to watch her lovely lips fall open as she gasps when I find that spot inside of her. Squeezing her nipples between my thumb and forefinger, twisting them, I am rewarded by her biting down on that full bottom lip of hers.

All these little things I know, have learned, I use to bring her closer to the edge, to take my mind of the slick heat sucking at my cock. For just a moment, when she leans against my hands, letting her hair waterfall around us, I can’t help but wonder if my brother ever made her dark eyes gleam like that, if he ever saw that feral sort of grin she gets when she’s close to cumming.

“Faster,” she breathes, but I shake my head. I don’t want her to cum, not yet, and not without me.

Sliding my hands down to her tiny waist, I roll her over until she’s pinned beneath me. Now I have the upper hand and she knows it as she struggles to press herself up against me. The little whimpers and the way she struggles to pull me deeper inside of her tells me that she’s close, that she wants to finish and maybe, just maybe, she doesn’t care if I do or not. But I know her body. I know how to bring her and make her beg for more.

With one last hard thrust inside of her, just to remind her of what she’s craving, I pull out entirely and slide down her body until I’m between her thighs, until her knees are draping over my shoulders and I can pull her to the edge of the mattress and kneel on the floor in worship.

It’s her turn to dig her fingers deep in my hair as I taste the juices flowing from her and then she lets out a long high pitched cry as I delve inside of her with my tongue. Her thighs begin to quiver as I sweep upwards with my tongue, finding that hard, swollen little button that makes her squirm and her hips to leave the mattress as I nibble and flick my tongue against it.

With just the right mixture of teeth and tongue, I feel her juices flood my mouth and drip from my chin, but I’m not nearly done yet. I have her at my mercy and if she’s going to go back to New York alone then she’s going to go back with my mark everywhere on her pale skin and the memory of my name spelled out against her clit.

Her back arches as I reach the second ‘a’ in my last name and it’s my name she cries out as her body shudders and quakes, and only then do scramble to my feet, digging my fingers into the soft flesh of her hips as I shove my way back inside the now almost unbearable heat of her cunt. With her hips entirely off of the bed, I can thrust deep inside of her and rub against her g-spot at the same time, the head of my cock finding that spot that won’t let me go any further but makes her whimper loudly, makes her shake her head from side to side, sending her long dark hair fanning out over the white bed linens like a dark halo.

“Tell me again,” I hiss, having to clench my teeth in an effort to hold back from exploding inside of her. “Tell me how good it is. Tell me I’m better than him.”

“No,” she whimpers, shutting her eyes tight and turning her face from me, grabbing a handful of sheet in each hand and clenching her own teeth. Thrusting hard enough so that our bodies meet with a wet slapping sound, I ask her again.

“Tell me. Tell me I’m the best.” Little lights are beginning to flash in front of my eyes and I’m sure I won’t last more than another minute. I only have one last weapon in my arsenal, and that is to pull out altogether, which makes her cry out in frustration, her dark eyes popping open and her full lips pursing. “Tell me Tippi. Tell me I’m the only one that does it for you.”

She looks up at me, defiant, sweat slicked, angry and very beautiful. Letting her back down onto the bed, I slide just the head of my cock inside of her and raise my eyebrow as if to say ‘I’m waiting, you can have more when you tell me’. At first I think she’s just going to continue to maintain her silence, but then her bottom lip quivers and she reaches up and brushes her fingertips along the line of my jaw.

“You already know it. Just shut up and fuck me Jordan,” she says, grinning suddenly as her hand drops and her fingers give one of my nipples a hard twist, sending a shooting pain through my body that’s offset only by her body swallowing mine, her fingers leading my cock home.

______________________________________________________________________________

Not for the first time, I leave the scene of the crime with my boots in hand, sneaking out to the parking lot where a cab is idling, sending clouds of exhaust into the dark air of the early morning hours. I hand the cabbie my bag and slip into the back seat, sparing the closed hotel door one long, last look, imagining the blonde haired boy lying spent across the bed inside.

My body aches in that good kind of way and I don’t feel quite as horrible as I did the last time I headed towards the airport. In fact, I have this secret sort of Mona Lisa grin on my face that I can’t quite get rid of. There’s definitely something to be said for the energy and inexhaustibility of a twenty one year old. That, and I’ve left him with yet another disaster to pay for and I can’t help but think he might feel the need to punish me for that the next time we meet, and that makes me smile.
“Did you have a good Christmas visit?” the cabbie asks as he turns the nose of the cab out onto the street. With a barely stifled yawn I shrug my shoulders.

“I’ve had better, but I guess it turned out okay.” The cabbie looks at me quizzically in the rear view mirror and I just smile back at him. It’s not like I can explain it to anyone.

Well, maybe Miki I think, pulling out my cell phone and turning it on, plugging in a short text.

Hey Mik, u awake? U r so not going to believe this….

Breathe Chapter 3

just want to say thanks for all the positive feeback and hey Rebel, give me a shout girl!

Chapter 13 ~ Have Your Self A Merry Little Christmas

Brightly coloured paper litters the room and squeals of delight fill the air but I can’t join in. I can hardly smile. Even when their mother (oh god, their mother) hands me a big package with a coffee table book of photographs of Canada in it, I can barely force myself to say thank you.

My hands are sweating, my pulse is racing and every time I look up Jordan is shooting me a look that would make Medusa wither and die. Worse than that, Marc keeps trying to hold my hand, especially when one of his brothers is opening one of “our” presents; simple things like video games, cds, t-shirts with rude sayings on them and watches. Stuff you’d buy people if you weren’t millionaires. I don’t know what I expected, cars or condos or something. It’s so normal that somehow it makes what’s happening even worse.

I’d convinced myself that if they were giving out diamond encrusted cell phones and yachts that maybe a little sex between brothers might not be a big thing, but seeing everyone in their festive Christmas themed sweaters and funky socks and reindeer slippers makes me feel even worse. I think I’d be happier right now if a firing squad marched out from behind the Christmas tree and put me out of misery.

I keep telling myself that I’m only making things worse for myself by waiting but I can’t quite make myself pull Marc away from his family. I keep telling myself that it’s the least I can do to let him at least have this moment before I ruin his day.

What do I tell him?

I look over at Jordan and he gives me that scary look again, the look that says I have about thirty seconds before he turns me into a pile of steaming ashes. I’d asked him, before I pushed him physically from Marc’s room. His answer was ‘just tell him the truth’.

That’s easy for him to say.

Which is why I can’t even watch him open his presents; I can’t make myself smile at him, can’t pretend to be having a good time. I can’t and then tell him I’ve fucked his brother. I just need to wait until everyone’s heading for the breakfast table and then pull him aside.

Or not.

I keep going over what Jordan said to me. Marc’s going to propose. Marc has a ring and he’s going to propose.

Fuck. What have I done?

It’s not like I would have said yes anyway. Or would I have?

Fuck.

My head is pounding and it feels like the only thing I can hear is my own heartbeat, loud and erratic in my ears. I feel like I’m about to have a full blown panic attack and one thought keeps repeating in my brain, louder and louder and more and more insistent. Run. For god’s sake, run.

_______________________________________________________________________

I can feel the tension in Tippi’s every muscle as she sits, very still, beside me and I can’t help but think that she’s disappointed. First, in me, for not sneaking down to see her last night and secondly for having to watch us all ripping into our mountain of presents. I wish I’d had time to explain to her how tired I was last night, and that I had to do some catching up with Jared and the next thing I knew it was morning and Jared was bouncing on his bed like he’d reverted to his six year old self and couldn’t wait to get at the presents under the tree.

But I’m going to make all of that up to her. I’m just waiting until everyone runs out of steam, until the shredding and tearing slows down and everyone sits back to catch their breath. That’s when I’m going to do it, pop the question. I can’t wait to see the look of surprise on her face, because I know she won’t be expecting it this soon, and besides, she probably thinks I wouldn’t do something like this in front of everyone.

She’d be just about right, because I’m definitely not the kind of guy who’d do something like this on the kiss cam at MSG. God no! I’d thought about waiting for New Years, do it in one of those buggies in Central Park like when we were dating….

When we were dating…I’m already doing it I realize with a grin. I’m already putting our dating lives into the past and looking forward to our future. Me and the Mrs., bringing the kids to Christmas here in a couple years, watching them shred wrapping paper under the Christmas tree with my parents looking on, the doting grandparents.
Yeah, that sounds just about right.

Feeling for the ring in my pocket, I look over at Eric who winks back at me and gives Tanya’s hand a squeeze. I think Tanya’s excited to have a sister-in-law so that she’s not the only one getting shredded on the boards on the net. We’d all sort of hoped for Heather but….

I glance over at Jordan to find him staring down at the unopened package in front of him, only to realize that it’s our present to him. Mine and Tippi’s. We bought him that new iPod doc because Talbot apparently broke Jordan’s at a party.

“Open it bro. It won’t bite. Tippi does, but I don’t think her presents do,” I add, nudging Tip who looks back at me alarmed, like maybe I just woke her up or something.
“Marc!” she hisses at me, glancing first at Jordan and then at my parents, expecting them to be shocked no doubt. Obviously she doesn’t know much about the parents of boys.

“Look at us,” my mother says, reaching forward to grab a handful of shredded paper from the floor and heading towards the fireplace, carefully peeling of a missed bow and pressing it tape first to Jordan’s forehead. “We’ve been having an orgy of greed and you’ve only had one present,” she says, turning to Tippi with a motherly smile. “There must be something else under the tree, maybe….”

“That’s alright mom, I’ve got this,” I grin, turning to Tippi and sliding off the couch, coming to rest one knee on the floor while I dig the ring out of my pocket. Her eyes go impossibly wide as she looks down at me and the hand that I’m holding quakes uncontrollably. I’d half expected a ‘what are you doing?’ or even for Tippi to run screaming from the room, but she does neither. She just sits there, staring at me, but her dark eyes fill with silvery tears.

______________________________________________________________________________

Tippi looks up at me over Marc’s red hair, tears spilling onto her pale cheeks, and I can see the plea in her gaze. It says, ‘don’t make me do this’. I don’t want to hurt my brother, but I can’t have any sympathy now. If she cared for him like she claims to do, she would have spared him this moment. She would have told him already. No matter how imploring her gaze is, all I can do is shake my head and remind her silently to keep with the agreement and tell him.

I don’t even hear Marc say the words but I know he must have asked the question because the only sound I hear in the room is the soft sound of Tippi crying. It sets my teeth on edge. Glancing around, everyone’s eyes are on her and Marc, looking expectant and happy.

This is going to get fucking ugly and I’m starting to have second thoughts about forcing her to tell him. She’d begged and pleaded with me to let her tell him when they got back to New York but I’d said no. Okay, so my pride was hurt right at that moment. What I’d expected was for her to realize it was me she wanted and go running off to tell Marc it was over. What I didn’t expect was for her to still have feelings for him.

I don’t like coming second. Maybe it’s a brother thing or a hockey thing. Either way, I didn’t want to him to be all happy and kissy and lovey-dovey in front of me, not even for a day. The thought of it made me sick, still does make me sick, but now…well seeing everyone else looking all happy for him…well I’d change it if I could but she doesn’t look back up at me. She’s looking down into his eyes and the tears are just running down her face and her bottom lip, the one that I kept wanting to bite last night, that even now I want to tug between my teeth, is trembling with emotion.

I guess there’s one thing I can do for her now, one thing that might…might make things not as bad, at least for her.

“She’s mine,” I say quietly, my voice breaking like I’m some kind of thirteen year old pubescent teenager but I know everyone hears me. I hear Tanya gasp. I hear my father whisper something like ‘what’s going on’ to mom and I know everyone’s looking at me, but I’m not talking to everyone. I’m talking to Marc. Or I’m talking to the back of his head, until he slowly turns around, the big chunk of diamond still in his hand, his face white as a ghost.

“What?” he asks, very calmly, but my brother’s smarter than that. Marc’s the brains of the operation, followed by Eric, so I know he’s already putting the pieces together.

“The mystery girl, my mystery girl from Vegas, it’s Tippi,” I begin, watching as he clenches his jaw, as his eyes grow cold and his hands curl into fists. The diamond must be digging into his hand, but if it is, he’s not showing any signs of pain, just pure, white, rage.

“No, she’s not,” he says calmly, too calmly. Marc is also the most controlled of us all, the most collected, but I can see that carefully held together control begin to unravel around the edges as he stares at me.

“She is and she knows it and…and…,” my courage begins to fail me as he stands up so that he’s looking down at me. It seemed so cool in my head when I thought of it before, how I was going to tell him that I was bangin’ his chick, but now…now it just seems…well, mean.

“And what Jordan?” my mom asks quietly in that voice that I figure only the mother of boys can use, the one that says she doesn’t have to wait for dad to get home to use his belt on your ass.

“And we slept together last night,” Tippi replies quietly, astonishing everyone in the room, including me.
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Everyone turns to look at me, including Marc, and right now, that’s the only face I need to look at. They’re all hating me right now. Every one of them, and how can I blame them? I’m the fucking tramp that’s just broken Marc’s heart. I can see it written all over his handsome features. He’s hurt and angry, and so pissed off that he’s got these red dots on his cheeks and his ears are turning a bright tomato red.

And this is where we came in, me sitting between two brothers, both with the same piercing blue eyes, the same strong jaw, the same wide sensuous mouth, and I keep thinking, how did I get here? How could I have been this stupid?

“I’m sorry Marc…you don’t even know how bad I feel right now,” I begin but he closes his blue eyes, like he can’t bear to look at me, and I understand. I feel disgusting.

“You fucked my brother?” He enunciates every word slowly, deliberately, like it’s hard for him to even say it out loud. It’s pretty hard to hear too. I nod, but I know he can’t see it and it’s not really the same as saying it out loud either.

“Yeah, sorry,” I mutter, feeling stupid when I say it. As if sorry is going to fix this. As if sorry is enough to make things better.

“You fucked my girlfriend?” he asks, as if for confirmation, turning back to his brother and this time he manages to say it quickly, like ripping off a band aid. Jordan shrugs in reply and I can tell he’s feeling just about as awkward as I am about all of this. I can barely stand to look at him but I’m feeling quite certain that whatever I see in his face, it’s nothing like the looks I must be getting from around the room.

“You don’t understand,” Jordan says finally when Marc takes a step towards him, fists clenched at his sides. “I told you…I told you how I felt about her.”

“Not about her,” Marc snaps, pointing at me, and for some reason that makes me flinch and wish for a hole to open up in the couch and suck me in.

“You’re not in my shoes man. I’m crazy about her. I told you,” Jordan continues, squaring his shoulders and standing up to meet his brother’s gaze face to face. Even when Marc takes another step towards him, Jordan doesn’t back down. “It’s not like we wanted to hurt you or anything but it’s the same for her,” Jordan continues, gesturing vaguely towards me. “She wanted it. She came looking for it.”

“What?” I snap, jumping to my feet, indignant. “I wasn’t the one in the kitchen feeling myself up after dinner,” I remind Jordan in what I hope is a threatening tone.

“I don’t remember you telling me no,” he replies quietly, glancing over at me with this odd mixture of passion and anger in his eyes. “Or last night. It was pretty much more Jordan, harder Jordan, if I remember correctly.”

Jordan barely gets the words out of his mouth when Marc tackles him, grabbing him around the middle like a linebacker and taking him down onto the ground where he starts to pummel him like a UFC fighter. I hear screams and shouts but my attention is focused on the two men wrestling for domination at my feet, brightly coloured wrapping paper flying in every direction, crumpling beneath them and winding itself around them until they look like some kind of odd present, right down to ribbons and bows stuck in their hair.

I can’t even make myself tell them to stop. I just think if I was Marc, of course I’d want to beat Jordan up and part of me is sickly gratified that Jordan is even willing to fight over this. I also can’t look away, like I have to watch this, like this is some kind of penance. But it won’t be enough. I can’t imagine what will ever be enough.

It doesn’t even seem real. Not until Eric is pulling me back and Jared is trying to pry them apart. It’s only seeing the blood smeared on their faces that makes it really sink in; brothers, shedding each other’s blood, over me.

I must be the worst person in the entire world.

“I think I’d better take you to the airport,” Eric says calmly, quietly, leading me away from the combatants. Whether I nodded or not, I don’t know. All I do know is that Tanya is packing my things into my suitcase, and when I reach out to grab something to fold it nicer, she glares at me and pulls it out of my hand so I end up watching her shove my clothes in haphazardly until she can barely close my case. And then Eric walks me out the door to the car and helps me in, without a word.

The last thing I see is Jordan standing in the window, a towel held to his nose, watching us pull out of the driveway.

Breathe Chapter 12

First I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who have been leaving me great and funny feedback. I'm glad you like this and I hope you'll keep reading.


Chapter 12 ~ It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

I can feel a pleasant ache in my bones and a languid sort of stretch in my muscles that I haven’t felt in a while as I swim towards the surface of consciousness, followed by a sort of warm tingling feeling at the base of my neck and that clammy feeling of sweat cooling on my skin. Reaching for the edge of a blanket to pull over my shoulders to hold off the chill of the morning air, I find an arm draped over me instead attached to a large hand softly cupping my breast.

Oh shit.

My eyes pop open and I shove my entire body backwards, sending Jordan flailing and flopping like a fish out of water towards the cold floor. Scrambling, I grab the sheet from where we’ve kicked it to the foot of the bed and drag it up over my breasts, staring wild eyed down at Jordan who only gazes back at me with a sleepy, satisfied sort of smile.

“What are you still doing here?” I hiss, glancing at the bedroom door that is thankfully still closed.

“You tired me out,” he yawns, stretching his long limbs over his head before climbing back to his feet and moving towards the bed.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I whisper, kicking at him from under the sheet, aiming for knees, groin, anything to keep him off of the bed.

“Coming back to where it’s warm. I was comfy, I was sleeping,” he adds, kneeling on the edge of the bed and grabbing my arm when I reach out to push him away. “Now move over.”

“No! You have to go back to your room. You can’t be here,” I snap, pushing at the immovable bulk of him but without result. He just stares down at my hand and then up into my eyes, smiling.

“You’re so feisty, I like it,” he grins, leaning down towards me, his soft pink lips brushing mine tenderly. I wince, my lips swollen and sore from both of us biting them, so I give him a taste of his own medicine, biting down on his bottom lip but it has the opposite effect to what I was hoping for. He only laughs and pushes me down into the mattress, his bulk holding me down as he pushes his way between my thighs.

“No, Jordan , no,” I moan, but my body knows that I’m lying. I can already feel anticipatory wetness pooling between my legs as he nudges at me, can already feel the clenching at the small of my back and in the pit of my stomach.

“Open your legs,” he whispers against my lips, pinning my arms over my head so I can scratch and push at him.

“No!” I snarl, turning my face away and l lying like a board beneath him, inert and unmoving.

“You’re going to fight me now?” he chuckles, his teeth nipping playfully at my neck, at my shoulder.

“It’s fucking daylight,” I snarl, staring up at him with what I hope is a warning clear in my gaze.

“That makes a difference?” he asks, his lips closing over my nipple, his tongue swirling slowly around it until I arch my back, moaning beneath him.

“I can smell coffee,” I whimper, my thighs parting for him despite my protests.

“It’s on a timer,” he explains, sliding inside in one fluid motion. “No one will be up yet, it’s early,” he adds, moaning into my ear as I tip my hips up to take him deeper in spite of the surrounding tenderness.

“I thought you were tired,” I whine even as my body moves against his, with his, in a slow, gentle motion. Not like the frenzied, sweaty sex of the night before. Night? Or was it morning? How long has it been I wonder, and what time is it now?

“Not that tired,” he whispers against my mouth, his lips parted over mine, barely touching so that our tongues twine outside of our mouths, reaching, touching and then withdrawing in a sort of dance that matches the gentle thrusts of our bodies. “I don’t think I could be too tired for this,” he adds, his entire weight pressing me down as I wrap my legs around the small of his back, pulling him into me. “Oh god,” he moans, as I bite down on his shoulder, the orgasm coming more quickly as the dawn light progresses through the faded curtains as the sun begins its march across the sky.
___________________________________________________________________________________

“I could get used to this,” I grin at her as I curl my body against hers’, our legs twined, my arms wrapping around her, holding her close.

“You can’t,” she mutters quietly, her body soft and relaxed against mine. “We can’t do this. Do you even realize what we’ve done? This is your brother’s bed Jordan. I’m your brother’s girlfriend,” she sighs but makes no move to pull away from me. None of the hissing and scratching cat stuff that she usually does, not that I mind that.

“You weren’t objecting before,” I remind her, laying a kiss on her ivory shoulder, smiling at the bite marks I’ve left on her neck. Or should I say possession marks? “Besides, after what you said last night, why do you even care?”

“What do you mean, what I said?” she asks, squirming free of my arm and sitting up, tugging the blanket off of me and holding it around her like a shield. As if I haven’t seen everything that’s beneath it. As if I haven’t kissed, licked, fondled every inch of her incredible body. “I don’t remember having any deep and meaningful conversations.”

“I didn’t say they were deep,” I muse, reaching out to tug at the coverlet, pulling her back towards me, “I just said you said…things.”

“Things? What things?” she demands, her eyes narrowing, her hand slapping mine away from the pale white skin of her thigh, which she quickly tries to cover with the edge of the blanket. I stare at her for a long moment, waiting for her to remember, waiting for her to cast her mind back but she just stares back at me from the position she’s taken on her knees above me, willing me to speak first.

“All that stuff you said about…you know, me being the best you’d ever had and how Marc doesn’t do it like I do, how he doesn’t get you, how he doesn’t ring your bell. That stuff,” I remind her sheepishly. It sounds so corny when I say it out loud. In fact it sounds downright egocentric. But I’m not the one that said it, she did, and repeatedly I might add.

She opens her pretty mouth, like she’s going to argue with me, but then she closes it and sets her lips in a thin line, her pouty red lips disappearing as denial sets in.

“If I did…if I said any of those things,” she begins, stepping back off of the bed and dragging the quilt with her like a roman toga, leaving me lying there, naked, staring after her, “it was in the heat of the moment. I didn’t mean it. It’s just…stuff you say, y’know, when you’re…,” she waves her free hand at the bed and then turns, heading for her bag. I watch as she begins to root through it, noticing the cute little pair of red lace panties she pulls out, all the while thinking about what she’d said to me and how she said it.

Certainly she was a little…preoccupied at the time, but she still said them and what’s more, the way she said those things, I believed her. I actually felt sorry for my brother, well, even more sorry for him after she’s said those things.

“So what are you saying?” I ask finally. She pauses, with those red panties pulled up just past her knees and then she just shakes her head, continues to shimmy into them before reaching for a matching red bra. Very festive.

“This was a mistake,” she mumbles, turning and fixing me with a glare. “Things got…out of hand and…and this never happened,” she adds before turning back to her bag and yanking out a black skirt and steps into it.

“Yeah, well, that doesn’t really work for me.” I get up and rummage through my brother’s drawers. The good thing about brothers is you might get a lot of hand me downs but then again, most of our stuff fits all of us. I could go to any of the closets or drawers in the house and find something that fits. Pulling out a pair of blue boxers, because now that she’s almost fully dressed I feel a little…conspicuous sitting around in my birthday suit. She turns around, a red and black sweater in her hand, her other hand curled into a fist at her hip, and stares me down.

“What do you mean it doesn’t work for you? That’s the way it is. Do you want to hurt your brother?” she asks, her voice trembling with emotion as her gaze searches mine hopefully.

“Of course I don’t want Marc to get hurt but, on the other hand, I have feelings too you know,” I add, staring back at her and trying not to just stare at her breasts but they look so bodacious cupped in that red lace, so white, so soft. When I look back up into her dark eyes, they’re open wide and I’m almost sure that they’re beginning to shimmer with tears.

“What? What are you talking about?” she asks, biting down on her bottom lip.

“I love you,” I state simply, watching her blink back at me like an owl.

“You don’t…you can’t….it was just sex for fuck’s sake,” she stammers, shaking her head but still staring back at me wild eyed. “You don’t even know me. You don’t know anything about me. We’ve had sex, twice, that’s it. It doesn’t mean anything.” Shaking my head I let go the sigh I’ve been holding in and take a step towards her, but she takes a step back, shaking her head rapidly.

“I haven’t been able to think about anything but you for months. I think that means something,” I offer but she keeps shaking her head at me, but more like she doesn’t want to hear what I’m saying than anything else.

“It’s just…physical…nothing else,” she snaps, tugging the sweater over her head. “Marc loves me. He knows me. You…you don’t know anything about me.”

“That’s not what you said last night,” I remind her quietly, moving towards her quietly like I’m trying not to scare her off. “You said I get you like no one else. You said no one else has ever made you feel like that,” I add, successfully cupping her cheek in my hand. Looking down into her dark eyes I can see all the fear and confusion I know I should be feeling, but for some reason I feel completely sure of what I’m saying and doing right now. “I know I’ve never felt so…crazy about anyone in my life.” For one long, amazing moment, I’m sure she’s going to let me kiss her but then she looks away and denies me access to her lips.
_______________________________________________________________________________


My entire body shakes when he touches my cheek and for just a moment, for a second, I want to kiss him. I want to put my arms around him and kiss him and let him take me back to bed and do all of those things that he does that make me forget about everything else. But then the moment passes and reality creeps back in and I manage to shake off the craving.

“You’re letting little Jordy do the thinking,” I whisper. “This was a mistake. This should never have happened. We’re going to forget about this, forget this ever happened. I don’t want to hurt him.”

“I don’t hear you saying you love him,” he replies quietly, his fingers tightening on my cheek, forcing me to turn and look up into his sky blue eyes.

“Your brother is amazing and sweet and gentle and polite and I care about him, a lot,” I manage, swallowing the words I can’t say, not to Marc, not to anyone.

“But you don’t love him,” he repeats, and now the puppy dog look is gone from those blue eyes, replaced by scorn and disappointment. The look he gives me makes my chest tight, makes the tears I’ve been holding back spill over. Closing my eyes I turn my face away again. I can’t face that look. “If you really loved him, it would be different,” Jordan continues, his hands falling to my shoulders, his hands digging in as he gives me a gentle shake to make me look up at him, which I do, but only for a moment. “But if you don’t, I can’t let you pretend you do. Not after this.”

“You don’t know anything about our relationship,” I snarl, pushing him away with what’s left of my strength. “You don’t know anything about us. How dare you talk down to me like that!” I hiss, feeling my claws come out, wanting to scratch that smirk off of his face. Thankfully he shrugs and suddenly looks tired and young and sad.

“I know my brother thinks he loves you. I know he’s going to ask you to marry him today and I know that I can’t let him do that. Not now.” His blue eyes search mine for a moment and I’m guessing that all he sees is the deer in the headlights look of utter shock.

“He’s…he’s….” I can’t get the words out. It’s like my tongue doesn’t know how to form the words or my brain won’t send the right signals to make my mouth work properly.

“He’s got the ring and everything,” Jordan continues nonchalantly, shrugging his big shoulders. “He’s going to do it when we’re all opening presents. If you don’t tell him by then…I will."