I’M NERVOUS. I NEVER GET nervous, but my palms are sweaty, and my damn hands are shaking. When the doorbell rings, I shake them off and then wipe them on my jeans. Glancing up at the monitor on the screen, I see my Livvie. She waves at the camera, and I feel her smile all the way through the monitor. Mel is sitting in the living room watching a movie, and I go shut off the alarm so I can let Livvie inside.
“Hi, Butterfly.” I grab the back of her neck and pull her to me so I can get my mouth on hers. I haven’t seen her since I left her in her office yesterday, and I’ve been dying to touch her ever since.
She grips my shirt and presses her body against mine, rubbing her tits all over me. Damn… if I had the choice, I’d take her right here. Now. Just to take the edge off. Make the anticipation of her spending the night in my bed not so damn powerful.
I reluctantly pull back and rest my head against hers.
“I missed you.” The vulnerability she shows me in those three words is enough to bring me to my knees. Wish I could take the sadness away from her. Wish things could be different, and we didn’t have to live apart.
Mel might be cool with her spending the night, but I’m not cool with asking my girlfriend to move in with me while my sister is still under the same roof. I’d love for Livvie to always be with me, but I don’t want to have our living together be… distracted by anything else.
I’m confident Mel will get a place of her own soon. She’s becoming more and more independent, and once she’s comfortable, she really does need to move on with her life. I won’t push her, but it’s not healthy that she’s practically a recluse.
I kiss Livvie once more. “Let’s get you fed.”
She links her fingers in mine while she waits for me to relock the door and set the alarm. As we pass through the kitchen, she looks at the stove. “Brownies?”
I shrug. Livvie can eat an entire tray of brownies if she wants to. She’ll pass up cake, ice cream, or chocolate, but if there’s a brownie in the room, she’s all over it. “You like them.”
“I like you.” She pushes up on her toes and kisses my jaw then heads to the living room. “Hey, Mellie.”
I have some Chinese food waiting and TV trays up. Mel’s already munching on an egg roll. “Hey, Liv.”
“Oh, I love this movie.” Livvie sits on the end of the couch closest to the chair Mel is on.
“Really?”
“Hello… Chris Pine and Tom Hardy.”
“Babe. I’m right here.”
She waves my comment off. “I’m committed, not dead, Jay.”
“Not for long,” I mumble as I sit next to her and playfully put her in a headlock.
She laughs as she pushes her hair out of her face. “Come on. If there were two hot-ass women on screen, you’d look in appreciation, too.”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“Bullshit,” she argues.
“You’re the only one I see, Livvie.”
“Nice,” Mel says. “Gotta give him points, Liv. That was a one-liner for the books.” My sister holds out her fist, and I give it a bump.
I let Livvie up but make sure to kiss her lips first. When the guys return to the screen, I roll my eyes. But later, I practically gag during the fight scenes. So fake. The fact that women like this shit is beyond me.
While the girls are watching TV, I clean up dinner and bring in the brownies. Mel takes a small piece, and Livvie devours three. As she’s licking her fingers, my balls tighten and my dick twitches. “Stop,” I whisper, subtly trying to adjust myself.
With a finger still in her mouth, she looks at me confused. But then it dawns on her. “Sorry,” she mumbles as she reaches for a napkin.
Her cheeks redden, and her breath speeds up. I watch as her chest rises and falls, her nipples hardening beneath the flimsy fabric of her shirt.
Mel yawns and stands up then swipes another brownie off the tray. “I’m going to bed. Night, guys.”
“Night, Mellie.”
“Sleep good,” I tell her as she passes.
We both watch her walk away, and when she’s up the stairs, Livvie jumps on me. My hands glide beneath her shirt and up her back, fingertips digging into her soft skin. Her mouth latches onto my neck, and she sucks and nips as she grinds herself down on my hardness.
She moans as I slide my hands down her spine and then grip her ass, lifting her into my arms. I carry her up to my room and kick the door shut. Mel won’t come in, but I still reach behind me and lock it.
I toss Livvie on my bed, and we both remove our clothes in record time. “Open.” I tap the side of her thigh.
Her legs fall apart, and I grab her beneath her knees and pull her to the end of the bed. Her pussy is throbbing and wetness glistens. I slide my finger between her folds, and she arches off the bed. Her thighs tremble, and she fights to keep her legs open for me, so I hold one down to the bed. I angle my body to prevent her other leg from closing as I continue to finger her.
Back and forth. Slowly. Circling and pressing, I bring her to the brink then back down again. Sweat forms on my back. Precum leaks out of my cock. Livvie’s moans get louder. Just when I know she can’t take anymore, I take my hand away, lean over her and cover her mouth with my own then slam inside her wet heat.
Her heels dig into the mattress as she pushes up, grinding herself against me as she squeezes my cock so damn tight it cuts off circulation to my brain. The breaths she pants into my mouth sound almost pained, but since she’s digging her nails into my back and I can feel her orgasm sliding down my balls, I know she’s doing anything but hurting.
I start to glide in and out of her as she’s coming down, unable to remain still any longer. She still grips me as her walls convulse, but I can’t take anymore, can’t hold back. Her body becomes lax, and I lift her by her ass to get in deeper then sit up on my knees to really fuck her.
Every time I bottom out, she gasps, her tiny body on the cusp of pleasure and pain. I’d never hurt her, and it took a little time to get her to be able to take all of me, but she demands it now. Her heels now dig into my lower back, and she pulls me in. “Fuck,” I grunt.
Her eyes close, and her fists grip the comforter so hard her knuckles turn white. “Get there, Livvie.”
“Jay,” she whines.
“Get there, baby.”
My balls draw up, and I grit my teeth to hold off. I don’t come without her. I never have, and I never will because I need her to be with me. Can’t do it unless I know she’s there, too.
“Oh, my God.”
“Fuck, baby. Get. There.”
“I am.” Her legs fall off my lower back. “Holy shit, I’m there.”
I drop my head and ride her orgasm out for several seconds before I pound into her and empty my release. My hands gripping her hips slowly relax. Color comes back to my knuckles, and redness imprints on her soft skin. “Fuck,” I whisper. I collapse on top of her, and we catch our breath for a moment before I pull out and kiss her hipbones. “I’m sorry, love. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“You didn’t.” She props herself up on her elbows and glances at where I just kissed. “I’m fine, promise.”
“I’ll be right back.” I kiss the inside of her knee then grab a pair of shorts before I head out of my room and across the hall to get a washcloth. Mel’s room is the master, the one with the attached bath at the far end of the second floor. I wanted her to have the privacy she needed, which I don’t mind at all.
Once I run warm water over the cloth, I come back to my room and wipe away the mixture of our releases from between Livvie’s legs. She crawls under the covers while I shut off the lights. Pulling her to me, I kiss the top of her head, and our legs intertwine. “Love you.”
She mumbles her agreement, and I laugh as I fall asleep with the smell of coconuts in my brain.
“Ahh! No!”
No matter how many times I hear it, it still scares the shit out of me. It took me almost a year to stop grabbing my gun. I jump out of bed and rush down the hall to Mel’s room.
“No. Stop, stop.” She’s twisted in her blankets and screaming at the top of her lungs, trying to fight off a nightmare.
“Shh.” I rush over to untangle her and then hold her arms at her side, preventing her from hitting me. “It’s okay, Mellicent. It’s me. You’re okay. Shh.”
Much like when our parents were killed, I rock her back and forth, whispering encouragement and making promises of things I can’t fulfill. She’ll never be okay. What happened to her will never be okay.
I wish more than anything in the world I could take it away for her. Haunts me almost as much as it does her. She finally shakes off the threats tarnishing her dreams and opens her eyes. “There she is.” I smile at her.
“I’m sorry,” she says, closing her eyes again and rolling away from me in embarrassment. “So sorry, Jay.”
I rest a hand on her arm. “You never have to apologize. I’m here for you; you know that.”
She nods into the pillow, and I pull a blanket up to her chin. Waiting for her to fall back asleep, I stare at the wall. I’ve stared at her damn wall every night for two years. Looked at my parents’ picture on her corkboard. Stared at my reflection in the mirror. Read the quote she has pinned from her favorite author—You will not break me for I am unbreakable.
And every fucking night, I walk away even more tormented than the night before. I don’t know what else to do. I can’t help her any more than I already have, and that fucking sucks. I want to take it away—remove the nightmares from her dreams, erase the memories from her mind, absorb the pain for her—but I can’t. I’m helpless, and there is absolutely no worse feeling in the world for a man like me than helplessness.
Mel’s better now. Each day, she gets just a little better. When it first happened, she locked herself in her room for months and almost never came out. She barely ate. Barely slept.
Her attacker is behind bars. He’ll be in there for a while but not long enough, if you ask me. I’m an officer of the law, and even I can admit to the flaws in our judicial system. A man like Norman should not have a chance to step foot on free soil ever again.
I lean over to make sure she’s back to sleep, then stand slowly as not to jostle the bed. When I turn around, Livvie is leaning against the doorjamb. My head falls briefly then I take her outstretched hand and close Mel’s door behind me.
When we make it back to my bed, I lie on my back and she rests her head on my chest. “That’s why.” She doesn’t ask; rather, she states the obvious.
“Yeah.”
“You could have told me.”
“I know I could have.”
Her breath tickles my skin. “Why didn’t you?”
“Because it wasn’t my story to tell. She’s embarrassed about it, and I wanted to respect that. I kind of assumed you figured it out.”
“I didn’t know exactly, but I suspected.” She tightens her arm over my stomach. “You’re such a good man, Jay.” She kisses my chest. “How often does it happen?”
“Every night.”
She sits up. “Every night?”
“Yeah. She can’t fall asleep until I’m home, and there hasn’t been one night that she hasn’t woken up screaming. That’s why I always had to leave you. I can’t leave her alone because she won’t sleep. And if she did, nobody would be here to wake her up from her nightmares.
“It took her six months even to come out of her room. Then another six to leave the house. It’s been a good year for her. She’s healing. Getting better. And I… I’m not a psychologist, but I was just trying to do what I thought was best for her.” I sigh. “I love you, Olive. God, I love you so much, but I’m stuck between what I want and what’s right for my sister. I don’t—”
“Shut up.” She interrupts me with a finger on my mouth. “Shut up, Jay. Do you honestly think I could ever be the slightest bit upset at the fact that you are the best brother in the world? Your devotion to your family is a quality any woman would fight for to have in her man. God. I get it. So get it. But you need to get that I understand. If she’s uncomfortable with me being here, I’m fine not spending the night again until she’s okay with it.”
How, I ask myself. How did I get so lucky? “You’re amazing, Livvie.”
“I’m really not. But you… you’re wonderful, Jay. I’m so damn lucky. Thank my lucky stars that someone dropped a penny on the sidewalk at the police station two years ago.”
I glance over at my dresser to the jar filled with the pennies Livvie’s given to me over the years. She has a jar at her place as well filled with the ones I’ve found and given to her. She kisses my cheek then my lips before resting her head back on my chest.
It’s not like I questioned it before, but as I drift off to sleep, my last thought is that I have to make her mine in every sense of the word. Permanently. Forever.