These Thorn Kisses (St. Mary’s Rebels 3)

To the fact that she cried for me last night. She wants to protect me. She wants to be my flower.

Mine.

But that’s not all.

Last night, before I very reluctantly dropped her off at her house, I studied her body while she was sleeping. I traced her skin with my fingers. All the places she’d written my name. All the roses and thorns she decorated her body with.

For me.

In my name.

Not to mention, I played with her hair too.

Because she drives me crazy. She drives me fucking crazy like no one has ever done before.

Fuck. Fuck. Fucking fuck.

“Dora.”

Stellan’s voice distracts me from my furious thoughts and I snap my gaze to him. “What?”

His jaw is ticking. “I know you overheard our conversation earlier. About Isadora. I call her Dora though.”

I frown. “The girl who likes Shepard?”

“Likes Shepard.” He scoffs before biting out, “I saw her first.”

Oh fuck.

I have a bad feeling about this.

A bad fucking feeling.

Even so as I’ve always done, I keep my calm and ask, “And?”

I can see the tightness on his features as he stares into the darkness for a few seconds.

“Doesn’t matter,” he says after a while, shaking his head. “He was right. She did choose him.”

“But you wanted her to choose you.”

Another few seconds pass.

Then he takes a large pull of his beer before he says, “I mean, why do I even want her when she doesn’t want me? If she wants my shithead brother she can fucking have him.”

“But,” I prod again because with Stellan you need to.

Ledger and Shep are usually more open. Callie too.

He swallows. “I do want her.” Glancing at me, he says, “I want my twin brother’s new girlfriend.”

My own jaw clenches as I look at him.

As I study his face, his features, his tells.

This one’s going to hurt.

I can see that.

And like always, my own chest feels tight when my siblings want something but can’t get it. My own chest feels suffocated as I say, “You need to get away. Come back here. Home.”

That might be the only way to get over the pain.

My solution makes him smile and shake his head. “I knew you’d say that. Because you’re always thinking about us. I’m going to be fine though.” Another shake of his head. “The point I’m trying to make, big brother, is that you’re not the biggest asshole here. For wanting an eighteen-year-old student. So you need to cut yourself some slack.”

Slack.

No. I can’t.

I can’t because she’s too young. Too shiny, too precious.

And I know I’ve underestimated her as well. Which is why I know she’s going to do great things in life.

Maybe I should let her go. I’ve had her once and the only reason I did that was to drive her out of my mind, my system.

But even the thought of that, the thought of giving her up right now, is somehow even more objectionable than throwing away her panties.

Even so as I sit here, I promise myself. I fucking promise that I will let her go.

That I won’t keep her.

I will end this one day.

One fucking day.

Because even though my name is written on every inch of her soft, velvet, wallflower of a body, she’s not really mine.

I can’t wait to see him.

I’m not sure what the protocol is here. But when I wake up Monday morning I can’t stop grinning.

Since Charles is driving me back to school from Wuthering Garden, I know I’m going to miss my early morning sketching session. So I won’t be able to see him run laps around the soccer field.

Which makes me a little sad.

Because I wanted to see him. Talk to him, before school starts, away from everyone else.

I wanted to make sure that it was real.

What happened between us.

And that he made love to me not once but twice.

I know. I know there’s no love involved here. I know that. I’m too young for him and he’s in love with another woman and he’ll never love me but still.

To me it was making love because I love him.

Because I’m the wallflower to his thorn.

So no one can dampen my enthusiasm right now.

Especially because after that second round of sex in the hallway, where he wouldn’t stop kissing me, wouldn’t let me breathe anything other than the air from his lungs, I made him breakfast and completely surprised him.

After he told me the other day that he wasn’t much of a cook, I decided that if given the chance I’d cook for him.

Because I’m a kickass cook.

We had a cook for a couple of years who became my friend and who taught me things. So I can cook pretty much everything. And since it was late night, which could be stretched and called super early morning, I made him pancakes and a spinach omelet.

I’m not going to lie, he was a little bit shocked.