Biting the inside of my cheek, I fingerfuck her, harder, faster. Her nipples are hard points pressing into my chest, the silk of her hair warm and smelling of flowers, wrapped around my neck.
She’s wrapped around me, and I don’t want her to release me.
That’s my last thought before she clenches hard, almost breaking my fingers, and lets out a small cry, writhing on top of me.
And I come.
My body seizes up, my cock spasms pressed between us, and I shoot my load with a long-drawn groan I can’t stop.
She blinks sleepily at me. Smiles a soft smile.
It undoes the last knots in my chest, and I close my eyes again, pulling her closer, tucking her against me until she’s once again sprawled like a starfish over me.
Drowsy, my every muscle gone lax, surrounded by her scent, I fall asleep once more, until morning.
Light is cutting through my lashes, stabbing my eyeballs, and I roll on my side with a grunt.
The shadow across the room turns into a pretty girl, and I blink at Octavia who’s puttering around my room, folding clothes and tidying up my meager belongings.
“I will talk to Ross,” she says, “This can’t go on.”
“What…?” I try to chase the fuzz from my brain—because I slept. Through most of the night. A fucking first. “Wait, Tay. No.”
“You can’t stop me.”
I roll this around in my mind. “Then I’m coming with you.”
How did that happen, how did I sleep when I haven’t been able to get any shut-eye for more than a couple of hours, tops, every night since Emma passed?
And then I remember Octavia’s body curled beside me, her arm over my stomach, her breath on my neck.
My fingers inside her as she came, her face flushed, her moans, and how I came all over myself like a teenager.
Damn. No wonder the front of my T-shirt is stuck to my chest.
Octavia is staring at me. “You don’t have to do that. You don’t have to come with me.”
I force my mind back to the conversation. “Yeah, I do.”
“I can do this on my own. If I took every nasty word everyone around here had for me, for us, I’d be rocking in a corner by now,” Octavia mutters, her eyes bright. “I have to face him. It won’t be the first time.”
She’s fierce. I realize I underestimated her. There’s nothing fragile about her now.
“Us? Who, your family?”
“Yes.”
“Why? What about?”
She shrugs, stops still for a moment, her expression closing up. “There are these… rumors that my mom slept around. She won’t say who our dad is, and everyone says each one of us, me, Gigi, Merc, have a different one. And then I had the braces…”
“Braces?” I rub a hand over my eyes, trying to focus, because damn, everything’s fuzzy.
“Yeah, braces.” And she bares her teeth—perfect, small, white teeth. She looks like one of those laughing foxes they show sometimes on Discovery channel.
A cute fox, and I find myself laughing quietly.
What is she doing to me? I want to laugh, and weep. I want to hold her, protect the bright flame of her mind, and beat up the goddamn bullies for notching scars in her confidence.