Damaged Like Us (Like Us 1)

As requested by Luna: no big birthday parties, no surprise family guests. Just a small dinner with immediate family, and later her best friends Eliot and Tom Cobalt will come over for a sleepover.

Farrow is here because my little sister has bad taste and has invited him to her birthdays since she was nine. Despite how much he aggravated me, Luna always liked him. Here he was, a pierced and tattooed guy who contrasted his blue-blooded clean-cut family. When you’re different from the pack, it takes more guts to be yourself.

Luna is drawn to people who experience that.

“I have a watch too, wolf scout,” Farrow says. “I see the time.” He sinks down on my small twin-sized bed. Comforter is a Spider-Man print. His brows pinch together.

“What?”

“This is one of the most uncomfortable beds I’ve ever sat on.” He rocks his ass on the mattress. “Fuck, it’s hard.” He leans back on his hands. “Is this why you’re so stiff all the time?”

The sexual innuendos stroke my cock. “My brother probably switched out his shitty mattress with mine when I moved out.” I flex my muscles and straighten up. Eyeing his lip piercing for a brief second—then his hair.

His hair is black.

He dyed the strands the other day, and I descend into this image of him—pretty much consumed. It’s not just that he appears older, or that his intimidation cranks to a higher newfound degree. He’s attractive with any hair color, any piercing, even minus all the tattoos or add them all together.

Honestly, it’s because the first time I ever saw this guy—he didn’t have white hair. Or blue. When I first met Farrow, his hair was jet-black. Like right now.

Today.

Farrow kicks a pillow aside and props his shoulders against my headboard. I imagine joining him, and he’ll pin me to the bed, then I roll him over, his stomach to the mattress.

Gripping his waist, tugging down his black pants enough to expose his perfect round ass, my mouth trails along his neck. And descends to the spot between his muscular shoulders—

“Maximoff.” His deep voice pitches me from a fantasy.

I lift my eyes.

He smiles.

“What?” I combat.

Farrow bends a knee. “Are you thinking about the philosophical meaning of the world or are you thinking about fucking me in the ass?”

Christ. I lick my lips, wanting my mouth against his mouth. Badly. I near the bed. “I wasn’t inside you yet.”

“Yet,” he repeats, his gaze sweeping my body in a boiling wave. He gestures me closer, until he stretches over and catches my wrist. He wrenches me onto the bed with him.

I’m on top of Farrow, my hands on either side of his head, but he hooks his legs around my waist and swiftly reverses me like I’m an MMA opponent. My head hits the pillow. He’s on top.

Farrow brings his mouth near mine. “You may dominate in the pool, but when it comes to submission moves and grappling, I’ll always have you beat.”

I breathe heavily. Chest rising and falling beneath him. One night, I asked Farrow to show me a submission move. True to his nature, he didn’t go easy. Not even on his boyfriend. I had to tap out of the chokehold in less than twenty seconds.

Farrow straddles my waist and sits up to reach into his leather jacket pocket. I’m about to say we can’t fuck here, but I stop myself when no condom appears.

He holds a black box.

The same black box I once gave him. The asshole merit badge is stitched to the back of his leather jacket. So I know he’s not returning my gift.

Farrow discards the box behind his back and clutches the object in a closed fist. He leans closer to me. In an affectionate, deep breath, he whispers, “Hold out your left wrist.”

He’s put a fucking spell on me. I never hesitate. I raise my wrist, our eyes melting against each other. Farrow opens his tattooed hand. Revealing a gray paracord bracelet, which can be unwound into rope for survival.

We watched Mad Max: Fury Road the other night, and I mentioned how the paracord bracelet on Tom Hardy’s wrist was cool.

That feeling, one that I’ve only felt with him returns like a tidal wave. Welling powerfully inside my chest, and also weightless—light enough that I could fly.

His fingers buckle the bracelet around me. “Just so you understand, you’re much hotter than Tom Hardy.”

I laugh, my eyes burning with emotion.

Farrow drinks in my reaction, his chest collapsing in a strong breath. “Didn’t I tell you?” he whispers, his gaze nearly glassing. “It’s the little things.”

This is what I missed in my life, and I can’t imagine never discovering this feeling. Never having him. I clutch the back of his head, my mouth nudging his open. We kiss deeply, intensely—enough to raise my back off the mattress and my chest to meet his.

We part so I can whisper, “Pretty sure you called it stupid, ordinary shit. Not the little things.”

He laughs against my mouth. “It’s all the fucking same.”

“MOFFY!” my brother screams from down the hall.

Fuck.

Farrow quickly climbs off me, and we’re both on our feet. The second time Xander screams my name, his voice sounds less panicked. More demanding, like get your ass over here.

“I’m being summoned,” I tell Farrow on the way out into the long hallway. His stride matches mine. I stop in front of my brother’s room. A sign hangs on the ajar door and says in Elfish: turn back you fools.

I hear more than just my brother’s voice. All three of my siblings are inside.

Before we enter, Farrow asks, “Do you want me to wait downstairs—”

“No,” I cut him off. “I want you to be here.” I pause. “Unless you don’t want to—”

Farrow kicks the door open wider in response. We go in together, the room a mess of fantasy trade paperbacks, video games, oversized beanbags, and a six-foot-four armored knight stands next to his four-poster bed.

I zero in on Luna waving a piercing gun at our brother. She wears a crop top that says Space Babe and black joggers.

Xander towers above her, already six-feet at fourteen. “I said I would do it, I didn’t say you could do it for me.”

“Come on, Xander, I’m an expert now.”

“What? You got a fucking infection in your tongue.” Disbelief coats his words. He swings his head and sees me and Farrow watching. “Good. You two—tell her to back away with the weapon.”

“Give it.” Farrow approaches, and Luna willingly hands him the piercing gun. “Happy Birthday,” he tells Luna and then inspects the actual device.

“What are you doing?” I ask Luna and motion w

ith two hands to the piercing gun. “And Happy Birthday too.”

“Thankyouthankyou.” She nods to us both and then picks a star sticker off her round cheek. “And I’m celebrating my eighteenth year on this planet.” She places the sticker on her eyelid. “Xander and Kinney said they’d get piercings as a birthday present to me.”

Kinney lies on Xander’s bed, flipping through the television channels. She shrugs. “Seemed easier than going to the mall to buy a present.”

You know Kinney Hale as the Princess of Goth and all things supernatural. A lot of you worship the fuck out of her, and you hope to one day be the recipient of her insults and death glares. You’ve even made video compilations of her epic eye rolls and “no bitch” face. And you wish you were part of her girl squad that includes Winona Meadows, Audrey Cobalt, and Vada Abbey.

I know her as my thirteen-year-old, tough-as-nails little sister who has a soft side that she only allows family to see. And I love the hell out of her.

Fair warning: I used to change this one’s diapers and feed her peas that she’d throw at me. You fuck with Kinney, I’ll slit your throat and then she’ll shove you to the bottom of a volcano.

Luna eyes the piercing gun in Farrow’s hands, then turns to Xander. “You’re still going to get your ear pierced, right?”

“Yeah.” Xander sits on the edge of his bed. “But Moffy’s going to do it. Not you.”

Farrow tilts his head at my brother. “How is he any better than Luna?”

“Five years older than her,” I defend myself.

“Tell me one body part you’ve ever pierced, wolf scout.”

“Burn,” Kinney says, still flipping TV channels.

“None.”

Xander rakes a hand through his bed-head hair. “Moffy is the best at everything.”

Farrow laughs hard.

“Shut the fuck up,” I tell Farrow, trying not to smile as I near him and Luna.

“I’m serious,” Xander says to Farrow, causing his laughter to fade. “Moffy’s never been below average at anything. Every time he tries something new, he’s practically a pro on the first try.”

“It’s magic,” Luna says certainly.

“He’s a demon,” Kinney says. “One of the ugly ones that live in toad holes.”