“
Cormac.” Her voice sounds breathy and, possibly, shocked.
“
Mmm?” I slide my thumbs under the straps of her tank and pull them down, ringing her shoulders.
“
Cormac!” She leaps up, yanks her straps back into place, and paces a few feet out of my reach.
“I’m sorry,” I apologize even if ‘sorry’ is the last thing I am for what just happened. “You kissed me. I thought--”
“I kissed you as a thank you,” she interrupts, her words jagged. “I...I kissed you because...I kissed you because...” She takes a few shuddery breaths, her eyes bright with unshed tears or mania or, and this may be nothing but wishful thinking on my part, lust.
And just when I expect her to storm out or slap me across the face or order me to march, she’s hurled herself back on my lap, her hands on either side of my face, her thighs on either side of my hips, her mouth hungry and sweet on mine. I smooth my raw hands over the silk of her
hair and kiss her back, kiss her the way I’ve been thinking about kissing her since the day she stumbled onto me at the lake and every minute since then.
She pulls away a second time, her eyes round,
her lips red from my bristle and damp from my mouth, her hair tangled in my hands and on my hoodie. She scoots back so fast, I have to brace a hand under her ass to keep her from toppling to the floor.
And, though my main objective is keeping her upright, I don’t neglect to appreciate the shape and feel of her particularly gorgeous bottom.
“This is a stupid, huge mistake.” She screws her eyes shut and bangs the heel of her hand on her forehead over and over until I ring her wrist with my fingers and tug her self-destructive appendage to a more neutral location.
Which is probably not right next to my dick, on second thought.
“I’ll go,” I offer. It takes every ounce of willpower in my body to get up out of that chair, and I have her in my arms, her legs still locked around my waist, the weight of her an excellent resistance in my arms, when the back door swings open and a dark-haired woman wearing a slash of bright red lipstick and stinking of marijuana stumbles in.
She takes a long look at the two of us between giggles she can barely contain, and I carefully lower
Benelli onto the table top.
“The professor?”
She has this sexy, low voice mixed with a thick accent and a little bit of a slur that is, I imagine, the result of the partying she just came back from.
I look over at
Benelli, who lowers her lashes and clears her throat.
“Aunt
Abony, this is Cormac Halstrom. He’s the graduate student I--”
“Yes, you mentioned.” Aunt
Abony’s voice is somewhere between a purr and a growl. She speaks to Benelli, but she never for a single second takes her eyes off me. “So, tell me, édesem, why are you wasting your time with brutes like Akos Miklós when you have this perfectly delicious alternative?”
Benelli
hops down from the table, takes me by the arm, and marches me to the door. “I’m sorry, Nénike, but Cormac was just on his way out.”
“Don’t rush because of me.”
Abony waves, the sparkling ruby polish on her nails making me think of bloody talons and powerful empresses.
I like her.
But I don’t get to spend any more time in the cozy little kitchen with the gorgeous Benelli Youngblood and her wild, admiring aunt.
“I should have left before she came home. This night filling up with apologies,” I apologize again.
She takes a deep, cleansing breath. “It’s fine. It’s been a confusing night, and I’m sorry too. Let’s just let our sorries cancel each other out and forget this whole...mess ever even happened.”
She waves a hand, the same one that tended to my wounds and grabbed onto my arms and pulled on my neck so my lips would meet with hers, like she’s dismissing me.
Us.
It’s for the best.
I know that to the deepest crevice of my overly-creased, rational brain.
So I say, “Tonight wasn’t all a mess, and I don’t plan on forgetting anything.”
Logic escapes me yet again.
“
Cormac--”
I have no clue what she would have said, because I rope her close with my arm and kiss her, forcing my hands to keep still and my lips and mouth and tongue to communicate all the unspoken wants I harbor for her. Despite her protests, she nips and licks and kisses back with the kind of unbridled passion I know can’t be faked.
And I’m willing to bet can’t be forgotten.
I pull back before the kiss is done, and it takes a monumental amount of determination to do that. But the look of shock and pure, urgent want on her face is worth it.
“I won’t forget a single damn thing,” I vow and leave before I can’t control it and yank her back into my arms.
Back where she belongs.
Benelli
3
I rush back into my aunt’s cozy kitchen, my lips still stung from
Cormac’s kisses, my head spinning from his last words.
She barks at me in Hungarian before I make it to the stairs down the hall.
“Come back here!”
I swivel on my heel and stomp back, trying to keep everything in check. Respect for my elders, check.
Temper, check. Open mind, check. Lust...no check there.
My woozy brain attempts to process her chattering, and I know she’s speaking quickly and with edgy excitement to trap me, seduce me, force me to listen to her while I juggle translations in my head.
“...my brother wants for you is all the bread and none of the roses, Benelli. He didn’t listen to his father, but that rebellion is tampered in you. I can see that. You want to do better, you want to make it right, but it isn’t your place or your responsibility to find your parents’ happiness. You deserve your own way, your own love--”
“Please!” I cry, palms over my ears to protect my ringing brain. “Please just stop. I can’t do this. I can’t listen to this.”
Abony jumps up, all swishing skirts, sparkling jewelry, and hand-flinging indignation. “No. You
must
listen. Playing the martyr is a recipe for disaster, my love. Disaster. You don’t know yourself yet, and you’re willing to trade your life, your freedom to be shackled to one of these arrogant idiots--”
“Stop,” I beg. “Please stop. You have no idea how hard Papa has been working. You have no idea how much Winch leaving and Remy falling apart broke him. I swear to you, I’m not being a martyr. I’m not. I’m trying, so
hard, I’m trying like crazy to save this family.”
Abony’s
scarlet lips flatten into a thin line. “I’m sorry for your father’s stresses. I truly am. But maybe it’s time this family lost a little of its power.”
I’m so damn sick of hearing this refrain. I hear it from my siblings enough, and I have no patience hearing it from my aunt, too.
“My father keeps this family running,” I snap. “His
power
puts a roof over all our heads and food in our stomachs, and that’s why I’m happy to sacrifice a little bit to help him when he needs it, so please stop trying to talk me out of what’s right and into something completely wrong and selfish!”
My
words ring out and bounce off the low ceiling and my aunt, usually so happy and carefree, plunks down on a chair and pulls a long, elegant cigarette out of its pack. The look she throws my way isn’t aggravated or angry.
It’s pitying
.
And I bristle at it.
I want to march upstairs and fall asleep, forget every single tangled snare this day tripped me with. I want to refocus, detail a new game plan, and eradicate distractions like Cormac Too Hot For His Own Damn Good Halstrom.
But something about
Akos’s comment about my father jarred me, and that ripple of unease has tremored through me all day.
Abony
blows rings of purple-grey smoke at the colored glass chandelier hanging over the table, one sandaled foot bouncing with an anxious rhythm.
“Your parents have always kept you protected,
Benelli. That’s a wonderful thing for a girl. Childhood is all about that...” She waves her crimson-nailed hand in the air carelessly. “...that time in your life when you know, unfailingly, that you’ll be unconditionally cared for and kept safe. But your childhood is long over.” She puts the cigarette down and leans forward, her blue eyes intent on my face. “Isn’t it?”
“What’s this about?” My voice wobbles and a prickle of icy
goosebumps dots along the back of my arms and fans over my neck.
“About?” She sighs and flicks a long column of ash into a glass tray.
“Life. Love. Choices. Famil--”
“Stop it,” I bite out, the cut of my voice shocking us both. “Stop it,” I repeat, calmer. “And, please, tell me what you need to say.”
She trains her eyes on me for a few endless, rapid beats of my heart. “Maybe it’s the wine and the pot and the moonlight.” She takes another long drag and coughs it out gently. “That’s it. Just too much of everything I love and shouldn’t do. Forget my dramatics.” She stubs the remainder of her cigarette out and gets up, but I block her from exiting the kitchen.
“You were furious at me the summer I grew up. Remember that? But now, you clearly have something to say, but you won’t. Do you want to keep me a little girl in the dark, or do you want to talk to me, woman to woman? Which is it?” I’m so close my nostrils are full of the distinct aroma that defines my aunt; a pinch of cigarette smoke mixed with a heavy blend of French perfume and the sweet tang of marijuana.
She leans one narrow shoulder on the wall, her face lined with sudden exhaustion. “I was furious that they let you think you were a woman without treating you with the respect a woman deserves. They gave you all the shallow trappings, but didn’t fortify you with the foundation you needed.”
“No more women’s studies
lectures.” I cross my arms and stand tall, though I’m still not nearly as tall as she is. “Tell me.”
“You love this family.” The cracks in her voice let pain and truth and upset seep all around us. “And I don’t want to take that from you. But, if you’re going to give them your complete devotion, you should know that they aren’t entirely what they seem.”
“Tell me.” My voice is barely audible because, maybe, I recognize that I may be prying at the hinges of a Pandora’s box I’m not remotely ready to have opened.
“Some of it isn’t my story to tell, so I can’t.” Her eyes, narcotic-glazed and weary, focus on a point just over my left shoulder. “But I’ll tell you my bit.
My little contribution to the Youngblood family.” Her words fight their way out of her lips. “When I was young, I was in love with...everyone! Everything. I wanted to make love. I wanted to study. I wanted to travel. And I got to. But I needed to deposit my token first.” She kicks a heel against the doorframe. “Unlike you, I didn’t care too much about the family. My father was a domineering man. My brother selfishly ran off to America and left me behind. I was ready to start everything, but my father said college for a girl was a waste of time and money.”
“I thought
my
father paid for you to go to college.”
Her eyes have gone from glazed to a flat, glass-like sheen that sees images I’ll be forever blind to. She flicks a look in my direction, but she isn’t seeing me.
“Your father bartered for my college, though I’m sure his version of the story is different.” She shakes her head and grimaces. “I was no virgin, and I wasn’t ashamed of that, despite that fact that all of them, the whole damn family, acted like my little escapades were going to bring down the mighty Youngbloods. Your father threw over a girl with a very powerful father, and marrying for love wound up costing him dearly. But he was able to have his cake and eat it too. Because he had me.”
I put one hand on the wall, my sweaty palm sticking flat against the plaster. “Explain.”
She shrugs, a delicate bob of her shoulders that masks the fury I can see smashing through the glassy veil over her eyes. “I was the town slut anyway, according to my family. Why not one more roll in the sheets with one more man?” Her lips twist. “Your father had already refused marriage to the daughter of a very powerful man to marry your mother, and there wasn’t much anyone could do about that; the girl was lost to the family as a connection and there weren’t any available Youngblood sons at that time. But there was her father. And the man was...a man. A man who liked pretty young girls. A man who liked having the daughter of the family that shamed his daughter in bed with him for all the town to know.”
A tinge of bile creeps up the back of my throat and threatens to choke me. “They made you sleep with him?”
Her eyes go tight and hard. “They gave me a choice, and I took it. One year as the mistress of a vile buffoon earned me a university degree. I had a choice, Benelli. It was just an ugly choice.” She reaches out, her ruby-tinted fingers clasping under my chin. “It was a choice I never expected my own family would force on me. But they did. And that’s one of the dozens of skeletons in the Youngblood closet.” She closes her eyes and a little of her shine, her light, her essence seems to ooze out and puddle darkly around her.