He doesn’t look at her as he plucks the condom out of his pocket and rips it open, slipping it on.

She stands there. “All you can do to me is walk away,” she mumbles but then sighs. “I hate it when you walk away.”

He pushes her back down on the bed and climbs on top of her, avoiding her eyes.

“I hate the way you look at me sometimes,” she whispers, and he can hear the tears. “Like I’m nothing.”

He lifts her knee high, and works himself inside of her. His dick crowns, feeling her open up and take him in as he slides in and out until he’s buried to the hilt. He settles on top of her, forcing away the pleasure and warmth washing over his body and shaking her words from his head.

“And then other times…” She kisses him, wrapping her arms around his body and sliding the tip of her tongue into his mouth. He hardens even more, sucking air in through his teeth.

“I don’t know how to talk sometimes, either,” she tells him. “This is how we talk. This is the only time I feel like you like me.”

The backs of his eyes burn, and he kisses her deep, tasting the tears on her cheeks. Her kisses her everywhere. He does like her. He’s wanted to touch her from the first moment, and he’s been here, watching, as inch by inch she started to laugh and become a part of them all.

He thrusts, the top of his body molded to her as he encases her head in his arms and kisses her.

“Kaleb…” she pants, her pussy clenching. “Kaleb. God.”

He can feel her about to come. She always comes so good. He rolls his hips faster and faster, wanting to love her. Wanting to let her have it, because she was made for him. Neither of them knows how to let people love them, but they don’t have to talk with each other. This is how they say it.

He doesn’t savor anyone like he wants to savor her. Her scent, her sound, her touch…her taste. The feel of her arms around him feels like he thought nothing ever could.

He wants to love her.

He wants to please her.

He wants to trust her and to see her holding his baby someday.

His thrusts slow as he wonders how they loved her, too. All the words she whispered in their beds.

She’s not hard to please.

And as the images of his father and brother with her tonight flash in his mind, he’s reminded…

Women he loves forget him.

He stops, and she whimpers, her body shaking as the second orgasm tries to push through her, but loses steam and drifts away, letting her float back to the ground.

“No,” she breathes out. “Please… Kaleb, what are you doing?”

Tiernan

He rises up, grabs me, and flips me over. Something circles my wrist, and I know what it is before I even look.

The belt he’d given me on my birthday had been sitting on my bedside table, and he takes it, tightening it around my wrist and looping it around the wrought iron headboard above.

Oh, shit. He yanks on it, pulling me up, and I have no choice but to clutch the bars with both hands for support as he secures me.

He forces my knees apart.

“Kaleb…” I start to protest.

I feel my wetness on the inside of my thigh, and every muscle inside me burns. I shake. What is he doing?

He digs his fingers into my hips and jerks me back into him, quickly sliding his cock back inside me. I squeeze my eyes shut, stinging from the rawness as he damn near punches a hole right through me. This doesn’t feel good.

“Kaleb…”

But I don’t know what I want to say, my head is spinning.

He fucks me, pounding his hips hard behind me as I hang onto the headboard and my hair bounces across my back.

He threads a hand through my hair, gripping the back of my scalp, and for a moment, I can’t breathe. All I hear is the sound of skin hitting skin as he fists his hands and makes my body hurt.

“Kaleb, stop.”

He pushes my back down more, making my ass jut out as he releases my hair and reaches around to paw my breasts and dig his teeth into my neck.

Tears hang at the corner of my eyes, and for a moment, all I can do is hang on as he pumps harder and faster.

It’s too deep, though. It hurts.

He’s taking. Fucking me like I’m nothing.

“Kaleb, stop.”

He doesn’t hear me, though, his hand landing on my ass with a loud whack and his breath pouring in and out of his lungs. I suck in a cry, the belt digging into my skin.

“Stop!” I scream.

I work the belt wider, slipping my wrist out, and then I whip around, hitting him I don’t know how many times. I burst into tears, seeing the rage on his face, and scramble off the bed. Naked, I run from the room. He catches me and yanks me back to him, but I slap him with everything I have and bolt into Noah’s room, locking the door. He pounds on the wood, and I hear Noah move in bed.

“What the fuck?”

I back away from the door, waiting for Kaleb to break through, but…

He doesn’t. I try to catch my breath, but my knees start to give.

“Tiernan?” Noah says.

I crawl in his bed, pushing him back down and spooning him from behind. I wrap my arms around him like a steel band.

“Go back to sleep,” I mutter, trying to quiet my tears.

“What did he do?”

“Nothing.” I bury my head in his back, the warm skin smelling like my bodywash that he always steals. “Just let me hold onto you.”

“Did he hurt you?” he asks, trying to turn around, but I won’t let him. “Tell me the truth.”

I can’t speak. I just shake my head. I’m the only one who hurts me. I believed it was real. Whatever was happening between us for however long.

He hates me. That wasn’t love.

Kaleb doesn’t come back to Noah’s door, and I think I hear his footfalls on the stairs at some point, but after a few minutes, my breathing calms and my tears subside. Noah just lies there, letting me hold him.

I tighten my arms around him again.

I don’t understand what’s happening. He wants me one minute and is throwing me away the next. He’s gentle and horrible. Vulnerable and hateful.

He shares me with Noah and then gets possessive. What does he want?

“He was with our mom,” Noah tells me, breaking the silence.

I open my eyes, feeling his voice vibrate against his body.

“It was a rainy, spring day, and some guy she’d been running with on the side was with them,” Noah goes on. “They had gone to the store—or so she told my dad. Instead, they went to a white house off a dirt road somewhere, and she left Kaleb in the car. Locked it and said she’d be back in a bit.” He pauses and then continues. “She went inside and the brief stop turned into a party. She got high, lost time, and fell asleep in the house.”

This is only the second time Noah has mentioned their mother. He must’ve been a toddler at the time.

“He was alone in the car with no one around for miles to hear him call out or cry when the minutes turned into hours. And hours into days.” I close my eyes, not wanting to hear the rest. “There was no food in the car and the only water came from the leak in the roof when it rained.”

I try not to see it, but an image of a little boy alone—cold and hungry—flashes in my mind. Kaleb was a child at one time. He was helpless then.