10. Cole

The ringing of my phone wakes me from my deep sleep, and I wince when I try to move, my body battered and bruised from last night’s antics.

Everything is tight and tense, and so is my rigid cock standing to attention beneath my duvet, straining in my pants.

I shove my hand south and fix it to a comfortable position, groaning from the tingling sensation. I didn’t get off last night. My full attention was on Blaise and making sure I owned full dominance.

I think, deep down, I didn’t want to dominate him – wearing the mask and hiding who I was just made it that bit easier to breathe.

What exactly was it I wanted? To beat Blaise? To touch him?

No.

I’m just confused with the way I’m feeling. Allie claims to love me, yet spreads her legs for anyone and everyone, and then Blaise is just…everywhere.

Another buzz from my bedside, and I sigh and rub my hand down my face. I need to go back to sleep, I’m exhausted.

With one eye open, I reach for my phone, rejecting the call from Allie. It’s three in the morning, and going by the bazillion messages apologizing, she’s cheated on me again. I should call her back and demand to know who she’s fucked – and I will, just so I can save myself any embarrassment and go beat up the asshole, but she can panic for a little while longer.

She calls again and again and again. Exasperated, I give in and answer the phone. “What?”

“Baby,” she cries, and I want so badly to hang up. “I didn’t mean it. I wasn’t planning on doing anything, I just needed to talk to him about my course work!”

“You fucked your professor again.” Not a question, and by the way she starts sobbing, I’m correct. “Why exactly are you with me if you keep fucking around?”

Sniffing, she coughs, and then I hear a door opening and closing. Her voice lowers. “We haven’t had sex in months, Cole.” Her throat cracks. “You don’t come near me, and if you do, you pull away. We barely talk. We barely message each other. When we do, you’re dry or emotionless or you just seem bored with me.”

“So instead of breaking up with me, you cheat?”

“I think you’re cheating on me too.”

I snort out a laugh. “That’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said.” Technically, I have cheated. I fucked Blaise’s throat and stroked him to an orgasm, but that doesn’t count. “I’ve never given you any reason to think I’ve cheated.”

She sniffles, and I pinch the bridge of my nose.

“We had sex at Samson’s party,” I say, sitting up, leaning my back to the headboard.

When she stays silent, I shake my head. “We should probably just call it quits, Allie. You obviously want the single life, and I’m not going to embarrass myself any further.”

“No!” she shrieks. “Please. Please, don’t end this. I’ll do better.”

I sense movement in my dark room, and I glance to the side to see the shadow of someone sitting on the floor with their back to the wall.

She’s still crying and begging me, but I hang up on her.

Blaise.

Leaning over, I turn on my lamp, lighting the room with a soft glow. My eyes land on all the bruises littering his face, the gash on the side of his head covered in dried blood, the swollen eye from my fists.

“Blaise?”

He doesn’t look at me when I say his name. His hair is a mess, as if he’s been running his hands through it. And he’s in the same clothes. They’re still damp, surely?

I gulp and sit up more. The silence is deafening, and I’m getting a little nervous at the tension here. There’s a tightrope between us, and I don’t know if it’s wrapping around my throat or pulling me toward Blaise.

“What happened to you?” I ask, knowing fine well it was my fists that did all that damage. “You look like shit.”

He doesn’t give me any response, or even acknowledge that I’m asking him anything. He’s vacant, unblinkingly staring at the wall opposite him.

The urge to go to him annoys me. Why the fuck would I do that?

I grab my ringing phone, silence Allie and, for fuck’s sake, a message from Mia pops up asking if Blaise is home.

Why is everyone awake at this fucking time in the morning?

I frown at my screen, then look at him again. “Mia is looking for you.”

Nothing. He’s not even asking why his girlfriend has my number. I don’t have hers saved, but from the millions of times Blaise has called me from it to either give me shit, ask me to pick him up, or to get ahold of one of our parents, I recognize the number.

Why is he not speaking? Did I fuck him up that good?

“Rough night?” I ask him, and I feel like slapping myself.

Of course it was a rough night. I beat the shit out of him, then forced myself on him. Rough night is an understatement. Saying that, my body hurts too. If he really wanted to, he could have stopped me. There was an opening he could’ve whipped off my mask, but he chose pleasure from an unknown.

And I was hard from it – the thrill of chasing him, watching him, hitting and touching him. I was so hard that I was losing my vision. I nearly took it too far, wanting more, to go further, to fuck him up really good and to feel from it, but the look in his eyes when I wrapped my hand around his cock? It floored me.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

Chewing my lip, I glance around my room to make sure I definitely packed away the mask and black hoodie – they’re in my bag in the closet.

I don’t have any bruises or cuts to my face to show that it was me, but what if he recognized my voice? My left eye was visible through the crack. Did he realize?

Maybe it was my cologne. Fuck. Does Blaise know I’m the unidentified masked man who’s been fucking with him? Does he know his stepbrother forced him to suck his dick, then stroked his cock until he came?

I swallow and sit on the edge of the bed, my knees bouncing, stopping when I lean my elbows on them. “Are you going to stay silent and stare at nothing, or are you going to tell me why you’re in my room?”

He’s only been in here twice since me and Mom moved in years ago. Once when he was drunk, and I had to lead him to his own room and hide the fact he was fucked up. The second time, he stormed in after an argument and tried to choke me out. We fought for what felt like hours before his dad broke us apart and blamed it all on me. I was the bully, and he was the victim.

Every. Fucking. Time.

“Did you take something?” I ask, nerves catching in my throat.

“Just…” He sighs, closing his eyes. “Let me sit here.”

Why does the way he says those words stab me in the chest?

For the next ten minutes, we stay silent, my phone buzzing repeatedly from Allie – but this is more important. I hate Blaise. I really fucking hate him, but there’s something within me that also wants to protect him. Plus, I think he knows and he’s trying to process it. Maybe he’s readying himself to walk down for breakfast in a few hours and tell our parents I basically forced sexual acts on him. He knows I’ll get disowned and my schooling will be done. I’ll lose my spot on the team, and if I get kicked out, there’s a high chance my dad will try to swoop in to save the day.

Not that he will. We ran when Mom finally had enough, and he never tried finding me.

I was the son nobody wanted.

Mom has seta spread for breakfast like she does every weekend morning. If she’s not at work on the ward at our local hospital, she’s in the kitchen with her cookbooks and enjoying every second of it.

My stepdad stares at me from across the table. “Where were you last night?”

I raise a brow. “Samson’s, why?”

“We heard the front gates opening in the middle of the night.”

Dropping my gaze to my plate, I shrug. “Wasn’t me.”

The table shakes as his hand slams down on the surface. “Don’t lie, boy.”

“Gavin,” Mom scolds. “He said it wasn’t him.”

“Well, it wasn’t my son.”

He likes to point out on the regular that Blaise is his son, that I am not anything of biology to him, and that he has a strong bad taste toward me. He thinks I’m my dad. I look like him, and apparently, I’m going to grow up to act like him too.

If I ever become a family man, the last thing in the entire world I’d do is abuse them. I wouldn’t force my son to drink gasoline and make him puke it back up, and I wouldn’t make my wife terrified of me.

Never.

I fill my mouth with food and ignore him, despite wanting to slam his face into his bowl of oatmeal.

Blaise walks in, and I freeze my chewing as my eyes follow him. In the daylight, he looks worse. The bruising is more noticeable than earlier. He hasn’t even tried to cover them up or wear a hoodie or sweater to make sure our parents don’t see.

Gavin stands. “Christ, Blaise. What happened?”

He ignores him and takes his seat opposite me, the purple ring around his eye nearly swelling the lid shut. Filling his plate with food, he pours himself a cup of orange juice.

“Did someone hurt you?”

He nods once.

I don’t know why, but I get pissed off, the confused, possessive side of me forgetting that I was the one who hurt him.

My stepdad sits down and grips his cutlery, scowling at me.

“What’s the point in pretending to be a big brother if you can’t protect him?”

I glare at him and my mom. “So I’m to blame when Blaise is a dick and gets beat up?”

“Yes,” Gavin replies. “I’m going to have a word with your school. You get far too much special treatment because of me, and you repay me by allowing this to happen to my son?” He tsks, shaking his head. “You should have stayed with your father.”

I push back in my seat and knock his plate from the table, smashing the ceramic on the wall. “Say that again, asshole.”

“That’s enough!” Mom yells. “Blaise, Cole, go to your rooms. Now.”

Blaise gets up and leaves with no words, but I stay in my chair.

“I’m twenty, not thirteen. Stop talking to me like I’m a child.” I turn back to Gavin. “If you ever bring up my father again, I’ll make you fucking regret it.”

“You live under our roof, boy, so you’ll start respecting us, or you’ll be out with no money and no college funding.”

“Gavin,” Mom snaps.

He raises his hand to stop her from saying anything else. “I own your entire future. If I want my son to replace you instead of Jackson on your football team, I will. If I want you on the streets, you will be. If I want you to jump, you will ask me how high.”

“Blaise can stick up for himself,” I grit out. “You need to get your head out of your ass and see he isn’t the little fucking angel you paint him as. He got beat up because he’s a prick, just like his father.”

“Cole.” Mom pulls my sleeve. “Stop.”

Begrudgingly, I listen and leave, wishing I could punch this motherfucker. But he’s right. My entire future is in his hands.

I hate him just as much as I hate his son.

The backof my skull hits the tiles, my eyes closing as the hot water soaks my hair and skin. Each long stroke has my balls pulling tighter to my body, my lungs forcing out air as I breathe.

I’ve been hanging on the edge since last night. I wanted to find pleasure instantly. I couldn’t fuck my own hand while in bed, with Blaise sulking in the corner of my room, and I couldn’t do it when he got up and left before we went down for breakfast, and now, hours later, my swollen crown leaks with precum as I slide my hand up and down my rock-hard shaft.

I let out a groan, my hand slamming into the glass door, and when my palm slips, wiping away some of the condensation from the steam, my eyes collide with green ones.

I freeze all over, staring at Blaise, my dick pulsing in my palm. From what I can see through the steamed glass, he’s leaning against the sink, his arms folded. He’s wearing a sweater now, probably already packed for our ski trip with our parents and Mia.

“Don’t stop,” he says, his voice strained.

For a long moment, our eyes stay glued, my heart accelerating to a dangerous pace, feeling like it’s about to bound out of my fucking chest.

His gaze dips to my hand around my cock. He’ll be able to see it faintly through the glass. “Keep going.”

My hand stays around my length. “You just have to ruin everything, don’t you?”

He nods. “I said…keep going.”

My grip tightens, and I grit my teeth to hide the way it’s making me fucking feral – him looking at me like I’m next for breakfast, his face, his deep voice, the corded muscles I can see through his clothes. His hands have veins, and I picture the touch being his hand wrapped around me as I absently thrust into my own palm.

From outside the bathroom, my bedroom door opens. “Cole?” Allie calls out, and I pause. What the fuck is she doing here?

Blaise reaches over and locks the door. “Keep going,” he demands again quietly, crossing his arms and leaning against the sink once more.

His chest rises and falls with heavy breaths, matching my own, and I clench my jaw, needing so badly to move my hand, my fingers flexing around the throbbing girth.

Blaise’s body is so relaxed, watching, waiting, and I’m as tense and rigid everywhere.

“Cole?” Allie calls my name again, and the bathroom door handle jiggles. Neither of us look in that direction. I’m trapped under his spell, eyes locked through each slow, tight stroke. I hate myself for doing it, for listening, but for some reason or another, the pleasure wrapping around my spine intensifies with him watching me.

“Can you let me in? Please, talk to me, baby. You can’t break up with me!” Her little fist smashes into the wood, a sob following. “Please, Cole. Your mom asked me to go on this trip since you didn’t ask me. We’ll make it work. I’ll be a good girl.”

She lowers her voice. “I’m always a good girl for you, aren’t I?”

Blaise tilts his head to the side, both of us ignoring her. “Is she always a good girl for you, big brother?”

“No,” I breathe, biting my lip. “I’m not your fucking brother.”

He chuckles, and fuck, my balls nearly explode. “What do you think she’d say if she knew you were in here, touching yourself, fucking loving it too, as I watched?”

Depraved. I’m depraved and sick and I love it.

“I knew she didn’t satisfy you,” he says, smirking as he comes closer to the glass. “You want a cock. And not just any cock. I think you want mine.”

He slides open the glass door, the bathroom far too steamed up for him to see the faint bruises from last night. His proximity has my body feeling alive and I hate myself for it.

My eyes roll as the back of my head hits the tiles again, the muscles in my thighs tightening while I fuck my hand. I’m unable to stop the deep moan from rumbling in my chest.

Listening to Blaise’s voice, I feel him press his hand to my pec, siding it up to grab my throat, strangling me, robbing me of air, but not enough to cut off my words.

“Don’t…fucking touch me,” I say through gritted teeth, slowing my strokes despite wanting him to drop to his knees and suck my cock again, to feel what it’s like to slide into him.

Blaise’s eyes brighten, soaking himself under the shower. His fingers wrap around my wrist, forcing me to keep going.

With a groan, I release so damn hard I see stars under my eyelids. I come all over his wrist as he makes me keep jerking myself through my orgasm while he sucks his bottom lip into his mouth. “Hmm,” he hums. “I knew it. You need to get out of the closet, big brother.”

The grip on my wrist and the hold on my throat vanish as he slaps my cheek. I stand there, unmoving, eyes closed, listening as Blaise leaves through the door to his bedroom, before my back slides down the wall.

What the fuck just happened?

I blink away the dizziness, looking down at the cum painted on the tiles just as Allie knocks on the door again.