Page 73 of Fuckboy Psychos (Scarlett Force 1)
A hard hand grabs my wrists, pushing my hands away from Scarlett’s ass, and our mouths part. I open my eyes to stare over her shoulder, meeting the ice-blue, almost white, stare of Kellin Bohnes.
“Enough,” he says, and in that one word, I can see it. He’s used to being obeyed. He’s used to people scrambling to follow his every order lest they meet a violent end at his hands and the bones inked into his flesh.
I’d be afraid of him if I hadn’t met a monster who is, at the very least, his equal if not his superior.
“Shit,” Scarlett murmurs, and then she’s ducking out between us and yanking her dress back down to cover her naked ass and cunt. Why she isn’t wearing panties under that short, tight little dress, I have no idea, but it’s making me feel crazy. It’s making me want to rip out my hair with both hands and drive my Mustang so fast that the entire world is blurred at the edges, so fast that if I were to wrap it around a tree, my life would snuff out in an instant.
I rub my hand over my jaw as Bohnes looks me over, and then I say something that I know neither of them will understand: “If it weren’t for my brother, I would wait for a moment away from Bohnes, and I would fuck you so hard and so raw that you’d never even consider looking at another man.”
All of this, of course, in Japanese. I’m fluent in it, because of my mother. My brother isn’t, and I know it makes him crazy that I have at least one skill that he doesn’t possess. I mean, other than empathy. I’m not sure if he envies that, too, or if he pities me for it.
Scarlett stays where she is, looking up at what little she can see of the moon while I turn to look Bohnes straight in the face. A muscle ticks in his jaw as he scowls at me, rubbing his hand across his throat, as if he’s considering wrapping that same hand around mine.
“Get lost,” he tells me, and the words are absolute. I flick my gaze over to Scarlett’s back. As if she can sense me staring at her, she turns around to look at me, her long dark hair shimmering with silver highlights. I’ve never met anyone with hair as dark as mine but whereas I’ve got an almost blue undertone, hers is straight-black. As endless as the night without stars.
I exhale, clenching and unclenching my hands at my sides.
“It’s his party,” she says, shrugging her shoulders as I stare at her. As if we didn’t just share a moment there. Absent Bohnes’ presence—and the mental image of my brother looming over us—we’d have fucked right there on the hood of my Mustang. “If he says you go, then you go. Get lost, Aspen, and go spend time with your girlfriend. You might think of Lemon as Prescott trash, but she’s a better woman than you deserve.”
Scarlett takes off for the stairs that lead to the front porch as Bohnes watches me in a way that warns I’ve now entered his radar. He’ll be watching me, particularly when it comes to Scarlett Force.
I curse under my breath and head around the back of my car, climbing into the driver’s seat and taking off before I get myself into anymore trouble here tonight.
As it always does, trouble follows me home anyway.
As soon as I walk in the front door, I see Yua. She’s the head of our household, a woman who was both housekeeper as well as nanny to me growing up, more mother than my actual mother. Not through any fault of her own, obviously.
Yua is covered in bruises, her round face swollen and misshapen, her eyes downcast. I’ve always loved her but, once again, my brother has managed to destroy this relationship the way he does all of my others. Yua Ito no longer loves me. As soon as she greets me, I know that for a fact. I know that my brother did this, delivered these blows as if they were from me.
“Okaerinasaimase, Goshujin-sama.” She bows at me and stays bowed, as if she dare not lift her head until I offer her permission. Welcome home, Master. Yua has always called me by my first name, sometimes even with affectionate honorifics. But master? No.
I hate it.
I hate that I can feel her pain and confusion, and I can’t understand for the life of me why she doesn’t already understand the difference between my brother’s dark conscience and my twisted, twilight colored one.
I stopped trying to convince people of that long, long ago. Both my brother and I are persuasive, both of us consummate actors. We know each other far too well. But how is it fair that he’s my blood, and he was born wrong, and I have to suffer his torments day in and day out.
