“You didn't do me any favors,” Rory muttered.

There was lull. Though silent, regret, and sadness blared through the walls.

“I love you, brother. Even when it doesn't seem like it,” Bobby said. Pained was laced through his words.

“I know, you bastard. But don't ever come back,” Rory replied. “We're done.”

“I know,” Bobby answered.

Bobby emerged from the bedroom solemnly. He placed a hand on the small of my back. “Let's go, Lil,” he uttered.

We stepped out of the house that had been my prison for seven years, and into the unknown, unlimited world. Together.

The drive to the motel was not a great celebration. It was still; somber. A great sacrifice had been made. We had to slaughter the living to get to the feast. The carcasses of our principles, loyalty, and familial bonds lay bloodied on the altar. There were no cheerful hugs, or jumping for joy. Our drive was moments of silence, stringed together, in honor of the things we surrendered to get what we needed.

Bobby pulled into the motel parking lot.

“We should get you to a hospital.”

“No, I'm fine. I don't want to see another person today. It's been 24 hours. I'm still here. I'm fine.”

“Lil . . .”

“Please, I just want to get inside. I'm exhausted.”

Bobby sighed in concession. I think he used all his fight in the bedroom with Rory. “Fine. Stay here while I get the room.”

Bobby came back in minutes with the key, and we entered our small, dimly lit motel room. It didn't have the trappings of my beautiful two-story house, but it was a palace. Because I was free. I was the master of my life now. And I had the perfect accomplice at my side.

I slipped off my dress, wrinkled, damp and bloody from the past 24 hours, as Bobby brought in our bags. I stood there in my slip, watching him. His white t-shirt, wet with sweat as it stuck to his shoulders and chest. His knuckles cut and swollen from his battle with Rory, his hair a tousled mess, his cheeks flush with heat and untapped energy.

It wasn't real. I didn't have him. I was destined to pine for him. To live a life incomplete.

I closed my eyes, drawing in a long breath as I leaned against the wall behind me. Grounding myself to this spot. I pulled the pins out of my disheveled hair and let it collapse around me.

Everything ached. My spirit and bones were weary.

The door to the motel room shutting forced my eyes open. Bobby stood there, watching me in taut silence. I knew he was hurting. No matter how he reasoned this to himself. No matter how much this result justified the means, he had to leave his brother behind.

We stood there for a while, just eyes on eyes. Taking in the other. The reality of this new world. The one we had dreamed of for so long that we had begun to think we had never deserved it. That our punishment for even wanting it was that we would never have it.

Bobby walked up to me trepidatiously, like I might startle if he moved too fast. Then he was there, his long shadow blanketing me.

He looked me up and down, pushing the hair off my shoulder, kissing it. Then, his lips found the bruise on my forehead. “I'm never gonna let anything like that happen to you ever again.”

“I know,” I choked out against his chest.

My slip clung to me in this muggy motel room. Bobby had seen me in every state, but I felt dirty.

“I should shower.”

“You're perfect,” he breathed against my ear, the words sending a chill down my neck. “How are you feeling?” he asked tenderly.

“A little sore. I fell running out of the house.”

Bobby ran his finger underneath the straps of my slip and peeled it away from my body. He ran his bruised and bloodied fingers along the slopes and divots, the slim bones and the soft crests. I watched him, mesmerized by his gentleness after such a brutal display of protection.

Small bruises had begun to develop from the fall and he came to his knees to softly kiss each one. I bit my lip to fight back the swell of tears. I was so full after being empty for so long, I couldn't bottle all the emotions his tenderness awakened in me.

Bobby stood up against me as I leaned back on the wall. He buried his nose into my neck and rasped, “I can't believe I get to have you.”

We had been in the shadows so long. Though there was nothing truer than how we felt about each other, it had been relegated to a dirty secret. A lie.

But now we could bask in the sun. In the light of a love so pure, it existed before we ever understood it. Before the world could ever taint it.

A tear escaped my eye as he grazed his lips along my neck, jawline and to my mouth. The kiss was so soft, I wasn't sure if our lips even touched.

“Lil, the girl who was beautiful even when she tried hard not to be,” he recited wistfully.

I smiled through the tears. Those words that had squeezed the joy from my heart years ago now filled it like a cornucopia.

“Let me make the pain go away,” my lover murmured as he flitted kisses along my glistening collarbone. I wondered if he meant mine, or his.

The pale orange light glowed against him as I reached for the bottom of his shirt and pulled it away from his sun-drenched body. Shadows settled in the vales of his muscles, glossy with perspiration as his lips traced a path down my breasts, my tummy, to the inside of my thigh.

He moaned as he tasted me. Any insecurities I had about the state I was in melted away with the heat of his mouth latched to me. Bobby slid one leg over his shoulder as his tongue drew trails along the sensitive, ripe softness.

I gripped his messy, silky hair in my fingers as my hips snaked against his mouth, lost in the pleasures of the flesh. Bobby's lips and tongue could make me forget a house was burning down around me.

Sweat trickled from my temple, along the peaks of my bust and down the underside of my breast—a collection of the external and internal heat meeting, turning me into searing flames. Bobby was the accelerant.

My hips snaked faster against his tongue, as he used it to slip in and out of me; sex with his mouth.

He moaned as if he was drinking from a flute of the sweetest champagne.

One of my hands left his hair and looked for an anchor as my legs grew weak from the pulsing thrill that ran along them. I felt around, only finding the lampshade and gripping it. The light around us shifted as the shade tilted, leaving us in darkness.

Bobby pulled away for a moment. “You taste so good.” He lapped his tongue all the way up the engorged lips, tasting the cream, and let the tip of his tongue swirl along the swollen bud.

I let out a weak cry.

He slid two of his thick fingers inside of me, curving them and caressing me. While his lips and tongue did the devil's work just outside of it. The pleasure was too carnal to be from god.

Like his mouth was the trigger, a bomb exploded inside of me, taking me down all at once. My supporting leg gave out from under me, but his strong shoulders and hand held me up. The lamp I used for leverage slipped sideways and fell to the floor, beaming unfiltered light on us. I reached for the wall behind me, looking for something to remind me I was still on this planet. That I hadn't died and gone to heaven or hell or wherever something this bad could feel this spectacular.

I called out echoes of Bobby's name. Each one weaker and more distant than the last as he fed from me unrelentingly, drawing out every last pulse of the orgasm.

Utterly spent, my leg slipped off Bobby's shoulder. He stood up as I used the wall to prop myself up, panting, my head pounding from the intensity of it all.

I could see Bobby raging through his pants, and I wanted to please him, but I had nothing left.