Homecoming
Damien
“Should I call my husband?”
Four words.
Four f*****g words that turned my homecoming into a goddamn nightmare.
I stopped halfway down the corridor, eyes closing for a single breath.
Two years.
Two years of different countries, different beds, different women whose names I never bothered to learn.
None of it had worked.
Because she was still here.
And apparently, so was my weakness for her.
I turned slowly.
Lila Hart stood a few feet away, looking like every sin I had ever wanted to commit. Same cherry-red hair that spilled over her shoulders. Same plump lips painted f**k-you red. Same dreamy brown eyes that had always known exactly how to ruin me.
Only now there was a diamond ring on her finger.
Dylan’s ring.
My brother’s ring.
The sight landed like a fist to the ribs.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” She asked, voice sweet and poisonous.
I let out a short, humorless laugh. “How the f**k should I look at you, Lila?”
She tilted her head, playing innocent. “Like someone happy to see an old friend?”
Friend.
Friends didn’t spend years haunting each other’s dreams. Friends didn’t make each other bleed without ever laying a hand on skin. And friends sure as hell didn’t marry your brother while you were still in love with them.
My jaw locked. “Why the hell did you come here?”
Her smile widened as she stepped closer. The scent of her perfume hit me instantly. Warm, expensive, and painfully familiar.
My c**k stirred against my will. I hated that my body still reacted to her like it used to.
“Interesting question,” she murmured. “Considering this is my home now.”
The words sliced through me.
Because she was right. This palace belonged to the Hart family.
And she was a Hart now.
Mrs. Dylan Hart.
The title felt like barbed wire around my throat.
“Besides…” she continued, almost casually, “you disappeared without even showing up to my wedding. That’s a little rude, don’t you think?”
There it was. The killing blow.
She knew.
She f*****g knew exactly what she was doing… every word, every smile, every reminder of what she had taken from me.
“Leave it alone, Lila.”
Her eyes sparkled with something dark and victorious. “No.”
I looked away before I did something irreversible. Something that would destroy what little was left of me.
I brushed past her and headed for my room, but her footsteps followed like the ghost she had become in my head.
“Does it still hurt?” she asked softly.
I froze, hand tightening around the doorknob until my knuckles went white.
“Go away.”
“Does it, Damien?”
I turned.
And for the first time since I had walked through those doors, I looked straight into the eyes that had ruined me four years ago. The same eyes that had watched my brother promise her forever.
Something ugly and hungry twisted in my chest.
“Go to your husband,” I said, voice low and rough. “Isn’t that what you’re good at? Spreading your legs for him and letting him f**k you until you forget I ever existed?”
The color drained from her face.
I should have stopped. I didn’t.
“Make sure he makes you scream loud enough for me to hear it down the hall. So I can remember exactly why I stayed away for two f*****g years.”
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Her lips parted, but no sound came out. Pain flickered across her face, real, raw and it felt like I had driven the knife into my own heart instead of hers.
Then Dylan’s voice echoed up the stairs.
“What’s going on here?”
Perfect f*****g timing.
I didn’t wait for her reply. I stepped into my room and slammed the door.
The silence lasted exactly forty-three minutes.
Then I heard it.
Faint at first. A soft moan. Then another. The rhythmic creak of a bedframe down the hall.
My brother was f*****g my obsession.
I sat on the edge of my bed, elbows on my knees, staring at the floor like it could save me.
But the sounds only grew clearer. Her voice… breathy, broken and then his. Every moan felt like it was being carved into my spine.
I should have turned on music. Should have left the house. Should have done anything except sit there and listen.
Instead I stayed.
My c**k was hard. Painfully hard. I hated myself for it. Hated her. Hated him. Hated the way my body still wanted what it could never have.
Another moan floated down the hallway, longer this time, needier.
I could picture it. Her back arched. Her red hair spread across the pillow. Dylan between her thighs.
Without wasting another moment, I grabbed my keys off the dresser, tore the door open and practically sprinted down the stairs.
I needed to get out. I needed to lose my mind before the sound of her voice carved me into pieces.
I drove like a man trying to outrun his own skin. Twenty minutes later. I enered up at a neon-lit, gritty dive bar, away from the estate.
I didn't think. I just drank.
Three shots of straight whiskey burned down my throat, but it wasn't enough to drown out the echo of her breathy whimpers.
"You look like you want to burn the world down.” A voice murmured beside me. “Need help?”
I turned my head slowly. She had dark hair, not red, thank God and eyes that were completely vacant.
She smelled like cheap vape juice and sweet, synthetic vanilla. It wasn't Lila’s expensive, intoxicating perfume.
"Outside," I growled, grabbing her by the wrist. I didn't ask her name. I didn't care.
The night air in the alley behind the bar was biting, but my blood was boiling.
I threw open the back door of my SUV, shoving her inside but as she turned around to wrap her arms around my neck, I pulled away.
"Turn around." I ordered.
She blinked, confused, but the cold authority in my tone didn't leave room for argument.
She turned, gripping the headrest of the front seat, her back to me.
I spun her around fully from behind, shoving her hips down.
I ripped my belt open and my hard c**k sprang free.
This wasn't about pleasure. This was an exorcism.
I hit her ass from behind, driving into her p***y with a brutal, punishing rhythm that had nothing to do with her and everything to do with the couple down the hall at the Hart estate.
Every time she gasped, I pictured cherry-red hair. Every time she gripped the leather seat, I imagined it was Lila beneath me, screaming my name instead of Dylan's.
Faster. Harder.
I used the hole like an eraser, pounding myself into a stupor, trying to force the image of my brother’s wife out of my head. I wanted to destroy the weakness in myself. I wanted to forget.
The second it was over, disgust crashed into me.
Fucking a stranger in the back of a car from behind hadn't washed Lila out of my system. It hadn't done a damn thing.
I pulled away, rejoining my clothes in silence.
The girl turned around, adjusting her top, looking for some kind of validation or a goodbye.
I didn't give her either. I pulled a thick wad of cash from my pocket, threw it onto the leather seat next to her and pointed to the door.
"Get out," I whispered.
She took the money and left without a word.
I sat alone in the dark cabin of the car, the scent of cheap vanilla suffocating me. I rested my forehead against the steering wheel, my hands trembling.
I still wanted her.