My Fault (Culpables, #1)

by Mercedes Ron

was the one who got her into all this. It was my fault. It was my fault she was destroying herself. In a way, we’d switched roles. She had shown up and dragged me out of the black hole I’d fallen into, but in doing so, she’d wound up taking my place.

“Yeah, right. I’m sure he’s crazy about Jane Austen.”

I didn’t know if it was the attraction of the forbidden, since she was my stepsister, or if I needed somehow to feel I could control her, put out that fire that kept shooting out of her mouth and make her act like all the other women I’d known and managed to control.

I’d kissed her. I’d offered to do it not because I gave a damn about her getting revenge on her ex-boyfriend or wanted her out of the party; it was just pure desire. I wanted to taste her, to feel her. As soon as I saw her that night, I wanted to get between her legs and make her mine. It was uncomfortable, hellishly uncomfortable, and frustrating, especially since I couldn’t stand her. Why did she have to be so goddamn attractive?

“I’ve been holding back with you… Dammit, you’re stuck in my head, and I can’t stop thinking of you,”

“I’ll take you wherever you want to go,” he said, knitting his brows, as if not even he could believe what he was saying.

Those eyes of Nick’s only promised darkness.

“It’s not like I don’t love holding you, Freckles, but if you don’t tell me what happened, I might draw the wrong conclusions, and I’ll wind up pounding the shit out of the wrong guy.”

“Please God tell me you didn’t fuck my other car up, too, and now you’ve come to me because you feel bad about it because I swear, all the kisses in the world won’t help that…”

“I hope you’re not stupid enough to let that asshole put his hands on you.”

Our irritation with each other was now an unquenchable longing, and it put me in an awkward situation.

Nothing would be as intense as the feelings I had for that girl now sleeping in my home.

“Can I break his face now?” he asked. “I don’t think we’ve fooled anyone,” I replied. “I called you Precious. For me, Freckles, that’s tantamount to asking for your hand in marriage.” He slid a lock of hair back behind my ear.

“That’s enough!” I shouted. “Not for me it isn’t, Precious.” “You can stop faking, Nicholas. No one’s here to see us.” “Who said I was faking?” That surprised me, threw me off-kilter. Fuck. What was I getting into?

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked, wriggling away only to find that Mario was already walking off. “Are you crazy?” “Crazy about you, Precious,” he said, lighting a cigarette as if nothing were out of the ordinary.

“I’m keeping track,” he responded. “At this rate, you’ll be my indentured servant before my twenty-second birthday.”

“I don’t do anything out of the goodness of my heart, love.” That last word almost made my heart stop, but it was even worse when he bent over, grabbed my neck, and kissed me hard. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything…

Just the thought of having her at my mercy turned me on unbearably. I needed it, even if I knew it was wrong. I needed her the way I needed oxygen to breathe.

“I’m not so sure about relatives… How about distant pseudo-relatives obliged to tolerate each other and hook up once in a while?” Oh, so he was making fun of me.

My good mood and my self-esteem sank like his body sinking into that cold water.

“I am,” he said, turning to look at me. “I’m jealous, I’m super-jealous, and I don’t even know why. I’ve never been jealous of anyone in my life, Noah, and certainly not of some jerkoff like Sam.”

“I’d do it all with you, Noah, you know that…but I won’t do anything until the fear disappears from your eyes.” Dammit.

“Fine. But don’t tell me it wouldn’t be amazing if y’all hooked up. That doesn’t count as incest, does it?” Once again, I found myself choking on my muffin.

I guess I like books that don’t necessarily have a happy ending. They’re more real, more like the way life is. Happiness is something you have to look for, you don’t just find it so easily.”

“I can’t be with you, Nicholas.” Those words cut like a knife. “You represent everything I’ve spent my whole life running from.”

“I would never lay a finger on you,” he said. “I don’t know what happened to you in the past, Noah, but whatever it was, I promise—I will never hurt you.” I shook my head. “You already did, Nicholas.”

I’d come to understand what it meant to love someone. I knew it, I knew I loved her now, I needed her to breathe… How could I have been so stupid?

I felt a pain deep in my chest, a pain that only ever went away when I was with Noah. I loved her. I needed her next to me to be a better person, to forget those bad memories. I needed her so I could feel loved.

“I won’t stop talking to you, and I will get you to change your mind about me,” he said, bring his face closer to mine than was appropriate. “I want you for myself, Noah, and I won’t stop until I have you.”

Loving that girl was going to put an end to the last bit of patience I had.

“Can you tell?” I asked her, seeing that she had her eyes open and was staring at me. “My heart never beats that way. Only when you’re nearby.” She closed her eyes and remained still. “Every time I see you, I’m dying to kiss you. Every time I touch you, the only thing I know is that I wish I could keep doing it the whole night long. Noah…I’m in love with you. Please stop pushing me away. You’re just hurting both of us.”

I kissed her the way every man should be able to kiss a woman at least once in his life.

“I love you, Noah,” he said then, and I froze. “I love you more than my own life, and when the time comes, I’m going to give you the most precious children the world has ever seen because you’re beautiful and I know you’ll make it through all this shit…and I’ll be right beside you to make sure of it.”

“You were made to be my personal torture,”

“You’re incredible,” he said, “I love you. I loved you from the very first time you told me you hated me.” I laughed, feeling a little regretful. “I just hated not having you to myself.” “From now on, you will. I’m completely yours, body and soul…completely.”

After years without trusting a woman, I had chosen one who was complex but perfect, one who could give me back all the love and trust that I had lost at such an early age.

“Son…please tell me you haven’t hooked up with your stepsister,”

“Look, I don’t know what you two have got going on, and I don’t want to know, but please, I beg you, don’t do anything idiotic. It’s hard enough to keep Raffaella from losing her mind with what’s going on. The last thing I need is to learn you’re hot for your stepsister.”

“I’m not hot for her, Dad… I love her. And I promise you, I won’t let anyone lay a finger on her.”

His lips kissed mine, gently but with the full force of the love that had grown between us. The kind of love that happened only once in a lifetime, the kind of love that touched your heart and never left you, the kind of love nothing else compared to, a love we sought, a love we may even have hated, but that made us alive, that made us need each other, that turned us into something the other person couldn’t live without…the love that I had just found.

I realized then that I had helped her, too, that I also had caused a radical change in her life. That had been my fault.