Five Brothers

by Penelope Douglas

Everything in life is about power, and it wasn’t that I was taught that I didn’t have any. I learned that men would like me better if I didn’t show it.

All I ever wanted was to love waking up. To be counted on to make someone’s life better. And I want a man who breathes me. Who craves me and needs me.

“Someday,” he says as he squeezes my throat, “when you look, act, and smell like a pristine pair of fifteen-hundred-dollar heels, and you’re married to a lawyer or a banker who tastes like glue and parades you around like his little trophy…” He flicks his tongue over my ear, taunting me. “I can wonder if it’s my son he’s playing Daddy to.”

thats a good line

I joke in his ear, “Just don’t ask me to wait for you, okay?” “Not me,” he says, letting me go. “But…you will be a Jaeger someday.” I look at him. “You feel it, don’t you, Krisjen?” His eyes light up. “You belong in that house.”

“It’s going to be one of us,” he tells me. “Not Jerome Watson. You’ll be ours, or I’ll make sure we all fuck you before we give you back, so nothing compares. So you always regret leaving us.”

He cares more about their lives than he ever did his own.

“I just want to love you.” All I can do is whisper. “That, I will do beautifully.”