THROTTLE: (A Stepbrother Romance)

THROTTLE

A
Stepbrother Romance

By

Holly
Stone

THROTTLE – Copyright
© 2015 Holly Stone

This book is protected under the
copyright laws of the United Kingdom.
 
No
part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any
form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the
prior written permission of the author.

This book is a work of fiction.
 
Names, characters, places and incidents are
products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
 
Any resemblance to actual events, locals or
persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
 

Cover Art by Holly Stone (Image
purchased from
www.fotolia.com
by @
Zsolnai
Gergely
)

Edited by Claudette Cruz

Reader Advisory:
 
THROTTLE contains scenes that may
be a trigger to those sensitive to portrayals of non-consensual sex.
 

1

Emma
couldn’t move.
 
The arms that rested at
her sides felt as though they were strapped to the bed, but they couldn’t be,
could they?
 
She was home; she knew that
from a single flash where her sight cleared enough to register the pattern of
glow-in-the-dark stars that had been on her ceiling since she was a little
girl.
 
Her eyes were so dry and she
wanted to blink, to scrunch her eyes, but nothing was working in the way she
expected.
 
It was as though her brain had
lost control of her body.

Time
passed in darkness interspersed with strange flickering light.
 
She heard distorted sounds and saw weird
mystical things.
 
Colors drifted across
her vision.

Nothing
felt real.
 

Her
tongue seemed swollen in a mouth so dry it felt as though it was packed with cotton
wool. The short, fast breaths she took through her nose sounded loud as they
rattled around her motionless body and addled mind.
 
She wanted to speak, to call out to someone,
but the words she needed kept disappearing into the fog inside her head.

The room was so hot she
could feel sweat trickling down her hairline, but couldn’t move to swipe it
away.
 

Darkness again.
 
Then a noise, cool air on her legs, a relief
at first.

Hot
hands pushing, fumbling, hurting.
 
In her mind she squirmed to get away, she slapped out to stop the
fingers, but her body didn’t move at all.
 

Pain
between her thighs.
 
Weight pressed her
down.
 
A strong smell invaded her
nostrils.
 

A face loomed.
 
Couldn’t be, couldn’t be, couldn’t be...
 

Dark
eyes, open mouth.
 

Sounds.
 
Horrible sounds.

She tried to close her
legs.
 
She wanted to cry.

Then there was nothing.

2

Had
it been eight years already?

Most
days dragged by so slowly, it felt as though an eon had elapsed since Jared’s
incarceration began. At the same time, the events that led to his imprisonment
were as clear and fresh in his mind as if they'd occurred only the day before.

He
hadn’t even known there was a word for what he did until he’d been dragged up
from the cells and interrogated by the police.
 
He’d kept his hands under the table in front of him because he didn’t
want them to see how much he was shaking.
 

No
one outside could imagine what it felt like to squeeze the life out of a man, to
feel the jerking and juddering as you throttled away their last breath.
 
Sometimes Jared found himself staring at his
own hands, marveling at what they’d done, disgusted at their violence but proud
of their ability to protect.
 

Eight long years.
 

Did
he regret them?
 

That
was hard.
 
It was impossible not to look
at the loss of so many years of freedom with anger and unhappiness.
 
When he thought of all the things he could
have been doing in his twenties he wanted to punch a hole in a wall from
frustration.
 
But he couldn’t regret what
he did because the alternative was unthinkable.
 
That filthy bastard hadn’t deserved to live another day with the power
to hurt and to abuse.
 
Jared wouldn’t ever
regret putting a stop to what he had seen.
 
Those memories couldn’t be erased, but he wished that they could.
 
He’d do anything to never have to remember
again.
 
He shook his head in an
instinctive attempt to clear his mind, not wanting to think about that night,
especially not on the day he was getting out.
 

He
flexed his fingers then put them behind his head so he could do another set of
stomach crunches.
 
One,
two, three.
 
He counted them off,
trying to hold his focus so he wouldn’t have to face seeing a flash of that
image again.
 

Emma.
 

Her
name was like a fire in his mind and a cool breeze to his soul.
 

Ten,
eleven, twelve…he wasn’t even feeling it yet.
 
There hadn’t been much else to do in the pen except build up his fitness
and strength.
 
He’d gone inside at eighteen
and learnt pretty quickly that a man needed to be able to protect himself.
 
That train of thought brought back more memories
he didn’t want to recall.
 

Twenty, twenty-one.
 
Jared had called Seth last week; he’d be
waiting outside to collect him.
 
Emma had
wanted to.
 
Her last letter had confirmed
it, but Jared couldn’t face her, not straight out of jail.
 
She’d already seen him reduced to nothing
more than a number.
 
He’d never wanted
her to see him dressed in orange, looking like the criminal he was.

Twenty-eight, twenty-nine.
 

They
were letting him go.
 
That’s all that
mattered.
 
It was all he wanted to think
about.

And
he was never going back.

3

"Did
you hear? Jared got out last week."

"Really?"
Emma asked, feigning a look of surprise as she glanced toward her friend. It'd
been six days, nine hours, and thirty-seven minutes since his release.

Not
that she was keeping track.

"Yeah,
I heard about it from Seth. I guess Jared got in touch with him for a place to
stay," Nicky said, her eyes filled with concern. "So he hasn't come
to see you?"

"Nope,"
Emma answered with a dismissive shrug. Or what she hoped was a dismissive
shrug, anyway. It was hard not to give away the anxious anticipation that
coursed through her at the very mention of his name.

"Weird,
you'd think that'd be one of the first things he'd do."

"Nah,
I don't think so," she said, shaking her head.

"Really?"
Nicky's eyebrows rose in surprise. "After everything he did, you don't
think he'd
wanna
see you as soon as he got out? I
mean, it's been—"

"Eight
years," she said, inhaling sharply. "I know how long it’s been."

Emma
turned away, glancing across the empty field that stretched into the distance
beside them. Just saying the words left a bittersweet taste in her mouth, made
her heart ache with longing. Everything had changed. Everything was the same.
Where was he?

Nicky
regarded her with keen eyes, ever curious to know more. "Didn't you send
him letters all these years?"

Every week without fail.
Four hundred and twenty-three letters in total.
Enough
words to fill several volumes. And twice a year he wrote back; sixteen letters
that she cherished, hidden away discreetly where prying eyes would never find
them.

"No,"
she lied.

Nicky
scoffed in disbelief, but let the subject drop. They were almost back to the
old house Nicky called home. Each worn step up to the porch creaked in protest
under their feet, like the old oak door that clung to its ancient hinges.

Emma
barely noticed. Her mind was awash with old, familiar memories. As teenagers,
she'd practically lived at her best friend's house. That was before Jared’s
father had moved in with her mother promising stability, marriage, and enough money
that they wouldn’t have to count out the pennies at the register any longer.
 
It had all started out so promising.
 

She
remembered watching Jared chopping the firewood to the side of their home on
the first night they became a family of sorts. He’d been so closed off at
first, wary, like a wild animal that had been cornered and was looking for a
way to escape.
 
If she closed her eyes
and listened carefully, she could almost hear the rhythmic blows of his axe,
the cracking split of the wood and the scent of his sweat-soaked skin when he
returned from his work and brushed past her in the narrow hallway.
 

That
had been the start of it for her.
 
The
spark of
feeling
that grew inside her
until she had to face the fact that she had fallen in love with the man who was
at that time, for all intents and purposes, her stepbrother.

"Are
you going to see him?" Nicky's voice broke through her reverie.

"Huh?"
Emma's gaze snapped back to her friend, then dropped to the floor again,
picking over the peeling linoleum. "No, I don't think so."

"Why
not? I don't get it, Emma. I know you've been waiting for him to get out. What
happened between you two?"

"Nothing!"
she snapped, glaring at her friend.

"But
he killed—"

"Nothing
ever happened between us. Just drop it," she growled.

Emma
didn't want to remember how things were after what happened but before he was
sent away. The pain, the fear, the desperate uncertainty—they were a distant
memory. She preferred it that way. Distance made it easier to deal with the
fallout of those dark, broken months.

It
was late when she finally left, bidding Nicky farewell in the doorway. The sun
had dropped beyond the mountains, leaving the sky with fading shades of blue
and gray. Nights were getting colder as summer faded and fall began in earnest.
She wrapped her coat more tightly around herself, shoving her hands deep into
the fleece-lined pockets.

Their
houses were only a mile apart; Emma knew the path by heart. Still, with the
dark of night drawing in, she felt a chill pass down her spine and hastened her
steps.

Overhead,
the streetlights started to click on, each one emitting a low buzz at first as
the bulbs came to life. With a sigh of relief, she reached the end of her
street and trudged up the cracked concrete driveway, heading toward the front
door.

It
was dark along the side of the house. The security light had been out for
weeks, but damned if she could be bothered to replace it. As she neared the
door she saw the note tucked behind the knocker, her name written in the neat
cursive she had grown so familiar with.
 

Jared
had come to see her and she hadn’t been home.
 
Emma cursed under her breath and looked around, hoping desperately that
she’d see his retreating figure and be able to call out to him, but he was long
gone.
 
Fumbling her key into the lock,
she swung the door open and reached for the light switch, then tugged on the
note carefully.

Her
fingers itched to open it and read his words, to pour over them as she had each
letter he’d sent, but she was scared.
 
When he hadn’t replied to her last letter to confirm his release time she
was worried.
 
She’d read through his
letters again and noticed that in all the years he’d been incarcerated, he’d
never promised her anything.
 
Sure, he’d
said that he missed her, that he was thinking of her, that her letters kept him
going and other more fevered things that kept her awake at night.
 
But he’d never made plans to come back to
her.
 

And
with every hour that passed since he was set free her dread had increased.
 
What if Jared didn’t want her?
 
She’d be devastated, but she’d
understand.
 
He’d witnessed something
terrible that night, something that he might never be able to look past.
 
If Emma was thankful for anything in her life
it was that her memories were patchy because of the drugs.
 
Jared’s wouldn’t be, though.
 
There was nothing he could do to erase what had
happened from his mind, and the guilt she felt for it all was something she’d
been pushing down inside herself since the judge handed out Jared’s
sentence.
 

Emma
closed the front door and perched on the edge of the chair in her hallway,
holding the note gingerly as though it were an unexploded bomb.
 
The clock ticked away minutes while she
worked up the courage to open it, finally accepting that knowing was better
than remaining in limbo.
 
With a deep
breath, she flipped it open and read quickly.

Emma,

I’ve been out for a week
now, wanting to come and see you but not being able to find the courage to do
it.
 
I keep thinking about you and I can’t
get past knowing that I’m not good enough for you anymore.
 
You deserve a man who isn’t going to have a
mark against him for the rest of his life, who isn’t going to struggle to put a
roof over his family’s head.
 
I should
have told you to find someone else a long time ago, someone more worthy of you,
but I couldn’t.
 
I needed you while I was
in there, I was selfish and I’m sorry for that.
 

I want you to know that I
don’t regret a thing.
 
Not one day has
gone past since that night that I’ve wished I’d acted differently.
 
If I were faced with it again, I’d do the same
thing.
 

I love you Emma, too much
to come to you and be with you like I know you want.

You’ll find someone else,
someone who can be everything that you deserve.
 
I’m sorry that life hasn’t been easier on us and that our chance was
taken.
 
I’ll always love you Emma, but I
know this is for the best.

Jared x

By
the end of his note, Emma’s tears were dripping onto her jeans, leaving
dark-blue blotches of sadness.
 
The sense
of loss and disappointment was terrible.
 
Even though she’d been fearful that he’d do this, there had been a huge
ball of hope insider her, too.
 
But worse
still was the realization that he was trying to do the right thing again, to
sacrifice yet more of himself for her happiness.
 
Imagining him writing that note, pushing down
the love he felt to suggest she try to meet someone better than him was too
much for her to bear.

She wasn’t going to let him do this.
 
She didn’t want anyone else.
 
Why couldn’t he understand that?
 
Emma rested the note on the little table next
to her and swiped at her eyes.
 
Jared
might think this was his decision to make, but she was going to make damn sure
he heard her out.
 
He’d already given up
more for her than any man should have to in a lifetime.
 
Now it was her turn to show him how that
she’d fight for the man she loved.