The Carnalli Complex (completed)

Chapter 2



I thought for a moment and figured Condor was about 28 now – the second oldest. Condor had always been the more intense son – the one who never seemed to fit in with the rest of the family. Where Quentin was quiet and composed, Condor was loud and angry. Always fighting or challenging decisions Quentin wisely helped make for the family. Fighting so violently that Dad would have to kick him out of the house to cool down.



The years Condor and I spent in the same house were years I spent tiptoeing around his path. Frankly, he’d always intimidated me. Just having those angry blue eyes aimed in my direction sometimes made me cringe even though I knew he would never hurt me or yell at me. I was the only one he really spoke to and was sort of friends with.



When Condor turned sixteen, he decided to live with an older friend instead of with us and no one heard from him again afterwards. Dad’s pleads and placations were ignored. His letters were sent back and her phone calls unanswered. I never blamed him for the decision. My brothers treated him like an enemy, constantly going out of the way to keep us separated all the time. Somehow, I knew that whatever they argued about involved me. I just wasn’t sure about the why of it.



Quentin sighed. “I never got up with him. He’s living somewhere else now.”



“I’ve seen asshole in town,” Cobryn said, pressing his shoulder against mine now. “He can’t be living too far away.” Then, sotto voce, “…just not far enough.”



Quentin cleared his throat, passing a dirty glance at Cobryn before turning to Ven. “So, how is Amberlyn? You haven’t said much about her lately.”



Ven glanced at me from the corner of his eye and uncrossed then re-crossed his legs.



“Amberlyn?” I asked. “Who’s that?”



“His girlfriend for …how long has it been now?” Cobryn said. “Three…four months now?”



Ven cleared his throat. “Five.”



Yet another thing I didn’t know about the brother I’d once been so close to. Again, for no reason, I felt a momentary twinge of jealousy -though over what I didn’t try to decipher. Maybe because someone else was closer to him than I was now? I jumped up before I could think too much about it.



“Excuse me,” I said, moving quickly toward the stairs.



“Hey, Alain!” Ven called. “Where ya goin’? Alain?”



I ran up to my room and started putting my clothes away in the dresser drawers. It wasn’t long before Ven walked in my room, smiling and making a big show of tiptoeing around all the junk in my floor on the way to my bed.



“Glad to see the cleaning skills’ve improved,” he said grinning ear-to-ear.



Without making eye contact, I threw a tee shirt over his head and continued to fold a pair of clean jeans. He sat back on the end of the bed with a laugh and threw back a pair of socks that looked like they’d walked through desert sand. I casually batted them aside.



Not glancing at my desk covered in misaimed laundry, I shrugged and started folding another pair of jeans. Yeah, I was dying to ask him about Amberlyn but I was still too busy trying to sort out how I felt about the whole thing.



“What?” he asked, and I could feel him staring at the back of my head in confusion.



“What?” I said back.



“You not talking to me now?”



“What’s to talk about? You obviously don’t have anything important to tell me.”



“You don’t want to see the pictures I’ve got?” he asked, avoiding the inevitable fight. I looked up long enough to see the blue packet of photos in his hand then I looked away again.



“Nope. Not really.”



“Why not?”



I let out a sharp, frustrated breath of laughter and set my pile of jeans aside so we could see each other clearly. He’d also changed for the night into a pair of black and green plaid pajama bottoms and a dark green tee shirt. A large breasted, topless woman on the front was leaning over a pool table to take a shot. The white lettered caption underneath said, “Rack ‘em up!”



“Like it?” he asked and was grinning again when I looked back up at him. I didn’t answer. I wasn’t about to give him a way to change the subject I wanted to focus on.



“No phone calls. No letters. Not even post cards!” I said. “And now you only show up after Quentin calls – even though he swore for years he didn’t know where you’ve been?”



His smile slipping, he turned on the bed so his legs hung over the side. At that angle, I saw only the right side of his face.



“It’s complicated,” he said, sighing. “I swear I didn’t do it on purpose.”



“God damn it!” I swore, shouting loud enough to make him jump. He swung his head around and looked at me like he expected to see blood gushing from somewhere on my body.



“What?” he asked, sitting up straighter. “What’s wrong?”



“Don’t make excuses!” I said, standing up with hands on hips to keep his attention on my face. “Where the hell have you been all this time? What was so fucking important that you couldn’t spare five minutes to pick up a goddamned phone?”



He looked shocked at the vehemence in my voice since I’d never seriously cussed at him before. He opened his mouth to say something about it but stopped when I narrowed my eyes and clenched my fists until the veins in the backs of my hands bulged. Now was so not the time to crack jokes.



“I’m sorry,” he said, looking more serious than I’d ever seen. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I …didn’t –” He swallowed like he suddenly didn’t feel too good. “I would’ve tried harder if I thought my letters meant that much. You were pretty damn mad when I left that day.”



“Because you were leaving!”



We’d had a huge argument earlier that day over letting Mom take him all the way to Europe. I\'d spent the rest of that day in my room crying. The last time I’d seen him was from my bedroom window seat, watching him walking out to the car with Mom. He stopped for a moment and craned his neck to look up at me standing at my window with my arms tightly crossed over my aching stomach. Our gazes caught and held for what seemed like a slow-motion moment. I had no idea what to make of his calm expression as he just stood there looking up. I only knew that somewhere in his thoughts he was saying goodbye like he planned on never coming back.



I sniffled and wiped my nose. The effort of holding back tears was making my nose run. The pain of that day was still too fresh a wound.



“When you stopped writing,” I said softly, “I thought you might have been hurt or sick or–!”



His arms went around me and, even though he was the reason I was crying, I allowed myself to vent on his shoulder. I wrapped my arms tightly around his upper half and squeezed. Would begging him to never leave again make any difference? Would letting him see my tears this time make him stay?



When my eyes were too dry for more tears, I just sat there hugging him and feeling the physical differences of our bodies. The solidity of his pecs pressed against my own chest. The impressive bulges of his biceps. He shivered a little when I ran my hand up his bicep and shoulder. He was so much darker than me and very warm. The barbed wire tattoo wrapped around his arm wasn’t anything I would ever be daring enough to do. His shoulder-length hair smelled faintly like coconut shampoo when it brushed my cheek. Over that was the subtle scent of Axe body spray and his own scent.



Ven slowly pulled away and for a moment our gazes collided. My mouth instantly went dry as he reached for my cheek.



“Ven!” Cobryn called. “You alive up there?”



Ven immediately jerked out of reverie, dropped his hand.



“Yeah!” he called back, suddenly turning to face the door. “Whatcha want?”



“Jake called and definitely wants to go someplace tonight or he said he’s comin’ ta haul your asses out!”



“Hot damn!” Ven turned back to me, smiling. “Time for another change. You been to the Rayven yet?”



I frowned and slowly shook my head. “That’s a place, right?”



He threw his head back and laughed but stopped and blinked at me when he realized I was serious. “Wait. That’s right, you’ve never been there before. I’ve been there a few times when I was in town.”



“When were you in town?”



He seemed to catch what he had just said and the smile immediately faded from his face. “It was a long while ago.”



I sighed and didn’t bother asking why he hadn’t called. Guess I wasn\'t important enough to bother with while he was living a big, luxurious life with Mom and his new French fuck-buddy.



“Well, anyways, that’s where I wanna go,” he said. “So throw on somethin’ nice.” He stood and glanced around at some of the clothes I had yet to put away then made a gave growl of disapproval. “Damn, you’ve got some boring-assed taste in fun wear. Not a designer label anywhere, I’ll bet. Remind me to take you shopping soon.”



“For designer clothes?” I gaped at him when he grinned and winked. “No way! That’s too expensive!”



“Ahh, don’t worry. I’ve got plenty of green in the bank for it. Modeling professionally’s got me set for life.”



“You’re modeling?” I cried, my mouth falling open. Surprise number 1,492 of the night.



“Shh!” He turned to me with a finger to his lips. Cobryn’ll never let me hear the end of it if he finds out.”



“Is that why you have so much money now?” I asked.



“Believe me,” he said, glancing back at the door like he paranoid someone was listening. “It wasn’t easy to come by. You wouldn’t believe the rough start I had with Mom when we went broke.”



“How did you get started?”



“Amber...." He stopped and licked his lips. "My girlfriend’s mom runs a modeling agency. She thought of the idea when I was looking for work.”



“Ahh, suddenly it gets clearer,” I said, smiling a little. I guessed right when I wondered what he did. He had enough of Mom’s beauty and charisma to follow in her once seemingly-hallowed footsteps. We all still wondered how she wound up with Dad.



“Seriously,” he said, sifting through the few things I’d hung in my closet. “I’ve done some shoots in the city, too. You’ve never seen me on any magazine covers?”



“I don’t read magazines.”



“Aw, come on.”



“Sorry.”



“How about some of those naughty magazines? I’ve been in a few of those, too.”



I rolled my eyes at that.



“Seriously? C’mon. I know you’ve seen at least one.”



He tossed a white undershirt and a long-sleeved burgundy shirt at my head as he walked toward me. I just stared at him when he reached under my mattress with one hand.



“Hey! What are you doing?”



He sighed in disappointment as the mattress flopped back in place. “Not a one.”



I snorted and threw my Polo shirt at him. “Not interested in seeing you nude, Ven.”



“You sure about that?”



He froze when he noticed I’d taken off my shirt.



I suddenly blushed when I realized what I’d done and quickly slipped on the undershirt. He grinned and wiggled his blonde eyebrows at me.



“Yes,” I said and slipped on the burgundy shirt arm-by-arm. “You don’t have anything that I don’t have.”



“Again,” he said, one eyebrow arched, “you sure about that?”



I looked down at my hands as I buttoned my shirt, not wanting him to see my cheeks getting red. I never remembered getting this uncomfortable around him before. What was this all about? I jumped when he suddenly put both his large hands over mine and tugged them away from the buttons.



“Leave it undone,” he said. “Now admit it, you’re curious.”



My face was officially on fire. I looked up at him. “All right! All right! I’ll only admit you’re different.” I held up my hands in surrender. “You aren’t as scrawny as you used to be.”



“Scrawny? I was never scrawny!”



“You were too!” I said, laughing and scooting back so I was well out of reach. “And you stunk!”



“Hey! That was just when I went out in the heat!”



“No, you stunk all the time.” I scooted back a little more.

Not that it helped.



“That’s it!”



Ven leapt on the bed and wrestled me until my head was locked in the crook of his arm. I tried wriggling away, twisting my hips and pushing at his arm – and it used to work – but he held tight this time.



“Okay, okay!” I said. “I’m sorry!”



He let me fall to the mattress then straddled my butt as I laid there catching my breath.



“You’re not really sorry, are you?” he asked.



“Hey!” I cried when he grabbed both my hands and held them at the small of my back. He had me completely pinned as he sat there grinning down at me with that expression I knew too well.



“Ven, you better not!”



“Or what?” he said.



“Or I’ll kick your ass!”



“You promise?”



“And I’m just being nice right now. I learned some nice, painful moves in self-defense class last year.”



“Oh yah? Cool. You’ll have to show me later.”



“Ven!”



He opened his mouth wide and set those perfect white teeth into the side of my neck like he used to do when we were kids. The dark red – almost purple marks he made would last for days. Kids at school would tease me for having a hickey. Then, further adding to my embarrassment, he always came up with some crazy story about how it happened. Most of the time, his stories were so crazy that even I laughed at the stupidity of them.



This time nothing about this seemed funny …especially when he started sucking. My breath hitched and caught in my throat. Involuntarily, my back arched. I chewed on my dry lips when my cock twitched under my jeans. What had once been an almost weekly torture for me as a kid was suddenly something more intimate. Something more …pleasurable.



Ven must have felt the difference, too. His grip tightened on my wrists. He applied more pressure with his teeth then licked at the small chunk of skin clenched between them. I moaned softly when he leaned forward a little more, pressing an intimidating erection against my ass.



“Please,” I whimpered though I had no idea what the hell I was pleading for. Please!”



He reacted to the helpless sound, letting go of my neck and arms to grab a fistful of my hair. He took a shuddering breath as his lips barely brushed across mine, our breaths mingling as tension escalated. The clean spice of his Axe body spray filled my nostrils and tasted slightly bitter on the air when I sucked in a sharp breath through my mouth.



“I’m sorry,” he said, backing away to sit up on his knees. He quickly released me and stood up to wipe the moisture from his upper lip on the back of one arm. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Guess things aren\'t the way they used to be, huh?"



I sat there stupidly blinking up at him, no words forming on my lips or in my head. Why hadn’t I panicked just then? Nate had nearly done the same thing to me, but I didn’t feel scared when Ven did it. I almost felt…. My whole body flushed thinking about the way I\'d felt.



“Hey!”



Ven and I both jumped when Cobryn stuck his head in, frowning.



“Can we skip on the makeup, ladies?” he said. “Jake’s gonna be here any minute. Get dressed.”



“What?” Ven asked, crossing his arms and smirking. “That pocket watch up your ass ticking a little too fast? Jake can’t get here that fast.”



“Wanna bet?”



I jumped up to look for some matching pants as they continued exchanging insults in the hall. Cobryn was right. Jake was a speed demon. Looked like I was in for another night out.



I sighed heavily. What was one more night of “surprises” in a week smotheringly full of them?