The Brotherhood and Me

Chapter 8

This isn't edited. Hell, this isn't even proofread.
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When I walk into the kitchen the following morning, most of the guys are bustling around. They all work well together preparing breakfast. They even gave Sean the task of buttering toast.

“Good morning” I say groggily.

“Good morning, sleepy head” Marc says, handing me a giant, steaming cup of coffee. “I wasn’t sure how you take it, so here’s some cream and sugar.”

“Thank you, Marc” I tell him. “You might be my favorite person on earth first thing in the morning.”

“I see how it is” Luke says. “I risk my life to sneak these chocolate chips into the pancake mix, and Marc gets to be your favorite?”

“Chocolate chip pancakes?” I say, perking up at both the thought of chocolate and the coffee already doing it’s job.

“Don’t tell me you’re a closet sweets fanatic too” North grumbles unhappily.

“Define ‘fanatic” I say with a smile in his direction.

“Someone’s sassy first thing in the morning” Axel says, leaning on the counter beside me. “Can I talk to you a minute?” He murmurs to me quietly.

“Sure” I reply, following him back into the sitting room, which miraculously cleaned itself in the five minutes I was in the kitchen.

“Listen, about last night” Axel says, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Yes?” I prompt him.

“If you catch any of the guys…um, you know” he starts.

“Being physical?” I provide.

“Right” he says. “If you catch any of the guys being physical with each other, or alone, please don’t freak out about it.”

“Why would I freak out about it?” I ask him.

“Well, because talking about it, being okay with it, is a bit different than actually seeing it” he says, shifting in his seat.

“But I have seen it before. Remember, the internet” I tell him, hoping to offer reassurance.

“Right” he says. “Still a bit different.”

“I can’t promise what my initial reaction will be if I walk into a room and I see something happening” I tell him. “But I didn’t not enjoy the things that I saw on the internet.”

“Didn’t not enjoy it?” He asks, smiling. “So you did enjoy it? Wait, Sang, have you ever, um, touched yourself?”

“I’m going to assume you mean sexually” I clarify and wait for him to nod his head. “No, I’ve never touched down there. But to answer your question, I didn’t enjoy it because it was two guys and they were being pretty mean to each other. If they weren’t being so rough, I think I probably would have liked it a lot.”

“Fair enough” Axel says. “Just, promise me that you won’t go running from the house screaming if you see some of the guys messing around.”

“I can definitely promise you that” I tell him. “Now, I need more coffee. Do you think Marc can make more for me?”

“I don’t think he’d deny you anything you asked for” he replies, grabbing my hand to lead me back into the kitchen.

The physical contact is nice. I enjoy the warmth of his palm touching mine and the zing of nerves that run up and down my arm. Are those tingles like I had with Brandon last night? Once we reach the kitchen, Axel releases my hand but leans in to press a soft kiss on my cheek. Yes, those are definitely tingles.

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Breakfast is a hearty combination of scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, toast and, as promised, a large helping of chocolate chip pancakes.

“Enjoy it now” Kota whispers, taking a seat on the bench-style table beside me. “North is a stickler for healthy food and chocolate is a big no-no.”

“Chocolate is a requirement for girls” I tell him, bewildered. Don’t they know anything about females? “At least once a month, I demand to have unfettered access to whatever chocolate I want.”

“Is that fucking right?” Gabriel says from my other side. “You hear that, North? Our little troublemaker is issuing her very first demand, and it’s motherfucking chocolate.”

“Why am I a troublemaker?” I ask him.

“Because it took forever for me to get my dick to go back down last night” Gabriel says in his usual blunt manner.

“I thought they stopped being hard as soon as you, ya know, finish” I tell him, a blush finally blooming. My boldness from the night before disappearing suddenly.

“Oh, now she’s embarrassed” Luke laughs. “Where was that blush last night?”

“We were playing games and joking around last night” I tell him, still blushing. “It feels a bit different to be discussing man-parts over breakfast.”

“Well said, Miss Sorenson. Breakfast, lunch or dinner conversation should never include mention of genitalia” Owen says.

“Back to this demand for chocolate” Kota says, changing the subject. “Do you have any other needs we might not be aware of?”

“I’m not sure” I tell him, thinking about it. “This is going to sound weird, but can we get a fan for my room? The body heat coming off you guys last night was a little much.”

“That’s not weird” Sean speaks up. “A lot of people prefer to sleep with a fan pointed at them.”

“It’s new for me, but I’m also used to sleeping alone” I say. “I’ve never been sandwiched between two sweating, snoring boys before.”

“I do not snore!” Brandon huffs while Corey laughs.

“Was I really sweaty?” Sean asks Owen.

“I’m not sure if you will need to sleep next to more than one of us in the future, unless we decide to camp in the sitting room again” Owen says. “Even so, I will see that a fan is placed in your room this afternoon.”

“If you’re finished eating, Pookie, we should have that chat now” Sean says, standing.

“Oh, okay. You’re coming too?” I ask him.

“If it’s alright with you, sweetie, we all wanted to be here for it” Marc says from his seat across from me.

“O-o-okay” I say haltingly, suddenly nervous. But I know it makes the most sense. They all deserve to know about my history and I can hopefully learn a little bit about theirs in the process. “What would you like to know about me?”

“How about we start simple” Axel says. “You were raised by your grandmother and grandfathers, correct?”

“Yes” I say haltingly. I’m not sure if I should tell them what my grandfathers told me to tell anyone that asks about why I lived with them instead of what most people consider a normal household, or if I should trust them with the truth. I bite my lip and notice several eyes around the table drawn to the action.

“Did you have something to add, Miss Sorenson?” Owen asks, straightening his tie.

“Well, possibly” I say, still unsure. “If I tell all of you something private about my history, will it stay just between us?”

“Yes, of course” Sean says at the same time Owen says, “that depends.”

While Owen and Sean glare at each other, I turn to Axel in question. “If laws were broken, we may have to report them” Axel tells me quietly. “But, honey, we need to know either way.”

“I don’t want my family to be hurt because I couldn’t keep a secret from you” I tell Axel, then meet Owen’s turbulent grey eyes. “Please?”

“Very well” Owen says, clearing his throat. “So long as you were not physically harmed in any way while in their care, we can promise you our silence.”

I nod at his compromise. No one in my home ever harmed a hair on my head. “My mother got pregnant with me six months before turning 16. My grandparents decided that the only way to keep her safe would be to let her have her baby and hope for a boy. If I had been born a boy, I wouldn’t have had to live in seclusion and my grandparents could have simply pretended to be my parents while I lived a life similar to that of the other boys in our commune. Since I was born a girl, it was decided that I would have to live much like my mother did for the first 15 years of her life, only more secluded since she somehow got out of the house and ended up pregnant.”

“Wait, so what happened to your mother?” Nathan asks, furrowing his brows.

“She stayed upstairs in the main house” I tell them. “She’s still there now.”

“But, she” Nathan begins, but Owen cuts his words off with a shake of his head.

“Continue, Miss Sorenson” Owen directs me. “I have a feeling I understand the situation now, but I will explain once we’re all up-to-date on your history.”

“Yes, my mother should have gone before the committee after she gave birth to me” I tell them. “But my favorite grandfather was afraid that she would be sent to a brothel because she was no longer pure. That’s actually one of the reasons he’s my favorite.”

“That is one of the many options your mother would have been offered, but that wasn’t necessarily her only option” Sean cut-in. “The hospital would have gladly taken care of her. Her body already carried a healthy baby girl to term. She would have been the holy grail of finds for the scientific community.”

“That doesn’t really sound much better, Sean” I tell him softly.

“I don’t imagine so” Kota says from beside me, offering my leg a gentle squeeze of support.

“Right” I get back to my own story. “My basement was built much like an apartment. I had a living area, bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. I was allowed window time for 30 minutes each day, but otherwise I stayed in the basement.”

“For 16 years?” Victor says, his eyes blazing.

“Yes” I say. “It wasn’t all bad. I had a computer with internet access, my mother helped with my schooling and I had movies upon movies to watch. And once I learned how to access the library, I was able to use one of my grandfather’s library card to check out electronic books.”

“Did your grandparents spend any time with you in the basement?” Corey asks, not smiling for the first time since I met him.

“What he means, I think, is were you alone all the time? Did you have anyone to talk to?” Brandon clarifies.

“Oh, of course” I tell them. “My grandmother was much too busy keeping the household running to visit very often, but my mother and grandfathers spent much of their spare time with me.”

“Sang, honey” Axel says, pulling my attention to him. “Did any of your grandfathers ever touch you?”

“You mean sexually, I assume?” I ask him, smiling at his flushed cheeks. “No. I am, like the committee promised you, completely untouched."

“If you think we give a shit about that, you’re fucking crazy, Trouble” Gabriel says sternly.

“Thank you for stating the obvious so very eloquently, Gabe” Victor says, fist bumping his friend.

I smile at both of them, “I don’t know if you care or not. I suspect you would be angry on my behalf if I was touched by my family in that way. You seem like the kind of guys that wouldn’t like a girl being in a bad situation. It’s why I trust you all with my family’s secret.”

“Damn right I’d be fucking angry ‘on your behalf’” North growls. “I’d have to break a couple of faces ‘on your behalf’.”

“Agreed” Silas says, staring at me with deep soulful eyes. “Instead, we just have to find out why you think we only want sex from you.”

“Yeah, what’s that all about?” Marc asks.

“My grandmother didn’t spend very much time with me” I begin. “But we would talk and bake together occasionally. She told me that a woman’s job in her home was a simple one if she learned three simple things: clean now, not later; cook big, not small; and you can never tell your husbands no, no matter what they ask for.”

Silence settles on the room after I tell them my grandmother’s three rules of keeping a happy home. Saying them out loud makes it sound a lot worse than she explained to me over the last several years. Cleaning messes sooner rather than later makes the task easier to keep up with. Cooking big meals for your husbands mean they won’t request snacks very often, which means you’re actually spending less time cooking and cleaning up. As for telling your husbands no, that one just made sense to me as a young girl. Maybe not so much now, since I’ve met Lily and her husbands. And my new family.

“When you say ‘no matter what they ask for’, what exactly do you mean?” Sean asks.

“She once told me that she was asked early in their relationship to perform a sexual act that she wasn’t comfortable with” I explain, trying to think of the best way to make them understand. “It was something called ‘triple penetration’. She told them no for several weeks, but they were very persuasive. Finally, they told her to just try it and if she didn’t like it, they would stop and never bring it up again. She said that at first it was uncomfortable, but after awhile she began to enjoy it. I tried to look that phrase up on the internet, but I couldn’t ever find a video about it. I did find the definition, which honestly horrified me at the time. I think, though, that her point was to trust your husbands to know what’s best for you sexually.”

“Jesus fucking Christ” Gabriel mutters.

“Hell no” North booms.

“Calm down, we won’t do that” Silas murmurs, placing his hand on North’s arm to settle his temper.

“We won’t?” I ask, surprised.

“We will most certainly not be doing that” Owen says, handing his phone to Sean so that he can read whatever is on the screen.

“Oh my” Sean says. Then, meeting my eyes, “it would break your tiny body into pieces if we tried that, Pookie.”

“Really?” I ask, still surprised. “But she made it sound so normal. Like all men would want something like that.”

“Maybe your grandfathers” Axel says, handing the phone back to Owen after reading the description of triple penetration that I’m assuming Owen looked up. “But we don’t want to take the risk of hurting you. If you go crazy one night and start begging for something like that, we would try to make you happy. But I beg of you to please not make us take that risk.”

“I am going to hope that somewhere along the lines, something was lost in translation” Owen says, running his hand down his tie again. “I can appreciate what your grandmother might have been trying to tell you. But that does not mean that we will expect sex from you at every turn. It does not mean that we will ask for anything from you. You are in charge of your body, Miss Sorenson. Whatever you want from us, we will give to you freely, but you will have to ask for it.”

“But what if you know of something that I might enjoy and I don’t know about it? How will I know to ask for it?” I ask him.

“We have years to figure out what we enjoy” Kota says. “I don’t expect you to come to me and ask for specific sexual acts, Sang. None of us do. We just need you to understand that if you don’t want to be touched, we will respect that. If you don’t want to be touched in a certain way, tell us and we will respect that too.”

“Besides” Raven speaks up for the first time. “You can learn from us fucking each other.”

“Raven!” Axel all but shouts at the man. “Forgive him, honey. He’s more uncouth than Gabriel.”

I giggle, “I like my Meanie just the way he is” I say, blowing a kiss in Gabriel’s direction. “And Daddy Russia can talk however he wishes.”

“She called me Daddy” Raven says to North in a teasing tone.

“If you keep it up, I’m going to bend you over my knee and make you call me Daddy” North growls at him.

“I would pay to see that” Brandon laughs.

“You and me, both” I say, my eyes bouncing from Raven to North. I can’t help the dirty image of the two big, burly men going after each other like in the video I watched.

“Owen, do something before our dining room table turns into a live-action porn studio” Axel says.

“Yes, please Owen” Sean says, laughing at the look on my face. “She’s not quite ready for that yet, I don’t think.”

“Gentlemen” Owen says in a warning tone.

“Later” Raven mutters to North.

“Much later” Brandon says, still chuckling. “After this, North and I get Sang all to ourselves for a few hours.”

“Oh!” I say brightly. “My bike ride. Yes, Owen. Is there anything else we need to discuss?”

“We can discuss the rest after I have spoken with Dr. Roberts” Owen says. “And yes, I will keep the small detail about your mother’s whereabouts a secret, as promised Miss Sorenson.”

“Thank you, Owen” I tell him, standing from the table. “Would someone show me to my room so I can shower and change for my motorcycle date?”

“That’s me” Gabriel says, standing as well.

“Oh, and Owen?” I say. “Do you plan on calling me ‘Miss Sorenson’ in the bedroom too?”

I can still hear the guffaws of all the boys when Gabriel shuts the door to my room behind us.