The Devil at Her Door
VANCE
The stale stench of spilled bourbon and scorched tobacco still hangs heavy in the upstairs corridor, but none of it dulls the low, breathy friction leaking through the wood. Two simple mandates were supposed to keep my head straight: never lay a finger on my best friend’s younger sister, and never cross the threshold of her personal space. Tonight, both of those lines are turning into dust beneath my boots.
Down on the first floor, Mateo’s birthday blowout finally burned out into dead silence, leaving the living room littered with unconscious bodies. Zane is out cold on the sectional. Kiernan passed out flat on his back with a bowl of stale chips balanced on his sternum, while Cole and Slade crashed hard out on the screened porch chairs. Everyone is accounted for—except the driver of that beat-up dark sedan sitting unmarked at the edge of the gravel driveway.
The thought of some nameless scumbag slipping past them, sneaking up these stairs, and sliding his hands over her skin turns my stomach into pure, molten iron. If someone is in that bedroom right now coaxing those wet, broken noises out of her throat, I won’t just break his neck—I’ll take a blade to him, drag his corpse out to the marsh, and make sure not even his family finds what’s left.
I sell myself the lie that I’m only securing the floor, just making sure the drunks downstairs didn't wander where they don't belong. The old timber of her door never sat square in its frame, leaving a thin, crooked seam near the latch. I lean my shoulder against the jamb, dip my chin, and cut my eyes straight through the gap into the amber lamplight.
The sight on the mattress knocks every ounce of air clean out of my lungs.
Sloane is stretched out against the tangled sheets, flushed a feverish, humid pink from her collarbones down to her ribs. Her gray sleep shorts are yanked down past the soft curve of her hips, pinning her knees open, and her bare right hand is buried between her thighs. Her fingers circle against her own slick center in an agonizing, slow crawl, dragging through her own wet heat with steady, practiced precision.
Every scrap of morality I was supposed to have learned tells me to back the fuck off, step into the dark, and let Mateo's sister keep her peace. She’s too untouched for the blood on my hands, too clean for the shallow graves Mateo and I have dug over the years. But then the heel of her palm presses harder against herself, her throat arches back into the pillows, and the quiet room fractures.
“Vance…” Her whisper cracks through the silence.
My heart slams against my ribs, stopping dead in my chest. She lets it out a second time—thinner now, pitched higher on a hitched, desperate intake of breath. The reality hits me like a closed fist: there isn’t another man in her sheets. Nobody touched her. She is lying alone under that bedside lamp, working herself raw to the filthy thought of me.
Every excuse I leaned on since she came home from that boarding school shrivels into nothing. For months, I told myself she was just off-limits, someone I could ignore if I drank enough or spent long enough under freezing water. But watching her fingers pump wetly between her parted thighs, listening to her choke on my name in the dark, every boundary I ever respected disintegrates.
Inside the room, the cadence breaks. Her hips hitch off the mattress in a wild, stuttering spasm. Her fingers lose their rhythm, pressing furiously into her folds as the wave crests over her, her brow furrowing with raw, uncovered hunger.
“Vance—god, please, Vance—”
The cry tears out of her throat, utterly wrecked and shameless, before her thighs lock and shudder through the violent snap of her release. She collapses limp against the mattress, chest heaving beneath her thin tank, skin slick and trembling in the warm glow. She looks entirely ruined. Beautifully, thoroughly broken apart.
Any prayer of keeping myself honorable is dead. If taking her sends me straight to hell, I’ll burn with a smile on my face as long as she’s pinned underneath me.
On the bed, the tremor subsides, and Sloane shifts slowly onto her side. I freeze, bracing myself to step back into the dark hallway, but luck has never been on my side. Her heavy lashes flutter up. In the sliver of golden light spilling across the doorframe, her gaze strikes mine dead-on.
I’m Vance Davenport. And I am about to ruin my best friend’s little sister.