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Author’s Notes

I’m up a little. Going back and forth with the story, but that’s fine. The more challenging part is approaching, as I can now move forward with what I have to do and not feel miserable about the choices I have to make in the story.

Tori’s past and present have so many layers.

I love speaking with readers about it. And it’s helped me figure out what I needed to do in order to take the story in a different direction.

For some reason, I was afraid to go down that road, but I know it’s the way to go.

I hope you enjoy the journey with me.

Enjoy… Happy Reading. Your Author, Sylvia Hubbard

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Chapter 18.2 Carthago delenda est

Her body was awash in pleasure. Wave after wave of bliss rolled over her from head to toe and then back again.

“Ahhhh!” she heard herself cry out, and it felt real—more real than ever before. “Ooooh… AhhhhhhAAAAhhhhhh!”

This peak hit her hard like a barrel roll, sending her falling and tumbling, battering her sexual pleasure areas with a bliss bat. Lawd, was she dying?

Who cared? She didn’t. Looking down, she was turned sideways, and Duncan had his face in the front, licking and sucking on her clitoris while Shawn was behind her, his face in her between her thighs, taking care of everything else. “Don’t stop!” she demanded as another barrel roll of orgasms beat down on her body, and she had to scream into the pillow because she knew her tenants would hear her.

And somewhere close, she heard Kevin wickedly chuckling. “Drink her! Don’t she taste so damn good? Fuck! Look at her coming.”

Her chest caved in hard, and she couldn’t pull air inside as her body convulsed hard as if in pain, but she wasn’t. “Oh damn! OH Damn! OH FUCKING DAMN!”

Tori fought her way out of her dream as if she were tearing from a binding. Pillows, covers, and duvets flew across the room, and she found herself scrambling out of bed, looking around frantically for Shawn, Duncan, or Kevin to be standing over her.

Her heart was racing, her body was shaking, and she was covered in sweat. The bed had taken a good soaking as well, and she knew all of that couldn’t have been from a wet dream.

Yet, the only indication that someone could have been in the room was that her bedroom door was wide open and her panties were missing.

“Who’s there?!” she called out, grabbing her water bottle from the nightstand and holding it up as a weapon, crouching on the other side of her bed, looking frantically around.

There was no answer and no sound, but her senses were so alert she could barely see straight.

When she finally calmed down, Tori slowly stood and came around the bed, looking in her private bathroom, but no one was there. Then, she ventured out into the hallway – and still, no one. Checking her door, she was sure she had locked it before she lay down, but there was no damage to indicate it had been kicked open like Kevin had threatened.

Putting her robe on, Tori still held the water bottle and rushed down the stairs and went straight to the kitchen. The journals were gone, and her back door was closed. Relaxing, she convinced herself that perhaps it was a dream.

“Tori,”

She screamed and hurled the water bottle in the direction of the voice.

Duncan ducked to the right in time as the bottle whizzed past his head and hit the wall.

“Oh Gawd! You scared the shit out of me!” she screamed, clutching her chest.

He was dressed in a white t-shirt and some jeans, and had respectfully taken off his shoes. “You did invite us over.”

“I invited Kevin!” she corrected him, rolling her eyes.

“As soon as he read the first one, he called me, and then I called Shawn, who came over after work.”

Amazed, she asked, “You read them all?”

“We scanned them. Many of the things that happened when your father dated my mother, we had already remembered, so we didn’t need to be reminded of them. We remembered everything.”

Tori straightened her spine, bracing for the worst, knowing she deserved every bit of animosity for what she did. “So why are you still here when you should be hating me all over again and probably never wanting to see me again?”

“Who says we stopped hating you?” Duncan leaned against the doorway of the kitchen and crossed his arms.

Remembering what was said about Duncan, she wondered if they had told him to stay here and break her neck. “Are you here to twist my head off my body?”

“Do you deserve it?”

“Probably,” Tori muttered, going into her refrigerator and getting a bottle of water. “Honesty, I forgot the depth of what I had done to others.” She cracked open the bottle and drank half the contents, feeling very thirsty.

“When you’re selfish like that, you tend not to care about the repercussions of your actions.” He moved to the other side of the counter, but reached for the water bottle she had set down and drank the rest of the contents, never taking his eyes off of her.

She didn’t know if he was angry or not, but the fact that it felt like he was hunting her was very evident. In her gut, she thought she should be scared for her life, but she didn’t feel that terrified of him.

“Why did they leave you to be here when I woke?”

“Shawn wanted to stay. Throttle you a bit and then fuck you. He’s still working with his new sexuality. It’s like taming a wild new wolf.” He chuckled internally. “But we’re determined not to wear you out.”

“You didn’t answer my question, Duncan.”

“I’m stalling.” Duncan took something out of his pocket and pushed it across the counter to her. “These are yours.”

Looking at what he gave her, she gasped and blushed at the same time. It was her underwear from… the blue room – the night they’d had dinner initially. “You took my underwear?”

“I thought I should return them, plus my pup and I needed a new pair.”

She snatched the underwear off the counter and put them in her robe. “Once I recover from my shock, I’ll yell at you later about stealing my underwear, Duncan, but wait… You were up in my room?”

He smirked. “Kevin was going to kick the door down, but I have a flair for opening locked doors that don’t have alarms.”

She gaped again, realizing her dream was real. “You and Shawn?”

Nodding while smiling wickedly, licking his tongue over his bottom lip. “You get really wet the more you get turned on, but Shawn was very eager to taste you again, and one of us needed to contain him.”

Closing her eyes repeatedly, reliving what had happened when she was half-sleep, Tori reprimanded, “That was not fair!”

“And what you did to Kevin was? You know he can’t resist your mouth. He could barely tell us what happened. You made my brother almost cry.” He chuckled. “I’ve never seen him so discombobulated over a woman before.”

“We’re going to talk about boundaries when I have all of you guys together, but for now, stop stalling. Give me the bad news, or do whatever you want to do to hurt me.”

“Are you really ready to receive what you deserve?” Duncan asked, moving a couple of steps toward her.

“Does it involve killing me?” she questioned.

“No, death would be too easy out. Extreme torture comes close to what you deserve.”

“I’ve said I’m not going to apologize continually, but I’m sorry. I’m really sorry-“

“Stop,” he sharply ordered, “Giving us the journals to read changes things for us.”

“How?”

“I can’t explain, but all I can say is that we’re not going to kill you.”

Tori turned to the refrigerator again, retrieved the fruit bowl with another bottle of water, and then proceeded to the dining room table. “If you aren’t going to kill me, I need to eat.”

He continued as he sat in the chair across from her. With him being the heavier brother, her furniture squeaked even more from his weight. “I have to tell you something, and it may sound strange, but I have to start at the beginning.” Duncan took a deep breath as if something was sitting on his chest. “Amos was awful to us – my mother and my brothers. Maybe he knew we weren’t his, or maybe it was just him. We never understood why our mother stayed. No matter how Amos acted, she never left, but we never suspected anything once Amos was gone. With him not there, it was understandable that she did better. But I have to tell you something I haven’t told anyone.”

She slowed down her eating as if it was going to make sure she could hear him better.

“Amos used to wake me up in the middle of the night, drag me out of bed, and make me go down in the basement with him. I think he felt he could use me because my mother treated me the worst. I think I reminded her the most of…” He shifted his weight. “If it’s true, then I think I reminded her most of Keir. So he felt he could treat me the worst. I never told Kevin what he did.”

“What did he do?”

“He’d drag his enemies down in the basement with their eyes covered and torture them. I’d have to watch initially, and then he’d make me do it. Hw showed me how. He said it would make me a man, and if I didn’t do it, he’d bring Kevin or Shawn down, and I’d have to watch as he did it to them. Amos would lean in close and talk to me, tell me what to do. Clear and concise. Never a tender word, but that was alright. It made my anger about life and everything go away, and all I could do was focus on his voice.”

“H-How long did this go on?”

Duncan shrugged. “A while, He’d make me talk through it. It was the only time I got to talk. Use my voice. And even if the police came around, people wouldn’t know my voice because my mother never wanted me to speak. I think if my mom and Keir hadn’t done what they did, it would have progressed into something else. Something more. I didn’t miss the torturing, but I missed his voice.”

The terrifying look of contentment on his face chilled her to the bone, but she didn’t speak.

“And then we met you. The first time you spoke, your voice… confused me a lot, but I’d find myself hiding behind a corner, listening to you in another room, always complaining, nagging, or fussing. No matter what, I would hear your voice and not the horrible things Amos used to say that I was sure would be stuck in my head forever. And trust me, as much as I hated every word that came out of your mouth, it was better than anything he had said. As much as I hated you, I needed to hear your voice, and I could never figure out why, until now. Until the journals.”

Tori didn’t know how long her mouth had been open, and she’d been holding the strawberry in her hand until he reached over and took the piece of fruit from her fingers and ate it. Slowly closing her mouth, she sat back in the chair, still shaken by his words. “How do you guys feel knowing you’re all Keir’s sons?”

“Angry because he would have been fine if he hadn’t been greedy. We all agree on that. Money wasn’t the issue, but he always felt this place – the ghetto in his mind – was a place he wanted to get as far away from as possible. We found a way out, so he could have also. He should have told us he was our father. I mean, those years with Keir were good. I could even speak when I wanted to, but they lied to us. All of them and you…” He paused again and frowned, “That’s just fucked up. You should be torturing people in your basement after what they did to you.”

Duncan took another piece of fruit from her bowl and held eye contact with her as he slowly bit down and ate the piece, and Tori remembered all the things his mouth could do to her.

Tori had to tear her eyes away and finished responding to his statement. “I don’t have bodies in my basement. I torture myself internally.”

He smirked, popping the last bit of fruit in his mouth. “You didn’t have to answer. I already checked.”

“And how do you and Kevin feel that you were intimate with your sister?”

___ *** ___

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Her Substitute Husband… His Brothers (c) 2025 Sylvia Hubbard All Rights Reserved

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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