Not by Blood
6: CHAPTER 6.
Not by Blood ”So, will you accept my offer, Camila?”
I flinched at the sound of that voice, then shook my head quickly.
Was he insane?
There was no way I would kiss a man I’d only met a few hours ago.
“Then how about this drink?” Pedro said, holding out the glass of thick, dark liquid toward me again.
With a trembling, hesitant hand, I took the glass.
My mind had gone blank.
Forcing this liquor down my throat, I told myself, was far better than kissing a man I felt nothing for.
I brought the glass to my lips, the sharp scent of alcohol stinging my nose.
But just as the liquid was about to touch my tongue, a strong hand suddenly wrenched the glass from my grip.
I looked up, my gaze locking onto his, and my heart seemed to stop beating the instant I realized the man was Javier.
I had thought he no longer cared at all, yet here he was, saving me.
“Go to your room,” he said, his voice low but carrying an absolute, unshakable authority.
“Come on, Javi, she’s an adult. Stop locking her up all the time—let her feel how wonderful the world can be. Have a boyfriend, drink a little, isn’t that how it goes?” Pedro cut in, watching Javier with a challenging smile.
“Go to your room, Camila,” Javier repeated, utterly ignoring Pedro’s interruption and the mocking stares of everyone else in the room.
His eyes bore into me, sharp and intimidating.
I nodded slowly, ready to walk away.
But the moment I turned, Adriana suddenly shifted, blocking my path.
“Sweetheart, what’s wrong with you? She’s grown up, everyone else is right. When is she supposed to have a boyfriend if you keep her caged like this? She probably wants to drink too, and feel what a kiss is like, doesn’t she?” Adriana said, her tone thick with condescension.
I stood frozen, glancing at Javier, whose jaw had gone rigid.
And then the next words out of Adriana’s mouth caught me completely off guard.
“Besides, she’s not even your real sister, is she? So you’re being way too much about this.”
I hadn’t imagined Adriana would be so brazen as to expose my status in front of her friends.
It wasn’t just me—Javier, too, turned to stare at his fiancée in disbelief. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
In an instant, the atmosphere in the room turned cold, and every pair of eyes shifted to me, weighing and judging.
“She’s never had alcohol in her life. If something happens to her, it’s you Mama will be furious with,” Javier said, slow but bitterly cold.
Without waiting for a reply from anyone, he seized my wrist and pulled me away from that cursed place.
Once we were far enough away, out in the quiet, dimly lit grounds beyond the lodge, I yanked my hand from his grip, hard.
I spun around, meeting Javier’s eyes with a sharp, blazing stare—fueled by both fury and the pain I could no longer hold back.
“Why?” I asked, my voice low and trembling.
“Why what?” Javier shot back, his face already frozen over again, cold as ice.
“Why did you help me?! Weren’t you the one who stopped caring about me?” I demanded, tears beginning to pool at the edges of my eyes.
“Didn’t you already start treating me like a stranger?
So just let it be!
Let me be humiliated by your girlfriend and her disgusting friends!”
”You’re the fool for choosing to go along, Camila,” he shot back, sharp.
“Yes, I went along! And that’s because your girlfriend invited me and forced me into it!” I shouted, refusing to back down.
“Besides, I’m an adult—shouldn’t you just leave me be?”
I gave him a bitter smile.
From the very start, back at the dinner table, I’d flatly refused.
But Adriana always had some cunning way of dragging me into this miserable vacation.
“Stay away from them. None of them are a good crowd for you,” Javier said again, his tone like an older brother handing down an absolute order to his younger sister.
Hearing that, a hollow laugh slipped from my lips.
How funny.
When we’d first arrived, he’d stayed silent, indifferent, as if I didn’t even exist.
But now, all of a sudden, he was acting like my protector.
“It’s none of your business.
Who I choose to be friends with is my own free choice, isn’t it?
Besides, weren’t you the one who asked us to stay professional and act like strangers to each other?
So don’t interfere in my business!”
”That’s at the office, Camila.”
To me, office or not, it made no difference.
I could see clearly how Javier’s fist, clenched at his side, tightened until his knuckles turned white.
I didn’t know whether my words had wounded him, or simply bruised the ego of a powerful man unused to being defied.
But I didn’t care—that was the bitter reality I had to swallow every single day.
“I’m warning you one more time, Camila. Never get involved with them. Especially not with Pedro—he’s a cunning womanizer,” Javier hissed low, stepping closer toward me.
“And if I do stay in touch with him, so what? At least then I could learn how to kiss properly from him, couldn’t I? I could learn how to date someone too, so I wouldn’t have to keep—”
Snap!
My sentence broke off midair as my body was suddenly yanked forward by a single, powerful pull from Javier.
The force of it was so strong our chests collided hard, leaving barely a sliver of space between us.
Honestly, every nerve in my body went numb in an instant.
My heart hammered violently at the closeness—this intense, dangerous closeness.
I could feel the warmth radiating from him, the thick, masculine scent rising from his clothes—the very same scent that always haunted my dreams.
“Let go! I don’t want your girlfriend to see us like this,” I stammered, trying to push against his broad chest to save what little remained of my sanity.
Instead of pulling away or loosening his hold, Javier only closed the distance further.
He lowered his head, bringing his hard, resolute face close enough that his warm breath brushed against the surface of my cheek.
“If I ever see you getting close to him again… you’ll regret it for the rest of your life, Camila,” he threatened, his voice a deep, low baritone that sent a tremor straight through my chest.
After throwing out that chillingly possessive threat, he shoved me back and turned away without another word, vanishing into the darkness of the corridor leading to his room.
I stood frozen in place, releasing a ragged breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding, my chest rising and falling unevenly.
My heart was still pounding wildly, utterly failing to understand the meaning behind the hidden flash of fury in that man’s hawk-like eyes.
Elsewhere, Adriana clenched her fists tightly as she watched her boyfriend lead Camila away.
If Camila had truly been his blood sister, perhaps she wouldn’t have felt this furious.
If she hadn’t sensed something so unnatural in the way he looked at her, she never would have set any of this in motion.
The way Camila looked at him—nothing like the way a sister should look at her brother—filled her with jealousy, and hardened her wicked plan all the more.