“Yup.”
He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “So that’s why you wanted both of us that night.” I can’t tell what he’s feeling, if he’s mad or not.
“Can’t blame a girl for being curious,” I say softly.
“No, I guess I can’t.” He doesn’t say anything else for the rest of the drive. Once he’s got me inside, he goes back out, and I know he’s calling his brother. A conversation he doesn’t want me to hear.
I don’t have much of an appetite; I start to fix some fruit and yogurt, but it reminds me of Lucas, so I settle for toast with peanut butter. Sometimes I stay in the living room with whichever brother is there that night and watch tv — we have a surprising number of shows we all like — but tonight I get ready for bed and crawl under the covers with a book.
It makes no sense, but I’m worried what they’ll think of me. That somehow, knowing this will tarnish what we have between us. Which makes zero sense, because all we have between us are one amazing night, some teasing, and enough sexual tension to power a starship through hyperspace.
They knew I wanted them both; what does it matter where my fantasy came from? It shouldn’t. Determined not to care, no matter what their response is, I prop myself up against my pillows and bury my nose in the pages.
A few minutes later, Alex comes back in. I’ve been staring at the same paragraph, unseeing, and I keep on doing it. His footsteps, almost soundless, approach, and then he’s standing in my doorway. “We’ll be there.”
I look up, my expression a carefully impassive mask. His face seems harsh in the shadows, but maybe that’s my imagination. “Okay.” I say it like it’s no biggie to me either way. This is so not me, being quiet and careful and — repressed.
And Alex knows it, because he straightens up from where he’s leaning against the doorframe and comes over to me. Immediately, my heart starts to pound. Neither of the Wolf brothers has ever ventured inside my bedroom before, not when I was in it. There’s been an unspoken agreement that this territory is off limits.
He stops by the bed. “Are you all right?”
“Fine.” My voice comes out brusque, and I take a breath and try again. “I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”
He sits on the edge of the bed, bracing his arm on the other side of me so he’s leaning sideways across my body. If I wanted to, I could run my hand along all that muscle, up to his bicep, over and down to his chest.
I want to. Badly.
My other hand is within easy reach of his denim-clad legs. I remember what they felt like between my thi
ghs while he pounded into me. And against the backs of my legs when he took me from behind.
“Zoe?”
It’s too much. All of it — the wanting, the waiting, the unbearable torment. My body acts without any conscious thought. Grabbing a fistful of his shirt, I yank him to me.
He lets me pull him forward until his mouth covers mine and then he’s kissing me, slow and deep, and hunger ignites in me like a bone-dry forest torched by a flamethrower. My hands go to his head, holding him to me, and I kiss him back, desperate, demanding, trying to pour all my need into him.
Alex rises from the bed without losing my mouth, long enough to toe off his shoes and yank the covers down, and then I’m flat on my back and he’s on top of me, grinding against me, his hand moving between us to find my clit. He works me expertly, rubbing and stroking, kissing me urgently while I push greedily against his hand. I’m so keyed up that it seems like no time at all before pleasure shoots through me and I’m arching against him, crying out into his mouth as I find my release.
When he eases back from me, I want to weep. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“Shhh … shhh.” Alex shifts to my side and turns me to face him, pulling me close and drawing the covers up over us. “It’s all right.”
He doesn’t say anything else, just holds me and strokes my hair, and I begin to calm immediately, his warmth and strength comforting in a way nothing else could be. “Don’t go yet,” I whisper.
“I won’t.”
I fall asleep more quickly than I have since this whole thing started, and deeply enough that I never feel him leave. But when I wake in the morning, alone, it’s with an ache in my heart.
23
Relieved
Lucas
If you had described the current state of my life to me a few weeks ago, I would have thought you needed medication. Or maybe a padded cell.
But here I am, driving with my brother to pick up a woman and take her to dinner … at the home of two brothers who are living with one woman. They’re even twins, like us.
The whole thing is crazy.
Alex and I are quiet, each lost in our own thoughts. And there is plenty to think about. When he called me last night, all I could say was “You are fucking kidding me.”
“Not even a little bit, bro.”
To say that this was a revelation is putting it mildly. It explains a lot about Zoe and her approach to Alex and me, for one thing. She’s not a superfreak; she’s a woman who wanted something very specific and went about getting it. It makes me admire her even more.
Beyond that, though, is the much larger fact that Megan and the Easton brothers are doing this long-term. They’re not just getting their kicks; they’re in what I guess you’d have to call a committed relationship.
She’s even pregnant — I noticed it at the sushi place. Did they work out which one of them was going to father the child? Are they planning on taking turns, or do they neither know nor care whose baby it is?