Is he going to kiss me?
Before the thought is fully formed, his rich, deep, and absolutely familiar voice rings in the air.
“You talk too much. One day, this mouth will get you in trouble.”
Then he releases me, steps back, and slips out the balcony door as easily as he got in.
My limbs finally fail me and I slide down the wall and to the floor.
There’s no doubt about it.
My fingers touch where he did a second ago. Well, he had a glove on, so it wasn’t a direct touch, but it still counts, right?
Only, now, my lips quiver and my heart falls in disarray.
It is him.
The one I shouldn’t want.
2
ANNIKA
“Are you sure no one came in here?”
Am I sure this is, in fact, an alternative reality and I will soon wake up? Am I surprised no one sees my trembling insides?
Sure thing.
I’m totally certain something is wrong with me, because I plaster on my brightest smile as I face my brother.
Jeremy, who’s barged into my room and is now towering over me, is tall, muscular, a bit bulky, and is the perfect clone of our father. Like, seriously, Papa gets an A+ for the copy-and-paste efforts.
He’s also six years older than me, so I’m like a baby at only seventeen. I’ll be eighteen in about a month and a half, so mentally, I’m already at that age.
Besides, due to my stellar academics, I got to skip a grade and attend college at this age. A fact my brother isn’t fond of.
He’s always been like a lethal tiger who stands guard in front of my door. I was only able to breathe when he left the States for college a few years before me.
Well,able tobreatheis an exaggeration, because I was still under Papa’s even more suffocating attention and protection.
That’s why I worked hard to get into college. But naturally, I could only apply to where Jeremy is. That, or I had to stay in New York.
My brain voted my brother as the lesser of two evils.
I came to Brighton Island at the start of this semester. It’s an island near the south coast of the United Kingdom. Ever since I reunited with my brother, that subtle feeling of suffocation, of being watched and monitored every second has returned.
I pull my sweater over my shirt, because, heck no, I’m not going to stroll around in my short-as-sin shirt in front of my brother.
That didn’t seem like a problem earlier.
I hush that tiny little voice and throw up a dismissive hand. “I was totally deep asleep until that guard woke me up. Can’t a girl have her beauty sleep around here?”
Nailed that.
Seriously.
If it were anyone else, they’d leave me be, but this is Jer. President of the Heathens, dubbed a devil, and the heir to Papa’s mafia empire.