“You’re soaking my brother’s bed,” Nash remarked as he leaned back against his pillow and took in the sight of me. He looked annoyed, liked I was a pest who had royally fucked up his weekend plans.
“You—I—What—” I floundered, my mouth opening and closing like a fish.
You slept with Nash Prescott.
Nash Fucking Prescott.
And it felt amazing.
Don’t freak out.
Don’t freak out.
Don’t freak out.
I was totally freaking out.
Nash raked his fingers through his hair, leaned over to snatch my robe, and tossed it to me. “Just fucking relax, would you? You’d think the goddamn orgasm would loosen you up.”
For a split second, all I could think was, you weren’t always like this.
Perhaps to other girls, but never to me.
Nash was a fierce protector, the guy who would stop by my table with his brown paper lunch bag when my mom ‘forgot’ to give me lunch money. And while we’d rarely talked, even when he would share his lunch, I always took comfort in knowing I had two protectors—Reed and Nash.
Something flipped the night of the cotillion. And after cops almost arrested Reed, the rift between him and Nash became unnavigable. They barely spoke. If they did, it was with a cordiality that reminded me of my relationship with Mother.
My heart wept for Betty, who tried desperately to mend things. Surprise parties. Homemade dinners. Family outings they couldn’t afford with a son going off to college and one fresh out of grad school.
Reed placed all his focus on Basil, football, and school. And Nash? He became a different Nash around us. One who lived up to his reputation. Gorgeous. Arrogant. Insufferable. Whenever he visited, he’d spend the weekend fucking every bored twenty-something housewife in Eastridge.
I don’t recognize you anymore.
The words sat at the tip of my tongue. I would never release them. That was Reed’s hill to die on. I cared because I hated the way Nash stared at me sometimes, accusations stabbing me from his eyes.
Snide comments I would never ask him about because I was loyal to Reed, and even talking to Nash felt like picking the wrong side.
“Such a Winthrop, Emery,” Nash once said when I stole capers from Reed’s plate after Betty made Chicken Piccata.
“So good at hiding things.” He caught me sliding extra money into Reed’s stocking. I lied about it being from Dad. “Gideon has you sneaking around for him often?”
“Betrayal. Taste it often?” I’d spit out a rotten peach from the garden. It landed by his foot, a few inches past my target.
I wanted to take a few seconds to study Nash, to process my mortification, to enjoy the aftershocks of my first orgasm, yet all I could feel was Nash’s overwhelming gravitational pull, one more dangerous than that of any other boy I’d ever met.
But Nash Prescott wasn’t a boy.
He was a man.
One who made me feel like the little girl I’d convinced myself I wasn’t.
My arms slipped through the robe. The second the tie wrapped around my waist, my body solidified. My underwear remained lost somewhere, but at least I was covered.
I ignored the sting of his derision, shook my head, and pushed aside the embarrassment. “Did you know?”
The sharp accusation unfazed him. He stretched his arms, drawing my attention to the deep V of his body. I clenched around him. A reflex. My mortified eyes flicked up in time to catch his cocked brow.
“I figured it out when you moaned my brother’s name while coming around my cock.” His eyes dipped down as if to remind me I was still on him.
I scrambled off the bed, pushing the blanket over with the rushed movement. Horrified didn’t even begin to describe how I felt, but it was the plain irritation on his face that almost undid me.
Couldn’t he at least pretend he enjoyed it?
Because I did.
I’d come.
I never came.
I’d spent the past two years filling out my body, my full chest the one thing about me that didn’t scream runway model. Riding Nash made me feel like a goddess. As if my body possessed magic, I controlled my pleasure, and something that had always worried me didn’t need to be anything but bliss.
Yet, I obviously did nothing for Nash. He stared at me like he wanted nothing more than to forget this had ever happened. Like he disgusted himself for screwing somebody so young.
It wasn’t as if either of us intended this to happen, and I didn’t have the guts to ask him why he looked slightly sickened and a hundred percent scornful.
Pulling the sheets had left him bare, but Nash didn’t bother covering himself as he ran a hand through his hair again. Maybe if I were a guy and I was as big as Nash, I wouldn’t cover up either. Still, you’d think he’d at least have the decency.
Then, I remembered there was nothing decent inside this man.
Reed had warned me.
“Careful, Em.” Reed glowered at his brother’s retreating Honda the weekend after the cotillion. “Nash does unforgivable things without bothering to ask for forgiveness.”
I dug my nails into my thigh, hating this cycle of hurt. “Can’t you two talk it out?”
“What would be the point in that? He’s a devious liar. I can’t trust anything he says.”
I’d never been able to reconcile Reed’s version of Nash with the one who saved me too many times to count. Even if three years passed since he flipped a switch, I’d still hoped Nash hadn’t become as bad as Reed accused him of being.
Until tonight.
That hope died a painful death.
Rocking back on my heels, I faltered for something to say before settling on, “Who did you think I was?”
“Katrina.” The words were blunt, like it wasn’t a big deal that he’d been waiting for a married woman to have sex with him.
Worse—he’d mentioned a boyfriend, which meant she was cheating on Basil’s dad and another man with Nash.
What happened to you, Nash?
He had gone from Knight in Shining Armor to a version of Maleficent that was so indifferent toward me, he didn’t even bother extending a poisoned apple.
Until now.
Only the apple was a rock-hard penis, and I imagined it felt much better than a poisoned apple tasted.
I whisper-shouted, conscious of Betty and Hank one door down, “You fucked me thinking I was someone else?!”
My hypocrisy wasn’t lost on me. So what if I thought he was his brother? It was different. I was in love. He thought I was a married woman. Okay, we both mistook one another for other people, but for my sanity’s sake, I needed to believe we were different.
You are not as bad as Nash Prescott, Emery. This is his fault.
Nope.
Even I didn’t believe my bullshit.
I’d been the one to climb onto him, not bothering to confirm his identity.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
“Fuck,” he toyed with the word, looking genuinely surprised. “Dirty word for a goodie two shoes…”
Good.
Like being nice and biting my tongue every time Mother spoke somehow made me less than him.
It pissed me off. I raised my arm stupidly. I wouldn’t hit him. I didn’t know what I would do, but it was a reflex, and it amused him.
“Easy, Tiger.”
He didn’t waver as he desecrated two words he’d said to me years ago when I’d run into his and Reed’s arms at the cotillion. I pushed the past away, not wanting to humanize Nash while I felt so furious at him.
He continued, either oblivious or uncaring, “I figured it out a second before you came. I wouldn’t have fucked you if I’d known it was you. I don’t fuck teenyboppers.”
A wave of awkwardness and embarrassment descended upon me.
I fought it.
Hard.
Lifting my chin, I glared at him. “I’m eighteen.”
Barely.
The ten-year age gap between us felt unbridgeable.
But at least it gave me something to focus on besides the fact that I had sex with the wrong Prescott.
Fuck.
Reed.
I continued, “Reed—”
“—won’t know,” he seethed. “You tell him and you fuck up your friendship.”
His tone didn’t match his eyes.
One screamed, you’ll fuck yourself over.
The other screamed, you’ll fuck me over.
It wasn’t only me who didn’t want Reed to know. It would damage their relationship beyond repair.
I knew you still care about Reed.
The realization returned a sliver of my confidence. He still had a heart, and needs, and feelings. Blood ran through his veins, just like mine. He wasn’t invincible.
I folded my arms across my chest, pulling the material tighter around me. “Aren’t you supposed to be in New York, opening some destined-to-fail business venture?”
At least that’s what Reed had told me a few weeks ago. Not the destined-to-fail part, but a wound named Ego bloomed beneath my skin, and I didn’t like it. Cruelty was a knee-jerk reaction, one bred into me through years of catty prep school drama, and I almost apologized but couldn’t quite bring myself to.
Two hazel eyes hardened, and he leaned back against the headboard, studying me with a scrutiny I wasn’t used to. Even with Virginia Winthrop as a mom.
“Not that it’s any of your business, Winthrop, I’m in town for a business meeting. Reed is spending the night at Basil’s, so I figured I’d crash in his room since Ma turned my room into a fucking craft room. I didn’t think I’d be accosted by an eighteen-year-old child.”
Fury exploded from my chest to my fingers at his coldness, and I wanted to punch him back—because that was exactly what his words were.
A punch I felt in my gut, worse than anything a physical hit could land.
He’d transformed from the older brother Reed had once idolized to this monster neither of us could recognize.
It hurt more than I’d thought it would.
I buried his jab beside my pride.
Nash grabbed a spare pillow and wiped our cum off his cock with the case, uncaring of the audience or the fact that I laid on that pillow every time I lounged in Reed’s room. “Do you often come into my brother’s room, looking for a quick lay?”
Never, I almost defended, half transfixed and half horrified as I watched him express his nudity so comfortably.
But I didn’t say it, because it made me feel vulnerable. The one night I professed my love for Reed had backfired in spectacular fashion, and Nash Prescott had the misfortune of witnessing it.
“All the time,” I lied to save face. “He’s a better lay than you.”
Another lie.
I couldn’t imagine anyone being better at sex than Nash Prescott. He made my toes curl and my lungs burn from exhaustive pleasure. He had pushed my body past its limits, and part of me wanted him to try again, just to see if the first time had been a fluke or if sex was supposed to be like this every time.
I still craved him, felt an obsessive thrill at the angry, rose-colored marks my nails had left across his chest. The thought terrified me. I wanted to run, but I also wanted to take a picture of the way I’d bruised him like he’d bruised me.
Deranged would be the perfect word to describe me. I had several teachers younger than Nash, and the idea of having sex with them sickened me.
Nash’s eyes narrowed as he studied me, lingering on my collarbone, where he’d sucked so hard, I knew his mark would last for weeks. “If he can make you come harder than you did around my cock, he deserves a medal.” His knowing eyes took in my flushed skin and the way my lips parted at the word cock. “My brother has a girlfriend. You know this, right?” he spoke as slow as he implied I was.
“For the record, Reed texted me, saying that he and Basil broke up.” I clung to the robe’s fabric.
“So your idea of being there for him is being his rebound fuck? Classy.” He ran a hand through his hair, messing it up more than I already had. He snorted a laugh. “That break up lasted all of thirty minutes before he apologized to her, practically begging on his hands and knees.”
I flinched.
The worst part was, I knew it’d be like all the other times they’d “broken up” and gotten back together ten seconds later. I’d succumbed to the magic of a starless night, convincing myself it would be different because that was what I wanted to believe.
For a startling moment, Nash’s arrogance fled, and he took me in.
Really took me in.
My whitened fingers clenched the robe. My chest rose and fell to a staccato rhythm as I reminded myself I needed to breathe to live. The alarm gleamed within my eyes. They darted from Nash to the framed picture of me and Reed laughing on the wall, and I realized that I’d ruined my chances of ever being with Reed after having sex with his brother.
It was pity mixed with that damned disgust I saw in Nash Prescott’s eyes.
He glanced at the alarm clock on the nightstand and said, “Either sleep or leave. I have a meeting in a few hours.”
His words were harsh, but I recognized them for what they were.
Sympathy.
He was giving me an out, a way to flee without addressing any of the mortifying details that brought me here tonight. I latched onto it like he’d thrown me a life raft.
“You’re unbelievable,” I retorted, but they were halfhearted words, because if he treated me any differently, I’d probably cry.
And I was not a crier.
“Here’s what we’re going to do.” He nodded to the mess of cum we made on the sheets. “We’re going to forget this ever happened. You didn’t fuck the wrong brother. I didn’t fuck an eighteen-year-old.” His lips curled into a sneer as he said my age. “Neither of us will tell Reed. Understood?”
Finally, something I agreed with.
“Crystal clear.” I grazed my lip with my front teeth. “Promise you won’t tell Reed?”
Nash watched me for a moment, something like disappointment flickering in his eyes, before he reached over and switched off the light. “Get out of the room, Winthrop.”
“Gladly, Prescott.”
I dashed back to my house, fumbling with the lock to my back door and rushing my way into my room. Flipping the lock behind me, I turned the knob twice to be sure and dove onto my bed. Pulling the sheets completely over my head, I panted into the silky fabric.
I’d left my ripped underwear on Reed’s floor. I prayed Nash had the decency to throw them in a ditch somewhere or burn them in a fifty-foot bonfire. My breath fogged under the covers, but I couldn’t bring myself to lower them or do something sane like take a shower.
Five-thousand threads of bliss stained with sweat and our cum.
I’d learned two things tonight.
First—I could orgasm during sex, and I would never be the same.
Second—I hated Nash Prescott.
