Wildalone (45 page)

“I want to feel you getting wet . . . Do you like my fingers down there? Or do you want my lips?”

I wanted his lips everywhere. But something wasn't right. “Let's go to your room. Please.”

“Not yet. Come, I have a Chopin for you.”

Of all things possible—a Chopin . . .

He sat down on the bench, pulled me in front of him, and began playing. It was the one piece that fit him perfectly: the last of the études dedicated to Liszt. I had never attempted its hurricane of sound—not only because of the absurdly difficult technique (after many hours of practice, anything could be learned), but because it exploded with a magnificence that had always seemed beyond my reach.

Under his fingers the étude was unbelievable, a triumph. He played it with absolute ease, knowing that his speed over the keys would charge me with the rush of a roller coaster. His face dived into me—my hair, neck, shoulders—and the rhythm didn't lose momentum for a second. He could no longer look at the keyboard, but having to keep his hands there drove him wild. Until the last chords unleashed his body on mine. He swirled me up from the bench and over the lid of the piano, shutting it with a bang that reverberated through the room. His hands, which he no longer had to control, were pulling off my clothes, and his own, with a violent, blind insistence.

I tried to slow him down—

“Don't.” He caught my wrists and held them still. “I can't fight it anymore, Thea. I am yours. All of me. Take me.”

His heat invaded my skin. Then the rest of him—the push of his stomach, the speed of his breath, the force of his legs opening mine.

“I've been dying to do this, without guilt or secrets.”

His voice. It could convince me of anything.

But I still had my own secrets. Jake's incredible, shy body, so different from the one closing in on me now. His stunning kiss that night, when I
had wanted him to be the first one—the only one—to ever be inside me.

My hands kept pushing Rhys away.

“Don't.” He won over them again. “They say it always hurts the first time. But it won't, I promise. Thea, look at me.”

I did.

“I love you.”

The words shot an electric current through me. I wanted to say it back. But my heart kept sinking.

“Trust me, it won't hurt. Just trust me. Open, open for me . . .”

Suddenly my entire body felt him. Pressing, shivering inside me and all over me, forcing the brief pain out then rushing through me, hard, pulsing, making me want to close around him and take him in with every part of me—

When a door was slammed, the sound felt foreign, and at first my mind failed to register what had happened. Then it did. And before Rhys's frown had confirmed it, I already knew.

Jake had walked in on us. He had heard and seen us.

I SLIPPED OUT OF RHYS'S
arms and off the piano, wishing I could disappear—from the room, from the house, from the two brothers' lives. And from my own.

“It was Jake, wasn't it?”

“My brother has gone insane tonight. Slamming doors, as if the sacred abstinence of the house has been violated.”

“Is he still here?”

“That was the door to his room—so yes. But I hope he won't bother us again, because I'd hate to end our evening with a fight.”

“He wasn't trying to pick a fight with you. It's my fault; I'm the reason he—”

“Don't be silly. My brother saw us having sex, big deal. If he can't handle it, that's his problem, not ours.”

Except it
was
our problem. Mine, at least. I had to tell Rhys the truth and own up to it. But, once again, the words refused to come out.

“Rhys, maybe I should go.”

“You aren't going anywhere. If anyone should be embarrassed, it's Jake, not you.” He turned off the lights and took my hand. “Come upstairs. You can sneak into bed while I'm having a chat with him.”

“About what?”

“About why he acts like he's gone back to puberty. I wanted your first time to be perfect, and now it's practically ruined.”

“Nothing is ruined, you were amazing. I just . . . I wish we'd leave Jake out of it.”

He smiled, lifted his shirt from the floor and wrapped me in it. “Wish granted. Besides, technically your first time isn't over yet. I'm considering keeping you up all night, even if it means we will—”

A sound cut him off. He had heard it before I did: an engine again, this time bringing its roar distinctly through the night. A car door closed. The main entrance to the house opened. And a girl's laughter carried her voice through to us, in the dark:

“. . . No, I won't make you beg again. But if you do want me
under
you, then you have to tell me which way to go in this absurdly dark house of yours!”

Nora.

Her steps echoed in the hallway and up the staircase. “My phone is almost dead, so stop saying—” The crystal laughter rippled out again. “Stop saying what you'll do to me, and tell me left or right. Yes, I'm upstairs . . .”

Another sound, barely recognizable: a door opening and closing.

“Finally! My brother has come to his senses. Too bad he had to throw a fit in the process and almost ruin our evening.”

Then he went on to talk about Nora. About how he could have sworn, by the way she swooned over Jake at the party, that she was toast even before we left. I pretended to listen, but all I could think of was Jake holding her. Undressing her. Letting her do to him whatever she wanted.

“Hey, what's wrong?” Rhys turned my face toward his. “You don't seem to like the poor girl very much.”

“How can anyone not like her? She's clearly perfect.”

“I hope Jake thinks so too, although I doubt it.”

“Didn't you say she was his type?”

“She isn't, really. There's the red hair and the feisty temper. Otherwise Nora is too much energy, too much physicality in your face—like a well-bred mare. But that's not what gets my brother going.”

It had gotten him “going” enough to summon her to his room. “Why was he so angry when you pointed her out to him?”

“Because she reminded him of someone. I should have known not to go there.”

“Go where?”

“Jake fell for a girl once, years ago. Lost his head like a madman. The same red hair, but otherwise very frail. Exquisite. She broke my brother's heart, Thea. Just went on and shattered it, like it was nothing.”

“How?”

“Fooling around behind his back. I first heard it from someone at Ivy and almost started a fight with him. Thought he was feeding me nonsense, to get back at me for voting against him during bicker week. Then I heard it from someone else. I knew it would crush Jake, so I decided not to say anything until I had confirmed the rumors. In the meantime, he found out from a friend who had run into her at a cocktail party. But you know Jake. He trusted her and dismissed everything.”

“What happened in the end?”

“I saw it with my own eyes and couldn't believe it. Couldn't fathom how a woman would have the nerve to be two-timing my brother.”

I wondered if what I was doing to Jake qualified as two-timing. It certainly hadn't required any nerve at all.

“He had gone to Seattle, to play at a concert for one of our charities. We were at a party where she drank too much. While I was driving her home, she made a move on me right there, in the car, telling me that Jake didn't need to know.” The rage exploded in his eyes. It was frightening and refused to subside. “I told my brother as soon as he came back. He broke it off with her that same day, but walked like a shadow for months. I don't want to think of the damage it did to him. Makes me want to find her and . . .”

It was better not to imagine the things he might have done. “What happened to her?”

“She was sent to Europe.”

“Sent?! By whom?”

“I told her to get the hell out of Jake's life. She walked off with a very generous offer. Named her own price, basically.”

“You mean . . . you bought her off?”

“Girls like her always have a price, Thea. And thank God they do.”

Girls like her.
Was I really any better? Only two nights ago, I had been kissing Jake. Making promises to him, naked, in my room.

“You look tired. Let's go to sleep.”

“Do daemons sleep at all?”

“It's optional. I think of it as a lifestyle choice, to be as much of a human as possible. If I keep at it, my body starts to need the whole package. Sleep, food, air.”

“You don't need to breathe?”

“I could stop if I wanted to. But I've done it for so long that my lungs are used to it, and the illusion is almost perfect. I like needing these things. It gets a bit frightening when I don't.” There was a sadness in him when he spoke of what he was. As if, had it been up to him all those years ago, he might have made a different choice. “You, on the other hand, I need no matter what. My only human need that is not an illusion.”

We went to his room and soon he fell asleep. I lay in the dark, listening to the house, to its deceptive absence of sound. Somewhere across the hall, Jake was with Nora. Doing to her everything he had been promising on the phone. Everything he had seen his brother do to me. And more.

His type, according to Rhys, was a different—exquisite—redhead. I tried not to think of that other girl and her fatal beauty, but my mind went at it stubbornly. An impossibly frail figure. Devastatingly white skin. Ravishing hair whose red had stolen Jake's heart, the same heart she had ended up shattering.

Now I knew why he had wanted his brother away from me at the beginning. Why all along he had anticipated defeat, certain that I would choose Rhys over him.

My heart will always be yours, either way.

I needed to see him. But the minutes dragged on, and Nora wouldn't leave. Finally, I heard a motorcycle drive off: he was taking her home. When the same sound brought him back to the house, I slipped out of bed and left the room.

Two identical doors faced each other across the stone staircase. One led to Rhys's bedroom; the other had to be Jake's. I pushed it in—it wasn't even fully closed—and saw everything at once.

Clothes, scattered recklessly across the floor. An open pack of condoms, with one torn wrapper left in a hurry next to a stiletto shoe and a dress literally ripped to pieces. That trip on the motorcycle . . . Jake had simply needed a pharmacy run? My eyes stumbled over the bed and the two bodies going madly at each other on it—

I ran away just as his face was lifting off her. Through the open door, I heard her voice: “What is it? Didn't you—” Then his own, cutting her off: “Stay here.” I rushed down the stairs but he caught up with me, the jeans thrown on, the rest of him naked, heated up, and whiffs of her perfume—

“Why did you come to me?” He pushed me into a corridor, a part of the house I had never seen. “You wanted to know what I was doing to her?”

“Jake, I had no idea—”

“Now you do: I was making love to you. If I can't have the girl I want, then I'll imagine her in whoever's in my bed. I've imagined so many things with you . . .”

He had backed me up against a wall and I tried to avoid his lips while his mouth chased me.

“Why did you come? To check if seeing Rhys all over you has driven me crazy? It has! That's why I called Nora. Did seeing us drive you crazy too?”

“Stop saying these things to me!”

“I am crazy, Thea, absolutely crazy. I am crazy about my brother's girl. I want her constantly, even when she's not around. And I would do crazy things for her—you know this, don't you?—I want to do crazy things
to
her . . .”

His hand went up my neck and his fingers closed around it. “
I can't betray
Rhys;
that's what I tell myself every time. But then I end up near you and—”

“We should stay away from each other, Jake.”

“Wouldn't matter. I see you everywhere, in every girl I meet. I keep hoping one of them will erase you from me, but they all become you as soon as I touch them. Do you ever think of me when you're with Rhys?”

There was no way I would answer him. I tried to move away, but his grip on my throat tightened.

“Tell me. Do you ever imagine it's me and not him?”

“Even if I do, so what?”

“Nothing, I just . . . I needed to hear you say it.” His voice kept dropping, lower than I had ever heard it. “I don't want you to be free of me. I want to be inside you every time you breathe, as soon as your lips open . . .” He leaned in so close I could feel his warmth on my skin, over my face. “Breathe, that's all I want, breathe for me—”

I did, and his lips took the air from mine without touching them. Then he breathed out. I could feel it enter my chest: the air that had just left his. Bringing him into me. Filling me up with him until the physical need for him hurt me.

“You make me come just with your breath, Thea . . . I can come just from feeling your breath on my mouth—”

A thousand places burst inside me. I heard my voice say his name and felt weak, numb with ache, terrified of him and the power he had over my entire being.

“Let me go, Jake.”

He remained still, hands pressed against the wall on both sides of me.

“Rhys will wake up. I have to go.”

“So what if he does?”

“So what? He is your brother, and I am with him. Just let go.”

His right hand dropped—away from me, lifeless. I went upstairs without turning back.