“Rebecca, what the fuck are you doing?”
My brain registered the words, but wondered how he was saying them when I was all over his mouth. I was practically inside it and his tongue was still busy kissing me. Jake finally pulled away from my mouth and set me aside, away from him. He looked over my shoulder at something and when I turned to see what, I felt my knees go all funny. “What the fuck?” I stumbled.
“And here I was thinking we’d sorted out our differences,” Jake said to Jake.
There were two Jakes.
Very quickly, Jonas and a few seriously hot guys appeared in the middle of the dance floor like guards, followed by the makeover sisterhood who all looked like they were about to burst out laughing.
“Sorry, couldn’t resist. She’s a live wire,” my mystery kissing companion said.
“I already know this. If you could put her the fuck down it would save me the effort of having to fuck up those handsome looks we share.”
I looked between the mirror images and stamped my pretty heeled shoes on the ground, feeling my fists clench. “Someone had better fucking explain themselves, right now!” I was barely keeping a grip on my reality and that must have been obvious to everyone watching the car crash. The guys all stood to attention because of Jake’s words and the women were no longer smiling.
“Baby, it would seem you’ve met my brother Jack.”
Oh no.
Oh hell no.
I felt my eyes water and the ridiculous situation I’d put myself in became too much to bear. I’d been so utterly stupid. I’d almost given a hint of a lap dance and made out with Jake’s brother.
And everyone was there to see it live in action. I needed to get out of there. I knew I’d fucked things up, ruined everything, and I didn’t know how to put them right.
So before anyone could stop me, I was sprinting for the exit.
“Nice to finally meet you,” Jack shouted at my retreating back, the smile in his voice obvious.
“Fuck. Rebecca, wait!”
No chance. I would not sort this out until my head was clearer and I was not doing it with an audience. When I finally felt fresh air, I tried to soak in some sanity by taking huge, gasping breaths. I knew he was behind me and I would have given anything to be able to out-run him. “Stop running. You weren’t supposed to meet him like that.”
I’d made an ass of myself, I’d hurt Jake, and lord knew how I would ever salvage any sort of relationship with the twin I didn’t even know he had, let alone the rest of them. Why did my life always turn into some undignified shambles? “I’m so angry at myself.”
“If anyone should be mad, it’s me,” he said calmly. “I’ve just watched you grope my brother.”
That was like throwing a match on the gasoline. “I thought he was you.”
“Well that’s just disappointing. I’ve always been more handsome,” he told me childishly.
I felt myself coming unraveled at his reaction. I’d expected him to be beating me up over this. “How could you not fucking tell me you had a twin?”
“I did,” he said, folding his arms across his chest, ready to do battle.
“No. You didn’t. Brother. You always said brother.”
I waited as he searched his memory banks, trying to remember back in an attempt to confirm who was right. “Well shit, this really is all my fault. That is some fucked up kinda payback,” he mumbled to himself.
With my panic gaining ground, I started to pace the club’s parking lot. “How am I going to be able to face them? How the hell could you let me do that, Jake?”
A cab pulled up and stopped by Jake, who opened the door. “Hey, Tommy. Rebecca, get in.”
“No. Leave me the fuck alone. I’m having a meltdown.”
“Get in the cab before I put you in,” Jake warned.
While I was contemplating my next move, the driver’s window whirred down. “Sweetheart, he doesn’t look like he’s joking and I need to get home, too.”
I’d embarrassed myself enough already and I wasn’t keen on continuing that theme in front a cab driver, so I huffed past Jake who was patiently holding the car door open for me. I sat in the back, moving as far away from him as possible and crossed my arms to hide the shaking of my hands. Mortification and dread were coursing through me.
“This her?” the driver asked.
“Tommy Sevens, meet the love of my life, Rebecca Monroe. As you can see, the path of true love never runs smoothly. Rebecca, this is my best friend, Lacey’s husband.”
“Just fucking brilliant! Another important person in your life I’m making an ass of myself in front of.”
Jake started to chuckle, which was beyond irritating. There was nothing remotely amusing about this. “Good idea Tommy,” Jake commented when the cab began to speed up. “Get us home quicker. This one is like a volcano about to erupt.”
“How do you think I should act after kissing your brother?” I bit back at him.
“Oh shit,” I heard Tommy mutter.
“Look, it’s not really an issue unless you enjoyed it more than when we kiss.”
“You did not just say that to me.” I was stunned at his brushing comment and Tommy, sensing danger, sped up even more. The conversation was reaching new lows and approaching territory it probably shouldn’t have in front of a stranger.
“What is it with you and him swapping women?” Tommy chuckled and Jake froze.
Right then, I knew he was going to see the volcanic eruption he’d been joking about only moments before. “Tell me right now he’s fucking joking and this isn’t some crazy game you boys play with women?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Jack’s lucky his head is still on his shoulders. No one touches you.”
“Apart from your brother,” I baited him stupidly and could tell Jake didn’t like that one bit.
Tommy finally pulled up outside Jonas and Dolly’s house. I didn’t hang around while Jake paid him and sarcastically thanked him for his help. “Looks like you’ve had a double dose of payback tonight. Catch you later.”
I was inside the cabin before Jake, and my rage was still swirling around inside me. “What double dose?” I asked as soon as I heard him close the door on the outside world.
“I’ll tell you. Will you hear me out, though?”
“Am I going to like this?” I stuttered and his face dropped. “No, I can tell I’m not. Spit it out then.”
Jake started wandering around the room like a caged animal, and after a while, I noticed that he never strayed far from grabbing reach of me, and of the door. I’d run out once and he was preparing for it again.
“Firstly, remember you are mine and I want nothing more than to make you Mrs. Griggs as soon as possible.”
“Stop stalling. Stalling is making it worse.”
“Remind me again, why am I the one in trouble when I caught you making out with the wrong guy?” The glare I gave him did the trick and had him scrabbling for words. “I told you I fell out with my brother. I apologize for not mentioning the identical twin thing.” Reminding me of this only caused me to glare harder. “Okay, okay. Moving on. I mentioned I didn’t do relationships, but Jake did. The night before I came to help you, I got so wasted that I hooked up with the girl he was dating.”
“You what?”
“In my defense, I knew nothing about this until I woke up the next morning. In her bed. On the plus side, I helped show Jack that Meesha was definitely not the girl for him.”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this.” His level of betrayal was low, very low.
“I’m not proud of it. It’s my biggest fuck up to date and I will spend my life making amends for letting my brother down so badly.” I could tell by Jake’s face that he was completely serious. There was such a sense of raw disappointment there that it pained me to see it. “When I came to help you, I gave him some space. We sorted things out today and I was going to introduce you two tonight, but that plan fell off a fucking cliff.”
“I
’ll say. That’s only single dose. Where does the double dose come in,” I asked, going back to Tommy’s comment.
“A little less sinister. My best friend Lacey was sleeping with Tommy on the quiet. As you may have noticed, there’s an age gap between us. A lot happened and it’s difficult to explain without betraying her confidence. But he contributed to her getting seriously sick. I was the one to find her and I spent some very scary time by her hospital bed, wondering whether she was going to make it. When I realized he was responsible, I went berserk and punched the fuck out of him. I guess now we’re even.”
Apart from Lacey suffering, that didn’t sound so bad. I felt a tiny bit proud of how he sounded so noble, like a hero. This story was one I could relate to with my Jake. That was the Jake who had saved me.
His cell pinged with an incoming text that made him smirk. “Jack approves and is looking forward to recanting this little ditty as part of his groomsman speech.”
The despair of it all was finally winning and I fell into the comfy couch. “I’ve fucked everything up. I’ve made such a bad first impression with a lot of people and I don’t know how I’m going to turn that around, let alone make it up to you.”
“I know a way you can make it up to me,” he said seriously. “Dance for me.”
“You’re kidding, right? I’m hardly in a two step frame of mind right now. Unless we’re talking about me two stepping out the door.”
“Pick a song, beautiful, any song and I’ll play it. Dance for me. Show me that I’m it for you. Drive me so wild that I can’t control myself.”
I let my mind consider the possibility that this was not a clever idea, but all I could think about was doing as he asked if it was what he really wanted. Jake helped make the decision for me and grabbed a kitchen chair before placing it in the centre of the room. “I’m ready, baby, and Spotify awaits your tune of choice,” he told me, holding his cell with an expectant look on his face.
Jake
My grip on my cell was fierce. I was trying to get her to do the one thing that might possibly take my mind off the fact that she’d come on to my fucking brother and kissed him. It was more than that, though. I needed the distraction because it was my own fault.
Never had I wanted to murder someone so badly, but I knew I deserved it somewhere in the grand scheme of Karma. So, I was attempting to internalize the fuck out of my anger. The dancing suggestion was an off the cuff remark to get her to focus on something other than her disappointment in both of us. I wanted to remind her of how we met and give us both three or four minutes to calm down. My sense of reason told me she wasn’t to blame. We’d spent years fooling plenty of people, but if I had to sit and listen to her bleat on and on about it, things would get ugly.
I was a man on the edge of unleashing something I probably wouldn’t be able to take back.
Telling her the worst of my secrets was hard, but she was still there for now at least, and I needed her to see that this could work. The past was the past and even though I knew she’d taken her clothes off for others, I didn’t hold it against her. I could accept that those were different times in our lives.
Rebecca needed to see what I saw when I looked at her—someone brilliant and vibrant, someone so bright and beautiful who belonged with me. She belonged to me.
It felt like there was an odd kind of stalemate between us, with just the flimsy kitchen chair in the middle of us. It was all expectant and inanimate and could go one way or the other.
I could see the way she was looking at me, peering right inside me, and I knew she was trying to figure out whether I’d lost the plot and this was the dumbest fucking request on the planet right now.
Her head dropped back and she rotated it. The silence enhanced the creaking of her neck and spine as it clicked. When I finally saw her face come back to me, her eyes were closed and she was worrying her lip between her teeth.
Good, she was finally focusing.
She was getting on board with my plan and was going to do this.
She was going to give me what I wanted.
Her eyes flashed open quickly. “Sweet Dreams.”
“Eurythmics?” I questioned, ready and poised to Spotify the shit out of it.
“No. Marilyn Manson,” she corrected and I did a quick double take just to be sure she was serious. He was an odd, dark choice I wasn’t expecting, but she was pacing the room. After finding the song, I connected my cell to the Bluetooth speaker by the TV unit and waited.
My fingers were trembling and I was trying to hide my nerves. I took a shaky inhale to fill myself with courage, and turned to her. Rebecca was in some zone, a far off place I wasn’t entirely sure she was comfortable in, and I was beginning to regret asking her to do this. I moved quietly to the chair and had just enough time to lower my ass into it before the guitar solo rang out. Rebecca was moving and the guy’s creepy voice seemed to compliment her dramatic dancing perfectly. It was all so unbelievably eerie that the hairs on my body were upright, but Rebecca was lost to me in the moment.
The words. The sounds.
Rebecca’s body moving with such precise calculation.
Fuck.
Everything told me I was there and present for it, watching her, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was intruding on some private moment.
Her limbs picked up the notes, the rhythm, and the intensity of it all as she finally slid towards me seductively. Rebecca was still in a trance and her hands were running over her body, painfully teasing me and taunting me into touching her.
The words of the song continued to batter at my brain, hurting my head. Everything about them was so ugly, so extreme, yet so very fucking relevant. I needed to close them down and shut them out, but I couldn’t. I wanted to stop hearing them because it made everything so beautifully erotic and I shouldn’t have been feeling pleasure. It was sickening.
Rebecca spread her legs wide and pushed her short skirt up. The teasing glimpse I got of her panties as she provoked me caused my body to heat and burn up.
I needed to be inside her.
Now.
I couldn’t take it anymore. She and the words were destroying me.
As I stood up, Rebecca was still moving around, her legs swinging out wide and her hands starting to caress my body. “No touching me, Sir. That’s against the rules.” She licked her lips deliberately. This was wrong, so wrong. I should have been the one touching her. I didn’t like this Rebecca.
I remained upright and became the pole in her routine, the one she was forced to work. I didn’t want her grinding against me but I was on the verge of begging for more.
My eyes were captivated, and the sheer intense experience she was exposing me to was such an assault I knew I’d never let anyone else ever see her this way again. She would never do this for any other guy while there was still breath in my body and blood in my veins.
The words of the song wouldn’t fucking quit and give me a break. I knew it was personal for her. She was reliving the demons from her nightmares and I could think of only one way to make this stop. The more I heard, the more I knew the song had so much meaning for both of us.
Her gyrating continued, but she was grabbing at her skirt, stripping it from her body. Its removal allowed her to work those fantastic legs harder. Her anger was making me hard and it was so wrong. I should have been ashamed, but I was so confused.
Fuck. I was already at breaking point. My cock was rigid and throbbing so badly that no amount of adjusting could quench its thirst.
The slow reveal of her body as she shed her top left her dancing in just her underwear, and seeing the flush of her skin, I could tell I wasn’t the only one affected. Her breathing was heavy and severe, and not just from the exertion of her movement.
The screeching and screaming of Marilyn Manson’s voice in the small cabin forced me to confront the lyrics of the song. Choosing this song had nothing to do with choreography. It was all about the fucking words.
The drums.
The singer’s yelling caused my senses to peak and I knew if I really looked at Rebecca and heard what she was trying to get across to me, it would be the thing that sent me spiraling.
‘Sweet Dreams.’ Those words thrashed at my ears. The undertone of ‘being used,’ was her life and her story, and it wounded me. The reference to ‘abusing people,’ cut me deep. That was me. I’d treated people that badly. I’d turned people’s sweet dreams into something ugly and I’d never felt more ashamed of myself.
While I was lost in my suffering, Rebecca turned and bent at the hips. Her ass was smack up against my cock and rubbing me. I couldn’t hold myself back any longer. I had to make this stop and make it all better. I needed her to see she was worth so much more, and that those words would never mean the same again the next time she heard them.
Putting my hands on her hips and tearing her thin panties apart at the seams disturbed her concentration, and she tried to stand up, but I forced her to remain bent double.
“Stay the fuck there,” I growled, and when her eyes met mine, I was sure I saw a tiny hint of fear.
“Jake,” I heard her whisper breathlessly, as the song continued to wage war on my emotions. I smoothed my hands over the perfect tight skin of her ass globes and spanked her once, hard, going to rub the blushing area in an effort to soothe her. Hearing her moan with pleasure caused my cock to hurt, the want swallowing me up, and as the blood pumped to the surface of her skin and pinked its pale shade, I knew she’d finally broken me down. “Don’t stop me, Rebecca. I need this so badly,” I begged. My voice was hoarse like I’d been the one screaming and shouting for hours, not Marilyn Manson. If I tried to think back over the last few minutes, I wasn’t completely sure I hadn’t been. “I need to take you so badly and shut the past down for good. I need to rid you of Raven and let Rebecca come alive.” Hearing me reference the past and her real name made her angry, and she fought against me. “Did you hear me?”
“I’ll always be Raven,” she whispered, scared. Was that what she truly thought?
Alive Page 16
