Still, it was emptier than I would have thought at this kind of time on a Friday night. I happened to glance around, and froze, stopping in my tracks. My brother walked into me, making us both stumble, but I ignored him as he grumbled.
No way.
Of all people I would have imagined would be in a place like this, she was probably the last. Emma Davis left town earlier than anybody before the ink was even dry on her diploma. Hell, she left before us, though we were a year older and a grade higher. We’d come back plenty of times, but she’d never be around.
We wouldn’t have come out if I hadn’t been bored out of my mind and bothered Abe until he agreed to go with me. We might have missed her without knowing it.
Talk about luck.
She sat in a booth, but in a different direction from where I was heading. Without thinking about it, I reached back and grabbed my still grumbling brother, and dragged him behind me.
“Carl—” but the protest died on his lips.
He probably saw what I did. A girl—woman—we both knew, drinking by herself. It looked like it was only the three of us in here, besides the bartender, though I didn’t bother to look around again.
She looked up when we got close, and it was definitely her, not just my eyes and the poor lighting playing tricks on me. By the widening of her eyes, I guessed she probably remembered us.
Good.
“Carl and Abe Thomas?” The surprise in her voice was pronounced. “What are you guys doing here?”
I almost felt relieved when she called out to us first, but I covered it with a casual grin. Between me and my brother, I was the ladies’ man, though he didn’t hurt in that department, either. But Emma Davis wasn’t the kind of girl I’d ever approached before. I didn’t think I’d know how to, without scaring her off. Which was exactly what used to happen before. I remembered she’d spoken maybe ten words to me—she’d said them all just now—though I only noticed her in high school. The school options in Libreville were limited, though, so we’d pretty much schooled together all our lives.
But we didn’t exactly run in the same circles. Before high school, girls and boys didn’t mingle any more than they had to. In high school, I ran with the wilder crowd, but Emma was a quiet girl. I never knew how not to scare her.
That was the last thing I wanted now.
“Would you mind if we sit?”
“Um,” she blinked and then shook her head a little. “No. Please, sit down.”
She ducked her head, and I thought her skin turned a little pink. Was she blushing? I sat across from her, hoping it would make her more comfortable, and Abe slid in beside me. I’d come in for a drink, but I didn’t want to take the time to walk over to the bar and order it. Clearly, my brother didn’t either.
“So, Emma Davis. I gotta ask, what are you doing drinking alone at the local bar in Libreville.”
Abe nudged my side, none too gently, but I just leaned back and folded my arms across my chest. Her head was still ducked down, her hair hiding her face, and my hand wanted to reach across the booth and hold her chin, raise her face so I could see if she was blushing
“Uh, I just got into town, actually. And suddenly felt like I needed something to drink.” That last part was muttered in a low voice, but the place was empty, we heard it clearly.
“No trouble, I hope.”
“No trouble, just a little tired. I haven’t been to the bar in a while, but I come to town every couple of months. Life’s gotten a little hectic, I guess.” She glanced up, gave us a wry smile. “High school doesn’t really prepare you for life, you know.”
Every two months? It must have been bad luck we missed her every time she came by.
I would have been a bit of a hypocrite if I agreed with her. It was true, but I pretty much coasted through high school without caring much about my grades. That was usually Abe, so I couldn’t completely empathize. I wasn’t a smart cookie, and I knew fairly early on my ticket out of the sleepy town of Libreville wasn’t going to be college. Abe would have gone, but I ended up dragging him into my schemes.
“So, what are you doing in town?” Abe asked, easily sidestepping her comment-that-was-not-really-a-question.
She held the beer bottle in front of her, wrapped both her hands around it, looking down again. “I came to visit my mom. I do it every couple of months, and I managed to get off work this weekend, so I called her yesterday, then got in my car this morning.”
“You’ve been doing this every year since you first left?”
“Yeah.”
“We don’t come by any schedule, but I can’t believe we never ran into you once.”
Not that we always looked, but usually, a kid that left town and came back was big news. The first few years, dad would throw a party and invite his friends because his ‘prodigal sons’ deigned to visit him until we both put our foot down and threatened to stop coming altogether.
“I only stay the weekend, and Mom doesn’t always make a big production of it. Most of the town never even know I’m here until they see me walking around.”
She seemed a little sad, sounded a little sardonic when she added that part. She even rolled her eyes, though we weren’t meant to see that. I wanted to ask what had her so down, but she’d likely come to a bar to drink and forget. Talking about it would probably just annoy her, so I put it out of my mind.
Instead, I sat back in my seat and watched her. She was in a pale dress held up by flimsy straps, leaving her shoulders mostly bare. I followed the line of her throat as she took a sip of her drink, down to the dip where her collar bones met. The neckline didn’t reveal any cleavage, not from where I was sitting, and I wanted to be right next to her. The dress curved nicely around her ample chest, and it was all I could do not to imagine her naked.
“You’ve changed a lot from high school. You’re even sexier than before.”
I said the words without thinking, coming back to myself after they were out of my mouth. I regretted them almost immediately—I meant it, but I didn’t know how she would react to it.
But she seemed to have grown out of her shell, at least a little.
Her eyes widened, her skin flushed a little, and her eyes flit across the both of us before settling back on me. But she got her expression under control and smiled, though it was shaky around the edges.
“Look at you, saying all the right things this time around. Unlike in high school. You never knew I existed, neither of you.”
“We knew you existed, Emma,” Abe cut in, leaning forward. “You were just so shy, back then.”
She ran when pretty much anyone, but especially a guy, tried to talk to her. Abe and I had tried separately after she ran the first few times we tried approaching her together. But the result was pretty much the same and we didn’t try too hard.
But here she was, and here we were, virtually alone in a public bar. We were both going to make damn sure she didn’t try to run this time.
Chapter Three
Emma
I didn’t know what to make of it.
Surely, I must have been wrong. Whatever they were implying must have somehow gotten lost in translation. Because there was no way they meant what I was thinking.
But how they both sat, eyes trained on me, was kind of hard to mistake. I didn’t have a lot of gazes like that aimed at me, but I certainly recognized it when it was.
The hot twins from high school wanted to get with me.
Carl and Abe Thomas, the tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed twins, had been pretty much every girl’s dream. The few lucky ones even got a little close, but neither boy dated anyone long-term, that I knew of. Not even Abe dubbed the ‘serious’ one of the two.
Like most of the girls, I’d grown a bit of a crush. Unlike some of the girls, they were out of my league, and I knew it. And it was true I had been shy in high school. Save for a handful of friends, I kept to myself. I grew out of it—I kind of had to, in medical school—but I still wasn’t anything to write home about.
Most people couldn’t tell the Thomas boys apart, they were identical twins, but I always could. I watched them enough to learn their different little quirks until I realized I liked them both when most of everyone else picked a random favorite.
But this was unexpected.
“You guys are just messing with me, right,” I said slowly, voice suspicious. “You never looked twice at me.”
Why would they? I looked at both of them, frowning a little at the thought of them making fun of me.
I was the shy kid that pretty much everyone ignored, because yeah when people approached me I got anxious because I didn’t know what to say and ended up hiding or walking away. Or running, in a few memorable encounters. I’d gotten into some bully situations because of that behavior of mine.
I wasn’t quite that shy little girl anymore, though. Standing up to my mother not an hour ago, was proof enough of that.
Abe stayed still, serious, but Carl, ever the ladies’ man, leaned closer and smiled. I could have sworn his eyes smoldered, something that happened only in writing.
“Why would we mess with you, Emma? In any way other than the fun way, of course.” He grinned the same cocky grin I’d seen him use to get whatever girl he wanted to fall into his lap.
I’d seen it enough times that it really shouldn’t affect me, nearly a decade later. But I could feel my breath hitch in my throat, my skin flush, and my mouth going dry.
“Emma.”
Even though they were similar down to their voices, if I’d been sloshed enough not to realize who was who, just that voice saying my name would have clued me in. Where Carl could make girls fall for him with a smile, his brother could do it by the power of his voice alone. It was pitched lower, practically curling around my name. He said it normally, I didn’t think he even realized he did it, it was never deliberate for Abe, but how he said my name made my body wake up and take notice.
“We would never do something like that to you. If you’d given us a chance back then, whichever one of us, we definitely would have come running.” He paused deliberately. “We still would.”
I wanted to give an immediate denial, but my throat seemed to close up. My body tightened at his words, at his voice; I couldn’t help the reaction.
But could I really do something like this? I wasn’t a virgin, not at twenty-six. Even shy little me wasn’t quite so pathetic. But two guys coming onto me—if they weren’t messing with me—and twins at that. People that I knew from my days in boring suburbia, before I graduated and ran like hell was at my heels. I knew they weren’t living at home, but still.
Although…
I thought my life was a joke. I’d spent the last few years studying like crazy to become a doctor. I’d gotten and was coming to the end of my Internship at Central General Hospital. I was making a name, and a life, for myself. But sometimes, I didn’t know who for. I was running myself ragged, but I rarely thought of taking it easy.
And I couldn’t exactly say I wasn’t interested. I was a woman with needs, no longer a little girl, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been with someone. With everything else going on, I didn’t have time for a relationship, let alone thinking about sex. I was definitely thinking about it now, though, and I could feel my body grow hot at just the idea. I had to cross my legs under the table because of the throbbing growing between my legs.
Well, why not?
It wasn’t like I had anything better to do with my time. If I went back home now, Mom and I would only get into another argument, because I turned my back on her. I should have thought it through, but this had me in the clear, so I wouldn’t have to sneak back in the middle of the night like some recalcitrant teenager.
I decided—a little impulsively, but surely—for once in my life, I’d let myself have a good time if they offered. I was too hard on myself. I’d had to be for a long time, right along with my mother, trying to prove myself to her when it only seemed to make it worse. It had been all work and no play since I started interning at Central General Hospital. Hell, long before that, even.
I decided that, if anything was going to get me through this weekend, it would be letting my hair down, even just a little.
I’d never been with two men at the same time, but I loved the idea that I would be doing it with the two guys that I—and pretty much everyone else—craved in high school.
Two guys that, incredibly, wanted me just as much.
Chapter Four
Abe
We were heading out to the bar to drink because my twin was an idiot with the attention of a toddler. Because he didn’t like being bored, and he didn’t like going out on his own when he could have me around, he’d dragged me behind him.
It was pretty much how we’d been all our lives. Even when we left home so Carl could join the world of motorcycle racing. Because I just happened to be there—because he made sure I would be—he decided I could do it, too. I didn’t complain about it, because I loved riding, but mainly because I was good at it. I also knew, unlike my brother, that it wasn’t exactly a career of a lifetime, so I was always after him to invest.
He found investing boring; he found a lot of things I said boring, in fact. It was why I usually just ignored his opinions.
We’d come awfully far in the past seven years. We even had a title, and thanks to Dad, everyone in town knew it: Carl and I were International Motorcyclist Champions. Carl, surprisingly, wasn’t one to brag. Not unless he was thinking of picking up girls.
But when we got to the bar, and my brother was acting weird, I would have called him out on it, if I didn’t catch the focus of his attention.
I remembered Emma very well from high school. If there was a girl from Libreville I’d thought about plenty, it would be her. We’d never even talked, but the neighborhood wasn’t so big that I wouldn’t have run into her somewhere at some point, even outside of school.
Bragging about our accomplishment wasn’t a tactic that would work on someone like Emma Davis, though. Just as well Carl realized it and kept his mouth shut when she gave the right opportunity for him to tell her neither of us went to college.
She looked better than she had in high school. Also, kind of worse.
Even if I hadn’t been looking for it, it would have been obvious to see Emma was more than a little upset. Why else would she be here to visit her mother for the weekend and end up at a bar, alone, the evening she arrived? Carl either didn’t notice or was being tactful about it for once and not bringing it up. When my brother said something that made her give a quiet laugh that lit her face momentarily, but not enough to clear out the shadows in her eyes, I decided.
I was going to lift her out of her bad spirits.
Emma looked down, and I wanted to reach across the table and hold her face, raise it so I could see her clearly. Though she was much better than she had been in high school, at least she hadn’t tried to run from us once, it was a habit she hadn’t broken.
“We have a room at the hotel.” She’d know which one. Libreville only had the one. “Spend the night with us, Emma.”
It was blunt, but I’d never been good at sweet-talking like Carl, and if I let him, it would take too long. Neither of us had approached a woman like Emma Davis before; a bombshell but shy and completely unaware of just how attractive she was, at least to us. Even back in high school, she was the one girl he had trouble approaching; the guy that had three dates to the prom, somehow juggled all three without someone getting hurt, and then spent the night, and several more, with all three girls.
Emma wasn’t the kind of girl he could sweet talk, but she would probably appreciate directness. There was a difference between appreciating it and being okay with it, though. She didn’t look up, and even though my chest burned with anticipation, I didn’t think she’d really agree to it.
Because I had said ‘us’ very clearly, she would know what I—we—were offering. I included Carl automatically since I was sure he’d try to run me over with his bike
if I took the girl we’d both mooned over a little in high school out from under him. We didn’t fight over much, but I wasn’t in the mood to just roll over and let him have his way, either. It was something different for us, but if it was the only way either of us got to have her, I thought Carl would be game with the idea. Still, I was awfully sure he didn’t have any more hope than I did.
Emma shocked the both of us, though.
“Yes.”
I blinked, wondering if I was hearing things now. It was a surprise that she would be party to the idea. But the word was low, the voice feminine, and I heard it. Carl obviously had the same idea, because when I turned to him, he was turning my way, and our eyes met, the surprise in mine mirrored in his. We both looked back at Emma.
“Could you repeat that,” Carl said slowly, both of us leaning closer.
She never raised her head, not entirely. Just enough so she could look at us from under her eyelashes. Her face was pink, and she was biting her full lower lip. I wondered if she knew just how that look affected us, because Carl was feeling it, a low sound escaping him as he shifted in his seat.
She said it again, a little louder and harder to mistake. “Yes.”
She said yes. Shy, straight-laced Emma Davis. I curled my hands into fists, wanting to reach out to her, touch her. Now that she’d say yes, I didn’t want her to change her mind. My body went from cold to hot in sixty seconds, I felt like I needed to pause for my head to catch up.
“Are you sure?” I said slowly, wanting to hit myself as soon as the words were out. I didn’t want her to change her mind.
She took a deep breath that raised her chest up, and I was distracted for a second as my eyes dropped. The dress was thin, and either she wasn’t wearing a bra or it was thin, too, because I could see her nipples outlined perfectly by the fabric.
My jeans tightened as I thought about how I was going to get to play with them very soon. But I forced my mind back on track, looking up at her face, waiting for her final word.
Forbidden Prescription 3: MFM Ménage Stepbrother Medical Romance (Forbidden Medicine) Page 14
