Almost Wrong

by Aubrey Parker

  The awkward moment passes. We spend some time discussing my family despite him clearly not wanting to, probably so we can remind each other that we’re legally (if not biologically) related. Hunter makes a joke about how Mom and Bill screwed things up for us by getting together. I tell him that if they hadn’t been together, there was no way in hell we ever would have met. I was Miss Perfect, and he was Mr. Wrong. His friends beat up my friends. We had our parents to blame, not thank.

  Then Hunter goes too far, pointing out that all the problems would go away if they’d just break up or die. “Then we could rock the bedposts,” he says. It’s such a ludicrously awful thing to say, a truly tasteless joke. We both laugh, too hard, and it’s clear that it’s only made things worse for these two people trying to reacquaint without reacquainting too far.

  We talk about a bunch of other boring, platonic things: his business, his standard artist contracts, Dreadnought’s expansion plans. I make him show me an organizational chart because it’s the least sexy thing I can possibly think of. And after a while the moment passes, and we really are just two people. A golden hour begins, and I can almost imagine us hanging out, being buddies, maybe acting like siblings joined by marriage.

  And at that point, with the cold shower of ordinary reality between us, I realize to my surprise that I like Hunter Altman.

  He’s smart. He’s interesting. He’s lost his worst habits and gained a few better ones. He still has his arrogance, but that’s okay; the world’s difference makers are all arrogant.

  When he suggests that I meet Duncan — who, he assures me, is even more arrogant than he is — the air feels safe enough to accept his offer. I have today off work, and I’ve already made my excuses to Mom like a teenager. I tell her I’ll be late and add that I may stay another night away. That will have to be played by ear. Right now, I’ve found myself comfortable playing with fire.

  But I must remember it’s fire, and be ready to run if it blazes.

  I tell Hunter I need to go home for dinner clothes. We’ll be meeting Duncan and a woman named Samantha. I can’t do it in jeans that probably stink from yesterday’s sweat. What’s more, I intuit that Samantha is Hunter’s girlfriend. Him making a point to invite her is probably like me bringing up Mom and Bill. It’s Hunter saying, See? I have a girlfriend. How could we NOT be platonic forever and ever? Clearly, it’s not a problem because I’m inviting her to dinner … and no, it doesn’t sound to me like protesting at all.

  Regardless, I don’t want to look dowdy when I meet Hunter’s girlfriend. I don’t know why; it just feels wrong. He has a few pictures of her around — not in frames, but as vacation snaps printed and propped up loose on his massive black desk. Samantha is stunning. I feel an unreasonable desire to compete.

  But when I suggest running home, Hunter laughs. “We’re family,” he says with unreasonable emphasis, as if trying to convince himself, “and I have too much money as it is.” This turns me on a little in a way I’m ashamed of. I push the feeling down.

  We visit boutiques in Beverly Hills, right there on Rodeo Drive. He won’t let me see any prices. He keeps repeating that, as obnoxious as it is to point out, the highest prices mean nothing to him. He keeps telling me that he likes to give gifts, and that by accepting his offers, I’m doing him a favor.

  I wonder what Mom will think of these clothes. Will she think I’m a sellout, gone the way of my previously Hell-bound, suddenly birthday-card-worthy stepbrother? Or worse: will she congratulate me on narrowing the gap, bringing the three of us closer to gold?

  Hunter must have appointments even though it’s Saturday, because his cell keeps buzzing. He declines the calls every time. “Not important,” he says. And: “That’s what assistants are for.”

  This is making me nervous. He’s doting too much. Yesterday, I hated him, and he barely remembered me. Now we’re best pals — but not just best pals; he’s spending his day in shops and salons, talking to me while I’m having my hair done on his dime, chatting me up while I’m getting a manicure. It takes all day, and I can’t help but wonder what he’d normally have done with this time.

  I’m not stupid. I know this is lingering affection. I keep turning the discussion to our families, and he keeps turning it to this mysterious Samantha, just to keep us honest. The fire at my heels is burning hotter. We’re risking burns that will scar. But I can’t stop. He’s out of line for doing all of this; I’m out of line for letting him.

  We should stop. We don’t. It’s all so familiar because we’ve been on this seesaw before.

  Dinner’s at eight. We have reservations somewhere fancy. He showed me the menu, but I didn’t recognize a single thing. But it’s been such an amazing day that I don’t care whether any of this is smart.

  When we reenter his penthouse, I’m carrying several bags from the most expensive places I’ve ever shopped. I pause to look in the mirror, and hardly recognize myself. I look like a model. I suppose it’s arrogant to say that, but what the hell; I’m here with the king of arrogant. He was cocky as a hot teen boy, and now he’s cocky as a hot wealthy man.

  “You look amazing,” he says, coming up behind me. He’s wearing a very fine suit — fine enough, in fact, that even my terrible eye for tailoring can see the difference. I haven’t seen him in half an hour, and right now he looks positively delicious.

  Alarm bells screech inside my mind:

  I’ve been thinking of him as a “hot wealthy man.”

  I decided he looked “positively delicious.”

  And I’ve already mentally made myself at home here, in this place, so far from my home. Somewhere out there, my mother and stepfather are waiting for me. I have a job and responsibilities. Yet here I am playing fairy princess, acting like this is how things are for me now, and forever will be.

  Whatever I’ve tried to stuff down inside me regarding Hunter Altman, I’ve failed.

  It’s too late to get out of dinner. After all he spent — in money and time — to gussy me up, it would be unbelievably rude to run off or cancel. I have to get through it, but that will be hard now that I’ve heard my yearning heart.

  My eyes are softening for him. And oh shit oh God oh hell, I’m getting wet for him.

  I’m longing for the bathroom, and about to make an excuse—knowing full well how incredibly undignified it will be to hike up this fancy dress and play sticky fingers. But I’m left with little choice. I’m in too deep.

  I’ve watched the fire at my back, but without warning here I am, surrounded.

  I want to turn, but Hunter’s pulled out a beautiful silver necklace with gemstones at the throat. He lowers it to my skin from behind, his hands brushing my bare shoulders and the nape of my neck. He clasps it and whispers, “For you.”

  I don’t know what’s happening.

  Hunter doesn’t finish saying those two words before I’m turning my head and pressing my lips to his.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ANGELA

  I remember that night, in my eighteenth year, more than any other.

  It was the most intense set of emotions of my life, mixed in ways that didn’t make sense. I was terrified that Bill and Mom had almost caught me and Hunter doing what we’d almost done on that fateful movie night. I was alive with lust, but felt so guilty that Hunter was Hunter. I felt angry at my mom for marrying Bill — one simple act that neither Hunter nor I had had any part of, but that turned our otherwise straightforward relationship taboo. I might have been the immature, teenage version of in-love — an emotion that, back then, had a strong tie to my blossoming sex drive and almost no rationality.

  But most of all, I felt the need.

  It was stronger than anything I’d felt before. All-consuming. I couldn’t shake it, even after Hunter made his excuses to leave. I stayed with Mom and Bill downstairs, forcing awkward conversation as if serving penance. Through it all, I burned in my jeans; clear thought was impossible. I kept feeling the phantom touch of Hunter’s hand. The phantom brush of Hunter�
��s kiss. I needed him, and the feeling refused to leave as minutes and hours bled from the evening.

  I couldn’t run up to take a cold shower — doubtful that it’d help anyway — because upstairs was where Hunter had gone and I knew he felt the same way I did. I couldn’t go near him; something awful and wonderful would happen if I did. So I drank ice water, which did nothing to help. Mom tried talking to me but I couldn’t follow our conversation. My mind kept returning to what my stepbrother and I had almost done.

  To what we could never do.

  To what would forever tempt us, now that we’d cracked the seal on Pandora’s box.

  When Mom snapped her fingers to draw my attention, I pretended to be distracted by a noise on the street. Really I’d been imagining what it would have felt like to go all the way.

  I was a virgin. I had nothing to compare with my almost-experience, delicious and shameful, the subject of my persistent fantasy: Hunter — the boy who lived in the room beside mine.

  I couldn’t meet Bill’s eye. He didn’t know what had happened on the couch, but I was sure my expression would give us away.

  I kept my “everything’s normal” act up for as long as I could. I didn’t go to bed until after Mom and Bill. Even then I plodded upstairs on the step’s edges, hoping they wouldn’t creak and wake Hunter … or if he wasn’t asleep, to rouse him from his room.

  I couldn’t face our future, now that everything had changed.

  How were we supposed to get through the months or years before one of us moved out?

  I forced myself into bed. I refused to touch myself because I knew who’d be on my mind if I did. I tried to convince myself that it was right that we’d been interrupted — that Mom and Bill’s early arrival had been divine intervention, meant to keep us from doing something that would detonate our family, and that we’d both regret forever.

  But my resolution didn’t last. I slipped my hand into my panties, sending my mind back to those frantic minutes on the couch, and thought of Hunter as I came.

  Sleep took me uneasily.

  An unknown time later, I woke suddenly. My slumber was paper-thin; I was sure that something had startled me. But there was no one in my room. My door was closed and the night was still.

  Until I heard a creak from beyond my door — a repeat of the noise that had woken me.

  I heard it again. Then again, slowly.

  I opened my door to find Hunter already past my room, near the stairs, tiptoeing down the hallway with an enormous hiking pack.

  “What are you doing?” I shout-whispered at him.

  Hunter turned. His expression broke my heart.

  “Go back to bed, Angela.” He watched me for another few seconds, then turned and moved toward the staircase.

  I stepped into the hallway and followed. Our house was dark. The air was electric between us, and only the dim allowed me to face him without flinching.

  “What are you doing?” I asked him, indicating the backpack.

  He looked like he might deny whatever it was, but then he said simply, “I’m leaving.”

  “Why?”

  Sadly: “You know why, Angela.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “I’m not sure. Duncan’s, maybe.”

  “Do you really have to leave now? In the middle of the night?”

  “I don’t want to fight or argue. Or for my dad to pretend he wants me to stay when we both know that nobody wants me here. I’d rather just slip away.”

  I swallowed. “I want you here.”

  A grim smile crossed his handsome features. “I know. But that’s why I have to go.”

  I crossed the remaining distance between us. I took his hand. He resisted, but I dragged him back into my room. His pack lightly banged the doorframe, then we were behind a closed door. My bedroom was a place where we could at least talk freely. A place we knew better than to be in unsupervised.

  “It’s not just for tonight, is it? You’re leaving for good. You’re leaving us, and you’re not coming back.”

  He shrugged. He’d been unshaven earlier, but the shadow on his face was so much more evident now, in the semi-dark. He looked like a wanderer. A nomad. A man with no home.

  “You weren’t even going to say goodbye?”

  “I couldn’t. I just …” And he trailed off, looking away.

  “What we did tonight —” I began.

  “It’s not just that.”

  “Then what?”

  There was a long pause. “I might love you, Angela.”

  He turned for the door, but I wrenched him back.

  “What did you say?”

  “You heard me.”

  “You can’t love me. You don’t. We’re just …” But I didn’t know the end of that sentence. In a rational world, a sentence like that couldn’t exist.

  He cupped my cheek. It was a rough hand, used to work. Covered with calluses.

  I thought he might repeat those heartbreaking, wonderful words. Instead he let the hand drop to my shoulder. It moved to the back of my neck. And he pulled me forward to plants his kiss on my forehead like a respectful, protective, proper brother.

  A tear rolled down my cheek. I couldn’t stop it.

  “Don’t cry, Angela.”

  “You’re leaving. Don’t leave us. Don’t leave me, Hunter.”

  “No good can come from what would happen if I stay. We have to be strong.” He swallowed. “I have to be strong.”

  I wrapped my hands around his wrist, his palm still behind the spill of my hair. With two hands on his arm, I thought I could stop it from happening. Hold him. Keep him with me forever, by force if not by volition.

  “Angela —”

  “No. You can’t go. I’ll hate you if you leave me here.”

  “It’s okay if you hate me, as long as it will stop me from loving you.”

  I didn’t understand the strange alchemy that seized me with his words. I was tortured and angry. Crushed and furious. I gripped his hand tighter. I pushed him away and pulled him near. I didn’t shout for fear of waking our parents, but I whisper-screamed, tears streaming faster. I beat at his chest and clawed at his eyes. My heart hammered like a drum. I couldn’t see him. There was only the wash of my sadness, obscuring it all.

  Hunter caught my flailing arms. I kicked away, almost knocking him to the floor. He ducked a slap, then caught my hands again. Finally, he pinned my weapons against my chest, using his body as a shield.

  I looked up, rage boiling within me. I hated him. With every breath I had within me.

  Hunter fixed me with his bottomless eyes, that cocksure brow now furrowed with something like concern. Dead serious, still as the air between us.

  His kiss hit me like a bludgeon. It was as if something inside him snapped, and all of his carefully held control shattered like glass under a thrown rock. His mouth covered mine. His breath was in my throat, hot and urgent. And then whatever wall was left within me broke with his.

  We became all hands. I ripped his pack away and dropped it heedlessly to the bed, where it mercifully crashed without noise. His fingers groped clumsily at my sleep shirt, his hands finding my braless breasts, the fury of his assault more than making up for his awkwardness. He tugged the shirt up and groped my flesh in great, rough handfuls. His squeeze was too tight. His lips mashed against mine. We fell to the bed in a pile, finally knocking the errant backpack to the ground.

  Hunter was above me, propped on his arms. He was one percent sense; the rest was abandon.

  “We can’t do this. You’re my sister.” He said it without step in front, as if trying to turn himself off.

  I unbuttoned his shirt, pulled it off his arms, frustrated by the way it caught on his wrists. I tugged as if I had no idea how clothing went on or off. It came free and I pawed his chest, pulling him toward my lips.

  “Angela—”

  That was all he got out. Whatever demon had hold of me, it finally caught hold of Hunter and tugged him atop me. His weight smother
ed my body. He covered me like a shroud, his mouth hot and working. We were saliva and tongues. I’d never kissed like this. It wasn’t even kissing; it was something from the wild. Something primal, brought up from deep inside.

  We couldn’t stop. Even at gunpoint, we wouldn’t have stood a chance.

  No more words. There was a spell we couldn’t risk breaking. This was the ripping of a bandage—we had to do it quick, before we lost our nerve. He devoured my neck, covering it with kisses. He pulled my shirt all the way up and then off, licking every inch of my chest. Then he sat upright and fixed me with his stare, hands at the waist of my elastic pajamas. He pulled them and my panties off in one sweep, and then I was bare before him.

  Hunter looked my body over, spellbound. Almost reverently, his hand moved between my legs. His fingers brushed my pussy lips, found me wet.

  My hands went to his belt. I freed his cock and stroked it as I had before, only much more aggressively. I sat halfway up, shoving his pants and underwear down to his knees. Then I pulled him toward me, as if his cock were a tether. He used both hands to spread my legs, then followed my lead.

  He was inside me in a second — just the tip. I flinched, and he moved to pull back. But I held his shaft. I held him just inside me, fighting to keep him where he was.

  “Does it hurt?” he asked me.

  “No. Yes. Just a little.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “It’s okay. I want you to hurt me that way.”

  “This is wrong. We have to stop.”

  I wrapped one arm behind Hunter’s lower back and pulled him closer. The sensation was strange; there was pain, but there was pleasure behind it.

  Hunter’s cock was halfway inside me. I tried to keep the effort from my face, but I must have failed. I tried to relax, but it wasn’t just relaxation I needed. It was something different — a muscle, of sorts, that I hadn’t yet used.

  “Are you sure?”