Broke and Famous

by Elizabeth Gannon

  “You wanna take pictures of me without my clothes on?” Thraex asked, sounding confused but willing to listen. “Okay, Miss Sasha, if that’s what you want, I’ll oblige.”

  “For the complaint we’re going to file.” She explained. “This needs to be dealt with.”

  “I ain’t gonna file no complaint.” He shook his head, sounding certain. “No sense to it.”

  She made a face at him again, hoping to convince him to at least speak to an attorney about the matter. The Freedom Squad had been completely out of line, to a criminal extent. At least in her opinion.

  Her fingers skimmed over the muscles of his side, and up across his chest.

  He’d always been a strong young man. Far stronger than Sasha, both in physical strength and in character. He never complained about anything and his work ethic was incredible.

  He was a kind man. Gentle. And always concerned about the welfare of her family.

  Yes, people accused him of being a little… rough around the edges at times. Mostly times when he’d fight someone he shouldn’t have or do something which wasn’t up to the high standards of civility her mother stressed, but he was still a fine young man.

  Her mother had issues with him, mostly due to her thinking that his behavior around Sasha wasn’t acceptable, but Sasha had never been put off by it. True, it made her self-conscious sometimes, but that wasn’t Thraex’s fault. That was hers. He wasn’t from this dimension, he had no idea what he was doing.

  It took Sasha a moment to recognize the fact that her hand was on the hard muscles of his chest, pressed against his heart.

  She immediately yanked it back, feeling embarrassed.

  Thraex didn’t look embarrassed at all, he simply stared at her in his usual way.

  Hot and self-assured and… wild.

  She opened her mouth to apologize for touching him like that and explain that it was just to check for injuries, but she couldn’t think.

  It was the damn heat.

  She licked her lips, wishing that her mouth would work, so that she could end the awkward tension which suddenly filled the room.

  The moment stretched out too long and it went from her fumbling for her words, to just being uncomfortable.

  Or uncomfortable for her at least.

  Thraex scooted forward on the table, leaning towards her.

  Her heart raced at the physical awareness of having him this close.

  He was innocent. Sasha wasn’t sure he’d ever even dated. Not that her mother would have really liked strange women coming around their building, but he’d never seemed overly interested in that. Lots of women had tried, obviously, but he’d always turned them down flat.

  His legs dangled above the floor and she became aware of the fact that the way she was standing put his leg between hers.

  He was so close that she could feel the heat of his flesh on her face.

  His knee brushed against her hip.

  Sasha looked up at him, mouth parted, feeling her skin flush with excitement and embarrassment and the sweltering heat…

  He suddenly reached out and grabbed her hip, pulling her towards him, leaning closer.

  Oh god! He was going to kiss her!

  She swallowed, feeling lost and scared and utterly captivated by him.

  He made her feel hot and weak and alive.

  It was forbidden what he made her feel. He was only just a man by a few months, and he was her family’s ward. And her student. And the one man in town which her family and friends would absolutely forbid her from being with.

  She shook her head, pulling back. “Do you know what would happen if you kissed me?” She breathed, thinking about the ramifications of such an action, and what that would do to her standing in the community if it got out.

  He smiled his lopsided, confident smile. “I’ve got some notion, yeah.”

  He pulled her against him and she found herself tilting her head back to meet the kiss. “We can’t…” She breathed, seconds before his lips met hers.

  His mouth forced hers to open, hot and sweet and demanding.

  It was like fire racing through her in the still, warm air of the room. His mouth devouring hers in illicit ways, making her already racing heart feel like it would burst from her chest in an attempt to get closer to him.

  She broke away from the kiss a moment later, gasping for breath and stumbling backwards. She started swearing softly to herself, recognizing that she’d allowed him to pull her towards something she would never do.

  She turned to look at him again, and his lip was bloody. At first, her stomach lurched, assuming that he’d somehow been injured again, but then she realized that the blood was hers. The force of the kiss had broken open her split lip from her fall in the ring earlier. He didn’t seem to mind the salty taste.

  The sight of her blood on his mouth made him seem more like the predator she’d always been warned he was. His bottom lip disappeared into his mouth as he sucked her blood from it.

  There was something so shockingly primal and dark about the simple action…

  And the rational part of Sasha’s mind faded away, replaced by raw selfish desire. She didn’t resist when he pulled her close again.

  He wrapped his arms around her, enveloping her in the strong muscular warmth of his body, holding her close for another kiss, stronger this time, hesitation gone.

  His lips were firm and hot, and he kissed her hard enough that he bent her neck back, throwing her off-balance. It was an intense and all-consuming kiss, which sent shockwaves of heat surging towards her inner thighs.

  She was aware that she was making a soft gasping sound of desire, her hand reaching out for balance and finding only his hard body. Her hand skimmed along his thigh, feeling the tightness of his muscles and the fabric of his pants, straining to contain his thick desire. Her fingernails bit into his flesh, trying to hold on.

  His tongue moved into her mouth, his hand sliding down her back to hold her against him.

  Sasha’s tongue teased his, loving the taste of him. It was…

  Her mind snapped back into action, screaming at her body to stop doing what it was doing.

  She let out a small panicked sound of realization, and instantly reached up her palms to push him away. “No…,” she got out desperately, “I can’t…”

  “Why?” He sounded genuinely confused, arms still locked around her.

  “People will…”

  The door to the clinic examination room opened, and her supervisor and a representative from the Freedom Squad stood in the doorway.

  And Sasha’s life was ruined.

  ****

  Years Ago

  Sasha pounded on the door, trying to keep her footing on the slick tile. “Come on! I know you’re in there!” She shouted, pausing only long enough to take another drink from her bottle.

  A moment later, the door was thrown open and Thraex stood silhouetted in the doorway, looking like a goddamned model from the cover of a book about sexy southern cowboys. Cowboys with blue-grey skin, but definitely some kind of sexy cowboy.

  Asshole.

  She’d deliberately been avoiding him for months, because it seemed like he only got better and better looking as the years went on.

  It was so fucking annoying.

  When he was one of her students, he was handsome. But now, years later, he looked like… like…

  She was too drunk to think of anything, but whatever it was that was sexier than “handsome,” Thraex was that.

  He was that in spades.

  “Miss Sasha?” He sounded confused, but then alarm crossed his face. “Is something wrong? Is everyone…”

  She cut him off, shoving past him and making her way into his room. “So, I guess we’re brother and sister now.” She took another swig from her bottle, toasting the absolute nightmare that situation represented for her. “How wonderful.”

  Sasha had just had a blow-out fight with her father about his affair with Thraex’s mom. Again. True, this time s
he had chosen to have that heated discussion at their wedding, but what did that even matter? Wrong was wrong!

  But she’d already so severely disappointed her mother because she’d kissed Thraex, that the woman barely even talked to her anymore, so it was only right that she should lose her father now too.

  To say nothing of the fact that she’d basically been blackballed in the superhero and super-science fields for years. She was part of the fucking Window Seat Tribe now!

  Everything she did was wrong! Everything she tried blew up in her face!

  And Sasha’s father was now married to Thraex’s mother.

  And Sasha’s mother was just… obsolete. Bye, Susan, thanks for the memories! Say goodbye to the kids for me, ‘kay?

  “I got a whole talk about it from my father. About how I’ll have another brother now.” She took another long swallow. “We’ll be like the fucking Brady Bunch.”

  “Miss Sasha,” Thraex began, “I know that you’re unhappy about what’s been happenin’ between our folks, but I don’t see how…”

  She laughed humorlessly. “It wasn’t enough that I’ve known you since you were a kid, or that you live with us, or that you were my student, which were all already unforgivable…” She trailed off. “Now you’re my brother too.” She swatted his chest with the back of her hand. Hard. But it was like hitting a brick wall and it made her fingers hurt. “Because of course you are! Why wouldn’t you be!?!” She doubled-over in laughter. “I’m going to fucking hell, I know it.”

  “I think you’ve had enough, Darlin’.” Thraex tried to grab her bottle of champagne. “Gimme that before…”

  She dodged out of his reach. “No, I don’t think I will.” She drank more of it, just to prove her point. “I think I’m just getting started, Brother. I think, since we’re family now, that you’re going to have to get used to the sight of your big sister drinking herself sick.”

  He held up his palms to calm her, and coax her down. “Listen… you’ve had a spot of real bad luck these last years, Miss Sasha, but the things you’ve been doin’ lately? They ain’t you. You need to…”

  “I got fired.” She blurted out, unable to get past the event despite it being long ago at this point. “Well, not even ‘fired,’ there’s too much dignity in that. Just re-assigned into obsolescence. Apparently, I’m not supposed to kiss students.” She made a sarcastic scoffing sound. “I don’t remember that in orientation.” She paused for a beat. “Oh, wait…”

  He didn’t say anything for an extended moment. “I still don’t see how that was any folks’ business but yours and mine.” He stated flatly. “And I didn’t exactly complain to the Academy’s administrators, chère. Then or now.”

  “You could have at least told them that there was nothing between us!” She cried. “You could have denied it!”

  “Why would I lie to some peckerhead Capes?” He sounded genuinely confused. “I’m not that kinda man, Miss Sasha. Nobody tells me who to be but me.”

  “They kicked you out of the Academy!”

  “And yet I got on just fine without them.” He shrugged disinterestedly. “I didn’t much fit in there anyway, chère. I’ve moved on from them, you should too. It’s been years and…”

  “My whole family is still on the outs, because they stood up to the Freedom Squad!” She interrupted. “They’re not going to be able to work with the Capes! Probably ever!”

  “No loss, if you don’t mind me sayin’. Them folks are all a few sandwiches short of a picnic, can’t imagine them doin’ the other Westgates any good.”

  “I only had my position at the Academy because they wanted to shame me, and now… now they’re going to send me to Antarctica or someplace. I’m fucking done now. I tried to get my job back there and they wouldn’t even consider it. I figured that it had been a few years since… maybe they’d forgive me, but…” She stared at a point in space, unseeingly, trying to come to grips with that. “There’s no coming back from this…”

  “Do you really want to come back from this?” He asked softly. “Why? Why pretend for people who don’t wanna understand you?”

  She ignored that, still lost in her own mind. “But I told them, ‘No, no, it’s okay,’” she started laughing again in shameful glee, ‘’cause he’s also my brother now!’” She laughed so hard she dropped her bottle, and it clattered to the floor of Thraex’s room. “Shit.” She bent to retrieve it, but almost fell over in the process. “Hold on…”

  Thraex hurried over to clean up the mess. “It’ll be okay, Miss Sasha.” He assured her confidently. “We can work through this. I know things have been bad for you, but the future can be as bright as we want to make it.” He continued toweling up the liquid before it stained his vintage carpet, which formed a giant Westgate Foundation logo. “If this means so much to you, I’ll go in and talk to them. They’ll have to accept you back if they know it was my fault.”

  It was most certainly not his fault. She knew that as well as she knew the periodic table… which was very well, even when she was drunk.

  In a way though, she still blamed him. Blamed him for being so tempting and unavoidable. Blamed him for always being there, a lure she couldn’t escape.

  She should have listened to her mother and stayed away from him. The man was like a siren, enticing her to her doom. Playing on her weakness and desire…

  He’d ruined her life.

  She absently looked around his room, feeling unsteady on her feet.

  His room was done in the standard 1960s décor that the rest of the building was decorated in. She’d always expected him to redecorate and make it his own, but instead, he’d just adapted to the style.

  Thraex was just that kind of man.

  If the Westgates had been really into Victorian furnishings, Thraex would have undoubtedly become passionate about Steampunk. If they’d lived in a plantation, he’d be out there dressed to the nines like the O’Haras at a barbeque.

  He fit his environment… like any good predator.

  On one wall, next to a large mod painting of colorful amorphous midcentury shapes, was the calendar she had done. Her smiling face shone out while in that stupid swimsuit her mother had made her wear, complete with its peekaboo cutout which exposed her cleavage.

  Sasha had hated the entire thing. It was absolutely not who she was, and it embarrassed her to this day that she’d allowed herself to be talked into it. It was weakness on her part and she didn’t like thinking about it.

  Then her brow furrowed. She hadn’t been asked to be a part of the Freedom Squad calendar in years, for obvious reasons. And yet her month was still up on the wall.

  She looked down at Thraex as he finished his cleaning job, on his hands and knees in front of her.

  A surge of feminine power shot through her, as a new depraved and terrible idea entered her drunken head…

  “It’ll be okay,” he assured her, “we’ll go get some coffee in you, maybe get you detox or somethin’ for whatever you’ve been takin’ with that peckerhead Jacob Michaels, and then everythin’ will be fine. You’ll see.”

  He looked up at her, and their eyes met.

  The moment stretched seemingly into eternity.

  Thraex cleared his throat and looked away. “There’s no need to go destroyin’ yourself over…”

  Sasha smiled a wicked smile, malice and lust mixing in her hot, drunken blood. “What a nice boy you are, Thraex…” She practically cooed.

  He squinted at that slightly, obviously unsure how to take it. “Thanks?”

  She nodded, advancing on him. “Always there… Always helpful…”

  He got to his feet and retreated a step. “I’m…” He stammered, the first time she’d ever seen him anything but entirely confident about anything. “The Westgates have been good to me.” He finally stated unequivocally.

  “Very good.” She agreed, sighting on him. “But you want more, don’t you?”

  He looked confused again. “Ma’am?”

  An edgy a
nticipation filled Sasha. Or it could have been alcohol. Probably both.

  “What is it that you want from me?” She started towards him, feeling lost and angry and scared and lusty, all at the same time. “Huh?”

  “At the moment?” He held his hand towards the door. “I’m just lookin’ to…”

  She stood next to him, so close that her breasts pressed against his chest. She could feel the hardness of him, teasing her, even through her bra and dress. “What do you want, Thraex?” She licked her lips. “My dad says that we should be brother and sister now.” She tried to meet his eyes, looking up at him through her lashes, but he kept looking away. “Is that what you want, Thraex?”

  He met her eyes, suddenly serious. His gaze was as hot and dangerous as it ever was, telling her everything his mouth wouldn’t.

  And it was like her temperature instantly went up ten degrees.

  The room suddenly seemed to be suffocating her, the air thick and quiet and filled with a sexual tension that was about to explode. They could both feel it.

  And that feeling excited her.

  Because for the first time in her life… Sasha had nothing to lose and nothing holding her back.

  “You’re drunk, Miss Sasha.” He gestured towards the door with the side of his head. “This won’t help you none.” His voice lowered. “Whatever you’re thinkin’, Darlin’, don’t.” He advised. “I ain’t the kinda man you wanna do this with. Trust me. I ain’t a gentleman.”

  But Sasha barely heard him, still too angry and drunk and frustrated.

  He’d taken everything from her.

  Her job, her pride, her family…

  She wet her lips again. “I know what you want…” She said softly, reaching up to run a hand across his broad chest, which was bare. Her fingers played over him, nails scraping across one of his flat nipples and lingering there.

  He tried to move away, but the bed prevented his escape. “Not a good idea, Sasha.” He reached for the doorknob. “Go somewhere quiet and sleep it off, and we’ll work through this …”