by Toby Neal
The feel of her petite, curvy body in his arms was intoxicating. Her unique womanly smell with its top note of antiseptic was drugging to him.
He was the worst, coveting his beloved brother’s wife—and Nando hardly buried. Dolf hated himself.
He let go of Avital and tried to move away, but her small fingers curled into his shirt, holding him in place. “You should get to bed. You need rest if you’re going back to the hospital.”
“I should get a few hours. You’re right about that.” Avital dashed the tears off her cheeks, still keeping a grip on him with one hand. “It’s strange having you here, your arms around me right now. If I close my eyes…” Dolf felt Avital relax, her shoulders dropping, the weight of her forehead against his chest increasing. “It’s almost like he’s still here. Like I can have him for just a little longer.” She looked up at Dolf, her long black lashes spiky with wet around those big brown eyes. She swallowed, her throat convulsing.
Dolf held his breath. Her words stabbed him, bringing pain and pleasure. Imagining her feeling about him the way she felt about Nando—loving him—it was his greatest dream and worst nightmare. Betrayal and fulfillment, one and the same.
“Could you stay with me tonight? Just one night. Just hold me and be with me. I don’t want to be alone,” Avital whispered.
Dolf went rigid. His mouth dried. His throat closed. Dear God. She didn’t know what she was asking. Her body pressed against his felt so right, which just proved how wrong he was. Dolf warred within himself. The searing loss of his brother clouded not just his mind but also his body, and his discipline crumbled under the weight of her on his lap.
Could he just hold her, let her pretend he was his brother, for comfort?
She was asking the earth.
Avital looked away from him, staring at her hands, twisting them in the lap of that awful skirt. “Never mind. I’m so embarrassed. No one would understand how weird this is. I don’t even understand it.”
“I understand it.” Dolf’s throat unlocked enough for him to speak. “I understand, and I’ll do it. Nando told me to take care of you, and I will. Whatever you need that I can give is yours.”
Chapter Two
Avital
Avital spit toothpaste into the sink. It was a glob of white against the green marble— Nando’s big splurge. He’d always wanted a green marble sink in his master bathroom. He thought it was masculine and beautiful.
The sink was a waste of money. She would rather have put the dollars towards a working air-conditioning unit, but Nando had insisted they could have both. She suspected Dolf had helped pay—he was always there to help them.
Avital cupped her hand and brought water to her mouth. The taste of Philadelphia tap water, with its mix of metallic tang and fuzzy oxygen, always made Avital feel at home. She held her hand under the faucet and drank deeply, closing her eyes. The apartment she grew up in, right off Rittenhouse Square in Center City, Philadelphia, was only a few miles from this row home, but a world apart.
Her parents had loved her and given her everything they had to offer, but when she met Nando at sixteen, she’d realized what was missing from her life—energy and liveliness. His large, rowdy family and their unabashed affection were so different from the tightly controlled, mournful threesome of her and her parents.
And now here Avital was, without him—and without her parents, either. They’d passed away some years ago, her father from a heart attack and her mother from the stress of being alone.
Avital splashed water on her face before looking up into the mirror. There were bags under her eyes. Her skin was pale and her shoulders drooped—but none of that mattered. It was the empty space next to her that throbbed with ugliness. She didn’t have to elbow Nando aside to spit out her toothpaste. She didn’t have to push him out of the bathroom so that she could pee in privacy.
There was too much space around her.
After her father’s death, Avital’s mother took to wearing a thick shawl. It was burgundy, made of scratchy wool. She’d hunched into it, curling over herself, bending down towards the ground, until she finally sank into it, dead only sixty days after her husband.
Avital understood that shawl now, but then it had made her angry. How could her mother give up and just start shuffling around like an old woman covered in a blanket? How could she leave Avital?
It was amazing how loss could be so heavy. The weight of nothing could drag you all the way to death.
Avital had taken her moment at the funeral—climbing onto Nando’s grave and breathing in the sweet scent of those flowers. She’d never liked the smell of roses and lilies, too cloying for her usually. But mixed with the moist soil and humidity of the plague-struck city in summer, they smelled just right. She’d been able to let go there, on top of his grave. Directly above the body that she’d loved and cared for and cleaned and buried, she’d found a moment of peace.
Now it was time to get some rest so that tomorrow she could return to work.
Nando, like Avital, had dedicated his life to helping people. It was an obsession for both of them. Though their backgrounds were different, that shared passion had given them common ground. And while Avital always took strength and comfort from Nando’s support, they did not need each other. It was important to not need each other.
Because when you lost something you needed, like food or water or health, you died.
A sound in the hall, bare feet on the carpeting, sounded almost like Nando returning. But different, really. Dolf was heavier, darker, more muscular. She’d been shocked by how different he was when he showed up in the kitchen in that towel.
Familiar, but not. A harder, colder version of her husband, tanned and ripped.
She’d met the twins in high school, and had always been able to tell them apart even when others in their social circle struggled to see the differences. Nando looked at Avital with fire in his gaze, open and transparent. He was passionate about her, about law—about onions in his sauce. Avital hiccupped a sob and bit down on her knuckle to shut down the emotion.
Dolf had the exact same dark brown eyes, but the expression in them was so different. It was disorienting to see eyes so like her husband’s look at her as he did—she couldn’t put a name to the expression she sometimes caught in his gaze. There was coolness and distance there, but also a certain possessiveness, a banked heat.
Being married to an identical twin was its own strange thing.
Lucy, the twins’ younger sister, had asked Avital about it once when they were both drunk. “So, you must think Dolf is hot too, right?”
The truth was that Dolf was hotter than Nando. She’d never admit that to Lucy, no matter how drunk she got. Avital hardly even admitted it to herself. But the way Dolf looked at her was as if he really saw her. Nando loved Avital blindly, but Dolf stared right through her defenses and saw the flawed being inside her—a woman she barely knew herself.
She’d caught Dolf watching them sometimes. Just the month before, at a barbeque, Nando had come up behind Avital in the kitchen while she was washing dishes and wrapped his arms around her waist, pressing himself against her ass, kissing the top of her head, whispering something sweet and a little dirty in her ear.
She’d turned to him and as her gaze swept over the window, she’d seen Dolf gazing at them, the ghost of a smile on his lips. He knew that Avital made Nando happy. As cold and “Tin Man” as Dolf could be, he wanted nothing but for his twin to be happy.
Avital had heard Dolf tell JT he wished it were him in the ground. She’d had to bite her tongue, because she wished it too. She was a terrible, selfish, bad wife, wishing Dolf had died instead—because Nando wouldn’t have wanted that. Dolf was the only person Nando loved as much as he loved her. He’d have wanted Avital to look after his twin, to keep him close and make sure that he didn’t drift off in grief like a lone iceberg in a freezing sea.
Avital dressed in the loose knit pajamas she usually wore, and glanced back in the mirror one mo
re time, making eye contact with herself. “You will be just fine. You will be. Just. Fine.”
Sharing a bed with Dolf tonight was like climbing onto Nando’s grave during the wake—it was her one moment, allowing herself this weakness now, so that she could be strong tomorrow. It was her one indulgence—to not be alone, for one more day.
In the guest room, Dolf sat on the edge of the bed with his back to her. His head was tilted, looking at the phone in his hand. Dolf’s hair was shorter than Nando’s, but the exact same glossy black. Their shoulders were the same width, though Dolf’s were more defined.
She’d always liked that bit of softness about Nando. It had made him approachable, despite how incredibly handsome he was. Dolf looked like something out of a magazine, flat and unreachable, a GQ ad for the successful rock-climbing businessman.
“Shit,” Dolf muttered.
“What’s wrong?”
He looked up at her. Familiar, but not. A carbon copy with something added, and other things missing. “Nothing. Cell’s not working. No coverage.”
“It’s been like that for days, hasn’t it?” She walked into the guest room that she and Nando had decorated together with Dolf in mind. The sheets were navy blue, the walls dawn grey, and sheer white curtains fell from the single window that faced their small back yard.
On the side table sat Dolf’s personal things, lined up neat and straight. His father’s lighter, gold, inscribed with the former police officer’s name, given to him by the force on his fifteen-year anniversary shortly before his murder. It still looked brand new, because Dolf probably got it polished at some lighter specialist in New York City. She imagined it cost as much as their green marble sink to keep up. But that was unkind. Dolf had every right to live his life any way he wanted.
Next to the lighter was Dolf’s watch, a gold Cartier with a simple black leather band. Cuff links engraved with his initials leaned against each other at the base of the lamp.
Avital had seen that same precise lineup of her brother-in-law’s possessions before, at holidays and weekends when he came down from the city to see his twin, and the two of them would talk that abbreviated twin-speak they did over the grill, while Nando flipped burgers and Dolf sipped the fancy microbrew beer he preferred.
Would he still come visit her? Would she ever see that lineup of personal items again? Her heart thundered. He had to, he just had to. Avital couldn’t lose Dolf too.
“Avital?” Her gaze jumped to Dolf. His brows were raised curiously, his sculpted mouth tight with concern. “Are you okay?”
She wanted to kiss him.
She wanted to take that face and hold it between her hands and press her lips against his hard mouth, plunder it, taste it, disappear in it. She wanted him to speak to her in that husky tenor voice that he and Nando had shared for thirty-four years, and now was his alone.
She wanted him to say, I love you. You’re safe. We will always be together. You will never be alone.
Why did she want Dolf to love her? That was so wrong. Betraying color swept up her neck, and she knew he would see it with her fair redhead’s skin. Avital swayed on her feet, her vision dimming. What the hell was going on? She was sick, sick, sick.
“You look exhausted. Come rest.” He patted the far side of the mattress. Avital crossed the room, pulling back the covers and getting in quickly and smoothly, as if her heart wasn’t in tiny little pieces spread all over her mother-in-law’s back yard several blocks away.
As if she wasn’t suffering from some bizarre grief-related hot flash.
As if she wasn’t pretending that Dolf was Nando, and that this was just another Tuesday.
Yes, just another Tuesday. They would wake up tomorrow in each other’s arms, make slow sweet love, then get dressed and elbow each other in their bathroom before heading to the diner for breakfast and then off to work.
Dolf lay down next to her and turned off the lamp. Soft yellow light from the streetlight on the corner sifted in through the filmy curtains. Dolf and Avital were only six inches apart but there was a raging river of grief between them trying to sweep them away—she could feel it like an invisible force.
Avital reached out and took Dolf’s hand, creating a bridge. Touching him was like building a dam that stopped the river, held it back, let it go still.
Just for tonight.
One peaceful night pretending, so her strength could return and she could continue on with the rest of her life.
Dolf linked his fingers with hers. His hand felt almost like Nando’s, but calloused from rock climbing. Even his fingertips were slightly rough. She pictured him as she and Nando had seen him climbing in California: bare-chested in those tight shorts, every muscle sharply defined as he free-climbed a boulder, his hands white with chalk.
Avital closed her eyes and sleep washed over her as Dolf’s hand held hers, blockading a river of pain.
She arched off the bed, pushing her aching nipple deeper into his mouth. He sucked on it hard, much rougher than usual, but it was perfect. Pain and pleasure surged from the roots of her hair to the bottoms of her feet in a white-hot arc as she bowed upward from the bed. His arms wrapped around her, hard biceps pressing against her waist, hands clutching her shoulder blades. His tongue swirled around her nipple, wet and hot and so sweet. Her shirt and pants were gone, and she was close to ecstasy.
Avital cried out, not a word of any kind, but a sound that meant so many.
It was pitch black in the room, hot as hell, steamy and still. The air-conditioning must’ve broken again. No, the electricity was off, there was no light coming from outside, no hum from the computer. Was she dreaming? She must be dreaming.
She had no idea how they’d gotten here, but it felt so good and so right. This was where he belonged. Right here, with her.
Her hands found his hair—and it was too short. She was barely able to grasp it.
This was Dolf, not Nando.
Even as the recognition burst across her reluctant brain, right now, she didn’t care—she needed him.
Avital tugged his hair hard, and dragged his face up to her mouth, kissing those lips the way she wanted to, taking control the way Nando had always liked.
His tongue met hers, clashing and warring—he wasn’t letting her have the power. He held her pinned and took what he wanted, grasping her waist in his hard calloused hand, controlling her instead. She released into it, feeling his dominance unlock something inside as he left her lips and kissed her chin, her neck. He suckled her collarbone, bit her shoulder, his mouth so hot that she writhed beneath him, moaning. She ran her hands down his back.
So chiseled. This was not the gentle slope of Nando’s back. The ridged planes of muscle beneath her palms belonged to his twin.
One word, one sound, and he’d stop. She felt steely restraint in the way he held her. It was a different kind of power—Dolf controlled her body, and she controlled him.
But she needed this. She needed him.
Just for tonight, she needed him.
Instead of pulling away, leaping out of bed and running from the room, she slid deeper under him, opened her legs wider, and invited him with a lift of her hips. There was nothing between them but their bodies’ slick heat. He was hard and naked between her thighs. She could feel him at her entrance.
Dolf slowed down everything. He kissed her gently, holding her face between his hands, a calloused thumb running over her eyebrow, petting her. Caressing her. So sweet.
So loving.
Avital’s eyes stung with tears and her body vibrated with need and grief.
“Take me.” She whispered it, but she meant it as a yell. “Please.” She wanted him to obliterate her. To remove her mind from this body, remove her soul from this place.
Dolf kissed her forehead, her nose, placed his lips against hers, and then he surged into her with a desperate moan, and filled her in every way she needed. He moved, and the feel of him inside her, their most intimate places touching, was the balm she sought.
She cried out softly, the only sound she could make as her mind was no longer forming words. She was awash in pure sensation.
Low sounds came from Dolf’s throat and she felt drops of wetness land on her face. Was he weeping? Or was it sweat?
It didn’t matter.
Slow and deep, increasing in force, the power of his movement made her clench the sheets so she wouldn’t slide.
He smelled nothing like Nando.
He acted nothing like Nando.
Dolf was tougher and harder and hotter, and he was making her brainless, mindless, and senseless.
Avital let go of all inhibitions and reveled in him, bucking up to meet his every stroke.
Chapter Three
Dolf
Avital’s soft cries were music to Dolf as they moved together in a timeless rhythm.
He had no idea why or how she’d started it, but he was no saint—if she wanted him, he was hers, always had been. He lifted himself high on his arms above her so he could watch her face. She whipped her head back and forth, that red hair he loved a dark cloud on the pillow in the dim light as she dug her nails into his buttocks.
“Yes!” she cried. “Oh, I need this, yes!”
She didn’t say his name. She didn’t say she needed him. She just said she needed this. Well then, he’d give it to her.
He drove harder, deeper, faster, wanting to mark her, claim her—and Avital arched beneath him with a cry, wrapping her legs tighter around his hips. Whatever he dished out, she’d take and give back—her secret darkness met his, and matched it.
He’d always known that’s how it would be if this moment ever came.
Avital might still be pretending he was his brother, but he was going to make her remember this forever.
He grasped her wrists in one hand, bracing himself with the other, and drove into her. Their gasping cries filled the steamy darkness and, far from withdrawing, she bucked against him. She was about to go—she just needed something more.
