Chapter 1: Tangled Sheets
The room smelled like jasmine and guilt. That was the first thing Alex noticed when he stepped inside, shutting the door with a click that sounded too loud in the hushed apartment. The second thing was Melody, already crossing the space toward him, her steps silent on the thick rug.She didn’t say hello. She never did.Not anymore.
Her fingers found the front of his work shirt, coarse denim stained with drywall dust and July sweat.Her touch was cool, deliberate. She began unbuttoning it, each brass button slipping free with a soft sigh. He stood there, letting her, his own hands hanging useless at his sides.He watched her face.The careful concentration, the faint line between her brows. She was so beautiful it sometimes felt like a physical blow.
“Rough day?” she asked, not looking up.
“They’re all rough,” he said, his voice a gravelly thing.“You?”
“Lonely.” She pushed the shirt off his shoulders. It pooled on the floor.“Until now.”
She led him to the bed. The deep rose walls seemed to swallow the faint light from the single candle on the nightstand. It was her sanctuary, all velvet and silk and soft, forgiving shadows.It felt like a separate universe, one where the rules didn’t apply. Or where they applied differently.
He sat on the edge of the mattress, the silk bedspread cool beneath his palms. She stood between his knees, looking down at him with an expression he couldn’t quite name.Affection, sure.Possession, definitely.Something darker, too. Something hungry.“Look at you,” she whispered, her hands coming to rest on his shoulders. Her thumbs brushed the cords of his neck.“My big, strong brother. All tied up in knots.”
He leaned forward, pressed his forehead against her stomach.The fabric of her blouse was soft. He could feel the warmth of her skin beneath it. He inhaled, and the jasmine was stronger, mixed with the clean scent of her.This was the only place he ever felt quiet. The only place the constant, low-grade hum of dissatisfaction in his veins stilled.
“I hate this,” he murmured into her blouse.
“No, you don’t.” Her fingers speared into his short, brown hair, gripping lightly. “You hate that you love it.”
She guided his head back, forcing him to meet her eyes.Hers were the color of storm clouds. Then she kissed him.It wasn’t gentle.It was a claiming. A mouthful of teeth and desperate, shared breath that tasted like mint and sin. It silenced everything—the traffic outside, the memory of his co-worker’s inane chatter, the incessant, whispering voice of his own conscience. There was only this heat, this soft, willing mouth, this terrible, perfect rightness.
When they broke apart, gasping, she climbed onto his lap, straddling him. Her weight was familiar, anchoring. She settled against him, and he groaned, his hands finding the curve of her hips through her skirt, his calloused fingers tracing the pronounced bone.She was slender but strong. Real.So devastatingly real.He kissed her again, swallowing her little gasp. His hands slid under her blouse, skating over the smooth plane of her back, feeling the delicate ridge of her spine.She arched into him, a shudder running through her. He knew her body as well as his own now, every curve and secret. The knowledge was a jewel he kept hidden, dark and glittering, in the deepest part of himself.She pulled back, just an inch. Her breath was warm on his lips.“You think about this,” she breathed. “When you’re up on that ladder.When you’re mixing mud. You think about being here.”
It wasn’t a question.He nodded, a sharp, jerky motion.A slow smile touched her mouth. It was a wicked thing.She leaned in, her lips brushing the shell of his ear. Her voice dropped to a husky murmur, the words clear and deliberate, a script they’d written together in this shadowy room.
“Do you want to suck your baby sister’s fat dick?”
The air left his lungs in a rush. A hot, sharp shame spiked through him, followed immediately by a dizzying wave of want so profound it made his vision swim. He clenched his jaw, his fingers biting into her hips.
“Do you want her hot load in your pretty straight boy mouth?”
He hated the words.He craved them. They were a key that unlocked a part of him that had no business existing.A part that belonged only to her. They shattered the last pretense, stripped away the comforting lie of a purely emotional bond.This was flesh and need. It was base, and it was theirs.He didn’t trust himself to speak. He turned his head, caught her mouth again in a searing kiss that was his answer.Yes.God, yes.
She laughed against his lips, a low, triumphant sound. She shifted, grinding down against the hard proof of his desire trapped in his jeans.The friction was agony and ecstasy. He buried his face in the curve of her neck, breathing her in, trying to anchor himself in the smell of her skin, the feel of her blonde hair against his cheek.
“I can feel how much you want it,” she whispered, her hands sliding down his chest, over the taut muscle of his stomach.“You’re shaking.”
He was.A fine, constant tremor. It was the war inside him—the love that felt so primal it must be wrong, the need that felt so natural it must be a sickness.He held her tighter, as if she could steady him. As if she was the cliff edge and the only safe ground, all at once.
She was the only person who had ever looked at him and seen the whole, messy, contradictory truth. The only one who didn’t expect him to be simple.His sister.His impossible, forbidden heart.
Outside, a car alarm wailed, a distant, mechanical shriek.The real world, persistent and ugly. It faded as her hands worked at his belt buckle, the metallic rasp impossibly loud in the quiet room. The candle flame guttered, casting frantic, dancing shadows on the rose-colored walls.
He closed his eyes.For a few more minutes, he could stay here, in the velvet dark with her. For a few more minutes, nothing else existed.