In His Brother's Bed

The bedroom smells like Caspian ， cedar and clean laundry and something faintly citrus ， and I hate that it does nothing for me.

I'm stretched across his bed in the dark, staring at the ceiling, my body humming with a restlessness that has nothing to do with sleep. Three years. Three years of dating a man who kisses me like he's afraid of breaking me, who holds my hand in public and calls me baby in that soft, careful way, and who ， somehow, inexplicably ， hasn't once made me feel the way I need to feel.

My phone says 9:47 PM. He won't be back until midnight.

I squeeze my eyes shut.

Don't.

But the thought comes anyway ， it always does ， uninvited and relentless, slipping through the cracks I leave open when I'm tired of fighting myself.

Dark hair. Gray eyes. A nose that's been broken at least once, the slight crooked bridge of it somehow making his face more striking, not less.

Corvus.

My boyfriend's older brother. The man I am supposed to hate.

I do hate him, I remind myself.

My hand drifts lower.

I absolutely hate him.

The fantasy builds the way it always does ， against my will, or at least that's what I tell myself. I imagine those gray eyes watching me, cold and intent, the way they do in real life when he doesn't think I'm paying attention. I imagine the particular quality of his stillness, like a predator at rest. I imagine his hands, broad-palmed and scarred at the knuckles, doing things Caspian's careful hands have never thought to do.

A soft sound escapes me. My hips shift against the mattress.

I hate this. I hate him ， his arrogance, the way he looks at Caspian like his brother is a problem to be managed, the smug, contained authority he carries like a second skin. I hate that he never looks at me twice.

I hate that I'm wet thinking about him right now.

The orgasm, when it comes, is quiet and unsatisfying and I gasp his name ， Corvus ， into the dark of Caspian's bedroom, and then I lie there staring at the ceiling with my hands pressed flat against my stomach, flooded with a shame so familiar it's almost comfortable.

God, I'm pathetic.

I roll onto my side and curl there for a moment, listening to the faint sounds of the street three floors below. A car door slams. Somewhere, music thumps. The city breathes around me, indifferent.

The ceiling offers nothing.

My body still feels empty.

That's the part that finally moves me off the bed and into the bathroom ， that hollow, restless ache that no amount of self-administered relief seems to touch. I run the shower cold. Stand under it with my teeth clenched, arms wrapped around myself, letting the shock of it scour away the heat I've been carrying all day.

It doesn't help.

It never helps.

But it clarifies something. A decision that's been forming at the edges of my mind for weeks, maybe months, finally crystallizes into something hard and actionable.

Enough.

Three years is long enough. I am twenty-three years old and I haven't had sex with my boyfriend in ， I actually have to think about it ， seven months. Not for lack of trying. Caspian always has a reason: exhausted from work, stressed about the family business, not feeling well. At first I told myself it was temporary. Then I told myself it was fine, that relationships were about more than that.

Then I started fantasizing about his brother.

I'm done waiting.

I dry off quickly, roughly, leaving my skin slightly damp. I wrap a towel around myself and don't tighten it all the way ， let it hang low on my chest, precarious. I've thought about this. I've planned it, even: two glasses of red wine poured on the kitchen counter, the lights in the living room turned low. Caspian loves me. He's always said he finds me attractive. Whatever wall has gone up between us, I'm going to knock it down tonight.

I pad barefoot into the kitchen, pour the wine, and stand in the living room in the amber half-dark, towel barely holding.

I feel reckless. Decided. Maybe a little desperate, if I'm honest, but I'm wrapping that in something that looks like confidence and hoping it holds.

His key in the lock ， I hear it before the handle turns.

I reach up. Let my fingers loosen on the towel.

The door swings open.

The towel drops.

The man in the doorway is not Caspian.

For one endless, fractured second, my brain refuses to process it. My body has already gone rigid, the towel puddled around my feet, every inch of me exposed in the low warm light of the living room ， and I am standing here, naked, staring at Corvus Moretti.

He goes completely still.

So do I.

His gray eyes drop ， just once, just briefly, a single involuntary sweep from my face downward before they snap back up ， and something in his expression does something I've never seen it do. The hard, controlled mask doesn't slip exactly. But it softens. Just at the edges. Just for a second.

Then his jaw tightens.

I grab the towel.

I am moving before I've consciously decided to, yanking it up, pressing it against myself, my face burning so hot I think I might actually be dying. I spin halfway around and then realize that's worse ， my back, my shoulders, the curve of my spine all suddenly visible ， and spin back again, and Corvus has turned his face away. His hand is still on the doorframe. His knuckles are white.

"What are you，" My voice doesn't sound like mine. Too high, too thin. I try again. "What are you doing here?"

"I needed to speak with Caspian." His voice is level. Controlled. Like this isn't happening. "I have a key."

"He's not home."

"I gathered."

I want to evaporate. I want to walk backward into the wall and through it and simply cease to exist. My fingers are clutching the towel so hard the terrycloth is leaving impressions in my palms.

"You could have called," I say.

"My calls go unanswered when he's avoiding me."

"So you just ， you just walk in ， what is wrong with you，"

"What is wrong with me?" Something moves across his face, too quick to name. He still isn't looking directly at me. His gaze is fixed somewhere above my shoulder. "You might consider redirecting that question."

The heat in my face goes sharp and furious. "I was ， this is ， I wasn't expecting，"

"Clearly."

"Don't you dare，" The words come out before I can stop them, and they're the wrong ones, too sharp, too rattled. I sound caught out. Because I am caught out, and he knows it, and the fact that he's standing there so perfectly composed while I'm standing here barely covered and shaking with humiliation makes me want to scream.

My body, traitorously, is reacting in a way that has nothing to do with rage.

I press my thighs together.

I am not turned on right now. I am absolutely not，

"You should put some clothes on," Corvus says. His voice is flat. Almost bored. He reaches for the door like he intends to just ， wait outside, maybe, or leave, and then a sound begins, low and distant, building quickly. Rain. The kind that doesn't ask permission, that arrives all at once and without warning.

It hits the windows like a wall.

Corvus's hand drops from the doorframe. He looks at the window. He looks back at me ， just my face, only my face, his expression carefully, deliberately neutral.

I think I see something else in it, something that isn't neutral at all, but it's gone before I can be sure.

"Go get dressed," he says.

It's not a request.

I go.