Riptide Affair, page 25
Tripping and giggling our way back to her room, we finally manage to get semi-dressed, and I'm floating on cloud 9, drunk on Merrin and what she does to me, when I open the door...and my smile falls into the basement.
“What are you doing here?”
Rhett shifts from one foot to the other, nervous. He's always been shit at hiding his feelings, and the fact that he's shown up here, at Merrin's house first thing in the morning, has me on edge. I may be in the process of forgiving her, but I don't know if I'll ever be able to look at him the same way I did before.
“We need to talk. Can I come in?”
Merrin comes to a stop behind me, fixing her hair. As soon as she sees Rhett, her entire body stiffens, but when she looks up at me, a question in her eyes, I nod. She doesn't need my permission, but I'm giving it anyway. Whatever he came to say has to be important, and even though I don't owe him an audience, I'm being the bigger man today.
Check that out. Growth.
Wearing a cautious smile, Merrin opens the screen door and waves my twin inside. Knowing that he heard me making love to Merrin less than five minutes ago shouldn't make me feel good about myself, but it does. I blame testosterone.
“I, uh, I think we need to talk and straighten some things out,” Rhett says, taking a seat at the kitchen table.
The same table where I've made love to Merrin a handful of times.
I smile internally, remembering the way her hands held onto the ledge, but Merrin's angry voice piercing the quiet morning banishes that memory entirely.
“I swear to God, Rhett Sullivan, if you have an STD and are just now telling me, I will castrate you with a rusty kitchen utensil and leave you on the floor to exanguinate!”
The blatant reminder of why my girl could possibly be infected by my demon spawn of a twin churns my stomach but judging by his face and the way all color leaves his cheeks, it does the same to Rhett.
“What? No!” His hands fly up in surrender. “I'm clean, but...it doesn't matter!”
“What do you mean it doesn't matter?” she asks. Her cheeks are blazing, and I can't tell if she's embarrassed or mad. Or both. I'm not even sure where I stand at the moment.
Rhett takes a deep breath and scrubs a hand over his face. “I think there's been a misunderstanding, Merrin. We...slept...together.”
Nevermind. I do know where I stand. I'm pissed.
“I'm well aware, Rhett,” Merrin bites out, “but thanks for reminding me.”
“No. Shit!” Rhett pinches his eyes closed. “What I'm trying to say is...we slept together. We just—we just slept together. We didn't...”
I hold my breath.
Hoping against hope.
“We didn't what?” she urges.
I want to urge him on too, but I've lost the ability to form words.
Rhett's face, which looks so much like my own, flashes crimson. “Wedidn'thaveintercourse!”
It all comes out as one big word, but somehow, even though my brain is misfiring, I still manage to cling to the message.
They didn't sleep together.
They didn't have sex.
Which leaves me with a whole slough of new, unanswered questions.
Merrin sinks lower into her chair, shocked. Then she pulls in a breath and clears her throat. “I'm sorry, what?”
It looks like my brother's trying to swallow a cactus as he speaks, and I can't bring myself to blink and miss a second of his discomfort. “There may have been some, uh, some foreplay, but no, um, you know...penetration.”
Merrin shakes her head. “How—”
“I was sober,” he rushes to say, and the instant that's out in the open, all I see in blue eyes that are identical to mine, is regret.
But Merrin isn't seeing this. She's only seeing red.
“And you didn't think to say anything?” she screeches. “You didn't—I—what the fuck? I don't even know...what the hell did we do?”
“Enough,” he states in a whisper. “Enough for me to regret it. Enough for me to know that it was wrong and I should have stopped way before anything happened, and definitely way before you passed out and I just...left you there.”
Merrin is fuming. I've never seen her this worked up before. I should be just as riled, but somehow, I'm not. Because she didn't make love to my brother. She didn't give him something she's only given me.
“Why didn't you stop me?” Merrin asks. Then she raises a hand. “No. Actually, why didn't you say something earlier? Why didn't you, I don't know, make this clarification months ago? Like, say, the day we woke up in bed together!”
Rhett's posture mirrors hers and he looks down at his hands, unable to fight away his remorse and keep his eyes on her—the person he should be on his hands and knees in front of, begging for forgiveness.
“I don't know,” he confesses. “I really don't. I guess I just figured it wasn't something we should talk about. And maybe, with enough time, you'd both forgive and forget and get back together. But days became weeks and—honestly what happened last night was the fucking miracle I've been hoping for—but I just...I can't let you two continue thinking we did something we didn't.”
“So we for sure didn't...” Merrin sits upright, making a circle with one hand and inserting the pointer finger of her other hand through it.
“No.” Rhett shakes his head. “No...coitus.”
“So neither of us—”
“No,” he cringes. “We didn't—”
Merrin raises a hand. “I'm not sure I want to hear whatever scientific term you have for that.”
“—climax,” he finishes.
Eww.
Eww. But also, hell yes.
“Oooookay,” I say, finally breaking my silence. “Thanks for that, Rhett. You can go now.”
He claps his hands together, immense relief shining in his eyes at the dismissal. “Yup. Gone.” Before he reaches the door, he turns on his heel and drops one more bomb. “Oh, by the way, Mom and Dad are pissed about, well, everything that went down last night.” He casts his eyes to Merrin. “They're not pissed at you. Just Jared. But either way, your presence is required at dinner tonight.”
“Rhett?” Merrin smiles.
His eyebrows shoot up. “Yeah?”
“Get out.”
He salutes her, and the second the door slams shut behind him, the two of us glance at one another and immediately burst into laughter.
“Well that wasn't uncomfortable at all.”
She crawls up into my lap, taking my face in her hands before kissing my lips. “Do you know what this means?” she whispers.
I do know what this means.
“No,” I lie. “What does this mean?”
She arches her back, grinding into me before lowering her lips to my ear.
“It means, you are the only man I've ever been with.” She nibbles on my earlobe, sending a fiery ache through my entire body. Her tongue trails down my neck, making it hard as hell to breathe through the immense desire threatening to drown me. “The only man I've ever made love to.”
My dick is so hard I could break through granite right now if I swung my hips hard enough, but I hold perfectly still and divert enough blood back up to my brain in order to speak.
“The only one, huh?”
Slowly, she nods, a devious gleam coloring her dark, hungry eyes. “First and only.”
She may not have been my first and only, but she sure as hell is my forever.
Trailing my hand up between our bodies, I find the gap in her shorts and find where she's wet, wasting no time in thrusting two fingers inside. Merrin's eyes flutter closed as she arches, riding my hand, grabbing hold of my free arm and roughly placing it to her breast where I cup and squeeze her with every ounce of relief and frustration and desire I have within me.
My name leaves her lips multiple times, and I know she's close, but just when she's on the precipice of an earth-shattering O, I move my hand to her hair, fisting hard, wrenching her head back in a way I know drives her crazy. And when her wild eyes meet mine, filled with equal parts lust, love, and trust, I pull even harder.
“I don't give a shit about being your first,” I growl, grinding my thumb against her clit, causing her to spasm in my arms. “I just want to be your last.”
She comes apart on my lap, her entire body stiffening with an ecstasy-heavy cry that echoes through the empty house. The house where I intend to love, honor, and cherish the fuck out of her for as many years as the good lord grants me.
I love her.
I'll always love her.
No matter what riptides try to drag us under, I'll never stop loving her because I know she's incapable of not loving me.
She's mine and I am hers.
Forever.
THE END
Catherine Black, Riptide Affair
