Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 87068 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 435(@200wpm)___ 348(@250wpm)___ 290(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87068 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 435(@200wpm)___ 348(@250wpm)___ 290(@300wpm)
When it’s over, I collapse. I’m sticky, sweaty, ruined. I pull my hand free and let it fall to the mattress, limp.
The room is unchanged. The world is unchanged. Only I’m different, and even that won’t last.
How pathetic. I just jacked off to the imagery of my stepbrother having sex with another woman. What is wrong with me?
I stare at the ceiling and try to catch my breath. But the fantasy lingers, like the taste of something forbidden, and I know I won’t sleep tonight. Not even if I wanted to because Trevor has me in his grasp … and I can’t seem to escape, no matter how hard I try.
3
JUST THE HIGHLIGHTS, PLEASE
Trevor
The night is black-glass quiet, the city a lizard’s tongue of blue out the penthouse window, and the only sound in the room is the soft combustion of the fireplace. I have a thing about silence: I don’t trust it, never have, so I fill it with the clink of crystal and the rasp of a cigar, anything to keep my mind from doing what it does best.
I’m in the study. It’s not a “man cave”—that’s a term for suburban failures and hedge funders with something to prove. No, this is a chamber for war councils and execution orders, a place where secrets get decided and lives are unmade. The desk is mahogany, imported, the kind of antique you have to sign a prenup just to put your coffee cup on. The chair is black leather, ergonomic and ugly, and worth more than most people’s cars. I keep the lights low—just a single green-glass banker’s lamp and the slab of gold radiating from the hearth.
I lounge backwards. I like the cold against my skin. There’s a tumbler of Armagnac at my elbow, two fingers, no ice, and a Cuban between my teeth. Yes, it’s cliché, but the thing about clichés is that they work. Every inhale is sugar, pepper, the ghost of campfire.
From the bedroom, I can hear the girl snoring. Cassie. It’s probably not her real name, but it’s the one she answers to. God knows, she’s likely a farmer’s daughter and actually named Edna or Daisy or the like. But right now, my date’s flat on her stomach, drooling into a thousand-thread-count sheet. There’s a black smear of mascara on the pillowcase because heavy lashes are her thing. But I remain motionless because I feel nothing for my date. Not affection, not disgust. I know what Cassie is, and she knows what I am, and it works out. She’ll stay until noon, eat my food, and Uber herself out, and I’ll Venmo her enough for a new dress if she asks. Sometimes she leaves her panties behind, sometimes a bra, although she often goes without. I never throw the lingerie away. They accumulate in a glass bowl in my closet, like lurid trophies.
But Cassie’s hopelessly idiotic. She likes to call me Nate after some character from a teen HBO show I’ve never watched called Euphoria. Evidently, Nate is “Nate Jacobs, a high school quarterback with anger management issues and an Oedipus complex, who’s dating a beauty queen named Cassie.” At first, I thought it was fucking lame. Who the hell gets so invested in TV shows that they have to role-play?
But Cassie (the live one) eats it up—hell, she puts it on like armor. She does her make-up like the fictional Cassie, and the first time we fucked, she asked me to wear a football jersey. She brought one in a dry cleaning bag, size XL, and made me put it on before she’d let me touch her. I did it, of course, because she sucked my cock through the mesh, running her tongue over the little holes. “Go, Blackhawks,” she moaned, as I spurted down her throat.
So it’s not that I’m into her kink. Hell, I have no interest in teen TV shows whatsoever. But it’s just easier, sometimes, to let the other person decide who you’re supposed to be. Especially when you’re brutally fucking her in the ass and the pussy whenever you want. Hell, Cassie can call me any name she wants. God, Hulk Hogan, or Shrek. Whatever, as long as she lets me fuck her until her teeth chatter.
Of course, there’s always the issue of “appropriateness.” Tonight, for example. The wedding was a haze of canapés, fake laughter, and speeches no one will remember. Cassie showed up in a dress that could have started a riot in a convent. Red, tight as a glove, split down the front to her navel and barely covering her ass. Her nails matched. Her tits were in full display, the nipples practically popping out. She giggled when she caught me staring. “You like?” she said, twisting a lock of her hair. “Or is it too slutty for the family values crowd?”