Twin Ties 1: My Brother's Lover (4 page)

I wanna lick those. Or maybe just fit my thumbs right in there to hold him and just—

He broke the thought off right there. The dimples were right above the tight swell of what might have been the most perfect ass Evan had ever seen.

Stop looking you perv, it’s your brother. He’s your goddamned brother, and worse, he’s your twin brother. What the fuck’s wrong with you?

But it was just looking after all. He wasn’t hurting anyone by lingering and making sure Brennan was all right, or so he told himself. For some reason it hit Evan how incredibly young Brennan seemed with his face soft and peaceful with sleep. It made Evan wonder if that was how people saw him, too.

The word ‘Jailbait’ rang in his head, affecting him in a plethora of different ways.
That’s not who I am,
Evan thought. Or maybe he was just in denial. Most of the people in his life had no idea he was gay and he intended it to stay that way. But he couldn’t help but enjoy the way it made butterflies knock around in his stomach, remembering how it felt to have Alek call him Jailbait and treat him like someone unspeakably desirable. That wasn’t the first time he had let someone fuck around with him just because it seemed like fun at the time. It
was
the first time he really enjoyed it, though.

He went into the bathroom and grabbed his toothbrush. After brushing his teeth, cheeks and tongue long enough for some of the lingering guilt to wash away, and trickle down the drain, he got in the shower and began scrubbing his body clean.

Limbs heavy, head foggy, he fell into bed and was out like a light.

The next morning he woke early, thanks to the shrill tone coming from his alarm clock. In the kitchen he found the pantry, countertop and fridge all laden with food, which would have been purely good news except most of the food was fruit and vegetables.

“Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me,” he groaned, scanning Brennan’s purchases.

The door to Brennan’s room was firmly closed. Evan stared at it for a second, wondering what could possibly be going on behind it, until he forced the thought away. Ignoring the tiny voice at the back of his mind that told him to go over there and maybe put his ear to the door, Evan headed out the back of the house.

The walk to work was a quick one, but on the way he called his neighbor, good friend and beer supplier, Jimmy Bennett.

“Hey, I know it’s early. Can I swing by later? After work?”

“Sure. Everything okay with the new arrival?”

“Yeah,” Evan said shortly. “So you’ll be home? Around four?”

“I’ll be here.”

“Cool. Thanks, Jimmy.”

“Sure thing. Later, Ev.”

They hung up and Evan set his sights on the garage just ahead, thinking of coffee and the attractive distractions of manual labor.

In a mobile home only a half-mile away, Jimmy Bennett gazed out of the small, curtained window over his sink and tried not to overanalyze Evan’s brief call. He couldn’t help but feel responsible for the kid—who was more than a few years younger than him—especially with Charlie gone again. A deeply pious man at heart, Jimmy sent up a little prayer.

“Please God, watch over him. He needs You. Help open Brennan’s eyes to who Evan really is and help open Evan’s heart to receiving such a gift as a brother in his life. I believe they can be a blessing for each other, Lord. As long as they don’t keep their heads buried in the sand,” Jimmy sighed. “In Your Name I pray. Amen.”

His thoughts went there again, to that field of tall grass, four years in the past. It seemed like it was just yesterday. There was sunshine, with a light breeze making the supple blades wave and dance. It was such a beautiful day. All he wanted was a walk to ease his mind and to listen for God’s voice in his heart. Jimmy listened, all right, and the warm, bright day was turned black and cold in a matter of moments, finding what he did cradled on God’s living canvas, nestled in the green-gold grass.

“Oh, Evan.” Jimmy rubbed his eyes and went to fill the coffee pot.

As usual, Alek’s late night was followed by a late morning. He rolled out of bed around eleven, got dressed and headed downstairs with the work shirt discarded by the sexy, beautiful teenager from the bar’s bathroom crumpled in his hand. His first stop was the kitchen. The house was quiet. Carter Raed, one of Alek’s three housemates, no doubt was at work. Presley Owens, another housemate, was probably working too, being one to favor the early shift over the late one. Alek could hear the television in the front room, and that was probably Luka, Alek’s twin brother, either passed out or watching ESPN.

After being in the same large circle of friends in high school as Presley and Carter, they’d migrated toward one another the older they got, growing closer after graduation, and agreeing to chip in on rent in order to gain their independence. It was all done without any of them coming out and saying it was because of their sexual orientations, even though that was the case. Even in such a crowded school as theirs, it was still rare to find guys who didn’t self-identify as being straight, and who were open-minded enough to know when to look the other way, or live and let live. They never talked about it when they agreed to live together, and years later it was a conversation that had never quite happened. Alek and Luka never tried to hide who they were when at home, though. Presley and Carter’s tolerance for the twins’ lifestyle had, in turn, earned them respect and willingness to overlook some of the other strange things happening behind closed doors.

Noting the recently emptied coffee pot with only a few drops scorching the bottom of the glass, Alek sighed, “Thanks, Luka,” and decided to hit a coffee shop on his way that morning.

He pulled the phonebook from the cabinet and looked up Mike’s Garage. He knew it sounded familiar but when he saw the address listed, he instantly remembered the place—a beat-up but long-standing business in Whippoorwill, way out in farm country but a short enough drive from Mitchellsburg.

“Awesome,” Alek grinned, teasing his bottom lip between his teeth.

Taking the shirt with him, he made for the front door. Passing through the living room, he saw his brother, but someone else, too. A petite brunette wearing only a t-shirt and panties was seated comfortably on Luka’s lap. Luka’s left hand was slipped down between her thighs. His right was wound around her in an embrace while Luka’s thumb stroked idly against the under-swell of her breast through the thin cotton.

“Hey, Jackie,” Alek sighed, half-smiling out of politeness. He was used to finding her around sometimes. She and Luka had broken up a year ago but there had been booty calls ever since. Luka was a big fan of casual sex with old flames.

“Hey,
Alek
,” she drawled back with a wicked smirk.

Wow, do I want to get out of here
, Alek thought. Jackie had never quite given up on trying to get both twins into bed with her, no matter how fervently Alek declined her advances. He had never been able to figure out if part of Jackie’s appeal for Luka was her ability to annoy Alek so intensely. Alek couldn’t tell Luka who he could and could not have sex with, though. He could only try to be there to steer his beloved brother toward the best, healthiest path available. Ensuring Luka’s wellbeing always came first for Alek, no matter what, prioritized even over his own happiness.

His hand was actually resting on the doorknob when he heard in that eager, persistent tone, a voice that was tonally identical to his own, just slightly, constantly, more chipper, “What’re you doin’ up?”

“Need to go somewhere,” Alek told Luka with a pointed look that basically said, ‘Stop bothering me.’ “Don’t worry about it.”

Which, of course, to Luka meant, ‘Keep bothering me, please.’

“Go where?” Luka perked up with suspicion as he asked, intrigued by Alek’s vagueness.

“I said don’t worry about it.”

Catching the heated look exchanged by the two men, Jackie decided to butt in, stroking Luka’s chest. “You want some more coffee, babe? Babe?”

Luka ignored her and squinted suspiciously at Alek.

Alek held Luka’s stare as he grabbed his keys and left without another word.

“Aleksy!” Luka bellowed as the screen door slammed. “Alek!”

“Let him go,” Jackie said softly, soothingly. “What’s the big deal? Just let him go.”

“I know that look,” Luka huffed. “He’s up to something.”

“You know what this looks like, don’t you? It makes you look desperate. And pathetic.”

Alek turned the worn fabric of the work shirt over and over in his hands as he sat in his truck, parked in the front lot of Mike’s Garage. He could see people moving around inside, and someone that could have very well been the person he was looking for.

Those lips, that haunted look in his blue eyes, the way he whimpered, like he was scared by how good it felt, the way he tasted, how goddamned tight he was....

He’d always been prone to over-thinking and worrying. His brother, Luka, was often the focus of his preoccupation. There had always been an invisible, unbreakable tether between the twins, linking them in perpetuity. If Luka went one way, Alek was helpless but to follow. Every feeling or problem, joy or danger, shivered the line connecting them to each other. Information traveled both ways, but Alek could always sense Luka there with him, even when alone. It was both a comfort and a burden.

Usually, when Alek hooked up with someone, it meant nothing. There was no connection, no reason to go back or stick around. It wasn’t because he was coldhearted; he was simply looking for something worth investing his emotions in. There was a lot of competition for his attention. He would feel Luka pulling him somewhere else, and, because in so many ways, Luka—who had endured so much already in his life—was the owner of Alek’s heart, Alek would gladly go without a second thought. But that teenager—
he
was different. There was something there, Alek could feel it, the same kind of way he could feel Luka. Part of him was terrified of that feeling, and of the fact he was sitting in his truck, worrying about a nameless kid who owed him nothing. It was like the barb had already snagged inside him, hooking another one of those tethers to the core of his being. If he started to care about this guy, it was just more to scrutinize, to obsess over and open himself up to. Luka had always chided him on living too much in his head, on assuming responsibility he didn’t need to carry. But sometimes, if you didn’t bother to care, no one else would either.

Alek was out of the car before he realized it, smoothing down his hair which came almost to his chin, tucking it behind his ears and walking up to the garage. “You’re just returning the shirt. Get your shit together. And stop talking to yourself like a crazy person.”

Seeing a flash of vibrantly blue eyes, and the mouth-watering sight of full lips formed in a natural pout, Alek almost tripped over his own feet for a second before he did get his shit together and headed over to the young guy in the far corner of the garage.

“Can I help you?” A startled look was the only thing betraying the teenager’s vibe of cool disinterest. When Alek got a little bit closer, only a foot or two away, the kid’s voice got much quieter as he growled in that gravelly, fucked-out, sexy tone which Alek got to first enjoy the night before, “What’re you doing here?”