Resist (6 page)

“What if I want you?” I questioned, my voice small.

He leaned into me, his breath smelling minty fresh while his lips looked like they tasted of sin. “Listen to me, you don’t know what you want. A few minutes ago, you were all over Xavier like a cheap suit. Now you say you want me. This is the
precise
reason why I don’t fuck chicks who are high either. Sleep it off and then we can talk.”

Blaine stood and left me there in the middle of the floor, utterly humiliated as I broke down and cried myself to sleep.

I
awoke to the sound of the ocean crashing against the shore while seagulls cawed in the background. My head felt stuffed with cotton wool and my mouth tasted like a pack of week old cigarettes had taken up residence. In one word, I felt like complete and utter shit.

Unlike many people who got wasted in their lives and woke up not remembering what happened, I was one of the unfortunate—or fortunate, depending upon how you looked at it—ones. I recalled the previous day so clearly, I was ashamed of myself despite the fact I should have been angry and frustrated.

Blaine had obviously brought my passed out form to his loft and it was there I was staying for the time being. A prisoner I suppose but that was too strong of a word. I could leave but if I did, innately I knew my actions would have consequences.

This whole situation I’d brought on myself by acting TSTL—too stupid to live—and reckless. Since when had I not ever played it on the safe side? Yes, everyone had a wild side to them but there were some men a woman’s wild side should never come out and play
with
. I’d unfortunately met
three
of them in one day and to say I was well and truly fucked was putting my situation mildly.

I crawled out of bed, wearing nothing but my Joan Jett t-shirt and a pair of string bikini panties. My bra and shorts were nowhere to be found, which meant Blaine had undressed me and tucked me into bed.

I suddenly wondered if he’d touched me inappropriately but there wasn’t any pain or strange sensations other than my head pounding with a dull ache that only coffee and a couple of aspirin would alleviate. I felt like shit run over twice but I’d danced with the devil by mixing Oxycodone with alcohol and could live another day to tell the tale.

The smell of coffee lured me from the bedroom past a large airy living room space and into the kitchen. The sun rose from the east, just beginning its ascent into the sky as I looked around the glass palace Blaine called his home.

Most of the windows were open and I wondered if anyone could see me from the beach since I had a clear view of it from where I stood.

“Good morning,” a male voice said into my ear as I turned around and faced Blaine.

Although freshly showered, he hadn’t bothered to shave. He only wore a pair of low-slung white linen pants that fit him loosely. Like his brothers, he was built and obviously worked out and lifted weights though he wasn’t nearly as well defined as Xavier or Zed. While it was obvious he hit the gym regularly, he was lean and well rounded, preferring both cardio and weights.

His chest was hairless—obviously waxed—while he possessed a right arm sleeve tattoo too but his was a mosaic pattern of shading that could not be discerned until mid-bicep where ancient Viking and Teutonic tribal symbols took over. It was a carefully orchestrated study in organized chaos but in some strange way, it was beautiful.

I finally found my voice. “Morning.”

“Coffee?”

I yawned and realized my breath was still pretty rank. “Yeah, that’s perfect but let me . . .” I trailed off and walked towards his bathroom, which was easy enough to find.

Grabbing a spare toothbrush head left out for me, I detached his from the mechanical toothbrush and began to brush my teeth after I applied a liberal amount of toothpaste.

I needed to shower but knew that could wait until after I’d had coffee and we had a chat first. There was information I desperately needed to know and I wanted it now that I was perfectly sober.

My situation couldn’t be romanticized in any way. How could I find something as repellant as two brothers using me for their own physical pleasure fulfilling at all? If I didn’t have a problem with sex, I would wish for one now. Fortunately, that wasn’t an issue but there was a lot about this situation I needed to know if I was going to stay the whole summer let alone any longer.

Blaine owed me an explanation if nothing else at all.

Chapter 5

Blaine

B
laine chopped fresh onions; along with green and red peppers to add to the omelets he was making for Vie and him. He’d already added ham and tomatoes to the two separate pans sizzling on the stovetop.

He could have made their omelets together or one after the other but he cooked like he directed and lived his life: with ultimate expertise and calculated ease. It was better their omelets were cooked at the same time rather than separately. Plus, it kept him busy, and idle hands were the “Devil’s workshop,” according to his dear psychologically genius-level inclined parents.

It was never a good idea for Blaine to think too much. He was an existentialist thinker in the extreme and both his parents were more afraid of producing the next Nietzsche than happy, healthy children.

Vie finally emerged from his bathroom and sat down at the dining room table. She still wore only her t-shirt and panties as if she were quietly in defiance of every rule she’d ever made for herself.

She would never know how he gazed at her breasts after he removed her bra but forbid himself the sensation of touch. He would have gone too far and losing control was the antithesis to his innate personality. He left the uncontrollable antics to Zed.

Blaine turned to study her, which amounted to watching her drink the coffee he’d freshly poured for her before he returned his attention back to the cooking food.

After adding the additional vegetables to each of their omelets, he topped them off with fresh Brie and goat cheese. Tossing them, he finished up and made sure each side was equally cooked before he turned the burners off and slid them onto fancy china he used on a regular basis.

“I think you and I need to talk,” Vie began as she cleared her throat and he walked her plate over and set it in front of her.

“About what, exactly? How you got here or why you feel so shocked my brother and I would talk about you like you were an object instead of a person?”

Blaine set his plate down, cater corner to hers and sat down in the corresponding chair. Their silverware, previously set out, consisted of a knife and fork, but no matter how bristled Vie became, he could honestly say he didn’t think she would use the object against him. She wasn’t a violent person by nature and there was nothing to suggest she would become one now.

“We need to discuss
everything
.” Vie sliced into the omelet and took a tentative bite before her eyes closed and she moaned with pleasure. “This is so
good
. What the hell—I mean, how did you learn to cook like this? I can’t even boil water.”

He smiled. “My mother always wanted a daughter but alas, she was blessed with three sons. She loved to cook. It’s her . . . passion besides psychiatry. She taught me. I was the only one who wanted to learn how to cook and I loved the extra attention. The perfect French omelet was one of the first dishes she taught me how to make. I was five at the time.”

Vie glanced at him with wide gray eyes. “As in
five
years of age she trusted you near a stovetop? Good grief, what
can’t
you make?”

“My pretzels aren’t that great but I make a mean bratwurst. Bread isn’t my strong suit because I don’t really consume an overabundance of carbs but I’m good when it comes to cakes and pastries. I love making my own sauerkraut but the fermenting time is a pain in the ass. I also have fresh blackberry and strawberry jam I made a couple of weeks ago,” he replied before he sliced into his own omelet and savored a bite.

“You make your own jam and sauerkraut? I just go to Whole Foods and get the organic kind.”

Blaine shook his head. “Nothing in grocery stores is
completely
organic, especially not here in the States. In Europe, it’s different. I love food shopping when I am visiting Germany, Denmark or France but here, it’s just easier to make what I love and store it in the freezer until I am ready to consume it.”

“Would you do that to me?” Vie questioned in a joking manner.

He failed to see the humor in her comment. “No, I wouldn’t.” He set his fork and knife down before he pushed his plate away. “Listen, I’m not sure how much of the conversation between Zed and I you heard but it’s a
complicated
situation and one where you’re not allowed to be privy to all the facts.”

“Even if they directly concern me?” she wondered after she drank from her coffee. “Somehow that doesn’t seem fair. Has women’s rights been overturned by the Supreme Court and I missed the shocking headlines online at
The Huffington Post
? I certainly didn’t see any such story trending on Facebook. Forgive me if I seem a tad confused about how you’re treating me. Like I’m an object, not a human being with
rights
.”

“Listen, I am offering you a wonderful opportunity—one, I didn’t plan to do until we got to know one another. I would never force you to sleep with my brother or me. Where’s the fun in that?”

“Don’t take me for another square, Blaine. After all, there are such occurrences known to happen such as dubious consent and Stockholm syndrome,” Vie replied without missing a beat.

“Sure but you’re no ordinary woman,” Blaine responded in a soft voice. “It would take more than a few sweet talking words to get you into bed. Besides, everything has changed and you will be given a choice as to whom you want to share your body with. Zed is fine with that and realizes he might not be your first choice—”

“Christ, Blaine, it’s not even about that! It’s the lack of consideration for my
condition
. You know I’m not normal and I have a hang-up about sex so why even go there with me at all? Why even put me in the running?” She ate another piece of her omelet and deliberately took her time to chew and swallow. “What I really want to know is why me? Is this some kind of swinging dick contest? God knows you have the world at your feet and a pick of women that must be a mile-long list. You don’t
need
me like that so why
bother
?”

He shook his head as his crystal blue eyes centered onto her steel-gray orbs. “You’re not asking the right questions. What you should be asking is why
not
you? Do I look like a man who enjoys a sure thing? Every part of my life has always been a challenge for me or I become bored and lose interest. I need to be with someone like you, if only to prove there are certain psychological conditions that can be overcome. Don’t you want to get over your condition?”

“Of course I do but not like this. Not as
someone’s
bet or challenge.”

“Well, what
other
way would you have it, Vie? Siblings are, by their very nature, extremely competitive. At least my brothers and I have always been. Yes, we’re close but at the same time, we
resent
each other. I’m sure Xavier and Zed don’t feel the same about one another as they feel about me because they’re twins but I have a definite dislike—bordering on hatred—for them both despite the fact they are my brothers,” Blaine explained in a rational tone although the words themselves probably sounded completely irrational to Vie.

“I wouldn’t know,” she began caustically. “I’m an only child.”

“Then you’re lucky. You never had to share your parents’ love and affection with another. You were able to relish in it selfishly and without worry another would take it from you.”

Vie glared at him like he was a stranger with those big gray eyes before she shook her head. “Surely you can’t possibly believe that. You graduated from Stanford for Christ’s sake yet you sound like some . . . uneducated trailer park trash on
Jerry Springer
. Your parents didn’t love one sibling more than the other—if anything, they attempted the impossible, and tried to love you all
equally
.”

“That is simply impossible for a human being to do, don’t you understand that? Surely you don’t
believe
the bullshit you’re trying to feed to me when you
just
graduated with a Masters in abnormal psychology from Stanford University.”

For the first time since they’d met, he could see the vulnerability in Vie he absolutely adored and thus, he hated himself just a little bit more. She truly was as naïve as she looked and had spent too much time in the academic world, surrounded by their hackneyed theories about life and the human mind. What she hadn’t done was actually live life and see it was very different from a classroom setting or even the academic world itself.

Blaine knew real evil existed—not only in life but people as well. He dealt with the depraved, the clinically insane who were able to adorn a mask of complete and utter normality while rotting away from the inside out in their own moral corruption and filth. Not physical waste but that of the mind; diseases they’d never been diagnosed with and obviously suffered from but so many people were simply able to discard because if it wasn’t present in the body and couldn’t be seen on an X-ray then it must not exist.

He knew better. The American conditions that Western Europeans liked to laugh about just to think they were better than people across the ocean were real but not in the way they thought.

Munchausen’s, hypochondria, multiple personality disorder, manic depression, kleptomania—these were all real conditions though not necessarily
American
conditions though Americans seemed to suffer from them more than others.

Not that there weren’t European conditions that were just as bad—if not worse—than American conditions.

Blaine had lived on both sides of the Atlantic and dealt with both group of people equally. He knew Western Europeans suffered from their own set of psychological issues that made the Americans seem like a walk in the park.

For all of the faults of this nation’s people, at least they were able to deal with their shortcomings if not completely and irreparably. At the very least, they acknowledged their very existence. They didn’t believe they were without flaws and there was no perfection to aspire to because it didn’t exist.

Europeans, for all the greatness in their countries—the utter history and the fact that their nations were hundreds upon hundreds years older—had grown ornery and despondent. There was a depression that spanned the continent and no matter how happy people seemed to be, deep down, the people were . . . restless, on guard, uneasy and most of all, hopeless.

They didn’t believe in anything—not God, not man and certainly not the future. People didn’t acknowledge any real faith in relationships and they were something to shallowly invest in but only to seek solace until the love ran out. Then they were something to shed and flee from as quickly as possible. It was out with the old, in with the new and onto the next . . . and then, the next one after that one failed too. Being free with one’s body didn’t necessarily equate with being easy to access one’s heart.

Blaine recognized in Vie a combination of both continents’ ills rolled into one person. She’d been born and raised in the United States and yet, she suffered from both the American and the European conditions in her life. Not able and unwilling to put her heart on the line, she’d made her body inaccessible through a phobia that was so severe, it made intimacy—physical, psychological and emotional—with anyone damn near difficult if not impossible.

She was a closed book and it would take a special person to break through to her and make her realize she not only hurt herself but the people around her thorough her morbid and incommunicable actions.

“What are you thinking about?” Vie wondered as she grasped her fork again and began to eat the rest of her omelet. “You’re looking at me as if I am . . . I don’t know, evil incarnate or something.”

Blaine smiled though it was wary and without mirth. “No, you could never be any of those things, darling. You’re perfect just the way you are . . . for now but your imperfections will kill you if you let them. You’ll suffer physically the way you do mentally and it will hit you like a fucking tumor. Is that what you want? Do you never want to feel close to anyone in any capacity what so ever? Granted what my brother and I had planned might not be the best way to intimacy but at least we were trying. There is something inside you begging to be set free and you’re determined to not let it go.”

“That’s not true at all. I will be the first to say I am far from perfect. I know I have issues but . . . I’m not sure what the best way it is to go about changing what I need and want out of . . . shit, I don’t know what I’m trying to articulate anymore.”