Twisted Love: A Prequel

by Brenda Ford

  “Exactly.” Oliver nods, but I can’t help noticing all the color has gone from his cheeks. “So, she wants me to go and act like her boyfriend.”

  “You’re going to, right? Being her best friend?”

  He doesn’t answer for a couple of seconds which is definitely strange. I know that he’ll do anything for Rosie, so the fact that he’s even hesitating for a moment is odd.

  “Yeah, I should, shouldn’t I?”

  “Of course you should! She needs you. You have to be there.”

  “Right.”

  “Oliver, what the hell is going on? You’re acting strange. Is there some reason why you don’t want to take Rosie to the event?”

  This might be the moment he finally confesses all and tells me that he loves her. I brace myself, a scenario spinning in my mind of them finally getting together, which will put an even bigger knife into me and Miss Clark.

  That won’t stop me though. However complicated and messy it will get, I won’t care. I’ve waited for this for too long. She’s the only woman I have ever wanted. I can’t sacrifice that for anyone. Even my brother.

  “I just have a feeling that it’s going to be bad.”

  “No.” I shake my head hard. “That isn’t good enough, Oliver. Just tell me what the fuck is going on. I can help you, you know?”

  My breaths become labored. I can front as much as I like and tell myself that I don’t care about the consequences of my feelings, but the truth is I can’t lose my brothers. They are all that I have.

  “I don’t know.” He finally backs out from telling me anything which leaves me incredibly frustrated. “I just think everything is going to get fucked up.”

  As I gaze out the window towards Miss Clark’s now empty bedroom, I know that he’s right. Change seems to be in the air for all the Smith brothers. I just hope that at least some of it is good. We haven’t always had the best of times, not that I can remember life being at its worst since I was only two years old at the time, but I’m pretty sure we deserve some luck.

  5

  Oliver

  I should have just told Nelson the truth. I should have told him that I’m scared to take Rosie to this party because I’m afraid of rejection. Scared of screwing everything up between me and her.

  She’s the one person in the world that I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with. My best friend, the person that I have shared everything with. She’s been my rock and I have done the same for her.

  If I say anything and this all gets fucked up, then I will lose the most important person in my life. I will basically be left with no one.

  Why didn’t I tell Nelson? Initially I went to speak to my only brother in a long term relationship for some advice, but he was in the middle of a crisis of his own, so I tried Nelson… only I couldn’t get the words out. Probably because it would make it that much more real.

  I don’t want it to be real. It’s a nightmare because it’s real. I just want it to be over and to never think of the girl next door like that again.

  “You look nice.” Her soft voice comes from behind me, making me jump. I should have known that she would just walk into my bedroom like she belongs here. She does it all the time. “I like you in a suit.”

  My eyes run down her body, drinking in the glamorous figure hugging red dress which shows off her voluptuous curves perfectly.

  “You look incredible yourself,” I reply stiffly, trying so hard not to allow my true feelings out. “Tristian will be kicking himself.”

  And if he isn’t, I might well kick his ass for him. How he could have the perfect woman and treat her like shit is beyond me. Didn’t he realize how lucky he was? Well, now it’s my job to make sure that he doesn’t get lucky again. I don’t know if I will ever be able to have Rosie, but I can’t let him hurt her again. She doesn’t deserve it.

  “You think so?” She pushes up her breasts as if they need to be even more pert, and she spins around to show me the delicious curve of her ass in that dress. “I don’t know if it looks as good as I thought it did in the store. It always looks different under that soft, flattering lighting.”

  It’s almost impossible for me to say anything with the thick ball of emotion lodged in my throat. But I need to. Right now, more than ever, Rosie needs reassurance from me.

  “Rosie Clark, he will be losing his mind over you. He will be begging you to take him back.”

  “Good.” For a second her face is unreadable. Horror strikes me as I fear she might want him to want her again and that she wants to get back with him. Do I tell her that cheaters never change, or will that make her hate me? But before I need to say anything, her expression darkens. “Then I can smack him in his stupid face.”

  She reaches out to take my hand and I slip my fingers between hers. Immediately electricity bolts through me, a new feeling that started a while back. I can’t pin point the exact moment. It just crept up on me as I stare at her but she doesn’t seem to notice it though. It must be one sided.

  Idiot, I tell myself angrily. Just focus on being Rosie’s friend.

  Tonight is huge. I don’t know how I can tell; it just feels obvious. Something will happen. I might have to try and not allow it to so things will stay the same. The last thing I need is to lose Rosie completely. I won’t be able to handle life without her.

  “Is he looking?” Rosie whispers to me for what feels like the hundredth time. Every single time she focuses on him instead of us, my heart sinks. I want to tell myself that it’s a good thing because it stops everything from getting more complicated than it already is, but it isn’t working. “Or is he still dancing with Little Miss Pert Boobs?”

  I glance over at Tristian to see him looking right back at me. If Rosie wants to make him jealous then she doesn’t need to worry. It’s definitely working. The green monster is dancing behind his eyes and I just know that it won’t be long before he’s trying to get her alone.

  Will she kiss him or hit him? I really don’t know.

  “He’s looking,” I mutter quietly, my heart shattering as I do.

  “He is?” She tosses her hair over her shoulder and laughs loudly. It’s so damn obvious what she’s doing and that makes it even more frustrating.

  “Yes, and now his girlfriend has noticed so she’s yelling.”

  “She is?” Rosie lights up like a damn Christmas tree. “Oh my God!”

  “Yep. She’s shoving him away.” Fucking hell, I don’t want to be watching this scene unfold over Rosie’s shoulder. I want to stare at her instead. “Now he’s begging her to stay but she’s storming off anyway…”

  “Now what?” She grips my arms tight. “Is he following her?”

  Tristian looks longingly at Rosie. It’s obvious to me where he wants to be. I need to act, to do something, to stake my claim… panic grips me, I just know that if I don’t do something soon, I risk losing her forever. So, without giving myself even a single second to talk myself out of it, I grab the back of her head and I pull her to me for a kiss.

  As my lips collide with hers, the world stops spinning. Everyone around us melts away into nothingness. That chemistry I could feel brewing, the electricity that I just knew was there, explodes. It’s like a nuclear blast, getting rid of absolutely everything else. There’s only me and Rosie left.

  For a split second, her body stiffens. I think the shock of my actions has gotten to her, but then she molds into me and locks her arms tightly around my waist, fixing me in place. As our lips move in unison and her tongue even darts in to my mouth for a second, I’m certain that everything I’ve been feeling is right.

  The girl who has been under my nose the entire time, my best friend, the one I wasn’t supposed to ever fall for is the one. This is incredible. My hands make their way up in to her hair as I imagine our incredible future together. The wonderful wedding, the big family, us growing old together, always getting along because we were friends before lovers….

  It’s perfect and as we pull apart and I see the glazed over
thoughtful look in her eyes I know that she can see it too.

  I have no idea where we will go from here, but I’m determined to find out.

  “Is he coming over?”

  “Who?” I ask, stupidly forgetting what she thinks we’re here for.

  “Tristian. That’s why you kissed me, right?”

  Oh, fucking hell. Fuck sake, what a god damn mess. I’m here stupidly thinking of my happy ever after and she’s still stuck on him.

  “Er…” I glance over her shoulder, blinking quickly so no accidental emotion leaks out. “He was, but it’s worked. He’s gone now.”

  What the hell is wrong with Rosie? She looks disappointed, like she wanted him to speak to her. He cheated on her and disrespected her, and she still wants him. Even the magic of that special kiss did nothing to change her mind.

  “I…” I need to get away from this situation before it swallows me up whole. I can already feel the walls closing in on me, shutting me down. If I had just spoken to one of my brothers about this, they might have warned me this was going to happen. “I just need to go to the bathroom. I won’t be long.”

  “Sure.” She smiles thinly, still with him at the forefront of her thoughts. “I’ll get us some more drinks.”

  I race to the bathroom with my phone clutched between my fingers and I call the first name I come to, the brother I talked to last, and I call him.

  “What’s going on?” Wesley cries out, happy as always.

  “Wesley, I’m in a fucking mess.” I rake my shaky fingers through my hair. “I just made a real hash of things. I… I kissed Rosie.”

  “Rosie?” The shock is evident in his voice. “No way, bro. That was your first mistake. You never kiss someone that you actually like. That’s how you end up in trouble.”

  “Then who the hell am I supposed to kiss?”

  “Anyone but Rosie, you idiot. How are you going to make things right now?”

  I don’t have an answer to that. In fact, this whole conversation has been a giant waste of my time. It’s left me with more questions than answers.

  “I don’t know what I’ll do, but I need to do it now before I screw everything up forever.”

  “Good luck!” he replies. “And next time kiss someone you don’t care about. Or better yet, someone you hate!”

  He’s so weird. I don’t know why I came to him first. No, I need to follow my own advice and just talk about this. Communication is key to any relationship and I want to start that early if we have even a chance in hell of surviving. I just need to take in a couple of calming breaths before I go back out there and get this ball rolling…

  “Oh, holy shit.”

  Everything stops again. Only this time in a bad way.

  No pep talk could have prepared me for this. This is the last sight I wanted to come out and see. Rosie is not alone. Very much not alone. In fact, I don’t know where she ends, and Tristian begins.

  6

  Wesley

  “Oh, Wesley, you feel so good,” Zoe murmurs while rolling her hips against me hard. “I want you to hate fuck me some more. Over and over.”

  I plunge into her deeper, faster, more powerfully, giving her everything that she wants. It feels like this moment has been building forever, coming for longer than either of us knew, and I can’t wait until we reach the pinnacle, until we get this out of our systems.

  “Fucking hell, Wesley.” Zoe bites my ear hard, reminding me that we’re enemies not lovers. The pleasure pain combination is fucking delicious. “You’re such an asshole, I fucking love it.”

  “You’re an asshole too.” I nip her throat. “You’re just lucky that you have a damn fine body, or I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near you.”

  Her head tosses back, her words come out in rasps, but that doesn’t stop her from insulting me as our bodies clap together loudly. “You’re so up fucking tight, such a fucking stick in the mud, and you’re just jealous that I’m better at the job than you are. You hate that I’m nothing like you, yet I’ve become your rival. One who’s a million times better than you.”

  I pin her hard to the bed and slam all of me in to her but it doesn’t destroy her like I want it to. She fucking loves it. The animalistic screams flying out of her mouth speak volumes. This is how she wants it. It really is a hate fuck. Well, if that’s what she wants…

  “No wonder your fiancé left you at the altar,” I spit out spitefully. “I wouldn’t be able to stand being with you forever either.”

  “Is that what this is?” she pants while flipping me on to my back and taking control. “A pity fuck because I got dumped cruelly?”

  I grab her hips and try to guide her movements, but she slaps me away. It doesn’t matter. She’s doing a much better job of it than me anyway. Zoe might not be better at her job than me, no matter what she says, but she does know her way around my body.

  She bucks hard, her walls starting to clamp around me while her pert breasts bounce gorgeously while she fucks me hard. As the pleasure grips her tighter, her body coaxes the orgasm from me in an uncontrollable way. She drags me hard under the waters of pleasure with her and we drown together, sinking under this unfamiliar territory, not giving a shit what will happen next after this mess…

  “Huh?” I bolt upright in bed, sweat pouring down my forehead. “What the fuck?” I pat the bed next to me, but it’s empty and cold. No one has been there which is good. I don’t fucking want Zoe in my bed again. “You need to stop dreaming about that bitch,” I growl angrily at myself. “It was one stupid drunken pity hate fuck three months ago. Stop thinking about it already, you fool.”

  I step out of the sheets and immediately head towards the shower, my foul mood getting the better of me. Telling Oliver last night to kiss someone that he doesn’t care about what good advice. Mentioning people he hates was stupid. After all, that hasn’t exactly worked out well for me, has it?

  I don’t even know how we managed to end up fucking. I wasn’t even one of the people who felt bad for her when that guy of hers left her at the altar. That stupid hippish bitch deserved it as far as I’m concerned. But somehow, I got talked into the night out to ‘make her feel better’. Somehow, we ended up the last ones there. Somehow, we ended up hate fucking. Sadly, it’s the best dam sex I have ever had in my life.

  What makes it difficult is having to work with her every day and pretending that it didn’t happen.

  I still have no love for her, and she doesn’t me either. We still compete like crazy, with me winning at the moment thank God, and neither of us mentions that one crazy night of stupid passion. But it’s always there in the back of my mind, reminding me that while I hate her personality, I love her body and what she can do with it. She’s a sex bomb for sure. It’s fantastic. It doesn’t matter who I start thinking about when I masturbate, even if I’m watching porn, she’s always the one there when I come. It’s so fucking annoying.

  I don’t want to screw her again, I wish I hadn’t screwed her once, so why is that bitch always there?

  “I need to head out tonight after work,” I tell myself determinedly as I straighten my tie. “Find someone else to fuck. Get her out of my system.”

  The sad thing is it doesn’t seem to matter how many palette cleansers I have. The past three months have been full of them. She’s still there. It’s almost like it’s a punishment from her. A final ‘fuck you’. Maybe a part of her knows that she still has a little part of my brain and she’s using it to torture me. I wouldn’t put anything past that bitch.

  I crank the music up in the car loud and drive much too fast, my usual way of doing things, but it still isn’t enough to block Zoe out. She’s still there, naked writhing underneath me, then pounding away above me, giving me my most explosive orgasm yet. The damn girl is like a virus that no pill can get rid of. It’s like I caught something from her… but worse.

  As I walk towards the office, my brain starts to work in a different way. I need to plan my first insult to shoot her way to let her know th
at I mean business today. Just because her hot body is in my mind, it doesn’t mean I’m going to let her climb above me again. I always win…

  But any planned words fall apart the moment I step in to the office and I see her tear stained face. She looks as sad and freaked out as the day she returned to work after being dumped in the most humiliating way possible. Only this time it’s different because I can’t help but feel something. My heart weirdly goes out to her and I don’t know what to do about it. It’s safe to say that I’m not too great at dealing with chick emotions. What do I say? Where do I even begin?

  “Er, Zoe, are you… you know?” I ask as I practically tip toe around my desk.

  Her head snaps up as if she’s only just realized that I’m here. “What the fuck do you want, Wesley? Can’t you see I’m not in the mood.”

  “Right, sure. Okay.” I hold up my hands in a surrendering gesture. She’s always a bitch to me, but this time she seems to really mean it. “Just thought that I might be able to help is all…”

  “Why the hell would I want help from you?”

  I glance around the office. “Because I’m the only person here. Because you’re clearly crying. Because… I don’t know. I’m human?”

  “Are you?” she snorts, rage filled. “Half the time you seem like a robot.”

  “Yes. You might be right about that, but I can try.”

  She forces a small smile on her lips, but the agonizing pain really shines through. “Hmm, well trying won’t be enough with this one.”

  A strange instinct over takes me and I find myself walking towards her with my arms stretched wide to hug her.

  “What the fuck are you doing now?” she yells.

  “My words might be shit,” I reply honestly. “But I can hug you.”

  “Urgh, I don’t want to touch you.” She runs her eyes up and down me looking disgusted. “I don’t know what I’ll catch.”

  “I’m all clean, I promise you.” I shoot her a wink. “I always use protection.”