by Lucas, Helen
“That’s true but wolves don’t make good lovers.”
“They make fine lovers. Mates, on the other hand…”
“Jesus, Kyle, we’re brother and sister.”
“We were, for two years, stepbrother and stepsister. Things are different now.”
“Not different enough.”
That was a life. They were different enough for me… I was just…
Could I go home with him? Could I run off into those strong arms, drown myself in those seductive grey eyes? God, I wanted to, but everything in my body told me I shouldn’t.
“Mr. Stone!” a voice called out. Kyle turned to see one of the waiters approaching us.
“Sir, the valet is looking for you—they want to know if you’d like your car now, or if you’d prefer them to park it again.”
“I’ll take it now, thanks,” Kyle said, his voice cold steel once more. He slid a five dollar bill into the waiter’s hand and jerked his head back to me. “Why don’t you get her a drink? Something strong. She needs to loosen up.”
Bastard. I didn’t want him to go.
KYLE
“Wait…” Karen said, reaching out for me before I could leave. The waiter stopped and looked at us both.
“Why don’t you grab that drink for her, kiddo?” I murmured to the waiter, turning to face my ex-sister.
“I don’t want us to leave things like this. When am I going to see you again?” she asked. I rolled my eyes.
“That’s up to you.”
“Give me time to think about this.”
“Next weekend. It’ll be after Thanksgiving. Come see me. We’ll talk about how we want to proceed.”
“Proceed? What do you mean?”
“With administering the donation. That’s what you do in a situation like this—you draw up an action plan. I want to see a protocol for recruiting students and grant applicants, as well as a plan to invest the money so that these programs are self-sustaining. Or…”
I smiled, taking her hand.
“Did you mean us?”
“Oh, shut up.”
She snatched her hand away just in time to grab the Cosmopolitan the long-suffering waiter had brought to her.
“Is that a deal?”
“Fine,” Karen replied, sipping her drink.
“How is it?”
A look of defeat graced her pretty face.
“It’s… Good.”
“You’re not going to do anymore work tonight after that, are you?”
She shook her head.
“Then my work here is done. Take me to my car, kiddo,” I said, another five finding its way from my wallet into the waiter’s hand. I’d given this poor jerk enough trouble this evening anyway.
We picked our way through the reception as it let out. I pressed the flesh of professors and administrators, all hoping for a private audience with me. I assured them that I would be on campus regularly, that my office in New York was open to them, passing out business cards with a smile. Little did they know that those were the old business cards—the number on them connected to a chiropractor’s office now. I had become a master of avoiding people when I need to.
Damn it all to hell, Karen. Here I had a reservation at Dorsia for two people, with only one in attendance. If there was anything I hated, it was eating alone in public.
For a moment, I thought about calling Liana. No, that was clearly a terrible idea. I absolutely should not do that. Bad Kyle. Bad.
Well, I supposed I would just see if Nicholas were still in the city or if he had retreated to Connecticut for the weekend.
It was then that I saw Masha, standing by the bar, a bored look on her pretty young face.
I felt my chance arriving. I could fuck her easily, of course, but the way it would affect Karen would be more fun.
Bad Kyle. Bad.
Masha was absorbed in her cellphone when I approached her. I gently took it out of her hands and put it to sleep.
“It’s impolite to text at social gatherings,” I instructed her. She blushed, a smile spreading on her face. “You should cultivate the habit of socializing with your peers in a charming way. You’ll find it does a whole lot more for your life than Twitter.”
“Okay. You’re right.”
I gave her the phone back.
“I’m heading back to New York. My date for dinner cancelled on me. Tell your boyfriend to go play Settlers of Cataan or whatever tonight.”
Masha’s eyes widened.
“Mr. Stone—“
“Kyle.”
“Kyle… I can’t…”
“Oh, Masha, don’t make me beg. You wouldn’t like me when I beg. I just look so pathetic, rolling around on the ground like a little puppy dog.”
She bit her lip.
“Come on, do something crazy. You’re in graduate school and pretty soon, you’ll have a PhD in English. You’ll be a professor. Do something wild before you end up like—“ I glanced behind me to see Karen entering the room, her cosmo half-empty already. “Like Karen.”
I waved at her and she frowned. She mouthed to me: “You’re still here?”
I winked back.
“Okay! Okay, let’s do it. Am I dressed okay?”
“No,” I confessed. “So we’ll be stopping at Bergdorf’s on the way.”
“What?! Really?!”
I shrugged. “I need you dressed to get in. Now, wave bye-bye to Karen.”
Masha and I both turned and waved to my ex-sister. She was positively fuming: her face trembling, her knuckles stretched tight around her glass. Perfect.
I slid my arm around Masha’s waist as we left the club.
“I’ve got a hell of a night planned for you….” I whispered to her, one eye still on Karen. I saw her face contort, darken. Yes. That’s right.
Get mad, girl. Get jealous.
KAREN
I doubted I’d ever be able to forgive Kyle for what he did.
I should have forced myself to stop thinking about him, stop thinking about him and Masha. I couldn’t help but imagine it, though. The images of them… Together… Flooded my mind’s eye.
He’d take her into town, let her freshen up at his apartment first. Maybe some shopping first. A casual hand finding its way to Masha’s ass, squeezing and groping, but gently, playfully.
Then, a limo would pick them up. A long, black, stretch limo. They’d pile into the back. There, Kyle would ply my student with champagne and strip the dress he’d just bought her off of her young, inexperienced body…
By the time they were at the restaurant, Masha would be pulling her dress back on, wiping her mouth clean. Kyle would be zipping his pants back up. They’d have a decadent dinner, complete with cocktails, wine pairings, and a nice port at the end.
And then, the limo would whisk them back to Kyle’s place. Back to his fantasy world of luxury and pleasure. There, they’d fuck. All night long.
Assholes.
I fumed the entire way home. I should have been happy. This should have been a victory. But Kyle, stupid Kyle, he had ruined it, made me feel like a child, made me feel stupid… God damn him…
When I got home, I found a text on my phone. It was from Kyle.
“Masha’s having a great time with me. Just so you know.”
I texted back immediately.
“Go to hell.”
A few moments passed and then Kyle’s reply, which he must have been already typing in anticipation of my own reply, flooded my phone’s screen.
“Now, now. That’s no way to talk to your newest benefactor. Be good, sis.”
I scowled and all but threw my phone into the pool outside my condo.
Fortunately, I didn’t hear from Kyle for the next few days. I assumed that he had succumbed to Masha’s charms, as she must have to his, and that he didn’t have any reason to bother with me.
That was for the best.
After all, it was dumb… SO DUMB… of me to get hung up over him. Over a man who was out of my league. A man
who had way more women throwing themselves at him than I’d ever have men wanting to take me out.
And a man who had been, for a time, my brother.
I did my best not to think about it, but I couldn’t help but feel… Something. Something I didn’t want to admit to.
Damn it, was this jealousy?
No. No, it couldn’t. Certainly, I could have had Kyle… if I wanted. But it was wrong in so many ways. And I needed to focus on my career. And Kyle wasn’t right for me.
And damn it, he was my brother!
But still…
Those eyes. Those shoulders, broad and powerful. His powerful, precise movements, and then the intoxicating smell of his cologne as he pulls me close, his fingers feeling like they’re ready to start kneading dough, to start kneading me, molding me…
And the omnipresent bottles of Dom Perignon didn’t hurt.
Damn it. Damn it all to hell. I spent the next few days after the donation ceremony trying to do work, trying to research and spend my time productively, but instead, all I could think about was Kyle and Masha. Kyle and Masha.
It was a welcome relief when, finally, it was time for me to fly down to Atlanta to see my mother for Thanksgiving.
I wish I could say my mother was proud of me, and probably, she is. But I still can’t help but suspect that there’s part of her that wishes I had become a lawyer like her, that I was working in Atlanta or New York, making the big bucks and going on mother-daughter vacations to Jamaica to pick up men way too young for either of us.
I know she’s proud of me. It just doesn’t feel like it.
Still, there’s nothing like seeing your mother. As I tumbled into her BMW when she picked me up at the airport, the familiar scent of her perfume greeted me. She wore a more casual suit than she normally wears, which indicated to me that she hadn’t been in court or meeting with a client that day.
“Karen, babe!” she squealed, leaning over to kiss me. I kissed her back.
“Hi, mommy,” I said, settling in with my duffel bag over my legs, relaxing into the luxurious leather seats of her car. The machine roared to life and in a second, we were out of the airport and on the highway, roaring down the road on our way to my mother’s fancy downtown Atlanta townhome.
I had emailed her about Kyle’s donation but I hadn’t told her anything more about it. I hadn’t told her about what he had said during the ceremony.
And I definitely hadn’t told her about Kyle and Masha. Or myself and Kyle. God, how did I end up in this situation?
“That’s a damned fine thing your brother did,” my mother commented as our conversation drifted from the usual talk of people I had known growing up and what did the dogs do now to a topic which I knew she would touch on.
“It was, but I don’t want to talk about it now.”
My mother eyed me. She’s a keen judge of character—she has to be, being not only a woman, but a woman in a law firm that’s just about all old men. She has an almost supernatural ability to ascertain a person’s feelings and emotions in moments, just from the intonation of a word or a gesture. And now, she had focused her laser sharp powers of detection and deduction on me.
“Why’s that?” she asked coolly.
“Well… Oh, I don’t know. He downplayed my role in the whole thing during the ceremony in front of my entire department where we announced it. It was like I didn’t even exist.”
“Well, honey, maybe’s that for the best. You don’t know what kind of—you know, scandal—it could cause if people got to thinking about your relationship.”
I froze, my blood running cold. Wait, what did my mom know about me and Kyle? Had he talked to her?
“Our relationship?”
“You know. The fact that you were brother and sister, once upon a time. Step-brother and step-sister, but still.”
I relaxed. No, Kyle hadn’t talked to her. She didn’t know that Kyle was trying to put the moves on me, trying to make me want him, trying to do all sorts of things that he shouldn’t be doing…
Things that I didn’t want him to do but which I couldn’t stop him.
Things which I wasn’t sure I wanted to stop.
“You’re right,” I said with a sigh, leaning back in my seat.
“He sounds so much better than his father, though,” my mother murmured. “He was gorgeous, of course, but couldn’t keep it in his pants. It was a second marriage for both of us, so we were jaded already but still… It got to be where I simply couldn’t trust him.”
I knew why they had broken up. I knew it was because of the cheating. They had remained close, right up until the suicide, but it had been rocky, even as friends.
“I’m pleased to hear that Kyle has grown up into a nice young man.”
I sighed again. Even though my mom was powerful and hard-headed, there were times when she couldn’t help but sound like a mom.
“That’s right, mom. A nice young man,” I said, my eyes all but glazing over as I watched the city zoom by. She had no idea what Kyle was like. He was just like his father—a man who wanted pleasure, who thought he could buy anything, have anything, simply because of who he was.
I hated him. I never wanted to see him again.
But damn if I couldn’t stop thinking about him. This was going to be a long Thanksgiving break, I realized…
KYLE
Thanksgiving, for those of us who stay in the city, is always kind of a lonely, depressing affair. I knew Nicholas had gone away with the kids to their house on Cape Cod for the long weekend. Karen, no doubt, was with her mother in Atlanta. Most of my other colleagues and friends in town had other plans, had families to go see.
I, on the other hand?
I haven’t had a real Thanksgiving since my father killed himself. He had been addicted to painkillers for several years, and that really harshed the Thanksgiving vibe. We would drive up to Westchester to see his family. When I was younger, we would fly to San Francisco for Thanksgiving with my biological mother, but I hadn’t seen her since my father’s funeral, let alone had Thanksgiving with her.
So, I worked. I didn’t mind that. If you’re single and unattached, with no significant family, it’s easy to work your way through Thanksgiving weekend, taking a break for the parade, enjoying how quiet the office is, keeping up with your foreign colleagues and clients who don’t have the luxury of a late November break to ease them into the holiday season.
Of course, Karen was still angry at me. But that was the idea. I don’t like it if a woman’s feeling nothing at all for me. I’d rather anger over apathy.
Anger over apathy. I should trademark that.
I emailed Karen the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I imagined her ready my words, her pretty brow furrowed in annoyance as I popped back into her life, invading her inbox in the same way that dreams of her invaded my sleep…
“Hey sis,
Happy Turkey Genocide Day. Masha and I had a lovely time the other night, and an even lovelier brunch the next morning. I’m planning on coming to Silliman next week to see her and I want to meet to discuss how we’ll administer the fund. Monday? Monday it is. All best, your loving big brother.”
That was sure to piss her off.
Still, how to get Karen? I couldn’t just enrage her. That’d be fun for a little bit, but I wanted more. I wanted…
Her.
There. I admitted it. I was getting a little bit obsessed.
I hate not getting what I want. That tends to only make me want things more.
When I was a kid, I was lonely. Lonely all the time—growing up rich is great in a lot of ways, but it can be isolating. My parents never had time for me, were more likely to send me off to boarding school than hug me, more likely to gift me a new car than read an essay I had written or come to see a lacrosse game.
I don’t mean for this to be a sob story. After all, I turned out all right. I’m not a complete psychopath. I’m a jerk, sure, but not nearly as much of a jerk as the other assholes on Wall Street. Hell, I�
��m one of the nicest guys I work with.
But damned if it wouldn’t be easier if I could just… Buy Karen.
Not literally. Not in terms of slavery or the horrible things she studies. But if only I could just take her out to dinner, take her to a show, take her to Bergdorf’s, take her for a drive, a helicopter ride—and then she’d see, she’d KNOW what I could give her…