Tangled Like Us

by Krista Ritchie

  She’s quiet for a full minute. Trying to figure out what question to ask or what to say first, and I squat and check the bottom of her closet.

  “I’ve noticed that you mostly wear black and your brother is often in white. Is that a stylistic choice or so other people can tell you apart?”

  I open some of her old shoeboxes. “Stylistic.” I adjust my earpiece as someone on Alpha yells at another bodyguard. Nailing my eardrum. My jaw hardens, and I continue without much falter, “But when we were young, our mom dressed us in certain colors so she wouldn’t confuse us.”

  I explain briefly how Banks was blue.

  I was red.

  Now it’s harder to wear blue without feeling like I look like my brother. Same with white, which he gravitates towards as an adult. It’s not like I never wear those colors. I have plenty of white button-downs, but most of my clothes are black and red.

  “I see.” Jane has a smile to her voice. “It’s not for other people. It’s for you.”

  My chest rises in a stronger breath, but I don’t falter as I search her shoeboxes. My face is still stoic. Eyes still narrowed in focus. I like how I never have to say much for her to understand, I recognize.

  I nod in reply and stand up. Shutting the closet door, I turn to face her. “It’s clear.” I skim Jane, who rests against the headboard, elbow on her bent knee and chin perched on her fist. She’s gorgeous. It’d be a sin to think she’s anything short of that.

  And I’ve captured most of her attention. More importantly, she’s not as uneasy. This is good.

  I let go of my radio. “Want me to check anything else?”

  Her curious eyes brush over my biceps, carved against my black button-down, and then trace the gold horns against my chest. “The window, possibly?”

  Her bed is tucked up against the only window. I come closer, and I watch her take a shallow breath. I cradle her gaze, then rest a knee on the pink comforter and stretch over to the window. Pushing aside the cheetah-print drapes and resetting the alarm.

  I’ve done this before.

  I’ve also been deep inside Jane every night on this bed.

  But it’s too early for that routine. This isn’t the usual hour that I sneak into her room and fuck her senseless. We have to be careful with Farrow and Maximoff awake in this townhouse, and until I take off my radio, I’m still on-duty.

  Her safety comes first.

  I never forget that.

  Jane relaxes more. “What was your favorite class in high school?”

  “P.E.”

  “No hesitation,” she notes like she’s still constructing a PowerPoint about me. It’s one of the cutest things she does. “You’re scoring very high on the jock charts.” She already knows I played football all four years at a Catholic high school. The church gave Banks and me financial assistance so we could afford tuition, and in return we had to do community service hours.

  I catch her staring at my ripped biceps again, and then I push up on the window. Testing the latch.

  Secure.

  She keeps talking. “I have a hard time picturing you as a beat-your-chest, beer-crushing jock.”

  My mouth almost curves upward. “That’s because I was more like a stiff-stone-wall, beer-drinking jock.” I fix the drapes. Concealing the window, blinds already shut.

  “So you were very similar to how you are now?”

  “Probably close.” I briefly mention how there’d be a good chance of me becoming that chest-thumping, beer-crushing jackass if I weren’t an identical twin. Being that self-involved isn’t an option when I’m being mistaken as my brother or seen as a unit.

  I lean back and drop my boot on the ground. Standing strictly next to the wooden bedpost, I ask Jane, “Were you friends with the jocks at your school?”

  She untwists the towel from her hair, wavy brown strands cascading over her shoulders. “Not particularly…” Her voice tapers off, and I zone in on the way her eyes glaze in a rare faraway expression.

  Which strains the air and my muscles.

  My gaze strengthens on her, and my nose flares.

  Something happened. In the past. When she was younger.

  I don’t like getting into raw places with anyone, but I keep finding myself wanting to dig there with Jane.

  How do I?

  Pull the fucking trigger, Thatcher. “Did you have problems with guys on the football team?” I ask straight out.

  “Hmm?” She seeks more solace in my hard gaze, her bedroom a million degrees in the silence. “Not football…I had some issues with the boy’s lacrosse team at Dalton Academy.” She pauses.

  I make sure to never look away.

  Her eyes glide over my strict features while she talks. “The boys were signing up for my after-school math tutoring sessions. But they had no real interest in learning derivatives.”

  This isn’t public knowledge.

  Or security knowledge.

  We share a deeper look knowing she’s revealing something extremely personal and private.

  “They’d spend the whole time asking rude questions,” she tells me. “Are you like your mom? Do you like to be held down and tied up? ”

  I rake a tense hand across my jaw and mouth. My blood is boiling. They ragged on her like that because they knew her parents prefer BDSM and the public compares Jane to her mom every day.

  And because they’re immature shit-fucks. Who probably feel entitled to girls. To women. To her. Like they’re toys to fuck with.

  Jane continues. “Is your leather collar in your backpack? How many times have you watched your parent’s sex tape? Zero—by the way,” she says quickly. “Not even my morbid curiosity could tempt me.” Her cheeks are reddened, more angered at the memory. “The questions weren’t the worst, really.”

  My gaze narrows. “Did they touch you?”

  “No, no . I always told them I had a fleet of bodyguards and police on speed-dial and they’d arrive in a minute flat if anyone laid a hand on me. I think my confidence sold the lie well enough.”

  Security protocol varies on school grounds. Depending on the client, a bodyguard might just be around for the drop-off and pick-up. I’m betting hers was in the school parking lot or nearby.

  But not the whole team.

  “Their snickering was always the worst,” Jane clarifies, arms loose around her legs. “Between each question…they’d laugh like I didn’t realize I was the butt of the joke. It was shrill and…ugly.”

  I’m clenching my jaw. “Fucking shitheads.” I set my glare on the drapes because it’s caustic as all hell. And I don’t want to glare at Jane. “You shouldn’t have had to deal with that.” I push myself to add more and I try to soften my gaze.

  I look back at her when I do. “I hope you know that you’re a strong person, Jane. I don’t think you hear it enough from people who aren’t your family.”

  She has her knuckles to her lips, an overwhelmed smile forming. “I suppose I don’t because that felt…really nice.” She swallows hard, eyes reddening. “Can you stay a little longer?”

  I check my watch. Nineteen hundred hours. Too early in the night. I should go back to security’s townhouse soon—fuck it.

  “I can stay.” With a stringent stride, I head to the door and lock it. Just so Farrow and Maximoff can’t storm inside and catch me holding her.

  Jane watches me yank off my boots. “When did you know you wanted to be in the military?”

  I set my shoes near her nightstand. Closest to the bed in case I need to jam my feet into them and move out. “I was adamant that I’d enlist around twelve, thirteen. Banks, not so much.”

  “How come?” she wonders.

  I explain how my brother wasn’t sure he wanted to follow me. “We were going through a period where we felt like we had to have different interests in order for people to treat us like separate individuals.”

  Banks is the one who plays basketball.

  Thatcher is the one who plays football.

  Really, Banks hate
d basketball. Couldn’t make a free throw if our grandma’s life depended on it. He was good at football like me, and then in high school when we both joined the team, it became who’s better at football?

  I take off my holstered gun. “It just took him a while to accept that he wanted to enlist in the Marine Corps too, and that was okay.” It doesn’t make us the same person.

  I place my weapon on the nightstand. I’m about to move closer, but Jane suddenly says something that I don’t hear often from people outside my family.

  “You have immensely different personalities to me.”

  I stare at her firmly. A breath stuck in my chest. Wanting to know more, and I don’t have to ask. She’s already telling me.

  “You’re logical. You take charge of situations, and you’re very disciplined and regimented. I think that Banks has more of a creative-brain. He also seems more apt to go with the flow than shoulder what you carry. There’s more, of course. I think people are dreadfully complex creatures.”

  I nod slowly, stunned. That was really accurate.

  She tips her head in thought. “You remind me of Moffy—but that’s not why I’m attracted to you.” She speaks quickly, hands raised. “It’s just an observation. You both share some of the same qualities. Like how you shoulder responsibility and your stoicism—” Jane cuts herself off when I climb onto the bed and take her hands in mine, holding her burning cheek.

  “I know what you meant, honey.” I think Maximoff Hale is a better man than I’ll ever be. He’s compassionate in ways that I struggle to outwardly show. But I love my country and I love my family and her family and her , and I’ve put my life on the line to protect all of them.

  Her lips are a breath from mine, and my hand descends the length of her leg. I pull her further down the bed, our noses brushing while I stay close.

  The air around us has a pulse. My blood pumping with each heavy beat, and our eyes dive deeper. Grasping something crucial, something critical that neither of us is saying yet.

  A feeling.

  An emotion, and I shouldn’t touch it. Shouldn’t near it.

  Bearing my weight on my forearm, I hover over Jane. My large frame shielding her, our legs woven, our lips skimming like a hot breath over the surface of a steaming lake.

  Her small hands roam my cut muscles, then linger on my ass.

  I whisper against her lips, “My cock isn’t going in your pussy yet, Jane.”

  Her breath shallows. “Yes…not yet.” But our carnal eyes want deeper physically. I tuck her against my build, and I sink my shoulders back into the pink duvet. My head on the pillow.

  She nestles into the crook of my arm while I hold her. Her warm freckled cheek on my chest, she eyes the radio on my waistband and the cord that runs to my earpiece.

  Comms are still on. An SFA argument is still in my ear, regular background noise in my life. Just like camera clicking and paparazzi screaming are hers. “I can’t turn off comms until I get word about Nate,” I explain to Jane.

  Her lips rise, but just for a moment. “Do you think of the night often…the one where Farrow caught…” She takes a measured breath and looks up at me, resting her chin on her arm. Which is across my chest. Her voice softens to a whisper. “Where he caught Nate destroying Moffy’s room?”

  Blood.

  There was blood everywhere. I can still fucking see Farrow and Nate covered in it. Animal blood.

  “Yeah. I think about it.” My eyes sear, but I have trouble letting emotion through. “The worst nights of my life tend to stick around.” I think she needs me to go first. I see this look in her eye like she’s afraid.

  But she wants to talk about Nate, and I’d rather crawl through barbed wire first and push it out of the way.

  So I don’t ask her anything yet. I keep my arms wrapped around her shoulders and lower back. Waiting for her next question.

  She searches my gaze. “What was the worst part about it for you?”

  “Having to leave with security once the house was secured. Not being able to be with you after.” I breathe a constricted breath, my nose flaring, and I know she can feel my muscles clenching. “But I couldn’t be with you like that.”

  She knows why.

  Her eyes redden more. “Just knowing…” She swallows. “Knowing that you wanted to be next to me, that means a great deal.”

  I nod and brush her damp hair off her cheek, strands already frizzing.

  “It’s not what I thought you were going to say,” she admits. “I thought the worst part would be confronting Nate.”

  “It’s up there.” I blink back the image. Blood. Farrow. Nate unconscious on the fucking floor. I train my focus on Jane, and I say what I’m thinking, “I should’ve ripped his head off his neck.”

  But that night was more complicated than my anger, her hurt or his hatred.

  “What stopped you?” she murmurs.

  I wish I could say morality . But outside of the civilian world, morality means something else and I have blood on my hands from war.

  “Protocol,” I answer. “The target was already neutralized.” I pause. “But I’d be lying to say it didn’t cross my mind. I was left alone in the attic with him.”

  I remember how Farrow and Maximoff went to go shower. To wash off the blood. And Farrow needed to leave the scene. He was shaking with adrenaline, and he knew it.

  It was just me and an unresponsive Nate. “Quinn knocked on the door, and I wouldn’t let him in.” I hold her gaze. “I didn’t want any of the men to see the scene until it was cleaned. That was my focus.”

  She opens her mouth, tentative to ask something else. “Is it so bad to say that I don’t think I want to know exactly what it looked like?”

  She never saw the room.

  I wouldn’t let her.

  “No. I don’t want to paint the picture for you,” I tell her.

  Jane exhales deeper, seeing that we’re on the same page.

  Police took photos, cuffed Nate, and I knew Jane wouldn’t want more strangers walking through her house. Not that night. So no one called a cleaning company.

  I scrubbed the floorboards while Moffy was with Jane. Farrow came in and helped me.

  In dead silence we cleaned the attic room and threw out the shredded mattress. Hauled in a new one that Quinn went out and bought.

  So it looked like nothing ever happened.

  It was our responsibility, and we’d do it all over again. In a heartbeat.

  Jane sits up to see me better, and I follow suit, my shoulders against the headboard. My arm stays around her waist.

  “I think about that night often too.” She rubs her lips together, her bloodshot eyes on me, and she’s close enough where her fingers trace the gold chain around my neck.

  I have to ask her. “What was the worst part?”

  Her eyes immediately flood. “The feeling. So painfully invasive. The break-in tonight reminded me of it.” She motions to her body. “My skin crawling and an eeriness lingering around me, and the only thing that seems to make me feel better are people I love.”

  She pauses on that.

  And then speaks even faster. “And he wasn’t just a stranger. He was someone I trusted with everything in me, and I let him in. I let him in. ” Her face twists in pain, chin trembling—tears dripping down her cheeks.

  Instantly, I hug her against my body. Strongly. Protecting this girl with everything inside of me, giving her all that I fucking have.

  My hand on the back of her head, she cries into my chest, “I had sex with him.” Her whole body shudders in a sob. “I never told anyone, the night where he came over—we had sex before he destroyed Moffy’s room.”

  Something wrenches my stomach. Pain.

  Rage.

  Guilt.

  And what I feel for her—it’s suffocating. I press a kiss to her temple, and I whisper, “He’s never going to hurt you again.”

  There is no way in hell I’ll ever let him near her.

  * * *

 
; I finally unclip my radio. Just got word that Nate doesn’t have a substantial alibi. I’ve been ordered to keep him on my radar. Regardless if he was a part of tonight’s break-in or not, he’ll always be in my line of sight.

  Jane and I are quiet in the next hour. We have to be.

  Wax-dripping candles lit on the vanity, firelight flickering. Our shadows dance along the walls while our hands travel. While we undress one another, while our lips skim, and I have her bare and soaked beneath me.

  Coated in sweat, I support my weight on my forearm, my other hand between her legs—and I kiss her strongly, each one welding our bodies. Our tongues tangling, and I feel her explore my build like we’re on day one.

  All heat. All visceral desire torching us in the night.

  My muscles tighten as she grinds up into me. Our movements are somehow slow and scorching but combustible and urgent. I pulse my fingers inside her tight warmth.

  Pleasure tremors her limbs, and she tries to shelter a gasp. “Oh…God. ”

  “Softer,” I whisper against her lips. My cock is begging to fill Jane. Throbbing. Blood blistering.

  She bucks upward again.

  Fuck. I stifle a guttural groan. Gritting down. My muscles tighten while her heat clenches. She’s been riding more than one orgasm to shore, and I need in.

  I break apart her legs even more. Spreading her open so I can thrust inside her pussy. Her head falls back in a whimper. “Yes .” She grips my hair with eager fingers.

  I run my hand along the softness of her thigh, and we stare deeper, deeper and my mouth moves to her ear.

  “Jane,” I breathe. “I’m going to push into you. Tell me if you’re not ready.”

  “I’m ready, please. Please ,” she pants, squirming beneath me in want.

  I grip my rock-hard erection, veins bulged with hot need. We keep our eyes on each other as I carefully slide into her heat. Watching her reaction.

  Her lips break apart in a short gasp. She clutches my ass with two hands—and I begin to add friction. Rocking between her legs, the pressure around my cock is fucking heaven on Earth.