“Come on, please”, she quietly whispers to herself.
Every so often she cranes her neck to try and look at the register, before looking back to her left, horrified to see someone else join the enormous queue.
The plump assistant clicks chewing gum against her teeth while she waits for the machine to tell her what to do next. Her skin is so fake-tanned and dented by acne, she looks like a gigantic orange. Next to her, Sash could be a completely different species. She’s compact but perfectly proportioned, with delicate features and gorgeous eyes.
The human orange looks from the computer up to Sash and blinks slowly, one eyelid slightly behind the other, like a treefrog waking up.
“Denied”, she says lazily.
Clack goes the chewing gum against her teeth.
“That can’t be”, Sash says. “I put money in there on Wednesday.”
“Today is Friday”, the assistant says flatly, as though Sash may have overlooked a crucial piece of information. “Maybe it went somewhere else on the days in between?”
“What’s the hold up?”
An irritated voice comes from the queue behind her.
People tap their toes impatiently. Others drum their fingers on the long since stopped conveyor belt. A child folds his arms, mimicking his scruffily dressed father.
“Let me try again”, Sash says. “It must be a problem with the machine.”
Moving at a snail’s pace, seemingly unaffected by the enormity of the queue that has begun to swell so much it’s now impossible to see the end of it, the assistant rubs her fingers along the black stripe of the credit card and langorously re-swipes it. Any slower and her heart would stop.
The till hums. The eyelids blink, out of synchronization. She pauses briefly, like a game show host at the moment before revealing the winner of a year long event.
“De-nied”, she says again, emphasizing the first syllable of the word.
Someone’s hands go up in the air.
“Come on. That’s four times now. It isn’t going to work.”
“Do you have another card?”
The assistant hands back her broken one.
Sash looks down at her shopping. A bottle of wine, a pre-packaged salad, a beef steak, a punnet of strawberries, a health food bar to eat on the way home. She rifles through her purse, practically tipping the coins out in front of her to count them.
“This is ridiculous.”
The voice belongs to the same man from the queue behind her, his arms still folded across his chest. Others nod their heads in agreement.
One says, mostly to himself, “call the manager already.”
“I have three dollars, eighty six cents.”
Sash looks down pitifully at the coins.
The assistant looks at the shopping. She looks at Sash and then she looks at the till. “That’s not going to be enough.”
***
Outside, the sky has clouded over.
Sash looks up into the black stormy swirls as though expecting to find a reasonable answer there. Instead, all she gets is a spot of light rain dampening her cheek. She feels like the world is spitting on her.
“Looks like it’s rolling in again.”
An old lady holds on to her hat while she passes, in case a sudden gust of wind might blow it off.
Sash sighs.
“What happened to the fucking sun?”
At the entrance to the train station, a dark skinned man taps enthusiastically on upturned plastic buckets with a wooden kitchen spoon. Sash pauses for a moment to listen, losing herself pleasurably in the hollow, vibrant sounds.
The man blinks at her kindly to say hello, lifting the corner of his mouth into a smile, and tilting the top of his head downwards, in a way in which Sash mistakes for an attempt to indicate the collection hat on the ground in front of him.
She smiles sweetly at the old man, whose leather skin reminds her of her grandfather, immediately embarrassed she can’t tip him. As if she’s already outstayed her welcome, she heads into the station, rushing quickly towards the train that’s already pulled up to her platform.
Her three dollars eighty six cents were just enough to buy the health food bar and leave a sufficient amount for the train ticket home. Digging it out of her purse now, she realizes for the first time, in her haste to get out of the supermarket, she’s bought the only flavor she doesn’t like.
“Fuck”, she says, a little bit louder than she wants to.
A wide-eyed child sat on the edge of the seat opposite, regards her with a mix of fear and excitement, as though he’s heard something he’s not supposed to, and because of that, he likes it. His feet dangle down, a good twenty centimeters from the floor.
“Sorry”, Sash says.
The boy looks far too young to be traveling on his own. She looks at the health food bar and then hands it over to him.
“Here, you like apricots right?”
The city shoots by, framed through a toughened plastic window covered in scratches and graffiti.
A fat attendant checks Sash’s ticket, eyes the boy as though he were her own and then shuffles along the compartment, his company issue trousers frayed at the bottom and hanging off his ass, his belt doing nothing to keep them in place.
There is a quarter mile walk uphill back to Sash’s apartment over pitted pavement slabs not designed for high heels, and by the time she gets there, she’s soaked through and absolutely exhausted.
A stack of bills jam the progress of the door momentarily. Some of them have been there for months, as though now forming part of the apartment’s design. She fights her way past them, kicks her shoes off in the hallway and swings the door shut behind her without bothering to look.
Just before it hits the latch, a hand comes up to stop it.
“Miss Cole?”
The voice freezes the blood in Sash’s body. She makes fists with her bare toes in the worn carpet. Her head hangs at the end of a long, deep sigh. Finally she turns.
“Martin.”
Martin is a man of extreme proportions.
His nose, his fingers, his belly and his ankles. He looks like he has been drawn by a caricature artist.
“The rent?” He taps the part of his wrist where a watch would sit if he wore one. “It’s late.”
“It’s not a good time”, Sash says.
The door still isn’t fully open. The effect is that only half of Martin’s immenseness can be seen, as he hovers on the periphery. For all his bulk and presence, he’s reserved, and a little bit timid. To be polite, and because she knows he won’t do it himself, Sash takes the three steps back to the door to open it fully.
“I’m sorry, Martin. It’s just been a bad day, that’s all.”
“It’s been over two months. I can’t wait any longer.”
“Just give me until the end of the month”, Sash pleads.
“The end of the month is twenty eight days away.”
“The end of the week?”
“I’ve got to eat too, you know. I have people queuing up for this apartment. It’s a good apartment. I’m a good landlord. Not everyone is like me. When you were late with the money I said, ‘sure no problems, you take as long as you like’, but enough is enough. Two months is too long. I’ve got a little girl to feed.”
Sharing the proportions of her father, Sash would call her anything but little, but she knows what he means. She sighs again. She was in a fix and she knew it.
“Can you give me until the end of the week, please, Martin?”
“Are you going to get a job by the end of the week?”
Martin eyes her suspiciously.
“I sincerely hope so.”
“Final deadline, no extensions. The end of the week or you’ve got to leave.”
“Thank you, Martin. I won’t let you down, I promise.”
He’s still stood there, looking suspicious, while Sash closes the door, kicks off her shoes and slumps down into the sofa.
That morning’s intervie
w had been a complete and utter waste of her time. She was sick of spending hours filling out application forms, weeks waiting to hear back from companies she had no interest in working for, and whole mornings trying to sell herself for roles she knew were beneath her.
They hadn’t told her either way, of course, but she knew from the moment she walked into the room, based on the atmosphere alone, that it was going to be a no. It was the same old story, day in day out.
Either she wasn’t qualified, or she was too qualified, or she was qualified in the wrong way, or she was too pretty, or not pretty enough or pretty but just not in the way they were looking for right now. She went to one interview last week where they told her she was too young. Too young to work in a college library putting books back on shelves. She looked the interviewer in the eye, shook her head in disbelief, stood up and walked straight out.
Everything that Sash chose to do of late seemed to be a waste of time and money. University debts, bills stacking up, behind on rent and nothing but a jar of cents to her name was seriously beginning to bum her out. There wasn’t even anything decent in the fridge to eat.
She knew what she had to do, but she just didn’t want to admit to it. Seeing him was such a last resort, she’d have to be so desperate there was no other way.
The trouble was, she knew she’d already exhausted every other option.
Chapter 2
“That’s a Siamese fighting fish”, Alex says, “They tend to be rather aggressive. Your brother is quite keen on them.”
“He’s not my brother.”
Sash straightens back up to face her.
“Oh.”
Alex raises her eyebrows and forms an O shape with her thick, perfectly painted lips. “My mistake. It’s just in the appointment book it says ‘little sister.’”
“Our parents are married, that’s all. I think he thinks it’s cute calling me it. We’ve never really been all that close.”
Alex is a remarkable woman. She has wrinkle-free skin like recently pumped oil, and stands over six foot tall, towering above Sash when they find themselves side by side.
“I didn’t even know he had a sister.”
“Step”, Sash says, reminding her of the distinction.
“Of course.”
Alex curls her face up into a well practiced smile, while Sash breaks eye contact to look again at the fish tank. “Maybe there’s a lot about your boss that you haven’t realized yet.”
Time passes agonizingly slowly.
Alex returns to her desk and Sash listens to her answering a telephone that seems to never stop ringing, her voice clipped, polite and expedient. There are huge paintings that fill the vast wall space around them, a floor to ceiling window of glass that frames the ever changing city below, carpets of oriental design and lampshades that look like they’ve been lifted from a movie set of the latest futuristic blockbuster.
Sash sinks into the hug of a gargantuan leather arm chair, the depth of the seat enough to lift her legs completely off the ground.
Like a child dominated by the size of the world they have only just realized they are inhabiting, she sits there in awe of her surroundings. She turns expensive fashion magazines over in her hands, unable to concentrate for long enough to read any of the articles, and then stands again to look at the city below, the workers running from place to place like ants in an industrial garden.
Back at the fish tank, she walks with them as they swim about in their world, one side of the tank to the other, trapped in a never ending circuit of unhappiness, broken only by the inability to remember it for more than fifteen seconds at a time.
Clown fish, butterfly betta, loaches and swordtails, every single one of them beautiful and unique.
After another thirty minutes has ambled by, at which point Sash is about to give up completely and leave, Alex finally tells her he’s ready.
Suddenly, after all that time waiting, Sash realizes that even though he might be, she’s not ready at all. She wants to back out, but now, obviously, she can’t. He’s expecting her and she’s here. The time to leave has already gone. The decision has already been made.
Approaching the huge wooden doors that stand in the way of her and her past, she feels her heart beating frenetically in her chest. Alex nods encouragingly. Sash swallows hard. Finally, with little other choice left, she pushes her way through, ready to face her destiny.
He’s stood to greet her, arms out passively, the offer of an embrace. His tousled hair a little bit longer than she remembers it, his chest even more robust, his eyes magnetic and debilitating, a universe and more inside each one.
“Sash”, he says.
The word familiar on his lips, but rusty, as though too much time has passed since he’s had reason to say it out loud.
Sash lets herself be taken, pressing herself close to her stepbrother for as long as she feels is acceptable, long enough anyway to breath in his familiar scent.
“You’ve got bigger”, she says coyly, pulling herself away from him to stand a foot away, her arms by her side now, but his still around her protectively.
“I’ve got older”, he says modestly.
“It doesn’t look like it.”
Sash steals a look into his eyes that lasts longer than she knows it should.
Dante smiles his contagious smile, and Sash can’t help but smile too. She looks to her feet and then back up to her gorgeous stepbrother. Three years and the feelings still haven’t gone away. She knew it too. She knew they wouldn’t.
‘What?” he asks flirtatiously, knowing exactly what Sash will be thinking.
“Nothing.”
Sash shakes the moment away in a playful push to gain distance, desperate to show her stepbrother the meaning of their relationship now, desperate to show herself really, how much she has matured over the last three years, and how capable she has become of controlling her own emotions, even if the opposite is true.
“So, this is it, the beating heart of the Dante Hix empire.”
She brushes past her brother, their shoulders rubbing together slightly, enough to make her skin buzz, and her heart skip a significant beat.
Dante watches her glide around. He watches the careful way she moves her feet, and the sensual way she touches everything. She has her back to him intentionally, keen to have him observe her, and not the other way round.
Like this, she has the illusion of being in control. Dante knows his stepsister well, but more than that, he knows about control and how best to achieve it.
Sash turns to face him.
The measured spin of a seasoned professional. Several meters split them, but even from here Sash can feel herself being pulled back towards him. Never underestimate how dangerous the game is you’re playing. The words an internal memo, Sash takes a moment to tell herself.
The silence is palpable, almost alive. Like gunslingers locked in a wild west duel at high noon, they face each other down, each one looking for a sign to pick up their weapon and shoot. Three years in the wilderness and suddenly back in the same room.
Nothing has changed.
“It’s been a while, Sash.”
“Has it been long enough?”
Sash is unsure who the question is really meant for, and immediately embarrassed, she looks away.
“You tell me”, Dante begins. “You were the one that couldn’t-.”
He can’t finish the sentence, partly because he knows he doesn’t need to.
Sash shrugs her shoulders, the skin there exposed by the cut of her dress. Her bone structure light, poised, elegant.
“It could have been different.” Lost in the memory, her voice is almost too lightly for Dante to hear. “If you’d-. It doesn’t matter anyway, that’s not why I came here.” She brushes it off and looks at him again. “There isn’t any point going back over-.”
Now she’s the one who can’t finish her sentence. Lost in his beautiful, stormy blue eyes, that familiar look that turns somersaults in her stomach, her hear
t can’t help but yearn.
“You look good”, Dante says, quick to take advantage. “I’ve missed you.”
“Don’t Dante”, she warns him, at the very edge of letting herself go. “I didn’t come for that. You know I didn’t.”
She turns away, making for the leather sofas in the corner of the room. Climbing into the single armchair, she kicks off her shoes and folds her bare feet up to the side of her.
“Do I?”
Dante turns to watch her. He wants to reach for his stepsister again. He wants to go back to that earlier embrace, to that buried time, much further in the past, and pull her out of it. He will, even if she doesn’t know it yet.
“Please. I came here to ask for your help.”
Dante takes the half a dozen or so paces across the room to join her, and as Sash watches her stepbrother advance, unable to take her eyes off him, she can’t help but find herself spellbound by the natural sexiness he effortlessly exudes, in an action so unquestionably simple. In the few seconds in takes him to get to his chair, he knows he’s already won her over.
As he leans back into the sofa, it gathers him like an old friend. He stretches his legs, smooths down the pleat of his bespoke suit trousers and steals a brief but necessary moment to admire his beautiful stepsister.
He shifts his gaze across her face, lingering just long enough to remind himself of her huge, chocolate brown eyes, the cute button nose that she’s always hated, and the plump, perfectly proportioned lips that bring repressed memories floating back to the surface of his mind.
He continues, across the petiteness of her frame, the awkward fragility of her collarbones, that stick out to make dimples across her upper torso in which he fought at one time to leave secret kisses, past an ample bosom she always complained was never enough, and onwards, deep into the crevices of a dress tucked neatly between her legs, that follows the shape of the perfect, athletic body she hides below it.
“I was surprised when you called me. I thought you didn’t ever want to see me again.”
Sash is about to contradict him, but she thinks better of it. Again she reminds herself that digging up the past and playing the blame game is not the reason she’s come here.
Donkey Doubled: A Twin Stepbrother Menage Romance Page 37