“How’s work?” I said.
“Oh, you know. The usual. People keep on breaking things, and I keep on patching them up.” He turned and leaned back against the kitchen surface. “And where the hell have you been?”
I shrugged. “Around.”
“Not around here, you haven’t.”
“I’ve got a lot going on at the moment.”
Simon folded his arms and looked me up and down, as though he was trying to read my mind. We’d tried, naturally. When we were kids he had made a full set of those cards – with the circle, star, cross, square and wavy lines – for the purposes of testing ESP. And it had yielded impressive results, at least on my end of the telepathic transmissions.
“You’ve got to take me to the doctor,” Simon had told Mum, when this difference between us became apparent. “There’s something wrong with my brain. Nathan can read minds and I can’t.”
It was all bullshit, of course. I could no longer read his mind than he could read mine, which was just as well. Because lately my mind had been full of his ex boyfriend.
“So,” he said. “Who is she?”
“She?”
“There’s a she,” he said. “There always is, when you disappear for days on end and come back looking smug. Who is it? That redhead?”
“What redhead?”
“You know. The one you introduced me to in the Albany that time after your rehearsal. With the pale red hair. Very attractive girl. What was her name? Natalie?”
“Nadia,” I said.
He arched an eyebrow, waiting. I took my tea and headed for the living room.
“Well?” he said.
“I’m not saying anything.”
“You don’t have to,” said Simon, following me. “You’re never home and you have human teeth marks in the nape of your neck.”
Rob was going through a carnivorous phase. I tried to compose my features into a suitable expression – one that didn’t say I was thinking about filthy all-fours sex, with lots of biting and hair pulling. “Settle down, Sherlock Holmes,” I said, and spotted the violin under the window. There was a music stand now, and the case looked new. “Wait – is that a new violin case?”
“It’s a new violin,” said Simon. “You can have your old one back, if you like.”
“Generous of you. You only borrowed it for…what eighteen, twenty years?”
“You’re welcome.” He settled in the armchair and reached for his breakfast – two slices of brown toast with hideous thick layers of Marmite. “The bow’s fucked, though.”
“Does this mean you’re actually learning to play?”
“A bit,” he said. “Life’s too short to sit around on your hands saying you’re going to do something, after all. May as well try, even if you’re bloody awful at it.”
My phone shuddered again. It was Rob. He was on his way over, and part of me almost wanted him to hurry the fuck up so that he’d bump into Simon on his way out and we could get this thing out in the open. Sleeping with your brother’s ex was one thing, but being in love with him made it worse somehow.
I texted him – can’t talk now – while listening to Simon munch his toast. Simon gave me a long, curious look, and by a strange coincidence it was the exact same look he used to give me when he was trying to figure out if I really was telepathic or not.
“Do you remember those ESP cards you made?” I said.
“The what now?”
“Extra Sensory Perception cards. You made a whole set of them, with cardboard and felt-tip pens. They had special symbols – a cross and a star and a set of squiggly lines…”
He swallowed his mouthful of tea and nodded. “Zener cards.”
“Yeah. That’s them. We used to play with them all the time. Do you remember?”
“Of course.”
“Did you really think I could read your mind?” I asked.
Simon shrugged. “We were eight,” he said, and I recognised the evasion.
“So you did?”
He shrugged again. “Eight year olds, dude.”
Dude? Was that from something? He had me off balance today.
“I figured it out,” he said. “Eventually. I had my suspicions because you always seemed to perform better in certain circumstances, like when the light was better, but I’d deliberately used a triple layer of card so that there was no way you could see through the card when it was held up near a light source. So I knew it wasn’t that, and that’s why it took me a little bit longer to figure out how you did it. I thought I’d eliminated the possibility of cheating, you see.”
I leaned forward. “Go on.”
“I tried to send you messages with my mind all the time. But you never got any of them. The only time you seemed to be able to read my mind was when we were using the cards, and I got really frustrated. Then one day, when I was holding the circle card up to the light, sure that it had to be the only way you could do it…that’s when I saw it.”
I knew what was coming.
“There was a mark,” said Simon. “Barely there. Where you’d put a tiny nick in the edge of the card with your fingernail or something.”
“It was a metal nail file,” I said. “But carry on.”
“Wouldn’t have seen it unless you were looking for it, and of course it was more obvious in good lighting. The circle had one nick on the left, if I remember rightly. Then another card had the nick on the right. And another had two nicks close together in the middle, while another one had two far apart.”
I stared at him, astonished. “And you’ve been sitting on this information this whole time?”
“So have you,” he said. “I was waiting for you to tell me the truth.”
“For almost twenty-five years?”
He gathered up his cup and plate. “Oh, come on. Don’t tell me you didn’t know that I knew you faked it?”
“Well, yeah…” I said. “But I had no idea you knew how.”
“There you go then,” he said, getting up from the chair. “So much for twin telepathy.”
I sat there with my mouth open for a moment. The words – I have to tell you something – seemed to be lodged in the back of my throat.
“Right. Gotta go,” he said. “I’m replacing someone’s knee at eleven, and you know what the Tube’s like on a Saturday.”
Rob missed him by fifteen minutes. He turned up wearing that Spiderman t-shirt I loved, because his eyes always looked extra blue whenever he wore red. He was in my arms before I’d even finished closing the front door. The old-fashioned word ‘tryst’ always hissed in my head whenever I saw him lately, because that’s what we did. We trysted, and tangled, and tore at each other.
“I missed you so much last night,” he said. We were on the sofa and his hair was coming loose from its band. His t-shirt was halfway up his chest, and I moaned at the sight as I pulled down his jeans and shorts, baring him from his ribs to his knees. His thick, pink cock made my mouth water, but he pulled me down and we touched, length to length.
“Bed,” I said, because I’d never had him there before. “I want you in my bed.”
I let him up. He wriggled out of his clothes and shook out his hair, then led the way to the bedroom.
“Come on, then,” he said, as he lay back on my bed. The sun caught his pubes and turned them bright gold. The head of his cock was a deep, dusky pink and I still couldn’t quite believe how hungry the sight made me. He was hard and hairy, unquestionably male, but the lust he inspired in me shook me all the way down to my foundations.
I already knew what I wanted, and I crawled on top of him and over him to reach the bedside drawer. He moved underneath me, kissing every part of me he could reach with his lips, then – as I fumbled in the drawer – he slithered halfway out from under me and all of a sudden I was in his mouth. So hot, so good.
“No,” I said, pulling back. “Not today. I want to fuck you.”
He released me and I slid down over him. He was wet-lipped, big eyed, already breathing
hard. The desire to penetrate him roared like a monster behind my ribs, and in the darkest, wrongest part of my brain. “How do you want me?” he said.
“Every damned way there is.”
He moaned around my tongue as we kissed. He felt light in my arms, but he had a wiry strength, for all his build was so slight. And he wasn’t holding back, either, now that our roles had reversed; he bit my lip and scraped his nails over my back. I moved down between his legs and ran my tongue up the length of his cock. He tasted like need, and caught his breath with a hiss as he lifted his knees for me. There. There it was, the thing that had been driving me mad with lust for what seemed like forever. A little dark pink star.
I lowered my head and kissed it. He cried out at the first touch of my tongue, and I went deeper, bent on revenge. This was payback for all the times he’d spread me open on his bed and taken me to pieces with the end of his tongue, licking and circling and pushing until I was a loud, wet, hungry mess, who didn’t know how to do anything else in the world but beg for his dick.
“Please,” he said, as he bucked and puckered under my mouth. “Please. Fuck me. I want you. I want you so much.”
My hands shook as I rolled down the condom, and I had a vivid memory of the very first time I’d done this, with my heart beating in my throat and Sarah Rawles lying on her bed, wearing nothing but a knowing smile. She’d done this before. I hadn’t, and she knew it.
But the memory slid away very quickly, because this was different. I knew what it felt like – what I was about to do to him – because he had done it to me. And I knew how amazing it could feel.
I thought I would have to push harder, but he did something with his muscles and I slid inside him in a stroke so smooth that it took my breath away. I hung there for a moment, balls deep and with my face buried in his neck, the insides of his knees pressing against my ribs. Your brother’s been here, said a terrible voice in the back of my head.
That thought should have poured cold water on the proceedings, but I didn’t, because apparently I was a whole lot more fucked up than I’d previously imagined. I drew back to look at Rob. He was panting softly, his lips parted and his eyes wide. Unable to resist, I moved inside him, mesmerised by the slide of his flesh on my dick and the way his eyes fluttered shut. His forehead creased in the middle and his lips tightened, pursed, sucking on an indrawn breath. That was his getting-fucked face, and there – right on cue – was another intrusive thought. Simon had seen this, too.
“Okay?” I said.
Rob nodded. “Yeah. You?”
“Yeah.” I bent down to kiss him. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
This. Simon hadn’t had this. My hips turned as greedy and possessive as my heart. Rob moaned and wrapped his legs around me. He was deep and tight and noisy, and – oh dear – there was another fucked up thought, because I’d lain here in this very bed listening to him make the exact same noises in the next bedroom.
“Tell me you love me,” I said.
He licked his dry lips. “I love you.”
“Louder,” I said, in competition with the bed frame. It was an elderly Malm and unaccustomed to this level of abuse.
He caught his breath in a gasp and rode me harder. “I love you.”
“Say ‘I love you, Nathan,’” I said, my fingers digging into his hip. God, he was gorgeous.
“I love you, Nathan.” He moaned, bucking and rocking into my cock. “I love you…oh God, yeah, there, there…fuck me like that. Harder. I love you. I want you to make me sore.”
I pressed my fingers deeper into his flesh, slammed into him up to the hilt. I thought of the bruises my fingers would leave on his skin and I thought my brain would melt in the heat. “I love you…” I managed to say, but a moan stole my breath. “You dirty little…”
Rob knew exactly what I wanted. “That’s it, that’s it,” he hissed in my ear. “Fucking wreck my arse with your cock. Give it to me…oh yeah. Come on. Fuck the come clean out of my balls, you beautiful fucking…” He moaned at the top of his voice, and I wanted to hear more.
“Turn over,” I said. “Give me your arse.”
He got on his hands and knees, giving me a grandstand view when I pushed back inside him. His bum was pink and slick and welcomed me in, and he let out a keening, alley cat wail as I entered him for the second time. I had no idea how I hadn’t fucked him before, because he was made for this. He loved it.
“You like that?” I said, and slapped him on the thigh. “You like that, you little slut?”
He cried out and arched his back for more. I slapped him lightly on the other cheek, but I was in no shape to explore this discovery any further. “I should turn your cheeks pink,” I said, bending over to whisper in his ear. “But I can’t keep my cock out of you.”
I had to come. I had to make him come, and it wasn’t going to be difficult. We were going at it hard and heavy, my thighs slapping against him, balls jiggling, my fingers digging into his hips. He was howling and crying out filthy encouragement “…there, yes…squirt it up my arse, you bastard…I love you…use me. Use me…that’s it…” When he turned to look over his shoulder at me – eyes dark, face hectically flushed – I nearly came there and then, but then I heard a thud, like someone banging deliberately on the wall. I had a handful of his hair at the time, and it pulled me up short. I jerked his head back and paused to listen, but Rob was frantic.
“Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stooooop…” he moaned, and I kept going, somehow managing to listen out at the same time. Another knock from nextdoor. Yes, they were definitely banging on the walls, and I couldn’t help myself.
“Tell me you love me,” I said, pulling his hair.
“I love you.”
“Louder,” I said, in a frenzy now. I was close. So close.
“I love youuuuu…fuck me, God, fuck meeee…”
Someone hammered on the wall again, but it wasn’t going to make any difference to Rob, because he was coming. I felt it inside him first, like a tiny clenching ripple that grew and grew until he was pulsing around my cock. He gave a rasping gasp and as I drove deep into him he howled with pleasure. I saw his come shoot out and splatter the inside of his wrist and I couldn’t stop; he was finished and sagging beneath me, but I held him up by his hip and his hair, pushed my dick as deep as it could go and exploded.
I held him there, both hands on his hips now. His upper body flopped beneath me. His thighs were trembling. Finally I released him and he collapsed so fast that I was worried for a moment that he’d pull the condom off. I sprawled beside him. He lay on his front, with his face turned away. His breathing was hoarse and loud, but growing slower. The neighbour had fallen silent. I lay and listened for a moment to the nearby rattle and creak of trains moving over the tracks.
Rob reached up and lifted his hair away from his neck. I touched the middle of his back and he rolled over onto his side to face me. He was flushed right to the hairline, so that I could see faint traces of old freckles. His eyes were bright and dark.
“That was…um…”
“Filthy?” I said.
“I was going to say loud, but filthy works, too.”
I leaned over and kissed him. “Back in a minute. Don’t go anywhere.”
He gave a short bark of laughter. “I’m going nowhere. I can hardly feel my feet.”
I went into the bathroom and cleaned up. While I was washing my hands I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror. I looked pink and sweaty and guilty, and I was. Had I just marked my territory?
When I went back to the bedroom he was lying naked on his back. His eyes were far too wide and my first thought was that I’d said something out loud in the middle of sex. It was hard to remember exactly what I’d said. Had some scrap of my id slipped past my lips?
“I love you,” I said. “I really do.”
I crawled back onto the bed beside him. We kissed but he still looked anxious. “Why do you sound like you’re trying to convince yo
urself?” he said.
“Do I?”
“Yes.” He ran his tongue over his lips. “Is it me? Am I trying too hard? I always do this…”
“No. No, it’s not you.”
“Oh God. Please don’t say ‘it’s not you, it’s me.’”
“It’s not you…” I said. “But what if it is me?”
“Nathan,” he said, his voice so soft and needy that in that moment I could almost imagine the pleasure of sadism. “You’re scaring me. Please don’t break up with me while I still have lube up my arse, because I think that’s gonna be a whole new low.”
I kissed him. “No. Listen to me. I’m not breaking up with you. Nothing could be further from my mind.”
“You promise?”
“I promise,” I said, and sighed. I ran my hand over his tiny hip. “But we do need to talk about Simon.”
He exhaled, and nodded.
“We’re going to have to tell him,” I said.
“I know,” he said, but he still managed to sound reluctant.
“We have to, Rob. All this sneaking around is making me weird.”
“You were weird anyway. Normal people don’t impersonate their siblings.”
“All right. Weird-er,” I said. Normal people also didn’t think about their siblings when they were on the verge of orgasm. Or worry that the neighbours were going to complain to Simon about noisy sex and he – who had hit a dry spell after Rob – was going to put two and two together and come up with My Brother Is Fucking My Ex. “Let’s face it, the whole thing is weird. If you’d told me this time last year that in twelve months I’d be in love with my brother’s ex boyfriend…”
He sighed. “I know. Wasn’t exactly something I planned, either. I mean, I’ve had sexual fantasies about twins before, but…”
I frowned, and he turned defensive.
“What?” he said. “Everyone has sexual fantasies about twins.”
“I don’t.”
“What, never?”
“No,” I said. “I tried it, but it doesn’t work when you have a twin. Pictured two identical blondes, but all I could think of was how awkward it would have been for them after they’d finished going to town on me. And the possible sibling rivalry dynamics involved.”
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