Sexy Little Sinner

by Kenner, J.

  “Kerrie…”

  “Do not Kerrie me. You’re being an idiot. I will totally cop to having had a crush on you for years, but once we actually got together, all that changed. It wasn’t just a school girl fantasy any more, and I wasn’t thirteen with a crush on the soldier who came home on leave with my brother. I was twenty-three and working as a paralegal when we started going out right before my birthday, and I was twenty-four when we broke it off, remember?”

  “You think I could forget?”

  “Maybe. I’m twenty-five now. Or did you forget that? Because I’m all grown up. It’s been over a year since you—you—put on the brakes. And during all that time, did I ever badger you for more? Did I whine that I wanted anything beyond what you were willing to give? Did I complain that you were a delusional loon who didn’t know a good thing when it was staring him in the face?”

  “No. Not until—”

  “Exactly. All that time we’ve been friends—good friends, obviously. Friends who know each other pretty damn intimately, and that was okay. And we’ve been co-workers, too. And that never caused a problem until—”

  “Exactly. Until.”

  “Until,” she says, mimicking the way I stressed the word, “we got good and friendly at the party. And after that, I told you I missed you. Missed us.”

  “You told me you wanted to get back together,” I remind her. Which is exactly what she’d said later that night as we shared an Uber to our respective homes.

  “Yeah. And I meant it. But you said no. And I didn’t press, did I? Not once, Connor. Not once, because even though I want you so bad I sometimes think it’s going to drive me mad, I still value our friendship.”

  I want to get a word in, but honestly I don’t know what to say. Besides, she’s talking at the speed of light, so I’m not sure I could even manage to squeeze a syllable in, much less a coherent sentence.

  “Don’t you get it? If I can’t have you in my bed, I still want you in my life.” She blinks rapidly, and I know her well enough to know that she’s fighting back tears, and my heart squeezes tight as she says, “But you’re acting like one hot night in a utility room means we can’t even be friends anymore.”

  “Maybe we can’t,” I say, then want to kick myself. I don’t want to hurt her—that’s the last thing I want—but I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Thinking about her a lot. We can’t have a relationship, for all the reasons that existed when we broke up. Fourteen good, solid reasons. And then some. But after the utility room, I have my doubts about the friendship route, too. “Maybe ‘just friends’ won’t work for us. Because we weren’t just friends. If we’d just been friends, you wouldn’t have been so quick to say you want to get back together.”

  “So you’re saying I blew it. I opened my mouth, told you the truth, and screwed us up forever? Well, fuck you, Connor.”

  I rub my temples. This is not going well. “All I’m saying is that—”

  “You know what?” Her words cut me off, and I’m grateful. Because I have no clue what I intended to say. “You’re right. We’ll play it your way.”

  “My way? What do you mean we’ll play it my way?” I didn’t even realize I had a way.

  “You say we can’t be friends?” She inches forward, and I take a corresponding step back, only to find myself pressed up against the desk. “Fine. We won’t be.”

  “What are you talking—”

  I don’t get the rest of the question out, because suddenly she’s pressed up against me. “Forget friends. If we’re going to tumble down into the land of awkward acquaintances, I want it to be because of more than fifteen minutes in a laundry room. I don’t get you as a friend or a boyfriend anymore? Then I think I deserve a fuck buddy. At least then I’ll feel smug and not pissed when you can’t look at me in the conference room.”

  I know she’s kidding. Kerrie is the kind who will always try to bring some levity to an awkward situation. But before I can even grin, she shocks me by sliding her hand down to cup my package.

  I jump, my entire body fried from the ten thousand volts of raw electricity that shoot through me with the contact, then I push her away, thrusting my hands into the air in a gesture of self defense.

  “Whoa there, woman. Let’s leave some room for the Holy Spirit.”

  As I’d hoped, she laughs at the reference to what had been my grandmother’s favorite expression when Cayden and I were growing up in East Texas. For Gran, it had been more than a trite saying; it had been the essential rule for living that we boys and all the other boys in town were expected to follow at any and all school functions. Not to mention every other moment of the day until we resigned ourselves to wedded bliss.

  Naturally, every boy in the county lost his virginity well before college. With that kind of carrot dangling, we had to see what all the fuss was about.

  “I’m serious,” she says, and when I meet her eyes, I realize that she means it. What I’d thought was an attempt at levity was an actual, authentic proposition.

  “Fuck buddies?” I can hear the disbelief in my voice. “Sweetheart, you’re insane.”

  “No, I’m not. And don’t call me that. Not unless you’re agreeing, and then only in bed. You walked away. You can damn well call me Kerrie. Or Ms. Blackwell.”

  “In case it escaped your attention, Ms. Blackwell, the reason we broke up was that it made no sense to be together. We didn’t have a future.”

  “Said you.”

  “Damn right. Somebody had to face reality. I’m fifteen years older than you. That’s a decade and a half. I’ll be drawing Social Security before you even subscribe to AARP.”

  “Since when did you start letting government pensions and magazine publications dictate your life? And it’s fourteen years. Not fifteen.”

  “I’m forty. You’re twenty-five. Do the math.”

  She rolls her eyes. We both know that for most of the year, the difference is fourteen years. But until her birthday, I win. The victory gives me little satisfaction.

  “Can we not do this again?” She drags her fingers through her hair, leaving it tousled, which on Kerrie is a very good look, indeed. “I think your reasons were bullshit, but I’m not arguing them. I’m not asking to be your girlfriend. I’ve moved on, Connor.”

  Even though that was the point of our break up, I can’t deny that her words are like a spike to my heart. “I didn’t realize you were seeing someone.” I mentally congratulate myself on keeping my voice steady and level.

  “Why would I tell you? That’s not really your business anymore.”

  “If you’re seeing someone, then why do you want us to—”

  “Dammit, Connor, I’m not seeing anyone, okay? And I’m not asking you to marry me, either. I’m just saying that we had something good, then we put it away in a box and shoved it under the bed. But it didn’t stay there and when we set it free at the party, we destroyed something. So let’s fix it. Can’t we do that? Can’t we go back to the way we were, only with both of us knowing that the relationship isn’t going to go anywhere? But that—for right here and right now—we’re both going to enjoy this intense attraction. Because I know you feel it, too.”

  Every atom in my body wants to do a fist pump, shout with joy, then bend her over the desk and seal the deal with a hot, dirty, fast fuck. That, however, I can’t do.

  Because even though a thousand green-eyed monsters gnawed on my kidneys simply from the thought that she’d found someone else, I know that it’s just jealousy, not rationality, running the show. She needs to move on. She needs someone her own age. What’s between us might be fun, but it can’t last. And I can’t be the guy stealing her focus when she should be looking for the real thing.

  She deserves more.

  And I’m going to make sure she finds it, even if it kills us both.

  “Connor,” she presses. “You have to at least answer me.”

  “I want to. Christ, Kerrie, you have to know I want to.”

  I watch as she licks her
lips, then swallows. “That means there’s a but coming.”

  “But we can’t.”

  “Yes, we can. All we have to do—”

  “No. Dammit, Kay,” I say, calling up the nickname that only I use. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to find someone in this world you connect with? Right now, you’re meeting all sorts of people through work and through school. Now’s your time to meet the guy you’re going to end up with. And that’s good, because it just gets harder as you get older. But if we’re fucking like bunnies, you won’t pay attention.” I feel a twist in my heart, but ignore it as I press on. “You won’t find that special guy if you’re with me.”

  “Won’t I?” she says, her head cocked sideways as she studies me. For so long, in fact, that I start to get antsy.

  “What?” I demand, when I can’t take it any longer.

  “Nothing.” Her smile is both resigned and melancholy as she gets up and goes to the door. “I’m just trying to figure out how a man I know to be smart as a whip can be so goddamn stupid.”

  And as I stand there wondering what the hell she’s talking about, she tugs open the door, slips into the hallway, and pulls it firmly closed behind her.

  Chapter Three

  My instinct is to follow her. I want to smooth out the bumps and make everything better for her. Hell, if I’m being honest with myself—and where Kerrie is concerned I’ve sacrificed both of us on the altar of my honesty—I have to admit that what I really want is to hold her and soothe her.

  That, however, would be highly counterproductive.

  Still, I’m not going to hide from the truth. I want her. That’s the thesis of my fucked up personal essay, all the more wretched since she wants me, too.

  It’s like we’re living in our own personal O. Henry story, complete with an utterly wretched, melancholy ending. Apropos, maybe, since the famous writer—William Sydney Porter to his friends—used to live just a few blocks away from this very office. A small house where he penned those ironic twists.

  I don’t know if he ever wrote a story with characters like Kerrie and me, but if he didn’t, he should have. Two people, desperately attracted to each other, who can’t be together. And who, if they give in to desire, will end up paying for the pleasure of the now with the inevitable, inescapable pain of the future.

  That might make for a classic short story, but that’s not a future I want for her. Not Kerrie.

  Being with me might be fun at first, but I’ve known since childhood that a relationship can’t survive that kind of age gap. As the years marched on, our relationship would become a prison, and I don’t want to see Kerrie ending up like my grandmother, a vibrant sixty-five-year-old who lost a decade of active life to the yoke of obligation.

  Growing up, my grandmother had been a force of nature in our family, taking up much of the slack after our mother left and our dad spiraled down into depression and drink. She ran our house, volunteered all over the city, and traveled the world with her friends and my grandfather.

  But that came to a screeching halt when a heart attack landed Grandpa permanently bedridden. She spent the next decade as a shadow of herself, her vibrancy erased by long hours at the side of a man she adored, but whose slow, bedridden decline stole her life.

  My grandmother always told me and Cayden that it was no hardship to stay home with him, but how could she say otherwise? Once she’d made that choice, she had to make herself believe it. Hell, she had to make him believe it.

  And even if that’s truly how she felt, how can I move forward with Kerrie knowing that this might be her fate? I may be in stellar shape now, but combat strains a man’s body, and even though I have all my limbs, I took plenty of hits, and have the scars to prove it. Maybe I’ll be fine until the end of my days. But it’s more likely that some injury will flare up or some unknown toxin embedded in my cells will rear its head, and I’ll end up like my grandfather, trapped in a bed under a blanket of guilt because the woman I adore is there beside me, handcuffed by the obligation of a love we should have never succumbed to.

  How can I risk burdening Kerrie that way?

  And what if it goes the other way? Instead of being like my grandmother—trapped by the burden of love—she follows in my mother’s footsteps and grows to resent the discrepancy between us. What if, craving freedom and youth, she simply walks away from the man who is almost two decades older than her, leaving me in the same way my mother left my father. A lonely, bitter man who drowned his pain in a bottle, abandoned his eight-year-old sons to their aunt and grandmother’s care, and moved ghostlike through the next few years until he finally passed out after one of his benders and never woke up.

  Either way, Kerrie and I are fucked.

  I know it, and she won’t accept it.

  But I’m not giving her a choice. I love her too much to risk destroying her.

  So, yeah. I’m gonna have to RSVP “no” to the fuck buddy plan. With regrets, of course.

  I stifle a frustrated sigh, then push away from the desk. Leo must be here by now, which means I need to get to the meeting, sit across a conference table from Kerrie, and try to look like none of this just went down.

  Should be simple enough, but I’m foiled the second I pull open the door and find my erstwhile brother leaning against the opposite wall, his head tilted, and the brow of his visible eye cocked in something that’s either amusement or consternation. Possibly both.

  “What the fuck?” he asks.

  Apparently, it’s consternation.

  “Problem?” I turn right out the door and start heading toward the conference room. “Are Pierce and Leo already in there?”

  “Leo just texted. He’s parking. Should be up in five.” His large hand—so like my own—closes over my upper arm, urging me to a stop. “Don’t you think it’s time to officially tell me what’s going on with you and Kerrie?”

  “Going on?”

  He just gives me the look. Because he knows. Of course he knows. Not only do we have the twin thing going on, but the man works in security. He notices when people disappear. He notices when they return. And he notices the way they interact.

  I, however, am not giving an inch.

  Cayden clears his throat. “Let me rephrase,” my brother says. “Don’t you think it’s time you told me what the devil went on with you and Kerrie at my engagement party? Because unless Gracie, Pierce, Jez, and I are all completely off-base, that’s when you started acting like she was Kryptonite to your Superman.”

  “Gracie and Jez?” Gracie is Cayden’s fiancée, and Jezebel is Pierce’s wife. And I’ve been intentionally keeping so busy over the last month that I don’t think I’ve spent more than ten minutes at any given time with either one of them.

  “You can try to avoid us,” he says in a demonstration of twin-related mind-reading, “but it’s pretty damned obvious. For that matter, I don’t even really need to know what went on at the party, because that’s pretty obvious to. And can I just say that it’s breaching the boundaries of etiquette to fuck on someone else’s washing machine? Just pointing that out in case you missed that lesson in finishing school.”

  “Cute. And I didn’t fuck her. Not technically,” I add when he cocks his visible eyebrow. Cayden lost an eye in the Middle East, and while I’ve never been intimidated by my twin, even I have to admit that it makes him look like a bad ass. Honestly, it comes in handy for the job.

  “Well, hell, maybe that’s the problem. Maybe we need to lock you two in the penthouse at The Driskill and let you go at it like bunnies until you get it out of your system. Because honestly, Con, you can’t keep avoiding her. In case you forgot, she works here, too.”

  “I’m not avoiding her,” I lie, pointing to the office behind me. “Talking. Just now. You watched her leave.”

  He meets my eyes, and except for the patch it’s like looking into a goddamn mirror. Only the reflection staring back at me is centered, together, and completely content for the first time in a very long time. I’m ha
ppy for him and Gracie, I truly am.

  But I can’t deny the green serpent of jealousy twisting in my gut.

  “Work it out,” he says. “And do it fast. If we want to entice Leo to join us and not the competition, we need to make sure he sees us as a razor sharp security company with a stellar reputation and an increasingly elite client base. He’s not looking to sign up at Payton Place. Got it?”

  I hold up my hands in surrender, and for the first time in a long time, I really do feel like the younger brother being schooled by his elder.

  Even if there is only a nine minute difference between us.

  Chapter Four

  As soon as I step inside the large conference room, I see Leonardo Vincent Palermo standing by the windows, a huge smile lighting up his face as we all greet each other with firm handshakes and slaps on the back. Leo did a tour with Pierce, and Cayden and I met him a couple of times when we were all on leave. Born of an Italian mother with a love of art, he was named after Da Vinci and Van Gogh. “But I can’t paint worth a damn,” he assured us. “I don’t think my mother ever forgave me.”

  In all the time I’ve known him, I never thought about the way he looks. But now, as Kerrie breaks stride when she enters the room with a sheath full of copies, I take full stock of the guy. He’s dark, like Cayden and me, but whereas Cayden and I look like we grew up on a ranch, Leo looks like a cross between European royalty and a classic film star.

  “Leo!” I watch, not sure if I’m amused, pissed, or jealous, as Kerrie bounds across the room into Leo’s outstretched arms.

  Jealous.

  Yeah. Definitely jealous.

  What the hell, right? I might as well own it. Because at the moment, there’s really no other way to describe the dark, storm-green maelstrom of emotions roiling inside me.

  “It’s so great to see you again,” she squeals. “It’s been, what? At least two years, right?” She grinning so wide she’s practically giddy, and, damn me, my first instinct is to sidle up next to her, put my arm around her shoulder, and lay claim to her.