The Better Brother

I let my eyes slipped closed in pleasure while I stroked myself to the memory of Penny’s warm and wet clit against my fingers. I heard her pants and moans in my ear as I had coaxed an orgasm from her. I imagined my hand was her luscious mouth, taking me in and sucking me until I exploded down her slender throat. My orgasm crashed over me, and I shot warm jets of cum over my own stomach, trying my hardest not to imagine how good it would feel to release myself inside of Penny.

Afterward, I stared up at the ceiling with a pounding heart while half-listening to Neil converse with his wife downstairs. I needed to do something, now that I had crossed the line. I needed to talk to Penny to make sure that she was all right. I could still picture the wide-eyed and horrified expression on Penny’s face when I had backed out of that booth quickly to call Neil for a place to crash for the night.

I took a cold shower in the guest bathroom across the hallway. Toys from the kids were scattered around the bathroom floor. I showered quickly before getting dressed in the same clothes from the previous night. I texted my driver to let Alyssa know that I needed a fresh pair of clothes so that he could meet me at work before the rest of my employees arrived. I didn’t want any more talk going around the office, and showing up in the same rumpled clothes with an obvious hangover was one way to spur the rumors on.

“You look like hell,” Neil commented when I managed to make it down the stairs without tripping on a single toy. “What the hell happened to you last night?”

“I don’t even want to talk about it,” I said with a grimace. “Is there any coffee?”

“Coming right up.”

I followed Neil through the chaos of the living room where his children were currently gathered in front of the television. They greeted me with cheerful smiles as I walked by them with a strained looked. Michelle looked up from where she was cooking bacon in a large skillet over the stove.

“Good morning,” she said. “How are you feeling, Gabriel?”

The smell of bacon made my stomach twist with nausea. I forced myself to sit down at the kitchen island to be polite. I nodded gratefully at Neil as he poured me a cup of hot black coffee that smelled heavenly.

“I feel like my head is going to burst open,” I said. “Do you have any Tylenol?”

“Of course. I’ll grab some from the bathroom for you.”

Michelle squeezed my shoulder in passing when she walked by me to the bathroom. I sipped at my coffee while I waited for my driver to text me back.

“So, are you going to tell me what happened last night?” Neil asked. “I mean, I’ve seen you get drunk once before, but not like this. I had to carry your ass up the stairs and put you to bed.”

I grimaced at the memory of it. I could remember hitting another bar on the way over to Neil’s house to have a couple of shots in an attempt to numb the guilt of what happened. Everything after that was a dark blur of Neil dragging me up the stairs with muttered curse words coming out of his mouth.

“Thanks man and I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me last night but I’d like to just forget the entire evening.”

“So you’re not going to tell me what happened that made you crawl into a bottle of whiskey?” Neil asked again.

“You would be right about that. We need to get to the office soon, though. I want to go over everything that we are going to present to the government. I want it to be perfect.”

“We’ll make sure it’s good to go. I doubt that you have to worry about Jack Miller.”

I laughed darkly as I took another long sip. “That’s the thing about him. You don’t feel like you have to worry about him, but he’ll steal your ideas and wife in a heartbeat. He pretends to be average so you don’t worry about him, then he sneaks right up on you. ”

“Sounds very clever.” He eyed my disheveled clothes. “Your driver is bringing you clothes from the condo, right?”

“He should be. I told him to wake Alyssa up to go through my closet. She knows what I like to wear to work.”

We drove thirty minutes through thick traffic and cold winter air to find my driver waiting patiently in the parking lot. He handed me a set of clothes that Alyssa had picked out for me before leaving us to enter the office. I changed quickly in my office, just in time for the rest of the office staff to arrive for the start of their shifts.

The next two hours passed by me in a surreal blur, filled with a throbbing headache and a shit tone of guilt. I didn’t want to deal with anything, but I gritted my teeth through the PowerPoint presentation my team had made with my notes. It wasn’t until nearly eleven in the morning when one of my receptionists came by to tell me that there was a visitor waiting for me in the front lobby of the office.

“Who?” I asked grumpily while I followed her down the hallway. “This person better be damn important because—”

I stopped short when I recognized my ex-wife standing in my office lobby. The years had not been kind, judging from the wrinkles lining her face and the overall exhausted look she had as she looked at me with a timid smile. She was dressed in an expensive pencil skirt suit that hugged her tightly. Gray streaked her dark hair that was pulled back in a clip.

Coupled with my fucked up night, I felt a deep-seated anger start to brew all over again. I crossed my arms to gaze at her coldly.

“What are you doing here, Michelle?” I asked. “Does Jack know you’re here?”

“He knows that I’m here,” Michelle said. “He’s parked safely around the block. He figured you’d rather put a bullet in him than me.”

“That’s debatable.”

Michelle sighed as she pulled out a manila envelope from her brief case. “I didn’t come here to argue with you. I just wanted to drop