Forbidden Prescription 2 (Forbidden Medicine 2)

“Look at you, saying all the right things this time around. Unlike in high school. You never knew I existed, neither of you.”

“We knew you existed, Emma,” Abe cut in, leaning forward. “You were just so shy, back then.”

She ran when pretty much anyone, but especially a guy, tried to talk to her. Abe and I had tried separately after she ran the first few times we tried approaching her together. But the result was pretty much the same and we didn’t try too hard.

But here she was, and here we were, virtually alone in a public bar. We were both going to make damn sure she didn’t try to run this time.

Chapter Three

Emma

I didn’t know what to make of it.

Surely, I must have been wrong. Whatever they were implying must have somehow gotten lost in translation. Because there was no way they meant what I was thinking.

But how they both sat, eyes trained on me, was kind of hard to mistake. I didn’t have a lot of gazes like that aimed at me, but I certainly recognized it when it was.

The hot twins from high school wanted to get with me.

Carl and Abe Thomas, the tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed twins, had been pretty much every girl’s dream. The few lucky ones even got a little close, but neither boy dated anyone long-term, that I knew of. Not even Abe dubbed the ‘serious’ one of the two.

Like most of the girls, I’d grown a bit of a crush. Unlike some of the girls, they were out of my league, and I knew it. And it was true I had been shy in high school. Save for a handful of friends, I kept to myself. I grew out of it—I kind of had to, in medical school—but I still wasn’t anything to write home about.

Most people couldn’t tell the Thomas boys apart, they were identical twins, but I always could. I watched them enough to learn their different little quirks until I realized I liked them both when most of everyone else picked a random favorite.

But this was unexpected.

“You guys are just messing with me, right,” I said slowly, voice suspicious. “You never looked twice at me.”

Why would they? I looked at both of them, frowning a little at the thought of them making fun of me.

I was the shy kid that pretty much everyone ignored, because yeah when people approached me I got anxious because I didn’t know what to say and ended up hiding or walking away. Or running, in a few memorable encounters. I’d gotten into some bully situations because of that behavior of mine.

I wasn’t quite that shy little girl anymore, though. Standing up to my mother not an hour ago, was proof enough of that.

Abe stayed still, serious, but Carl, ever the ladies’ man, leaned closer and smiled. I could have sworn his eyes smoldered, something that happened only in writing.

“Why would we mess with you, Emma? In any way other than the fun way, of course.” He grinned the same cocky grin I’d seen him use to get whatever girl he wanted to fall into his lap.

I’d seen it enough times that it really shouldn’t affect me, nearly a decade later. But I could feel my breath hitch in my throat, my skin flush, and my mouth going dry.

“Emma.”

Even though they were similar down to their voices, if I’d been sloshed enough not to realize who was who, just that voice saying my name would have clued me in. Where Carl could make girls fall for him with a smile, his brother could do it by the power of his voice alone. It was pitched lower, practically curling around my name. He said it normally, I didn’t think he even realized he did it, it was never deliberate for Abe, but how he said my name made my body wake up and take notice.

“We would never do something like that to you. If you’d given us a chance back then, whichever one of us, we definitely would have come running.” He paused deliberately. “We still would.”

I wanted to give an immediate denial, but my throat seemed to close up. My body tightened at his words, at his voice; I couldn’t help the reaction.

But could I really do something like this? I wasn’t a virgin, not at twenty-six. Even shy little me wasn’t quite so pathetic. But two guys coming onto me—if they weren’t messing with me—and twins at that. People that I knew from my days in boring suburbia, before I graduated and ran like hell was at my heels. I knew they weren’t living at home, but still.

Although…

I thought my life was a joke. I’d spent the last few years studying like crazy to become a doctor. I’d gotten and was coming to the end of my Internship at Central General Hospital. I was making a name, and a life, for myself. But sometimes, I didn’t know who for. I was running myself ragged, but I rarely thought of taking it easy.

And I couldn’t exactly say I wasn’t interested. I was a woman with needs, no longer a little girl, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been with someone. With everything else going on, I didn’t have time for a relationship, let alone thinking about sex. I was definitely thinking about it now, though, and I could feel my body grow hot at just the idea. I had to cross my legs under the table because of the throbbing growing between my legs.

Well, why not?

It wasn’t like I had anything better to do with my time. If I went back home now, Mom and I would only get into another argument, because I turned my back on her. I should have thought it through, but this had me in the clear, so I wouldn’t have to sneak back in the middle of the night like some recalcitrant teenager.

I decided—a little impulsively, but surely—for once in my life, I’d let myself have a good time if they offered. I was too hard on myself. I’d had to be for a long time, right along with my mother, trying to prove myself to her when it only seemed to make it worse. It had been all work and no play since I started interning at Central General Hospital. Hell, long before that, even.

I decided that, if anything was going to get me through this weekend, it would be letting my hair down, even just a little.

I’d never been with two men at the same time, but I loved the idea that I would be doing it with the two guys that I—and pretty much everyone else—craved in high school.

Two guys that, incredibly, wanted me just as much.

Chapter Four

Abe

We were heading out to the bar to drink because my twin was an idiot with the attention of a toddler. Because he didn’t like being bored, and he didn’t like going out on his own when he could have me around, he’d dragged me behind him.

It was pretty much how we’d been all our lives. Even when we left home so Carl could join the world of motorcycle racing. Because I just happened to be there—because he made sure I would be—he decided I could do it, too. I didn’t complain about it, because I loved riding, but mainly because I was good at it. I also knew, unlike my brother, that it wasn’t exactly a career of a lifetime, so I was always after him to invest.

He found investing boring; he found a lot of things I said boring, in fact. It was why I usually just ignored his opinions.

We’d come awfully far in the past seven years. We even had a title, and thanks to Dad, everyone in town knew it: Carl and I were International Motorcyclist Champions. Carl, surprisingly, wasn’t one to brag. Not unless he was thinking of picking up girls.

But when we got to the bar, and my brother was acting weird, I would have called him out on it, if I didn’t catch the focus of his attention.

I remembered Emma very well from high school. If there was a girl from Libreville I’d thought about plenty, it would be her. We’d never even talked, but the neighborhood wasn’t so big that I wouldn’t have run into her somewhere at some point, even outside of school.

Bragging about our accomplishment wasn’t a tactic that would work on someone like Emma Davis, though. Just as well Carl realized it and kept his mouth shut when she gave the right opportunity for him to tell her neither of us went to college.

She looked better than she had in high school. Also, kind of worse.

Even if I hadn’t been looking for it, it would have been obvious to see Emma was more than a little upset. Why

else would she be here to visit her mother for the weekend and end up at a bar, alone, the evening she arrived? Carl either didn’t notice or was being tactful about it for once and not bringing it up. When my brother said something that made her give a quiet laugh that lit her face momentarily, but not enough to clear out the shadows in her eyes, I decided.

I was going to lift her out of her bad spirits.

Emma looked down, and I wanted to reach across the table and hold her face, raise it so I could see her clearly. Though she was much better than she had been in high school, at least she hadn’t tried to run from us once, it was a habit she hadn’t broken.