Dirtiest Secret (SIN 1)

I get why you're upset, why you backed off and walked away. But don't stay away. You don't want to and I don't want you to. We can try again. We can try a hundred times.

Or we can not try that at all. That's okay, too. I just want you. YOU.

Please don't think so little of me that you actually believe what happened makes a difference in how I feel--in how much I need you.

You know me better than anyone. Surely you know that, too.

So far he hasn't answered, but I open my texting app for the hundredth time that morning and check again. Just in case my phone forgot to beep in signal of an incoming message.

There is, of course, nothing.

Since I'm already looking at my phone, I decide that I probably should check my email, since I haven't even opened it since Saturday when I left for the island.

It's mostly subscription crap or unsolicited newsletters and I barely glance at each message as I slide it off the screen and into the archive.

And then there it is.

[email protected]

J--

We can't play this game. More important, I can't, for a lot of reasons, and you know every single one of them.

I don't want to write you out of my life--hell, I already miss you. But we have to find a way to move on, and if cold turkey is what it takes, then that's what we do.

Hate me if you want. Maybe that will make it easier.

Your brother,

Dallas

For one minute I let myself consider the possibility that he's right. After all, we've lived at arm's length for years and survived. But that's all it was--surviving.

And now that I've touched him, talked to him, just plain been with him again, I know that I don't want to just survive anymore. I want to live. Fully and completely and with Dallas--my best friend. And, yes, my lover. Forbidden fruit be damned.

Honestly, the thought that he thinks differently--that he could just turn back to that emptiness, pisses me off. Either he's lying about how he feels about me, or, more likely, he's willing to sacrifice both himself and me on the altar of lost erections, bullshit incest laws, and ri

diculous social taboos.

Idiot.

Damned, stupid idiot.

For just a moment, I let myself rage at him. Then I very calmly and deliberately squeeze my fury down into a neat little box and I tie a pretty red bow around it.

Done. Finished. Nothing to see here. Just move along.

Because anger doesn't do me any good. I want to go to the mat, yes, but I'm not interested in stomping on his face when I get there.

But now that he's officially thrown down the gauntlet, I'm faced with the biggest question of all: how exactly do I fight a man who just won't engage?

"Easy," Brody says when I present him with that very question at Starbucks three hours later. "The same way you got him in bed with you on the island."

I've told him the whole story up to the real reason for the lack of follow-through. I figure that's the kind of thing Dallas wouldn't appreciate me sharing, and so I blamed it on an attack of conscience.

"I jumped him in his bungalow after we watched each other masturbate on a beach," I say flatly. "I'm thinking reproducing those circumstances won't be easy."

"Mental masturbation," he says with a grin. "Sexting. Send him naughty pictures and even naughtier suggestions. Eventually, he'll either block your texts or fuck you blind."