Page 76 of Seduction
“Fuck,” I whispered, thinking about all the ways in which I’d fucked Penina and the many more positions I had in store for us. I didn’t want to stop doing her. I wanted her to be in my life forever but not as a fucking sibling. I had enough of those.
Gina shrugged. “Look on the bright side. Your family has already survived some serious inbreeding. I think that’s why Randolph was so fucked up.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. She was agitating the hell out of me, but she had a point. The Christmases were originally Mobleys. My great-great-grandparents Sylvester Mobley and Jane Young were raised as cousins, but the rumor was they were actually brother and sister. They’d fucked, she got pregnant, and to escape public scorn, they snuck off to America with a lot of family money and changed their surname to Christmas.
“That’s a rumor,” I said, even though I believed it to be true.
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, it’s true, and you know it. But Penina”—Gina spoke her name with scorn—“being your sister isn’t why I hate her. She’s too fucking perfect. That’s why I hate her. But…” She took a bite of her sandwich. “But eating is helping me get over it. Want one?” She sounded like she had too much sandwich in her mouth.
“No, I don’t want one.” I slammed the letter from the DNA company onto the counter.
“So did you guys have sex?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied, too preoccupied to refine my answer.
Gina sat up straight, eyes wide. “Was she better than me?”
I scratched the back of my ear. I used to enjoy saying hurtful shit to her. I wanted to make her hurt for being in love with my other brother, Spencer, while involved with me. “You really want me to answer that question?”
She looked down and squirmed. “I was fucked up, wasn’t I?”
“We both were,” I said.
She looked up again. “Do you know I haven’t had sex since the last time we tried?”
I jerked my head back. “Really?”
She shrugged. “I mean, I’ve had customers. Like ten of them, back to back, didn’t want to fuck. Then I finally got one who did, and I just couldn’t let him inside. We were in a hotel room in Toronto.” She swallowed as a pained expression overtook her face. “He wasn’t bad-looking, no halitosis, no furry body, but I just felt so fucking dirty. So…” She shook her head. “Neglectful of myself.”
I swallowed. “I’m proud of you.”
She watched me with watery eyes. “Me too.”
* * *
Gina knewI couldn’t sleep. She didn’t used to be able to either, but she yawned and told me that now she slept like a baby. We were sharing a bottle of rum. I tried to focus on what she was saying as she told me about the girls she worked with and how happy they had made her.
“But, Ash…” Her eyes trailed from my face down to my dick. “You look so different. I hardly recognize you. You’re so manly, Spencer-like.”
“Ha,” I scoffed, feeling relaxed even though I didn’t want to be relaxed, not with Penina gone. “He’s married, you know.”
“I know,” she snapped. “To another fucking Pollyanna like Jasper’s wife. And look at you. You’re sniffing after one who’s a carbon copy of them. What about me?”
I watched her intently. Gina was a survivor, always had been and always would be. She was a young runaway and prostitute, used and abused by every man she’d ever encountered, even my father. We’d first crossed paths in the secret tunnels at the Christmas mansion. I was twelve, she was fourteen, and somebody had roughed her up. She was bleeding from her mouth, nose, and private parts. I was devastated and scared, but I knew I couldn’t just leave her. I was too afraid to ask Jasper for help because he might have told Father. Even then, I knew who was responsible for her circumstances. So I asked if I could help clean her up, and she shouted at me to go to hell and leave her alone. I said no and held my ground. It wasn’t like I’d found a wild cat or stray dog. She was a human being, a pretty little girl who wasn’t much older than I was.
I had seen them before—girls my age shuffling through the dark tunnels, eyes to the ground, keeping a rapid pace. But I’d never run into one in Gina’s condition.
“Go,” she said, shooing me away while hugging her knees tighter.
“No!” I shouted, shaking my head. “I can’t leave you here to die.”
When I had said that, something seemed to click inside her. She asked me my name, and I told her. She laughed wildly and said that my father had done that to her.
“Then I hate him,” I said, which wasn’t hard to say because it was true.
“Me too,” she replied.
We sat in silence, listening to cold, stale air pushing through the hallway.
