American Prince

And he was touching me.

He’d reached across the table and pressed his fingertips against the exposed bruise on my bicep, and there they lingered, rough and warm. The bruise had darkened from a florid crimson to a deep purple overnight, and the change in color seemed to fascinate him.

“Examining your handiwork?” I asked dryly. Sleep made my voice lower and more breathless than normal, and when he lifted his gaze from my arm to my face, I saw how wide and blown his pupils were, how ruddy his lower lip was from being pulled between his teeth.

“Does it hurt?” he asked.

“Only when assholes poke at it.”

He pressed against it again and I sucked in a breath, but I didn’t knock his hand away. I didn’t know why I didn’t, because it did hurt and I hated him and I hated the sensations that clawed their way up from the base of my spine as he did it.

“Do you like hurting people?” I asked, trying to cover up the feelings skittering their way across my skin.

He ran his fingers along the edges of the bruise, making small circles and larger ones, sometimes with one finger and sometimes with all of them. Soft, brushing touches. Caresses. I sighed, despite myself. It was gratifying to have such tender flesh touched so tenderly. “Does that feel good?” Colchester asked, with a kind of reverence in his voice.

I should have lied. But I didn’t.

“Yes.”

“I’ve never thought about hurting people the way I think about hurting you,” he said slowly.

“Because you hate me?”

He looked startled by that. “Hate? Why would I hate you?”

I blinked at him.

He tilted his head, his touch still on my arm. “Do you hate me?”

And maybe I should have lied here too, but I didn’t. “Yes.”

He nodded, as if he already expected that answer, and then he pulled back, his fingers leaving my arm. I felt a stab of remorse, felt the lack of his touch like a burn. And I glanced away from him, needing to look at something else, anything else, and then I saw the flutter of Morgan’s eyelashes and I knew she’d been watching us as she pretended to sleep. She’d seen the whole thing.

Well, good, I thought. It was just as well she knew I hated him—maybe that would encourage her to keep flirting with him and my stupid, masochistic plan could carry on. After all, it was impossible to feel things for someone when they were fucking your sister, right?

The second thing happened three days later. I’d woken up in my room early that morning—military habits died hard, even on vacation—and my body had been tangled up with that of a Czech girl’s. After Katka had climbed on top of me and rode me a final time, she’d left and I treated myself to a long shower. While I was toweling off, I heard a thump from the wall I shared with Morgan’s room, and then a second thump followed by a woman’s cry and a very male groan.

“Again?” I said indignantly. Out loud. Even though I was alone.

Since the moment we checked into the hotel, she and Colchester had been going at it like they were shooting the next Logan O’Toole porn flick over there. I mean, I certainly hadn’t slept alone since I got to Prague, but at least I left my room now and then. Ate some kolaches. Stared at the castle and smoked cigarettes. Prague things. I’d barely seen them once since we got here, though I’d heard them plenty.

Cursing them and also cursing myself for caring, I got dressed and decided to go to Wenceslas Square for breakfast and more kolaches. Anything to pass the time until the bars opened and I could drink and fuck my way out of thinking about Colchester again. But as I was sipping my coffee and watching people mill around with their shopping bags and cameras, I got a text from Morgan: Let’s do dinner somewhere nice tonight. Not one of those trashy clubs you like so much.

I frowned. I don’t go to trashy clubs. I waited a moment before asking, Is your fuck-buddy coming too?

Yes, MAXEN is coming, she texted. I think it would be a little rude not to invite him, don’t you?

I think you two are past the point of rudeness, judging from the sounds coming through the wall.

A pause on her end. Then: A of all, fuck you. B of all, we’ll see you at seven at the Holy Ghost Church on Široká, it’s by the Kafka monument. Try not to dress like a frat boy.

Oh, fuck her.

Same to you, I typed back.

And then I tossed my phone onto the cafe table with a heavy sigh. As awful as it was to listen to Colchester and Morgan through the wall, I knew it would be a thousand times more awful to see them crawling all over each other in public.

This is what you wanted, I reminded myself. This is what’s necessary. And then I threw some money on the table, pulled on my light wool coat and strolled out into the fog, smoking and walking until I found my way to the Charles bridge, where I could lean out over the river and watch the water run under the stained stone arches.

This is what you wanted, the river whispered. This is what had to happen.

The river was right.

That night, I stood under a statue of Franz Kafka sitting on the shoulders of an empty suit and watched Colchester and Morgan walk towards me, fog swirling around their legs, the street lamps casting haloes of gold around their sable-haired heads. They were walking arm in arm, Colchester guiding Morgan around the buckles in the cobblestones, and they didn’t see me at first, their heads bent together as they talked. They looked like a matched set, tall and beautiful, black-haired with green eyes.

I should have noticed it then, I suppose. I should have known. But who would have guessed that? Of all the things?