I rooted my hand around the bowl of popcorn in my lap and shoved a handful of buttery, salty kernels into my mouth. It was Thursday, which meant it was our weekly mother-daughter date night. As always, it was fueled by Shonda Rhimes and copious amounts of wine.

“I’m so glad you’re coming on Sunday,” my mom said, blowing on her nails. While I was stuffing my face with carbs, she was refreshing her manicure. “This will be the first time all you kids will be here at the same time. Richard and I couldn’t be happier.”

I almost choked on my popcorn. Reaching for my wine, I gulped down a few mouthfuls of Bordeaux.

“You okay dear?” she asked patting me awkwardly on the back to avoid smudging her polish.

“I’m fine. It went down the wrong pipe.” I banged on my chest with my fist to help dislodge the stuck popcorn.

She raised a perfectly groomed eyebrow. “Don’t lie to your mother, Victoria. It’s not becoming.”

“I’m not lying.”

Technically, I wasn’t. I had swallowed wrong. She just didn’t need to know why.

She shook her head and tsked. “For my sake, can you at least try to be polite to David?”

“I’m polite to everyone!”

The other thing she didn’t need to know was just how polite I’d been to him. How many times I’d said please.

Please fuck me. Please make me come. Please. Please. Please.

If that wasn’t polite, I didn’t know what was.

She picked up the remote, muted the TV, and turned to face me. “I get the impression you don’t like him much.”

“What makes you say that?” I asked, unable to meet her probing gaze.

“I saw the way you reacted at the wedding. You looked horrified to find out Richard had a son.”

“That’s not true.”

It was true. But only because less than eight hours earlier I’d had my new stepbrother’s dick in my mouth. But I figured the less said about that the better.

“Richard could have had eighteen kids and I couldn’t have cared less.”

“Then why don’t you like him?”

“I like him just fine.” I shoved another handful of popcorn into my mouth and lifted my chin defiantly as I chewed.

She stared at me, her shrewd eyes assessing. “Oh!” she gasped after several seconds. “You don’t hate David. You fancy him.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

It seemed I was saying that a lot lately. I was beginning to wonder if maybe I didn’t know what I was talking about, because everyone seemed to be able to see right through me.

She scooted closer and laid her hand on my knee. “Vicky, he’s your brother. You know nothing can ever happen between you two, right? Think of what people would say.”

“Which people?” I asked, ignoring everything else she’d said for the time being.

“Well, everyone. My friends, your friends, his colleagues at Thackeray. It’s a terrible scandal waiting to happen.”

“Again, I don’t know what you’re talking about. But even if I did, let me be clear: David Carstairs is not my brother. Drew, Theo, and Alex are my brothers. David is your husband’s son, and that’s all.” I took a deep breath, pushing my next words out through gritted teeth. “He’s nothing to me.”

Before I could get the last word out, I felt traitorous tears stinging my eyes. I could tell myself in the lonely recesses of my soul that David meant nothing to me, but to say the words aloud was something else entirely.

It nearly broke my heart to hear them.

All at once, I pushed up off the couch and grabbed the empty bottle and my glass. “I need more wine to deal with Annalise Keating and her ragtag team of wannabe lawyers. Can I get you anything?” I asked over my shoulder as I practically raced out of the room.

I watched David approach from across the quad, unable to hold back my smile. After the discussion with my mother the night before, I’d debated whether or not to cancel. And then all this morning, I’d wondered if I’d built him—and the way I’d felt about him—up in my head. But now, as he drew nearer, the warm tingling sensation taking up root in my belly told me I hadn’t. He was as effortlessly handsome as I recalled.

“Hey, you.” He leaned in and set a feather-light kiss on my cheek.

My knees wobbled, and I tried not to melt into a puddle at his feet. “Hey back,” I said, returning the gesture.

David pulled away, and his eyes flicked between mine for a few seconds with uncertainty. “Sorry, was that okay? I didn’t even think about it. I just had to be near you.”

I smiled, my heart pumping loudly in my chest, making me feel more alive than I had since we’d said our final goodbye the morning after our parents’ wedding. “It was fine. It’s how you’d greet anyone you hadn’t seen in awhile, right?”

He chuckled nervously and gripped the back of his neck. “Honestly? No.”

“Oh, well.” I glanced away, unsure what else to say. I didn’t want to get my hopes up. Not when we’d agreed to put that night behind us, to pretend like it had never happened.

“Victoria …”

I brought my head back around. “Yeah?”

He tilted his head to the side, studying me. “How interested in this talk are you?”

I shrugged, my right shoulder hitching up toward my ear. “It’s a good topic.”

“It is.” He nodded thoughtfully. “But what if I told you I had a better, more interesting one in mind?”

“Such as?”

David took a step forward, and then another. When we were only inches apart, his hand landed on my hip—the touch sending a small zing of electricity to my core—before snaking its way around to the small of my back. With light pressure, he tugged me closer.

I craned my neck to look up at him. “David?”

“I miss you,” he said, the heat of his gaze threatening to turn me to cinder.

It was crazy, but I missed him too. So, so much. For days, I’d told myself you couldn’t miss something you’d never had, but I knew that wasn’t true.

With a fierceness I hadn’t expected, I’d missed the possibility of us, the couple I knew we could have been if only we’d had a chance.

Standing here with his arm banded around my middle, I didn’t want to miss out on another second with this man.

“I miss you too,” I admitted. “I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t stop thinking about you. About what we shared.”

His other arm came around me then and he pulled me fully into his embrace. “We’re two consenting adults, Victoria. This isn’t wrong.”

My mother’s words came back to me as I rested my cheek against his chest, letting his warmth seep into me. “My mom was horrified.”

“You told her about us?”

I groaned, remembering how uncomfortable the discussion had made me, and shook my head. “Not exactly.”

He pulled away, a tiny smile tugging at his lips. “Come on. Let’s get out of here, and you can tell me all about it.” He held out his hand.

Without even thinking about it, I laced our fingers together. It felt good to be able to do that. It felt right to walk across campus with David at my side.

And despite the crisp October breeze, I was warm from head to toe, my heart having thawed after a month-long freeze.

I took the glass of wine David passed my way and settled into his sofa, a throw blanket covering my bare feet. “Thank you.”

He shrugged out of his wool coat and, tossing it over the back of a chair, took up his position on the opposite end of the small couch. He placed my feet in his lap. “You’re welcome. Now tell me about last night.”

I sipped my wine, savoring the flavors, before launching into my story. “I think she knew something was wrong at the wedding. I tried to play it off like I’d had too much to drink, but she’s not a stupid woman. Then, when I skipped dinner last Sunday, she decided it must be because I don’t like you very much. She asked me to be polite to you at dinner on Sunday.”

He smirked. “Please, David, make me come. Please fuck me,” he parroted in a high pitched voice meant to mimic mine when I was in the throes of passion. “That sounds pretty polite to me.”

I leaned my head back and laughed. “Oh my god. That’s exactly what went through my mind when she said that. I was like, ‘Oh mom. If you only knew how polite I can be where that man is concerned.’”

“You begging me for an orgasm was the sexiest thing I’d ever heard. God, your voice. Your eyes. The way your whole body flushed pink with desire.”

The laughter died on my lips. “David?”

“Hmm?”

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

He gaze tore me apart and put me back together. Heat, lust, and desire were mixed with pain, confusion, and hesitancy. And it was all for me. He stared at me with a single-minded focus that made me tremble with anticipation.

“Ask me nicely, Victoria,” he growled, his voice dropping low and full of promise.

I swallowed deeply. “Ask you what?”

Oh, I knew exactly what David wanted me to say, but I wanted to hear him say it too. I needed to hear those words.

He reached under the blanket and looped his fingers around my ankle, tugging me down the sofa until I lay on my back.

“What are you doing?” I squeaked.

His rubbed a circle over the arch of my foot before his fingers danced their way up my leg to rest on my knee. He scooted closer, and his hand continued its upward. Soon, he was leaning over me, his mouth hovering over mine, our hot breaths mingling, as he traced a path over the thin strip of lace at my hip.

“Ask me to make you come,” he whispered enticingly against my lips.

“We shouldn’t be doing this.”

It felt like that was what I was supposed to say, but even as the words dripped from my lips, I knew I didn’t really mean them. I wanted him. I hadn’t stopped wanting him—consequences be damned. And right now, I wanted him to make me come more than I wanted my next breath.

To hell with it.

Like he’d said earlier, we were two consenting adults, and there was nothing wrong with the way we felt about each other. He wasn’t my brother, I wasn’t his sister, and we weren’t family—much as both our parents wanted to pretend otherwise. If I wanted to have sex with him, there was nothing stopping me.

“Make me come,” I begged, heat and longing and something pure and right unfurling in my belly.

His lips crashed down on mine, and his fingers dipped beneath the lace covering me, his touch sprouting goosebumps along my flesh. When his thumb pressed against my clit, I gasped, and his tongue pushed its way into my mouth, coiling around my own.

I rolled my pelvis, and his middle finger slipped inside. My whole body shook. It was too much, too good. I broke away. “I’m going to come.”

David buried his head in the crook of my neck and breathed me in as I rode his finger. “That’s it, baby,” he said, sucking my earlobe into his wet, hot mouth. “Just like that,” he crooned, as I broke apart, his name on my lips.

“Oh god, David. Oh god, oh god, oh god!”

When my orgasm subsided, he withdrew his finger and kissed my nose, chuckling lightly as he pulled away. “You never said please.”