Chapter 1
The good couch faces the TV and the dark mouth of the staircase.
Tessa claimed the middle cushion like she always does, blanket already in her lap before anyone pressed play.
Bennett took the left arm. Reid sat on the floor first, then climbed up onto the right when the opening credits started and the house made its first real sound: an upstairs register ticking as the heat tried to push through ducts that were never sized for this building.
I sat on her other side.
Not touching. Close enough that the blanket became a border I could feel.
The movie was the kind with a farmhouse and a girl who keeps hearing things that are probably the pipes. Tessa snorted at the first jump scare. Then the house answered it. A long creak over our heads, same pitch as the one on screen, and her whole body went tight under the blanket.
“It’s the floor,” I said.
“I know what it is.”
She still pulled her feet up. The next scare came without warning. A door slamming in the movie, a real door settling in the hall like it had been waiting for the cue. Tessa made a sound that was almost a laugh and then she was in my lap.
Not a hop. Not a joke she took back. She turned, put her weight on my thighs, and stayed there with the blanket dragged around both of us like that would make it look accidental.
Bennett’s head cut toward us in the blue from the screen.
Reid said, “Jesus, Tess.”
She didn’t get off.
My hands had nowhere legal to go. They landed on the outside of her thighs over the blanket because the alternative was her waist, and her waist was bare under a thin shirt she had no business wearing in a cold house.
She was warm. She smelled like the citrus stuff she puts in her hair and the dust this place never loses.
Every time the movie punched a beat, she pressed back into me like she could hide inside my chest.
I did not move her.
Bennett saw that I did not move her. Reid saw it too.
The three of us had a whole conversation in the dark that did not use any words.
I kept my eyes on the screen and my hands exactly where they were, and I let her feel what she was sitting on because I was done pretending I was built different than this.
A floorboard popped at the top of the stairs.
Tessa’s fingers hooked in the front of my shirt.
The movie kept going. Nobody turned it up. Nobody turned a light on. Bennett shifted closer along the couch until his knee touched the blanket over her calf. Reid stayed on the far cushion like he was waiting for me to decide whether this was a line or an invitation.
I decided.
I slid one hand under the blanket and settled it on her hip, skin, the waistband of her shorts, and I left it there.
She didn’t tell me to stop.
She stayed.
That was the part I kept waiting to correct itself.
A shift. A laugh. Some little sorry as she slid back onto the cushion like she’d only been startled.
None of that came. Tessa settled her weight more fully across my thighs, the blanket tented around us, her spine against my chest, and the movie threw another cheap scare across the room.
I used it.
My hand on her hip stopped being polite.
I pushed under the waistband of her shorts far enough to find bare skin, the soft give at the side of her stomach, and I spread my fingers there like I had a right.
She sucked in a breath I felt more than heard.
Didn’t move off me. Didn’t look at Bennett. Didn’t look at Reid.
Bennett had gone still the way he does when he’s deciding whether to start something. Reid’s eyes were on the blanket. On the shape of her in my lap. On my wrist disappearing under cotton.
I didn’t say a word to either of them.
The house did the talking instead. Heat crawled through the ducts and the register above the stairs knocked twice, hard, like someone had put a boot down up there.
Tessa’s fingers tightened in my shirt. I dragged my other hand up her side, over the thin shirt, and found she wasn’t wearing a bra.
I’d known. I’d been knowing since she came downstairs.
Knowing and touching were different animals.
My palm covered her breast and she made a small sound that did not belong in a room with my brothers in it.
Bennett’s jaw flexed.
I thumbed her nipple through the shirt until it pulled tight, then pinched, slow, and she arched back into me like the movie had anything to do with it.
The blanket slipped. Not all the way. Enough that Bennett could see my hand working her.
Enough that Reid stopped pretending he was watching the farmhouse on the screen.
I slid the hand at her waist lower.
Shorts were loose. Cheap sleep shorts she’d thrown on because the house was cold and she hadn’t planned on ending up here.
My fingers went under the elastic, over the cotton of her underwear, and then under that too.
She was already wet. I said nothing. I just pressed two fingers along her and felt her hips stutter, a tiny helpless roll she tried to hide by going rigid after.
Reid whispered, “Cole.”
I didn’t look at him.
I circled her, unhurried, like we had the whole runtime and the parents weren’t coming back for a week.
Tessa’s head tipped against my shoulder.
Her mouth opened on a breath. I pushed a finger into her and her thighs clamped around my hand, not to stop me, to keep me.
Bennett leaned in along the couch until his knee was flush to the blanket over her calf.
He still hadn’t spoken. He didn’t need to.
I could feel him watching the way my knuckles moved under the fabric, the way she was trying not to make noise and failing in little broken pieces.
Another creak upstairs. Longer this time. The kind that used to send her running for a hallway light when she was nineteen and we were all still pretending this was a family weekend.
She didn’t run.
I added a second finger and used my thumb on her clit, and she shoved her face into my neck so the sound she made hit my throat instead of the room.
My cock was hard under her ass and I knew she felt it.
I rolled my hips once, just enough to make the point, and her hand dropped from my shirt to grip my wrist under the blanket, not pulling me out. Holding me there.
Bennett’s hand landed on her ankle over the throw. Then higher, to her shin. He was waiting to see if I’d stop him.
I didn’t.
Reid moved off his cushion and onto the floor in front of the couch, close enough that Tessa’s knees almost framed him.
The movie screamed. Nobody flinched at the screen.
I kept working her, wetter now, her breathing gone sloppy against my collarbone, and I looked at my brothers over her head for the first time since she’d sat down.
I still didn’t say anything.
I just didn’t take my hand out of her shorts.
“Easy,” I said against her hair, like she had any control left. “You’re soaking my hand in front of them. You feel that?”
Tessa nodded, a short jerky thing, and I curled my fingers inside her until her hips gave up the fight and started moving with me. Bennett’s hand was on her calf now, no pretense, thumb stroking the back of her knee. Reid hadn’t touched her yet. He was close enough that I could hear him breathe.
“Look at Reid,” I told her. “He’s been staring at your shorts since you sat down. Don’t act shy now.”
She made a broken sound and hid harder in my neck.
I wouldn’t let her. I turned her face with my free hand, not rough, just enough that she had to see the room.
The movie threw pale light across Bennett’s mouth, Reid on the floor between her knees, my wrist working under cotton that was a joke of a barrier.
“That’s it. They can see what I’m doing. They’re going to see you come on your brother’s fingers.”
Bennett exhaled like he’d been punched.
I picked up the pace, thumb tight on her clit, two fingers stroking the spot that made her thighs shake.
“You sat in my lap like you didn’t know what that would do.
You’ve known for years. Every holiday. Every time you walked down that hall in something this thin.
” My voice stayed low. Meant for her. Loud enough they both heard it.
“I used to stop at the door. I’m not stopping. ”
“Cole-”
“Say it louder. They already know.”
She didn’t. She whimpered instead, and I rewarded that by pushing deeper, spreading her around my fingers, letting the wet sound compete with the movie.
Bennett’s hand slid to her thigh and stayed there, waiting.
Reid’s fingers hooked the edge of the blanket and pulled it down to her hips.
Cold air hit the skin I’d bared. Tessa jerked.
I held her still with the arm across her stomach.
“Leave it,” I said, and I was talking to Reid as much as her. “She can sit here exposed. She’s close anyway.”
She was. Tightening in little pulses, breath gone ragged, ass grinding down on my cock every time I crooked my fingers. I put my mouth to her ear.
“Come on. Make a mess on me. Let them watch you do it. Then they can decide how nice they’re going to be when it’s their turn.”
That finished her.
Tessa came with her whole body locked, a high trapped noise she tried to swallow and couldn’t.
I kept her there through it, rubbing her through the clench, talking into her hair the whole time.
Good, that’s it, fuck, look at you. Until she sagged back against my chest shaking.
My fingers stayed inside her while she fluttered down.
Bennett’s grip on her thigh had gone white-knuckled.
Reid was staring at the shine on my hand like he’d forgotten how to blink.
I kissed the side of her neck, slow, and didn’t pull out.
The movie kept playing to nobody.