Fraud

Amused by how the two of them always look for each other without realizing what the rest of us know about how they really feel, I make the mistake of glancing left to find another dangerous stare locked on us, this one a pretty amber color with green flecks you can only see when up close.

My first thought is Ezra, but the truth is it could be either of them. I can’t claim to have superiority on Hillary. I never really knew who was tugging me into a room, whose lips brushed mine, whose voice whispered words in my ear that made me melt.

“I need to go,” I say, yanking my arm from Ivy’s hold.

She turns to stop me, but I’m too fast as I weave my way past a crowd of bodies, cutting through them like a warm knife through butter. I have no idea where I’m going, just that it’s away from Ezra or Damon or both.

Unfortunately, the best laid plans and i

I realize it as a hand locks over my arm, my body melting at the touch, my brain short-circuiting as I’m dragged into a separate room, my eyes clenching closed as a door shuts.

My back presses against a wall, the cool temperature of the plaster sinking through my dress to tease my skin, the heat of warm lips ru

“You were going the wrong way.”

A smile tugs at the corner of my lips, both happy and bitter. “I don’t think away from you is the wrong way.”

Fingertips tempt my skin as they skitter over my neck to brush away my hair. I’m so out of my element with him that I could be floating in space, my legs kicking and arms doing a breaststroke even through there’s no water to propel me back to Earth.

His warm palm slides up the line of my jaw, his thumb sweeping over my cheek.

“It is.”

And then his lips are on mine, the tip of his tongue flicking out to taste my mouth. I hold it closed, refusing to kiss him back, refusing to speak, refusing to let his touch render me boneless and stupid.

My refusal means nothing.

Not with heat surging through me.

Not after my mind loses the ability to function.

Not after I stop caring for once that I was raised only to care about the future my parents decided for me.

“Who are you?” I ask because I always ask.

He grins against my mouth. “Does it matter?”

Instantly I remember what Ivy said to Hillary, the tears in Hillary’s eyes, the fact that Hillary had been kissing one of them at some point before I arrived tonight.

It’s a blessing when I realize that none of it matters. That regardless of what I do right now, and regardless of who I do it with, I’m still going to marry someone I don’t want.

“No,” I whisper, my heart thudding against my chest when his lips grin against my mouth.

Cupping my face with two hands, he nips at my bottom lip, his voice a growl. “Good.”

My mouth opens and his tongue dives in.

I let him kiss me without caring which twin it is, because in the end, when I’m married to a man I don’t love and living a life I don’t want, none of this can matter.