Page 1 of Burden of Proof

CHAPTER 1

LINCOLN

LINCOLN

The thing about fucking a twenty-five-year-old is…it’s never a good idea. But I had made a lot of bad decisions in my life, though getting on all fours for a virgin might have taken the cake. I was only twenty-five myself, butIwas far from a virgin, and I also made it a general rule to not sleep with anyone who was under thirty.

Especially virgins.

Smith Covington wasn’t even technically a virgin. He’d just never been with a man before, and I liked being with men. He was easy enough on the eyes, and it had been awhile since I’d gotten anything other than a blow job, so I’d said what the hell. He also looked so pathetically sad when he’d been drinking and crying, and you might as well call me Lincoln Summers, patron saint of bad fucking ideas.

“Can we try the other way?” Smith asked, long and slender fingers rolling the condom off his cock. He tied it off and tossed it into the hotel trash can, and I stared up at the ceiling, my forearm covering my forehead and half my eyes.

“The other way?”

“Where you…” he trailed off, gesturing with a swirling motion of his finger, his chest covered in sweat.

“If you can’t say it, you can’t have it,” I said, grabbing his wrist and pulling him down. He collapsed onto the bed beside me, our shoulders touching, toes touching.

“I want to bottom,” he said. “I want to see which one I like more.”

“What an eager beaver.”

I ignored the way his pinky finger dragged across the top of my wrist, turning away from him and flinging my legs over the side of the bed. I would have thrown myself out the window if the damn thing opened, but the threat of a lifetime of undeserved therapist bills for Smith was enough to stop me from executingthatbad idea. And if that hadn’t been enough, my best friend being shacked up with Smith’s oldest brother definitely would have been.

Falling into a shitty hotel bed with Smith hadn’t been on my radar.

The night I met him, he was reeling from some bad news and nursing a bottle of wine like if he got to the bottom of it, the revelation of his new half-brother would somehow cease to be real. I’d sat beside him on the edge of a bed that wasn’t his in a house that didn’t belong to either of us and listened to him pour his heart and soul out to me over the last dregs of his wine. After he’d run through it all, I patted his forearm and tucked him back into bed, but his trembling voice stopped me before I could get out of the room.

“I think I might be bisexual.”

I sighed and turned back to face him. “Everyone is bisexual, Smith.”

“But I’ve never…”

He was too drunk, and I was too sober.

“And I have.”

“Would you?” he asked, legs tangling around the sheets. “With me, I mean?”

“Maybe when you have some alcohol in your bloodstream and not the other way around.”

After that, he’d left me alone for so long I thought he’d forgotten about me entirely.

But then he’d texted me with an address, a room number, a time, and one of those ridiculous little emoji faces that looked like a watery-eyed, kicked puppy. I’d gone back and forth for hours if I was going to go through with it or not. I knew Silas would probably not be thrilled with the prospect of me fucking his future brother-in-law, but I had no plans to make anything with Smith into something real. He was a sad man who wanted to fuck, and I was a sad man who wanted to fuck. Even though we were sad for very different reasons, the fucking part would be fine.

It would befine.

Bracing my elbows on my knees, I stared down at the patterned hotel carpet and the tufts of dark hair on my toes.

“Do you think your brother is going to marry Silas?” I asked.

Behind me, the bed shifted.

“Marshall has never done anything by half.”

I scrunched my nose, sniffling. “Silas has barely told me anything about him.”