Page 2 of Desperate Temptations (Immoral Starts)

TWO

TRENT

Sipping the coffee, I take in the quiet kitchen.

I haven’t spent a lot of time in Ethan’s home over the years.

Lyndsey was a nasty cunt who made it her personal vendetta to keep me at arm’s length.

I’m not sure if she ever told Ethan of our argument during our senior year of high school, but he never acted any differently if she did.

If anyone had told me that hours after her funeral, we would be jacking off together, I would have told them to put away their tin foil hat.

And the crush I thought I erased of my best friend bloomed fresh in my chest overnight.

It doesn’t help that the size of his dick is no longer a figment of my imagination, now it’s a very large reality I wish he’d use on me.

The accompanying dream I had last night reminded me exactly why I’ve limited my time with him over the years.

Ethan isn’t a man who ever shied away or cared about my sexuality.

In fact, he seemed to embrace it more than any of our other friends.

He very rarely took my comments or jokes as serious flirting, and even played along the majority of the time.

When we were teens, it left me in a confused and tangled mess over whether there was ever a possibility that he liked me back.

But I grew up and got wiser, and just realized Ethan is comfortable with who he is and our friendship.

A soft knock on the door has me squeezing my eyes shut briefly before blowing out a bated breath. Adjusting the bulge growing in my sweatpants, I walk to the front of the house and open it slowly, revealing the person I assumed it to be.

Carol blinks, her eyes widening as her hand tightens on her purse strap. “Oh. It’s you.”

I grin. “It’s me. Your son-in-law’s favorite queer.”

Lyndsey’s mother has never outright discussed her dislike for me, but her and her daughter’s scowls all night at the wedding left little to the imagination.

I know Lyndsey even fought to have me replaced as best man, but Ethan put his foot down.

Funny enough, her maid of honor joined my hook-up for a very memorable threesome.

Her distaste didn’t spread to her own best friends.

Her lips tighten in disapproval and she tilts her chin up. “May I come in and speak to Ethan?”

Crossing my arms over my bare chest, I lean against the frame of the door. “He’s still sleeping. We had a long night.”

After his little game of desecrating her roses, he pulled all her clothes from the closet and set them on fire in the pit in the far corner of the backyard. I don’t know what Lyndsey did to upset him or if this is a strange reaction to his grief, but I don’t plan to leave till I know he’s okay.

She lets out an offended huff of air before taking a step back and I smirk wider. “I can have him call you once he’s up. Will that do?”

“I guess it will have to. Make sure he understands the importance of calling me. His behavior yesterday?—”

“His wife died. I think you can manage to give him some grace, no?”

Her eyes narrow. “His wife, but my daughter. We are all grieving.”

I nod slowly. “Yes, but a relationship between a parent and child is different from a partnership. There’s a deeper level between partners, an intimacy you understand with your husband.”

Carol glances away from me, subdued for a moment at my honesty before sighing. “Please just have Ethan call me.”

She turns around and walks back to her expensive car idling in the driveway.

I wait a few moments, watching her car disappear down the road before heading back to the kitchen.

Rummaging through the fridge, I manage to find enough for a solid breakfast of eggs, bacon, and fruit.

I feel like a stranger playing guest in a house I am renting, and it saddens me that we’ve grown apart this much over the years.

He wakes up around noon, sauntering into the living room, and I look up from my laptop. His eyebrows are scrunched together, dark hair sticking up places that shouldn’t be possible without gel, and his brown eyes squint.

“Hungover?” I ask.

“Yeah, a bit,” he says with a groan and flops down onto the couch.

I shut off my laptop then grab him some ibuprofen and water.

“Here.”

Handing him the best headache remedy, I sit back down and study him carefully as he swallows it.

The dark stubble forming on his jaw is a few days old, but the slight softness of his stomach tells me he hasn’t been working out as much as he used to.

Ethan always prided himself on his body to the point I made fun of his vanity.

I wonder what’s gone down the past few weeks, and why he never reached out to me until the funeral.

“Carol stopped by. She wants you to call her when you’re up.”

Ethan groans. “Fuck, she say anything else?”

“No, she seemed a little disturbed I was here and couldn’t wait to leave,” I say with a smirk that he returns before it drops.

He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I thought she’d give me more time.”

“Well, we did leave the funeral kind of suddenly. Right after you made your niece cry.”

He snorts. “I doubt that little witch shed a tear. She’s horrible.”

I sigh. “What’s going on, Ethan? I feel like I’ve been dropped in the middle of a shit storm.”

Ethan shrugs, tilting his head back to rest on the couch. “I don’t even know anymore.”

My knee bounces and I rest my tangled hands on my thighs as I glance at my best friend. “Was Lyndsey’s death an accident?”

He blinks once, then bursts out laughing before letting out a slight moan and grabbing his temple. “Fuck, don’t make me laugh.”

I shake my head. “I’m serious. Do I have to worry about you getting arrested?”

“No, I didn’t murder my wife. Though, I wish I had.” Ethan chuckles again.

Words stick in my throat, relief and confusion rattling around in my chest.

“What the fuck, Ethan?”

He pushes off the couch, and I follow him into the kitchen a moment later, sighing when I see the whiskey bottle being raised.

I let him swallow a gulp before attempting to take it from him.

He holds it tight and I stumble into him.

Our bodies are pressed against one another, and I can feel the heavy curve of his length against my hip before he lets go, and I step away.

“Let’s try to get through most of the day sober,” I say, my voice deeper with embarrassment.

“Whatever,” he mumbles, walking past to grab a banana.

He eats it in two to three bites, barely chewing and I watch in gross amusement.

When he tosses the peel into the trash, he faces me, then stretches.

His arms flex over his head and his sweatpants dip a little lower, showing off the thin trail of hair from his belly button to under his waistband.

I glance away, testing my willpower not to pop a boner.

“I found out she was cheating on me… a few weeks before she died,” he says, waving his hand as if to give him the whiskey back now that he’s admitted to what happened. I shake my head.

“What? Lyndsey?” I ask, leaning against the counter. Lyndsey cheating on him wasn’t on my bingo card. She’s been obsessed with Ethan since we were teenagers, not only obsessed but possessive to the point of being a bitch to me. “That’s… not what I expected.”

He laughs bitterly. “Yeah, me too. It’s probably why she got away with it for so long.”

I shake my head. “Wait, how long has she been cheating?”

Ethan stares at me, a grimace twisting his face. “She has a four year old in London.”

My head snaps back. “Wait, what the fuck? A child? Like her biological child? How did you miss her being pregnant?”

“Yeah, I missed it because she planned it perfectly.” Ethan stands, rubbing at his temples as he starts to pacing. “Remember when the London office opened for her dad’s company? How I was supposed to help start it up, but he sent Lynds instead?”

I nod. “Yeah, she was gone for… nearly a year.”

He shrugs. “I guess she was already a few months pregnant. One of the investors she met while he was visiting the states.”

“And you’re sure it’s not yours?”

Ethan rubs at his face. “No. I’m not sure, at all. She decided the baby is his. I could have a daughter that doesn’t know anything about me.”

He closes his eyes and stands there in silence for a moment. No wonder he had been the way he was yesterday. His heart had already been broken before Lyndsey died.

“What are you going to do? Can we petition the courts for a paternity test?” I ask.

Imagining Ethan with a child is odd because he’s never really expressed his desire to have any kids.

Nor do I think he would want to prioritize one the way he’d need to.

Ethan enjoys doing what he wants when he wants, but who knows? People have changed for less.

“I don’t know how it works overseas. Do they have to respond to a request from another country?” He sighs, slumping down on the barstool at the island.

“Then let’s go to London and demand one. What’s the dude gonna do? Run?”

Ethan looks up at me, his eyes wide with shock. “We should go to London.”

I nod, grabbing my phone to start looking up flights. “We can leave as early as later tonight. We doing this?”

He jumps from his seat. “Yeah, yeah. We’re fucking doing this.”