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AIDEN

Aiden

I just called the head distiller

Nothing

Whit

Fuck

Sienna

Is that it?

Tristan

No other option unless we find the buyer

The recipe might be gone forever

Whit

Passing a recipe down orally is fucking stupid

Sienna

It’s all we have though

Tristan

Aiden, you good?

Sienna

Aiden?

M y fist lands on the bag with punishing force. It swings from the ceiling, chain creaking. My leg is next, a roundhouse kick that would make Katie proud.

We lost it. It’s gone.

Dad’s legacy. Gone.

And yes, passing a recipe down orally is fucking stupid.

Whit’s not wrong. Just like Sienna wasn’t wrong when she told me there were other whiskeys we could make.

Of course there are. Of course I could do something else with my life.

Maybe I am overly focused on something that doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

But this.

Another kick, the bag protesting.

This.

It has the acrid taste of failure.

My next punch carries me nearly to the bag, the force of it traveling through my arm in brutal shockwaves, my hands coming to the bag, then my forehead. The blood rushes in my ears so loudly that I barely hear the sound of surprise behind me.

Her.

I turn, crossing my arms. “You should go.”

Emory’s eyes flicker with irritation. I let my gaze drift over her body, lingering on all my favorite parts. It’s rude and I don’t care. Not today. Animal need rolls beneath my skin, but just like I have for the past thirteen months, I’ve tightly leashed it.

Except with her.

I expect Emory to make a cutting remark or snap back at me, but instead she tilts her head, and that irritation turns to something softer that makes me break eye contact.

The gym is dim in the afternoon light, sectioned by the squares of sun that the skylights let in.

She steps forward, going from shadowed to gilded in the span of a step.

Her lashes fan down, her lips part. So fucking pretty that I’m two steps forward before I fist my hands.

“What’s wrong?”

I shake my head, already feeling the stutter pressing against my mouth, my tongue leaden.

“Okay,” she says lightly before she reaches down and grips the bottom of her shirt. My gaze arrows to the hem, praying she’ll lift it. And oh she does. I drink her in. The workout set Sienna gave her is criminally sexy, all breast-plumping tightness and silky black softness. “So let’s spar.”

The breath leaves my chest. “You can’t beat me.”

“Don’t need to beat you.” She flashes me a grin before she bends down to stretch and I get an eyeful of those pretty tits and the shadow between them. “Just need you to try and pin me.”

I don’t want to hurt her. The thought of hurting her makes my stomach roll. There’s a good reason I avoid my siblings on days like this, and those are people who are required to love me. Emory isn’t even required to like me, and everything inside me roars at the thought.

“Emory—”

“Don’t.” Her head jerks up. “Don’t underestimate me. You’ve never done it before, so don’t start now.”

She misunderstands, of course. She thinks I don’t want her here, that she’s not enough of a challenge. Instead, I’m worried she’ll see into the heart of me and she won’t like what she finds. Today, it feels like a bleak, swirling darkness.

“Okay,” I say, seeing the stubbornness on her face.

She drops into a fighting stance, and I do the same, warning myself to breathe deeply, to take it easy. She feints forward and I dodge back. She’s better than the first time we sparred. I see her taking in everything Katie says during practice, giving it her all.

She snags an arm around my waist, but I push her off and dance away.

“So what’s wrong?” she asks again, then rolls her eyes when I’m silent. “I can take it, Aiden.” She lunges and lands a glancing blow on my side before I twist away.

“Not this,” I say shortly.

“I’ve always been able to take it.” She plants her hands on her hips, her breaths panting. “You’ve always respected me.” Her words are sharp. “More than anyone. Don’t stop now.”

I inhale slowly. What would it be like to lay this at her feet? To see her as a partner? I imagine that’s something real couples do, though I wouldn’t know. My exes weren’t participants in my life, not the way she is. Under my skin. In my blood.

“The recipe,” I say shortly. “That fucking recipe.”

She nods, gesturing for me to come at her.

I lunge for her too quickly, expecting her to turn, but she lets me take her to the mat before she locks her legs around my hips and wrenches me onto my back.

She laughs softly as I pant under her. The friction between us is unbearably intimate, my sides pushing against her thighs, her hands on my stomach.

Her palms flatten, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say she was feeling me up. My skin shivers from the contact.

“You can’t find it?”

I shake my head. “We’ve tried everything. It’s gone. It’s fucking gone, and I feel-feel—” I fall silent, my jaw rolling, before I try again. “Like a failure.”

Her fingers land on my jaw, tracing lightly, her lovely eyes heavy lidded and warm. “What did Tristan say?”

“Haven’t talked to him.” The words are forced out through my clenched jaw. It flexes under her fingers and she presses lightly, like she knows.

I tremble, waiting for her to ask, unsure if I’m willing to admit to this particular failing. Not when she’s gathered so many already.

Instead, the tip of her finger presses into my bottom lip. “Why not?” she asks idly.

My focus is on her touch, my blood starting to heat, my body starting to tighten.

“Because I bear this alone,” I say.

“Bear what?” Her gaze is too knowing. She sees too much.

“You’re breaking the rules,” I say under her hand.

“Bear what?” she repeats.

“All the hard parts,” I burst out. “All the difficult things. For the-them. And I can’t even do that. I don’t know if I can lead-lead the family. I don’t know if I want to.” The words leave my breathing shallow and my chest heaving.

“Funny,” she says softly. “You feel pretty damn capable to me.” Her hand fists in the material of my shirt.

“You always have.” That fist tightens. “It drove me crazy,” she whispers.

“How unfair it was that someone like you, who’d been born with it all, should also be so damn talented.

So smart, so studious, so athletic. And so calm, like nothing could make you break.

Like I could batter myself against you and you’d stand firm. ”

Her voice sounds awed, and it sends tendrils of heat through my chest. Heat that melts the ice I’ve felt all day.

“Sounds like you hated me,” I say hoarsely.

“So much.” She gives me a quick grin. It feels like sparks are in my blood.

“I hated you so much, but never once did I doubt you, Aiden.” She spears me with a look.

“Are you really willing to lose like that? To me?” She arches a brow, and I swallow, not ready to grapple with this but tucking away her words for later.

“Are you cheering me up?”

She leans down, her eyes sparking, her pink lips pulling up, so close that I can see each freckle around the edge. I press my head to the mat so I don’t do something insane like bite her.

“I would never do that,” she whispers, her breath brushing my lips. “I don’t like you, remember?” My heart thunders in my chest as she smiles at me. “ And you didn’t even pin me.”

I have her flat on her back before the sentence is finished, my knee wedged between her thighs. I’m hard against her stomach, and I know she feels it. Her breath stutters. Her inhale pushes us closer together, enough to make me harden further.

“You make me want to bite you,” I growl.

Her nails dig into my stomach. “You make me want to strangle you.”

I arch a brow. “Not sure you needed to announce that. You’re supposed to be cheering me up, wife. I had a very hard day.”

“Let’s see. You are—” She pauses, fighting a smile. “Not unattractive. I suppose.”

“Shh,” I whisper, my mouth twitching against my better judgment. I’m supposed to be fighting with her, not laughing. But damn, she makes me feel like I’m swimming in champagne. “If you listen closely, you can hear an angel getting its wings.”

“Oh god,” she gasps, before a laugh bursts out of her, her shoulders shaking. “Am I so terrible to you?”

“You are unstintingly awful,” I say honestly. “Relentlessly evil.”

“Stop, Aiden. I’m blushing.” She really is blushing. Heat is traveling over her face.

My thumb skims over her collarbone, the bare touch making her shiver.

Warmth fills my chest. I shouldn’t feel this way about her. I don’t even know what this way is, but I know it’s dangerous.

“Torturously pretty,” I say. Her eyes fly wide.

Everything in my body is pointing towards her, the blackness that’s shrouded my thoughts in tatters as sunlight pours through.

“Now you go,” I say huskily.

“You are insufferably arrogant.” Her gaze is locked with mine, her pulse visible in her neck. “Impossibly cocky.” Her short nails scrape over my stomach. “Unendurably handsome.”

Her tongue wets her lips. “It is intolerable how much I want you.”

My breath tangles in my throat. Need punches through my body so swiftly that I feel like I’ve been shocked.

“Intolerable?” I manage the words somehow.

Her nails dig into my chest. “You have no idea,” she whispers. “I think about it all the time.”

That need spirals tighter inside me. “You do?” I ask hoarsely. Because I do too. All the fucking time.

“It is unreasonable.” She swallows. “I want you so much. So fucking much. You’re in my thoughts and under my skin, and I tell myself that if I just had you once, I could go back to being normal.”

“You think once is enough?”

“It has to be.” She pushes up my shirt with light fingers and I flex over her. I want to tempt her into madness, but I want her to take the first step.

I need her to do it. I can’t be alone in this.

“You are—” She presses her lips flat, as if she’s decided better of the words. “It can’t be as good as I’ve made it out in my head.” Her tongue wets her lips.

“You think it would be bad?”

She follows the trail of hair on my stomach with her hand, toying with my waistband. I’m so hard for her, leashing myself ever more tightly as she torments me.

“I think,” she whispers, “That no man could live up to the fantasies I’ve had.”

Her words make me still. I had no idea she thought about me. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine she’d fantasize about me. But bad ? I want to snap my teeth in her face.

“What fantasies?”

Her cheeks redden, but I’m not backing down. Everything in me is taut with need, with competition, with the desire that has been unquenched for so fucking long with her.

“Are you really going to make me—”

“Yes.”

“Fine.” Those fingers dip under my waistband. I nearly groan. “I have a fantasy that you find me in the dark, that you push me up against the wall, that you don’t even speak, but we both know it’s inevitable.”

I inhale sharply at the hunger that rises in the wake of her words.

“Once,” I hear myself say. I am a fool. “Just once.”

We’re not supposed to do this. Everything in me screams that I’m breaking all the rules. But the part of me that has obsessed over her knows that this is inevitable.

Once will be enough.

One time to quiet this need and stop this madness.

She stills. “Once.”