2. Seth

SETH

Family dinners areone of the most grueling tasks on my to-do list, having to endure sitting at the dinner table across from Bridget while my mother and Solomon, my stepfather, do everything they can to get us to talk to them about our lives.

Bridget and I have never spoken about family dinners. There's just this unspoken thing between us, an implicit knowledge that we have to do this for my mom and her dad. They've both been through too much for us to be difficult about a few dinners every month.

Not to mention, Bridget and I are well into adulthood and don't really have room to pull the whining "But moooooommmm" card.

"You two should see what your dad got up to today," Mom says, smiling ear to ear across the table at Solomon. "It's remarkable."

I glance at Solomon. I don't call him dad, and I know there's no expectation to. But the second he walked into my mother's life, all six something of him with his shiny balding eagle nest head and pointy nose, she was so excited to get her life back. The life she had before Dad, my real dad, died.

I've never had the heart to tell her it will never be the same. I think she knows that deep down. "What'd you get up to, Sol?"

Solomon smiles, then blots his mouth off with a napkin. "Well, I don't know if it's remarkable."

"It's remarkable!" my mom says, her blue eyes bugging out and curly, brown hair bouncing. She's stopped covering up the silver strands with dye. "Don't sell your accomplishment short."

Solomon blushes. Like actually blushes. I can only hope that one day I'll be able to have the woman of my dreams that makes me blush like that well into my fifties.

I look over at Bridget and immediately feel my stomach curdle. I'm suddenly not very hungry.

I'll never be able to have the woman of my dreams. That much has been clear for ten years.

"Well, I should just show you." Solomon pushes himself up from the table and scurries into the room off the kitchen, his office, which is more like a workshop. He's not yet retired, but in his free time, he certainly acts like a retiree. From the woodworking and the puzzles and the–

"Ta-da!" Solomon returns, holding a bottle with a model ship inside.

Bridget gasps. "You made that, Dad?"

"You bet your ass I did. And it was like hell getting it in, god almighty," Solomon says as he sits back in his seat with a heavy sigh. He turns the bottle back and forth. "A brigantine in a bottle. Who would have thought, huh?"

Bridget smiles, corners of her pink lips pitching as high as they'll go. Makes me warm in the chest. She's never smiled at me that way. Never will, in all likelihood.

"That's amazing."

"See? Amazing, Sol." My mother points her fork at him.

"Anyway…" Solomon places the ship in a bottle in the middle of the table like a centerpiece. "Now that you've all heard about my very exciting day–"

I chuckle, "Can't say I've ever accomplished something like that."

"I'll show you!" my stepfather says with eagerness. "I mean, that is, if you want. You know. If you have time. You're busy. Which reminds me, what did you get up to today?"

I push at my side of mashed potatoes, wishing I could stomach eating another bite so I wouldn't have to respond. "Not much. Work. Work is work. You know how it is."

Bridget giggles. My eyes shoot to her. What the hell was that?

"Something you'd like to share with the class, Bridget?" My eyes are square on hers.

Her cerulean eyes dare to stay on mine, twinged with fear at the corners, and her smile falls. "Nothing. Nothing at all."

The table settles into another silence, one we're very good at.

I chew on my lip as I watch Bridget. I know she knows I'm watching her.

After all these years, I know she's come to disdain me for watching. Thinks I'm controlling, overbearing, maybe a freak. If only she knew how I fucking can't help it. Haven't been able to since she was sixteen years old, and I felt like a total creep lusting after her. Too young for me. My stepfather's daughter. I refuse to think of her as my stepsister.

"What about you, Bridget?" I take my glass of wine and swirling it in the crystal glass. "What'd you get up to?"

Her eyebrows rise, dark like her flowing locks. "Nothing. Just some sketching."

"At the club?" I offer.

Her eyes flash.

I bite back on a laugh.

She's so cute when she's annoyed with me. Perhaps that's why I can't help pushing her buttons all the time.

Solomon looks her way. "You were at the club today, pumpkin?"

"Yes, weren't you, pumpkin?" I say with a teasing lilt.

Under the table, Bridget's foot makes contact with my shin. Harder than I anticipated. I grip the bottom of my seat to keep from reacting to the pain.

Bridget lifts her chin, maintaining her good girl persona. "Yes, I was visiting Sonia."

"Oh, that's nice of you," my mom says.

"Yes, you know, I always like to visit my friends."

That's one way to put it. And sure, she was walking out of the viewing gallery with Sonia. But I've heard through the grapevine she enjoys herself in the viewing gallery far more than I ever anticipated from pretty, sweet Bridget Vance.

Of course, I've always been able to tell what she needs.

Every cell in my body screams for Bridget because she is as submissive as they come.

And for years, all I've wished was to be the one she submits to.

But that is forbidden fruit. And besides, just because I know what she needs, doesn't mean she knows it too.

Would she even let me? Would she want me to?

God, I need to get out of my head. Now.

"That's the only reason you were there?" I half-smile.

Bridget's nostrils flare. "Why do you care, Seth?"

I shrug. "Just curious."

I love watching her squirm. I could drop a bomb on family dinner in one fell swoop by telling the truth about where she was exactly. What would I get out of that, you may ask? A reaction. If I have to live a half-life and settle for subs that don't quite satisfy me, if I can't have the sub of my dreams, then I want to enjoy my time on this earth any other way I can.

But just because I like to see her reactions to me, imagine how she'd react to my hand as I spank her for being this fucking irresistible, I would never actually out her like that. It means crossing a line.

The sanctity of the Underground is worth everything to me, just as it's worth everything to Bridget. Not only because we've signed legally binding documents, but because it's a place where we can express our desires.

Our needs.

Our cravings.

I wouldn't jeopardize that.

"What about you, Seth?" Bridget offers. "Why were you at the club?"

My heart stutters in my chest. It's only fair.

Well played.

There are any number of reasons I could be at the club. I'm a member in my own right, not just by familial attachment. I could have been using the fitness facilities or indulging in a meal midday. Maybe taking a meeting with potential investors in my tech company.

However, every excuse eludes my tongue because the truth was I left my office in the middle of the day because I was desperate for a release. Desperate to be free of my ever-present thoughts of Bridget for an hour or two. Needed a sub to take my mind off of it.

And by the way Bridget is staring at me, she knows. Does she know that all the teasing and poking is a reaction to not being able to have her? If that's the case, she's got a better poker face than I thought.

"Business lunch."

"At three?" Is that a smirk on her lips?

"Late business lunch." My jaw tightens.

Mom tsks. "No wonder you're not eating much. You're not hungry."

"With whom?"

If Bridget were my sub, she'd be getting the spanking of her life tonight.

I lean toward the table, my eyes locked in hers.

Her smile grows. "Well? Is it a secret, Seth?"

Out of the corner of my eye, Solomon squirms in his seat. "You two, always with the arguing," he mutters.

Solomon knows about my… inclinations. Though he isn't in the lifestyle himself, he accepts that we all have needs, I am rather open about mine around everyone except my mother.

Thankfully, she's not all that invested in the club scene, much prefers to keep to her own hobbies and hiking trips.

Solomon wants me to like him. Always has. So, as he says, this stays "between us guys."

I'm an adult, a man with needs, and she doesn't need to know of my need to always stay in control because life seems to find a way to elude accountability.

I throw out the first name that comes to mind. "Cal Ferrano."

"Cal Ferrano." She nods. "Isn't he in Portugal, Dad?" Her eyes swing toward Solomon.

He shakes his head, looks into his lap. "Don't ask me. I didn't work today."

"What is going on with you all? You're acting funny," my mom says.

"Yeah, I had a meeting with Cal Ferrano." Who cares if he's in Portugal? "Sonia was working, though, she must have been busy, right, Bridget? So, what were you doing while she was busy?"

Bridget's mouth grows small, eyes darken. I withhold a laugh. How is it she manages to look adorable even when she's serious? If she knew what that does to me, she wouldn't pick a fight with me.

She looks back at the plate in front of her, pushing her food around like she is working on some kind of masterpiece. "Working on final details for the wedding."

"Oh, the wedding. What kind of details?"

Bridget jerks forward. "Why do you need to know?"

I match her. "Just curious."

We could go on like this all night if we had to. It's a stalemate. I have a secret of hers and she has a secret of mine. If one of us reveals the other's, it's mutually assured destruction. Could be fun…

Except it's not fun when our parents are the ones in the crossfire. I would do anything for my mother. And I know Bridget feels the same for her dad.

"Oh, my goodness, you two!" my mom cries out. "Can't we ever just have a nice dinner without you two going at each other's throats?" She shoves herself up from the table.

"Amelia –" Solomon calls to her.

She waves her hand. "I need some fresh air."

Mom walks across the kitchen to the sliding glass doors into the garden.

We all watch in silence.

Once she's outside and the door smacks closed behind her, Solomon sighs. "You guys…"

I shrug. "We're just having a conversation, Sol."

He looks at me. Defeated. "You know that's not true."

"Sorry, Dad," Bridget says in a small voice. Docile and wanting to please. Would she be that way for me too?

Not the time.

I look at Solomon and then toward where my mother left.

Fuck.

I hate apologizing, but this is not all on her. "Yeah, sorry."

Without another word, Solomon gets up from the table and follows the path of my mother outside.

Leaving Bridget and me alone. A rare occasion. Often, we're surrounded by our friends or our family, interacting at events, not left alone to deal with what is between us.

Or isn't, which makes my chest ache.

"Were you seriously going to tell my dad?" Bridget whispers in a way that pulls on my heart strings.

"Were you going to tell my mom?" I shoot back.

"As if that's nearly as a big of a deal." She shakes her head.

I scoff. "Of course it is!"

"You're a guy! It's not the same if people know you're into… the lifestyle."

I frown. "What's the difference? Between me and you, then?"

"Are you kidding?" She huffs. "My dad knows all about your…" she waves her hands wildly, "what you do and doesn't bat an eye. If he were to know I was doing that, then I wouldn't be his good girl anymore."

Not my cock growing hard at that.

Good girl.

What the fuck, that's so unfair.

"And that's what my dad expects."

"You seriously put on the good girl persona just for your dad?" I scoff.

She rolls her eyes. "It's not just for my dad."

"People see you walking out of the Underground. They see you in the gallery. It's not like people don't know that you–"

She shakes her head. "It's just different. You know it is. And if you don't get that…" Bridget stops.

"What is there to get? I've got my needs and you have yours." Fury flashes in my brain for all the men who have gotten to touch her and kiss her the ways I always have wanted to. "And neither of us want our biological parent to know. Although I really don't think you should waste your time in the Underground with any more than watching. Those guys…they won't know how to take care of you."

Bridget's brow pinches at the center. "And you would? No, don't answer that. I don't know why I continue to try and make you understand when you never will."

A knife to the gut would have been less painful than that. "The fuck does that mean, Bridget?"

"I'm so tired of you speaking to me like I'm some kid who doesn't get anything. You're only three years older than me, Seth."

"You're my…" No, I can't even think it, let alone say it. I don't care what society or law say. I'll never seen her that way. I swallow before adding, "We're family, I'm trying to look out for you."

Bridget shoots out of her chair. It tips back and smacks the ground. "You're trying to control me! You're always trying to control me and tell me what's best for me and threatening me with my secrets to keep me down and–"

"I've never threatened, Bridget." At least, I haven't intended to. Is that how she sees it?

She puts up her hand. "Look, I don't think we should talk anymore. Okay? Unless it's family dinner."

I shake my head. My heart is being ripped in two. "What?"

"I don't want your commentary on my life or my choices. I don't want you to interfere. And if you do–"

"You'll what?" On the outside I need to keep my poise. Calm and collected. I need to have control over this situation.

I. Have. Control.

Bridget's mouth twists. "I don't know. I just don't want you to talk to me anymore, alright?" Her voice pitches high, warbling with tears.

Double fuck. I don't want to be the cause of her tears if there's no pleasure involved. "Bridget–"

She turns, hands over her face, and runs out of her room, up the stairs to her wing of the house.

I remain seated at the table, staring at all the half-eaten plates of food, the empty seats. Empty because of me and my inability to get a handle on my emotions.

My inability to let Bridget go.

How can I after ten years of pining?

I grab my fork in my fist and close my eyes, trying to level my breath.

Now she doesn't want me to talk to her because, in her eyes, I'm some sort of monster.

But I'm not a monster.

Bridget just doesn't understand.

She'll never understand.

If I'm cursed to want my stepsister the rest of my life, I want to at least be able to talk to her.

But I've fucked everything up by being too much. As fucking always.

Maybe I am a monster.