1
Maddox
The last person leaves the meeting room, except for me, Axel, and Declan. As soon as the door clicks shut, Axel grins wickedly at me before flicking a rubber band across the conference table, hitting me directly in the forehead.
“Ow,” I wince grumpily, rubbing where the rubber band snapped against my face. “Dick! You’d better hope that doesn’t leave a mark.”
“I hope it does,” Axel jokes, “Then people around here will be able to tell us apart, at least until it fades.”
“Axel, chill,” admonishes Declan, still typing notes on his laptop. He glances up briefly to give my face a cursory glance. “You’re good,” he says to me with a nod, meaning there’s no red mark left behind from my brother’s prank. Axel is the younger twin (by two whole minutes, which I’ll never let him forget), and it shows. Normally we get along well; it’s not like we could work together if we didn’t. But I’m not in the mood for his pranks today.
“Relax, my dudes. It’s a beautiful Friday afternoon, we’re all done with meetings and bullshit for the day. So, what are we getting into tonight?” Axel asks, wiggling his eyebrows and rubbing his palms together suggestively.
As I stare at his face, I muse over our physical differences, all of which are brought on by our personality differences. We’re identical twins, and our hair and clothes are enough alike that the employees at our marketing and sales firm have a tough time distinguishing us. Having spent my whole life looking at both of us, though, it’s shocking to me that others can’t see the differences I see.
We share the same longish, wavy brown hair, but I always wear mine down and Axel likes to pull his back in a “man bun.” That stupid little thing looks like a hamster sleeping on his neck, which I tell him all the time, unless I’m trying to sneak up behind him and pull out the hair tie, or once I even cut it off as a joke. He didn’t take that very well.
And I might be imagining it, but I think that, at twenty-five, I already have a more worn, older-looking face than Axel. Even though we’ve had the same life experiences and tough times, he’s better at taking things in stride. He’s also never been in love. I can thank my ex, Jasmine, for some of the changes on my face. More laugh lines, maybe. And more bags around my eyes from crying and sleepless nights after we broke up. Well, after she dumped me, to be more accurate.
“I don’t know, I think we should really keep working on this account,” mumbles Declan, still not taking his eyes off the screen in front of him. Declan is easily the hardest-working of the three of us, even though we are all cofounders and make the same amount of money. I guess if you wanted to classify the three of us, you could say Declan is the serious, reliable one, Axel is the carefree, goofy one, and I…well, I don’t know. Maybe I’m the broody, creative one. Or maybe that’s just how I’d like to think of myself. Axel would probably say I’m the whiny, bossy one.
“Work? On a Friday night? I don’t think so,” grins Axel, slamming down the top of the laptop and catching Declan’s fingers in the process.
“Hey!” Declan protests.
“It’s been a long week, and someone’s got to make sure we have a little fun around here,” said Axel, standing up from his seat and crossing the room to the little snack bar in the corner. We have a table of food laid out for the meeting earlier, most of which is still untouched. There’s also a mini fridge, which is mostly full of water, juices, and seltzers, but also holds a six-pack of beer. Axel pulls out three bottles and uses his belt buckle to crack them open. I swear, even though we graduated from college three years ago, he still acts like he’s a teenager in a frat house sometimes.
Despite his earlier protests, Declan accepts the beer without comment and takes a deep swig. I sigh and do the same.
“So, what are you thinking for tonight? Karaoke? The casino? Strip club?” I ask dully, already bored by the prospects. The three of us have gone out drinking together countless times over the years, and we used to go out every single Friday and Saturday night after the company started making money. But for the last year, I was dating Jasmine, and boys’ nights dropped a little lower on the list of priorities. I mean, why go out with the guys and pay for a bunch of drinks for girls who may or may not go home with you, when you’ve got a hot girlfriend at home who will almost definitely have sex with you?
And the sex with Jasmine was good. We knew what each other liked, what turned each other on, where to touch, what to say. I’ll admit I was kind of a player in the past, before Jasmine, so I never really had the experience of having sex with the same person over and over for months until dating her. I learned there’s a huge difference between one-night-stand sex and long-term-relationship sex. Yeah, you kind of learn what to expect, but after a while, there’s no awkward fumbling, no worrying about what the other person thinks of your body, and there’s a real, emotional connection when you have sex. I miss that connection most of all.
“Nah, I’ve got a better idea,” Axel hints, waiting for one of us to take the bait. I don’t feel like playing his game, so I drink my beer in silence and wait for someone else to talk.
“Okay, what?” asks Declan finally, looking about as intrigued as I am, meaning not at all.
“Remember that place we went to about a month ago?” says Axel, suddenly coy.
“That BDSM place?” asks Declan sharply, setting his beer bottle down on the table a little too hard.
That catches my attention.
“Yeah,” says Axel nonchalantly. I can tell he’s not as blithe as he seems, though, because he’s peeling the label of his beer bottle and avoiding eye contact now. “Why not?”
My eyes glaze over as scenes from the sex club flash through my brain. The rows of whips hanging on dark walls. The shrieks of pleasure mixed with pain. The metal chains biting into bare flesh. I can still smell the place in my mind: a mix of sweat, leather, perfume, and something else I couldn’t quite name. The memory is almost as intoxicating as the actual experience was. I shiver involuntarily, feeling both frightened and turned on at the same time.
“Hello? Earth to Maddox?” Axel grins, waving his hands around to get my attention. “I see that look. I know what you’re thinking,” he teases.
“I’m not thinking anything,” I lie, furrowing my brow and frowning. It can be a real pain in the ass having a twin sometimes, especially one you spend so much time with. It’s like having a mirror and a mind reader around all the time.
“Suuuure,” he agrees sarcastically. “So, you’re going to try and tell me you haven’t been back there since we went together?”
I can honestly say I haven’t, although the thought has crossed my mind more than once. Ever since that night, I can’t get some of the images out of my head… And for the most part, I like it. I would never want to try some of the stuff I saw going on there, but some of it has me intrigued.
Jasmine would never go for that kind of thing. First of all, she would never, ever set foot in a sex club. I never asked, but I knew her well enough not to. Sex with Jasmine was never boring, but it was maybe a little vanilla.