Derry groaned at the pathetic little joke, but some part of his gut tightened. Dancing around the truth with Gavin was always a losing strategy.
“I’m here because I’m bored.”
“Bored after being with three women?” Gavin sniffed again. “Except…” His eyes tightened to blue triangles, then widened as his older brother tilted his head, studying Derry. “You didn’t. Sleep with them, I mean.”
“I had my fun.” Derry couldn’t keep the gruff, defensive tone out of his voice, and Gavin picked up on it, his laughter overriding Derry’s single-shoulder shrug. Derry found an unopened bottle of whisky and slit the paper seal with his thumbnail, the hiss of the bottle as he unscrewed it so faint it was like a fairy’s whisper.
And then he guzzled enough Glenfiddich to cover any desperation that prowled in his cells.
“Jesus, Derry, you’re drinking that like it’s mineral water.”
“Might as well be,” he answered, wiping the back of his hand across his wet mouth.
Gavin crossed his arms over his broad chest and stared. “This is about a woman.”
Derry’s eyes flickered to the couch, then floated back to Gavin. “You could definitely say that.”
A tight sense of alarm filled Gavin’s face, giving him a sudden, menacing look. Derry’s inner warning system tickled his extremities, making the muscles vibrate as if he were about to shift. Danger, every fiber of his being called out.
Danger.
“I’ve said it more than once, so quit stalling. Spit it out.” Gavin’s words felt like grenades being cradled in his brother’s hands, unpinned and ready to be dropped. Perhaps he should have gone back to his loft. Visiting Gavin may have been a mistake.
“Spit what out?” The entire night’s activities, from early cocktails to the intoxicating kiss with Jess and so much more piled up inside him. Add in the rush of adrenaline that came from Gavin’s alarming tone change, and he was nothing but a live wire.
An intoxicated, increasingly frustrated, live wire.
“Are you in love with Lilah?”
Struck dumb, Derry gaped at his brother.
“Excuse me?” His deep laugh echoed through the quiet apartment, making Lilah stir. He shut down his reaction instantly, giving Gavin a very sober, sincere look. “God, no.”
Gavin’s shoulders relaxed. “Good.”
“Why in the hell would you think that?”
“You looked at her when you mentioned that your troubles involved a woman.” Gavin’s eyebrow arched. He looked exactly like their late father. Derry felt like an errant schoolboy being dressed down for a bad grade.
“Because she looks so much like—”
Damn.
Gavin frowned. “Just like…” His voice trailed off to a husky sound that faded into something less than words. He scrubbed his face with one palm, the skin from his hand against stubble making a swish skrit swish skrit sound that felt like a rat running laps around the inside of Derry’s skull.
And then his eyes lit up with understanding, going dark quickly.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Derry. Not Jess,” Gavin groaned, Lilah’s sister’s name invoked like it was a crime Derry had committed.
In essence, it was.
“Of course not.”
“Don’t lie.”
“I’m not—oh, bloody hell,” Derry spat.
“The only thing that’s bloody here is your face in two seconds if you don’t promise me you’ll stay the hell away from Jess,” Gavin said.
“Tell her to stay away from me! She kissed me under the mistletoe!”
“And insulted your manhood.”
“Which is why I have no interest in her, Gavin.”
“That’s exactly why you’re interested in Jess, Derry. Women who reject you become forbidden fruit. She might as well have hung a target on her back, with your cock the weapon of choice.”
Derry couldn’t even argue. Damn his brother for being right.
“I had an uncontrollable shift tonight,” Derry confessed under his breath.
Gavin’s face tightened as he twitched in surprise. “That’s not funny,” he said in a low voice. “Just because you know it happened to me when I met Lilah does not mean it’s acceptable fodder for jokes. Don’t you dare equate what I went through with your little dick dipping.”
As Derry opened his mouth to protest, a shuffling sound from behind the kitchen bar interrupted them.
“She’s not interested in you anyhow,” said a sleepy, feminine voice. Lilah’s blonde curls spilled over one shoulder as she sat up, rubbing the cheek that had rested against the pillow on the cushion.
Derry took her in, eyes combing over her as he pretended to drink more whisky from the bottle. She was magnificent. He had to give Gavin that. And yet Lilah did nothing for him.
She was a fabulous conversationalist, and a genuinely pleasant person to spend time with, but when he looked at her, he saw Gavin. Sister.
Shifter.
When he even thought about Jess, he felt his heart expand all the way to the root of his cock and up through the basal ganglia into all the important emotion centers in his brain.
Parts deactivated for so long he’d simply replaced them with sex. Lots of sex.
Too much sex.
Lilah’s words felt like daggers being jabbed into his ribs. “She’s… w-what?” Derry stammered. Stall, he told himself.
“We rode home together. I dropped her off at her apartment. She told me the kiss under the mistletoe had been a mistake. She shouldn’t have done it, but the pressure at the club made her think it was expected. She was being…” Lilah yawned, her neck stretching in the moonlight as if it were a piece of performance art. Creamy skin glowed in the night and Derry found himself transfixed as if watching a private performance by one of the world’s master artists. He ached to paint that neck.
“Nice.” Gavin finished Lilah’s sentence for her with a tone so mismatched Derry started slightly. “She was being nice.” His brother managed to make such a benevolent word sound like an insult.
“Nice girls don’t kiss like that,” Derry muttered. But the really naughty ones do.
“Jess doesn’t kiss anyone like that,” Lilah said earnestly. She scooted her shapely ass to one side as Gavin sat next to her, his arm wrapping about her shoulders, his lips planting a kiss on her temple.
A tiny bubble inside Derry’s chest popped, the feeling so light and feathery he might not have noticed it under any other circumstances.
But he did. And it reverberated like a gong. The want. The need. The pure desire for the kind of deep love Gavin and Lilah had found was one treasure no bank account could ever buy. No inheritance could provide it.
“She kissed me like that,” he finally ground out, his words almost an afterthought.
Gavin glared at him, the room spinning with an icy chill that made Derry realize, even in his emotional, boozy haze, that he was a third wheel.
“A formality,” Lilah said, smiling until dimples showed. “You were a formality.”
If Lilah had sucker punched him, she couldn’t have done more damage.
Gavin’s tight jaw and slightly tilted head carried the nonverbal stance of a threat.