An Illicit Pursuit by Liv Bennett Page A

satisfaction forming on my lips. Wouldn’t that upgrade the great
evening to perfection? “Nothing can stop me.” I stride around the
kitchen island, only to be stopped at the doorway.
    “Nikki, which pictures are those?” Adam
yells, standing in front of me to block my way out of the
kitchen.
    “Of you with braces and lots of acne,” Nikki
answers and Brendie laughs.
    I have to see them. “Let me go.” I push him
with my hands against his chest, but when he doesn’t budge. I try
to sneak under his arms. He gently holds my bare shoulders with
both hands to stop me. Working hard not to let his touch affect me,
I put on my deadly serious face and grab his forearms. “You know
what? I’ll just leave if you don’t let me see the pictures.”
    He inhales a long breath of defeat and throws
his head back, before releasing me. I head to the living room but
see Jack punching Adam in the shoulder from the corner of my eyes
and hear him whisper, “Man, get a room.”
    I’m not hundred percent sure I’ve heard it
right but Adam’s response is, “Very soon.”
    Dream on!
    I sit on the couch beside Nikki, who’s
holding the photo album, and Adam squeezes himself into the small
spot between me and the arm of the couch, yet manages to leave
enough space between us so we’re not touching. We may not have any
physical contact, still his scent is trailing over my arms,
brushing my belly, grabbing my breasts, licking my throat, and
massaging me between my legs. His allure multiplies tenfold with
the close distance, making me want to close that tiny but
significant space between us and to reach out directly for his
lips.
    I barely notice Jack sitting in a chair
beside Adam and across from Eleanor. For now, Adam’s erotic power
is so undeniable, I couldn’t care less about the possible love
connection between another couple.
    “Here, he was thirteen,” Nikki’s voice
distracts me enough to turn my attention to the album in her
lap.
    “No way.” I smirk at the innocent boy holding
both Nikki and Brendie on his back. In the next picture, the girls
are strangling him playfully on the green grass. In another one,
the three of them are playing ball in the swimming pool. The more
pictures we go through in the thick album, the clearer it becomes
to me that Adam and the twins spent an awful lot of time together,
doing all sorts of things kids love to do. And one picture where
the maybe-eight-year-old Adam is feeding the toddler twins has me
dropping my jaw. “Looks like you three love to hang out together,”
I point out as I turn the page and find yet another picture of the
three musketeers alone, as if they didn’t have another member in
their family. Apparently, Adam isn’t some obtrusive, restrictive
older brother I imagined him to be but an attentive and loving
care-taker.
    “We used to,” Nikki corrects me. “Then, he
turned into an asshole.”
    Brendie, who’s been silently sitting on the
other side of Nikki bursts into a loud laugh.
    I glance at Adam to see what he’s got to say
and see him rolling his eyes. “Hey, no cursing. Ungrateful brats. I
had to feed you breakfast, lunch, and dinner until you turned six
because you didn’t want to be fed by anyone else. Not to forget the
some five thousand diapers I had been forced to change.”
    “I can attest to that.” Eleanor smirks. “Are
we going to waste the evening going through some old pictures and
talking about diapers? If you want that, then I’m off to my
room.”
    “Let’s watch a movie,” Jack says, looking
toward Eleanor. “I brought some DVDs.” He gets up to bring a
plastic bag with DVDs and leaves them at the small table beside
Eleanor. “You can pick whichever you want.”
    Eleanor browses through the DVDs and quickly
chooses an animated movie. The twins, who usually don’t shy away
from voicing their opinions about everything, don’t make any
comment this time about why Eleanor gets to choose.
    As the oven alarm goes off, Adam rises to