Aunt Only by Marriage

1. Prologue: Blue Cover, Monday Not Yet

The blue cover had already taken the heat of her knees. Diane felt it every time Grant’s hands reset her hips, a drag of cotton under skin that had gone slick, the nap of the bedspread rough where her shins rubbed. Lace hung off her arms and did nothing. Her breasts swung with the next push, heavy, the tips tight from Nate’s mouth earlier and from nothing gentle since. Cole was under her. She had sunk onto him because he had pulled, both hands on the soft give of her waist, keeping her there as if place were a thing a man could still own.

Grant’s cock filled her ass in a slow, thick claim. Spit and the first stubborn yield had given way to a deeper fit, each stroke opening her a fraction more. The burn sat low and bright. When he drew back she felt the drag, the wet sound of it, then the blunt return that shoved her forward onto Cole. Cole met that shove. His cock curved up into her cunt, buried, the head nudging where she was already swollen. Two rhythms, not one. Grant patient and heavy. Cole shorter, angry, trying to fuck a title out of the room before it could be said.

Nate stood at the side of the bed, one knee on the mattress, cock glistening on her tongue. His hand stayed in her hair, not yanking, just holding the angle so she could not turn her face into the pillow and disappear. Salt. The faint catch of his breath when she swallowed around him. He watched Grant’s hand spread over her ass more than he watched her mouth.

Sweat gathered under her breasts and along the dip of her spine. The room smelled of skin, of the wine none of them had finished, of her own wetness where it slicked Cole’s stomach every time she rocked. A pipe knocked in the wall. Somewhere below, the refrigerator kicked on. Ordinary house. Her heel had come off; the other ankle strap still bit.

Grant leaned over her back. His belly rested against her, warm, the hair at his groin scratching the cleft of her ass each time he seated himself. His mouth found the slope of her shoulder.

“Aunt Diane.”

The word landed where the title had always lived, in the place that was supposed to make refusal cheap. It did not make anything cheap now. Her cunt clenched around Cole before she could stop it. Cole swore, hips jerking, both palms sliding up to cup the weight of her breasts as if he could answer with his hands. Nate’s fingers tightened in her hair. She moaned around him, the sound wet and ashamed and wanting, and hated that the name still knew where to go.

Grant did not repeat it. He only held her there, deep, while Cole thrust up into the grip of her and Nate’s cock rested heavy on her tongue, all three of them listening to a word that had already done its work. Her thighs shook. Nobody finished. The blue cover took another inch of her knees, and the next breath snagged on the title still warm against her skin.

1. Chapter 1: Sheets Counted Twice

Diane had the guest sheets in her arms when Russell’s text lit the counter. Stay was already decided. The apartment his brother had left the three of them was still taped by the clerk, the motel had eaten what cash they were willing to spend, and the house, he wrote, was empty enough. He would be late. Papers. She set the phone face down and carried the linen up anyway, heels ticking on the wood, the black housedress sticking faintly at the small of her back where the afternoon heat had found her.

The box room took the oldest set. She shook the top sheet out and watched it settle, then did it again because a crease looked like carelessness and carelessness would read, later, as something else. Pillow. Spare blanket at the foot. In the bathroom she hung three towels that did not match and lined the soap up with the tile. Her reflection in the cabinet mirror was the one the notary had seen that afternoon: dark hair pinned badly, mouth set, the dress open enough at the throat that the lace edge of her bra showed when she leaned. She closed one more button. It did not change the weight of her breasts under the cloth, or the way the heels made her stand as if she were still conducting an errand instead of opening her husband’s house to his brother’s sons.

They were not boys. Twenty-four, twenty-six, twenty-eight. She had married Russell after they were already out of school, and the title had stuck because dinners were easier with a word than with an explanation. She had corrected it once. The correction had not survived the next casserole.

Tires on the drive. A door. Another. She met them in the hall with the last towel still over her forearm, stupid, domestic, a prop.

Cole came first. He kissed her cheek the way he had since the wedding, careful, a second too long, stubble catching. “Aunt Diane.” The word sat in the hall with the bags. He smelled of the car and of the cheap soap the motel put in paper. His hand hovered at her elbow and did not land.

Nate set his duffel down and looked at the stairs as if the house had shrunk around them. He took the towel off her arm without asking, thumb grazing the inside of her wrist, then nodded at the steps. “We can put these up.”

“Box room’s made. Sofa’s if someone wants the ...