One Night With The Wrong Brother

"Arthur?"

The name scraped against Katherine's dry throat. It was a whisper, fragile and hopeful, born from the haze of a hangover that felt like a hammer inside her skull. Her vision was swimming, the edges of the room blurring into dark, indistinct shapes. The drink from last night-or whatever had been slipped into it-still clouded her mind with a heavy, narcotic fog.

The sunlight slicing through the gaps in the heavy curtains was too bright. It burned. But not as much as the sudden, freezing stillness of the man standing by the window.

He was buttoning his cuff. His back was to her. Broad shoulders, the taper of a waist she had clung to only hours ago. The skin of his back was tanned, smooth, and familiar. Or so she desperately wanted to believe. Her brain, desperate for the fairy tale, automatically filled in the blanks with the gentle warmth of the man she had been longing for.

At the sound of the name, his hands stopped. He didn't turn around immediately. The silence in the room stretched, heavy and suffocating, swallowing the sound of the distant Hamptons surf.

Katherine pulled the silk sheet up to her chin. "Last night..." she murmured, lost in a haze of manufactured happiness. "I knew you'd come back for me."

He turned.

Katherine blinked hard, trying to force her eyes to focus. The face was blurry, but the silhouette was so familiar. Her mind instantly overlaid Arthur's kind smile onto the shadowy features.

But then the fog parted just enough.

The breath left Katherine's lungs in a sharp, painful gasp.

It wasn't Arthur.

The jaw was harder. The eyes were darker, devoid of the gentle warmth she had fallen in love with over the summer. There was no kindness in the set of his mouth, only a cruel, twisting line of disdain.

Agustus Riddle.

Arthur's younger brother.

The room spun. The memories of the previous night-the yacht party, the endless champagne, the fireworks, the warm body she had stumbled into in the dark-crashed into the reality of the morning. She had whispered confessions of love. She had cried in his arms. She had given him everything she had been saving for Arthur.

"Gus?" Her voice trembled, breaking on the single syllable. "I thought... I thought last night..."

Gus stared at her. His eyes were like chips of ice. He didn't look like a man who had just spent the night with a woman. He looked like a man looking at a stain on his expensive carpet.

"You thought what?" His voice was low, rough with sleep but sharp with mockery. He walked toward the bed, his steps deliberate and predatory.

Katherine shrank back against the headboard. "I... I felt..."

"You felt?" Gus cut her off. He stopped at the edge of the bed, his shadow falling over her, blocking out the sun. "You mean you felt the alcohol? Or did you feel the opportunity to get one step closer to the real prize?"