Audition - Skye Warren, Amelia Wilde Page 0,35

house this way let her hide it for longer. She never seems to hesitate. Even now she throws her hands up and laughs. “Why not let me make the tea? You’re the one with places to go and the weight of the world on your shoulders, child.”

Bethany shrugs off that metaphorical weight with a toss of her head. “I’m light as a bird.”

A wizened hand drops onto her shoulder. “For a person so light, you’re holding tight to that teapot. Is it keeping you on the ground?”

Bethany stops filling it in the sink and holds it daintily by her fingertips, raising her left hand to give the movement a playful flourish. “Better?” Her teasing is an arrow through the heart. A shock. A lightning bolt. Her laugh is a familiar soprano that fits in with the melody of this house. With her grandmother’s low, echoing rumble of pleasure. It’s so fucking domestic I could die.

This is what she’d be like as a wife. As a mother.

My throat constricts.

Someone else’s wife.

I leave her in the kitchen and wander through the house, to the very back. This space started out as a porch. Somewhere along the life of the house it became a back room, closed in with panes of glass. The original wooden posts have become part of the wall. The floor feels less substantial under my feet. It’s a step down from the rest of the house. But the floor isn’t what captures my attention. The swing does.

It’s a rickety, falling-down jumble of what used to be called play equipment. The swing still hangs from its chains. Someone as featherlight as Bethany might be able to sit on it still, but it would be a risk. The thing looks like the slightest breeze could bring it down. I used to plant my feet next to it and take aim at Bethany’s window. A far fucking cry from taking aim at a shadow overseas, but the same adrenaline rush. Her silhouette started out the same way every other enemy’s did. A barely visible outline against pitch darkness. Damn, did she become something different in the light. My dick goes hard at the memory of her muscles working in the climb. In the dance. I know what you need, Josh.

Her voice wraps around me like a rope and pulls me back to the kitchen. The teapot whistles on the stove. Bethany’s set out three mismatched mugs on the countertop. She bows her head, a slight smile on her face. “—my own choreography.” Mamere watches with rapt attention. It should be some Cinderella shit—the ever-suffering servant laying the teabags over the edges of the mugs. Balancing the strings just so. But I’m struck again, like a two-by-four to the back of the head, by the deep knowledge that she could be on her knees at the foot of my bed, naked and panting and begging, and still be a queen.

I’m one filthy motherfucker.

And for the next several moments, while Bethany goes on about studio space and a hundred other hopeful plans for the future that are like knives thrown into the hidden parts of me, I remain the filthiest motherfucker in this old house.

A knock at the door.

Bethany and her mamere lift their heads like a pair of birds, but it’s me who goes to answer it. Automatically. Like this is my house.

“Why would you want to do that?” Mamere says with a faint scoff. “It’s as good as taking your clothes off for all those men.”

A beat of silence. “I would have the final say.” Bethany’s voice is fierce but still gentle. Love suffuses every word. Forgiveness, even though each syllable is also ringed with pain. “Nobody would be telling me what to do. I would be in charge of the piece. I only need one chance to prove it.”

I’m under no illusion that I could belong here. I don’t entertain that ridiculous fantasy for a second. A man like me, part of something like this? Never.

Maybe I was entertaining that daydream, because something falls to the floor and shatters when I reach the door. Or perhaps that was only my complacency. Every nerve jumps into action. Why didn’t I see this coming? Did I let her distract me? I fucking did. I was so busy watching her ass sway in her black leggings and imagining pulling them off with my teeth to take in the necessary details. Like the photos of Caleb Lewis that grace the walls in the entryway. Mamere

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