Badd Luck Read online

  "Actually, it would be more accurate to say fuckin' T," I said with a coy grin.

  "Fuckin' T, then." Corin managed to make that simple phrase into an innuendo, and my lungs stopped working and my brain fizzled.

  Aerie glanced at me, and then at Corin's image on the screen, and then at Canaan. "Um. Our mom is calling us," she said abruptly. "We have to go."

  I frowned at her. "What are you talking about?"

  She gave me a meaningful glare. "We should go." She widened her eyes at me. "Now."

  I glared back at her, mocking her wide-eyed meaningful grimace, and then turned back to the laptop screen. "Aerie is just embarrassed. Don't mind her."

  Aerie literally growled, then. "TATE!" She gave a fake sweet smile to the boys. "We really do have to go. So...bye!" And then she reached for the mouse, intending to end the call.

  I snagged her wrist before she could click the "end call" button, and we wrestled for control of the mouse. I caught a glimpse of Corin on the screen, covering his mouth with one hand, trying to shield an amused grin.

  "Sorry about this," I said, while still fighting my sister. "She's just easily embarrassed."

  "And you're just a major bitch!" Aerie howled.

  And then, taking me by surprise, she twisted, and shoved me sideways, knocking me off the couch. I hit the carpet, rolled to my feet, and lunged for Aerie, tackling her before she could end the call yet again.

  When I tackled Aerie on the couch, my shirt flew up, baring my butt, and then when Aerie rolled to get a better position, she bared her assets as well, in full view of the screen. Even more revealingly, we both realized this at the same time, and in our hurry to sit back down and cover ourselves, we each experienced a further wardrobe malfunction--Aerie in the form of one tit flying out the side of her tank top, and me in the form of a tit flopping out over the top of my scoop-neck T-shirt.

  Corin and Canaan were trying, unsuccessfully, to act like they hadn't been unabashedly staring.

  "Um." I laughed nervously. "Sorry about that."

  "I'm not," Corin said.

  Aerie was messing with her tank top and then, with a quick glance at me, she lunged at the laptop, grabbed it, and leaped over the back of the couch with it.

  "BYE, BOYS!" she said, dodging my attempts to catch her. "See you soon!"

  And then she ended the Skype call, closed the laptop, and set it down, turning to face me. "That was totally your fault!"

  "What was?" I asked, faking innocence.

  "Canaan saw my boob!" she yelled.

  "And Corin saw mine," I answered with a grin. "So what? And anyway, you were the one who suggested we call them."

  "I thought maybe we might flirt a little, not show them our tits on Skype!"

  I shrugged. "I don't think they minded."

  "Yeah, well, I did." She was genuinely upset, I realized.

  "Why?"

  "Because--because..." she trailed off, turning away. "It's Canaan and Corin! We've known them our entire lives. We grew up with the Badd family and we were like little sisters to all those boys. Cane and Cor were the two people who always understood us best out of anyone in the whole world. Now things feel different. I wanted to ease into things with them." She resumed her seat on the couch.

  I poured us each another glass of wine and handed one to her, sitting beside her. "Since when do we ease into anything?"

  "Since...since I feel like this could maybe lead to something," she said, after taking a long sip of her wine, "not just a quick tryst with a sexy local after a shoot."

  I eyed her in surprise. "What do you mean lead to something?"

  She shrugged, staring at me over the rim of her wineglass. "I dunno. I just have a weird feeling about this whole thing."

  "That's called lust," I said.

  Aerie rolled her eyes at me. "Don't be dumb. You can't go from being best friends with someone to having feelings of lust in five minutes."

  "You saw the twins," I said, gesturing at my torso with a fierce grimace, flexing my muscles dramatically. "They're jacked, stacked, and sexy as fuck. I almost had a spontaneous orgasm just looking at them."

  "Well, no shit. But that's not the weird feeling I'm talking about."

  "Then what is it? Because I'm confused."

  She sighed. "I don't know, Tate. If I did, I wouldn't call it a weird feeling."

  "He saw your tit, and now you're all horny because you want him to suck on it."

  "Which one are you talking about?" she asked.

  I frowned. "That's a really good question." I giggled, leaning into her. "I notice you're not denying that you wouldn't mind having one of the Badd twins suck on your titties, though."

  "You're so inappropriate, Tate. Jesus." She looked away, feigning an air of disinterest. "But...I wouldn't mind, no."

  "You wouldn't mind."

  "No, I wouldn't mind."

  I waggled an eyebrow at her. "What else wouldn't you mind?"

  She shrugged, trying to keep up the pretense of disinterest. And then she broke, snickering as she leaned against me. "I wouldn't mind being the one doing the sucking, that's what."

  I burst out in loud laughter. "Aerie!"

  "What? You started it."

  I laughed. "Yeah, well, you're taking it to a whole new level of inappropriate."

  "Why's it inappropriate, though?"

  "You're the one who called it inappropriate in the first place!"

  Aerie waved me off. "You're impossible."

  "This is a weird conversation."

  She poured more wine. "Can we finish getting drunk? I don't want to talk about Cane and Cor anymore. Besides, we've got an early flight in the morning."

  "Oh, stop lying. You want to do a lot more than talk about them."

  She shoved my glass to my lips and tilted it up, forcing me to take a sip or risk spilling it. "Let it go, Tate. Just sit on it for a minute, okay?"

  "I'm gonna sit on Corin's face, is what I'm gonna sit on."

  "TATE!" Aerie said, sputtering, wine dripping down her chin.

  "What? You saw how he was looking at me."

  "Yeah, I also noticed Canaan taking a nice long gander."

  "At you or at me?"

  "Both."

  I sighed. "This is getting complicated."

  Aerie laughed, then. "T, honey, it hasn't even started getting complicated. That was just a Skype call. Wait 'til all four of us are in one place again."

  "Holy shit." I sank down in the chair, sucking down wine like it was going out of style, as I tried to imagine being face to face with the twins again after so long, especially now that it had been established that there was serious chemistry between us. Chemistry that had never been there before.

  "Yeah, holy shit is right." Aerie patted me on the top of the head. "I have a feeling none of us have any idea what we're getting ourselves into."

  "Now I have a weird feeling," I said.

  2

  Corin

  * * *

  "Holy shit."

  I turned to Canaan, who was leaning back on the couch, scrubbing his face with his hands. "Did that just happen?"

  He nodded, acting shell-shocked. "I think it did."

  "Just to clarify exactly what just happened, Tate and Aerie Skyped us and said they were moving back to Ketchikan...and they flirted with us."

  "Flirted isn't quite the word," Canaan said. "That was...something else. I'm not sure if they did that wrestling thing on purpose or not."

  "They were both mostly naked."

  "Just shirts and panties."

  "And then they had serious wardrobe malfunctions."

  "There was full-on tit, right out in the open."

  "Very, very, very nice tit, I must say."

  Canaan glanced at me. "The nicest."

  "Big and round and juicy."

  "Delectable."

  "Delicious."

  Canaan sighed. "Now I'm hungry and horny."

  "Did you see their asses, though?" I palmed my face, groaning.
/>
  "Tight as a drum."

  "But not too small."

  "Nor too big."

  I frowned at him. "Not sure that's a thing."

  "Is that a challenge?" Canaan said, smirking at me.

  "NO!" I shouted, knowing he'd make it a mission to find a picture of the biggest ass he could, just to prove a point.

  He laughed. "Now I'm curious."

  "Yeah, me too. Now I need to see both tits at once."

  "Both of both, or both of one?"

  I blinked. "Huh?"

  "Both tits of both twins, or both tits of one twin?"

  I shook my head. "I have no idea how to even answer that."

  "I have a feeling that question is going to be answered, though," Canaan said. "And soon."

  I nodded. "Yeah, I think you're right. There was very open interest from both of them."

  "That's an understatement." Canaan eyed me, then. "I have a question."

  "Okay."

  "Was it me, or were they sexier than they've ever been? And I'm not talking about the wardrobe malfunction, I'm talking in general."

  "They were definitely sexier than ever," I said. "I mean, they've always been hot, but...damn."

  "But I mean, what if they were always that hot and we just...didn't notice, or didn't see them that way?"

  I frowned, thinking. "Um. I don't know. I mean, I always noticed how hot they were, but I never thought of them that way. They were more like friends when we all lived here in Ketchikan." I hesitated. "But I did have a wet dream about them, once."

  Canaan stared at me. "You did?"

  I nodded. "I did. Remember when we all went swimming, right before they moved to New York? They were wearing those bikinis and I fought a hard-on all day, that day. It was a weird boner then, because it seemed weird to be sexually attracted to my best friends. But I was. Then, that night, I had this crazy vivid dream about them."

  "What was the dream?" Canaan asked. "Do you remember?"

  I laughed. "How could I forget? Hottest dream of my life. I dreamed we were at the beach again, but instead of the one right here, it was, like, far away. Just this feeling of...privacy, or isolation. We were alone, is what I remember feeling. And you and I were on the beach, and the girls were in the water. They both came up out of the water at the same time, and it was like a scene out of a porno, they were soaking wet and the water was sluicing down their tits and thighs and everything, and they walked right up to us, all sexy and looking at us like they wanted us. I don't remember who did it first, but...one of them reached up and untied the top of her bathing suit, and the other did too, like at the same time, and they took their tops off." I let out a sigh. "So fucking hot. And then it was...it was Tate in front of me, just me and her, like suddenly, you know? Just her, topless."

  Canaan shifted uncomfortably. "Then what?"

  "Then I woke up, right as I was reaching out to touch her."

  "Shit, that must've been frustrating as fuck."

  I groaned. "You have no idea. I woke up hard as a fuckin' rock."

  He eyed me. "What'd you do?"

  I laughed awkwardly and reached up to rub the back of my neck, looking away. "I went into the bathroom and I yanked one out."

  "To a dream of the girls?"

  I nodded. "I tried my damnedest to think of anyone else, but I couldn't. I kept seeing them, the twins, shrugging out of their bikini tops. Over and over and over, and I felt so fucking weird about it, because they were our best friends from the time we were babies, but we'd spent the day with them in those bikinis and I just..." I sighed. "That's why I never told you about that dream, because I felt oddly guilty about jerking off to a dream of Tate and Aerie. Especially that last part, with Tate? That image from the dream is still seared into my head."

  Canaan laughed. "In that case, I have a confession too."

  I stared at him. "You had the same dream?"

  He laughed again and shook his head. "Not...exactly. We were over at their mom's house once; I think it was that same summer before they moved. We'd just gone to the mall and we were going to be going to a movie next. The girls went to change, and I had to pee. You were in the bathroom down by their kitchen, so I went upstairs, thinking I'd use the one up by their bedroom. My phone rang right then, and I got distracted. You know how they always kept all the doors closed, right? Well I went to see who was calling and accidentally opened the wrong door. I opened their bedroom door by mistake, and ended up catching Aerie in nothing but her panties. Like, she was just standing there, naked, about to step into a dress. She just stared at me, and I stared at her, and there was this...moment, I guess. I don't know. I've thought about that moment almost every day since. Not because I saw her all but naked, and not just for like a split second. It was a good full thirty seconds that we stared at each other. It was incredible, but...it was the tension in the air in the moment. The way she looked at me, like...I've always wondered what she would have done if I'd gone in. But then Tate came out of their walk-in closet saying something, and I turned around and left."

  "Why didn't you say anything to me about this?" I asked.

  He shook his head. "It felt weird. Like, I thought I was imagining the way she'd looked at me, and I didn't want to read anything into it. I kind of thought I was going crazy. Like, no way they think about us that way, no way Aerie thinks about me that way. I was always closer to Tate anyway, which is what made it that much weirder." He glanced at me with a sheepish grin. "I'm not gonna lie, though--those thirty seconds I spent staring at Aerie wearing nothing but a black thong? Best thirty seconds of my life."

  I laughed. "Canaan, did you masturbate in Rachel Kingsley's bathroom?"

  He laughed, nodding. "I was sixteen, dude--if you'd just seen what I saw, you would've too."

  "Wow, man. We're kind of messed up."

  "No kidding."

  We stared at each other for a long moment, and then I shook my head. "And now they're moving here," I said.

  "And unless we're totally crazy, they're interested in us."

  A long pause then, each of us lost in our own thoughts and memories. Eventually, Canaan glanced at me. "So...how are we going to handle this, when they show up?"

  I shook my head. "I have absolutely no idea."

  "Yeah, me either."

  Another long silence.

  "I have a question," I said.

  Canaan quirked an eyebrow at me. "Okay?"

  "You think Tate and Aerie are possibly interested in taking our relationships to a new level?"

  "Honestly, I have no idea, but why call us while they were half-drunk, just to tell us they're moving back."

  I let out a breath. "Tate was acting pretty obvious. I mean, 'fuckin' T'?" I laughed. "That was all but an invitation, if you ask me."

  "Can I make a suggestion, though?" Canaan said.

  "Sure," I answered, "don't mean I'm gonna listen, but you can try."

  "Let's not rush this, when they get here. Let's lead in slow, take time to read them, make sure they're into us like we're thinking, before we go too crazy."

  I rolled my eyes. "What do you think I'm gonna do, tackle her the second I see her and try to fuck her right then and there?"

  "You've done it before."

  I laughed, punching his arm. "That was different. That was Rania, who was a self-proclaimed ho. She sent me a pic of her tits from the airplane bathroom, asking if I wanted to join her. Pretty damn straightforward."

  "Look, bro, this could be a lot of fun...but it's serious, too. We don't want to act like a couple of horny teenagers. While it might not look like it, we're supposed to be grown-ass men and we need to remember that."

  "It's okay, Princess, I'm with you. But I will say one thing."

  "What's that?"

  "Thems just might be into us," I said.

  "Yessir, they do seem to be, Brother Corin," he agreed.

  "Which means, if we're lucky, we just might be seeing more of those fine-ass titties."

  "A whole lot more."
r />   I held up my hand. "High five for seeing the Kingsley girls' tits!" I snorted. "We're major dorks, you know that, right?"

  He playfully clapped his hand over my mouth. "Hush, you idiot! We have a reputation as rock stars to uphold! Don't blow our cover!"

  I laughed as I knocked his hand away, and then he slapped at me, which then devolved into to kicking and punching, which led to wrestling, and that was how Brock and Claire found us: shirtless and wrestling on the floor of the den.

  I rolled away from Canaan, and caught up against Claire's legs, and she stared down at me. "I don't know whether to be turned on or weirded out by you two right now," she said.

  Brock, behind her, snorted derisively. "Turned on? By these punk-ass dweebs? Hardly."

  She winked down at me. "I dunno, Brock. They're pretty sexy."

  Brock growled, grabbing at her waist. "I'll show you sexy, woman."

  She jerked away and ran, letting him catch her just as she reached their bedroom door.

  "Ha ha." He twisted the doorknob and they fell backward into the bedroom. "Start getting naked, woman, before I rip the clothes off you."

  "Where's the fun in doing it myself?" Claire asked, giggling. "I like it when you rip the clothes off me. That way, I get to go buy more."

  I missed Brock's response, because I was busy hauling Canaan toward the stairs. "AND THAT'S OUR CUE!" I shouted, to cover the noises now coming from the bedroom.

  Canaan followed me down the stairs. "Do they have to be so damn loud?" he complained.

  "I think Brock's made it his life's goal to prove exactly how loud he can be during sex," I said.

  "Him? I'm talking about her. Jesus. The woman shrieks like a damn banshee."

  I laughed. "I don't mind that as much as him going 'UUUGH-UGH-UGH-UGH-UGH-UUUUGHH!--UH!--UGHHH!'"

  With that we entered our little home studio downstairs.

  We had a pretty nice setup, if I do say so myself. We had a small but quality mixing board, a soundproof, professional-grade recording booth for tracking individual instruments, top-of-the-line mics and headphones, plus a practice space jam-packed with our amps, racks of electric and acoustic guitars, a couple cajones, a full drum set, another guitar stand with a mandolin, ukulele, banjo, dobro, and my twelve-string acoustic. We're both multi-instrumentalists, and we like variety. We had broken our contract with our label, which meant we were, once again, unsigned indie musicians. We'd toyed with the idea of working on getting our own label up and running, but so far hadn't done anything with the idea besides talk about it.

  "I think it's time to write a song that is a thinly disguised homage to Tate and Aerie," I said.