Doubled Read online

  Doubled

  Charlotte Stein

  Bobbi has been friends with the Hoffman twins for one long, glorious year. They’re sweet, funny and kind, but there’s a problem…they’re also hotness personified. Times two. And when they lure her into a kinky little game involving a blindfold and some rather unexpected fondling, she finds them much harder to resist than she’d imagined.

  It seems they want to be something other than just good friends. They want a hot, steamy ménage, and all Bobbi has to do is decide if she’s up to the challenge. One big, gorgeous guy is enough for her.

  Two might be more than she can handle…

  Ellora’s Cave Publishing

  www.ellorascave.com

  Doubled

  ISBN 9781419937842

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Doubled Copyright © 2012 Charlotte Stein

  Edited by Grace Bradley

  Cover design by Caitlin Fry

  Photography: Raisa Kanareva; Luka/Shutterstock.com

  Electronic book publication January 2012

  The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

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  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  The publisher and author(s) acknowledge the trademark status and trademark ownership of all trademarks, service marks and word marks mentioned in this book.

  The publisher does not have any control over, and does not assume any responsibility for, author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  Doubled

  Charlotte Stein

  Dedication

  For my editor, Gracie, who puts up with my total scatter brain.

  Chapter One

  “Could you pass me the chips, Seb?”

  She said the words without looking up, for extra impact. Just a little polite comment, of the kind people said to each other all the time. But that was enough to make him throw his cards down in a huff, and shortly afterward Tobias cut in with a half-laughing, “How does she always know?”

  Because she did, of course. She’d known the second they sauntered back into the room, hairstyles switched—Sebastian with the side-parting instead of Tobias, Tobias with his hair all jauntily shoved forward—and clothes exchanged. Did they really think they were going to fool her that easily?

  She always knew, despite the fact that Tobias and Sebastian Hoffman were identical right down to the last eyebrow hair.

  “Bobbi, how do you always know?”

  She dared to look up then, and sure enough—Sebastian appeared infuriated. He’d crossed his arms over his big chest and shoved himself back in his chair, and there was actually something like an expression on his usually so-still and stoic face.

  It made her want to laugh, but that would only enrage him further. God, how he hated to lose! She’d already snookered him on three poker hands that night and now this. Any second he was going to get her down on the floor and demand she match him push-up for push-up.

  Which sucked, because she knew for a fact he could drill out over a hundred, easy. She’d be lucky to get to ten.

  “I just do. I don’t know!”

  She tried shrugging, but Seb wasn’t having any of it.

  “You can’t just know. There isn’t another person alive who gets it right every time—not even our own mother. So come on, spill. How did we give ourselves away?”

  The cards were forgotten. Tobias had even turned his over, revealing the two pair he’d had before they’d gotten into this. She threw her hand in too—not enough to beat Tobe, not by a long shot—but neither of them noticed. This was the new game now.

  And as usual, it was called “figuring out Bobbi”. It had practically become a national pastime, in the great land of Hoffmania—though she couldn’t for the life in her figure out why. A year, and she still didn’t fully understand why they wanted to hang out with her, or play poker with her, or get her to come watch them beat the shit out of everyone on the college swim team.

  There wasn’t a girl at Brier who didn’t want to watch them beat the shit out of everyone on the swim team. Girls practically swarmed over the pair like insane, lust-choked ants.

  And yet they chose to hang out with her, to the extent that people had started calling them the triplets. Of course, she suspected the same people wanted to call them worse. Like, say, The Human Centipede. But Sebastian and Tobias Hoffman totaled twelve foot ten and four hundred and fifty pounds between them. If they had stood on top of each other, they would have equaled an actual and real giant—one who could have easily frightened Jack, after he climbed the beanstalk.

  No one talked shit about the Hoffman twins. And now, by default of their protection, no one talked shit about her. She could wear her thick-rimmed glasses and like ABBA all she wanted and no one flicked things at her. She could write smutty stories for her creative writing class and no one snickered.

  It went without saying that she liked them a whole lot. They were perhaps the nicest handsome guys she’d ever met in her entire life.

  “You’re just different. Okay? You’re different.”

  The irritation on Seb’s face drained away, at that. As though she’d actually said, You’re just amazing. Okay? Amazing.

  At which point a rather new and slightly unsettling thought occurred. Was that why they liked hanging around with her? Because she could tell the difference between them so easily, and saw them so clearly as separate people? She hadn’t realized it was that important to them—they didn’t dress to distinguish themselves, or act as though they particularly cared.

  Sometimes it was hard to tell if they really cared about anything. Until Seb put his hand on her shoulder and told some rude douchebag to fuck off before he got the pounding of a fucking lifetime. Yeah, then she knew they cared about something, all right.

  They cared about her.

  “We’re not different,” Tobe said, as though the concept was just the most hilarious thing in the world. “We’re exactly alike. That’s what twins are. I thought you aced Professor Linderhoff’s biology class?”

  “Ha ha fucking ha. Ha. Okay, smartass—you both have the exact same perfect handsome perfect faces. But you’re, you know… Different on the inside. Where your teeny-tiny, cold, dead souls are.”

  But as usual, Tobias didn’t go after the expected, normal thing. In fact, Tobias didn’t go after anything at all. It was Seb who answered, and Seb who made her fully realize one of the fundamental differences between them.

  “You think we’re perfect and handsome?”

  Seb was more direct. Tobias liked to hang back. She could tell he wanted to ask the same question—absolutely tell—but he’d shied away from asking it. They thought the same things, and could finish each other’s sentences, but it was more often Sebastian who did the final aski
ng.

  “Right now? I think you really might possibly have a teeny-tiny, cold, dead soul. Seriously. That’s the thing you pick up on? I’m frightened for you, Seb.”

  “I think she’s frightened to admit that we’re handsome.”

  “I definitely think she is.”

  “It’s okay, Bobbi. Just go with it. So far you’ve been impervious to our charms, but no one can hold out against us for long.”

  She rolled her eyes, despite the little voice inside her. The one that was saying, That’s not really what their friendship with you is about, is it? Waiting for you to stop holding out and be like every other girl—drooling over them and flirting at every opportunity.

  Unfortunately, a second voice chimed in, shortly after this little brain-fart. And said voice was brassy and unpleasant and wanted to bray things like, I got news for you, girl. You’re already flirting all over them. And they think you’re a mess.

  She had to admit—the second voice sure knew the score.

  “Oh for fuck’s sake—yeah, you’re both gaaawww-jus. Angels weep when they look at you, panties drop, vaginas moisten…yadda-yadda. Are we gonna play cards or what?”

  “I want to talk more about how you knew who was who,” Seb said. Of course Seb said.

  “Because you came first out of the bedroom. Okay? That’s how I knew. Because you spoke first. Because Tobe ran his hand through his hair. Because he went for the tortilla chips first. You’re different.”

  She started gathering up the cards, but knew what it looked like. It looked as if she were trying to avoid the question somehow, and move onto something else. Something safer, maybe, though she couldn’t tell how talking about their differences was dangerous.

  “So you couldn’t tell if everything was even. If you just looked at us, and we didn’t move or talk or go anyplace.”

  Ahhh, that’s how it was dangerous. She’d won at something, and now Sebastian wanted to win one back. He wanted to up the stakes, make things interesting, test her in ways she didn’t want to be tested.

  Jesus, that fucking competitive streak of his.

  “I could still tell.”

  “We come out of Tobe’s bedroom in the same clothes, with the same hair, at the same time. No talking, no eating, no nothing—you think you could still pin us?”

  “I think you could come out of there naked with Twizzlers up your asses and I’d still know who was who. Bring it on, Hoffman.”

  Tobe laughed through a mouthful of chips. Partly at his brother, she could tell.

  “Come on, dipshit. You need to get your sweats on,” Sebastian said, as he pushed back from the table. Tobias wasn’t having any of it, however.

  “Let’s just play cards, man. You’re not gonna beat her. She knew it was me on the goddamned phone! She asked me right off—is Seb coming? Not—is Tobe coming? She knew it was me and I’d barely said a word.”

  It was true. She had. In fact when she really thought about it, she wasn’t even sure if he’d given off any of his tells. She’d just known it was him by the sound of his voice, even though it was as deep and liquid-metal sounding as his brother’s.

  “Let’s go, Tobe,” he said, and she knew there was no room for argument. Tobias simply stood, and shrugged, and followed him in there.

  Then emerged ten minutes later, dressed in the same outfit as Sebastian. Hair the same, expression the same, no talking, no chip-eating. They stood by the entrance to the awesome kitchen their apartment had—the apartment they’d paid for with money they’d made themselves, in some kind of weird internet predicting futures nonsense—like a pair of bookends.

  Nobody could have told them apart, she knew that much. No one. They even maintained the same expression—all flawless stillness, those eyes of theirs like the blue swirling atmosphere of some faraway planet that didn’t exist. Like glass, at the bottom of the ocean.

  It was a privilege to look at them, it really was. The soft line of their lower lips—the one that Sebastian so often drew in, when he was unhappy—and the way their noses seemed almost perfectly straight and smooth and fine until you got to the little hint of an upturn at the tip. As though the upturn got fed up halfway through, and decided to quit with only some of the job done.

  Which didn’t sound very pleasant at all, when she really thought about it. But oh, it was glorious on them. They weren’t the square-jawed soap-opera-prick sort of perfection.

  They were the not-quite-right sort of perfection, where a million tiny flaws somehow added up to something that absolutely never, under any circumstances made her weak-kneed. Oh dear God no, they never did anything like that to her.

  Not even when they gazed at her with their foggy-blue eyes, mouths making what should have been mean lines but somehow weren’t, that hair of theirs as soft and thick as a newly sifted sand dune.

  Lord, she knew she was fighting a losing battle when she thought of stupid things like sand dunes. Her brain had started thinking in insane similes, and all because of too much exposure to the Hoffman twins. She couldn’t even cling to their imperfections anymore—like the too-rounded jaws, as though they’d never quite shook the puppy fat she knew both of them had carried up until high school—because as the above mental swooning proved, their imperfections only made things worse.

  Their imperfections made them nearly, almost, sort of, possibly accessible.

  Dangerously accessible.

  “Sebastian,” she said, and punched three fingers into his chest.

  Of course she was right. Only this time…this time he didn’t look irritated. He looked pleased, for just a second—right before he barked out the word fuck.

  “How do you do it?” Tobe asked, but most of her didn’t want to say. It sounded lame in her head. God only knew how lame it would seem on the outside.

  I know because I would know you both anywhere. You’re my soul mates.

  Somewhere close by, a sand dune barfed its guts up.

  “Cheating,” Sebastian said, but he didn’t sound serious. He was still faintly pleased or amused or whatever it was she’d seen on his face.

  “You’re both just too obvious. Sorry,” she said, even though she wasn’t in the slightest. And Sebastian knew she wasn’t, if his expression was anything to go by.

  “Really? Obvious, huh? Think you could do it without looking?”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Are you serious? That’s like asking me to read with my eyes closed. Face it, I passed your test, I won, you lost. I know it’s hard for you, Seb, but I got news for you—I can beat you at a whole bunch of other stuff too. Like poker.”

  And sick-making similes.

  “You’re only getting him riled, Bobs,” Tobe said, but he was laughing while he said it. Laughing and ruffling his hair out of the slick-back they’d decided to go with.

  “I just think you’re not up to the challenge. You couldn’t tell us apart if you were blindfolded.”

  She threw up her hands.

  “Well…no! Probably not. But really, what kind of test is that? I can tell you apart because I can see who you are in your faces and hear who you are in your voices. I don’t spend every waking hour fondling your brows. Brow-fondling does not help me.”

  “I think my brow is less wrinkled than his,” Tobe said, but Sebastian didn’t even glance at him. Didn’t even give him a thwack. He had his arms folded again, and he wouldn’t stop staring her down.

  At six foot five with eyes like a newly cleared thunderstorm, he was very good at staring someone down.

  “Come on. Wanna try it?” he asked. “Or are you just afraid you’ll fuck it up?”

  Oooh, he was being a pain in the ass.

  “Fine. Go for it. Blindfold me and I’ll still tell your wrinkled ass from your brother’s.”

  He shot a glance at said brother, who looked…flummoxed? Yeah, he looked a little flummoxed. As though this was getting into a weird sort of area, even though it completely wasn’t. What was the big deal about being blindfolded and touchin
g someone’s face, after all?

  She’d never really touched their faces before, but that didn’t mean anything. She touched other parts of them all the time. Or at least, they touched things on her and she tried to pretend it wasn’t happening in case she accidentally slipped and fell tongue first into their mouths.

  Like the other night, at Lisa Merretti’s roof party, when Sebastian had gone to pat her on the arm and accidentally held her hand instead.

  “Straighten your hair out,” Sebastian said to Tobe, and Tobe did.

  And then Sebastian had a scarf in his hands, as though he’d just pulled it out of his pocket. As though he’d thought about doing this all along—which actually was kind of weird, when she thought about it. Had he really known she’d guess who was who easily, then thought about how he could test her further?

  Maybe. But then, maybe Sebastian had actually intended to hold her hand instead of the half-baked, “oops I went for your elbow and missed” theory she’d cooked up afterward. Who really knew, in Insane Theories Land?

  “You ready?” he asked, but all she could think about was how that scarf looked, wrapped around his two fists. Hell, all she could think about was how his fists looked, white-knuckled and tense like that, as big as bricks.

  “Don’t tie it too tight,” she said and meant it. Even though the look on his face as he drew the scarf close…the look on his face…was so…warm. It was so full of something good and warm and safe, somehow.

  Though it took until that exact moment for her to realize that this was the way he always looked at her. As if she should know that if a bomb went off in the street, he would cover her body with his without even thinking about it.

  “He won’t tie it too tight,” Tobias said, and she knew that feeling—that feeling about the bomb and Seb covering her—was the same with him too.

  And then everything went dark.