Peerless Perverted Actor Has a Celebrity Harem?!

The jets churned. Another sigh came through the doorway, wetter, longer, and further gone.

’Interpret nothing of that.’

The sunken pool was set low into its own tiled platform, wide enough for six and used, as far as this room was concerned, by exactly one.

She used it at least twice a week, and had done for years. That was the arrangement. Emmeline let herself into her brother’s room with her own key, woke him however best amused her that morning, took the pool while he took the shower, and afterward the pair of them went down to breakfast together.

And the old Park had never once understood a single part of it.

He had thought his sister was strange, and invasive, and probably up to something. He had endured her.

He had even constructed a small careful wall out of "stop it, Emmie" and "this is my room, Emmie" and had lived behind it for years.

He had assumed she came to torment him. Failing that, to spy on him for the other two—for the sisters who did not read scripts with him, who did not come to his door in the morning.

That suspicion had lived in the old Park’s chest like a stone, and Emmeline had been carrying it around in her arms every morning for years without ever being told it was there.

Because the truth was standing in plain sight for anyone who bothered to look at it for longer than his predecessor ever had:

’This is not mischief.’

That was a person turning up to a place where she was not welcome, over and over, because the alternative was walking lonely in an enormous quiet house where the staff were paid to be pleasant to her and nobody, anywhere in the vast beautiful building, was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs.

She woke him with a hurricane in his ear because it made him look at her, sometimes they argued, laughed and fought softly like real siblings and did all things she could not do with her sisters but only him.

’God,’ Park thought, and something turned over in his chest and would not settle. ’You poor loud lonely girl.’

And no—before any filthy mind in the room got busy about it—this is not what you think it is.

Yes, she was shameless, wildly and catastrophically shameless. She would sneak-peek at her brother’s member and offer him a considered review. And now she had for the first time in their lives stripped naked right before his eyes and went off to a hot bath without a backward glance; but the shamelessness was simply how she had been built, and had exactly nothing to do with what a suspicious mind would rush toward.

She loved him because he was her brother and she bothered him because she was lonely and he was the one relative always in the same building who cared about to treat and be like sibling with her.

’And I love you back too, sister,’ Park thought.

He was not lying, either. He had known her eleven minutes by his own count and he meant every word of it, because Park had never had this. Not in the old life, where his mother’s love had been measured out across unanswered texts and his friends had drifted the way broke friends drifted.

Nobody had ever been lovingly, obnoxiously obsessed with him the way she was. Nobody had ever come looking for him at seven in the morning purely because they wanted his company.

Emmeline had been doing it for years, to a boy who had spent every one of those years trying to get her to stop.

’Well,’ he thought. ’That ends today.’

He stripped, stepped into the glass, and turned the water on.

It came down out of that enormous head in a warm heavy sheet, and Park stood under it with his eyes shut and his head tipped back and let it run over him—over his shoulders, down his spine, over a body that was four days old and behaving accordingly. The heat unlocked something at the base of his skull.

The steam climbed the glass and closed the room down to a small white world about four feet across.

Which would have been peaceful, if the door had been shut.

It was not shut. And through the gap, over the drum of his own water, every so often Emmeline made another one of those sounds—unhurried, unguarded, unaware, a woman entirely alone with heat and buoyancy and nobody to perform for.

Park pressed both palms flat against cold marble and hung his head under the water and lost, comprehensively, the entire fight he had been pretending to have.

’It’s the plumbing,’ he informed himself, without conviction. ’It’s a very good jet system. This household has invested in excellent jets. That is all this is.’

But the imaginations of his step-sister kept coming to his head.

’I am going to hell,’ he thought, almost fondly, ’and honestly, at this stage, I have already died once and they clearly didn’t want me. What’s the worst that can happen? A second bad review?’

He didn’t care! He was going to follow his instincts and if Emmie wanted him too—

Then, mercifully—

"Little brother!"

Her voice came ringing through the gap over the jets.

"How did the last shot go?"

Park opened his eyes, ’Oh,’ he thought. ’That’s right.’

Out of every person in the Bennett household—the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the three daughters, a standing army of staff—Emmeline was the only one who had ever openly backed his acting.

She read sides with him, helped him practice, she played the other parts badly on purpose to make him laugh. She asked how auditions went, and then remembered the answers a week later, which was the part that actually counted.

And his predecessor had spent four years quietly convinced she was gathering intelligence to carry back to their sisters.

’Sorry, my predecessor,’ Park thought, with an affection that surprised him, ’but you were an absolute fool.’

Though in fairness to the dead boy—hidden and quietly strangled at every turn by a man whose name he carried—paranoia had probably not been the worst instinct he could have developed.

"It went well!" Park called over the water. "Better than well. You won’t believe it."

"Try me."

"They praised my acting. Properly praised it, out loud, in front of people. Even the AD came over."

A splash. "Your first?"

"My first. She said I did good work." Park laughed, and heard the ridiculous crack of disbelief in his own voice. "She said I had more talent than the main lead. Can you believe that? Me?"

The water in the other room stopped.

"What are you talking about?" Emmeline’s voice came off the tile like a thrown plate, genuinely furious on his behalf. "Damn right you do! That so-called main lead doesn’t have half your talent and every single person on that production knows it. He has a jaw, good agency, manager and and he was very well connected. You have the actual thing."

"Emmie—"

"I have never seen anyone with what you have. Not on television, not at one of those insufferable dinners, not anywhere, not once." She paused and quieter through the doorway:

"I’ve been telling you that for years, you know but you do not believe it."

Park stood under the water with his eyes closed; this was the first time anyone ever sincere complemented his talents.

"I know," he said. "Thank you."

"You should be thanking me continuously. Consider it a subscription."

He laughed properly then and pushed his soaked hair back off his face—and remembered the other thing.

"Hey. Emmie."

"Mm?"

"There’s—I—so there’s this party;" He rubbed the back of his neck nervously, which was absurd, since she couldn’t see him. "Some kind of wrap-up party. I got invited. Are you free—I mean, do you want to—"

"Park." Her voice arrived flat with delight. "Are you asking me out on a siblings’ date?"

"No."

"Because I might misunderstand. I’m terribly sensitive."

"Don’t let it get to your head." He turned the water down so he wasn’t shouting through a waterfall. "Yes. But it isn’t a date, it’s you being my plus one. I have never in my life been to a high-class party. I don’t know which fork means what, or who I’m supposed to laugh at, or how long you’re meant to hold a glass before drinking from it. I need somebody with actual experience standing beside me or I’m going to make a magnificent fool of myself in front of every big-shot director in the room."

There was a long, indolent pause from beyond the door, and the sound of her settling back into hot water and enjoying herself enormously.

"Ah," Emmeline said. "What would you ever do without me."

"I know; I’ll be lost without you, sis."

"You’d be eaten alive inside eleven minutes and I’d be called down to identify the body." Water shifted. "Of course I’ll do it, dear brother."

"Thank you."

"But it isn’t free."

Park paused with one hand on the tap.

"...Go on."