I mean, the price was right.

Bedding the Wrong Brother is a serviceable contemporary erotic romance that is, importantly, free on Kindle. It’s a pretty short story, so there isn’t any particular lip service paid to anything like a “plot” or “character development.” What we know is this: our heroine, Melina, has known the Dalton twin brothers, Max and Rhys, since childhood. Melina went on to have a respectable life in academia, but never really came alive in the bedroom. Part of this is because she dated jerks, and it’s partly because she has carried a torch for Rhys, but believes he’s out of her league.

After being dumped by her latest boyfriend, she wants to learn how to spice it up so she can keep a man’s attention. She goes to Max, the other twin, with whom she’s always had an easy repartee, and asks if he can tutor her sexually. He agrees, but on the night of, Max pulls a bait-and-switch and sends in Rhys, knowing that the two of them both harbor a thing for the other. Melina is a little tipsy and, at Max’s instruction, not wearing her glasses, so she can’t tell it’s Rhys. For his part, Rhys isn’t so sure why Melina is throwing herself at him, but it’s like a dream come true, so he goes with it. After they complete, she murmurs his name as she’s falling asleep, so it seems like all is well.

To get this out of the way immediately: I usually hate the bait-and-switch conceit, because it dances close to being rapey in a lot of cases. This didn’t read that way at all. It’s still, you know, toe-ing the line because she’s not sleeping with who she thinks she is, but all the time she’s sleeping with Rhys thinking it’s Max, she’s fantasizing about Rhys, so it reads as very consensual in either case.

There’s no real meat to the story, and the writing is pretty pedestrian. But: the sex is steamy, there isn’t too much overblown faux angst to create conflict, and, did I mention, it was free?