Dad looks like he’s going strong with Katherine, and Lola and I show no signs of faltering.
Warm beer or not, watching Lola out on that dance floor surrounded by her friends and our family, having the time of her life, and knowing that when she’s done she’ll come back to me, makes me the happiest man in the world.
Fuck, it even makes me want to get married.
Maybe we’ll see what happens in a year’s time. Marriage, kids, the whole fucking works. That’ll make my dad really shit bricks.
Lola
This was always meant to happen and there was nothing either of us could ever do to stop it.
After that day, and as much as I tried to resist, I was absolutely powerless to do so. Max captivated me. In the end, I just gave up trying to fight it.
He was right too. Why should it be anyone else’s business but our own? We weren’t related by blood, and we weren’t doing anything wrong. At least not technically.
I mean sometimes the sex felt so good it should have been illegal, but seriously, if we wanted to be together, why should we let anyone try and stop us? We might have been step-siblings on paper, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t be lovers for real.
I watch him by the bar watching me. A year has passed and he’s got even sexier. His hair a bit longer, his eyes a bit brighter, his muscles more defined. The strength of the feelings I have for him deeper, more complete.
He always says he never saw himself settling down with just one person, but I know when he looks at me he feels exactly the same way I do about him. I know that from the very first day we met, there was no other way that this could have gone, and no matter what he says, there was nothing else he wanted either.
I compare our relationship with the ones I had before, especially with Tyson, and this is in a completely different league. I ache for him when he’s not there, and the things that he does to me when he is, make me feel like I’m living on a higher plane of consciousness.
He’s still cocky, confident, mischievous and badly behaved, but he wouldn’t be Max if he wasn’t those things and I love him because of them.
I take my leave from the dance floor - Alex is tiring me out anyway with his strange jerky movements - and make my way over to Max.
He gathers me up in his arms, kisses me firmly and plants me back down onto the ground.
Just being with him makes me happy. I’m happier now than I thought would be possible in my life.
“You know the restrooms are over there”, Max says, raising his eyebrows and pointing them out with a nod of his head.
“Imagine if you’d said that to me a year ago.”
“I imagine you wouldn’t have been able to resist. Tyson might have had something to say about it though.”
“I’m sure you would have handled it, you know ninja style.”
“Did you ever find out what happened to him?”
“Last I heard, he was working on his uncle’s farm in Ohio.”
“Fucking pigs with his pencil dick.”
“Something like that.”
I order a beer and lean into Max. Out on the dance floor Mom dances around Alex, happier than I’ve ever seen her.
“Do you think we’ll be doing that when we are their age?”
“As long as our kids aren’t doing what we are doing.”
I elbow him in the ribs for that.
“Who said anything about kids”, I say.
Max wraps his arms around me and pulls me tightly into him.
“I just hope we don’t have to come here every year, the music is awful.”
Kids with Max. One big happy family. There, surrounded by family and friends, Mom, Alex, Max and I sharing our one year anniversary, I couldn’t be happier.
I down my beer, slam the empty on the bar and give Max a wicked smile.
“Oh”, he says. “Oh. You naughty girl.”
“First one to come is a loser”, I say and skip towards the restrooms.
###
Giving My Billionaire Stepbrother A Baby Part 1
Stephanie Brother
© 2015 Stephanie Brother
Continue reading the series:
Giving My Billionaire Stepbrother A Baby 1
Giving My Billionaire Stepbrother A Baby 2
Giving My Billionaire Stepbrother A Baby 3
Giving My Billionaire Stepbrother A Baby 4
Giving My Billionaire Stepbrother A Baby 5
All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author's imagination.
Please note that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18 and all characters represented as 18 or over.
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About This Book:
He was a jerk, but she loved him, that was the first problem. The second? He was her stepbrother.
Dante Hix. An alpha male. A billionaire at 21. A God.
It had been three years already and she still wasn't over him, what the hell was she thinking going back again now?
If she had any sense she wouldn't have, but if she had any money she wouldn't have needed to either. Broke, with bills piling up, there was only one way left for her to turn. She had to see him.
And then when she did, she knew immediately. It was going to happen again.
He asked her to dance for him, but it could have been anything. Stupid Sash didn't realize exactly what that meant.
All that time later and she was still doing the same. Her clothes on the floor, his body pressed up against hers, her hand on her belly.
A wish.
If she gave him what he wanted, he could never run away.
***
She's sat when he enters, waiting patiently, the door opening so silently she is unaware of it. Dante closes in on the glass. He stands there casually with his hands in his pockets, taking a moment to admire his stepsister, before he intends to make his presence known.
It's been a long time since he's been able to do this, since he's been able to look at her without her knowing she's being looked at, and he wants to take advantage of it for as long as he can. On the raised stage, in hot pants and a tight white vest top that hugs the contours of her body, his stepsister looks like she's being exhibited. To him, she looks like the visual representation of a long held dream, better even then he remembers her. She uncrosses her legs and sits forward slightly, as though suddenly realizing she may no longer be alone.
"Is there anyone there?" she asks. "hello?"
Chapter 1
Sash stands anxiously at the counter, her heart thumping wildly in her chest.
Behind her, a large line of people snakes towards the center of the supermarket, irritated customers happy to glare at her angrily.
"Come on, please", she quietly whispers to herself.
Every so often she cranes her neck to try and look at the register, before looking back to her left, horrified to see someone else join the enormous queue.
The plump assistant clicks chewing gum against her teeth while she waits for the machine to tell her what to do next. Her skin is so fake-tanned and dented by acne, she looks like a gigantic orange. Next to her, Sash could be a completely different species. She's compact but perfectly proportioned, with delicate features and gorgeous eyes.
The human orange looks from the computer up to Sash and blinks slowly, one eyelid slightly behind the other, like a treefrog waking up.
"Denied", she says lazily.
Clack goes the chewing gum against her teeth.
"That can't be", Sash says. "I put money in there on Wednesday."
"Today is Friday", the assistant says flatly, as though Sash may have overl
ooked a crucial piece of information. "Maybe it went somewhere else on the days in between?"
"What's the hold up?"
An irritated voice comes from the queue behind her.
People tap their toes impatiently. Others drum their fingers on the long since stopped conveyor belt. A child folds his arms, mimicking his scruffily dressed father.
"Let me try again", Sash says. "It must be a problem with the machine."
Moving at a snail's pace, seemingly unaffected by the enormity of the queue that has begun to swell so much it's now impossible to see the end of it, the assistant rubs her fingers along the black stripe of the credit card and langorously re-swipes it. Any slower and her heart would stop.
The till hums. The eyelids blink, out of synchronization. She pauses briefly, like a game show host at the moment before revealing the winner of a year long event.
"De-nied", she says again, emphasizing the first syllable of the word.
Someone's hands go up in the air.
"Come on. That's four times now. It isn't going to work."
"Do you have another card?"
The assistant hands back her broken one.
Sash looks down at her shopping. A bottle of wine, a pre-packaged salad, a beef steak, a punnet of strawberries, a health food bar to eat on the way home. She rifles through her purse, practically tipping the coins out in front of her to count them.
"This is ridiculous."
The voice belongs to the same man from the queue behind her, his arms still folded across his chest. Others nod their heads in agreement.
One says, mostly to himself, "call the manager already."
"I have three dollars, eighty six cents."
Sash looks down pitifully at the coins.
The assistant looks at the shopping. She looks at Sash and then she looks at the till. "That's not going to be enough."
***
Outside, the sky has clouded over.
Sash looks up into the black stormy swirls as though expecting to find a reasonable answer there. Instead, all she gets is a spot of light rain dampening her cheek. She feels like the world is spitting on her.
"Looks like it's rolling in again."
An old lady holds on to her hat while she passes, in case a sudden gust of wind might blow it off.
Sash sighs.
"What happened to the fucking sun?"
At the entrance to the train station, a dark skinned man taps enthusiastically on upturned plastic buckets with a wooden kitchen spoon. Sash pauses for a moment to listen, losing herself pleasurably in the hollow, vibrant sounds.
The man blinks at her kindly to say hello, lifting the corner of his mouth into a smile, and tilting the top of his head downwards, in a way in which Sash mistakes for an attempt to indicate the collection hat on the ground in front of him.
She smiles sweetly at the old man, whose leather skin reminds her of her grandfather, immediately embarrassed she can't tip him. As if she's already outstayed her welcome, she heads into the station, rushing quickly towards the train that's already pulled up to her platform.
Her three dollars eighty six cents were just enough to buy the health food bar and leave a sufficient amount for the train ticket home. Digging it out of her purse now, she realizes for the first time, in her haste to get out of the supermarket, she's bought the only flavor she doesn't like.
"Fuck", she says, a little bit louder than she wants to.
A wide-eyed child sat on the edge of the seat opposite, regards her with a mix of fear and excitement, as though he's heard something he's not supposed to, and because of that, he likes it. His feet dangle down, a good twenty centimeters from the floor.
"Sorry", Sash says.
The boy looks far too young to be traveling on his own. She looks at the health food bar and then hands it over to him.
"Here, you like apricots right?"
The city shoots by, framed through a toughened plastic window covered in scratches and graffiti.
A fat attendant checks Sash's ticket, eyes the boy as though he were her own and then shuffles along the compartment, his company issue trousers frayed at the bottom and hanging off his ass, his belt doing nothing to keep them in place.
There is a quarter mile walk uphill back to Sash's apartment over pitted pavement slabs not designed for high heels, and by the time she gets there, she's soaked through and absolutely exhausted.
A stack of bills jam the progress of the door momentarily. Some of them have been there for months, as though now forming part of the apartment's design. She fights her way past them, kicks her shoes off in the hallway and swings the door shut behind her without bothering to look.
Just before it hits the latch, a hand comes up to stop it.
"Miss Cole?"
The voice freezes the blood in Sash's body. She makes fists with her bare toes in the worn carpet. Her head hangs at the end of a long, deep sigh. Finally she turns.
"Martin."
Martin is a man of extreme proportions.
His nose, his fingers, his belly and his ankles. He looks like he has been drawn by a caricature artist.
"The rent?" He taps the part of his wrist where a watch would sit if he wore one. "It's late."
"It's not a good time", Sash says.
The door still isn't fully open. The effect is that only half of Martin's immenseness can be seen, as he hovers on the periphery. For all his bulk and presence, he's reserved, and a little bit timid. To be polite, and because she knows he won't do it himself, Sash takes the three steps back to the door to open it fully.
"I'm sorry, Martin. It's just been a bad day, that's all."
"It's been over two months. I can't wait any longer."
"Just give me until the end of the month", Sash pleads.
"The end of the month is twenty eight days away."
"The end of the week?"
"I've got to eat too, you know. I have people queuing up for this apartment. It's a good apartment. I'm a good landlord. Not everyone is like me. When you were late with the money I said, 'sure no problems, you take as long as you like', but enough is enough. Two months is too long. I've got a little girl to feed."
Sharing the proportions of her father, Sash would call her anything but little, but she knows what he means. She sighs again. She was in a fix and she knew it.
"Can you give me until the end of the week, please, Martin?"
"Are you going to get a job by the end of the week?"
Martin eyes her suspiciously.
"I sincerely hope so."
"Final deadline, no extensions. The end of the week or you've got to leave."
"Thank you, Martin. I won't let you down, I promise."
He's still stood there, looking suspicious, while Sash closes the door, kicks off her shoes and slumps down into the sofa.
That morning's interview had been a complete and utter waste of her time. She was sick of spending hours filling out application forms, weeks waiting to hear back from companies she had no interest in working for, and whole mornings trying to sell herself for roles she knew were beneath her.
They hadn't told her either way, of course, but she knew from the moment she walked into the room, based on the atmosphere alone, that it was going to be a no. It was the same old story, day in day out.
Either she wasn't qualified, or she was too qualified, or she was qualified in the wrong way, or she was too pretty, or not pretty enough or pretty but just not in the way they were looking for right now. She went to one interview last week where they told her she was too young. Too young to work in a college library putting books back on shelves. She looked the interviewer in the eye, shook her head in disbelief, stood up and walked straight out.
Everything that Sash chose to do of late seemed to be a waste of time and money. University debts, bills stacking up, behind on rent and nothing but a jar of cents to her name was seriously beginning to bum her out. There wasn't even anything decent in the fridge to eat.
She knew what
she had to do, but she just didn't want to admit to it. Seeing him was such a last resort, she'd have to be so desperate there was no other way.
The trouble was, she knew she'd already exhausted every other option.
Chapter 2
"That's a Siamese fighting fish", Alex says, "They tend to be rather aggressive. Your brother is quite keen on them."
"He's not my brother."
Sash straightens back up to face her.
"Oh."
Alex raises her eyebrows and forms an O shape with her thick, perfectly painted lips. "My mistake. It's just in the appointment book it says 'little sister.'"
"Our parents are married, that's all. I think he thinks it's cute calling me it. We've never really been all that close."
Alex is a remarkable woman. She has wrinkle-free skin like recently pumped oil, and stands over six foot tall, towering above Sash when they find themselves side by side.
"I didn't even know he had a sister."
"Step", Sash says, reminding her of the distinction.
"Of course."
Alex curls her face up into a well practiced smile, while Sash breaks eye contact to look again at the fish tank. "Maybe there's a lot about your boss that you haven't realized yet."
Time passes agonizingly slowly.
Alex returns to her desk and Sash listens to her answering a telephone that seems to never stop ringing, her voice clipped, polite and expedient. There are huge paintings that fill the vast wall space around them, a floor to ceiling window of glass that frames the ever changing city below, carpets of oriental design and lampshades that look like they've been lifted from a movie set of the latest futuristic blockbuster.
Sash sinks into the hug of a gargantuan leather arm chair, the depth of the seat enough to lift her legs completely off the ground.
Like a child dominated by the size of the world they have only just realized they are inhabiting, she sits there in awe of her surroundings. She turns expensive fashion magazines over in her hands, unable to concentrate for long enough to read any of the articles, and then stands again to look at the city below, the workers running from place to place like ants in an industrial garden.
Max: A Stepbrother Romance Page 5
