Victoria’s tanned face turned red. “You know, people say things, but if they can’t prove them, what does it matter?”
“Holy shit,” Stone said. “What is it about this guy that you’re attracted to? Is it his weird fuckin Russian accent? Is he hung like a horse? What is it?”
Victoria laughed so hard her drink spewed out of her nose.
“Aw, fuck, that’s it, isn’t it?” Stone said. “He’s got a gigantic cock, and you can’t go back to a normal dick now.”
“That’s not it at all,” she said.
“Well then, what?”
“I…” she shrugged. “I guess I see a different side of him. He treats me nice. I mean, he’s overprotective and a little crazy, sure, but any guy would be when he’s got all this to worry about,” she said, grabbing her breasts.
“You just think you’re all that, don’t you?” Stone asked.
“Baby, let’s face it,” she said quietly. “We both know I’m all that.”
Stone sipped his drink, remembering what it had been like to taste her lips for the first time. Fourteen years old, they had been, virgins, just exploring. How her soft ass had felt under his hand, the taste of her mouth on his. He remembered her spreading her legs, showing him her sweet pussy for the first time. He had gazed at it for a few minutes, just entranced by its beauty before nuzzling up to her delectable little slit…
Fuck, he thought. He had to move away from her a little and cover his crotch with his arm to hide how hard his cock had become.
She had been his first, and he hers. And out of all the pussy that had been thrown at him over the years, she had been the best. But they were past all that now. It was time to move on, let the past be the past…
“You know what? I kind of like the idea of going for a swim now,” Victoria said.
What he wanted to do was go to bed. The last thing he needed was to spend more time around Victoria in this state, when the memories were flying and the booze was flowing. He was an important person, routinely discussed in the media, a guy who ran charities and companies. If even a hint of his past with Victoria ever came to light, he would be crucified in the press. Game over.
He knew all that, but he also knew that he rarely got to see her anymore, and that her skin was glowing and she was still, after all these years, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
“Go get your swim suit, woman,” he said.
Victoria drained her Red Bull and sauntered off to the back of her apartment. “Be just a minute,” she said.
He watched her finely-tuned body walk down the hallway and he thought of following her back there, of taking her in his arms and trying to recreate the magic they’d once had. He took another sip of tequila and shoved the thought out of his mind. She was the one, she had always been the one, and if he ever had her again, he would never be able to let her go. That couldn’t happen. He’d be the laughing stock of the entire world. Every website, every news organization, every asshole with a blog would be plastering his face on flat screens with the caption: Tech Billionaire In Affair With Stepsister.
For a crazy moment, he thought of just disappearing. Of saying to hell with the company, cashing out, and disappearing with Victoria to some tropical island where no one would know them.
But he couldn’t do that. It was just one of those wild fantasies that run through your head at two in the morning when you’ve been partying for eight hours.
He exhaled bitterly. Well, there would be someone out there for him. Maybe not someone who could understand him the way that Victoria did, who lit up the world like Victoria did, but someone very, very close.
He’d just have to keep looking.
In the meantime, he poured another drink and was just about to sip on it when he heard a ringtone beside him on the couch. He picked Victoria’s phone up and looked at the screen.
It said “Ivan”. There was a picture of the Russian prick. Grinning like a damned jackal, wearing a shit ton of diamonds and fur, like some kind of wannabe rapper but without talent.
The only thing Ivan had ever been good at was hurting people.
Just like he was eventually going to hurt Victoria.
“I hope you get shot in the back of the head tonight,” Stone said to Ivan’s picture. He drunkenly thought, If this were a movie, I could just pay someone to kill this stupid bastard. But here I am, all this money, and I don’t know one professional killer. Not one! All those people I employ, and I don’t have one assassin on the payroll. I gotta look into that.
He giggled at the thought of having his own personal hitman, like some kind of James Bond villain.
Victoria’s driving me crazy, he thought, and tossed her phone under the couch, letting Ivan take his Russian ass to voicemail. He might not see Vic for a while, and he didn’t want that dyed-blond asshole ruining the party.
She finally came out of her bedroom with her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing a skimpy black thong. He was so used to being surrounded by scantily-clad women that they barely impressed him anymore, but she took his breath away.
“Aren't you going to change?” She asked.
“Fuck that. I'm going like this,” Stone said, looking down at his shorts and t-shirt. “I'm going to skinny dip anyway.”
“No the hell you aren’t,” she said.
“Oh, come on. We used to do it as kids, remember?”
“Yes,” she said, taking the tequila bottle from him and sipping from it. “I remember almost getting caught by Mom and your dad-”
“Do you think they know?” He asked.
Victoria raised her eyebrows and dropped them quickly. “I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, we did a pretty good job of keeping it down-low, but there were times we’d fuck up. I remember when Mom found your underwear in my bedroom.”
“Oh, shit, that was dumb of me.”
“On the list of dumb shit you’ve pulled, that was honestly probably like top ten.”
“What was number one?” He asked.
“Leaving,” she said quietly.
Her words were quiet but they landed like a bomb inside his chest.
“Vic, I had to go to college,” he said.
“All the way across the goddamn country, Stone?”
“It was the best place for me. If I hadn’t gone there, maybe I wouldn’t have met Danny.
And maybe I wouldn’t have come up with Zonkers. And then, maybe I wouldn’t be worth over a billion…fucking…dollars. I’m really helping people, you know? Like really poor, poverty-stricken people. I’m making a difference. So wouldn’t you say it was worth it?”
She took a sip of tequila. “I still think Zonkers was the stupidest fucking name for an app ever,” she said. “And I think Danny’s an asshole.”
“He might be, but he’s a marketing genius. Answer the question, Vic.”
She sighed. “That’s not why you wanted to go,” she said. “You could have become a great programmer closer to home. You wanted to get away from me.”
He stood and took the bottle from her. “What do you want me to say?”
“That I’m right. That you didn’t love me anymore, and you wanted to go meet someone else.”
His heart fell right through his stomach and through the floor. “Is that what you thought?” He asked, the pain in his chest matching the pain in her eyes. “Vic…I told you then, and I’ll tell you now: I loved you more than anything. Ever. And I could never, ever want someone half as much as I wanted you. But we were growing up. What were we supposed to do for the rest of our lives? Be single and hide our relationship from everyone, forever?”
“Maybe that wouldn’t have been so bad,” she said, tears welling in her gorgeous doe eyes.
He wanted to die right then and there for ever hurting her. He wanted to fall into a pit a thousand miles deep and be buried over. He wondered how many bottles of champagne he’d popped, celebrating his wealth and success, while she sat alone, hurting.
“I never should have started
anything with you,” he said. “If I’d known you were going to get hurt, I never would have-”
“Don’t you dare say that,” she said. “Don’t, Stone.” She wiped at her eyes, clearing them of tears. She took the bottle from his hand and drank from it. She handed it back and said, “Let’s go swimming.”
“I don’t want to go swimming,” he said.
“What do you want to do then?” She asked, grinning a little bit, almost lasciviously, her eyes wide at the thought that he might suggest something utterly wicked.
“I want to fix you,” he said.
She stopped grinning. She closed her eyes and held them tight for a few seconds and he would have bet his entire fortune that it was to hold back the tears.
“You can’t,” she said. “What’s done is done.”
“I’m the reason you started seeing that piece of shit, aren’t I?” He asked, suddenly understanding everything in a moment of perfect clarity. “We broke up, and you started partying, and he’s Mister Bigshot fucking dope dealer so of course that’s who you gravitate to.”
She shrugged. “He might be a lot of things, Stone. But he’d never leave me.” She held up her wrist and showed him the tattoo there. из камня, it said, in a pretty little script. “That’s Russian for Ivan,” she said. “And he has one for Victoria…right above his crotch.”
Stone was so disgusted he could barely speak. “Well, I hope you two are happy,” he said, feeling defeated. She was lost to him, gone forever.
“Some days we are,” she said. “Come on. I want to go smoke a joint and float in the water and look at the stars just like we used to when we were kids.”
“We’re not kids anymore,” he said.
“No,” Victoria said. “But we might as well try and start again. We can’t be lovers, Stone, but we can still be friends.” She laughed. “We can even pretend to be brother and sister. Now that there’s some closure between us- some real closure- maybe we can let go of the past.”
He nodded, thinking that there was no way he could do that. Not after all she had meant to him. Not with all she meant to him now. But he had to try, because the last thing in the world that he wanted was to lose her again.
Victoria grabbed a cigarette pack off a table and checked inside it. “Oh, goodie,” she said. “Plenty of weed left.” Then they walked out the backdoor of her apartment, out into the quiet night.
Victoria closed the door behind them and they walked down a flight of stairs, down to a cement walkway. It was dark and he could not help but stare at her legs and butt and back as she walked ahead of him. She had grown into such a beautiful woman.
The pool wasn't far away from her apartment. It was surrounded by a waist-high black iron fence. The apartment people had planted palm trees and thick tropical foliage around the perimeter to distract from that fence. All those green leafy plants gave the unintended effect of hiding the pool from view. The patio and pool itself were bathed in shadows, the water dark and ominous.
The gate was padlocked, so they hopped over it. Stone stripped off his shirt, revealing a lean, muscular body. He tossed his shirt on the patio while Victoria watched, admiring the way his muscles rippled in the moonlight.
“Somebody’s kept himself in shape,” she said.
“Got a gym in my office,” he said. “Personal trainer, chef, all that stuff.”
“Mr. Men’s Fitness,” she chided. “You don’t have to look good, you know. You’re rich. Girls will just toss themselves at you no matter what you look like.”
“They do,” he grunted. Not bragging, just telling it like it was. “I still like to work out.”
Victoria said nothing. She sat the pack of cigarettes on the patio and dove into the pool. He couldn’t see her for a few seconds, and then she appeared on the other side of the pool.
“Hop in,” she said. “It feels great.”
He tested the water with his toes. It was nice and cool. He jumped in and swam across the pool, meeting Victoria in the shadows of the deep end near the diving board. She was holding onto the board, keeping herself just out of the water, her breasts magnificent and wet, nipples poking out against the black material of her top.
“I’m sorry if I upset you before,” she said.
He held on to the side of the pool and shook his head. “No…you were right. We needed closure.”
“I lied, you know. He hasn’t really changed.”
“Who?”
“Ivan.”
“Of course not.”
“I mean, he does work for his uncle. But his uncle pretty much runs the Russian mob here. Ivan’s trying to pass himself off as legitimate, but he’s still up to shady shit.”
“You don’t need to be with someone like that,” he said. “There’s a billion great guys out there who would all kill to be with someone like you.”
She let go of the diving board and swam over to him. Close enough for him to reach out and touch her, but he didn’t, even though everything in him wanted to.
“I think I was so enchanted with how what you and I did was forbidden, how I wasn’t supposed to be with you…I think that played a big part in why I hooked up with Ivan.”
“Oh, wow, so it really is my fault,” he said. He reached out and touched her face. “Please, please. Do not marry that asshole. I’m begging you.”
She looked so sad that it just about broke his heart all over again. “You don’t get it, do you? Ivan isn’t the kind of guy you say no to. I’ve tried to break it off before…”
“Does he hit you?” Stone asked, his temper rising, a curious mixture of a big brother’s worry and a lover’s concern.
She looked away, into the shadows. “When I don’t act right,” she said.
“And you put up with that?”
She scoffed and looked at him with tears in her eyes. “You know all those rumors you’ve heard about him? How he’s had people killed? They’re true, Stone. And there’s a lot worse. He and his asshole flunkies, they sit around talking about all the horrible shit they do, and they think I don’t understand because they’re talking in Russian. What he doesn’t know is that I speak Russian. Took a whole college course in it. I’m terrified of him, Stone. Too afraid to stay with him, too afraid to leave. So what does that leave me with, huh?”
He banged his fist on the concrete patio. “You should have said something,” he said.
“I was afraid, Stone.”
He nodded. “Okay. Well, you don’t have to be afraid anymore. I’m gonna make sure that motherfucker knows to stay away from you.”
“How, Stone?”
He looked up at the full moon. He thought of all the times they had floated in their parent’s pool on nights like this, closer than two people had any right to be, how he had never wanted those nights to end.
He looked at her now, her moonlit face the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and he made the decision.
“I’ll figure it out,” he said, and pulled her to him. She was reluctant at first, until his hand found the back of her neck, her secret place, his fingers gently rubbing over it as he pulled her face to his and kissed her lips.
She hesitated, but only for a moment. Then her soft lips were returning his kiss, their mouths wet and hungry, ravenous for each other. It had been five years since they had shared a kiss, but there was no awkwardness at all. All of the old feelings erupted again, and he swore to himself that he would never, ever let her go, no matter what the cost.
He would have stayed right there and kissed her for the rest of his life, had it not been for a thickly Russian-accented voice interrupting them.
“So this is why you not answer my calls, whore.”
Stone opened his eyes and saw fear in Victoria’s. He turned around and saw two men, one of them resplendent in eurotrash garb. Ivan was the taller of the two, his dyed blond hair sticking up in spikes to make him look more menacing. He wore a bright purple shirt that looked like it was made from a material that hadn’t even been invented yet
over loud purple and black pants that would have looked right at home on a pro wrestler. Platinum and diamonds glittered from his wrists, neck, and ears. He looked extremely unhappy.
His companion, dressed much more conservatively in white shirt and black slacks, looked like a pit bull ready to be unleashed.
“Ivan, it’s not what you think-” Victoria said.
“Really? Because it looks like my slut girlfriend is trying to fuck her stepbrother,” Ivan said.
Stone grabbed the side of the pool and lifted himself out of the water. “Actually, Ivan, it’s exactly what it looks like,” he said, wiping water from his face. “So why don’t you take your boyfriend here and go fuck yourselves. You and Victoria are finished. And I ever hear about you coming near her, I’ll use every bit of influence I have to fuck your world to pieces.”
Ivan and his pit bull strode forward.
“You hear this?” Ivan said to his companion. “This fucking computer geek talks to me like he’s a man. Get the fuck away from me, little boy, before I crack your fucking skull to pieces.”
Ivan looked at Victoria. “I knew from way you talked about him that you two had fucked. But I overlooked it because you’re hot piece of ass. Now, you have to learn who you belong to. Get out of the pool.”
Romance: First Time and Pregnant With The Navy Seal (Stepbrother, Military, Romance) Page 3
