"As you wish," Jax replies.
I take the candle carefully and step into the room. I hear Jax's hand rustle behind me and suddenly the room is flooded with light. My breath catches in my chest. The room isn't large: maybe fifteen feet long but only five feet wide. Squashy, square floor cushions are piled on the floor next to beanbag chairs upholstered in a nautical-looking blue and white stripe. Bookcases line the walls. They are stuffed with bright blue Hardy Boys titles and Goosebumps books. I even spot the tell-tale bright yellow spines of Nancy Drew books. I slip The Twisted Staircase off the shelf and looked at Jax knowingly.
He shrugs. "Who says Nancy Drew is only for girls? I had a crush on her." Jax walks over to a cabinet that sits underneath a stained-glass circular window. Within the bookcases sit four porthole-looking glass circles. I stand up on my tiptoes and look through them. All I can see is amber light.
"They're fake," Jax explains at my unasked question. "This room is squarely within the center of the house. No outside windows. Otherwise my father would have known."
"I kind of feel like I'm on a ship right now," I admit to him.
Jax nods. "That was the idea that my mother had. She always liked boats but hated being on the water." He pushes his hand against one of the wood-paneled, ornate cabinets. The door bounces back into his hand to reveal a miniature refrigerator. He reaches inside and pulls out two brown bottles. "Thirsty?" he asks me.
"I am," I admit, hoping it isn't alcohol. I'm still buzzing a bit from the whiskey. Jax sets the bottles on the narrow countertop, takes off his jacket, hangs it on a brass hook on the wall, then quickly rolls back his sleeves, unbuttoning them and flipping them backwards. He picks up one of the bottles, condensation forming on the outside and expertly twists the cap off using his forearm.
"Wow," I say, taking the bottle from him. "That's quite a parlor trick."
"I use it with all the women," he admits, a sexy smile appearing as he sips.
I take a swig. I realize with some surprise that it’s root beer. "How retro of you."
Jax laughs. "It was my favorite as a kid. I try to keep this fridge well-stocked. Have a seat." He motions to the beanbags. He sits down and removes his shoes, tucking them into an empty cabinet behind him. I try to perch on top of one delicately but end up sinking into it rather unceremoniously, my legs flying up into the air. Jax laughs. "Need some help, there?"
"I'm fine," I reply, laughing in spite of myself. Once I situate my body, it’s surprisingly comfortable. I exhale, looking up at the wood-paneled ceiling that has a fake skylight in it. Simulated blue sky and puffy white clouds float past. "This place is like a dream."
Jax smiles at me. "I'm glad you think so." He furrows his brows and drinks more root beer. "Okay, so spill. I showed you my secret hideaway, so you have to go first."
In the excitement of the last fifteen minutes, I have completely forgotten that my life is falling apart. I take a few more sips of root beer as if to fortify myself with the alcohol-free beverage. "Paul's assistant called me in tears tonight. She walked in on him fucking another woman."
Jax's jaw drops. "What?" he asks. " Did you call him? Did you ask him if it's true?"
I was stricken by this suggestion. "Honestly? It didn't even occur to me to corroborate with him, but yeah. He called me and confirmed later." I pause, thinking, sipping my root beer. "Yeah, I don't know why it didn't occur to me." Jax is staring at me. "What?"
"Did it ever occur to you that you didn't think to ask because a part of you knew it had to be true? Don't get me wrong - I'm not accusing you of anything, but if this had truly been out of the blue, like if he were the model boyfriend - most women would not have jumped to 'Of course it's true, I'm not even going to bother asking.' "
I open my mouth and then close it. I want to defend Paul for some reason, probably out of habit. "Okay, you're right. I'm not really surprised. He's all but ignored me for months. He refuses to touch my body. There's real contempt there when he looks at me." Tears well up in my eyes as I say these true words.
Jax's eyes flick involuntarily down to my curves. "Well, that's fucking ridiculous," he says. "Your body is fucking perfect.”
I don’t know how to respond to this, so I don’t. I peel back the label of my root beer bottle with my fingers. “Paul says he’s getting married.” I stare at the paper label in my fingertips in silence. “How about we talk about what your dad said to you?”
Jax taps his fingers on his root beer bottle. "Well, you know the other night at dinner when your mom and my dad asked about my girlfriend situation? Tonight it was like that but turned up to eleven. He was a little drunk, I think. He says he wants me engaged by New Year's. Something about my inheritance." Jax polishes off the rest of his root beer and reaches over to the fridge to grab another. "Second round," he announces, pulling out two more bottles and twisting the lids off.
"Any prospects?" I ask him in a mock-serious voice. "Or are you going to end up with one of the blonde girls from the club?"
Jax rolls his eyes. "God, I hope not. No. There's...there's no one." He stumbles across those last words and he averts his eyes from me. "It's not. I mean. It's not that big of a deal. I mean, I’ll only lose my apartment, my car, and my entire business.” He shrugs with a good-natured grin as if none of these things matter.
"So what are you going to do?" I ask him.
Jax shrugs. "Figure it out, like I always do. What are you going to do?"
It’s my turn to shrug. We both burst out laughing. I double over, my hand brushing Jax’s leg. He gives me a look of fire and reaches out to grab my cheek.
A second later, root beer bottles are being knocked over, and there is a flash of fabric, lust, and fire between us. I climb onto his lap, my dress nearly ripping in half. His lips brush my cheek before finding my mouth. We lock our tongues together hungrily. Jax’s hands find the back zipper of my dress. He pulls it down.
Then he stops, pulling away from me. “What?” I ask him. “Did I bite you?”
He laughs. “No, but if you had I definitely wouldn’t have stopped.” He shakes his head. "Do you think your mom told my dad about the pool yesterday? About us?”
The words hang in the air. "Why do you ask that?"
"It's just that - my dad hasn't been this insistent on the marriage thing until recently. I was just wondering if they think there's something going on between us. I mean, I know your mother did. She threatened me earlier.” He strokes my hair. “I think they don't want to explain to their society friends the impropriety of what's going on. I mean. If something were going on. Which it definitely, definitely isn't."
He grabs my face again and kisses me with a fiery passion, his fingertips trailing down my clavicle to my breasts. I groan into him, unbuttoning his shirt while his hands run through my hair. I pull back as he kisses my neck. “That’s right. You’re my stepbrother. There’s nothing going on here. I have a kid. You don’t want kids. This is nothing.”
Jax nods as he pulls off my dress and unlatches my bra. “Exactly. We can’t do anything, so we won’t do anything,” he exhales.
"Right, exactly,” I say. His tongue teases my nipple and I cry out. I clap my hand over my mouth nervously.
Jax looks up at me. “There is three feet of concrete surrounding this room. Nobody can hear us, I promise.”
He pulls me up higher, sliding down to my mound. His lips are full and wet and warm. The passion behind his insistent tongue makes my pussy ache. He flips me onto the bean bag and pulls my knees behind my head, reaching his tongue into my slit. I scream, full-throated.
This is just like that night in San Francisco. Except a thousand times hotter because he’s not nearly as drunk and neither am I. And the taboo of him being my stepbrother is sending me over the edge. “I’m so ready,” I breathe to him. He smiles at me and stands up, dropping his pants to the ground and tearing off his briefs. He pulls a Hardy Boys book off of the shelf and opens it. “You going to read to me while I come?” I joke.
He reaches inside and pulls out a shiny condom packet. “Wouldn’t want any more Ryans running around,” he whispers. My stomach turns over at the possible truth behind that statement and I wonder for a second if he realizes the full meaning to those words.
But a few moments later, he’s slipping into me with a gentleness that I don’t expect and all thought of secret stepbrother babies leaves my mind. He grabs my face and kisses me slowly while he thrusts in and out. The slow-building tension is enough to make me climax. I don’t want this moment to be over, here in this secret room. When we leave, it’ll have never happened.
That’s what we said. That’s what we just promised: that this is nothing.
But when I leave, I know that’s a promise that I can’t possibly keep.
And I know that I don’t want to.
CHAPTER THIRTY
JAX
The next morning, my dad and Cassoe are nowhere to be found. I’m guessing that they’re hungover.
I walk into the kitchen and see that Robert is already frying up bacon. “Morning,” I say.
Robert smiles and nods toward the pantry. “Ms. Tessa is in there waiting for you,” he says.
I raise my eyebrows. “Sorry?”
He laughs. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell your father. It’s been pretty obvious, especially when both of you weren’t at the dinner table last night.”
I nod slowly and walk toward the pantry. Tessa is in there looking at cereal boxes. She smiles when she sees me. She reaches around me and shuts the door.
“Morning,” I say, reaching down and grabbing the sides of her back. She moans quietly as she laces her fingers through my hair. I kiss her fully, tasting her mouth, which is even sweeter than my dreams told me.
We wrap ourselves up in each other, and soon I have her against the cereal shelves, bent over. She flips up her flowery dress which I recognize from the pile of clothes I bought her. She’s not wearing any underwear.
I bend down and whisper in her ear. “You trying to kill me?”
She smiles shyly at me. “Fuck me, Jax,” she says.
I unzip my pants and she hands me a condom. “I thought we weren’t doing this,” I say, wrapping myself up and entering her slick, wet hole. She bites her lip and moans.
“We’re not doing anything,” she replies with a moan.
“Right,” I say, groaning as I fill her up. She hangs onto the cereal rack and it bounces back and forth against the wall as I drive myself into her over and over again. “I want to fuck you on a stage so the entire world can see us,” I breathe. Her muscles clench and unclench around me and I’m done in under two minutes. I pull out of her. “I’m usually not that quick,” I say with a smile.
She stands up and adjusts her breasts in her dress, a wry little smile on her perfect mouth. “You’ll have to prove it to me again later,” she whispers. She reaches up on tiptoes to kiss me, and I hold her.
“Tessa?”
We jump apart like there’s a fire between the two of us. It’s Cassie in the kitchen. “Fuck,” I whisper. At that moment, a baby’s voice cries out and I see the monitor resting next to a box of cornflakes.
Tessa grabs it to turn down the volume but it’s too late. I hear the echo of Cassie’s sensible shoes and rush to zip up my pants. Tessa steps toward the door but Cassie already has it open. She looks disapprovingly at both of us. We probably look exactly as we are: two people who just finished fucking each other in secret. “Having a meeting?” she asks with bitter disappointment in her voice.
Tessa brushes her hair over her ear and pushes past her mother. “Jax was just helping me get something from the top shelf.”
Cassie gives her an icy stare. “Living room. Now. I need to talk to you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
TESSA
I sit in the living room staring at the pattern of my dress fabric. It’s silk and covered in large purple and yellow flowers. It resembles Marilyn Monroe's dress from The Seven Year Itch. I look down at my fingernails and pick at the dried skin around them. Ryan is playing on the floor, gurgling happily atop the rug. I rescued him from his teary state upstairs before coming back down into the lion’s den. My mother sits across from me, bolt upright and silent. I tap my foot on the plush rug. “I take it Paul finally answered his phone,” I say quietly.
My mother nods. “That’s correct. So, what do you need from me?”
I look at her, shocked. I was not expecting her to ask me that. "I just need someplace to stay, Mother. For a while.”
"Do you need someone to collect your things from Indianapolis?" she asks me.
I shake my head. There is so little that is mine in that house I can’t even be bothered to go collect it. My mother had trashed most of my childhood mementos when she moved into her new life in California. All that remains in the house with Paul are unused canvases that I've been too scared to paint on, ill-fitting pre-pregnancy clothes, and my favorite coffee mug that I'd purchased on a trip to Europe. It is literally the only thing in the house that I care anything about. I’m willing to let it go.
"Do you have money?" she asks me.
I shook my head. "No. I don't.” I think over the plan I made in the early morning hours. I didn’t sleep last night going over classified ads on the Internet. “But I'm actually interviewing for jobs in a few days. Out here. In California."
My mother raises an eyebrow. "I see. And how do you propose Ryan will get along without you here all day?"
I’m prepared for this. "I'd like to pay for Susan to watch Ryan. Ryan really seems to like her. I don't want that burden to be on you, though. He's my son. I'll pay for the care from my wages until Paul can start sending a check each month. You know, since Ryan is his son.” I let these words sit with my mother. It’s inordinately unfair that I’m getting interrogated when he’s not only mine. “I'll keep working either way. I was never interested in being home all day anyway." I pick some more at the skin around my nails. My mother's seemingly calm reaction is making me nervous. I’m waiting for the eruption under the calm surface. I know that it has to be coming.
My mother nods. "Well, you'll have to speak to Susan. But it's fine with me." More silence falls. I catch my mother's gaze and see her eyes flash. Here it comes. "Have you even spoken to Paul?" The evenness of my mother's tone is more unsettling than if she were screaming.
I clear my throat. "Yes. He has no interest in reconciling.” I avert my gaze. “He’s actually getting married. Did he not tell you the happy news?”
My mother ignores this. "You really think you're going to be able to get a job? It's been almost a year. Who is going to hire a single mother with no talent to speak of to work for them? You like to blame Ryan for keeping you at home, but it's not like you had a career before he was born, Tessa. You flitted about from one thing to the next, never landing anywhere meaningful.”
There it is. I have prepared myself as best as I can for the blows, but they still sting me. Her words are like poison-infused barbs piercing through my skin. I hang my head, staring at the pointy-tipped stilettos that had made me feel so strong when I'd gotten dressed earlier today. Now I feel like a child in her mom's shoes. Tears prick at my eyes. My head is spinning. I know I need to reply but it’s like my voice is gone. Ryan scoots his body across the living room and balances on his knees. He rests his sticky, chubby hands up on the glass coffee table. He’ll leave handprints. My mother will not like that.
"I can't say that I'm surprised by any of this. Honestly. I knew you wouldn't be able to keep a man like Paul. It's shocked me that you've managed to hold your relationship together for this long, quite frankly,” she hisses.
I stand up and grab Ryan. I don’t have to take this abuse. I hear a clearing of a throat from the doorway. It’s Jax. “That’s enough, Cassie.”
My mother looks horrified at his interruption. “Excuse me?”
Jax steps into the room. He’s seems bigger than usual; it’s like he’s puffing his chest out in a primal display. “Th
at’s enough of you being an asshole to your daughter.”
My mother laughs darkly. “Oh, you’re her keeper now? You fuck your stepsister and suddenly you’re in charge around here?” Jax looks panicked. My mother laughs again. “You think I don’t know what you’ve been doing? Give me a little more credit than that. Oh no. I will not let this fling between the two of you stand. The impropriety of it – what will people say? You have a child with another man, Tessa. It was bad enough when you were unmarried with a baby, but at least his father was in his life.”
I start to walk out of the room, shielding Ryan from her verbal blows. I don’t have to stand for this. “Paul was never in Ryan’s life, Mother. He can tell you all about that.” I smooth Ryan’s dark hair across his perfect, soft head.
“It’s hard for a man to be there for his child when he’s the only one bothering to get up in the morning and work,” my mother shouts.
Jax isn’t done. “I said that’s enough, Cassie.”
I step past him and look up at the top of the stairs. Jillian is standing there holding her suitcase. She’s blushing with shame from having overheard what was happening. “I need a ride to the airport,” she says.
Jax looks at both of us. “Pack your shit, Tessa. And Jillian, we’ll drive you to the airport.”
“Your father is not going to stand for you driving off in your car,” my mother says.
“Fuck you, Cassie,” Jax retorts. “Tell him to send a goddamned repo man for all I care.”
I walk out of the room to go pack, bracing myself for the last thing that will come out of my mother’s mouth. She always leaves the worst for last. “I just want you to know that Paul is still always welcome in this house. He will always be my son.”
She lets the words hang in the empty air. For once, I don’t feel threatened by them. Jax has emboldened me. He helps me up the staircase, his hand on the small of my back.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Forbidden: A Stepbrother Secret Baby Romance Page 14
