My Stepbrother's Promise (Contemporary Stepbrother Romance)

by Anne Burroughs

  “Okay, so what is sex like?”

  She shoved herself to a sitting position and looked at me. “What?” She was angry.

  My words came out in a rush. “Come on, Jeremy is a senior and handsome and we’ve talked about how we were curious what sex felt like and you’ve been kissing him and, I mean, look at how you’re dressed and he said you were hot and I just figured the planets were all aligned.”

  She stared at me for a moment, and then said, in a whisper, “You think I went to the prom just to have sex with Jeremy?” The hurt in her words was like a knife.

  “Uh, no!” I backpedaled. I didn’t know what I thought.

  “That’s what you said, Aidan. You didn’t ask if he was a gentleman or if I had fun or if I saw anything interesting. You just asked if we fucked.”

  Shit. “Sorry, I just assumed. It’s a prom and all.” I shrugged from my seat at my desk. I hoped that my nonchalance would cover my fear and nervousness and embarrassment.

  “After all these years, this is the kind of person you think I am, Aidan?” She started to cry, and I had to turn away as I was on the verge of tears, too. “You think I would just fuck some hot guy to see what sex is all about?”

  “No—” She stood up.

  “Look, sharing and caring obviously mean something different to you. Glad to know it’s all about analyzing the replay. I get it.” She walked toward the door. “Tell you what, Aidan, don’t worry. If you want play-by-play of my first blowjob or what it’s like to feel a guy’s cock inside me I’ll call you from my cell phone the minute we’re done.”

  “Jenny, I’m sorry!” I tried to catch her eye, but her hand was on the doorknob.

  She didn’t even look at me as she spoke again. “If you need to know, Jeremy was a perfect gentlemen. He kissed me after one slow dance, and then we kissed longer as he said goodbye. He asked me if I would be comfortable dating a senior. I said yes.”

  And with that she turned the knob, walked through the door, and slammed it behind her.

  Chapter Four

  * * *

  Jenny

  What hurt me about Aidan’s attitude toward Jeremy was his coldness. He’d always been analytical and curious, and I wanted him to be jealous. I went to every swim meet just to stare at Aidan’s body. He pulled himself out of the water, and every drop that slid down his chest, arms, and legs was like an investment in the orgasm bank, withdrawals nightly.

  And his body. God. He had always been cute, and I loved that, but when he started swimming his body fat dropped, and it was like a sculptor had chiseled away the rough draft into an exquisite statue of the perfect male.

  He had this shaggy brown hair that he let grow long until he had to shave for regionals. It fell around his angular face, perfectly accenting his gray eyes. He had that perfect swimmer build—broad shoulders and torso that formed a V at his hips, with leg muscles rippling with every movement.

  So when Jeremy asked me to the prom I was kind of shocked. I didn’t even notice many of the other swimmers. Jeremy was handsome, and he was a swimmer so of course he had a great body, but he wasn’t even in the same league as Aidan. I swear I said yes only to see how Aidan would react. I wanted him to be angry, to pull me aside and say something like, “You are mine!” In fact, I masturbated a few times to that exact scenario.

  But, no, Aidan was just as cold and distant as always. I even asked him once or twice what he thought of Jeremy, and he would just mumble something about him being a good guy and that the important thing was that I was happy. Didn’t he realize that I didn’t want him to want me happy? I wanted him to want me unhappy. More specifically, I wanted him to want me.

  But it was a lost cause.

  The worst was after the prom. I didn’t know what I wanted to say to Aidan as I walked into the room. Part of me want to tell him just enough to see if I could make one last push to make him jealous. Part of me wanted to tell him the truth—Jeremy was nice, but there were no sparks. And, truth be told, part of me wanted to just grab Aidan, kiss him passionately, and say that it should have been us holding each other on the dance floor.

  But he ruined it all.

  All he cared about were details of how we had sex. I had never been more sad. It would have been better if he had screamed at me in jealousy and yelled out, “You fucked that asshole, didn’t you?” But, no, he just kind of dropped the bomb without a care in the world.

  At one point I started to cry, and when I looked over at him he had turned away. I loved him so much, and I thought he loved me, but he had just hurt me, and he couldn’t even look at me.

  I could never say I hated Aidan, but at that moment I didn’t like him very much. I stormed out. Jeremy had asked about dating, and I told him I’d think about it. I was going to share that with Aidan, and we would then conspire on a gentle way of saying no. But I blurted out that I was going to say yes, and as I ran to my room I knew I had to go through with it.

  I had to get over Aidan somehow, and if it took the arms of another man, then so be it.

  A week later and to my utter horror Aidan told me he was dating Katie Morrow. Aidan and I used to joke about Katie. She had the hugest crush on him, and she would constantly ask me how to get his attention. I didn’t have the heart to tell her, “Well, a good first step would to not be Katie Morrow.”

  At one point she decided to go for broke and after every swim meet she would walk up to Jeremy wearing small jean shorts and bikini tops. She would hug him after he swam, whether he won or not. I loved the awkwardness in his face as she would pull him tight and press her crotch against his. I swear if she could slide her hand into his swim trunks without everyone seeing she would have done it.

  So when he said he was dating her, my anger over his attitude toward me and Jeremy immediately switched to jealousy over the little slut trying to fuck her way to my brother’s attentions.

  To make matters worse, I had to admit that things weren’t going well with Jeremy, either. We had been on a few dates, and I froze when he started to French kiss me during the last one. I didn’t stop him as he put his hand under my blouse, but the moment he started to kiss me deeper, I pulled back. I called it a night shortly afterward.

  He was still angry the next day and was cruel in the guise of honesty, asking me about what other hangups I had. The truth is that the stupidest thing poured cold water over the nice feeling of having a handsome swimmer making out with me—my promise to Aidan. I felt like those stupid girls at school who say they’re saving themselves for marriage. In my heart there was some deep part of me that wanted to save the special kiss for Aidan.

  And now he was dating a girl who would give him a blowjob for his phone number. What the hell did a French kiss mean with that facing me? I felt stupid.

  His first date was to a movie on Friday night. Mom and Dad let him stay out until one o’clock because I was allowed to do that for the prom, but I think more than anything they were just glad he was finally going out with a girl. His interest in dating was pretty much nil.

  They went out to see Kung Fu Panda, which pissed me off because Aidan said that we would go see it together. The movie was over at like ten o’clock, so I was dreading what they were going to do after that for three hours. I pictured every possible sexual scenario between the two of them, all of them horrifying to me.

  He finally rolled in at one o’clock. I refused to do to him what he did to me, so I just stayed in my room and read. He knocked softly on the door.

  “Come in.”

  He walked in, and my heart couldn’t help but skip a beat. He looked so rugged and handsome, in jeans and a khaki shirt. He ran his hand through his hair and looked up at me from a bowed head. “Got time to talk?”

  I pulled myself up into a sitting position and patted the bed. He sat down and sighed.

  “Katie not what you expected?” I asked, trying to create an image of concern while being clear that I knew exactly what was expected in such a situation.

  “Yes and no.�
� He put his hands on his head and fell back onto my bed. “What’s wrong with me, Jenny? I try to do the right thing to all the people I care about, and now I do the same thing with the new people I am seeing, and all I do is just alienate everyone.”

  “What happened? Did you make her mad?” At this point I was kind of happy that the date clearly didn’t go well, but I was also nervous over how Aidan was speaking. No one was closer to him than me, and I knew that he would rather kill himself than reveal his deepest emotions, even to me. That’s part of what made him so maddening. But here he was doing just that. What did Katie do to him?”

  “I just wanted to have a nice time, Jenny. Really.” I slid myself closer to him. He was really hurting. “You know I think she’s pretty, right?”

  It pained me to answer, but I did. “Yeah, she’s kind of sad, but she’s definitely pretty.”

  “Yeah, that’s just it. She’s sad. I picked her up, and she immediately leaned over and gave me this big kiss. Then in the car she put her hand on my thigh, and she kept stroking my leg. And at the movie theater she actually took my arm and put it around her shoulder, and while I was okay with that she kept not-so-subtly tugging my hand down to rest on her breasts.” I had to smile at that point. Breasts, not tits. That was so totally Aidan.

  “Look, I don’t think I need all the dirty details. She was really horny. I get it.”

  “That’s the thing, Jenny. I don’t think it was that at all. I think she just wanted someone to be physically close to her. At no point was there any real passion behind her actions. I think she just wanted me to want her.”

  I looked at Aidan. His eyes were closed, and his profile was this combination of unbelievable sexiness and deep sadness. “Was that the problem? You wanted her to want you?”

  His head jerked up, and perhaps for the first time in my life his face didn’t have the cold Aidan veneer. He looked alarmed and seemed almost out-of-control. “No! I’m just trying to describe to you how it was this really sad thing.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I get that.”

  “So the movie ends, and she says we should go hang out at a Denny’s, which is cool. I thought it would be good to talk to her.” He looked at me, and his eyes pierced me with their intensity. “She is nothing like you. All she wanted to talk about was school and the popular kids and how cool it must be to be on the swim team. It was like two hours of desperation, Jenny. Can you imagine that?”

  “Well, we have each other, so thankfully not.”

  “Exactly! It was like two hours of soul sucking. I’m not trying to be a gross, but it was like I had become her host. She was outlining to me how her life would be so much better by being attached to me.”

  “That is gross,” I replied, smiling. Aidan smiled a bit at that.

  “But then it got weird.”

  “Oh, this I have to hear.” I couldn’t believe how much Aidan was opening up to me. We were the closest of friends, but I never knew him before he was twelve, and in the previous four years we shared all of our dreams and interests, but one thing Aidan had trouble sharing was his pain and weaknesses, so this was new to me. In an odd way I felt like this was a deepening of a relationship I didn’t think could go any deeper.

  “Well, I went to drive her home, and when I went to open her car door—“

  “Always the gentlemen,” to which he nodded with a smile.

  “—She grabbed my arm and pulled me down and kissed me. I kind of smiled and was trying to think of a way to say that I appreciated her affection even as I thought it was a little creepy, but before I could say anything she grabbed my crotch with her hand.”

  By now I knew Aidan’s mindset, and it wasn’t horniness, so I decided to tease him. “Sounds more like an opportunity than weirdness.” He glared at me. “Hey, you’re the one who said she was pretty.”

  “Anyway, I pulled her hand away and kind of laughed it off, saying something like there was plenty of time for that later.”

  “Oh that was a mistake.”

  “Wait, why do you say that?” He looked at me, his face full of confusion.

  “Because now she’s probably thinking that you’re inviting her to a hotel room or something for a big finale.”

  “Omigosh, that’s pretty much exactly how she reacted.”

  “Rumor has it that I’m a girl and that I understand girl things.”

  “So she says to me, with this really desperate whisper, ‘I could start you here and we could finish somewhere more intimate later,’ and then I swear to God she winked at me and grabbed my zipper with her hand.”

  “So what’s it like to get a blowjob?” I asked, smiling sweetly.

  “Shut up, you jerk.” He was smiling when he said it, so I knew that we were totally attuned to each other on the mood of the conversation. “I told her that it was too early to talk about stuff like that.”

  “You sound like an altar boy.”

  “That’s what she said!”

  I shoved my shoulder against his. “Girl. Knowing girl things.”

  “Yeah, well anyway. I’m driving her home, and she’s still running her hand up and down my thigh, and before you say anything, no, it was not sexy or arousing.”

  “Noted.”

  “I walk her up to her house, and I figure that I should at least kiss her goodnight, so I lean down to kiss her, and she grabs my hair and smashes her face against mine. She was running her tongue against my lips trying to get it in my mouth, but I just clamped them shut and pulled back. I don’t know who was more embarrassed, her or me. I kind of muttered a goodbye, and as I walked away I was wiping her saliva off my lips and chin with my sleeve, and I glanced back and she was watching me.”

  “Oh man, that’s bad.”

  “Yeah, her last sight of me after our date is me furiously wiping her kiss off my lips.”

  “Well, look at the bright side, you still have my promise,” and the moment I said it, all the air got sucked out of the room. We had not talked about the promise since we made it, and I had assumed that Aidan was glad of that. He had made it clear to me that I was his sister and that he didn’t think of me that way. Sure, stepsister, but still. His previous cold reaction to our kiss was clear enough. I wanted to just disappear.

  “Oh,” he replied. He looked at me, and there was something different in his eyes. Not the cold analysis I expected, but something warmer. “I just thought that with you and Jeremy…” His voice trailed off.

  “Me and Jeremy?” It took a moment, and then I added, “Oh my gosh, no. We have’t done more than just kiss on the lips.” Which was a lie, since Jeremy had copped a pretty good feel, but in terms of our promise it was true enough.

  “I thought you two were pretty close.” That look in his eyes again.

  “Actually, he doesn’t know it yet, but I’m going to break up with him.” Up until that moment I hadn’t decided to do that, but something was changing, and the awkwardness and anger of my not kissing him with the passion he wanted suddenly became a deal breaker for me.

  I looked at Aidan. He was smiling and shook the fringe of his hair out of his eyes. Yes. It was only too clear. I was going to wait until our eighteenth birthday, and then I was going to kiss him like he’d never been kissed before. For the first time I had an inkling he felt the same way. It was nothing more than the aftermath of a bad date, but it was something.

  Chapter Five

  * * *

  Aidan

  Jenny and my birthdays were only a month apart, and Mom and Dad’s anniversary as a couple was the same month as my birthday, so Mom had this bright idea of having an intimate celebration at our lake house. They would celebrate five years together, while Jenny and I would celebrate our eighteenth birthdays.

  The lake was in upstate New York, about three hours from our house, so we packed up the Range Rover on a Thursday afternoon and prepared to arrive later that night for a three day family gathering. I was looking forward to it because Jenny and I could spend some quiet time together. Things had b
een tense between us ever since she accepted a scholarship to Rhode Island School of Design, while I was heading to UCLA on a swimming scholarship.

  Honestly, I was a little hurt. I assumed we would go to college together. We obviously wouldn’t be roommates, but I thought the whole craziness of making it through our college years would be a lot easier with us watching each other’s back. And the thing was—UCLA had an art program and RISD didn’t have a swim program. So I took her choice as a pretty clear indication that our relationship was truly moving into one of a brother and sister who only saw each other on holidays.

  I guess I thought that after she broke up with Jeremy and didn’t get another boyfriend that we were destined to be together. It just seemed so natural, even though we didn’t talk as much. So I was hurt and confused and disappointed.

  I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. Jenny no longer came to all of my swim meets, and although I avoided other girls and tried to spend as much time with her as I could, we still drifted to our growing social circles.

  The good news was that our bedrooms were still right next to each other, and we would occasionally wander in late at night to discuss one thing or another that was bothering us. Even Jenny wouldn’t deny that we were still best friends.

  The trouble was that as the visits became less often they also became more unbearable. Jenny would come in wearing nothing but a t-shirt, and I could see her nipples pressing against the material as she leaned back and complained about this thing or that thing. She had an amazing body, with gorgeous tits on top of a perfect hourglass figure. Sometimes she wore pajamas, and she was able to even make those look sexy.

  I remember one night when she grabbed a few of my pillows from the base of my bed and tossed them against the wall so she could lean back and stretch across the bottom of my bed while I was sitting near the top. As she leaned back, the front of her pajama top pulled up, and I could see the top of her pajama bottoms. They had slid down and were very low.