My Stepbrother's Promise (Contemporary Stepbrother Romance)

by Anne Burroughs

“No, you’re right. I’m sorry. I have no right to be mad. It’s not like we are anything other than brother and sister. I mean, you would never ever think of me in any other way, would you?” I started to cry, and Aidan reached his hand over and laid it on mine. I yanked my hand away. “No! You do not have the right to comfort me.” I wiped my tears away with the back of my hand.

  “You could have at least told me, Aidan.” I stood up. “God, I’m such an idiot.” I followed Erin’s path to the front door.

  “No, Jenny. I’m the idiot.” I ignored him and turned the doorknob. As the door closed behind me I heard him say in a hoarse voice, “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  Too late, Aidan. Too late.

  Chapter Fourteen

  * * *

  Aidan

  I sat for a long time on the futon with my head in my hands. I was sad, scared, ashamed, and powerless. How could I tell Jenny that I was sorry? That I was an idiot, a loser—weak. Erin was gorgeous, and she wanted me. How could I say no? And the moment I thought that, I knew the answer she would give: You just say no, Aidan, because you love me and that love is stronger than your weak male ego or libido or whatever the fuck it was that made you jump into bed with the blonde bitch.

  Shit, even the truth was ridiculously pathetic, words that I could never tell her—“Look, Jenny, even as I fucked her I was thinking of you. I used her to channel you. Can you not understand that?”

  That night I broke up with Erin. She screamed and threw a lamp at me. I just left and went to stay with one of my swimming teammates. I didn’t tell Jenny. As we visited the Santa Monica pier and went out for meals the rest of the weekend with Mom and Dad, she glared at me the whole time, barely saying a word.

  I could have told her I had broken up with Erin. I wanted to tell her. But she was my best friend, and I knew her better than anyone. I wouldn’t win her love back by pushing away someone else. I would only win her back by pulling her close.

  But as I watched Mom and Dad laughing as the wind kept blowing his hat, I knew I couldn’t pull her close yet. I was still afraid.

  I hugged her at the airport and whispered in her ear as she pulled away, “I’m sorry.” She turned and walked toward security without replying. She never looked back.

  Chapter Fifteen

  * * *

  Jenny

  I stayed at RISD over that Summer, taking a special invitation-only painting class for advanced students. There were only two students accepted by Professor Neumann: Me and Rob McMillan. Rob was hot in a cute nerdy way. He was tall, but not as tall as Aidan. He was thin and his angular face was more from being thin than rugged good looks. He had brown eyes, which somehow made him look more studious than Aidan’s pools of grey.

  In an odd way, he reminded me of Aidan when he was little, before he started swimming.

  We had nothing better to do as all our friends were gone for the Summer, so we hung out. We talked, went to movies, and painted. I trusted him enough to tell him about being cheated on the previous semester. I didn’t tell him it was my brother who cheated on me, but it wouldn’t have mattered. He took my hand and listened.

  Oh God, how I needed a listener.

  I cried a little bit, and he held me. At one point he wiped my tears away with his thumbs while holding my face in his hands. It was so like how Aidan would hold me that my heart skipped a beat. I looked up at Rob. He was nice. He was cute. He was fun.

  I pushed myself up on my tiptoes and kissed him.

  I felt a mixture of excitement and fear. Aidan was my only love, but I had to move on. This was but a tentative step. To Rob’s credit, he didn’t push things. He kissed me back and then pulled away with a smile.

  “That was nice,” he said.

  “Yeah, nice,” I replied. And it was. I didn’t feel like I wanted to rip his pants off, but I felt myself being drawn to him. Baby steps, I told myself.

  The next day he kissed me goodbye after we went to see a movie. It was just a quick kiss on the lips. There were more more kisses and held hands, but neither of us felt pressure to move fast. I appreciated that. A few weeks later my parents came down for a visit, and all four of us went out for dinner. Rob delighted my mom. He was a liberal intellectual, like her, and he said all the right things. Dad was harder to impress, but when Rob started talking about the Patriots, it was over. Rob was Dad’s new best friend.

  I walked them down to the car to say goodbye. They were going to leave early the next morning for home and wouldn’t see me again. Mom hugged me hard and then held my arms as she looked at me. “I like your boyfriend, Jenny. He’s the kind of young man you deserve.”

  I hemmed and hawed, because I hadn’t really thought of him as a boyfriend. He was a friend with affection slowly growing to passion. At least I hoped it was. But did that mean he was my boyfriend?

  Dad smiled and put his hand on my shoulder. “I like him, too. You should introduce him to Aidan. I bet they’d get along great.”

  “Thanks, Dad. That’s a great idea.” It was a white lie to make Dad happy. I hadn’t talked to Aidan in a few weeks. Like me he had stayed at school over the Summer, and my hope that the distance between us would soothe my hurt and make us closer again proved to be only partially true. I missed him, but I was still mad at him.

  As I walked back to my apartment I considered where I was with Rob. The more I considered it, the more I realized he was my boyfriend. If that were the case, we were the most boring couple ever. Why hadn’t we even French kissed yet, let alone had sex? I knew the answer… I just hadn’t really considered him more than mildly hot and cute. He certainly didn’t make me wet with the desire, like thoughts of Aidan continued to do.

  I walked in to Rob sitting on the couch. He had put all the dishes away. I went over and sat on his lap, wrapping my arms around his neck. “Thank you for cleaning up.” I pulled his head down to kiss him.

  We had kissed more than a few times, but none lasted very long, and the kisses were all attached to other things, like goodbyes, thank yous, and hellos. There were no kisses just to kiss. Until now.

  Our lips touched and I stroked his cheek with the back of my fingers as he put his arms around me and pulled me close. He didn’t have the full lips of Aidan, but they were still soft enough. I opened my lips, and slid my tongue against his lips. He opened his mouth and slid the tip of his tongue out. I tickled his tongue with mine and opened wider. He then slid his tongue into my mouth, and I felt myself getting a little excited.

  It was at that point that he started running his tongue along the back of my teeth. It wasn’t exactly gross, but it was far from sexy. I tried to use my tongue to dance with his, but he kept just moving his tongue all around the inside of my mouth. I gave up and closed my mouth to suck on his tongue, but as I closed my lips around his tongue, he must have gotten the wrong idea, as he pulled his tongue out and closed his mouth.

  We kissed for a few more moments and then I pulled my mouth away from his. “That was a nice surprise,” Rob said, smiling.

  “Yeah, that was nice.”

  I stood up and grabbed a mug that Rob had missed. “I’m glad you’re my boyfriend, Rob,” I said as I walked into the kitchen. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him as I said the words, as I didn’t know if I believed it. He was a great guy. He was cute. He was smart. He was fun. But kissing him was nothing like kissing Aidan.

  Aidan’s tongue would have danced with mine. His lips would have been soft and sent tingles through me. He wouldn’t have stopped with just a kiss. The moment I pulled my lips away, he would have kissed my chin, then my neck, and then he would have kissed my nipples.

  The thoughts were making me hot, sad, and frustrated. I didn’t know what to do. I really wanted to have Rob be the one. I mean, he had all the right pieces. He was even an artist. I wouldn’t have to listen to Aidan’s boring talk about the latest in swimsuit technology with Rob. He was perfect.

  Rob kissed me goodbye later in the evening. It was longer than our previous goodbye kis
ses. It was nice. And that’s when I realized what I needed to do. Rob was too nice. I need to unleash the animal inside him. Aidan’s rippling muscles and hard angles screamed that he was a predator, even if he acted like a goofball. Anyone who looked at Aidan knew that. Shit, the blonde slut knew it right away. She wasn’t an idiot. But Rob, he looked like a professor and acted like one.

  I texted Rob. Hey, come by my place tomorrow and bring your paint eq. We can paint each other.

  The next day I gave Rob a long kiss and let him into the apartment. I wasn’t sure how the day was going to progress, but my goal from the moment Rob walked through the door was to fuck him. Not make love to him. Get him naked and fuck him or, better than that, have him fuck me.

  “Why don’t you paint me first,” I said as I handed him a mug of coffee. “Whatever you have in mind,” I added, hoping that he would get the message that if he wanted to paint me nude I would be up for that.

  “Great. Why don’t you lie down on the couch, and I’ll set up over here.” I lay back on the couch as he set up his easel and canvas. He looked at me as I got comfortable. I pulled a pillow next to the arm of the sofa and lay my head on it. I then dropped my right leg to the floor while my left leg stretched out. I put on hand on my right thigh while my left hand rested on my left breast. It was as close to a “fuck me” pose as I could think of.

  Going through the process of seducing Rob was exciting in and of itself. I didn’t think I was particularly good at seduction. I had never really done it other than stumbling around with Aidan for years, after all. But I had a sexy body, and I knew I was pretty. I mean I had the raw materials, right? How hard could it be to get a nerdy guy like Rob hard?

  He pulled out a pencil and started doing the preliminary sketch.

  “Hey, nothing too complicated, I don’t want to sit here all day,” I said after about five minutes. After about ten minutes I noticed he was still sketching. I knew how Rob worked, and he was a fast and excellent sketch artist. He could draw full sketches in a couple minutes. For him to have the rough outline of his painting not done almost immediately meant something was wrong. “Problems?” I asked.

  His brow was furrowed, and his glasses had slid down his nose. The intensity of his look was sexy, and I thought of him looking at me like that as we were both naked with him above me. The glasses were the turn on for some reason. Yeah, he was totally going to fuck me with his glasses on.

  “I’m trying to capture the real you. I think I know you well enough that I can do more than just paint a hot girl in jeans and a t-shirt.” The moment he said the words he looked up, and the look on his face was a kind of admission that I caught him thinking something naughty. More than anything he had said or done over the past few weeks, that look was the hottest.

  I stood up and walked over to see his sketch. It was an excellent representation of my body in jeans and a t-shirt. My face looked kind of thoughtful. There was a kind of understated beauty to my curves.

  I hated it.

  I always thought of myself as passionate and devoted and smart and sexy and kind of a hot mess—pretty much everything except what Rob had drawn.

  I took his hand with the pencil in mine. “You’re holding back. That’s so unlike you. You are an amazing artist, Rob. I took his hand with the pencil and held it between my tits and against my heart. Paint the me that you see when your eyes are closed. The me that you dream about. The me that you wouldn’t want anyone to see. Because that’s what I want to see.” I let his hand go. “I’ll be disappointed if you don’t do that.”

  I kissed him on the lips. “Now start over.” If he didn’t get the hint that I was looking for something erotic I didn’t know what I’d do. He was a maddening combination of cute, clueless, and awkward. I had yet to see the sexy nerd I was hoping for.

  He grabbed a new canvas as I lay back down on the sofa. I stretched my legs out and lay back, watching as Rob worked. He furiously sketched. Every so often he would stop and stare at me for long periods of time. The look on his face as he studied me thrilled me. It wasn’t that of analysis. It was of desire. I had seen it before. It took me years to realize it, but that look of desire was omnipresent on Aidan’s face as he looked at me.

  He put the pencil down, and I stood up. “Now let’s see what you’ve got.”

  “I’d rather not have you see this just yet.” He looked scared. Good. He did something uncomfortable.

  I soon discovered why. He had sketched me naked, with my left hand holding my left breast and the other laying on my thigh, the fingers almost reaching for my pussy. Rob was an amazing artist, and even though it was just a quick sketch I had to admit that it was extraordinary how well he portrayed my curves without ever having seen them. Looking at my naked body through the eyes of someone else was thrilling.

  “This is fantastic, Rob!”

  “It is?” He looked relieved. I didn’t want relief. I wanted him to give even further into his passion.

  “Well, for the most part. You got one thing wrong.” I had a very sexy thing in mind, but after I said the words, Rob looked scared again. I was trying really hard to seduce and fuck Rob, but he kept annoying me with his hesitation and fear. He should have been falling all over himself to get in my pants, after all.

  Part of what was maddening was that I was a virgin. It’s not like I was this slut who fucked any guy that came along. I had seen enough porn to know the basics and perhaps some advanced topics, but in actual application I was possibly in the same boat as Rob, yet I wasn’t worried over every little thing.

  “I”m so sorry! It’s just that I’ve never seen you naked, and I had to use my best guess.”

  “Rob. Calm down. It’s just a small thing. Here, it will be easier to explain if I show you.” I started to pull my t-shirt over my head as I walked back to the sofa. I dropped it on the floor and then undid my bra, dropping it next to the shirt. I removed my shoes, and then unbuttoned my jeans and pulled them off along with my panties. Rob’s jaw was dropped open.

  I lay down on the sofa, once again dropping my right leg to the floor, while I stretched my left leg out. I caressed my tits with my hands and then dropped my right hand down to my thigh, matching his sketch as much as possible. I looked up, and Rob looked like he was in heaven. “By now you know what you got wrong.” I smiled widely.

  He nodded. “Yeah, you are—”

  “Shaved. That’s right. So lose the pubic hair, and you’re good.” Ever since the night in the cabin when I had seen that Aidan was completely shaved, I shaved myself smooth.

  He started painting, and as he did I imagined what it would be like to fuck Rob. He clearly wasn’t the passionate type. Nor was he muscular. I had to give up the idea of a swimmer’s body. But that wasn’t so bad. He was really cute, and I anticipated that like a lot of artists, his passion was just buried under the surface. Maybe he would put his brush down, walk over, and just lower himself between my legs.

  I closed my eyes and pictured Rob tongue licking me as he looked up at me through his glasses. A thought entered my head that really turned me on. I had gone this far, so I decided to just go for it. I slid my hand over and started to stroke myself. I ran my index finger up and down my pussy lips, pretending it was Rob’s tongue.

  “Uh, what are you doing?”

  I opened my eyes and looked at Rob. “I’m imagining you on your knees right there—“ I pointed to the floor next to me. “—with your tongue licking my pussy right here.” I stroked my clit. He didn’t say anything, just stood and stared.

  “You’re supposed to be painting, Rob.” I smiled at the confusion in his face and then turned my attention to myself. I started to stroke my clit and breathe heavily as each stroke increased the heat in my pussy. I didn’t want to come fast, so I dropped my fingers down and stroked my pussy lips. “You look nervous. Come on. You’ve painted a lot of nudes. What’s the problem?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t concentrate.” I could not believe he hadn’t walked over and just ta
ken me yet.

  “You can’t finish?”

  He glanced at the painting. “Uh, no.”

  “I can’t finish either. Maybe you can help me.” He didn’t move. “Now, please.”

  He dropped the paintbrush and scrambled over. Finally. He slid his hand along my thigh and up my body to my chest. I tingled at his touch. He reached down and started caressing my right nipple with his fingers. I grabbed his hand and slid it down my body. “Between my legs, please.”

  He was tentative enough that I had to guide his fingers with my hand. I had to admit it was kind of hot, using a man’s hand to masturbate myself. I used his first two fingers to stroke my clit, and I did it faster and faster until I started moaning. “Oh God, I’m going to let go, but don’t stop.” I let go of his fingers, and he continued to stroke me. I thrust my hips forward and came.

  Breathing heavily, I looked up at him. “Now you can fuck me.” I spun my left leg down to get into a sitting position. I was going to take Rob’s pants off and suck his cock, but he had already pulled his pants and underwear down. His cock was rock hard but not nearly as big as Aidan’s, even soft. I mean, it looked fine but it wasn’t the kind of thing that fueled fantasies.

  This was a moment I had waited years for, to touch and hold a hard cock. I had fantasized about Aidan’s cock so many times. He’d come on my tits, in my mouth, on my face, in my ass, on my ass. There wasn’t anything that I didn’t want to do with his cock. And now I would finally get to hold and caress and suck one for real. I reached out for Rob’s cock, but he leaned down and started to kiss me.

  I kissed him back, while I ran my hand up his leg. He gently pushed me backward onto the sofa. I fell back, and before I realized what was happening Rob was on top of me. I could feel his hard cock against my thigh and then my pussy. I tried to enjoy it, but there was an almost clinical efficiency about how Rob was moving. He moved my left leg over and then I felt his cock pressed up against my pussy lips.