“That’s not the same thing as love,” said Maggie, shifting up onto her knees. “Giving me an easy place to live only makes sure I owe him obedience to his rules. He doesn’t care what I want—only what he wants. And he wants me to be with some normal person with an office job, a boring husband, and a weekend hobby.”
Jase stood at the end of the bed, clearly frustrated, but unable to find the words for it. He put his hands on his thin waist and shook his head. Maggie crawled up to him and leaned against his chest. He put one arm around her back with a light touch.
“He’s not going to let this keep on, Jase,” she said in a quiet voice. “You’re becoming his golden boy at the MC, but he wants me as far away from it as he can get me. You can’t honestly tell me you haven’t noticed what’s been going on since we got together…”
“We’ve been together a long time,” said Jase. He wouldn’t look at her.
“As friends, yes. And he was fine with that. But the second we crossed that line…”
Jase shook his head but said nothing.
“He’s kept you as busy as possible with club stuff. He’s kept me here as much as he can, and when you’re not here, he makes very clear that he isn’t happy about us. Haven’t you noticed that every time you stop by when he’s here, he finds some way to get you out of the house quickly? I mean, why are you even here right now, Jase? You have work in less than six hours.”
“It was the only time we…” he trailed off.
“It was the only time we could find where Henry wouldn’t be around,” said Maggie for him. “Where we knew he would be busy and we could steal a few hours. Is that how you want this to be—us forever sneaking around my dad?”
“If you moved in with me, this wouldn’t be happening,” said Jase. “He couldn’t stop us then.”
“He’s your president, Jase. He’s my dad. And he practically owns this town. Moving in together isn’t going to make those relationships magically disappear.”
Jase sighed. “What are you trying to say, Maggie? What do you want?”
“I want you to move away with me,” she said. “Let’s go find a new start somewhere else, away from all of this. Let’s have our own lives.” She ran her hands up his chest and looked up at his face with hopeful eyes.
Instead, she saw only pain on his face. “Maggie…” Jase took her hands in his. “My whole life is here. My friends are here. My mom wouldn’t have anyone else if I left.”
In all her imagining of this moment, Maggie had not prepared herself for this. She thought she had, but she discovered a level of pain for which she had no name “Don’t you love me?” said Maggie, unable to stop the tears surfacing in her eyes.
“Of course I do,” said Jase. He kissed her hands with fervor and looked into her eyes. “Of course. I love you. That’s why I want you to stay and make a life with me here.”
“Jase, what if I can’t? What if Henry won’t let us?” she said.
“He will. We’ll make—“ Jase was interrupted by the sound of a motorcycle rumbling down the neighborhood street. Both he and Maggie froze and looked at each other. “What is he doing coming back this early?” said Jase.
Maggie saw the look on his face, and gave him a sarcastic one of her own. “I thought we didn’t have anything to worry about from him?”
Jase frowned and made a soft, grumpy noise at her. He walked over to the window and stuck his fingers between the blinds to get a look outside. Maggie stood behind him with her arms crossed and listened to the bike pull into the driveway and park.
“Oh,” said Jase as he let out a breath. “It’s not your dad, it’s just Will.”
“Like that’s any better,” said Maggie as she moved to put some clothes on. Jase was right behind her, stepping into his jeans and fumbling his white shirt over his head. By the time he had his cut on, they could hear Will’s soft knocking on the front door. “What’s he doing here?”
“How should I know?” said Jase. “I’ve been busy the last few hours.” He nuzzled up to her as she pulled her hair out of her shirt. As upset as she felt, she couldn’t resist his embrace, but the kisses she gave him were short. She followed Jase down the hall to the front door.
Will leaned patiently against the porch railing, chewing on a toothpick and staring into the dark sky. He turned to them with a smile. “Hi, guys. I’m sorry to interrupt.”
“Everything okay?” said Jase as he straightened his cut.
Will tossed the toothpick into the garden as he straightened. “Henry’s been looking for you, he needs you for something, but you weren’t picking up your phone.”
“Yeah, I turned it off,” said Jase. “For a reason.”
“Well, he’s… insistent,” said Will with a soft shrug. “I said I might know where you were.”
Maggie stepped up to the doorway. “You didn’t tell him, did you?”
Will shook his head, pursing his lips. “Not that you two are a secret, or anything. But I think we all have an unspoken code to, uh… move around the facts.”
“How’s that?” said Maggie.
In a bit of embarrassment, Will’s lopsided smile made an appearance. “I think Henry knows exactly where Jase is when he’s not answering his phone, and he doesn’t mind me offering to be the one to possibly catch you in the act.”
Maggie sighed heavily. Next to her, Jase said. “He really needs me to come right now?”
“Captain’s orders,” said Will.
“You don’t say,” Maggie said in a flat voice. She felt emotions rising and turned away from the men at the door. She heard Jase speak softly to Will for a few moments.
Jase came up behind her as she stared at the dark living room fireplace and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. He nuzzled into the side of her hair and kissed her. “I’m sorry, he says it’s important.”
“Shocker.”
He held her tighter, as if his embrace could wipe away the truth. Maggie felt tears running down her cheek and wiped them away nonchalantly. In the dark, he couldn’t see.
“Just stay with me,” said Jase into her ear. “I don’t want to lose you. You’re my world, you know that don't you?” He squeezed her again. “You have been my world for a very long time.”
Despite herself, Maggie sighed and nuzzled into him. She planted a few tiny kisses on the side of his warm face. “You’re mine, too.”
He held her for a few more moments before he released her, leaving her feeling as cold as she ever had.
Maggie trailed Jase to the front door like a ghost, clinging to his hand. Before he walked out, he turned and kissed her deeply. “Just hang on for me, okay? Things will smooth out.”
Even though she didn’t believe that, Maggie gave him a tight, teary smile, and a nod. She said nothing, only kissed him on the side of his mouth.
“I love you.”
“I love you too,” she said.
After one last lingering embrace, Jase finally pulled away from her and headed down the porch steps towards the driveway. Will was already on his bike; he gave a smile and a wave up to Maggie, and she returned it. Jase climbed on his waiting bike, shiny and chrome under the steady glare of the streetlights. She felt her heart race a little at the sound of them revving up, and waved at her biker boyfriend one last time as he backed out of the drive.
As they pulled away, Maggie’s face turned to look down the hallway towards her room. Under the bed, she could see the shadow of the suitcase she had already half-packed. She stared at it as she listened to the bikes disappear into the night.
Sanctum available now on Amazon
And now, as promised, here is the complete novel Slade: A Stepbrother Romance
~ PROLOGUE ~
Slade
“Slade, wait… I’m a virgin.”
That’s what Iris said to me two months ago, when we were in the same position then—only that first time, her ass wasn’t on the kitchen counter of her parents’ pool house. Our parents’ pool house.
The first time
we’d fucked had been in her bed, still made up in frilly comforters and pillows and being watched by the stuffed animals on her shelves. You would’ve never guessed Iris Walker was eighteen years old. Not by the way she still clung to her innocence like it was her very own lifeboat.
Maybe that was what lust was to her—a deep, dark ocean just waiting to swallow her up. Maybe I was the shark circling her little raft, and she’d been chumming the waters with her creamy thighs, her raven hair, but most of all, those smoking-hot lips of hers.
Whenever she wrapped ‘em around a straw and puckered, I damn near saw God. They were so full, so succulent, like ripe peach flesh just dying for me to take a bite. She’d sweep her tongue across them every so often, a little pink dart of motion that always drew my attention, always beckoned me to steal a glance at her big, innocent brown eyes and sultry pout.
She was sex on two very long legs, and she didn’t even know it. She was also my stepsister.
And that was exactly why I had to get inside her.
It took months. Months of teasing. Months of half-joking innuendos and smoldering glares as I passed her in the halls of the house we both shared. Ever since my father had married her whore mother, Iris and I had been trapped together like two animals in the same cage. Proximity could be dangerous, and I was going to make damn sure Iris felt every ounce of the danger she was in the longer she shared my cage.
I was leaving soon. I was headed to Harvard at twenty-one, young, dumb, and full of cum, but also a goddamn genius. That was what everyone had always called me, anyway. Especially my mom, the saint of a woman my father had promptly forgotten all about the moment he caught sight of Ms. Evelyn Walker.
Call me Evie, she’d said the first time we’d met, when my father brought her to the same house Mom died in and wanted me to shake this strange woman—this homewrecker’s hand. Call me Evie. Yeah, right. Like I was ever gonna call her anything other than Evelyn, the Harpy, Evelyn, the Interloper, Evelyn, the Bitch Who Stuck Her Nose Where It Didn’t Belong.
How Iris had come out of that was beyond me. Kellan, too, her little brother—thirteen and all smiles and smart as a whip—he was a good kid. He was always looking at me, watching what I did. I liked basketball, so now he’d started to play. I was good at Call of Duty, so he’d begged his mom to get him the game so he could be just as good as me. I tried to set a good example for him, praising his good grades and making a big deal out of how great it was to go to medical school. “Don’t let any assholes ever tell you A’s are for nerds,” I’d say, and he’d nod, eyes bright as I helped him with his homework. That kid was going places, and I wanted to make sure he had someone he could look to for how to get there.
Which was why I kind of felt bad about leading my stepsister on.
Because what I told her was that it was love. That I couldn’t get her off my mind in a romantic sort of way. That ever since I’d lain eyes on my eighteen-year-old stepsister with the body of a twenty-five-year-old supermodel, I’d been smitten.
And poor Iris, with her stuffed teddies and her never-been-touched, blushing cheeks—she’d believed me. She’d bought the fantasy I was selling. Hook, line, and sinker.
But it was for the greater good. I just couldn’t tell her that.
Not then, when she’d looked at me with wide eyes and her heart in her throat, telling me she was a virgin and to take it slow, and we’d fumbled with each other’s clothes and knocked teeth when we kissed.
And not now, either, with her up on the kitchen counter, her legs spread, toned thighs quivering, her bikini bottom on the floor and her tits pulled out of her top.
“Slade, wait… I’m a virgin,” she’d said two months ago.
Today, all she said was, “Hurry up and cum for me, Slade, before Mom and Dad get home.”
I pushed up inside her in one long, pulsating stroke, perfectly content to take my time. Iris was more than just a hot body now. She’d learned a lot in the past couple months, and I’d learned that I was a damn good teacher. I’d seen her plump lips wrapped around my tip more times than I could count, and now when I plunged to fruition inside of her, she knew how to roll those hips and make me groan.
She was doing that now, urging me to finish, to leave all evidence of our forbidden lust inside her. Sweet, innocent Iris was on birth control now—I’d convinced her it was easier for both of us that way. No condoms to hide. Just my stepsister strutting around with a warm, creamy center.
That thought alone almost made me pop. Christ, I had to chill. I had to make it last. Because if everything went according to plan, then this would be the last time I got to fuck her.
Goddamn, some part of me was gonna miss this.
“I’m almost there,” I assured her through gritted teeth, leaning back a little to watch my dick speed in and out of her. I was covered in her desire. Iris had a hair-trigger, and she’d already gotten off multiple times, soaking the counter and me in the process. When my tip left the clinging wetness of her core, it made this popping sound I just couldn’t resist. Normally I’d have lost it right then and there, but the way my stepsister was digging her nails into my chest was killing me.
“Watch the tattoos,” I whispered. They were new and they were sore, and when Iris grasped them, they burned like hellfire. Which, given what we were doing, was awfully fitting.
“Sorry,” she moaned, leaning her head back so the damp curtain of her hair tumbled down her shoulders. I kissed the swan-like curve of her throat and she panted for me, her tits bouncing with the effort. Keep it cool, Slade. You can’t finish yet. Still got a few minutes…
“You’re close, Slade. I can feel it.” I drew back and her gaze met mine, hazy from her most recent orgasm. Her lips were swollen too, puffy and red, first from sucking my cock, then from my mouth on hers, stifling her moans and screams. “Cum inside me, baby. Please. Someone’s gonna catch us…”
Of course they are. That’s the point, Iris. But if she’d known that—if she knew this was all just a way to piss off my dad and put my brand new stepmom in her place—she never would’ve let me inside her. And that would’ve been a shame, because then I wouldn’t have known that turning a virgin into a succubus was a very worthwhile pursuit.
I couldn’t tell her the plan. Instead, I reached down between us and jiggled my thumb against that little bud I knew would send her over the edge again in no time.
Iris’ eyes widened. Her breath caught. “Oh, Slade. I can’t take it…” She raked her nails over me again and I just barely twitched out of range before she drew blood from my tattoo again. “I’m gonna…”
“Scream,” I told her, pumping in harder, faster, pushing her limits as well as my own. God, she was tight, and the way she writhed all over me was making my toes curl. “It’s our last time together, Iris. At least, for a while. I wanna hear you, baby. C’mon.” I turned the movement of my thumb into something more urgent, a tapping that made her wail. “That’s it. Louder, Iris. Scream for big brother.”
Yeah, that was nasty. But isn’t all sex, at twenty-one? And anyway, it worked. Shamefully, it turned us both on.
Iris began to shriek, spreading her legs wider to take the pounding I inflicted. She’d forgotten all about our parents, about what we were doing, about where we were doing it. She forgot how bold we were and how we were damn near out in the open. I could see it in her eyes when she looked up at me, her teeth embedded so deep into her lip that she’d broken the skin: all Iris Walker was thinking about, right at that moment, was cumming on my cock.
Shit, I was thinking about it, too.
Right up until the moment the pool house door opened.
The sounds that followed are ones I’ll never forget. The high-pitched cry of Iris helplessly surrendering to her orgasm, almost drowning out the sharp click of the doorknob turning. Then the little whine of the hinges as the door swung in, flooding the room with daylight and a single shadow, one that looked an awful lot like my dad’s.
Sweet vindication filled me as I fi
lled Iris right in front of him. I couldn’t tell which was better: revenge, or my orgasm.
I expected a whole lot of yelling next. I thought Iris, for sure, was gonna start to scream. And my dad had always had a temper, albeit only a verbal one. I could almost taste his bellow on the back of my throat as I swallowed, turning toward him, following Iris’ horrified gaze.
His face was ashen. There were deep, dark lines where none had been before. His eyes, cold as ice, made my skin prickle with pins, needles, and goosebumps. There was anger in him, all right, but it wasn’t the hot, explosive kind I’d anticipated. This was the silent kind, with a warning vibration that made the hairs on my nape stand on end.
Iris was the one who spoke first, only it wasn’t really a word that escaped her lips so much as a strangled sob. The smirk on my face faltered for a fraction of an instant. I hadn’t been expecting that, either—that the sound of Iris’ grief would put a little crack in my stone heart.
“Is this what you texted me for, Slade?” my father said. Disgust shimmered in his eyes, pulled taut at his lips. “You wanted me to see this, didn’t you? That’s why you said your mother and I needed to come home so urgently.” He shook his head. “Thank God she’s still in the main house.”
“You did this?” Iris whispered, lip curled, brow furrowed tight. There was a note of disbelief in her voice at first, but the longer she searched my face, the more her denial abated and turned to rage. Disgust. “You bastard. You… did this. Used me.” Then she lost all expression, staring blankly at the floor. “Oh, my God. Everything you said was a lie…”
I knew what she meant. I knew she wasn’t talking about the little stuff. Not about how I’d told her she was pretty, or that she had the best rack I’d ever seen. She was talking about those three little words I’d said. The ones I’d lost sleep over, thinking maybe I’d pushed it too far.
Kellan Page 16
