Secret: A Military Stepbrother Romance

by Irons, Aubrey

  I snort, “Fiiiine, watch your stupid shows.”

  “I will, thanks,” she says with fake indignation, making me grin. “Wait, so what’s this big news?”

  I know it’s supposed to be a big secret, but the hell with it. The whole world’s going to know in a few hours, and I’ll be damned if I let my best friend hear about it by way of an Argentinian newspaper tomorrow morning instead of me.

  “It’s about my mom.”

  “Damn, is she pregnant? Dude, that would be news.”

  “Baby-brain, will you let me finish?”

  She laughs, “Sorry, go.”

  “My mom’s getting married.”

  Jessica whistles slowly, “Holy shit, Mads.”

  “Yeah.”

  “To? Wait, can you even tell me or am I going to get black-bagged for hearing this?”

  “It’s going to be on the news in about hour, if you can manage to not tweet about your life for sixty whole minutes.”

  “Exceptions can be made; shoot.”

  “You know her Secretary of State?”

  “Mads, how many times have you seen me ever watch the news or know anything about politics, aside from your mom running and all that?”

  I grin, “The tall, silver-haired handsome guy that sometimes stands next to her at public things?”

  “Shit! That guy?” Jess whistles. “Way to go, Ms. Adams!” she laughs. “Wait, so why are you so glum then? Is he a dick or something?” She mutters something, “I knew he was a dick, all those handsome political types are.”

  “No, no, he’s actually awesome.”

  “So…what gives?”

  “Well— Okay, seriously— This… You really can’t spill this on twitter.”

  “Mads, I’m not, okay?”

  “His son is in the Secret Service.”

  Jess snorts, “Man, talk about apples and tree—” She cuts off abruptly, “Wait— You mean — oh shit.” She starts to laugh, “Wait, your Secret Service guy?”

  “Yeah,” I say glumly.

  “His son is Hunter? Super hot Hunter?”

  I can feel my cheeks blush, “Jess, gross, he’s not hot.”

  “Uh, yeah, girl, he is. Like, on any scale, that guy is hot.”

  “Jess he’s my stepbrother; eww?”

  “Not yet he’s not! And besides, who fucking cares if he is?”

  “What, you don’t see how weird that would be?”

  “Uh, no?” she giggles. “So what are you so bummed about if you’re somehow immune to your stupidly hot new stepbro’s charms?”

  “Well, I mean, he’ll be the President’s stepson, which takes him off the Secret Service,” I say quickly. “It just sucks for him, because he worked hard for it, and sucks for me because I have to get someone new for the detail.”

  “Someone not nearly as hot, you mean.”

  I roll my eyes. “You’re impossible.”

  “And you’re in denial about how much you wanna bang your hot stepbrother.”

  “I’m hanging up now, okay?”

  She laughs, “Go get pretty for T.V., I’ll see if I can go find an English news station and watch.”

  “Not a word, okay?”

  “Chill, your dirty little secret’s safe with me.”

  “Jess—!”

  “Byyyye.”

  *****

  “All you have to do is sit up there and smile, okay?” Emma smiles as she holds my shoulders and looks into my face while the prep crew finishes up with my perfectly coiffed hair.

  My makeup is perfect, and my demure and conservative skirt suit — like all the other ones I end up wearing to everything like this — is fit and smoothed to perfection. Even the way I’m supposed to smile — “not too toothy, okay?” — has been micromanaged and perfected for the camera.

  Because we’re the perfect American family; the perfect first family.

  Emma peers into my face and smiles reassuringly.

  “You’re going to be fine up there, Madison,” she says, patting my arm, as if the reason for the tenseness writ across my face is the fact that I have to be on international television in ten minutes.

  Of course, she doesn’t know that the reason my heart is pumping a million miles an hour and my knees keep shaking is that I know that when I sit there in front of those cameras with him right next to me, I’m going to feel like the whole world can see through our sham. The whole freaking world is going to see Hunter and me smiling away up there, and the wild paranoia in me screams that they’re all going to know.

  They’re going to know that I know what his lips feel like on mine.

  They’re going to know that I can’t stop thinking about his cock.

  They’re going to know that as terrified as I am about being up there in front of them, I’m also still wet from earlier.

  It’s all crazy-think, and I know that, but it doesn’t seem to be helping much. Emma gives me a final pat on the arm before she holds her finger to the com in her ear and mutters some words into her microphone, scurrying away with her clipboard.

  “You know, they say T.V. adds ten pounds.”

  I scowl as I turn to glare at Hunter while he comes up behind me in the backstage area of the press conference area. My mother is finishing up her initial statements about her education bill before we’re all going to join her on stage at the long conference table for part two.

  Yeah, part two: the announcement.

  “You know,” he says, grinning at me before looking around the dark, curtained backstage area. “We gotta stop meeting in places like this.”

  “I agree.”

  “It gives me way too many ideas,” he growls into my ear, letting his hand trail over my ass.

  I swat him away as I move a step back from him. He’s grinning and making jokes about this, as if the whole thing is funny. As if what we’re doing isn’t that much closer to being exposed and consequently shattering both our families, if not the nation.

  ‘What we’re doing’? What the hell ARE we even doing?

  I mean honestly, what is this thing between Hunter and I? Over-active hormones? Is it just that I’m cooped up in the White House and behind security so much that he’s just the only option for flirtation and male attention?

  “You look nervous.”

  I shoot him a look, “Are you not?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well good for you.”

  He grins as he moves much closer to me than a bodyguard should. “I’ve got something much more interesting to think about to keep my mind occupied.”

  I’m blushing as the door next to us opens suddenly, sending Hunter stepping back from me.

  “It was one cigarette!” Dexter’s grinning as a stern-faced Emma marches him in by the arm.

  “One cigarette, Mr. Ryan, will be a P.R. nightmare if someone were to snap a picture of it, especially with the President’s announcement about the engagement to your father in a few minutes here.” Emma furrows her brow at Dexter. “And especially given your age.”

  Dexter smirks at her. “‘My age’? What are you, like a year older than me?”

  “In actual years or maturity, because she’s got you beat by centuries on the second count,” Hunter says with a grin.

  Dexter shoots him a look. “Whose side are you on?”

  Emma’s suddenly putting her finger to her earpiece and then quickly pushing Dexter towards the stage. “Never mind that Mr. Ryan, we’re on in three minutes.”

  I start to follow, but suddenly I gasp as I feel myself get pulled back into the folds of the backstage curtains. “Hunter—!”

  He spins me around, and suddenly I’m face to face and pressed right against him. The words I nearly spat at him, or the hand I was about to smack him with suddenly get lost somewhere else in my mind as I just fall, right into those piercing blue eyes.

  “What are you doing?” I whisper, swallowing quickly and blinking as I get lost in the burning ice of his gaze.

  “Just saying ‘break a leg’ up the
re,” he grins. “Oh, and I had a quick question.”

  “We’re live in sixty seconds! Places on the stage!” I hear a voice call out.

  “Hunter!”

  “One question, doll.”

  “What!?”

  And then I’m gasping as he yanks me right against him, grabs my hand, and places firmly on something huge in his pants.

  “I was just curious,” he growls into my ear. “If you’re as wet as I am hard.”

  My heart leaps into my throat as I realize I’m holding his cock through his pants, and suddenly I jump as I feel his hand slide right up between my legs and beneath my skirt. His fingers stroke across the front of my panties, and I moan softly as redness blooms in my face.

  Because I don’t even have to answer him. He knows from touching me exactly how wet I am.

  “Madison! Hunter!”

  And just like that, he’s pulling away from me, grabbing my hand, and yanking me onto the stage. I’m hoping to God that everyone just assumes I’m nervous when they see my red face. I pray that I don’t have to say a thing up there when my mother and Alec give the announcement, because I don’t think I could find words right then.

  Because my head is still lost somewhere back there in that curtain, and my thoughts are still entirely centered on thing and one thing only.

  How much I want him; how utterly and completely turned on I am sitting up there right next to him.

  The stage manager counts down on his fingers, the lights go up, and my mother smiles at the camera.

  It’s that exact moment that I feel Hunter’s hand drop to my knee under the table, sliding all the way up to the wet front of my panties.

  My jaw drops before I quickly shut it, fighting everything I have not to turn and just stare like he’s insane.

  Because he is insane, and this is insane. There’s a floor-length drape over the table, including on our side which cover our laps. But it doesn’t matter that no one can see us; it doesn’t matter that no one knows that Hunter’s fingers are sliding under the soaking wet edge of my panties and brushing across my pussy.

  It matters that I am now on live fucking international television with my stepbrother’s fingers sliding into my pussy.

  “Good evening, America,” my mother says easily, as if addressing a nation on television is the most effortless thing in the world. As if looking into a camera beaming her face to hundreds of millions of people is so carefree.

  Let me tell you, the perspective is slightly different from where I sit, with Hunter’s finger slowly driving me mad under the table.

  I want to push him away, or slap him, or even just tell him to quit it before we both get absolutely humiliated on national television, but I can’t. I can’t hit him on T.V., I can’t say anything to him while my mother is addressing the country.

  I have to sit there and smile — “not too toothy” — and just be part of the perfect little all American family, — the first family — on that stage. I have to just smile benignly at the camera, while Hunter’s fingers slowly drive me absolutely wild.

  “Tonight, I wanted to take a moment to share something very special with you all.”

  My hands grip the edge of the table in front of us, my knuckles white as I force myself to keep breathing and not to let my eyes flutter shut as the pleasure rolls through me.

  “When you voted me into this office, we made history. It’s because of you, America, that I’m here today breaking down every boundary this office still holds, in the name of equality, and in the spirit of pushing this great country into the future.”

  My breath catches in my throat and my heart threatens to pound right through my chest as Hunter lets his thumb circle around and around my clit. He’s just sitting there quietly, a small little smile on his face. Looking to all the world like the perfect little soldier; the charming young man stepping into his new role.

  “You put your trust in me, America, and so today, I’d like to do the same with you as I announce one more historic breakthrough for this Presidency.”

  And suddenly, the horrible realization hits me that he’s not going to stop. Suddenly, I realize this doesn’t end with him teasing me to a point and then stopping.

  This ends with him making me come on national fucking television.

  The shocking realization has me pushing a hand beneath the table, trying to pull his hand away, as incredible as he feels. He resists me though, and I clench my jaw tight as I smile into the camera while his thumb rolls over and over my clit.

  “I’ve been keeping something under wraps that I’d love to share with you all tonight, because this is for everyone.” She turns to Alec before looking back at the camera. “Major Alec Ryan, as you know, was one of biggest champions on the campaign path. He offered his help, his support, and his kindness when I needed it the most, and he has stepped graciously and without hesitation into his new role as my Secretary of State.”

  She suddenly reaches over and entwines her fingers in Alec’s. “Tonight, I’d like to announce his move to fill a new role in my life.”

  I’m so close. It’s terrible, and awful, but I know the inevitable is going to happen no matter how hard I want to fight it. His fingers feel too damn good, stroking me in just the perfect place and rolling my clit over and over again until I think I might scream.

  I’m going to come, and there’s no stopping it.

  “Ladies and gentlemen—”

  The room goes quiet.

  Oh God, not now…don’t say it now. Not when I’m about to come, on camera, in front of millions of people, with my stepbrother’s fingers deep inside of me.

  Don’t say it, please don’t say it.

  “I’m pleased to announce that Major Alec Ryan will now be taking a new position, as my husband.”

  The room explodes into cheers and applause, and that’s the moment the bastard rolls his thumb over my clit just right, and I go crashing over the edge. The room goes nuts, and the cameras flash, and I’m coming on national — no, international — television. I’m holding onto the table for dear life, my mouth hangs open, and I fight not to squeeze my eyes shut as I come in front whole fucking word, at the hands of Hunter Ryan.

  My brand new, arrogant, sexy, untouchable stepbrother.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Just like that, everything changes. Just like that, I go from being the unassuming guy with an earpiece in the background to the guy with the President’s hand around his shoulder while we pose for pictures; the guy with the spotlight squarely on him. One freaking press conference, and my entire life as I know it just changes.

  I’m off the Service that night. That’s how quickly things move after the announcement. That very night, I’m debriefed by the director, and with Eleanor and my dad present, I’m given an award commending me for my service to my country and the office.

  As if I’ve done anything to deserve it. The job is the sword and shield of the Presidential office. There are guys that take bullets, or dive on grenades for this job and for the office it protects. Me? I fooled around with my fucking stepsister basically the whole time I was on duty. Draw my gun? Yeah, all I did was take my dick out.

  Sean and Darren start texting and calling me to give me shit about keeping them in the dark almost the second I leave the stage, but I know they get it. At least, I hope they do. When it all changes, I’m suddenly tossed into the same maddening, cage-like existence that Maddie’s been in since day one, and I have to say, it gives me a little perspective being there with her.

  No more personal phone, no more moving freely about, and no more shooting pool or pounding beers with my buddies down at the bar.

  Because everything’s changed now.

  On the upside, I do get to move rooms to Presidential suites after that. Hilariously, I get moved literally across the hall from the Maddie’s Lincoln Bedroom suite, but if I initially have any ideas about how much fun that’s going to be, they’re quickly dashed away in the madness of the next week.

 
Because madness is what it is, and leaving the Service and having my phone taken away is the least of it.

  I give press interviews, I’m quoted in newspapers, and I start shaking hands with Senators and lobbyists for photo ops. My war record is suddenly literally front page news, even though I’m no different than any of the other thousands of Marines who went to fight for our country over there. But suddenly I’m special, all because of who my father is marrying.