by Amy Faye
Forbidden Love
Stepbrother Romance
Amy Faye
Published by Heartthrob Publishing
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Here’s a preview of the sexy love story you’re about to read…
He'd been avoiding her for two days now—she expected him to lean away, to tell her clearly that he wasn't going for it. To do something to stop her. When he didn't, she wasn't going to complain. And then his arms, still as strong as they'd ever been, wrapped around her shoulders and pulled her in for a kiss, and the thin veneer of toughness she'd fought to keep in place melted away.
He pulled gently and she rolled over to straddle his hips. They fit together strangely well, like he was the missing half of a puzzle she'd been struggling to put together all these years. Her hips pressed down into something she felt stirring against her ass, and she was rewarded by his cock twitching against her and his kiss growing deeper.
She ground against him again, feeling him hardening to the point where it must have been uncomfortable. He wrenched away from her, his head pulling back against his couch.
"Jesus fuck, Amy. You're going to ruin me."
"Who says that's not what I wanted?"
He pulled her in tight. She couldn't help but feel good, in a position like this. Any woman would, wouldn't she? The feeling of really being a woman, of being taken even as she willingly gave herself over to the man she'd spent ten years forgetting as best she could?
Brett took a deep breath beneath her. He closed his eyes. And then his arms slacked.
"I can't do this, Amy. I—not tonight. It's not right tonight."
She gave an experimental roll of her hips. It sent a little shiver of pleasure through her as her mound rolled just right along his hard shaft, and she could feel his reaction as well.
"I understand," she said, deciding to take a risk. She kept moving her hips, strong circular motions, grinding out whatever pleasure she could in the time she had left. "If that's really what you want."
"This is a bad idea." The resistance in his voice lacked the conviction it had before. Amy found his hands moving onto her hips, but he made no effort to stop her, or even to slow her movements down. Meanwhile, each movement built up a little bit inside her, her pleasure growing with every forward thrust of her hips.
"I know. It was a bad idea for me to stay here. It was always going to go sideways, but—" she hit just the spot, and let out a low moan— "I couldn't say no, and you insisted. Did you want this to happen, big brother?"
She felt him tense up at the last part. She hadn't realized how much she would enjoy it, the reaction that she could get out of him. His arms wrapped around her waist, pulled her against him. She could feel the need in him, need that he couldn't deny and was quickly becoming unable to refuse himself.
She ground against him again, hard. She wanted every bit of that need, if she could get it. All he had to give. He let out a gasp that almost sounded pained, his entire body tense with need.
She dipped her head, her lips pressing into the nook of his neck. He tried to hide the sound of his sharp release of breath, but it was impossible, at that distance. His fingers dug into her leg, and she enjoyed the sound of the little 'hmm' he gave himself, trying to regain whatever control he could from her. But it wasn't going to happen. She was in the driver's seat now, and she was going to take what she'd wanted all these years.
He let out another breath, right there in her ear, and a shiver shot down her spine. Her hips rolled forward again, sending the shiver back up. His hands on her hips pushed and rolled her off. Amy's body laid back on the couch, her breasts pooling on her chest, her body flush and warm with arousal.
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1
Amy
Present Day
Amy Harmon looked down at the clock on her dashboard and tried to do the math on how long she'd been on the road. It should have been easy, but she found herself just staring at the number. She finally stopped looking and watched the road, trying to figure out why she couldn't solve the answer to how much time was between 6 AM. and 8 PM.
Breaking it down finally cracked the shell of the problem, though. 6 to 6, plus 2. She'd been on the road two days now, and she was too tired to keep going today. It would have been easy, if Dad were here. They could switch off and they'd be there already. They'd have been in town this morning after one of them took a long night drive.
But, in spite of her protests, Dad hadn't come along. And, in spite of Amy's past with her mother, she had come. A funeral wasn't exactly the circumstances she wanted to be running into the family again, but that was what it was. She needed to be in Detroit, and the funeral happened to be at the same time; there was no avoiding it.
She pulled into the parking lot of a Best Western and let her head rest on her steering wheel. She needed to get food. That was a more pressing matter. But there was a little voice in her head saying that if she wasn't going to go straight on to Shannon's place tonight, then she needed to make sure she had a room before she let herself sleep for the night.
Amy forced herself to smile. She'd been driving for two solid days, and she wanted very little other than to get into a room, check on the instrument in her back seat and make sure she wasn't in for a major surprise come time to use it, and eat.
But first, she needed to deal with the fellow behind the counter, and Amy was firmly of the belief that not only was it rude to put your problems in other peoples' faces—it was that, certainly—but it faced the very real risk of putting you in a bad position.
Nobody ever knows if the desk clerk they're talking to ends up talking to his uncle that night, sees your photo on his desk, and says, 'no, don't hire her. She seemed miserable to be here.' Heaven forbid if you were to actively be rude.
The man behind the desk seemed to be working on the same policy, a rictus grin forced onto his face as she walked up, hastily assembled in the time that it took her to open the door. "Welcome to Best Western. Do you have a reservation?"
She shook her head and forced her expression to keep up. "No, I don't. Do you have any vacancies?"
"Of course, ma'am." The conversation was an easy, practiced dance of niceties, and at the end of it, he handed her the magnetic key-card to a single bedroom, for a single night. For a single woman, she added to herself. Not for a lack of trying.
With the card in her pocket, Amy's mind moved immediately to food. But that would be leaving something out, she knew. One last thing, and then she could sleep. She walked out to the little Honda and unlocked the back seats, reaching across and grabbing the heavy Cello case.
Nobody would steal it, not here. Not anywhere, really. It didn't have the sex appeal of an electric guitar. Not even the recognizability of an acoustic guitar. Too big to be an impulse grab.
But leaving it in the car was—she ought to have had it sent ahead via air freight, but that risked the guys tossing it like a bag of potatoes. Or tossing a bag of potatoes on top of it, for that matter. So traveling with it was the only option. Now she just had to hope that two days of changing temperature and decreasing humidity hadn't opened up a huge crack in the top.
Through the door again, into the elevator. Amy took the opportunity to set the case down for the few seconds it took to reach the sixth floor, and then it was up again and moving. She slotted the key into her door, watched the light turn from red to green, and then inside, into the cool, air-conditioned room. It would be wonderful to just stay here, but her stomach gnawed at her.
She shouldn't h
ave skipped lunch. Not if it didn't even make up the difference to allow her to make Detroit by night. But that bird had already flown the coop. There wasn't any use in imagining what it would be like if she'd made different decisions. That was useless.
There was a Burger King a few hundred yards down the road. If she went another quarter mile, she'd be hitting the interstate, and there were nearly a dozen fast-food places, clustered around. But that was too far to be bothered with.
She popped the latches on the case and the cello opened p and presented itself. Yep, she decided, running her fingers along the polished surface. It was fine. She checked the humidifier stuffed through the f-hole. Still fresh. It was time to go grab a burger and make her check-in call for the night.
It was already ringing by the time she pulled into the Burger King parking lot, and as she put the car into a spot, Dad picked up the other end.
"Hey, chiquita. How was the drive?"
"Would have been a lot easier if you'd come along."
Amy reached across the center divider and started rooting automatically through her purse as they talked. Somewhere in here, she knew, she'd find the funeral plans.
"Come on, chica, you know I couldn't do that."
Her jaw tightened as he said it. How many years had it been? Ten? There had to have been some reason that he'd refused to finalize the divorce, but for the life of her, Amy couldn't see it. Whatever that reason was, though, it apparently didn't translate into wanting to go to mourn her.
"Yeah, I know."
On the other end of the phone, she could almost see her father deflate. "Come on, don't be like that."
Amy looked out the window. "I'm not quite into town yet. A few hundred miles out, but I'm not going to show up at Shannon's at ten at night."
"But you're alright? You don't need money or anything?"
Amy watched a family of four come out. The two children were about her age, when she'd left. Early high school, maybe, to look at them. Though it was hard to know for sure, these days; it seemed like the freshmen when she'd graduated all looked older than she had, so her age meter could have been way off.
"No, dad. I haven't eaten anything today so I'm gonna let you go, alright?"
"Just—stay safe, okay? I know things in Detroit can get—"
"Don't worry about it, Dad. I know what I'm doing."
"Okay," he said, reluctant to agree. "If you're sure."
"I'm sure," she answered, making her voice as firm as she could. She had better be sure, Amy told herself. Because if she wasn't sure of herself, then this was going to be one hell of a week.
It should have been obvious, she thought, but as she stepped out of the car, she hadn't made it two steps before a realization hit her like a bolt of lightning. She'd almost forgotten about Brett. Almost forgotten everything, really, except the part that had put her on the other side of the country.
2003
Amy's ankle was still sore. It had been almost six months since the surgery, and she could almost walk normally. Almost, at least. Sometimes she still got tired. And of course, with all the follow-ups, and barely being able to walk, time had slipped by. It wasn't like Dad was making her go to school. But eventually, she was going to have to go in, and today, in spite of a very real desire to avoid it, she was going to have to just bite the bullet and go in.
She took a breath and held her eyes closed. As she let it out, slow and as controlled as possible, she opened them again. She was tough. She wasn't going to let this, or anything, get in her way. She checked her hair in the mirror one last time, not that she needed to. She used too much product to have to worry about her hair. She could get hit with a hammer and it would stay in place.
Headphones on, plugged into her iPod, and out the door. A woman's voice screamed into her ear, guitar chugging along, and her eyes lit up as the energy started to surge through her. It might have been all that she could do to get herself moving, but if that was all it took then she'd be more than happy to do that little.
The bus ride might have been loud. She didn't know. Her music certainly was, and it was much closer to her ears. She kept her eyes shut and her head back, hopefully the international symbol for 'don't talk to me.' And as far as she knew, nobody did. That was all she could have asked for, all she wanted, and she got it.
She knew these streets, knew the area, knew the stores, but she didn't know any of these people. Who knew that a move three miles down the road could change school districts? Well, it didn't matter. She was in it now, and that meant making the best of things.
The school's colors were dark and forbidding. It might have fit with her clothing, if she'd thought about it. It certainly would have fit as a hair color, the deep, vibrant blue that would make her visible from orbit. She put on a surly expression—she wasn't going to be trifled with.
The office wasn't hard to find. There were two big doors leading into the school, but luck would have that she went into the one with the office door just to the left, big windows showing a pair of secretaries sitting behind a counter that was more than waist high.
They looked up as she walked in, pulling her headphones off and onto her shoulders. "Can we help you?"
"Uh, I'm. Amy Harmon." It wasn't until they started at her, blinking with blank expressions, that she realized that probably didn't mean anything to her at all. "I, uh, was supposed to start here this year, but I missed a few weeks."
"Do you have a doctor's note?"
She unfolded the paper in her pocket. "I had a broken ankle. I just got the cast off, so…"
The woman took it, her eyes flicking down for an instant—probably only looking at the signature. "You have your schedule?"
"Uh—" did she? The thought suddenly flashed through her head, not a worry that had even occurred to her. She'd gotten everything ready the night before, a half-dozen notebooks and a three-ring binder that was empty except for a packet of lined note paper. How much she was going to use any of that, she doubted, but Dad had insisted. And… "Oh!"
Amy dropped her bag on the ground and pulled the front pocket open, her knees stretching against her jeans as she knelt. Sure enough, a paper with printed letters that looked like something from a typewriter.
"Yeah, here."
She handed it over to the woman, who again looked down only a minute. "Do you know where these are?"
"No."
The woman's face pinched. "Okay, you're going to go right down that hall, take a left and an immediate right. Don't take the next right after that—that's the way to the cafeteria. The next right, after that, you're going to be on your left. That's going to be your first class. Got that?"
"Yeah."
The woman smiled at her, but Amy didn't need to be a mind reader to see the annoyance through her expression. Maybe one-word answers weren't the way to this woman's heart. But maybe she should have thought about who she was dealing with.
"Have a good day, good luck!"
"Yeah," came the terse response.
She stepped back into the main hall. Students came in by the boatload, and if she didn't move fast, then she'd get caught up in the mess. She walked down the hall. Left, then right. Not the next right, but the one after that.
Sure enough, the room number on the door was right there. She stepped inside still carrying all of her stuff, which was beginning to get heavy. Some part of her wondered why they hadn't bothered to tell her how to find her locker. Maybe that was all part of some sort of elaborate joke they were playing on her. Or maybe it wasn't.
The teacher was young, good looking she supposed, which was surprising because he had hair that was buzzed short with a hairline that was receding far too much for someone his age.
"Can I help you?"
"I'm Amy Harmon. I'm supposed to be in this class, I guess?"
His eyes closed and he nodded in understanding. "Oh, right. You were out with, what was it? A broken ankle?"
"Sort of."
"Um. Give me a minute—"
The t
eacher trailed off as if there were more to the sentence, but if there was, he didn't say any of it. He just turned and started rifling through papers on the table. "Here's all the handouts from the beginning of the year—syllabus, rules, stuff like that. You'll have plenty of time to go over it later, don't worry too much now. Handouts from the past couple of weeks, and if you have an e-mail, I can get you notes from the classes you missed. Anything else?"
"Where do I sit?"
He smiled. This teacher, at the very least, was surprisingly nice. He had a warm way about him that reminded Amy a little bit of her dad. "Anywhere you like."
2
Brett
Present Day
Brett Harmon rubbed his eyes and stirred his Coke with a roll of his wrist, watching the ice and soda swirl and then drop steady in the bottom of the cup. Overseeing a new property going up was the last step, and it was the easiest for him, physically and mentally.
Emotionally, though, it was an onslaught, and that fell entirely on the construction crews. If it were a choice between doing the job that he'd laid out in the blueprints, and doing the job that wasn't quite right, but went a little faster?
Well, Brett had dealt with straight shooters. They were all good guys, but some of them were good guys who took pride in their work. Not enough, and no matter how well-positioned the good ones were, he couldn't trust them to watch for him.
So it had become a standard practice for Brett to find in advance where he expected trouble to arise, and to monitor those installations personally, and when he couldn't be in two places at once, to check between them regularly.
And then, whenever the guys kicked off, he had to stay an extra hour to do a walk-through. This time, at least, he'd managed to hook one of the foremen to do it with him. And to his credit, the man had hired a good crew. This job hadn't been half as bad as some; if they were all as good as this one had been from the first day, then he might not have developed these habits in the first place.
