“What’s going on, Ella?” Julian asked, both of them awake and sitting up in bed.
“I—I have to go,” I said, then remembered that I had driven with Julian. “Somebody needs to take me back. I can’t do this.”
“Ella—”
“Stop,” I said, looking over at both of them. “Just stop. Take me home now.”
I saw Julian nod as a look of sadness passed over Eric’s face. They both got out of bed and got dressed in silence, then Julian and I made our way back to his car. It was quiet on the drive home, but when we pulled up the driveway he turned to me.
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” he said. I didn’t look at him, but got out of the car and went inside. I was relieved that I didn’t see Lola as I made my way to my room to change, then went outside to the garden. I sat on the bench overlooking the pond there. I heard Eric pull up and turned to look over my shoulder at him, but he didn’t meet my eye as he went inside. I assumed he was hurt, that I had caused him pain by rejecting them in my regret this morning. I hated the thought of that but I couldn’t help it—I was mortified by what I had done, what I had allowed myself to do.
“Miss?” came a voice behind me. I turned to see a familiar man standing on the path at the edge of the garden. I immediately recognized him as the man at the party, the one I had hooked up with in a few quick minutes on his desk. I flushed red when I saw him.
“Ella,” he said as he approached me, a charming grin on his face. “I was beginning to think I’d never find you.”
“You were looking for me?” I asked, puzzled. I hadn’t even told him my name. I had thought that was the last thing he would be interested in after I’d given myself to him so quickly. I had always been told that you had to make a man wait in order to keep his attention, and I figured that to be true with this man.
“I was,” he said. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you after the party. I kept kicking myself for not even getting your name.”
“How did you find me?” I asked him. “And who are you?”
“I’m Xavier Hayes,” he said, reaching out his hand to shake mine. “I went through a lot of resources to find you. I didn’t know who your brothers were, but I’m familiar with both of them.”
“Oh,” I said, trying not to blush when he called Eric and Julian my brothers. I had to remind myself that they weren’t—they were my stepbrothers, and I hadn’t even seen them in ten years.
“I hope I’m not coming off as creepy,” he said. “I just—I’m not usually one to hook up at parties, and I thought that you were interesting.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You thought I was interesting?”
He laughed. “Yes. You’re so lively,” he said. He reached forward to touch my cheek then and I let him, though I barely knew him. Somehow it seemed like after what we’d done together, he was allowed to be intimate with me. It didn’t feel like being touched by a stranger, but by someone who knew my body already.
“So what did you track me down for?” I asked him.
“A date,” he said. “I wanted to ask you on a date.”
I stared at him, for a moment not taking in what he meant. I had only been asked on a date before a couple of times in my life and never by anybody as handsome and charming as Xavier was.
“A date? With you?”
He nodded, grinning.
“Okay,” I said, pushing thoughts of Eric and Julian out of my mind. “Yes.”
“Tomorrow,” Xavier said, pushing a strand of hair out of my face. “I’ll pick you up here at eight.”
I nodded at him, unable to speak as I watched him walk away. The whole thing seemed like a dream, one that was doubly confusing given the night I’d just had with my stepbrothers. Part of the reason I had agreed to go out with Xavier was so that I could get Eric and Julian out of my head. Not only were their bodies distracting me, but their kindness, the way they had treated me since they’d gotten back.
I shook my head and went back inside, spending the day cleaning and avoiding Julian and Eric. By the time I went to bed, I still hadn’t seen them—they had gone out for dinner. I was glad for that and wondered how I would face them the next time I was unable to avoid them.
11
Julian
“I don’t think there is anything we can do,” said Eric, sitting across from me at breakfast. Both of us had seen Ella in the kitchen but she’d refused our offer to help her with breakfast and hadn’t met either one of our eyes. It was killing both of us that she regretted so much what we had done. It had been enjoyable for both Eric and me, and I knew that Ella had enjoyed it too, but she was feeling guilty and ashamed for reasons that were beyond our control.
“She thinks that it was wrong,” I said. “I don’t really blame her. It’s a hard thing to take.”
“Do you regret it?” Eric asked me, studying my face. I shook my head.
“I enjoyed it,” I said. He nodded in agreement and I was relieved that I hadn’t been the only one who had found the night before completely erotic and sexy. Sharing Ella with my brother had been hotter than I’d thought it would be—the look on her face as she got fucked by him had almost been enough to make me come even before she wrapped her sweet mouth around my cock.
“We should go to her,” I said. “Talk to her.”
He shook his head. “Maybe she just needs some time.”
“We’re leaving soon, Eric. I can’t leave it like this.”
“I know,” he said, looking away from me. “I don’t think I can either.” “So we have to talk to her,” I said.
“Okay,” he agreed. “We’ll talk to her tonight after dinner. She goes up to her grandmother’s room and feeds her—we can catch her after that.”
I nodded. We spent the rest of the day out of the house, trying to give Ella her space for the day at least. Later, we would talk to her, try to convince her that she hadn’t done anything wrong by being with both of us.
We were in the front room before dinner when we saw Ella coming down the stairs, wearing a pale blue dress that flattered her waist and buttoned up to her throat. Her hair was around her shoulders in curls, her face made up and glowing.
“Ella,” I said, staring at her.
“Where are you going?” Eric asked as she pulled a scarf over her bare shoulders.
“I have a date,” she said, not making eye contact with either one of us. My first reaction to her words was disbelief—we had just been together the night before last. As far as I knew, she hadn’t even been out of the house since then.
“How did you get a date?” I asked her. She shot me an annoyed look. “You know what I mean.”
“It’s with Xavier Hayes. He came to find me yesterday.”
“Xavier Hayes?” I asked. I felt something building inside of me, something green and coiled like jealousy. “How—when?”
“I met him at the party,” she said. “He liked me. He came to find me and he—he asked me out. I said yes.”
“Okay,” I said, staring at her. She was avoiding my eye and she wasn’t looking at Eric either.
“Ella,” Eric said. “We just want to talk to you. And this date—”
“—is none of your business,” she finished, cutting him off.
I crossed my arms over my chest and watched as she went toward the door, looking through the peephole. I heard a noise on the porch and the doorbell rang, and Ella answered it to reveal Xavier Hayes on the other side.
“Hi,” she said. His eyes were on her and the look on his face made my fists clench at my sides. I hated that he was looking at her like that, like she was a piece of meat for his consumption. Men like Xavier Hayes chewed women up and spat them out. I wanted to stop Ella, to tell her that she shouldn’t go with him. But I knew that wouldn’t be right; it wasn’t up to me what she did.
“Julian,” Xavier said, nodding at me, then at my brother. “Eric. How are you?” “We’re fine,” Eric said, and I heard a rare tension in his voice that told me he was feeling what I was f
eeling, like Ella was ours and no one else’s. We knew that Xavier had no intention of taking care of her like she deserved, knew that he would use and abuse her like he did everybody else. But there was nothing we could do about it as we watched her leave with him.
Eric and I decided to get out of the house for the night, to go to a local bar in order to avoid running into our mother or having to wait for Ella to get home. Both of us felt like we had to get out of there, so we got into his car and drove into town, going into the bar that we used to frequent when we had nothing but pride and our fake IDs. We ordered drinks and found a table in the corner, sipping them and looking around the room for anything interesting to take our minds off Ella. It was then that I spotted her on the other side of the bar, sitting next to Xavier in a booth and looking straight at me. Xavier hadn’t seemed to notice us there but Ella certainly had. There was a look of anger on her face before she looked away from me.
“Shit,” I said.
“Yeah, god, she’s going to think we followed her,” Eric agreed. We kept our eyes off of her, trying to give her privacy without looking like we were watching. A few minutes later, she came up to the table. I glanced over at her booth to see that Xavier wasn’t sitting there.
“Did you follow me?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
“We didn’t think Xavier would bring you some place like this,” I said dryly. “We thought he’d go high-class.”
“There’s nothing wrong with this place,” she hissed, growing red. I shrugged.
“I suppose not,” I said. “But we didn’t follow you, Ella. I’m not that interested in what you’re doing.”
She glared at me, glancing over her shoulder to see that Xavier still wasn’t back.
“You guys should get out of here,” she said. I saw that Eric was about to agree but cut him off.
“No,” I said, gritting my teeth. My anger was rising, combined with a jealousy I had never felt before. Her eyes were burning on mine, angry and aroused all at once. She couldn’t help the way her body reacted to me and I loved that, loved seeing her affected even when she didn’t want to be.
“Just don’t get in my way then,” she said and turned to go back to her table. She shifted in the booth a little bit so that Xavier’s back would be to us when he came back. That meant she was looking right at us though, and I noticed that she couldn’t take her eyes off mine even when Xavier came back. She finally turned to him, plastering on a smile that I could tell was fake even across the room.
“Don’t let it get to you,” Eric said. “We should leave.”
“No,” I said to him. “No, we’re not leaving.”
“Okay, Julian.”
I tried not to focus on her for the rest of the night, turning my attention to other things. Occasionally, I would find myself glancing over at her. She really was smiling now and laughing. He was sitting close to her and he had his hand on her arm in a way that was so intimate it made me cringe. It was as if he had touched her before, as if they had known each other already. I had spent most of the party with Ella and hadn’t seen her with Xavier Hayes. In fact—I hadn’t seen Xavier at all as far as I could remember, though the party was in his honor.
“When are we going back to Washington?” I asked Eric, prying my eyes away from Ella.
“I thought we’d go back the end of next week,” he said. “But if you want to go sooner—”
“I might,” I said. Thinking about being in the same house with Ella without being able to touch her, with her constantly avoiding my eye and refusing to speak to me, would be too painful to bear for long. If we weren’t going to make up soon, there was no way I could stick around and take it.
“I don’t want to leave her either,” my brother said in a soft voice. I swallowed, watching as Ella and Xavier got up from the booth and crossed the room to the dance floor. His hand was on the curve of her waist as he guided her across the bar, and it traced down to her hip as he pulled her against him without hesitating, pulling her hips against his. I felt a heat spread through my entire body as they danced, their eyes connected, though Ella met my eye over his shoulder when his back was turned to me.
“Julian—” my brother said, but it was too late. I was up and across the floor before he could stop me. I put my hand on Xavier’s shoulder and pulled him back in a way that was gentle but firm enough to send a message. He raised his eyebrows at me.
“Julian,” Ella hissed. “What are you doing?”
“Hello, Julian,” Xavier said. “Do you need something?”
I ignored him, but turned to Ella. I took her face in my hands and kissed her softly. She didn’t respond, and I kissed her again before she pulled away from me, staring at me with wide eyes. I felt a hand on my shoulder and almost swung thinking it was Xavier, but when I turned around it was Eric.
“Come on,” he said, glancing over my shoulder at Ella. “I’m sorry, Ella.”
“Get out of here,” she said, her voice trembling. I stared at her for a moment before I turned around and followed Eric out of the bar. Everybody was staring at me, including Xavier, who had a smirk on his face that I wanted badly to punch off of him. He knew that I had heard of who he was and how he treated women, knew that I knew how it would inevitably end up with Ella. He wanted to rub it in my face. I had to fight to keep myself from hitting him as we left the bar and went out to the car. Eric took the keys and turned to me.
“You really just made an idiot of yourself in there, Julian,” he said, his voice stern. “I know it was hard to see them together—”
“It was impossible,” I spat. “You know what he’s like, what he’ll do to her.”
“There’s nothing we can do,” Eric said in a sad voice.
I sighed, gritting my teeth in frustration. I knew he was right, that there was nothing we could do to stop Ella from seeing Xavier. I wasn’t the type of man who would control a woman or ask her to obey me in any way. It was up to Ella what she wanted, even if it included denying her feelings for Eric and me.
12
Eric
My brother was silent on the drive home from the bar, staring out of the window as we passed through the city on our way back to the house. I wasn’t sure what would happen now that he’d just publicly kissed Ella in front of people who would spread the word as fast as they could. I looked over at him, trying not to be angry. I had known exactly how he was feeling in that moment, how seeing Ella with Xavier had affected him. If Julian hadn’t been the one who’d gone over there, it would have been me after a few more drinks.
I sighed, turning onto the side highway that took us to our country house.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said to him, though I wasn’t sure of that at all. It was just my natural inclination to be optimistic, especially in the face of my brother’s cynicism.
“What is wrong with her?” Julian asked. I shook my head.
“There’s nothing wrong with Ella, Julian. You know that. She’s confused and scared, that’s all. She’s spent her whole life in this house.”
He sighed, rubbing his hand over his face. “That was so stupid. That was a really stupid thing to do.”
“It was,” I agreed, looking over at him with a grin.
“Why do you always let me do these things?” he said with a groan. I laughed.
“There was no way I could have stopped you in there.”
“Probably not,” he said. We pulled up to the house then and went inside. Everything was dark—our mother would have gone to bed hours before. We went inside and I heard Julian sigh. He looked at me with a defeated expression.
“I think we should go back to Washington in a couple of days,” he said, his voice flat as if he didn’t really mean it. And I knew he didn’t. Leaving Ella behind was going to be rough on both of us, maybe Julian especially. He was the one who had gotten her to open up to us in the first place.
We went upstairs and went our separate ways to bed, but I didn’t fall asleep right away. I couldn’t.
I got up and paced around my room, but it was beginning to feel small and cramped. Even when I opened the windows to let in a breeze, it felt stifling. I left the room then and started to walk the halls of the large house, padding silently around on bare feet. It was dark, but I knew the place well, and I had no trouble weaving through the halls without having to use my hands to navigate the shadows.
I heard the front door then, and before I could creep back to my room, Ella came up the stairs and cut me off.
“Ella,” I said softly, trying not to scare her, but she jumped and let out a soft scream that she stifled with her hand.
“I’m sorry,” I said, putting my hand on her arm. She jerked it away, her eyes on my face in the dark. I could just see the outline of her features in the light that was shining in through the windows. She was staring at me, a mix of emotions on her features.
“Why did you let him do that?” she asked, letting her anger be the first to show itself.
“I couldn’t stop him,” I said to her. “You know him.”
She glared at me, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Now everyone knows we—he—”
“Everyone saw him kiss you. You didn’t kiss him back.”
She paused for a moment, then nodded.
“How was the rest of your date?” I asked her.
“It was fine,” she said. She was standing close to me in the dark from where we had almost run into each other and she was looking up into my eyes.
“Did he kiss you goodnight?”
Her lips parted to speak but she didn’t say anything. I took the chance to lower my lips to hers, to kiss her softly. It might be the last time I would ever get to do such a thing, and I would have kicked myself forever if I hadn’t taken the opportunity to do it. Ella’s lips closed around my own, then started to respond slowly when I slipped my tongue into her mouth. She was wrapped in my arms; it was something that I had done automatically, without thinking about it. We were pressed close and I could feel the way her body was shaking against mine. She wrapped her arms around my neck then and held me to her while we kissed at the top of the stairs. There was a noise above us and we broke apart abruptly, both looking up toward the sound on the third landing. We saw nothing but shadows, though the moment had been broken and Ella had taken a step away from me, not looking at my face. I took her cheek in my hand and turned her face to look at me.
Dirty Ella: A Fairy Tale Inspired Stepbrother Romance Page 9
