Stepbrother, Mine

by Mandy Lou Dowson

  “Where's Harry?” Sophie asked, feeling the house's strange emptiness.

  “He's gone with Logan to visit the college. Says he wants to see what his money is paying for.” Her lips twisted in an expression of distaste. “I suggested that Logan was big and bad enough to see to himself in that regard, but you know Harry. He always wants to see where the bucks go.”

  “Mmm, yeah.” She considered a half-remembered scene from the night before, and Harry's pointing finger. “Mom, do you think Harry and Logan will get on?”

  “I don't know, sweetie. But something tells me that Logan has had more than his fair share of issues with his dad.” She offered Sophie a slice of bacon, laughing when Sophie mimed sticking her fingers down her throat. “Let's hope they do, honey.”

  She wondered for the first time, if perhaps Harry had told a few white lies concerning his estrangement from his son. It was plain for any fool to see that he loved him – he'd offered to pay Logan's way through college just for the chance to get to know him again, after all – but she began to that think it was less to do with Logan being a shit, and more to do with Harry being a shit dad. She hoped they could work things through and grow close again. If she had the chance to get to know her own dad all over again, she'd snatch at it with both hands.

  ~

  Logan

  His dad had been trailing him all damn day. Drifting into lecture halls and libraries after him, frowning deeper with every heavy step. Logan could feel his father's disapproval. He knew Harry had always hoped that Logan would go into the accounting business as he had. Unfortunately, he just didn't have the head for accounts like his dad, and architecture was a legit business, dammit. When he came out the other end of college, he'd be earning twice what his father ever had. The man at least conceded that much, eyes widening in surprise when he figured out how much even a passable architect could earn.

  “And these are the dorms. You'll notice that there's a curfew posted. Eleven pm is the cut-off, and if you're not in by then, you'll have to wake the custodian, and trust me, you don't want to have to do that.” The short, brown-haired lady pointed to a sign in the window that read:

  Curfew – 11pm – 6am

  Door locked automatically during these times.

  If locked out, please report to the custodian

  “Hmph,” his father snorted. “Didn't have a curfew in my day.”

  “Not all universities do, Sir,” she replied waspishly. “But we pride ourselves here on our impeccable grade averages and won't gamble with those results for anything. Curfew at least makes sure our students are in their dorms at a reasonable hour.”

  “I understand,” Harry muttered, though it was plain he did not. The man was so disagreeable today that Logan wondered why he'd even bothered to accompany him. He was hungover and pissed at Logan for the previous night. He should have known that his father – a notorious ladies man in his earlier life – would have spotted the attraction to Sophie for what it was. He hadn't hidden it well enough, it seemed.

  “You think you like her,” his father had grated, finger pointing in his face. “But you don't. Trust me, you don't.”

  Logan had shaken his head, denying the undeniable, but his dad was relentless. “You keep your hands off, you hear? She's off limits.”

  With a nod as his only reply, he'd turned away from his father's pointing finger and walked his stepsister home.

  “If you will just step this way,” the lady invited. “We can see the rooms before the end of our tour.”

  “No need,” his father interjected. “Logan will be staying with us while he attends here.”

  “Oh, well if that is all...”

  “No,” Logan replied. “It's not all. I'd like to see the dormitory rooms, please.”

  “Of course, this way.” She led them inside and to the right, where there was a common room with a TV in the corner and various couches slouched around the room. “The kitchen is that way,” she pointed straight ahead. “Nothing fancy, mind you, but it does the job. Laundry is in the basement, and if you'll follow me upstairs, there are various rooms available for viewing.”

  Logan listened to his father grumble all the way back to the car, where he abruptly rounded on him. “I was under the impression that you'd be staying with us as you attended university. What was all that?” he motioned to the dorms.

  “I just like to keep my options open, that's all.” That, and the warning was still ringing in his ears about his new stepsister. He was bound and determined to keep away from her as much as possible, and if that meant moving into a dorm, so be it. He'd keep his options open.

  His father seemed to see right through him, once more. “I meant what I said last night, Logan. Your sister is off limits.”

  Logan snorted. “She's not my sister.”

  His personal space suddenly invaded by his father, Logan frowned. “As soon as I said 'I do' she became your sister. You'd do well to remember that, Son.”

  “Like 'I do' means anything to you.” Logan about-faced and took off on foot, his father angrily shouting after him to come back to the car. Screw that shit, the house wasn't far from the university, and he remembered the way. He'd come back when he was good and ready.

  ~

  Sophie

  “I can't believe you have a new brother, and a hotty at that,” Serena sighed, leaning back on the pillows of Sophie's bed, crushing Mr. Stuffington in the process.

  Sophie grabbed her stuffed toy and put him on the shelf above her bed, safe from the crushing weight of her friend as she sprawled. “I never said he was hot.”

  “I can tell.”

  “How?”

  “You get this look in your eyes when you mention his name, like you want to lick all the flavor off of him.”

  “That's disgusting!” Sophie erupted, flopping back on the bed beside her friend.

  “But it's true,” Serena grinned, reaching for the bowl of M&Ms. on the bedside table. “Do you think you might...?”

  “No. Never.” Sophie had come to terms with Logan being her stepbrother and effectively forbidden fruit, and was working hard at crushing the little thrill that ran through her body when she thought of him. “Ever.”

  “Okay,” her friend sighed, popping several of the candies into her mouth with a dull clacking sound. “Tell me more about Taylor then,” she suggested.

  “Oh girl, you should have seen the way he looked at me last night!” Her cheeks reddened as she thought about it. “He said, 'I'll see you in school'.”

  Serena laughed, her spectacles falling down her nose. “You already said that, and I agree, it's epic. But do you think he'll ask you out?”

  Sophie grabbed a handful of the M&Ms., stuffing them inside her mouth. She shrugged. “I don't know,” she mumbled around them. “I hope so.”

  ~

  It was dark by the time her stepbrother returned to the house, and Sophie heard Harry angrily reprimand him for his 'earlier behavior', whatever that was. She was just about to tell them both to knock off the shouting when her mother's voice floated to her from the foyer.

  “Stop it, both of you. You're both adults, and I won't suffer for that sort of rudeness in my home.”

  Way to go, Mom, she thought as both angry voices faded to whispered apologies. Fast thumping sounds indicated Logan jogging up the stairs, and then the door next to her own closed with quiet finality. Within moments the first strains of Nirvana's Heart Shaped Box came through the wall, muffled and warbled.

  “I guess now wouldn't be the best time to ask you to introduce me?” Serena joked.

  Sophie bit her nails and tried to think of a way to put Serena off Logan for good. “I guess,” she replied eventually, coming up empty. “Tomorrow,” she offered instead.

  “Great. I gotta go. Dance class tonight.” With a shy but proud smile, her friend rose from the edge of her bed and slung a dark parka jacket across her shoulders.

  “You'll be great!” she assured her. Serena had been talking about being a
dancer forever, or so it seemed, and had been training for even longer. She sincerely hoped her friend's dreams came true. At sixteen, she was considered fully trained, but not yet polished. There was a certain School of Ballet and Performing arts she had been dreaming about attending for as long as Sophie could remember.

  “I hope so,” Serena replied, pushing her dark hair away from her face with her index finger. “I'll meet you in the morning.”

  “See ya.”

  When Serena left, Sophie raced to the adjoining wall and laid her ear flat against it. She could make out a mumbled conversation going on. It was all one-sided and she assumed he was talking to his girlfriend. Probably bitching about how he hated it here.

  When all had been silent for a few minutes she crept into the hallway and knocked on his door. She wasn't sure he'd heard her soft taps, so when the door flew open as she raised her hand to knock again, Logan got a face-full of her fist. “Ow,” he complained, fingers immediately massaging his nose. “What the fuck, Sophie?”

  “Omigod, I am so sorry!” She laughed nervously, watching him as he cursed and flung himself back on his bed. “I really didn't mean to. You opened the door...and I...I...”

  “Punched me in the nose. Great. I love this family,” he muttered sarcastically.

  Mortified flames licking at her cheeks, she rushed forward, removing his hands from his nose. She knelt between his wide thighs and inspected the injury. No blood. Nothing.

  “You're such a baby,” she told him. “There isn't even a mark.”

  He continued to stare at her, and she realized she'd gotten much closer than was necessary. Her subconscious had taken over and pressed her body closer between his open legs. Her chest was ample enough that it just brushed the taut material covering his lower stomach, making her nipples bead.

  In super-slow-motion, she watched as he captured her hands in his, a feral look in his brown eyes. Her mouth opened in an 'O' of astonishment as he placed them on his thighs. “Let's keep them somewhere safe,” he told her, his voice low and intimate.

  Sophie's heart beat triple-time as the muscles beneath her palms contracted. She cleared her throat and rose swiftly, the feel of him imprinted on the tips of her fingers. With a strangled gasp, she realized she was now chest-to-face with her new brother and he had an eyeful of her hardened nipples. He groaned in response and leaned forward – to do what, Sophie didn't know. She ran from his room, slamming her own door behind her.

  Oh, my. A pulse beating between her thighs, she sat on the end of her bed, head flopping into her hands. Why did he have to be her stepbrother? Why? If she'd known who he was before hand, maybe she'd have been able to build up an immunity to his god-like hotness. As it was, she barely kept herself from rushing back into his room, and demanding he look at her again the way he just had a moment ago.

  Still feeling out of sorts and embarrassed the next day in school, she immediately said yes when Taylor asked her on a date. Anything to keep the thoughts of hot-boy Logan from taking over her mind.

  ~

  February 2005

  As the months went by, Sophie and Taylor became inseparable – where you found one, the other was not far behind. Sophie fancied herself in love for the first time in her life, the strange attraction she'd felt for her stepbrother forgotten in all but the darkest corners of her mind. Logan, she noticed, kept a pretty busy schedule. Uni, home, study, eat, bed, uni. The only times she crossed his path were breakfast and dinner times, and even those were a rarity, her stepbrother preferring to eat with class mates in their dormitories.

  She began to wonder why Logan bothered to come home at all, especially on the weekends. When he invariably turned up on a Sunday morning, the smell of alcohol fumes from his breath was over-powering, and more often than not, he'd bring some floozy home to hang out in his room with.

  Two days before her seventeenth birthday, he surprised them all by declaring it a weekend event, and that they should celebrate from Friday – the day before her birthday – to Sunday – the day after. “What do you want to do?” he asked her, his face a study in seriousness. “Anything at all.”

  “Well,” she hesitated. “There's a new movie coming out in the theater, Taylor said he'd go with me, but he has to help his dad in the shop instead.” Taylor's dad ran a small printing business in town, and during the busier months coming up to the holidays, Taylor would have to spend weekends helping his dad catch up on orders. It was coming up to Valentine's Day and you'd be surprised at the orders that came in. From girlfriends wanting their faces on underwear to boyfriends wanting their own designs made up to show how romantic they could be.

  “The theater? Done deal. When?”

  “It premiers on Friday night.” She shuffled her feet, nervous. Harry was glaring at them, and her mom was busy rolling out pastry for dinner. “I guess we can all go to that.”

  “No can do, sweetie,” her mom chirped, trimming the edges of her pastry to fit the dish it was covering. “Harry and I have a dinner-date that night. We booked our table way in advance too, or I'd cancel.”

  “No, it's um, it's fine,” she replied. “We can go another time.”

  “What a good idea,” Harry agreed. “Another time sounds great.”

  “Nonsense, Harry.” Marie, swept the pastry brush across the finished pie and slid it into the oven. “They can go along by themselves. They're not children. Why don't you invite Serena, honey?” She stood with her hands on her hips, oblivious.

  “I already asked her, Mom. She's going out with Michael that night.” Her pulse beat a panicked rhythm in her mouth as she thought of being with Logan in the theater. In the dark. Alone. Without the back-up of her best friend.

  Serena had started dating Michael shortly after Sophie had gotten together with Taylor, and usually the four of them were a double-date extraordinaire – they were supposed to double-date Friday night to the movies but since Taylor had gotten stuck working in the shop, Serena and Michael had made different plans.

  It will be fine, she told herself. You're over that stupid little fascination you had with Logan. It was only silly kid's stuff, anyway.

  ~

  Logan

  The theater was dark, cozy and hot. He'd already taken off his jacket and slung it over the back of his seat, but damn the atmosphere was stifling. He hadn't quite intended it to be just himself and Sophie there. On the contrary, he'd imagined her showing up with her little boyfriend – the Champagne Chimp, as he'd begun referring to him privately – and her friends, maybe even their parents. But things didn't work out that way.

  He slouched in his seat beside Sophie, watching in a kind of morbid fascination as she popped pieces of popcorn between her lips and occasionally sucked on the straw. Seventeen, he thought. She's seventeen. You're such a perv. It didn't matter that he had only just turned nineteen himself, his thoughts were entirely improper. More so, considering she was his damned stepsister. Almost jumping out of his seat when she laid a hand on his forearm, he breathed in her scent as she leaned close enough to whisper.

  “Want some?”

  Yes, he did. Oh, she meant the popcorn. “No, thanks Soph. I'm good.”

  She looked at him with a speculative gleam in her hazel eyes, “Okay. If you change your mind, let me know.”

  Damn, now he was thinking of getting some with his stepsister. All the girls he'd dated in the months since coming here had done nothing at all to lessen his attraction to her. They only served to remind him of what he wished he had. Sophie, on the other hand, had practically forgotten he was even male, it seemed. She had the Champagne Chimp to keep her occupied. He sure hoped the guy wasn't pressuring her into anything sexual.

  The thought of Sophie naked in bed brought a groan to his lips, and she swung her gaze to his in question. He shook his head, unwilling to reply to the query in her look. He was so not going there tonight. Or ever.

  He couldn't have said afterward what the movie was about – he'd stared at her too often to be sure. The way her
eyes would scrunch up at the scary parts, and her hand would drift to her mouth would haunt him. The strawberry scent of her shampoo tormented him as she buried her face in the crook of his neck whilst the female lead tried to fend off the serial killer. She gasped, her lips touching the sensitive skin near the crease.

  He fought a good fight, but in the end he wrapped his arm around her slight shoulders, dragging her closer. She paid him no mind, her eyes glued to the screen – when they weren't buried in the flesh of his neck – and watched the movie. He indulged in a moment of pure bliss as she jumped, almost ending up in his lap, her soft breasts brushing his side.

  He was hard as steel and about as uncomfortable as he'd ever been in his life, his groin aching with need. He moaned when her lips once more tortured him as she whispered, “is it over?”

  “No.” He hadn't even started.

  The girl on-screen screamed as the killer caught her by the ankle from under the bed and Sophie pressed herself closer still, the armrest all the kept her from spilling into his lap. She clutched at the material of his shirt, little fists of iron tugging on the cotton subconsciously.

  ~

  Sophie

  Sheer terror tightening her limbs, Sophie leaned into Logan's side, her natural instinct to seek protection from the things that scared her. She didn't know why she'd ever thought she could handle a movie with this much gore. She was so absorbed in the movie that her limbs switched to auto-pilot, her hands grabbing at the soft shirt under them. Distractedly, she raised the hem of the shirt, seeking reassurance in the form of skin to skin contact. For a moment, she'd forgotten Taylor wasn't the guy beside her and frowned when the body beneath her searching fingers felt differently.