Stepbrother Demanding (His Wicked Plan, Book 1)

by Scott, Lucy

  I felt suddenly dizzy. I had no choice but to back up against the wall for extra support.

  My stepbrother.

  “What are you doing in here?” I managed to ask despite my body nearly going into a state of pure shock.

  “What am I doing in here? At least I’m not the stripper! What are you doing here?” he said.

  I couldn’t fucking believe this was happening. I thought the worst-case scenario would be someone finding out that little old me, the resident artist from my small, picturesque neck of the woods, was now a big city stripper. I was wrong.

  It actually turned out that making the wonderful self-discovery that I was getting turned on by my own stepbrother in a VIP room was actually the worst thing that possibly could’ve happened.

  By far.

  “What the fuck Dylan? I can’t believe this shit,” I said.

  He wrapped his hands around my wrists. “I’m taking you out of here.”

  I tried to pull away, but the harder I pulled the more it hurt. “Let. Me. Go,” I said as grinded down on my teeth.

  He didn’t budge. “Whatever happened to you becoming an artist?”

  I tried one last time to pull away from his tight grasp, but it was useless. His strong hands might as well have been steel handcuffs. Clearly he’s grown since the last time I’d seen him. “I still am an artist.”

  He laughed. “I can tell. Let me guess, you’re painting still lifes of strip clubs now.”

  I jerked my wrists even though I knew it would get me nowhere. “Typical Dylan, thinking you’re better than everyone else. I had forgotten just how special you thought you were.”

  I was furious. And embarrassed. Because just moments earlier I had felt completely lost in his arms, and now I felt nothing but shame and regret for letting myself go there with anyone like that, let alone my own goddamn stepbrother.

  This was why I needed to keep to myself until I got my life in order, or maybe forever. But I didn’t, instead I put myself out there, and look what the first thing that happened was?

  “You can think what you want about me, but I’m still taking you out of here,” he said.

  “No, you’re not. You’re not in charge of me, Dylan,” I hissed. “You’re not even the slightest factor in my life anymore, so what would ever make you think I’m going anywhere with you?”

  He released my wrists. I let my eyes close as rubbed the parts of my arm where his hands had been.

  Dylan used to be a big factor in my life. Sure, we fought about all the stupid things, just like regular siblings did. But when push came to shove, he was always there for me. And I was always there for him. We helped each other in different ways, I guess you could say we made a really good team as we tried to survive things like endless yelling, plates being thrown, cops showing up at our house in the middle of the night, and the periodic visit from the Department of Children and Families.

  Dylan was the one who found out about me cutting in eighth grade. And he was the one who got me through it. We both knew Walter and my mother would have killed me, ironically, if they found out what I was doing to myself. We knew I couldn’t get help from any outside professionals, because that always seemed to make matters even worse. So Dylan sat me down, told me everything was going to be okay-that I didn’t need to slice up my stomach or my arms or my thighs just because I was in so much pain. He taught me to deal with the pain, to face it head on until it crumbled in the presence of my courage. And he sat on the floor, on the side of my bed, every day during my freshman year of high school just to make sure I didn’t hurt myself anymore.

  And I didn’t. Because of him.

  The pain was gone.

  Until he left.

  He couldn’t take it anymore. Couldn’t take Walter’s tantrums, or his stepmother’s drunken blackouts.

  He could have at least said goodbye though.

  I suddenly felt the breeze that his arm made as it crossed over my shoulder, essentially pinning my body in between him and the wall.

  I felt a rush of energy flood my body, knowing I had nowhere to go. As if, somehow, I enjoyed being trapped by him.

  No, stop that immediately, I told myself.

  “Let me say this again,” he said. “You’re not a stripper. You don’t belong here.”

  I snickered at his arrogance. “And let me say this again, you don’t have any fucking clue where I belong anymore. You cut off all contact with me, remember?”

  “Clearly you’re not in the right frame of mind. Please tell me you’re not all high or something.”

  “You can leave now, Dylan.”

  “Was that a yes?” he said.

  “Fuck off.”

  “You’ve gotten pretty aggressive since I last saw you. I guess your mom never got you that counselor like the caseworkers recommended every time they paid us a visit.”

  “I’m going to call security if you don’t move your arm and leave me the fuck alone.”

  He laughed. And even though it was dark in this room, I could sense that he was shaking his head as he somehow found great amusement in this whole situation.

  I crossed my arms in front of my chest. “What could possibly be so funny?”

  “Yup, definitely your first time in one of these places,” he chimed in.

  I adjusted the bikini top over my boobs, somehow feeling embarrassed now in front of him even though my chest was covered in total darkness in this part of the room. “What’s that supposed to mean.”

  “It’s just kind of laughable seeing you this pissed off, without any real clue how this sort of world works.”

  “Let’s start with what I do know, which is that I’m going to get security if you don’t leave me the fuck alone right now.”

  He pulled his arm away. The most confusing part of it all was that I wanted it right back where it had just been, trapping my body in between his and the wall.

  “Suit yourself. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  And then he was gone. Out of the room, without saying another word.

  It felt like someone had just punched a hole in my chest. I stood there alone, in the darkness, wondering what had just happened. How could he just reappear in my life like that, only to disappear just as fast as he had come in?

  I began to cry, heavily. I could feel the mascara run down my face.

  And then the door swung open. My heart skipped a beat. I couldn’t help but pray that it was Dylan. I heard a hand scour the wall until whomever it was found a light switch.

  As light filled the once darkened room, I strained as my eyes adjusted to the blast of light. Then my heart sank when I realized Dylan was nowhere to be seen.

  Instead it was Adriano, my boss and the owner of this illustrious club, with a cigar hanging from his lips and a short glass of some potent-looking booze in his hand. He didn’t even bother to look at me as he surveyed the room with his rundown, bloodshot eyes.

  “Pack it up, girl. You’re fired.”

  All color drained completely from my face. “Huh?”

  His tone grew impatient. “Let’s go, move it out. I gotta get another body in here. Time is money baby, time is money.”

  I lost all sense as I marched up to my boss, determined to fight for my job. “You can’t do this, I need this job,” I said.

  Adriano’s gaze dropped to my sweet spot between my legs hidden only behind a thin piece of pink fabric. “You had potential, honey. Damn…” he said as his tongue slipped out of his mouth just a hair.

  I had somehow lost all self-respect. Because here I was, practically begging to work for a man that saw nothing but a moneymaking shell in me. That didn’t stop me though. “Please, I need this. You can’t do this to me.”

  Adriano took a long drag from his cigar, then exhaled a thick cloud of smoke towards my bare stomach. “Got no choice, it ain’t nothing personal. Last client paid me a lot of money to fire you. Wouldn’t have mattered what I wanted anyways. I guess you got unlucky tonight.”

  I grit
my teeth and clenched every muscle in body.

  Dylan.

  The balls on him to think he could pay off my boss, and then just leave me here. Again. As if somehow he was taking the moral high road by “rescuing” me from the living the life of a stripper, but then not bothering to stick around to offer me any sort of alternative.

  He was a coward.

  He crushed my heart three years ago when he left me the first time. He could’ve have just left it at that, that would have been more than enough damage to leave a lifetime of scars. But no, my stepbrother found a way to magically appear out of nowhere and make a really bad situation into a living hell.

  I had no options now. As sad as working the VIP room was, it was all I had if I was ever going to make it out of Walter’s reign and get to RISD this fall.

  I shook my head and lowered my gaze to the floor as I walked past Adriano. I didn’t say a word to anyone as I walked towards the backroom that housed all of the alcohol. I turned and saw Vicki, already topless as she readied herself to hit the main dance floor while the DJ introduced her to the crowd of hungry men. What was I going to tell her when she found out? That I almost hooked up with my stepbrother in the VIP room? The same stepbrother who, by the way, I hadn’t seen in years? Oh yeah, and did I mention that this same stepbrother then paid Adriano a large sum of cash to kick my ass to the curb?

  I couldn’t wait to have that conversation.

  I walked through the back door that led to the staff parking lot. My eyes caught the bumper sticker that read ARTISTS FOR PRESIDENT on the back of my beat-up Honda Accord. I wasn’t even sure if I had enough gas to make it home.

  Tonight was supposed to be the night that I’d start to forge my very own escape route, the night that everything was going to start to change for the better.

  Little did I know, it would end up being the night that did change everything, just not in any of the ways I’d ever seen coming.

  I flinched the moment I heard the cat calls come from behind me. And there I stood, wearing only a pink bikini top and bottom, as my trembling hand tried to wedge the duct-taped key into the door lock of beat-up Honda.

  “Hey bitch, where the fuck do you think you’re going?” the male voice called from behind.

  At first I didn’t look back. If my experiences with Walter had taught me one thing, it was never to make eye contact unless absolutely necessary.

  “Um, hello? Are you deaf, whore?” the man called again as tiny pieces of rock sputtered beneath his slow rolling tires. He had been drinking, that much was clear. And he wasn’t alone. Beyond those two facts, I tried to stay focused on the task at hand.

  I refused to turn towards the men as I persisted with my broken key. I knew this key had almost seen it’s last days, I just prayed that last day wasn’t tonight, in the parking lot of a strip club that I had just come out of.

  Next came the screech of his tires. Then the sound of two doors flying open.

  My hand shook even more violently as I tried to get the damn key to work.

  Please, just this one last favor, I prayed again.

  I rotated my wrist and watched as the plastic casing around the head of the key snapped into ten or so tiny broken pieces.

  Before I could do anything at all, two hands came from behind, one grabbed my throat and the other grabbed the back of my ass. I wanted to scream but all of the air was being choked out of me in massive, jagged gasps.

  He reeked of beer and cheap cologne as he shoved my body to the side and jammed the side of my face against my car windshield.

  “You should fuck her right here dude!” the second male voice egged on.

  The man’s grasp around my neck grew tighter, and I knew I was going to lose consciousness. I repeatedly pounded my fist as hard as I could onto my windshield, trying to make as much noise as possible.

  Blood poured from my wrist and ran down my arm as I kept pounding desperately on the glass.

  I had the feeling this guy was too drunk to realize how badly he was choking me right now.

  Everything that happened next happened all at once. First the third voice, it was deeper than any voice I’d ever heard. I couldn’t make out the man’s speech; I was too far gone by then, completely deprived of oxygen. Then the hand around my throat vanished suddenly.

  But it was too late. My world went white. The last thing I remembered was falling onto the hood of my car. Then I was out, completely unconscious.

  *

  I was drawn to him the very first moment I came to.

  Even in my groggy stupor, I felt pulled towards his energy, without even having the wherewithal to know who he was exactly, or where I was for that matter.

  As the images around me slowly began to crystalize, I stupidly used my right hand to try to support myself in a seated position.

  I screamed out from the pain, and then collapsed right back down onto the bed I was lying in. I looked down and saw that my entire hand had been secured with multiple patches of white gauze and strips of medical tape that had been applied by someone who clearly knew what they were doing.

  I wondered if I was in the hospital at first, until he spoke. “Lie back down, you’re going to need that hand to get better if you ever want to paint again.”

  I tried to look up at him, but my neck was too sore to move. “Dylan?”

  “Yes. I’m here.”

  I vaguely remembered my body crashing onto the hood of my car, then onto the parking lot pavement just before passing out. “Where am I?”

  “Relax, you’re okay.”

  It hurt to keep my eyes open, but I needed to see more. My immediate field of vision revealed that a long stretch of floor-to-ceiling windows. The giant sheets of glass were mostly covered right now by equally massive shades, apart from a small slit where one shade had been left slightly open, just enough to let a sliver of moonlight creep into the room.

  The room was colored in mostly melon yellows and cool blues. Sharp stabbing pain seemed to come from deep within the bones in my wrist, and yet somehow the rich cotton sheets beneath me had a cool, numbing effect that provided a dash of temporary relief from the pain.

  “Things could’ve gone much worse tonight,” he said.

  Oh god. I remembered the man’s hand on my throat. And the rank smell of his breath as he groped my body in that parking lot.

  Dylan, my stepbrother, saved me from those sadistic men outside of the club. I shuddered at the thought of what could’ve been had it not been for him.

  But why? He couldn’t have cared less about me for the past however many years, months, days… It didn’t add up.

  I started to open my mouth to find out what all went down. “Those men, they…”

  “I took care of them. Permanently,” he said

  “I didn’t need you to get involved.”

  “For future reference, thank you actually works well in these situations.”

  I tried to lift my head up to face him but the muscles in my neck had been somehow torn to shreds throughout everything that had happened.

  He raised his voice just enough to send a message. “You need to rest. You already almost died once today, I think that’s enough.”

  I followed his order and allowed my throbbing head to crash back down on his pillow.

  “Is this your bed?”

  “Odd question, but I like where your head’s at. Yes. I thought you’d feel more comfortable here than in one of the guest rooms.”

  I wondered how many other heads had rested on this very same pillow. Probably dozens of perfectly shaped women that he’d met through his work. Part of his public image was built on constantly hobnobbing it up with an endless array of drop dead gorgeous models and what not.

  I couldn’t resist myself. “I bet you’ve had a lot of company in here.”

  I wished I hadn’t said what I said, but I did. And not only did I risk pissing Dylan off, my comment forced certain visuals into my head that I didn’t want to see right about now.

 
Especially after the whole VIP room incident.

  I wanted to throw up in my own mouth when I realized what I’d just done.

  I was being possessive.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.” But I knew I’d never be able to take it back.

  I still couldn’t lift my head, but my gaze followed Dylan’s feet as they moved closer towards me. “No you’re not, and yes you should have,” he said, the tone of his voice calculated and edgy.

  I couldn’t get a read on him. It almost seemed like he was getting a little turned on by me, but that couldn’t be the case. What happened in the club between us was one thing, that was before either one of us even realized who the other person was. Freak occurrence, that’s all that really was. A guy like Dylan - rich, powerful, can have any woman he wants - just isn’t into a girl like me – an ordinary Jane who don’t know the likes of billionaires, skyscrapers, and professional athletes and pop stars.

  And besides, he’s my goddamn stepbrother. The idea of him seriously being into me like that is just…

  Wrong?

  My head told me one thing, but the space between my legs was telling me something altogether different…

  Something I had to ignore at all costs, immediately.

  Gross, Scarlett. You practically watched each other go through puberty together. You used to laugh at him as he ran around the house pretending to be Batman.

  And now…

  What I thought I knew no longer made a shred of sense.

  I wanted so badly to convince myself that what he did for me in that parking lot didn’t feel incredible. That it didn’t lift me up. That it wasn’t the best thing that had happened to me since the day he left and never looked back. I wanted to convince myself of all of those things because it was the only safe way to exist given the circumstances.

  I could only imagine what went down between him and that sick bastard who put his hand on my throat as he groped my ass.

  If it was anything like what he did to Walter the last day I ever saw him, it was a bloody mess. That day, Dylan had officially become a man. And when he caught Walter holding my mother’s broken coffee brandy bottle up to her eye, Dylan lost it. He nearly broke my stepfather’s neck. But when things got twisted around, as they so often did whenever Walter was involved, the police somehow filed a restraining order against Dylan, when it should have been the other way around.