“No, you love it.”
It was meant to be a joke, but everything suddenly felt oh-so awkward in the room. His entire body stiffened next to me.
“I meant you love my sense of humor,” I quickly said. “I don’t mean you’re in love with me or whatever.”
“It’s okay,” he said, hurriedly standing up. “Where’s my phone? I really want that pizza.”
“Over there,” I said, inwardly sighing.
Why did I have to throw down the L word so fast? It wasn’t like I was confessing my undying love for him or anything, but just bringing up the word at all suddenly made it feel like I’d laid down some sort of challenge for him to either tell me he loved me or bail out. It wasn’t what I’d meant at all, but I felt like that was the vague impression my words had given off. Or maybe I was overthinking things.
Even scarier was that I knew I was falling in love with him, and I had been for a long time now despite all the drama we’d put each other through. Even if I didn’t want to admit it to him, there it was. A lot of other girls my age were out experimenting with alcohol, weed and pills. Even cocaine. But not me. Mason was my drug of choice, and I was fast becoming addicted.
“You know what?” he said a second later. “Fuck the pizza. I think I need a shower.”
“Oh,” I said, casting my eyes down. He came over to me and tilted my face up to his.
“I meant we need to have a shower.”
I smiled, glad he’d elaborated. “Really? I guess I am a bit sweaty after all that.”
“Oh, you’re more than sweaty,” he replied, leaning in to kiss my forehead. “You’re a very dirty girl.”
He and sauntered into his bathroom, stark naked, and my insides tingled like crazy as I watched him. God, his body was perfect.
“Come on!” he called out as he turned the water on. “Let’s get you nice and wet.”
I already was…
CHAPTER TWENTY
MASON
So it was official. Arizona and I were sleeping together, and we were kind of ‘together’ as well. We spent as much time with each other as possible without making it obvious to everyone that we were fucking each other’s brains out, and it was like some flip had been switched in my brain. In such a short time period, I’d gone from untamable playboy to completely-tamed boyfriend material. I could actually picture myself in a zoo exhibit, with women standing around pointing at me and saying things in hushed voices like: ‘See? They can be tamed. You just have to feed them the right things, say the right stuff, and rub their bellies.’
Did I care? Nope. I usually hated being a cliché, and right now I knew I was one. The pussy-whipped guy. And guess what? I fucking loved it. I didn’t care what anyone else would think of me if they knew what was going on in my head. I was happy, Arizona was happy, and that was all that mattered.
For the last few weeks, we’d been sneaking around the house like we were engaging in some sort of illicit affair, and honestly…we kinda were. We weren’t related by blood, but we were damn sure related by marriage, and we both knew a lot of people would have a problem with that. Especially our parents. I didn’t know what they were thinking by putting our bedrooms right across the hall from each other. It was like they wanted us to start fucking right under their noses. I knew we’d have to tell them that something was going on between us eventually, but fuck…I wanted to hold off on that as long as possible. Roy had always been nice to me, but I doubted he’d be happy to learn that I was fucking the sweet, innocent daughter he’d only just found after nineteen years. He’d missed out on so much time with her that to him, she was still just the little baby girl he’d been holding in his arms right before she went missing.
Arizona had somehow dropped the L word into conversation the other week, and I’d reacted pretty weirdly. Luckily she seemed to have forgotten. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel like I loved her; of course I fucking did. I just didn’t want to be that creepy guy who proclaimed his undying love to a girl he’d only just started hooking up with a few weeks ago. It seemed so disingenuous, even if it was true.
Right now I was in her room, lounging around on her bed like a lizard as I binge-watched a TV show on my laptop. She was sitting at her desk finishing up some work stuff she’d brought home, and I ignored the show for a second and watched her. She had this habit of tucking her hair behind her right ear and biting her lower lip every time she hit ‘send’ on an email, and I took my shirt off and stood up, draping my hands over her face as I reached the desk.
“Hey!” she protested. “Trying to work here! Besides, Roy and Layla are home. We have to be careful.”
“They might be home, but they’re not in here,” I murmured, scooping her up off the chair. My hands slid around her ass as she squirmed in my arms, and I chuckled and set her down on the desk, her legs wrapped around my waist.
She was right. I should have been worried about how my mother and her father were somewhere in the house right now, and how they could walk in on us at any second if they were so inclined. For a mansion with all the bells and whistles money could buy, the lock on Arizona’s door didn’t work at all and the walls were quite thin. Typical. But I wasn’t concerned. Instead I was preoccupied with her smooth skin, her wide eyes and her perky breasts as they sat nestled in her blouse like two perfect scoops of caramel ice cream. I leaned in for a deep kiss, and she moaned into my mouth in protest.
“Mason…” she said, breaking away a second later. “Seriously. They could walk in here.”
“Hm. I guess you’re right. But if you’re that worried, then why aren’t you wearing any panties?”
I slid my hand up her skirt, and she reluctantly smiled. “I guess I’m not that worried.”
“Damn right,” I said, murmuring into her ear. Goose bumps cropped up all over her neck. “Put your arms around me.”
She leaned in closer and followed my orders, sliding her arms around me. Her skirt was hitched up around her waist from where my hands had shoved it up, and her breasts pressed up against my face as I buried it in between them. She clung to me as I pulled my cock out and rubbed it up against her slit, and then I was driving into her in fast, insistent strokes, barely giving her time to adjust to my girth. She moaned and threw her head back, her eyes closed, and I held her in a firm grip to make sure she didn’t go flying off the desk.
“Touch yourself,” I whispered, nibbling in her earlobe. She reached down between us and rubbed her clit as I thrust harder and harder, and soon she was coming, her muscles tightening and contracting around my cock as she buried her head in my chest, muffling her cries of ecstasy.
I forced myself to keep my own mouth shut despite the urge to groan like a wild beast as a climax began to build in the base of my cock. We were all too aware of the fact that someone could just so happen to be walking down this end of the hall at any second, and this was not the time to be discovered. Not when I was balls deep in my stepsister. Somehow the thought of getting caught intensified the bliss in my mind, and I couldn’t help but let out a growl of pleasure as I emptied myself inside her. Shit. That was the best one yet.
Every time with her was better than the last, without fail.
“God,” she said, sliding off the desk and pulling her skirt back down over her thighs. “We need to stop having so much sex. We’re going to get caught eventually, you know.”
I grinned. “Nah. No one suspects a thing so far.”
Famous last words. There was a knock at the door, and Arizona’s eyes widened.
“Arizona, sweetie. Are you in there?”
Fuck. It was my mother. Arizona’s face was still flushed bright pink, and I hadn’t put my shirt back on or even done up my pants yet. There was no way my mother would believe we’d just been hanging out as friendly stepsiblings.
“Uhh…give me a sec!” Arizona replied.
She mouthed four words at me before hurriedly kicking my shirt under the bed. Get in the closet. As quietly as possible, I crept over to her walk-in c
loset and closed the door behind me, and I heard the bedroom door opening a second later.
“Honey, have you seen Mason?” my mother asked. “His car is here, so I assumed he was home, but his room is empty and I can’t seem to find him anywhere else.”
“Oh…um…I think he went out with Anders. He got picked up, so that’s why his car is still here.”
“Hm. Funny, I could have sworn I heard his voice coming from your room just before I knocked.”
“Uh…nope. I was watching something. It was probably just that.” Arizona sounded like her voice was about to crack from the nervous tension.
“Isn’t that his laptop on your bed?”
“Yeah, it is. I couldn’t get Netflix working on mine, so he let me borrow his.”
My mother finally seemed to believe her. “Well, wasn’t that nice of him? Anyway, sorry to bother you, sweetie. Have fun watching your show.”
Her voice was so syrupy-sweet and fake that I wanted to storm out and spit in her face, but I stayed put. I heard her leave, and Arizona breathed a heavy sigh of relief as she closed the door and then released me from the closet.
“Holy shit,” she said. “That was close. Put your shirt back on! And if she asks, you were out with Anders today.”
“I know, I heard,” I replied, foraging under her bed for my shirt.
This was the first time we’d come close to being caught, and it wouldn’t be the last. But we couldn’t stop now. We were an unstoppable train, and the only thing that could prevent us from being together now was the wreck of the century. As much as neither of us wanted to admit it, that was really going to be a fucking problem.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ARIZONA
Mason and I had the house to ourselves again a few days later, but the close call with Layla had put a dampener on our crazy sex sessions, even when we knew we were alone. The risk had seemed all hot and forbidden for those first few weeks, but now we were both getting quite worried about what would happen if we were found out. I had no idea how Roy would react, and considering that we’d only just started to develop our father-daughter relationship, I didn’t want to ruin that by having him discover my wild affair with my stepbrother.
Right now, we were lounging around in the Jacuzzi that sat near the outside pool. Mason reached over to the edge to grab a beer, and once again I gazed at his tattoo and found myself wondering what it meant. Screw it. There was only one way to find out.
“What’s this?” I asked, gently running my thumb over it as he settled back into the warm bubbling water.
He hesitated, and by the look in his eyes I could tell that I’d struck a nerve. “It’s a tattoo,” he said, as if that weren’t obvious.
“I can see that,” I said. “I was just wondering what it meant.”
He took a long swig of his beer and then looked at me, an unfamiliar emotion clouding his eyes. “You really wanna hear about all my shit?” he asked.
“Of course,” I replied. “Besides, you’ve had to listen to all my crap for the last few weeks. I feel like I owe you.”
He sighed. “Fair enough. All right. I know what you’re thinking. You think Sammy was an old girlfriend or something, right?”
I didn’t reply, and he gave me a rueful smile. “It’s okay. That’s what everyone thinks. But it’s not like that. Sammy was my best friend when I was a kid. He lived just down the road from us, and my mother was close friends with his mother.”
“Oh,” I said. My stomach felt uneasy. On the one hand, I felt a strange sense of relief knowing that he wasn’t hung up on some ex, but on the other hand I knew that something bad must have happened to his friend if his name was permanently inked onto Mason’s arm.
“What happened?” I ventured a moment later. He was staring off into space.
“It’s okay,” I added hastily. “If you don’t want to talk about it, it’s fine.”
“No, I’ll tell you. I want you to know me, but I don’t want you thinking that I’m some pussy little bitch.”
“I’d never think that,” I replied.
He took another long swig of beer and then began to speak.
“Well, like I said, we were best friends. We hung out all the time from the second we met. Anyway, my mother and his mother decided to have some yacht party one summer. I can’t really remember exactly how it happened, but Sammy went over the edge. He couldn’t swim, and by the time someone jumped in to try and save him, he was gone. Face-down in the water for too long.”
“Oh god. I’m so sorry,” I said, my forehead crinkling with horror as he told his story.
“The worst part was just having to stand there and watch. All I wanted to do was jump in and grab him, but I was only eight. I couldn’t swim properly, let alone rescue someone from drowning, and one of the adults was holding me back. I know they were doing it to keep me safe, but all I remember is this crazy sense of being totally out control. I hate feeling out of control. Always have.”
I nodded. “That makes sense. Oh, you poor thing,” I said, squeezing his hand.
He was silent for a moment and then continued. “I haven’t been on any kind of boat since. I just can’t. Even thinking about being out on the open water brings it all back. I sound like a total fucking pussy, don’t I?”
I slid over to him and wrapped my arms around him. “Mason, it’s okay to be afraid of some things. That’s totally understandable. What happened to your friend…it’s awful. And you were so young.”
“Yeah. I guess. My mother always told me it was pathetic.”
“Pathetic? How?”
“She tried to make me take sailing lessons as a teenager and got really pissed at me when I refused. Said I needed to get the fuck over it.”
“That’s horrible. But maybe she was just trying to help in her own way? Like, maybe she thought it would actually help for you to conquer your fears if you took those lessons.”
He shook his head and scoffed. “No. She just knew sailing was an activity that fitted into her world, and she wanted to make sure her son was ‘appropriate’ to be seen and associated with her. Of course she couldn’t stand it when I turned out the way I did instead.”
“I’m sorry. The more I hear about her, the more I can’t believe how heartless she can be,” I replied.
He leaned over and kissed me, and it wasn’t the usual rough, passionate embrace. It was soft and tender, and I let him wrap his arms around me before he pulled away slightly and murmured into my ear. “Thank you.”
“For what?” I asked.
“For listening. It’s hard to talk about. When you’re a man, everyone expects you to be tough all the time.”
In that moment, I knew for sure that what we had was more than just a hot and heavy fling. Tina had always told me that the key to knowing if a guy was really serious about you was how he behaved when the sex dried up a little. We hadn’t had sex in a couple of days now out of our concern over being found out, and instead of doing a disappearing act, Mason had been happy to hang out with me and reveal his personal demons to me. In doing so, he’d let me know that he was vulnerable, just like any other person. Just like me.
I felt closer to him than ever before, and it was clear now. I wasn’t falling in love with him anymore. I already had.
I was in love with my stepbrother.
***
The following Friday at midday, I was at work as usual. I had approximately fifty trillion emails to reply to, and I put my head in my hands and sighed.
“Hey, Arizona. We’re all heading out to lunch at Domenico’s,” one of the other office workers said, idling by my desk. “You wanna come?”
“I would, but I have so much stuff to do here,” I replied with a rueful smile. “Looks like my lunch will be a granola bar from the vending machines.”
She winked. “I’ll bring you back a doggie bag. They have the best arancini in the universe.”
“Thanks,” I said with a smile.
I turned my attention back to my compute
r and pressed on with my work, and a familiar tune sounded on it forty-five minutes later. It was a Skype call, and assuming it was Tina, I looked at it. Nope. It was Mason.
“Hey,” I said, clicking on the answer button and watching his sexy body pop up on the screen. Oh god. He was shirtless.
“What are you up to?” he asked.
“Working like crazy,” I replied. “Although I’m getting these emails sent out faster than I thought I would. I missed out on going out for lunch with the others because I thought I wouldn’t have time.”
“Do you have time for me?” he asked, a lascivious gleam in his eyes.
“Always,” I replied. “Well…ten minutes, maybe. Close enough to always.”
“Good. Now, I think it’s kind of unfair that I’m sitting here shirtless, and yet your webcam tells me you’ve got a top on. We need to even out the playing field.”
“Mason,” I said, my eyebrows shooting up. “You know I’m at work. Anyone could hear you!”
“Didn’t you say everyone went out for food?”
I craned my neck over the top of my cubicle a moment later. Almost everyone was still out to lunch, save for a few of the receptionists down the other end who’d needed to stay behind to answer phones.
“Yeah, they’re still out,” I replied. “But be quiet. Some people are here at the other end.”
“Okay,” he said, lowering his voice. “Now unbutton your top.”
I shot him a warning look, and he chuckled. “Come on. You’re working like a dog. Take a quick break. Do it for me. We’ve barely touched each other in five days now. I’m going crazy.”
I shook my head but couldn’t help a smile quirking up on my lips, and I undid the top two buttons on my blouse. “There. That’s all you’re getting.”
“Tease.”
I settled back into my chair, crossing one leg over the other and waiting for his next order. He leaned forward and smirked, and my heart began to beat a little faster. Getting caught at home might be one thing to worry about, but we were really pushing it with this. Imagine the entire office walking in on me having some sort of Skype sex with Mason! Yet another crazy story to keep away from the grandkids…
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