PIERCED - A Stepbrother Romance

by Hawk, Maya

  PIERCED

  A stepbrother romance of epic proportions…

  MAYA HAWK

  COPYRIGHT 2015 MAYA HAWK

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  COVER DESIGN: MAYHEM COVER CREATIONS

  INTERIOR FORMATTING: DAVID HAWKINS

  EDITING: DEBORAH GREY COOPER, PREMIUM EDITS

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or, if an actual place, are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  DEDICATION

  To Rossi St. James,

  For believing in me and for recognizing my gift even when I refused to see it.

  M.K.H.

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  DESCRIPTION

  Paging Dr. Pierce…

  If you’d have told me my arrogant, man whoring stepbrother would grow up to become a doctor, I’d have never believed you. That is, until you mention he specializes in caring for the opposite gender. Then it makes perfect sense. He always did have a way with the finer sex.

  Wielding a Prince Albert piercing (don’t ask me how I know) and a whole mess of muscles and tattoos beneath his white lab coat, his power lies in his ability to incinerate my panties with a single smile, the way he knows exactly what to say to melt my resolve like rain on chalk, and his decision to tell me, after a decade of estrangement, that I’m the only girl he’s ever truly loved.

  But we can’t be together, and there are a million reasons why. He’s obnoxious and insufferable. He’s my stepbrother – the son of the woman my asshole father cheated on my mother with. Sutton Pierce is off-limits. Bad news. Wrong in every sense of the word.

  But it’s going to be my heart that needs convincing…

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  THANK YOU

  ONE – LAURYN

  There’s nothing like a cold, hard pap smear on a hot, sweaty day.

  “Right this way, Ms. Hudson,” a middle-aged nurse dressed in hot pink scrubs with a pink breast cancer awareness ribbon pinned to her lapel leads me down a long, humid hallway to exam room number four.

  I’m tempted to ask if her if the AC is working today, but she’s not sweating. It must just be me.

  I thought moving to Miami would feel like a tropical vacation. So far it’s scorching, muggy, and best enjoyed while looking out the floor to ceiling windows of my downtown apartment with the air cranked at full blast.

  I hate it, and that’s the understatement of the century. I hate the heat that sends my sensitive, caramel skin into a state of heat rash the second the sun comes out. I hate how the black leather of my car causes second-degree burns on my ass cheeks every time I forget to put my tin-foil sunshade up. I hate how my naturally curly hair frizzes up the second I step outside no matter how many horribly expensive “anti-humidity” products I work into it.

  Thank God it’s only temporary.

  I climb up the exam table while she types my name into a nearby computer and rattles off a bunch of standard questions.

  “Do you smoke?” she asks.

  “No.”

  “How many alcohol beverages do you enjoy per week?”

  Is this relevant to my gynecologic health? “Um. Three or four?”

  “How many sexual partners have you had?”

  “I don’t know.” Lie. “Four or five?” It was nine. Wait. Ten. I went through a phase my sophomore year of college. So sue me.

  “Are you taking any other medications right now?”

  “I’m on the pill. And I take a women’s multi vitamin when I remember.” Which is never.

  She types my answers in before pulling the stethoscope from around her neck and making her way back toward me. Her overdone floral perfume mixes with the humid air to launch an assault on my lungs, but I suffer silently like the polite, well-mannered girl I was raised to be. After listening to my chest, she wraps a blood pressure cuff around my lower bicep. We sit in awkward, stiffened silence as she pumps and listens.

  “One-twenty over eighty,” she says, as if I would know what that means. She returns to her keyboard and punches a few keys, scrunching her nose and scratching it with the inner corner of her elbow. “The doctor will be in shortly. There’s a gown on the table. Please undress from the waist down.”

  I wore a maxi skirt that morning because anything tighter causes a fiery furnace in my nether-region that no amount of ice cold AC can extinguish, but regardless, my curved thighs still stick together as if someone super-glued them with sticky sweat.

  Sliding off the table the second she leaves the room, I tug off my skirt and neatly drape it across the back of an empty chair. I unfold the paper gown and then refold it in order to optimize the amount of coverage I can get from a see-through piece of paper. Climbing back up onto the table, I squeeze my knees together and wait.

  And wait.

  Five minutes pass and then ten. Then twenty. Then thirty.

  This is ridiculous.

  I watch the second hand on the wall clock make circles, and then I count the ceiling tiles. I grab a Hi-Lites magazines from the rack and mentally solve five children’s riddles before tossing it back where I got it.

  But I shouldn’t be frustrated. I’m used to waiting on doctors. I do it every single day five days a week as a pharmaceutical sales rep. My drugs are gynecologic specialties, and OB-GYNs have some of the most brutal and unpredictable schedules of all the specialists. Even with modern medicine in all her magnificent glory, we still can’t predict exactly what sends a woman into labor.

  I lay back against the paper-covered the exam table, each move I make underscored by a crinkling sound. Counting the ceiling tiles overhead for the fourth time, I think about grabbing my phone and texting my fiancé, James.

  Okay, so he isn’t technically my fiancé, but we’ve been together for years and we’ve been engagement ring shopping, so it’s going to be any day now.

  Though I’m there for my annual exam, I make a mental note to ask the doctor about my fertility. I’d done some research and spoken to other doctors who all said Dr. Elizabeth Brown is the best fertility specialist in the area. James doesn’t want to have kids until we were closer to forty, and I want to make sure that, at twenty-nine, I can a
fford to gamble my fertility over the next decade.

  A quick knock at the door barely gives me time to declare “Ready!” before the door swings open and a man, who was clearly not Dr. Elizabeth Brown, ushers himself into my exam room.

  I sit up, pressing my thighs together and repositioning the paper drape over my lower half. The second he lowers his clipboard and our eyes met, my breath catches in my throat and my mouth fills with cotton.

  It can’t be.

  There’s no way.

  How?!

  “Sutton?” God, it’s so weird saying his name out loud again.

  His champagne eyes crinkle in the corners as his full mouth arches into a half smile accented by two perfect dimples. His chestnut hair, still as thick and dark as it was when we were teenagers, is impeccably groomed into place and contrasts sharply against his white lab coat.

  “Lauryn.” He places the clipboard next to a sink and washes his hands. The way he says my name sends an unwelcome fire to my core until I strengthen my façade and force it away.

  “You’re not examining me.” I make it clear before I breathe another word. “Where’s Dr. Brown?”

  He smirks, drying his perfect, callous-free doctor hands and turning back to me. “In this room, I’m your doctor, Lauryn. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

  “You’re still my stepbrother, Sutton.” Sure, I haven’t seen him in over a decade, but that doesn’t change the fact that his mother is married to my estranged father. Once upon a time, before we were stepsiblings, he was my best friend. My first love. My first time.

  Sutton Pierce was my first everything…

  Until he became my nothing in one fell swoop.

  “You’re not getting anywhere near me.” I press my knees together once again, but my leg muscles shake and tire out almost immediately.

  Sutton rakes his hand against his jaw and cocks his head. “I’m not going to examine you, Lauryn. I was only kidding. I noticed your name on the patient roster, and I had to come see if it was really you.”

  My jaw slacks. I deliberately ignored his attempts at reconnecting over the years. I ignored his Facebook friend requests back in college. I ignored his random texts every six months asking if it was still “Lauryn Hudson’s number”. No part of me wanted anything to do with him. Not after what happened.

  I still want nothing to do with him.

  “God, that would be so weird if I…” He grabs a speculum and clicks it open. He’s doing it to torment me. “Never mind.”

  “Still tactless after all these years.” I roll my eyes. “Good to know that even becoming a medical doctor hasn’t changed the man you are at the heart of it all, Sutton.”

  “You know I like to tease.” He places the speculum back on the tray by the exam table. “I wish you’d lighten up a little, Lauryn. Has anyone ever diagnosed you with a big, fat stick up your ass?”

  “Why are you here?” I cross my arms until the paper gown slides down my thighs and then I quickly retrieve it. “When I made my appointment with Dr. Brown, I didn’t notice your name listed on the physician roster.”

  And I made damn sure to check too. I knew he was an OB-GYN, and I knew he was living in Miami. I did everything I could to ensure our paths didn’t cross, though it took some careful maneuvering from time to time.

  “I thought you were a hospitalist anyway?” I add, quickly realizing I’m giving away the fact that I’ve checked up on him.

  “I fill in for doctors every now and again.” He slips his hands into the front pockets of his lab coat and subsequently pulls it against the ever-present bulge in the front of his pants. “We do that for each other.”

  His piercing. Oh, God. Completely forgot about that. His enormous cock. And all those tattoos.

  I wonder if anyone else knows what lies beneath his doctor McHottie façade. Knowing Sutton, every hot nurse within the greater Miami area probably knows exactly how he looks beneath his white coat.

  Ugh.

  “How’d you know I’m a hospitalist?” he asks.

  My lips part before the words come out, and I try to buy myself time to think of an excuse. “I’m a drug rep. I know a lot of the doctors and practices in the area. I’ve seen your name come up.”

  Boom. Perfect.

  Never mind the fact that I know his schedule. He works overnights – the weekend package. Mostly delivering babies and performing emergency gynecological surgeries. Who’d have thought my tatted up, muscled, cock-pierced stepbrother would grow up to deliver babies? I both love and hate that fact more than I’ll ever admit to anyone out loud.

  “Uh, huh.” He doesn’t buy it, and the phone in his pocket starts ringing with some God-awful metal music. Same old Sut. Our eyes lock as he retrieves it. “This is Dr. Pierce.”

  I glance up at the clock on the wall, silently cursing Dr. Brown for taking so long.

  “More overtime,” he says, shaking his head. “We’re in the thick of baby birthing season at the hospital.”

  My lips press together as I stifle all the questions I want to ask him. Why didn’t he want his own practice? How long had he been working at Miami General? What brought him here? Was he seeing anyone? For a split second, I nearly forget all the reasons I hate him. For a split second, I’m simply staring across the room at the guy who’d once been my best friend.

  “You think Dr. Brown will be in here soon?” I change the subject. “Kind of need to get back to work.”

  “Want to get dinner sometime?” He ignores my question. “Catch up?”

  Yes. No? I don’t know. “Um…”

  “Fine, Lauryn. We can catch up right here.” He takes a seat on a rolling stool and pulls it up to my table with the most obnoxious smirk on his face. I can’t imagine any woman in their right mind letting him near their vagina for medical purposes.

  “This is so inappropriate, Sutton.” I refuse to make eye contact with him. My hands hold down the paper sheet, and my sweaty palms melt what little coverage I have left. “Please send Dr. Brown in.”

  “Lighten up, Laur,” he teases me again, standing up. I almost wish he’d stay. I almost wished he’d bug me a little longer. I was just beginning to realize I kind of missed it. “How long have you been in Miami?”

  “A little over two months,” I say. “It’s just temporary. For work. We’re launching a new drug soon, and they have me stationed here because apparently there’s an overabundance of women’s medical centers in this city. Highest per capita in the nation.”

  Maybe that’s what drew him here? Well, that and the overabundance of beautiful women in Miami.

  “Come over sometime.” He isn’t asking. “I live downtown, not too far from here.”

  Me too.

  “I don’t know, Sutton. I get busy with work, and my boyfriend flies out every other weekend…”

  “Boyfriend.” He stares off to the side for a second as if he has to digest the fact that I could even possibly be with someone. “I’d love to meet him sometime. Welcome him into the family.”

  Rolling my eyes, I say, “Won’t be necessary.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “James.” I say his name with a quick huff, as if Sutton’s question is invasive. It kind of is. “If you must know.”

  “James, eh? God, that’s so safe and boring.” He rubs his full lips together and spreads them into a subdued smile, though his eyes aren’t smiling in the least.

  “For your information, he is anything but safe and boring,” I lie. I lie so hard. James is the epitome of safe and boring, and that’s why it only makes sense for me to wind up with someone like him. He is everything my father isn’t and everything Sutton isn’t.

  Sutton rolls his eyes playfully and releases a full breath. “Anyway.”

  I glance up at the clock again. “Can you please send my doctor in now?”

  He rises from the stool, unwilling to take his penetrating stare off of me, and smiles. “I’ll leave you alone. But I would like to see you sometime. We’re different peopl
e now, Lauryn. I’d love to get to know the person you’ve become.”

  It’s difficult to say no to that. In that moment, he seems so nice. So sincere. So likeable. And then I remember my mom. My loyalty. My allegiance. My priorities.

  “Lauryn,” he says, snapping me out of my trance. “Dinner? Tonight? Seven?”

  “Yes,” I blurt, saying anything to get him to stop badgering me.

  His mouth arches into a pleased smile and he stands, placing one steady hand on the silver door handle. “Excellent. I’ll send Dr. Brown in.”

  TWO – LAURYN

  Brentwood, CA – Summer before senior year of high school

  Voices trail in from the pool. The closer I get the more it sounds like laughter. I peek out the window by the terrace and see my father sitting between my mother and Sandra Pierce. They’re running lines, reading off thick scripts that sit nestled between tumblers of expensive bourbon and resting cigarettes, though it doesn’t seem like work. Sandra is laughing her infectious laugh and my mother is red-faced. My father, internationally known jazz trumpeter DeVonn Hudson, mutters something that forces my mom to gift him with a dirty glare.

  They do that – Sandra and my dad. They gang up on my mother and package it like they’re only teasing. Sandra is effervescent in nature, and my mom is more serious. Somehow those two are best friends, though I’m told the friendship started when they both had co-starring roles on some 1980s sitcom. Dad says they balance each other out. He says it just works and not to question it. Kind of like how no one wants to watch how sausage gets made.

  “Why are you just standing there staring at them?” It’s Sutton, Sandra’s son. We used to be best friends until last summer when he decided it would be a good idea to date Kerrigan Zanuck – the bane of my existence. “It’s weird.”