Wicked Stepbrother (Book Two)

by Lila Price

  Wicked Stepbrother (Book Two)

  Lila Price

  Favor Ford Publishing

  Contents

  Copyright

  NOTE

  Want To Be In The Know?

  WICKED STEPBROTHER (Book Two)

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  OBSCENE

  Obscene (A Bad Boy Romance)

  Copyright

  Obscene (A Bad Boy Romance)

  Copyright © 2017 by Favor Ford Publishing

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  NOTE

  This edition of Wicked Stepbrother contains the following bonus content: OBSCENE by Kelly Favor

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  WICKED STEPBROTHER (Book Two)

  by Lila Price

  1

  Dumbfounded, I stand in front of Tristan, who’s gripping the railing of the stairway as he faces me.

  His knuckles are shredded, and his face… God, his gorgeous face, marred and battered from what was obviously a fight.

  His eyes get a lost look to them for a moment, but as I step toward him, that look disappears. It’s taken over by the cockiness I’m used to, and he jerks his chin toward me in greeting, as if I can’t see his injuries.

  “It’s been a long night,” he says, “so spare me the drama.”

  “Tristan, you got in a fight.”

  “Good night, Cherry.” And there it is again—totally ignoring me.

  He begins to take the stairs, and even if he’s trying to hide it, every move he makes is weary, as if he only wants to shut his door and close out the world behind him. But that world includes me, and I’m not about to let him go that easily.

  “What happened?” I ask. “Please, just tell me.”

  He doesn’t stop, and I know that once he gets to his door, I’ll be locked out. He’s going to leave me once again.

  I run up the stairs, latching onto the back of his shirt, pulling him to a halt. He lowers his head and lets out a long breath.

  “I’m not in the mood for this, Sosie.”

  “Who did this to you?”

  Now he tenses up. He doesn’t exactly look at me, just barely addresses me over his shoulder. “Who did this to me? You make it sound like someone got the better of me, but nobody does that—ever.”

  Why does it feel as if his words have so much more meaning than what it seems? Does he actually think that no one has the power to get to him or affect him? He’s standing there as if no matter how many cuts and bruises are on him, he can never be hurt.

  I think of all the times I saw something haunted in Tristan, and all I want to do is have him face me now so I can tell him that, with me here, nothing will hurt him. I won’t let it.

  “Tristan…”

  He jerks away from me, his T-shirt slipping out of my fist, and I hold up my hands, taken aback. It’s as if he’s pushed me away, even though he hasn’t touched me at all. My throat burns at his rejection.

  With his jaw clenched, he looks down at me. He glances away and shakes his head.

  “Why can’t you ever leave well enough alone?” he asks.

  “Because I kind of care about what happens to you.” My voice is wobbly. “I give a crap about this—” I gesture to his injured eye “—and this.” I motion to his cheek, where those raw, cruel cuts are red with drying blood.

  A beat passes as he watches me. He has to see that my heart’s in my gaze, that I care way too much than is good for me. Then he tucks his hands under his arms, obviously back to being a defensive asshole.

  Wonderful.

  “If I tell you what happened, will you stop interrogating me?” he asks.

  That’s better than I expected, and I can’t make promises, but I nod.

  “It was a bar brawl. A few drunk dipshits started something up with one of my friends, and I jumped in. Typical guy stuff, Cherry, and you’d better get used to it for the rest of the summer.”

  I’m reminded of my mom’s email and how Tristan isn’t even supposed to be here. And I think he’s lying to me about this now, and my heart is breaking because, for some reason, he thinks he can’t be honest with me. Why can’t he trust me, the one person who adored him from not-so-far and who would’ve always done anything for him?

  I approach as if he’s a wounded animal, softly, slowly, and when I get close enough to reach up so I can touch one of his cuts, he goes completely still. There’re questions in his eyes, deep and dark ones. There’s also something quiet and cautious.

  As I lightly rest my fingertips against a cut, testing it, he grips my wrist.

  “I’m fine,” he says.

  “At least let me get some ice for your eye.”

  “You think I don’t know where the ice is if I need it?”

  “Seeing as you’ve been moving in the opposite direction of the kitchen, I can’t be sure.”

  His gaze locks on mine, and I suppress a shiver. His touch burns through me, especially when he sends me a maddening, condescending grin that tells me he doesn’t take any of this seriously. Mostly, he doesn’t take me seriously. Doesn’t he see that I just want to help, even if he’s acting like it’s the last thing he needs?

  On a burst of frustration, I reverse my grip on him, pulling him with me as I walk past him up the stairs. “Come on,” I say. “You should at least get cleaned up.”

  “Well, yes, ma’am, Nurse Bossy.”

  Could he be more difficult?

  “And since I’m already so bossy,” I say, “I guess I should remind you that being such a hothead is going to get you into big trouble one of these days. First you almost kicked the crap out of that guy in the club who grabbed my ass, then you stared daggers at every man who even laid eyes on me at the bar, and now—”

  “Now you seem to be acting like my parent. Does that mean you’ll carry through with that threat you made to spank me?”

  Desire bolts through me, especially as we pass by both our doors. It wasn’t long ago that he gave me the spank of my life in my room, and then in his own room he…

  God, I can’t think about how he drove me wild and made me cry out for him.

  I flip on the light in the bathroom, and the sight of him and me standing side by side fills the mirror. He towers over me, and my pulse trips over itself. Calming down, I open the medicine cabinet to get out some gauze and antibiotic ointment.

  He leans back against the counter, his arms barred over his chest again, making his muscles strain. I force my gaze off his biceps and to his scraped knuckles. Then I turn on the faucet to wash my hands with the antibacterial soap by the sink, dry off, and wet the gauze, soaping that up, too.

  I have no idea how to play nurse, so I just do my best as I dab at the first cut on his face, cleaning it. A muscle ticks in Tristan’s jaw, but I don’t think it’s because of the sting. He’s watching me with that same intense gaze he gets whenever his thoughts get dirty, and I pace my breathing.

  “I still think you should get some ice on your eye,” I say. “You’d feel better.”

  “Oh, I can guess how it would feel.”

  As his gaze runs over my chest, where the tips of my breasts are visible thanks to t
he fact that I don’t have a bra on, his words once again seem to have a double meaning. He’s gone back to teasing me, and I’m pretty sure it’s because he doesn’t want me to think too much about his injuries. He’s deflecting, as usual.

  Subtly, I pull my shirt away from my skin while tossing the used gauze in the trash. Then I grab another strip and repeat the process with the other cut.

  At first he closes his eyes, but then he grits his teeth, as if this one bothers him more.

  “See?” I say. “This is what you get when you fight. Very inconvenient pain.”

  “What if I told you I was fighting for the honor of a woman? Would you approve?”

  A woman?

  My blood freezes, and it isn’t until he grins again that I thaw. No, forget that—I heat up from my head to my toes. Even with his wounded eye and cuts, his grin is devastatingly sexy, and I can’t fight the taunting lure of it.

  Then he laughs. “Just kidding, Cherry. You know I only fight for the virtuousness of my Lil Step-sis.”

  Yeah, taunting all right. “Shut up, Tristan.”

  “Whoa, let up on the anger. Why so cranky?”

  “I’m not cranky.” But I am. He’s confusing me again, sending a thrashing wave of need over me, drowning me in it.

  “Hell,” he says, “you’ve been angry ever since the other day when you pulled up to the house in your car and saw me outside. It’s like you’re fighting tooth and nail to deny how crazy you are about me or something.”

  I can’t believe he went there, and I throw the gauze in the trashcan with more force than I should. “The only thing that makes me crazy when it comes to you is shit like this.”

  He gives me an innocent look.

  “Oh, please, you know what I mean.” I grab the damned antibiotic ointment and squeeze some onto the pad of my index finger.

  “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. What do you mean?”

  Is he trying to get me to admit how I feel about him?

  Fat chance, and as I roughly smear the gel over his cuts, I avoid what he’s trying to get at. No way I’m going to give him anything.

  When I’m done, I eye his knuckles, then squeeze some ointment straight from the tube and onto his skin. He can rub it in. He’s so good at that, anyway.

  “I’m tired of the way you toy with me,” I say as he clearly realizes I’m done nursing him and smoothes the gel over himself. “It’s like I’m a little doll you found in a gift store during this vacation of yours, and it’s a lot of fun for you to toss me around and then leave me lying on the floor after you’re—”

  I cut myself off, reminded again of the lie he told me about coming here for the summer to watch over me. Now I’m more confused than ever.

  “Sosie,” he says. “You’ve got it all wrong.”

  I do?

  My heart seems to arc inside me, ready to do a swan dive into the air as he stands away from the counter and moves behind me. When he rests his hands on my shoulders, the oxygen catches in my lungs.

  “Boys like me don’t play with dolls,” he says, and there’s emotion in those words. I swear there is.

  I find my breath and take a risk. “Then what am I to you?”

  He eases his palms down my shoulders, then my arms. Suddenly, as he meets my gaze in the mirror, he’s famished, unrestrained. The bad boy is back full force.

  My core turns to liquid as he puts his hands on my hips, his fingers digging into me.

  “I don’t know what you are to me,” he finally says. “I only know that I never really saw you before. Not until you showed up in that driveway.”

  When he slips his hands under my shirt and strokes my belly, my muscles jerk so violently that my clit knots up. I can’t take my gaze away from Tristan’s in the mirror. His wounds give him an edge, something even more dangerous than before.

  I let him pull the shirt higher, until he’s coaxing it over my head, the cotton whispering against my skin. But he doesn’t remove the material all the way; my hands are poised above me, the shirt wound around my wrists. In the mirror, my bare breasts are plump, my nipples pink and ready for him. His gaze is still on mine.

  “I see a woman who makes me want to fuck her brains out every time I see her,” he says. “And I can’t get enough of her.”

  I’m already getting damp for him as he turns me around, my hands still over my head in ecstatic surrender, my body and soul all his.

  2

  Somehow we make it to his bed, his hands working at the buttons on my shorts, my hands still over my head. I stumble back to the mattress and flop onto it, realizing that he’s already gotten my fly open and it’s gaping, offering a peek of my white panties.

  He pauses, looking down at me. Those wounds on his face give me a primal thrill as I imagine him throwing punches at someone else, pummeling them. It’s wrong, I know, but the fantasy makes me even wetter, especially when I think of the fight he started for my sake.

  A fighter, I think. A man driven by demons I don’t understand.

  But I’m starting to understand some things about him, such as what he likes to do to me, and when he lays his hands on my ribcage, his fingers spanning me, I squirm underneath him, my temperature rising.

  “Sweet Sosie,” he whispers, whisking his thumbs beneath my breasts, which feel ripe and sensuous with my hands over my head. “Always so sweet on the inside, even while you flirt and drive all the guys insane on the outside.” He traces my nipples, making circles that force soft sounds of pleasure out of me. “Do you know what you did to me when you danced that night at Shady’s?”

  My skin flushes, and not only because of the memory of him watching me, wanting me. “I don’t know.”

  His gaze is even hungrier now. He bends down to deliberately kiss my nipple, then lick it. I watch as my tip slowly hardens, and I feel the humidity between my thighs tick up a notch.

  “You know damned well what you did to me, Cherry,” he says. “You’re a natural tease.”

  Just like he is? This dirty talk is getting me good, getting me so slick against my panties.

  He sucks at my tip, then pulls off of me, carelessly allowing my nipple to pop out of his mouth. I arch up with him and gasp.

  “Tell me what you did to me,” he whispers roughly.

  “I…” The word chops off as he bends down again to lave me, using his fingers to play with my other breast. I’m a mess of swarming need. “I think I made you excited when I danced.”

  He speaks against me. “What part of me did you make the most excited?”

  “You. Your…cock.”

  He smiles then nips under the curve of my breast, making it rise up. As he lets it settle back to where it was, I rock up against him, and he kisses his way over the center of my chest. His cheeks are whiskery, and I can hear the sound of him dragging up my skin. He runs his teeth over my neck, and sweet heaven, my hips can’t stay still. I latch my legs around him and rub against the top button of his jeans.

  “I can tell you like saying that word,” he tells me. “You like cock, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” Because I do. I never even knew how much before.

  “And what else would you say happened to my cock when I was watching you flirt with those men at the bar?” He licks his way to my ear, then takes my lobe between his teeth.

  He’s talking about Brent and the blond customer, but they’re barely even a memory as I try to reach down with my bound hands to tug at Tristan’s shirt. I want it off of him.

  “Hard,” I say on a breath. “You got hard and ready to…”

  I’m embarrassed to go on but then he whispers in my ear.

  “Say it.”

  He drives his cock against my pussy, and even through my shorts, I feel the tip of him. Desperately, I press right back, dizzy, the words pouring out of me.

  “You were ready to explode,” I say.

  I keep grinding against him, seeking more, but he only watches my restless moves. I still work at his shirt, but with my h
ands still tied, I’m getting nowhere. Dammit, I want it off.

  Mercifully, he pushes my hands back over my head, then takes off his shirt. I look at him: those wide shoulders, the tanned skin over the muscles in his beautiful chest, the ridged abs. God, he is perfect.

  He slides his hands up my arms, and although I’m still bound, he gently clasps my wrists. It’s a moment of tenderness I don’t expect, and my pulse seems to stop as his gaze meets mine. His cuts, his injured eye—they make him my hard-edged hero.

  When he lowers himself so that he can press his naked chest against mine, my nipples tingle at the skin-to-skin contact. A sense of feral intimacy grips me.

  “You like that, Cherry?”

  “God, yes.”

  “Did you ever think I’d be feeling your tits like this?”

  The wickedness of the thought pumps through me, and my clit throbs hard. “Never.”

  “Your tits,” he says. “The tips of them are like little cherries, and they taste like maraschinos. What would you do if I spread some of that sticky juice on them and sucked it off?”

  Oh. I close my eyes, then open them. “Didn’t you say you buy your dates drinks with those cherries in them?”

  He brings his cock against me again, and I moan. I fist my hands so hard that he laughs quietly.

  “You sound jealous,” he says.

  “I don’t want to hear about your dates.”

  “Good.” He shifts his weight to his side, slipping a hand down my spine. A brutal shudder takes me over, and he must sense it, because there’s a change in his eyes. Almost as if he likes that I feel so much for him.

  Slowly, he pushes his cock against my sex again, then again until we’re churning against each other, fucking with our clothes on. I can feel the head of him, so insistent against me, his hips moving harder, faster. My clit bangs in an unsteady rhythm, pounding at me to let him in.