Wicked Stepbrother (Book Two)

by Lila Price

  “This,” I whisper. “I like this, Tristan.”

  When the head of his cock nestles into a gape in my shorts, I wiggle, trying to get him past the material and closer to me. Even through his jeans, the sensation must drive him wild, because suddenly he’s yanking my shorts down. As my pulse spins, I kick the material the rest of the way off, and he comes back to me, his tip nudging me through my panties, which are soaked now.

  “I want to be inside you all the way,” he says.

  Oh, dear god, yes. But is he just teasing me again, seeing how far I’ll go before I chicken out? Does he think I’m only a flirt and won’t go past this point?

  I want to think I’m wrong about him, especially after seeing what I saw in his gaze, but Tristan’s moods can flip from one side to the other. I’m not sure I want to tell him what’s really in my heart, even if he’s between my legs right now, so close.

  So damned close…

  He reaches down, and as his tip nudges against my hole, stopped only by the denim and cotton between us, he presses his thumb up against my clit. I tear at the shirt binding my hands so hard that seams crackle.

  “How bad do you want me to fuck you?” he asks.

  “So bad,” and it’s nearly a sob.

  With something like a growl, he kisses me, and as his mouth crushes mine with erotic heat, I think I hear a stifled sound of pain from him. Is it because of his cuts? Or is it because of something that I do to him?

  He sucks my lower lip. “How long can you wait for it?” he asks devilishly.

  Screw him.

  As if relishing my impatience, he slides down my body, taking the time to kiss one breast, then the other. My clit beats as he drags his lips down my stomach, my belly. When he gets to my sex, he doesn’t take off my panties. He just gives me a long kiss there, then surprises me by sitting up while lifting one of my legs.

  Taking my foot in his hand, he runs his fingertips over my toes. “Pink polish,” he says. “It matches the color of your pussy.”

  Seriously? He can wait? I grip my shirt above me tighter, pulling, desperate to release my hands, and it pops a couple more seams.

  Tristan runs his thumb over my instep, and I lift off the bed. He knows I like it.

  “When I saw you wearing this polish,” he says, “I started fantasizing about every detail of you—what you looked like without your shirt on. How wet I could get your pink pussy. How every inch of you would taste.”

  “You’ve already experienced some of that,” I say.

  “Not all of it.”

  His words make me nervous in a good way, and when he bends to my foot to take my big toe into his mouth, I gasp. As he sucks, he strokes a hand down the inside of my leg, up and down, dirty and suggestive. All the while, he’s watching me, and I get more and more restless. And he doesn’t stop with my toes: he slides his mouth down my leg, and my clit hums in anticipation of what I think is coming next.

  I’m wrong, though, and when he suddenly turns me over so that I’m lying on my stomach, I start panting.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “I told you,” he says, easing my panties down my ass, then my legs. “I want to taste every bit of you, Sosie.”

  He parts my thighs.

  Oh, my god. Oh, my god. Oh, my god. He’s already swept his arms under me, lifting my hips slightly, enough so that I can feel him in between my legs, his breath on my exposed folds…and so much else.

  Vulnerable. More naked than I’ve ever been. So excited that I’m about to come, even without his mouth on me.

  He’s probably going to tell me to relax and enjoy, so I do, grasping the bedcovers even as I cradle my face in my T-shirt-covered arms. As I feel his tongue licking me from my pussy and upward, I bite the material, my hips rising with his mouth.

  “God, Sosie,” he says. “You even taste like cherry, so sweet. God.”

  He licks me again, then comes back down to kiss me so slowly and deeply that my hips gyrate. At the sound of my wet lower lips getting even wetter against his mouth, a spike of lust pushes through me, and I don’t know how long I’m going to be able to hold off my climax.

  Then I feel him inch his finger up and in between my cheeks, rubbing, and I make a panicked sound at the unexpected jolt of desire in my clit.

  What is he doing?

  As if he knows that there’s no way I’m going to relax this time, he stops, giving my pussy one last kiss, then urges me onto my back again.

  The sight of his gaze is consumed by the same craving I can’t fight, and my heart beats so hard that I think I’m going to crack apart. It doesn’t help when he thrusts his other fingers into me, curving them upward, and—

  It’s as if he pushes the right button, and at the electric zap of his knowing touch, I cry out so loudly that it seems to fill the entire house. He keeps pressing there, and lightning strikes, making me go blind, crashing through me with such force that my body flares, my mind is blown, and everything else combusts.

  The next thing I know, I’m breathing again, and he’s breathing in the same jagged rhythm as I am, and I’m opening my eyes to find that my skin is tingling, sweaty. I’m delightfully numb from coming, and I want it again.

  Tristan is starting to move off the bed, but I rip that shirt from around my wrists and grab him. I think I know where he’s going, what he’s getting, and I don’t want a goddamned condom between us. I want to feel every inch of him.

  “I’m on the pill,” I say, because I have been for a couple years now, even if I haven’t needed it. But my friends were on it, and I thought I should be on it, too, just in case…

  Just in case something like this happened. Something unexpected and so right.

  I know Tristan wouldn’t ever harm me, and he comes back to me, drifting his fingertips over my belly, warming me up again and watching me with that certain something in his gaze that makes me trust him without a doubt.

  He works my clit until I’m begging for him to stop, to come into me, and when he does, he’s not gentle. He rams his cock home, ripping right through my virginity, making me dig my nails into his skin. There’s a burning sensation, a tightness that has me gritting my teeth.

  “Does it hurt?” he asks.

  “No.”

  But I’m lying, at least at first, because as he moves inside of me, I get used to the feel of him. He must sense when the burn starts to subside, because his thrusts speed up and he fucks me, fucks me until I feel like clawing at the bedcovers or at the walls. Or maybe it’s just another orgasm clawing to get out.

  It’s like nails scratching inside of me until heat flares, blazing and getting hotter until I can’t stand it anymore and I do come for him, noisily, once, twice, maybe even more. I hear him call my name and then he pulses inside of me, and I can feel him filling me, coming inside of me, and it’s enough to make my pussy clench and give me another orgasm.

  My arms are spaghetti, my limbs relaxed, and then everything becomes a black void in my head until…

  Until I hear his voice.

  “Sosie.”

  Fingertips trace over my cheek, and I open my eyes to find Tristan by my side. His gaze has that elusive softness in it—a soft spot that I only see when he’s around me, his injuries only making him rougher, even if his caresses tell me that he’s really not that way at all.

  No one will ever be what Tristan has become to me, but as I sigh under his caresses, I’m afraid.

  Afraid because I can’t stop all the feelings inside me that are all too real now.

  3

  Before I can fall into an utterly exhausted asleep, Tristan takes me into his arms, holding me to him, and my fears quiet themselves down. I think, How can I be afraid of anything when I feel so safe and taken care of? How can I ever doubt that my emotions are anything but right?

  After that, everything is a blank, and I awaken hours later during the late morning to catch the scent of bacon in the air. I roll over to find the spot next to me in bed empty, the sheets tousled
, an imprint where Tristan’s body should be.

  But…bacon? That has to mean he’s downstairs in the kitchen. He’s still here, and he hasn’t abandoned me as he’s done before.

  I take a moment and smile to myself, hugging the sheets to my chest. Beneath them, I’m naked, and my skin is sensitive with the after-burn of his touch. There’s some discomfort between my thighs, but when I think about Tristan filling me up, I squeeze my legs together.

  It really happened, me and Tristan, Tristan and me. But my happiness cools a little when the doubts start up again: when he sees me walk into the kitchen, will he give me that naughty grin and say something dirty that’ll start things right off where they ended? Or…

  I run my fingers over his place on the mattress. Or will he go back to ignoring me, wishing that last night never happened?

  If he’s making us breakfast, it has to be a good thing, right?

  I snatch up my clothes from the floor and run to my room, where I change into a clean t-shirt and cotton shorts.

  After stopping in the bathroom, I go downstairs, my heart like red neon flashing on and off inside my chest. I stop just before I go inside the kitchen, leaning against the entrance.

  His back is to me, his brown hair wet, his T-shirt and jeans different from what he was wearing last night. It looks like he’s already showered, and I want to snuggle up to him and smell the soap on his warm skin.

  But I don’t want to break this moment, with him cooking at the stove, water simmering in a pot as he deftly cracks an egg into a shallow dish then slides it into a pot of the water I can hear boiling from where I’m standing. Next to him, he’s got two plates laid out with bacon and toast, and my heart clutches, because one of those really is for me.

  At the sweetness of his actions, I hug myself, comforted. It’s easy to imagine that we wake up like this every morning together as a couple.

  Did last night change him in some way? Has he started to turn from a bad boy who drifts from one day to the next to a man who’ll stick around for me and only me?

  It’s as if he can feel me standing behind him, and he turns around. As he pushes his hair back from his face, I think of the other day when I came upon him washing his car, all sex and heat and forbidden fantasy. But now a bruise is forming around his eye, and the cuts on his face are just as brutal as they were last night.

  Still the bad boy, I think. Still the guy who lied to me about why he’s actually here for the summer.

  “Morning,” he says.

  A heavy second passes while I wonder what “morning” really means. Morning, Sosie, I’m beginning to feel the same way about you as you feel about me. Or, Morning, Cherry, I was just about to head out the door after I cooked up this consolation breakfast.

  Then he smiles, and everything we did last night rushes back to fill the space between us. A flood of warmth makes goose bumps run up and down my arms.

  “Morning,” I say.

  He motions toward the table in the nook by the window, where light is spilling in. Two glasses of orange juice have already been poured.

  “If you didn’t show up soon,” he says, “I was going to bring your breakfast up to you.”

  “You…were?” Now the lining of my belly feels as if honey is coating it.

  “I figured you’d be hungry.”

  I can’t tell if he’s teasing me again, because he turns around to grab a slotted spoon. He dips it into the pot and brings out one poached egg after another until four of them are drying on a paper towel on the counter.

  What is there to say now? Small talk seems like the best option until we settle into a groove.

  “You can poach an egg,” I say.

  “Somehow, that became a skill during college.”

  I don’t ask what else he learned in school before he dropped out, or why he dropped out. Why does it matter when he finally found the right job as a stockbroker after quitting a string of other jobs?

  I go to the table and take a seat while he cuts holes into the centers of the toast and then transfers the eggs into the empty spaces. He salts and peppers them, brings over the plates, then sits down opposite me. His blackened eye, his cuts…I itch to run my fingertips over them.

  “What’re you doing today?” he asks.

  Small talk. “I was going to see a movie with Julia and Cleo, but I’m getting a late start, so…”

  He grins as he picks up a piece of bacon. I wouldn’t be getting such a late start if he hadn’t kept me up. And if I hadn’t kept him up in more ways than one.

  Heat rolls over my skin, and I’m sure my blush is very amusing. “I’ll probably cancel with my friends since I’ve got a shift at Shady’s this evening.”

  He lifts his head, swallows his food, and lowers the rest of the bacon strip to his plate. If I thought last night changed him in any way—or if he’s at least changed his mind about my bartending—I’m dead wrong. The thunder in his gaze tells me so.

  “You’re not going back to Shady’s,” he says gruffly.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re not going near that damned place.”

  Is he seriously trying to forbid me from going to my job tonight or any other night?

  “Tristan, this is ridiculous. The last thing I want is another fight. This morning started out so well and—”

  “We already worked this out, Sosie.”

  Who is he to order me around? “Clearly, we didn’t.”

  “Sos—”

  I brace my hands on the table and lean forward. “You. Are. Out of Line.” I can’t believe this is even an issue. “Listen—I need to earn money, and as I told you before, it’s a good job. Do you know what I got in tips last night?”

  “It’s what you have to do to get those tips that concerns me.” His voice is contained, but he looks about ready to throttle something.

  My temper is rising right along with his, and I don’t like his insinuations.

  “And what do you think I have to do for the money, Tristan?” I ask.

  He grits his jaw and slowly leans back in his chair, looking out the window.

  “God,” I say. “You know what this is really about? You trying to control me. And I’m not going to take that.”

  He barely gets the next words out through his teeth. “You don’t know what those men are like. I saw how they looked at you.”

  “I told you before that I can handle myself.”

  He slams his palms on the table, and I flinch. I can still hear the rattle of dishes in my ears, the pounding of my heartbeat.

  “Goddammit,” he says, gripping the edge of the table, his gaze furious. “Don’t you know that I can’t stand to think of you being surrounded by men who want to hit on you and take advantage of you?”

  I shake my head at how overbearing he’s being, but then I remember what he said last night about no one ever getting the better of him. Maybe that thought extends to me, too. It’s as if he doesn’t trust the men around me or, worse yet, trust me around them.

  Hurt combines with the usual confusion. The anger has returned yet again.

  His hands are fisted. “Sosie, you’re better off without that job. If you’d just listen to me—”

  “And why should I listen to you?”

  He goes silent, and I stand out of my chair.

  “You’re such a hypocrite!” I shout.

  He looks as if I’ve just slapped him, inflicting another bruise on his face, another cut. “What are you talking about?” he asks, his tone way too calm.

  “Don’t play dumb with me. You’re too clever to be dumb. I don’t know what you’ve been up to every time you leave this house, but it’s got to be something you’re lying about.”

  That’s when he shuts down completely. I can see it in his gaze, just as if shades have been drawn over a window. His expression is impassive, as if nothing I say will get through this newest barrier.

  I want to make him admit that he’s been lying without having to shake him down, but it’s no use. He�
��s not giving an inch.

  So I do what I have to do.

  “I know you lied about being in a bar fight last night, Tristan,” I say softly. “And I know you keep a lot of secrets. I think you’re up to no good.”

  He laughs harshly, but there’s no stopping me.

  “It’s not that I’m trying to put a crimp in your lifestyle, but I just want to know why you can’t be honest with me.”

  Why you can’t tell me the reason you’re actually here this summer?

  His words are tight. “I see, so we’re revisiting this. I’m a bad influence.”

  “No. Would you just listen to what I’m trying to tell you?”

  “I’ve been listening, but I think I’ve heard all I want to.”

  He starts to get up, and he’s almost out of the kitchen when I stop him.

  “Mom sent me an email. She said she and your dad had no idea that you were coming here for the summer.” I cross my arms over my chest. “They didn’t ask you to watch over me, Tristan, so why did you say they did? Why are you here?”

  For a moment, I think he’s going to lower all those walls he’s built around himself, that everything will crash away from us and he’ll take me in his arms to tell me not to worry, he’s got good answers for everything. I think that the morning will go back to being sweet and full of new possibilities, just as soon as Tristan sees that he can tell me anything.

  But the set of his shoulders never crumbles, and his voice is harder than ever.

  “I know an unwinnable fight when I see one,” he says.

  Then he leaves me standing next to the breakfast he made for me, the plates cold as he slams the front door behind him, our morning-after a total wreck.

  4

  I don’t move from my spot in the kitchen for a while. I’m not sure how long I stand there, but it’s enough so that I hear my phone dinging upstairs with incoming texts, over and over again.

  Julia or Cleo, I think through a fog. I should answer them, tell them that today isn’t a good day for us to see a movie together, because I would obviously rather stand here and feel sad and silly for believing that anything real between Tristan and me was happening. I would rather punish myself for having the gall to imagine that Tristan would change for me, and that one amazing night would make him someone he obviously isn’t.