by Celia Styles
“I agree,” he said, tearing his gaze away from Charles. Little or not, he’s still your brother, for all intents and purposes. And you’ve got no business looking at him like that, he tried to chastise himself. But his groin had a mind of its own, and twitched at the sight of Charles’ cranberry juice-wetted pink lips.
Matthew deliberately spilled cold water on himself, and moved his crotch under the table, hoping it would do something to hide the inappropriate thoughts that were coursing through his mind.
“Oh watch out,” Charles said, and Matthew groaned inwardly, realizing that he was past the possibility of caution. If Charles was going to be around him in school as well as at home, there was no way he would be able to retain his composure, and the truth was bound to get out, sooner or later.
After dinner, Matthew was asked to show Charles to his room, something he had very mixed feelings about. He was glad to get the boy to himself for a while, but not acting on his overwhelming desire was a task for a man stronger than he. He had managed to suppress his erection somehow at the dinner table, but now that he was alone in Melina’s room with Charles, it roared back into existence.
Dark Stallion
By Celia Styles
Chapter 1
“Over there.” Sara jabbed her finger at a waiter who seemed rather confused about the placement of the hors d’oeuvres. “The cheese doesn’t go out with the petite fours, please.”
The waiter nodded even as Sara turned away, her attention drawn to another waiter who was sticking his fingers inside each and every wine glass.
She hated planning this party—still couldn’t believe she’d gotten talked into it. It was torture, right up there with watching her stepbrother give a speech at their high school graduation when she knew that she should have been the one up there—she had the grades, the volunteer hours, the clubs and student council—but he had a flirtation with the assistant principal.
Elliot and his damn charm.
He was always winning the privilege of doing things that he shouldn’t be allowed to do, or getting out of things he should be doing, all because people thought he was so pretty, so perfect.
He should have been here, helping Sara with this party. The thing was his idea in the first place. He was the one who agreed to plan it, to make sure everything went off without a hitch.
But was he here?
Of course not!
It was their parents’ fifteenth wedding anniversary. Fifteen years since Sara’s mother turned her life upside down and brought her to this place, to live with people she didn’t know and couldn’t have cared less about. She would have been perfectly happy to remain in Houston with her friends and her Aunt Janey. Heck, she would have been perfectly happy to be the first ten year old to live on her own with only her favorite teddy bear as her companion.
Her mother, however, didn’t agree.
Mom tried to explain, tried to make the transition easy. But how could uprooting a little girl from everything she had always known—on the heels of the same little girl watching as her father abandoned the family—and moving her nearly two hundred miles away be easy? Throw a stepfather into the mix and you have a recipe for pure disaster.
Needless to say, it was a rough adjustment. To Nicholas’ credit, he tried to be a good stepfather. He always bought Sara elaborate gifts on her birthday, for Christmas, even the occasional ‘just because’ gift. And when he found out she had a special affinity for horses, he bought her a pony all her own—Shadow, the only horse ever housed in Carmody stables, as far as she knew. Nicholas thought he could buy his way into Sara’s heart. He figured out that wasn’t quite true on her sixteenth birthday. He threw her a party that included a live band and private catering, one attended by two hundred people, mostly the kids of his business associates, but a party that any kid would love, right? Everyone did have a great time…everyone, except Sara, who Nicholas later found hanging out in the stables with Shadow. It was then when he started talking to her like she was a real human being, actually asking what she wanted instead of throwing money at her. And it was then that he began to wriggle his way past the wall she’d wrapped around her heart where he was concerned.
She thought of Nicholas as her dad now, not just the guy her mother married. She couldn’t imagine what her life would have been like if her mother had never met him. And she could see in the way they were constantly holding hands and staring into each other’s eyes that they loved each other deeply. And she knew they both loved her.
They were a family.
She couldn’t say the same about Elliot.
Her stepbrother was the most irritating, the most frustrating person she had ever met. He spent most of their shared childhood avoiding her. And when he wasn’t walking out of the room as she walked in, he was encouraging his friends to make fun of her, or stealing credit for her accomplishments.
Or dumping the responsibility for a party that was his idea squarely on her shoulders.
So much for the promise he made that he would be here to help with the preparations.
A dish fell and shattered against the hard stone of the kitchen floor. Sara spun around, about to let a few choice words slip from between her lips when she saw the frightened expression on the maid’s face.
This was just too much.
She stepped out the side door and paced the length of the service drive, her eyes automatically moving to the large, modern stables that sat half a mile behind the house. She wished she could go there, return to her private space in the apartment tucked above the stables and forget about parties and expectation and charming stepbrothers. She wanted to curl up in her bed and return to the wonderful dream she’d been having that morning when her alarm rudely woke her…smooth hands moving over her naked back, a man’s breath washing over her cheek as he whispered words of love in her ear…
She’d been having the same dream over and over again lately, almost like a memory rather than a figment of her imagination. It didn’t come from any experience in her life. No…it was too perfect, too filled with a pleasure she’d never known. The last time she had been with a man in that sort of blush worthy situation it was the first time, an unmitigated disaster she would prefer to never repeat.
But she wouldn’t mind returning to that place in her dreams where pleasure was all that mattered.
Instead, she was organizing this damn party.
She tugged her cellphone out of her back jeans pocket and hit the speed dial button that would connect her to his office.
“Do you know where Mr. Carmody is?” she demanded the moment Elliot’s assistant, Becca, answered.
“No, ma’am. He left over an hour ago.”
Of course he did.
Sara walked to the end of the drive and peeked around the gray stone façade of the main house, looking for his familiar Mustang convertible. It wasn’t there. Instead, Nicholas’ Porsche was parked by the front door. He’d been home a lot lately…even joked that he was too young to retire, but wise enough to know time was short and he should spend as much of it around the women in his life as he could.
“If you hear from him, please tell him that his sister is looking for him. Again.”
“Of course, Ms. Carmody,” the woman said so docilely that Sara almost felt sorry for her.
Sara tugged at the end of her heavy braid as she turned and headed back to the kitchen. She paused and took a deep breath before she entered the room, barking out fresh orders as she realized the hired staff had been standing around, twirling their thumbs, while she was gone.
What was it Nicholas was always saying? Good help is hard to find…
***
Elliot still hadn’t shown up when Sara rushed back to the house after changing into her blue and pink evening gown. You would think after attending so many formal parties and operas and charity events and such things as a kid she would be used to dressing up. But the three inch heels just felt foreign on her feet and the tight skirt, low cut back, and super-tight bodice of
her dress felt like a straightjacket.
Not that she minded the appreciative smiles of the few male guests she passed in her rush.
“You and Elliot did a wonderful job, sweetheart,” her mother said as Sara stepped onto the back deck, her heels clicking on the stones. “I couldn’t have done better myself.”
“Sure you could have.” Sara turned her head, accepting her mother’s light kiss on her cheek even as she bit her tongue to correct her assumption that Elliot had anything to do with any of this. “If Maddie hadn’t had that list you slipped her…”
“You weren’t supposed to know about that.”
Sara just smiled, well aware that her mother had orchestrated everything from behind the scenes with the help of her long time—and long trusted—housekeeper/cook, Maddie Greene. She didn’t mind…of course she didn’t mind, she never could have done it all without Maddie.
“Where’s Nicholas?”
“On the phone.”
Sara’s mother slid her arm through Sara’s and led her further into the growing crowd, doing what she does best—mingling.
Sara was in the middle of an intense conversation about the merits of a new kind of rose feed—at least, the woman she was talking to was in the middle of an intense conversation—when she saw Elliot, looking as darkly handsome as ever in a black, Armani suit, slip out onto the deck from the study doors. Nicholas was behind him, a tension on his face that always seemed to be there whenever he spoke to Elliot recently.
Something was up between them. But she didn’t know what.
It was a minute before she could extricate herself from the conversation and, when she did, Elliot was already talking to Kayly Johnson, the daughter of one of Nicholas’ business partners and probably the most sought after single woman in the area. She and Elliot had had a flirtation since high school, but it had never really gone much further than that.
Sara moved up behind Elliot and slid her hand through his elbow.
“Can I steal him away for a minute?”
Kayly barely concealed the irritation on her face.
“Just make sure to bring him back,” she said with a pouty expression that was clearly meant more for Elliot than Sara.
“Don’t worry, darlin’,” Elliot said, executing a slight bow, “I shan’t go far.”
Sara walked off, irrationally annoyed by their flirtation. He was always flirting, always trying to charm something out of some woman or other…she couldn’t keep track of how many girls she’d seen him crush with his sudden indifference. It never failed to drive her to distraction.
“Where the hell were you?” He’d followed her back into Nicholas’ study, a warm smile on his lips as he regarded her. She wanted to slap it away. “You promised you would help with the preparations.”
“I got tied up at the office.”
“I called the office.” Sara backed up a little as he came to stand too close in front of her. “Becca said you’d left already.”
“Yes, well, I got tied up at the office and then I had to go check on one of the warehouses.” He shrugged his broad shoulders, that what-can-I-do expression in his green eyes that she had always hated. “We don’t all work from home, Sara, writing our little articles. Some of us actually have to go out and do things.”
He touched her arm, as though intent on leading her back outside. The touch set off a memory, another flash of that dream she couldn’t seem to shake—his muscles rippling through his back as he moved, supported on his arms, his cock hard and thick inside of her as the tingles of an orgasm…another orgasm…began to build deep in her lower belly—bursting through her mind with an intensity that caused her to gasp.
“You okay?”
If she hadn’t known better, she might have thought it was concern she saw flash briefly through his eyes.
Sara yanked her arm from his grip.
“You promised to be here. When you make a promise—“
“I’m sorry, Sara.”
He reached out to stroke her cheek. She turned away, brushing past him, duty rushing back as she saw through the glass doors a waiter nearly dump a tray of canapés on Mrs. Collins, the president of the local Chamber of Commerce. This party was supposed to be perfect, but it seemed like everyone from Elliot to the wait staff was trying to destroy it.
It was almost a relief when it was time for Nicholas and her mother to make their pre-planned speech.
“It’s been fifteen years,” Nicholas began, holding up a glass of champagne in one hand while the other slipped around the waist of his still beautiful bride. “Sixteen, if you count the year we spent trying to pretend we didn’t have feelings for one another.” Nicholas snuck a kiss while their guests laughed. “And I don’t regret a moment of it. Fifteen years we’ve been a family—sharing the trials and tribulations of life with each other and our two beautiful children, Elliot and Sara.”
Sara glanced behind her and saw Elliot standing just a few feet away, a glass of champagne clutched tightly in his hand. He tilted it toward Sara in a friendly gesture. She turned away without acknowledging it.
“When my first wife died, I never imagined I would find love again. I thought that the kind of love required to sustain a long term marriage was a once in a lifetime sort of thing.” Nicholas looked lovingly at his wife who smiled back up at him despite the tears in her eyes. “I was wrong. I now know that that kind of love can happen twice.”
“Now, isn’t that nice?”
The loud, rude voice came from the French doors leading onto the porch from the sitting room. Sara’s stomach dropped to her toes as she turned and recognized Tony Smith, one of Elliot’s business acquaintances—at least, that was how she’d been introduced to him. Sara suspected he was more of a troublemaker than a businessman. She didn’t know what Elliot was up to in his spare time, but it couldn’t be good if he did it with Tony.
Tony frightened her. He’d shown up in the stables once, a little less than a month ago, and caught her up against the wall of Shadow’s stall while she was mucking it out. If the stable boy hadn’t shown up just then, she was pretty sure what came next would not have been pleasant.
Elliot was already making his way through the several hundred party guests to confront Tony. Sara followed, determined to let their parents shine in this one moment if it killed her. By the time she got to the doors, Elliot had already ushered Tony inside. They were arguing quietly near the center of the room, if their body language told her anything, too quietly for her to guess what it was about.
Then Tony spotted Sara over Elliot’s shoulder and began to laugh.
“Did you come to protect your little brother, sweetheart?”
Elliot didn’t even look at her. “Go back to the party, Sara.”
“You’re ruining everything. You know that, right?”
“Sara…”
“They’ve been planning this night—that speech—for months. And the two of you are ruining it.”
“Go back outside, Sara,” Elliot said, his tone so controlled that she almost didn’t recognize it. “I have this handled.”
“Is that what you have?” Tony asked. “You have me handled? I hate to break it to you, brother, but you have very little handled.”
“Go back outside,” Elliot repeated.
“Why don’t you tell her, brother? Why don’t you tell her what you are? What we are?”
Tony suddenly rushed around Elliot and grabbed Sara by the shoulders, shoving her backward. She cried out as his fingers pressed into her flesh so hard that she was could almost feel the bruises forming.
“Let her go.”
Tony slammed her against the far wall, smiling as he bent low, acting for all the world like he was about to kiss her. Sara turned her face away in disgust just as he whispered, “You will make a perfect replacement.”
Elliot rushed up behind Tony and kicked his feet out from under him. Sara cried out as his hands were ripped from her shoulders as he fell. Tony immediately rebounded, jumping to his feet an
d throwing a punch that hit Elliot square on the chin, causing him to fly backward and slam into mother’s collection of Faberge eggs, shattering half of them as they rained down around him. A few guests had followed them inside, including Kayly who cried out—though Sara wasn’t sure if she was crying for Elliot or the expensive knickknacks.
Elliot began to throw an answering punch, but he met Sara’s eyes and the anger almost instantly melted from his own. Instead, he grabbed Tony by the arm and dragged his struggling body out of the room with an impossible amount of strength. A second later, the whole house seemed to vibrate with the slamming of the front door.
“What the hell is going on?”
Nicholas had come into the room, Sara’s mother close behind him.
Sara would never forget the shrill pitch of her mother’s scream.
