Forbidden Prescription 2
MFM Menage Stepbrother Romance
Stephanie Brother
Illustrated by
Kasmit Covers
Edited by
Teresa Banschbach
Contents
Mailing List
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
Thank You
Also by Stephanie Brother
BONUS: TASTE
BONUS: GREED
BONUS: URGE
BONUS: Forbidden Prescription
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
Copyright © 2016 by Stephanie Brother
All rights reserved.
Cover design © 2016 by Kasmit Covers
Editing © 2016 by Teresa Banschbach
All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author’s imagination. Please note that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18 and all characters represented as 18 or over. Kindle Edition
Please note that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18 and all characters represented as 18 or over.
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Chapter One
Emma
Libreville was the small town where I grew up. Where a lot of people —certainly a lot of the ones I knew back in high school—cleared out of as soon as they were of legal age.
I was one in that crowd, clearing out of town the evening of high school graduation, looking for something better in the closest city without much to my name. Most of that crowd didn’t come back, and the few that did visit did so rarely it would be a miracle if I met up with anyone, certainly not this weekend.
I’d even called ahead and none of the friends I knew would be around for the weekend.
Like plenty of the smart kids from back then, I could have gone away and stayed away. But here I was, back in town, late and feeling exhausted, practically falling out of my car. Only to end up, standing on the front lawn, feeling like I was about to face the firing squad.
“You’re late, “said a woman’s voice out of the darkness.
Should I get back in the car and drive away? I thought it, but I didn’t say it. I was too tired to get far, anyway, after the day I’d had, but I was seriously tempted to.
I felt like she should have been more grateful. She was the reason I still came back here, after all.
Every two months, I made a point to drive out to Libreville to visit my mom. The time was significant, but I felt it was still too frequent. She didn’t seem to appreciate it either. Not for the first time, I wondered why I still bothered.
“I’m sorry, Mom.” The apology grated, but I knew she expected it. I wanted to get inside, out of the cold, and away from possible peeping neighbors. I wanted to lie down and rest.
“You said you’d be here at six—”
I cut her off. “Yes, and it’s eight, now, I know. I had some problem with the car on the way.”
Why did I even bother to visit her? Sharon never visited me, not once since I’d moved out. Even when it was phone calls, I was the one to reach out. Like it was all so far beneath her; Sharon Davis would never deign to contact her daughter because she thought as her daughter I was obligated to, or something.
Sometimes, I wondered, if I just stayed away, gave her complete radio silence, if she would remember I still existed. Plenty of times, I felt sure she wouldn’t.
“Look, Mom. I’ve been driving for hours, and then there was the issue with the car breaking down. I haven’t had anything to eat since this morning, and I would really like a shower.”
To start with. I didn’t feel hungry, but I probably needed to eat. Then I needed to sleep.
“Is that all you can think of? If you’re hungry, then maybe you should have thought of that before getting here this late. Or bought something for yourself on the way. I knew you were coming at six, so I prepared dinner at six. I ate at seven, still waiting for you to get here, and I gave the leftovers to Mrs. Wright from across the street to give to her cats thirty minutes later. You could have made it here at least half an hour earlier.”
I stared at her. I didn’t think she was kidding. I knew the woman that lived across the street, she had half a dozen cats and about as many great-grandchildren. Those cats of hers were always hungry.
“You couldn’t have held it for me? I would have eaten it cold.”
She just shrugged, folding her arms over her chest and sticking her chin up. “I figured if you were that late, you weren’t going to show at all. You could have called at or before six to tell me you would be late.”
I could have, but by that point, I was back on the road, and I didn’t call and drive. Stopping along the highway just to tell her I was going to be late so she could hold dinner for me would have been stupid.
What if I never made it back, would she not have wondered something could have happened to me on the way? Or would her assumption be that I lied and stayed home?
Or would she not have cared.
I didn’t look too closely at that, though it worried me that I didn’t have a definite answer.
Mom hadn’t changed much from her old tyrannical ways. I hated it in high school, and even more now when I didn’t have to take shit from her because I was no longer living under her roof. Well, except for the weekend I’d be in town. But I didn’t have to stay at home.
“I’m sorry I’m late but I couldn’t predict that something would happen with my car.”
It wasn’t old, and usually, it was dependable. My stop wouldn’t have taken so long, except I didn’t know much about cars. Luckily, I’d only had to walk a bit to the nearest town and look for help there. It could have been longer than two hours.
Mom didn’t seem to care about the details.
“Next time, come earlier. If something happens with your car, tell me so I know you’re on the way, not back at home or in a club somewhe
re, doing who knows what, with only Lord knows who. If you’re gonna bother to come out here anyway, at least make it when you say you will, would you?”
More staring. Like she had no idea what I did when I was at home. I called and updated her more frequently than I made face-to-face visits. I didn’t have time to go out to clubs, still studying for exams, and with my internship underway. I worked odd hours at the hospital, got maybe six hours of sleep on a good night—sometimes day when I had a night shift.
Did she really think all I did was waste my time?
I rolled my eyes and turned away. I didn’t have to stand there and listen to this bull. I ignored her calling my name, after a short pause. Usually, I would just stand there and take it, I’d been doing it all my life so I had the practice. But I was on a short fuse already. After the day I’d had, my patience was shot, not enough of it left to handle my mother.
Had mom always been this unbearable, or did she grow worse? I couldn’t remember.
It was a long time in coming, though. I’d been working up to it for years; twenty-six and I was finally having my teenage rebellion.
Though, if I thought about it, it was probably more that mom was the same she had always been, and I’d just grown out of the needy little girl that thought the only thing that mattered in the world was for her mother to love her. I had a life away from home, a life that didn’t revolve around her. That wasn’t going to change just because I came for a visit.
I reached into my car for my purse, then locked the doors and dropped the key into my purse. My luggage was still in the trunk, but it wasn’t like I would be staying long, so it wasn’t much. I left it there and continued walking.
There was a bar close by. Technically, in Libreville, you could walk just about anywhere, but the place was less than five minutes away on foot. I’d passed it plenty of times during previous visits, but I’d never stopped there for a drink before. It was a wonder why.
I’d spend the weekend drunk to deal with Sharon’s antics. This would be the last time I came to visit.
Chapter Two
Carl
Oh, to be home.
The thought was, of course, sarcastic. Libreville was fine when you were a kid, or someone looking to settle down. When you were a guy barely in your prime and looking for excitement, it was boring as hell.
There was at least a bar in the area or I wouldn’t agree to stop no matter what my brother said. Dad didn’t need us to stick around for so long, and besides, we visited often. There was no reason to stick around for three freaking days, shooting the shit when we could just as easily have done it over live chat and it would have been less unbearable.
But my opinions were almost always ignored because I wasn’t the smart twin.
I pushed open the door to the bar and headed for a booth. There weren’t that many people around, probably because it wasn’t sports season. That was usually when the place pulled in any worthwhile crowds. It was fine with me, anyway. I didn’t need to see or talk to anyone. I’d had friends in high school, but they pretty much all cleared out about the same time we did, and I didn’t need to get stuck with relatives missing their boys and girls trying to take a trip down memory lane.
Still, it was emptier than I would have thought at this kind of time on a Friday night. I happened to glance around, and froze, stopping in my tracks. My brother walked into me, making us both stumble, but I ignored him as he grumbled.
No way.
Of all people I would have imagined would be in a place like this, she was probably the last. Emma Davis left town earlier than anybody before the ink was even dry on her diploma. Hell, she left before us, though we were a year older and a grade higher. We’d come back plenty of times, but she’d never be around.
We wouldn’t have come out if I hadn’t been bored out of my mind and bothered Abe until he agreed to go with me. We might have missed her without knowing it.
Talk about luck.
She sat in a booth, but in a different direction from where I was heading. Without thinking about it, I reached back and grabbed my still grumbling brother, and dragged him behind me.
“Carl—” but the protest died on his lips.
He probably saw what I did. A girl—woman—we both knew, drinking by herself. It looked like it was only the three of us in here, besides the bartender, though I didn’t bother to look around again.
She looked up when we got close, and it was definitely her, not just my eyes and the poor lighting playing tricks on me. By the widening of her eyes, I guessed she probably remembered us.
Good.
“Carl and Abe Thomas?” The surprise in her voice was pronounced. “What are you guys doing here?”
I almost felt relieved when she called out to us first, but I covered it with a casual grin. Between me and my brother, I was the ladies’ man, though he didn’t hurt in that department, either. But Emma Davis wasn’t the kind of girl I’d ever approached before. I didn’t think I’d know how to, without scaring her off. Which was exactly what used to happen before. I remembered she’d spoken maybe ten words to me—she’d said them all just now—though I only noticed her in high school. The school options in Libreville were limited, though, so we’d pretty much schooled together all our lives.
But we didn’t exactly run in the same circles. Before high school, girls and boys didn’t mingle any more than they had to. In high school, I ran with the wilder crowd, but Emma was a quiet girl. I never knew how not to scare her.
That was the last thing I wanted now.
“Would you mind if we sit?”
“Um,” she blinked and then shook her head a little. “No. Please, sit down.”
She ducked her head, and I thought her skin turned a little pink. Was she blushing? I sat across from her, hoping it would make her more comfortable, and Abe slid in beside me. I’d come in for a drink, but I didn’t want to take the time to walk over to the bar and order it. Clearly, my brother didn’t either.
“So, Emma Davis. I gotta ask, what are you doing drinking alone at the local bar in Libreville.”
Abe nudged my side, none too gently, but I just leaned back and folded my arms across my chest. Her head was still ducked down, her hair hiding her face, and my hand wanted to reach across the booth and hold her chin, raise her face so I could see if she was blushing
“Uh, I just got into town, actually. And suddenly felt like I needed something to drink.” That last part was muttered in a low voice, but the place was empty, we heard it clearly.
“No trouble, I hope.”
“No trouble, just a little tired. I haven’t been to the bar in a while, but I come to town every couple of months. Life’s gotten a little hectic, I guess.” She glanced up, gave us a wry smile. “High school doesn’t really prepare you for life, you know.”
Every two months? It must have been bad luck we missed her every time she came by.
I would have been a bit of a hypocrite if I agreed with her. It was true, but I pretty much coasted through high school without caring much about my grades. That was usually Abe, so I couldn’t completely empathize. I wasn’t a smart cookie, and I knew fairly early on my ticket out of the sleepy town of Libreville wasn’t going to be college. Abe would have gone, but I ended up dragging him into my schemes.
“So, what are you doing in town?” Abe asked, easily sidestepping her comment-that-was-not-really-a-question.
She held the beer bottle in front of her, wrapped both her hands around it, looking down again. “I came to visit my mom. I do it every couple of months, and I managed to get off work this weekend, so I called her yesterday, then got in my car this morning.”
“You’ve been doing this every year since you first left?”
“Yeah.”
“We don’t come by any schedule, but I can’t believe we never ran into you once.”
Not that we always looked, but usually, a kid that left town and came back was big news. The first few years, dad would throw a party and invite his fr
iends because his ‘prodigal sons’ deigned to visit him until we both put our foot down and threatened to stop coming altogether.
“I only stay the weekend, and Mom doesn’t always make a big production of it. Most of the town never even know I’m here until they see me walking around.”
She seemed a little sad, sounded a little sardonic when she added that part. She even rolled her eyes, though we weren’t meant to see that. I wanted to ask what had her so down, but she’d likely come to a bar to drink and forget. Talking about it would probably just annoy her, so I put it out of my mind.
Instead, I sat back in my seat and watched her. She was in a pale dress held up by flimsy straps, leaving her shoulders mostly bare. I followed the line of her throat as she took a sip of her drink, down to the dip where her collar bones met. The neckline didn’t reveal any cleavage, not from where I was sitting, and I wanted to be right next to her. The dress curved nicely around her ample chest, and it was all I could do not to imagine her naked.
“You’ve changed a lot from high school. You’re even sexier than before.”
I said the words without thinking, coming back to myself after they were out of my mouth. I regretted them almost immediately—I meant it, but I didn’t know how she would react to it.
But she seemed to have grown out of her shell, at least a little.
Her eyes widened, her skin flushed a little, and her eyes flit across the both of us before settling back on me. But she got her expression under control and smiled, though it was shaky around the edges.
Forbidden Prescription 2: MFM Ménage Stepbrother Romance (Medical Romance) Page 1
