Off Limits: A Stepbrother MMA Romance

by Harper, Callie

  Subject change. Good one, too. I exhaled and leaned back against the side of the tub. If I stretched my arms out I bet I could touch her fingers. But I didn’t, not yet.

  “Yeah, I started a fight club.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  I shrugged. “I wanted to.”

  “Of course.” She rolled her eyes. “You do whatever you want.”

  “Do you ever do what you want?”

  She met my direct gaze, a bit startled. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean do you ever do what you want to do? Instead of what you’re supposed to do?”

  “Oh, you’re making fun of me for studying.”

  “That’s part of it.”

  “Has it ever occurred to you that I might like books?”

  “And nothing else?”

  She looked at me angrily, her eyes flashing. I liked the fire in her.

  I moved closer. “All you do is study. Isn’t there anything else you like to do?” My voice grew huskier as I drew closer. I could see her skin glowing pink, rosy in the heat. The swell of her breasts rose and fell above the surface of the water, her breathing agitated.

  “I do other things that I like,” she protested, not sounding too sure of herself.

  “Like what?” The closer I got, the closer I wanted to get. I could see the pulse flutter in her throat. I wanted to lick it.

  “Poker,” she whispered, breathy.

  “Poker?” I smiled. That wasn’t what I expected.

  “I like to play poker.” She smiled back and it nearly killed me, the secret naughty look in her eyes. She clearly thought poker showed she had a wild side. I knew she had a wild side, all right. I wanted to set it loose. I bet she had no idea how wild she could get.

  “So you like to gamble?” I asked, stretching my arm along the back of the tub. My hand rested just behind her, not touching. Yet. She kept looking at me with those luminous green eyes. “You like to take risks?” I asked.

  “When I play poker,” she whispered.

  Slowly, gently, I brought my fingers up to graze a tendril of her wet hair. She didn’t pull back. I pressed closer, the side of my thigh touching hers. She sucked in her breath, but still didn’t move. The heat surrounded us, the sound of the jets, the steam enclosing us in our own world.

  “That’s good to know.” I stroked her with my voice, low and soothing. Trailing my finger down to her ear, I lightly traced the edge. She shivered at my touch, her eyelids fluttering closed for a moment. “I wondered if you always played it safe. Or if sometimes...” I dipped my hand down to her throat, my thumb lightly stroking. She felt so good under my fingers, so right even though I knew it was all wrong.

  “Tuck, what are you doing?” Her voice tense, her breath came in shallow pants.

  “I’m just wondering.” My fingers continued their hypnotic swirls, caressing her skin. I could feel the struggle in her, her body melting into my touch, her mind protesting wildly. Leaning close to her ear, I whispered, “I’m wondering if you’re ever bad.”

  “Tuck!” She sounded distraught, tormented, but she didn’t move away. She stayed where she was, pressed next to me. My cock strained at my swim trucks, hard and ready. She was so fucking hot. I felt out of my mind watching her, touching her but still so innocently. I wanted more.

  “Last night, in the hallway,” I whispered into her ear. Slowly I moved lower along the creamy skin at the top of her chest, close to the rise and swell of her breast. Close, but not touching.

  “I caught you watching,” I whispered. She shivered under my fingers, and it wasn’t because she was cold, not in the hot tub.

  Slowly, gently, I brought my hand down to cup the large swell of her breast. “You know you want it.”

  Her knee came up hard and sharp, right into my balls.

  “What that fuck?” I gasped as soon as I could. Doubled over in pain, I even missed checking her out as she climbed out of the hot tub. By the time I looked up she had a huge towel wrapped around her like a fucking mummy.

  “You arrogant bastard!” she screamed. “Don’t you ever fucking touch me again!”

  OK, this wasn’t how I’d seen tonight unfolding. Hand still cupping my aching balls, I looked up straight into her bright, fierce fury. It felt blinding. I fought the urge to shield my eyes as if from the sun.

  “What are you doing?” she yelled. “I’m your stepsister! You’re disgusting! I’m not some skank. I’m onto you.”

  She was onto me? “What is this, a crime drama? Do you think I’m a criminal?”

  “No, I think you’re a player. You take nothing seriously. You fuck women like it’s your job and you drink like a goddamn fish.”

  “Guilty as charged.” I smiled up at her, projecting more confidence than I felt. But, really, she should tell me something I didn’t know.

  “You’re nothing but a spoiled little daddy’s boy!”

  Oh. That sucked. “Well, you’re an uptight, repressed bitch.” The words flew out of my mouth before I’d thought them through.

  “What was that you said?” She brought her hand up to her ear as if she were having trouble hearing. “It’s hard to hear you with that silver spoon in your mouth.”

  “Said the girl with the stick up her ass.”

  She stared down at me, hating me with every bone in her body. Why did I still want to bite her lower lip, hear her gasp and then lick her with my tongue?

  “You’re pathetic,” she spat out. The door opened and closed in a flash, Jewel’s towel-wrapped body disappearing into the darkness of the penthouse before I could think of a comeback.

  There really wasn’t one.

  She’d called me a player and an arrogant asshole and I’d laughed and let it roll right off my back.

  But daddy’s boy? That one cut deep. Because I knew who wrote my tuition checks, who funded my playboy lifestyle. I knew whose monthly bank account deposits kept me going in the style to which I was accustomed.

  She knew it, too. And deep down, I knew she was right.

  Sometimes life took a turn and you weren’t fully aware of it. You might make a choice or a decision and only realize later on what had happened, how you just changed the shape of the rest of your life.

  This wasn’t one of those moments. This was one of the times when you knew.

  I knew I was deciding something big. I was going to make some changes. I was going to sort my shit out. It would take time. I had to get a plan in place and then I had to follow it, ruthless in my execution.

  But right then and there, my balls aching because of Jewel in more than one way, I decided I’d do it. Enough was enough. It was time to take charge and go after exactly what I wanted. All of it.

  CHAPTER 5

  Jewel

  “Forget something?” My stepbrother Tuck stepped into the garage behind me. I looked up from where I stood at my car about to open the door. Shirtless and huge in all his muscled glory, he scowled at me like a total prick.

  “No, I’m fine.” I exhaled. Patience. I needed patience. Summer had only just begun and he was already driving me crazy. I had no idea how I was going to make it through the next eight weeks. Eight weeks living with Tuck. The universe was playing a cruel joke and I was not laughing.

  This was supposed to be an amazing summer. I’d finished up my sophomore year and landed the internship of my dreams at the Marine Mammal Center in L.A. Each summer they only accepted ten biology majors across the country and I’d been one of them. I would never have dreamed of living at my stepfather’s house in Bel Air if I hadn’t had that opportunity. Unpaid opportunity.

  Plus my mother had claimed she’d spend the whole summer there. We’d have tons of time together to catch up, us girls. I should have known she’d never meant it. Now she talked about coming to L.A. in July, August at the latest.

  The only member of our so-called family who was at the house? Tuck. The one person I’d counted on not being there.

  I couldn’t fucking believe it when I’d walk
ed into the kitchen on Saturday and found Tuck standing there, shirtless and sweaty, chugging from a gallon jug of water.

  “No. Fucking. Way.” Eloquent first words from me, I know, but he wasn’t supposed to be there.

  “What are you doing here?” he’d asked me at the same time I’d asked him exactly the same question.

  “This is my father’s house,” he’d had the nerve to state, well, the truth. It only made me more pissed off.

  “Shouldn’t you be out on a yacht somewhere? Drunk and surrounded by models?”

  He gave me a wry smile. “Sorry to disappoint you, sis.”

  Uh, I hated it when he called me that. “But you’ll be leaving, soon, right?”

  “Here all summer.”

  Those words, like a fucking death knell to my sanity.

  We hadn’t even spent two full days together under the same roof and I was already ready to kill him. He stood by the garage door holding up my backpack like I was a school kid who’d dashed off for the bus and forgotten it. I swore under my breath. He was only 21 to my 20, but he acted like that one year was ten.

  Damn it. I brought my hand to my face. I didn’t want to share this house any more than he did. Neither of us had known the other planned to live there over the summer. Our family was fucked up like that, in the way that only rich families could be—houses in multiple locations, our parents jetting all over the world. Plus the lines of communication didn’t exactly flow.

  But I needed to keep my cool. The only way to survive this would be to show him that he didn’t get to me. Only he did get to me. I could barely even stand to be in the same room with him.

  A few minutes ago I’d been sitting calmly in the kitchen eating a cup of yogurt for breakfast when he’d sauntered in half-naked, rubbing his tousled bed-head of dark chocolate brown hair. His athletic shorts rode down low on his hips revealing six-pack abs and that insane V, drawing all attention to what lay below. He looked like a modern-day gladiator storming the kitchen.

  I’d done what any hopelessly shy 20-year-old virgin would have—thrown my half-eaten breakfast into the sink and leapt out of the house like a panicked jackrabbit.

  Of course I’d left my backpack behind. I was only human. And he was my sadistic stepbrother who seemed to only have two speeds: tease and torment. He loved making me squirm.

  Reluctantly, I started walking toward him. Of course he was going to make me come to him. He would never deign to bring it to me.

  “It’s my first day of work,” I huffed. He just stood there, watching me as I approached. “I’m going to be late.” I knew I sounded like a whiney brat. I had no idea how he brought out the worst in me, but he did it like no one else.

  He looked at me with his dark eyes, level, unimpressed. “That’s right. I forgot. You’re saving the planet this summer.”

  “I’m working at the Marine Mammal Center!” I corrected him.

  “Right, right.”

  He didn’t care. He towered over me. Chiseled jaw, all broad shoulders and testosterone, he made girls drop their panties just by walking into a room. We stood so close that I could smell him, musky and masculine.

  “Tuck, give it to me.” I hated standing that close to him.

  “Aren’t you going to say please?”

  I needed strength. He was going to kill me this summer. Unless I killed him first.

  “Tuck,” I pleaded. A swirl of tattoos played along his shoulder and bicep, down at his wrist. He was sex on a fucking stick.

  “Oh, you’re so close. Try ‘Please, Tuck.’ I’d like to hear you say that.”

  A deep, red blush flooded my cheeks at the erotic tone of his voice. “Give that to me.” I snatched my beat-up old backpack from him and stalked back to my car.

  “I see why you left that behind,” he called after me. “They might not let you in the door with that thing. It looks contagious.”

  Yes, it was stained and beat up but I loved that backpack and I was going to keep using it until it literally disintegrated. My mother might have married a billionaire and thrown herself 110% into the whole ‘I need a bigger diamond tiara’ thing, but I promised myself I would keep my feet firmly on the ground.

  “Just because it’s not Hermes!” I fumed, stalking back to the car.

  I could hear him chuckling. “You don’t pronounce the H.”

  I swear, the smirk I could hear in his voice made steam come out of my ears like a freaking cartoon.

  This marriage had to crash and burn at some point soon. None of my mom’s relationships lasted long, and you knew with a guy this rich he had to have an air-tight pre-nup. Chances were good that I’d be fielding a call from my sobbing mom in six months asking if she could crash on the couch in my college dorm room. It couldn’t happen soon enough.

  “By the way, a homeless guy just called,” Tuck said in that lazy, bedroom voice of his. “He wants to know why you stole his backpack.”

  “You’re such an asshole,” I mumbled.

  “Got that right,” he agreed before he turned back into the house and closed the door. I hated that he got to close the door on me first. That’s the kind of childish level he made me sink down to, and he did it in seconds flat.

  Driving to work, I told myself to get a grip. The next eight weeks weren’t going to be that bad. With a party boy player like him I’d probably barely even see him. We’d probably never even run into each other.

  §

  The next night when I walked around the corner I flew right into him. It was my fault, I wasn’t thinking about where I was going. My mind was on work, thinking through what I’d done that day, my second in the internship. The other college kids in the program were friendly. A bunch of them were going out tonight to a club and they’d invited me, but that really wasn’t my scene. I didn’t mean to be lame or spoil anyone else’s fun, I just didn’t enjoy myself in those kinds of places. The whole point of a club was to cut loose, let go and drop all your inhibitions.

  Inhibition was my middle name. I had a long list of things I wouldn’t, couldn’t, absolutely no question would ever consider doing. Items A-Y on the list were things my own mother had done all during my childhood. Clubs were her milieu. As for the last item on the list? The one I would absolutely by all means necessary at all costs stay away from? I now stood pressed up against him in a hallway.

  “Sorry!” I exclaimed, my hands up to his chest to steady myself. Mistake. He wore no shirt, of course. Did the man have a shirt allergy or something? I didn’t think I’d seen him in one once over the past five days we’d co-habitated in the house. I preferred to think of it like we were boarders who happened to be under the same roof, instead of living together. That seemed too intimate.

  He had muscles on top of his muscles, but not in that pumped-up silly steroid balloon way. Tuck’s muscles looked hard-earned, like he’d fought for them, some kind of a warrior on an ancient battlefield. He would have made a great medieval knight.

  “Take your time.” He smirked down at me. I removed my hands as if they’d been touching a hot stove.

  “I was just steadying myself.” I blushed as I spoke, always so quick to betray my emotions. He was right. I had left my hands up on him a second or two too long. A real knight wouldn’t have pointed that out, though. Tuck was no chivalrous knight.

  “Why aren’t you wearing a shirt?” I huffed.

  “I just got back from the gym.”

  “Is that all you ever do?”

  “I’m training.”

  “For what? The most annoying naked stepbrother contest?”

  “You want me naked, huh?”

  How had the conversation gone there? And so fast? He didn’t move, his huge body practically blocking the hallway.

  “Excuse me, I’m trying to get past.” I hated the way my voice escalated, annoyed and bitchy. I swore I wasn’t like that with most people.

  “Hot date?”

  “I might head out to meet some people.” My chin jutted out defiantly. I hadn’t pla
nned on it, but suddenly this giant mansion felt too small for the both of us. I hadn’t expected him to be around so much. Back in New York he’d been out more than he’d been in. But the past five days he’d been home in the morning, and home at night.

  I knew because his bedroom was two doors down from mine. Only a bathroom separated us. I’d wanted to set up my room in a whole different wing, but the housekeeper had told me that was where Mr. Leland liked to put up guests. I didn’t know when he and my mom would be dropping by over the next eight weeks, never mind when these hypothetical guests would arrive, but I was a pleaser. I didn’t want to make more work for her. So there I slept, two doors down from the Incredible Hulk who surprised the hell out of me by keeping monk-like hours like mine, lights out at 10 p.m., alarm off at 6 a.m.

  Surveying me with skepticism, Tuck asked, “Where are you heading out to? A Quaker meeting house?”

  “What?”

  “You’re wearing a tent.” He gestured with his huge hand to my dress.

  “This is not a tent! It’s a maxi dress.” I looked down and, OK, it kind of was a tent, but it was super comfortable.

  “Two of you could fit into that thing.”

  “Why do you care?”

  We stared each other down, standing close in the hallway. He had a cut up along his cheekbone under a small butterfly bandage. I wondered how he’d gotten it. It didn’t look like a nick from shaving. It looked bigger, a gash but healing well. I suppressed the urge to reach up and touch his face and ask if he was OK. I shouldn’t care if he was OK. I hated him.

  “I’m just saying.” He shrugged a massive shoulder. “If you’re trying to impress one of those tree-huggers you’re working with—”

  “We’re not hugging trees. It’s a Marine Mammal Center.” I wished I could stop rising to his bait, but I felt powerless to resist. He completely got under my skin. And I couldn’t stop looking at his, wondering about the tattoos that played across his muscles. I wanted to trace them with my finger.

  “Like I said,” he continued, “if you’re trying to get with one of those super cool guys you’re working with—”

  “I’m not trying to get with any of them! You’re such a Neanderthal.”