Stepbrother Romance: The Complete Box Set

by Diamond Durango

  “That was too hard to tell me earlier?”

  “When it was fresher? Yes. It hurt for a long time to have this.” He touched his scar. “We weren’t identical anymore. I didn’t know how much that mattered to me until I lost it.”

  “Identical enough that I gave you a racy hug at the sink.”

  “If you consider that racy, then you are still very innocent.”

  She drained his glass and set it down. “Oops. I guess that wouldn’t have flown in your room either.”

  “I think you know the answer to that.”

  If she wasn’t with Hollis anymore, was it strange or wrong to be flirting with Wyatt? She couldn’t get the image of his nightstand drawer out of her mind. “Is sex always like that with you? A power game with props?”

  “Not always. But it’s a game I like to play.”

  “I don’t know if I would.”

  “If you ever get curious, just misbehave in my bedroom and find out. But since we’re not there and may never be, how about you pour me a replacement drink and then we’ll see about getting you a car?”

  She got up obediently with his empty glass. “You agreed that I could pay for it in installments.”

  “As I remember. But there isn’t any need. I didn’t do anything for that money except survive being my mother’s child. You had to grow up with her for long years, too. Why shouldn’t you also get a reward at the end of that?”

  “You could keep the money you were going to pay me for cleaning up.”

  “You’ll find it in an envelope on the table in the entryway, and we won’t say another word about it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t say that to me unless you mean it.”

  “Yes, sir!” she said, saluting him. She went back inside and made him another drink. Before delivering it to him, she retrieved the envelope and opened it. Inside were ten crisp one hundred dollar bills. She gaped. And she had just agreed to not talk about it!

  Going back outside, she found him standing between the spa and pool. He accepted the glass and took a long sip. Then he set it down and prepared to jump. “Should you be drinking and swimming?” she asked.

  “I haven’t had much, and I trust you’ll save me before I drown.” Wyatt dove in and resurfaced in freestyle, his arms coming down in strong, steady chops.

  She sat down on a chair and watched him go back and forth with boundless energy. Since her job didn’t start until next week, she should spend the rest of this one shopping for work clothes and shoes that wouldn’t make Ivy yell in protest. With a thousand dollars, she wouldn’t have to select the cheapest items. Three or four pairs of good trousers and an array of shirts for her to mix and match should do. A swimsuit as well for home.

  And she would tell Hollis that she understood his need to go back to being friends. Above all, she didn’t want to lose that. He could hide out in his box where nothing could touch him, and if ever he gathered up the confidence to peek out again, she would welcome it.

  Wyatt changed to butterfly with the next lap. The rocking of his body reminded her of sex. She had a standing invitation to his room, and now she had to figure out if she wanted to accept it.

  There was something she had to know first. Going to the shallow end of the pool, she lay down on the tiles as he pulsed down the center to her. When he got to the edge, he grabbed the gutter rather than flip and resume swimming. “Yes?” he asked as he stood.

  “Would it be a fling with you?” Aviana asked, sitting up.

  “I can’t answer that, Avvie. There’s what I want and there’s what you want, and they might not line up.”

  “What would you want it to be?”

  He kissed her, his lips cool and wet on hers. Her lips parted almost at once and he slipped his warm tongue inside. Dripping fingers slid her long hair back and then his hands pressed to the back of her head, holding her firmly to his demanding mouth. By the time he broke the kiss, she was breathless.

  “I’d keep you, if you would let me,” Wyatt said. “Think about it and let me know.”

  “I will.”

  He hiked himself out of the pool, his black swim trunks shrunken against his thighs. Fetching a towel from the shed, he wrapped it around his waist and said, “I’ll shower and we’ll go in half an hour. I need to drop off a stack of files at the office first.” Then she was alone in the backyard.

  She had to change her panties before they left. One kiss had ruined them.

  As she was going upstairs, she pulled her cell phone from her pocket to check the time. There was a missed call and a message from an unknown number.

  It was going to be the Alumni Office. Even with another thousand dollars to her name, she wasn’t financially secure enough to donate a cent. She had half a mind to tell them to call back in twenty years. Lifting the cell phone to her ear, she listened and stopped on the last step.

  The message was nothing but a long silence, and then the person hung up.

  Chapter Eight

  They stopped at Luxure to let Wyatt run in the files, and had a late lunch before heading to the dealership. Hollis caught up with them there, his car turning in five minutes after they arrived. “Don’t you have a job?” Aviana called, annoyed at him on one level and glad to see him on another.

  He gleaned from her tone that she wasn’t bearing him a grudge and smiled. “I’m a salaried employee, not hourly. As long as I get the work done on time, it doesn’t necessarily matter when. Besides, I know a lot more about cars than Wyatt.”

  “No, you don’t!” Wyatt exclaimed, insulted to the core. The two of them got into a good-natured argument about what kind of car would be best for Aviana. Even though it was her decision, she let them squabble with each other and the salesman while she ambled through the lot to see what struck her fancy.

  In time they all came to accord on a red Pioneer, so lightly used in its previous ownership that it was practically new. Only two years old, it was in perfect condition. She drove it around with Wyatt beside her and Hollis with the salesman in back. If the man had had any idea about scamming with useless add-ons or other tricks, there was no chance of it with the twins.

  She liked the feel of the car. When they got back to the dealership, the salesman asked them to step into his office. Aviana went in only to have Wyatt eject her, a gleam in his eyes. “You’re just going to worry about how much it costs when I need to be negotiating. Go away. I’ll call you in when I need you.”

  Finding a chair, she sat down and pulled out her cell phone to kill time. There were no calls from unknown numbers or silent messages waiting for her. It couldn’t be Ramona who was responsible for this. The woman was a chatterbox who jumped onto the tail end of every sentence in a conversation to inject her own airheaded thoughts.

  Aviana had her number on the do-not-call list to cut down on spam, although some still slipped through. With an icy chill in her gut, she searched online for the number of the Alumni Office. Then she called and a man picked up on the second ring. “This is Ronson. You’ve reached the Alumni Office-”

  “Hi,” Aviana interrupted. “I’m trying to reach Brett.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “My name is Aviana Shawe and I just graduated this year. Brett from your office called my father a few days ago to get in contact with me to ask for a donation.”

  “Will you hold on for a moment?” the man asked apologetically. “It’s only my first week here. Let me speak to my supervisor.”

  A woman with a crisp English accent soon replaced him on the line. “Ms. Shawe? This is Rebecca Stanley speaking. We have no one named Brett working in the Alumni Office. Are you sure that was the name?”

  “That was the name my father told me,” Aviana said.

  “We do have a Rhett in here, but he doesn’t contact our alumni.”

  “Ever? Are you positive?”

  “Yes, quite. Also, our office is undergoing renovations; we haven’t made any calls for donations recently.”

  The icy chill cr
ept up to Aviana’s heart as the woman went on. “I’m afraid that this is a prank, or an attempt to steal your personal information. If this man calls you, don’t give him anything. He does not represent this school.”

  Aviana hung up and sat there with the phone clutched in her hands. It was Milan. He had called her father pretending to be with the Alumni Office to get her phone number. What else had Dad told him? Had he mentioned where Aviana was living now? Dad was devastatingly gullible. A friendly voice on the line and he would have chattered all about Aviana. Even with her warning, he would do it again.

  A burble of masculine voices penetrated through the closed office door. Wyatt laughed. The terror melted and she looked to her phone. She would block the number. Going online, she surfed forums for instructions on how to do this when the number was unknown. Then she did it. If that didn’t work and the calls persisted, she would change her number entirely. And not give it to her father to pass around to random people.

  The rest of the car’s purchase went by like a dream, Aviana forcing herself to smile and act normal as her stomach churned. Milan hadn’t gone away, and the style of his behavior was changing as it frequently did. First he had followed her in public and nothing more, and then he followed her in public and approached when she offended him. After that, he appeared in more intimate ways outside her dorm room and online, in her class and her mailbox when he discovered photography . . . He was sidling closer and closer to her in his bizarre fashion, and for him to call her father directly was an alarming new development.

  From now on, she would never pick up her phone unless the caller was identified. Even a simple, inquisitive hello would feed into his fantasies. To her, it was just a greeting. To him, she was saying something more akin to loving him until the end of time.

  As she drove her new car back to the house, Wyatt ahead of her and Hollis behind, she heard Milan screaming in her memories. Why are you talking to him? Who the hell is he? Haven’t I told you not to talk to strange men? Don’t you know what happens to pretty girls? Go inside! In her senior year when he was spying occasionally through her window, he’d demanded to know when she came outside to go to class why she left the curtains open. Did she want men to look in and see her naked body? Even more crazily, he had gotten angry when the curtains were closed. Did she have a man in there? Who was he? Had she let him touch her? Slut!

  It had been the middle of the morning that time. She hadn’t felt too physically threatened with students passing around them on the walkway, and she had shrieked at Milan to leave her the fuck alone or she was calling the cops. The sudden attention of everyone around them made Milan leave, sputtering that he forgave her for being a whore but no one else would. She didn’t follow through with a call to the police since he was leaving, but in retrospect, she wished that she would have. Not that they would have bent over backwards being helpful anyway.

  Slut. Whore. Tramp. Bitch. She should drive to the airport. Fly far away and change her name so that he didn’t have a prayer of locating her. What happened to a stalker when the target moved beyond reach? Did that force them to refocus on a new target? Or did they hunt forever for the one who got away?

  It was dinnertime when they got home. Hollis was just there long enough to change and collect his basketball before going out. He was meeting friends from the office for a game. She and Wyatt warmed up chicken and chopped up vegetables for a salad until someone from work called for him. His voice tight, he took the call in the living room and was hanging up when she came out with their food.

  She curled up on the end of the sofa near his chair and said, “Was that about the project?”

  Wyatt looked disgusted. “The subcontractors padded outrageously to make up the difference for when they had to redo things that they did wrong. I’m not going to roll over and take that. Do an inferior job and you deserve an inferior paycheck. And they were inferior in every way.” He eyed her. “Is the car what you want?”

  “Very, very much. Thank you.”

  “It was a good deal. You shouldn’t need to do anything but give it oil changes for a long time. You’ll do that, won’t you?”

  “Yes, Wyatt.”

  “You’re thinking that I’m a bossy jerk, aren’t you?”

  “Bossy but not a jerk.”

  They watched the news, and then he had to answer another phone call. Taking vacation days didn’t stop people from needing him, nor did the time. It was seven. Once she had cleaned up the kitchen, she went outside to sit by the pool with a beer.

  Go inside!

  She wasn’t going to live her life inside. Hiding from Milan. The rise and fall of Wyatt’s voice within the house made her feel encompassed within a protected bubble. She closed her eyes and rested, listening to the crickets in the yard and the honking horns far away, the buzzing of an airplane high above. Hollis crashed through the front door, bouncing the ball and calling that everyone had gone home early. Thumping upstairs, he came down fifteen minutes later. She glanced through the window as he went past, unaware of her presence. Freshly showered and changed into a suit, he was going out for the night. To dance at a club and pick up women with that darling smile and flattering attention.

  His car pulled away and her lip trembled. No, she wouldn’t allow herself to cry for him. He was sweet but fucked up, and there was nothing she could do to change it. If he wanted to change, he had to do it himself. That was one thing she had learned from her father and his coterie of broken birds. Aviana wasn’t going to waste her time on men content in the company of their dysfunctions.

  Wyatt was still on the phone, pacing from room to room as he wrangled with the person on the other end. Towering pyramids and glorious waterfalls amazed other people, but to Aviana, the most amazing sight on the planet had been those plastic bags packed with food, the handles straining from the weight. Cereal and milk, bread and peanut butter and jelly, cheese and cans of soup and a variety of fruit, ground beef to make hamburgers and pretzel buns . . . She would have turned away from a chest of pirate treasure to stare in awe at Wyatt covering the table and counter with food. She had been scandalized at his missing video games and console when she was thirteen, but he’d taught her that she was worth so much more than all of those things, and she had to treat herself as such. Wyatt had been the only adult in their childhood home.

  When it grew dark, she went up to her room and showered. Then she got into bed. Angry at how Milan had spoiled the afternoon, she was frightened that he might be outside even now. Staring at the windows of the house, snapping pictures, devising a new way to infiltrate her life.

  Her mind was on Hollis as well. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw him leaning casually on the bar and ordering beautiful girls a round of drinks. She shouldn’t have gotten entangled with him. He had little to give but his body, and only the barest hint of his heart. Now she was going to spend a lot of time missing what she had had.

  It was midnight when Wyatt came upstairs to his room. There was a rattle of water in the pipes, a door opening and closing, and the faint sound of him getting in bed. After that, all was silent in the house.

  She couldn’t lay here awake anymore. Getting out of bed, she decided to go downstairs and watch television until sleep overcame her. Instead, her feet turned to Wyatt’s room. She didn’t hesitate on the doorknob but invited herself in. Quick, soft strides took her to his bed, and she climbed in beside him.

  Sleepily, he said, “Avvie?”

  She rolled onto her side and tucked herself into him, head on his bare chest and her arms tucked up between them. All he had on was a pair of boxers. An arm slipped over her back and Wyatt said, “Tell me why you’re in here.”

  “I don’t know,” Aviana whispered. “Please just let me stay?”

  He stroked her back over her T-shirt. All at once aroused, soothed, and exhausted, she snuggled in closer to him. He stroked from her shoulders down almost to the base of her spine, and went underneath her T-shirt to return to her shoulders. His breathing wa
s calm and rhythmic, and she would have thought he was asleep if not for his massage.

  He was so solid, unlike his brother. So certain of who he was and where he was going. Slipping her arm out from between them, she wrapped it around him. His warm hand traveled over her lower back, emerging from her T-shirt to stroke the top of her buttocks over her thin pajama bottoms. She nestled even closer, although there was already no space between them. Then she hitched her leg over his hip.

  “Put it down,” Wyatt chided, his hand stilling. She put it down with reluctance and he resumed. Her arm was permitted; her leg was not. In this bed, he was the one in charge and she could only take what he wanted to give.

  He started all over again, stroking her back over her T-shirt and at length going beneath it. If she put her leg over him a second time, she had no doubt that he would stop entirely. Acutely attuned to every slide of his hand over her flesh, she rejoiced internally when he at last returned to her ass. He cupped her buttocks, kneading them one by one as she stifled a groan. He worked his way up and she tensed as he came to her waistband.

  He didn’t go in. He went up her shirt, frustrating her. She didn’t utter a protest, however, just tracked his caresses and felt herself starting to steam between her legs. His hand stopped at her lower back again, where he drummed his fingers against her skin.

  She was still. A chuckle rose from deep in his chest. “You’re as taut as a harp string, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” she admitted.

  “Would you like me to keep going?”

  “Yes.”

  “Roll onto your back.”

  She did as she was told, excited that he was going to get down to business now. But he only did as he had done before, albeit now on her stomach and over her shirt. On his way up, he never quite reached her breasts, and on his way down, never did he make it to her mound. Her legs parted a little. He couldn’t see her in the darkness, but he said, “No, Avvie.”