I hadn’t planned on playing games with her when I’d first grabbed those panties off the floor this morning—hell, all I’d wanted to do was find her—but the minute I did find her and comprehended the fact that she was about to be my stepsister, I hadn’t been able to resist playing with her. Her reddened face as she tried not to remember me over lunch was just far too adorable, and she’d made it so easy for me. There was no way I couldn’t have messed her around a little. It was too funny.
I glanced around my bedroom, surprised to see that everything was still exactly where I’d left it since I’d last visited around eight months ago to catch up with friends. I suppose I couldn’t be too surprised that Dad had ignored the room and left it as it was. It wasn’t like he cared about clearing out my junk and converting it into yet another guest bedroom when the manor already had two entire floors of guest bedrooms. The place had an insane number of rooms, and the whole estate reeked of someone with far too much money and no idea what to do with it all.
Yup, that was my Dad.
There’d been a point where I’d been a bit like that—eager to flash the cash from my trust fund with no consideration of where it had come from, just to impress people and make them think I was fucking ‘cool’ or whatever. But I wasn’t like that anymore. I couldn’t be that shallow after all that’d happened in the last year or so.
I let out a deep sigh and wished once more that I hadn’t had to leave my Mom’s place last week. I’d always felt far more welcome there than I did here at Dad’s, and it was a shame that everything else was so fucked up for me in that city. I’d been determined to change things for myself while I was there, but my plan hadn’t quite worked out, and there was nothing I could do about that now, so it was time to unpack and to accept that I was back in London for good. It may not have been what I wanted, but I could still make the best of it and start over.
I showered and began to unpack, and just as I’d finished hanging the last of my clothes in my wardrobe, I heard my phone vibrating on one of the bedside tables where I’d left it earlier. As I picked it up, I noticed a familiar face flashing on the screen—the face of a friend I hadn’t seen in quite some time.
I only hesitated for a split-second before answering. “Hello?”
“Jacey boy!” came the overly-excited reply from the other end. “It’s Roy. I heard you were back in London. Please tell me this is true, because I’m back in the city too!”
Roy sounded so happy to speak to me that I couldn’t help but smile.
“Well, well, well….if it isn’t Roy Cummings. You heard right, I’m in London now. Scotland was a proper washout.”
Roy and I had been friends all throughout school, and we’d gone on to have some very wild parties as we’d grown older and gone off to our first year at university in Manchester, where we’d both elected to study in order to put some distance between us and our parents. There’d been lots of booze and other illegal substances involved—too much, in fact—but it had been a lot of fun. We’d had some damn good times and made some amazing memories together.
We’d drifted apart in the last year when I dropped out of my course and moved to Edinburgh to stay at my Mom’s, because I’d wanted to separate myself from all of the temptations that uni life held for me. It had just become too much, and I actually wanted to make something of my life…but that hadn’t exactly happened. Edinburgh had been ten times worse. I’d managed to find a job, but I’d fallen in with the wrong people almost right away, and my uni days had suddenly seemed tame in comparison.
I’d always had trouble with retaining self-control. Maybe that was the real reason I was playing these stupid games with Rayna—if I didn’t, I’d have no distractions, and I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from trying to have her. And that wouldn’t exactly go down well with Dad…
“What are you up to? We need to hang out, it’s been far too long,” Roy said.
I was grateful for the way he was totally skating over any awkwardness there might have been after the way I’d abruptly left uni a year ago. He was simply acting like it’d never happened, allowing us to pick up where we’d left off.
“Not much. What do you wanna do?”
“How about a drink?”
“I don’t know, man. I went to a party at Tom’s last night, and I got totally hammered. I’m still pretty hungover from that.”
“I don’t mean ‘let’s get fucked up’,” he said. “Let’s just go for a nice quiet beer at our old favorite pub down on Faversham Road. Catch up and whatever.”
“Yeah, all right,” I replied. “How about we meet at two?”
There was nothing wrong with that plan. One beer in the afternoon was pretty standard behavior.
“Yep, cool. See you in an hour, then,” he said.
I hung up and stared at the screen on my phone, wondering what my old friend was up to these days, as he hadn’t said much over the phone. If he was back in London now, then there had to be a reason for that. He hadn’t said anything about dropping out of his course like I had, so perhaps he’d transferred his course to somewhere here in London. Or perhaps he had dropped out, and hadn’t wanted to say anything. That’d be understandable. I hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone about why I’d dropped out when I’d done it last year, out of pride.
There was no point wondering about it now, anyway. I’d be seeing him in an hour, and he could tell me all about what he’d been up to then.
I put my shoes on and went back into the still-steamy bathroom to spritz on some cologne, and through the vent near the ceiling, I could make out the sound of Rayna talking on the phone in her room next door.
“Okay, I didn’t tell you this part of the story this morning because I was almost convinced that I dreamed it all last night. Honestly, it’s so insane, and I was so embarrassed,” she was saying. “But remember how I told you that I sort of hooked up with a guy last night? Well….he’s Gerald’s son, and he’s about to be my stepbrother. Can you believe it?”
A moment went by where her friend was obviously talking on the other end of the line, and then I heard Rayna’s voice again. “He’s called Jace…yes, Jace Wilde! I didn’t know you knew him. Oh my god, you could have warned me last night!”
Another pause.
“Are you serious? No freaking way! He’s going to be related to me, Liana. It doesn’t matter how sexy he is.”
Oh, so she thought I was sexy, huh? Not that I didn’t already know that, but still, it was nice to hear her say it out loud.
“I’d never do that to my Mom,” Rayna continued. She paused for another moment, then went on. “Yes, I know, but that was different. I didn’t know who he was last night, but now I do, so it’s not going to happen. I’ll never, ever sleep with him.”
I grinned at my reflection in the mirror and then mouthed two words towards the vent. Challenge accepted.
***
The second I saw Roy nursing a beer at the corner table of our favorite pub, which we’d long ago claimed as ours, I felt my spirits lift. It was just so damn good to see him. He looked rather tired, although I was certain that I did too after the party at Tom’s last night, but apart from that he was still the same old Roy.
I quickly ordered myself a beer and joined him before he’d even looked up from his phone to notice my arrival. Luckily the place was dead, so it looked like we were going to have some privacy for our reunion.
“How you doi…?” I started to ask before being wrapped up into a tight bear hug.
“Oh man, it’s just so great to see you,” he said. I was happy too, of course, but Roy just seemed over the moon. “Uni really wasn’t the same without you, when you dropped out and all,” he added, finally allowing me to sit down.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, you know, it just wasn’t the same. It got boring, even the parties weren’t the same.”
I had no idea what to say. When I’d left, I hadn’t considered everyone I was leaving behind, and now I felt a little bad about it.
I’d just been focused on myself, and it was fair to say that I’d acted a little selfishly.
“Well, I still love parties. Just not those kinda parties.”
My concern must have been etched into my features, because Roy grinned. “Sorry, man, I didn’t mean to make you feel like shit. It was just different once you left, that’s all. Anyway, how’s things?”
I shrugged. “All right, I guess. My Dad’s getting married again, so I’m having to deal with getting to know yet another fiancée.”
He snorted. “Seriously? He’s getting married again? Jesus, who is it this time?”
“Some American woman he met online. She’s actually quite nice.”
“Any kids you have to play nice with?”
“Err…” I hadn’t planned on bringing up Rayna, but I couldn’t exactly lie to my friend and tell him Elena had no children. “Yeah, a daughter called Rayna,” I finally added.
“Young?”
“Nineteen.”
Roy arched his eyebrows, and his eyes glimmered with amusement. “Is she hot?”
“She’s all right, I guess.”
He laughed. “Bullshit, man. I can tell by your expression…she’s fucking fit, isn’t she?”
I grinned. “Fine. You got me. Yeah, she is.”
“So are you gonna try to get in there?” Roy asked, and then his expression changed. “Oh, shit. You already did, didn’t you? You dog!”
“Nah, I didn’t.”
Well, it was half true. Rayna and I had been interrupted mid-hookup by her realizing who I was, so I hadn’t actually slept with her, even though we’d definitely been about to fuck each other’s brains out.
“You totally should.”
“Nah. That’d just be awkward,” I said. I was still lying. Fuck the awkwardness; I still wanted her. I just didn’t need everyone else to know that.
“Like that’s ever stopped you in the past. You fucked Lyndon Turner’s sister in his own bedroom when we were seventeen, remember? That was awkward.”
“True,” I said, nodding and grinning. “But this is different. Rayna’s gonna be my sister.”
“I guess. But you clearly like her, at least enough to keep trying to change the subject away from you wanting to screw her.”
“Well, she is pretty cool,” I admitted, before trying to make a joke to get off the subject. “She’s got that special ‘didn’t pepper-spray me’ quality I’ve been looking for all these years.”
Roy chuckled. “Sure, like you’ve ever had any issues getting chicks to like you. She’s probably already in love with you. Anyway, speaking of chicks, I totally forgot to tell you, Kristy dropped out of uni too. She got married to some lawyer.”
“Kristy Miles?” I said, remembering the hot leggy blonde that Roy and I had always fought over in a silly banter type of way. I’d actually hooked up with her a few times, but I’d never told my friend that. I’d always allowed him to believe that he was still in the running for her affections.
Unfortunately for Roy, he’d been in my shadow the whole time we’d known each other; since sixth form. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Kristy didn’t even know who he was. Where I was charismatic and took care of my body, he’d always been shyer and a little tubby—though that had changed. Now he was erring on the side of too skinny.
“Yeah, her. Fucking hottest girl around, right?”
“Mm,” I said in a noncommittal voice.
Truth be told, the thought of Kristy didn’t make me feel the same twinge in my cock that it used to. Even though I’d only met Rayna yesterday, she was already cemented in my mind as the hottest chick I’d ever laid eyes on, and some bleached-blonde girl with zero aspirations—like Kristy—couldn’t hold a candle to her. It didn’t surprise me at all that she’d married a lawyer and dropped out of her course—she’d always struck me as the type of girl who was only at uni to find a husband.
Rayna, on the other hand…she was different. In our brief conversation at Tom’s party, she’d mentioned that she was studying law, and she’d actually sounded passionate about it.
“Hey, do you remember that night she dared me to jump in the pool at that party, but because I was so fucked off my face, I thought it would still impress her if I pushed you in instead?”
We both chuckled at this memory. What I didn’t tell him was this actually did work as a seduction technique….only not in the way he’d intended. It’d worked for me after he’d passed out on one of the sun lounges. Apparently Kristy liked the ‘drowned rat’ look on me, because she’d dragged me into one of the bathrooms at the party house and practically begged me to do her over the sink.
“Oh, and do you remember when we went to that rave at the Armstrong’s farm?” Roy continued, obviously excited to be reminiscing with me. As much as I’d rather talk about where he was with his life now, this subject was still fun to think about all the same.
“Yeah, that farmer went apeshit when he found us in the barn with his daughters,” I said with a nod and a snort of laughter.
“You know, we should do it all again!” Roy said. “There’s a rave over in Whitechapel tonight, actually. I know the rest of the boys would be up for it, if you could just sort out some cash for the stuff…”
And there it was—the real reason he’d invited me to catch up. He just wanted money.
My stomach felt hollow as I considered this. Roy had never had as much money as me, so back in high school and during our year at uni in Manchester, I’d bankrolled most of our shenanigans. So maybe that was the real reason uni apparently hadn’t been the same without me after I’d left—because he didn’t have anyone to pay for his pills, coke and weed anymore.
How wonderful….I’d come here to catch up with an old friend, but it had turned into this instead.
I shook my head. “Nah, man. I’m happy to have a drink with you and hang out, and hell, I still like to party. But no raves or pills or anything like that. Just a regular old party; not like what we used to do.”
He nodded. “Sure, you can just drink. Me and the other boys will still do a few lines or whatever, but you don’t need to join in.”
My stomach felt even worse now. I’d left both Manchester and Edinburgh to get away from the drug-fueled craziness that seemed to follow me around, and while I had no problem going to a normal party and catching up with friends, I really didn’t want to be around people who’d be snorting coke, dropping pills and smoking god knows what. It was too easy to slip back into old habits, and I needed to keep away from that now.
“I don’t know, man. I’m trying my best to change, you know. That’s why I left Manchester last year.”
Roy’s face darkened slightly. “Really? Because I heard you were even worse in Edinburgh.”
Ah, the old rumor mill. No matter where or how far I went, it seemed I couldn’t escape it. There was no point denying this particular rumor, though, because it was true.
I nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. I was. I thought being there would be better for me than Manchester, but it wasn’t. That’s why I finally came home to London. Another fresh start, seeing as my last fresh start didn’t really work out for me.”
“Surely you can still lend me some cash for stuff tonight, though, aye?”
I shook my head. “I don’t mind paying for some drinks, but nothing else. And I don’t want you or the other guys doing any shit in front of me, either. Like I said, I’m trying to change and get away from all that.”
Roy slammed his fist down on the table. “Jesus, Jace. You’re so fucking boring now. You’re right, you have changed—but not for the better. You’re just a fucking sanctimonious asshole. Can’t even shell out for a few lines of coke.”
“Are you fucking kid—” I started to reply, but he was already getting up and heading for the door. I closed my mouth and watched him storm out of the pub only seconds later, leaving me sitting alone.
Boring.
Was that all I was now? A boring old man at the not-so-ripe old age of twenty?<
br />
All I’d wanted to do was grow up and stop fucking myself over by getting high every night. I hadn’t wanted to alienate anyone, and surely Roy could see that I was doing my best. I wasn’t sure why he had to be such a dick about it, just because I refused to give him money to pay for pills and blow.
Then again, maybe Roy had a vague point. Just because I’d sobered up and stopped snorting shit at parties didn’t mean I was suddenly a good person. Take my new family, for example. I’d been pretty rude to Elena when I’d first met her, and I’d been even worse to Rayna, although I’d just been kidding. She obviously hadn’t thought any of it was funny, but I’d still kept going with it for my own amusement.
Maybe I really was just a giant fucking asshole.
On top of that, why the fuck was I so hung up on Rayna? I’d only just met her, yet every time I thought of any subject at all in the last day, my brain found some way to involve her. Sure, she’d had an effect on me when we’d met, but that didn’t mean she needed to be on my mind twenty-four-seven, especially seeing as she was about to be my stepsister. No, I needed to push her from my mind, and that shouldn’t be too hard. After all, I might very well have changed, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t still Jace fucking Wilde. I still knew a ton of people in London who were decent non-users—like the people I’d been at the party with last night—and I still had a ton of chicks available to me for a hookup if that’s what I felt like.
That was what I needed right now. A distraction in the form of a hot body to look at and a warm pussy to slide into. I pulled out my phone and scrolled through my contacts list as I finished the beer in front of me, trying to put Rayna out of my mind and concentrate on other girls instead. I almost dialed one number—a girl I’d met only hours before Rayna at the party yesterday—but instead I pressed ‘delete’, then slid my phone back into my pocket without a single call made. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, not when the sweet taste of Rayna’s full lips was still lingering on my mouth.
I guess as long as Rayna was in my life, driving me crazy the way she did, the closest thing I’d be getting to any action would be sitting across from her at the breakfast table every morning with a stiff cock.
Tease - A Stepbrother Sports Romance Page 24
