by Locket, V.
Table of Contents
STEP INTO TEMPTATION by V. Locket
Prologue: Forbidden Obsession
Chapter 1: Forbidden Fruit
Chapter 2: God’s House
Chapter 3: Where She Sleeps
Chapter 4: Let Me Keep You
Chapter 5: One Last Time
Chapter 6: Into the Woods
Chapter 7: First Morning
STEP INTO TEMPTATION by V. Locket
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I have loved her for ten years, but she will never be mine.
It was never supposed to have happened in the first place, regardless of how much I longed for it. But how could I have the strength to say no when she was the one offered herself willingly?
Beautiful Gretel. Sweet Gretel. Innocent Gretel.
My love. My obsession. My curse.
I know, even as I touch her, that this can’t go on. We can’t keep this a secret forever. I will be banished if we are discovered...and she will suffer a far harsher fate.
But I can’t let go.
Even if it’s the right thing.
And I can’t give her to someone else.
Even if it’s the only way to save us.
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This book was originally published as FORBIDDEN OBSESSION under the name VIRGINIA LOCKE.
Copyright 2012 Virginia Locke. All rights reserved
Cover Fonts – Bebas Neu and Freebooter. Cover Stock – rainfall. Copyright belongs to individual artist(s).
Cover Copyright 2015 VLocket
***
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. All characters are over the age of 18. WARNING: This is a stepbrother/stepsister erotic romance.
Prologue: Forbidden Obsession
Hansel
I REALIZED IT FIRST when I was thirteen and she was twelve. I was coming up from a day working in the fields to get a drink from the village fountain. My stepsister sat on the ledge and looked at the water. Her basket of apples lay at her feet. Almost all of them were gone.
No one could resist her smile, so she always sold all her apples. I started to walk faster, thinking of sitting beside her and holding her hand, and paying for one of her apples with the some of the money I’d earned that week.
Three boys leaned against the window of a shop ahead of me. They each had an apple. They laughed as they passed them back and forth, rubbing their thumbs obscenely over the soft, pink surface of the fruit, talking about how ripe they were. One of them licked it, then took a bite. He said it was sweet, that he couldn’t wait to buy more than her apples.
I turned, grabbed the apple from his hand, and smashed it into his face.
He yelped as blood spurted over the fruit. It leaked into his mouth and down his chin. One of his friends asked what my fucking problem was and grabbed my shoulder, pulling me off him. I swung wildly and connected with his jaw. His other friend tried to tackle me but I sidestepped and kicked him in the back of his knees.
I don’t remember much of what happened next. I didn’t feel it when one of them broke my nose, or when I fractured my hand in the process of knocking out Johan’s front teeth, or even when they held me down and took turns kicking me. I barely noticed the shopkeeper breaking up the fight and yelling at the three boys for ganging up on me even though I started it. But I remember the moment I saw Gretel’s face above me.
Sunlight made her golden hair glow like a halo around her pale face. Our village had recently acquired an icon of the Virgin Mary, and Gretel’s eyes were the same cobalt blue as her heavenly robe. She looked like an angel as she glanced down at me with devastation. And I watched, equally devastated, as she placed her hands beneath my head to move it into her lap, and asked me why.
I couldn’t tell her why I did it. I didn’t want her to know what they thought of when they bought her apples—what they thought of when they looked at her body. So I got up and ran as fast as I could in the opposite direction, until I could no longer hear her frantically shouting my name as she tried to catch up with me.
My dad took me aside that night to talk about happened. I told him about the way they touched the apples they’d bought—touched them roughly, condescendingly, as if it had been her. My father said I needed to let it go. He said that Gretel was pretty, and that boys were going to start looking at her, and that I should never start another scene.
I realized, then, that those boys who did not love her—who thought of her as nothing more than fruit to be purchased when it was ripe—had more of a claim to her than I did. I realized that everyone around me would consider the feelings that had been silently growing inside me filthier than those boy’s intentions. And I knew that she would never be mine.
Chapter 1: Forbidden Fruit
Hansel
I HEARD THE KITCHEN DOOR open and glanced up from my plate of bread and butter.
The girl looked down as she fixed invisible wrinkles in her skirt. I couldn’t see her face, but I could see the delicate curve of her ankles, those round hips that were made for a man’s hands to grab, and her golden curls.
Damn. Gretel was home early.
My mother died while giving birth to my brother ten years ago. He didn’t survive either. A few years later, my father married Gretel’s mother. She’d lost her husband a fire at the mill the next town over.
Is this alright with you? My father had asked. I still love your mother. No one will ever take her place.
I’d smiled. It’s fine, I told him. And even if it wasn’t, who was I to keep my own father from his happiness? I didn’t yet know how much pain my consent would inflict upon us all.
My father had sighed, relieved. Good. You’re going to love your new family—your new home.
And I did. I loved it all...too much.
The first time I met Gretel, she was sitting in the field outside the new house we would one day call home. She looked over her shoulder, smiling. Are you Hansel?
I couldn’t say anything, so I just nodded. Something was wrong with my chest. It felt like a fist was closing around my heart.
She stood, still smiling. Hi Hansel. I have something for you.
It was then I noticed she was holding something—a daisy chain. I’d never cared about flowers before. I never even noticed them.
Here. She stood up on her tiptoes, her eyes intent, as she crowned my head with the flower she’d picked.
She stood back, smiling, pointing at the daisy chain on her head. There. Now you’re my prince, and I’m your princess.
How could something so simple make me feel so much? For the first time since my mother died I was happy, because I would become her brother and that meant we would always be together. I vowed to always protect her.
I didn’t know yet that one day I’d have to protect her from myself.
I clenched my teeth as Gretel sauntered around our simple kitchen. Being around her was agony, and the customs in this town didn’t help. All unmarried people lived under the same roof as their parents or guardians until they found a spouse. It didn’t matter that I was already twenty; it was unheard of to move out before then. Then again, lusting after your stepsister was pretty unheard of, too.
Recently I’d started trying to avoid her—running home after work so I could eat and bathe before she arrived. Then, I’d sneak out before dinner, and only return when our parents came home. Nothing killed my boner faster than her mother asking to pass the potatoes, or one of my father’s awful puns. When they were around, listening to her sexy laugh didn’t make me want to bend her over the table and fuck her sweet, litt
le cunt until all she could do was cry out my name.
Beneath the table, my hands curled into fists. I shouldn’t think of her like that. Love shouldn’t be dark. It shouldn’t be raw. It shouldn’t make a man insane. But my love for her did.
I hated the sound of her innocent laughter. I hated her beautiful smile. I hated how she showed it to everyone—even the men who watched her, lecherously, when her head was turned. I hated it so much that every time I saw it I wanted to destroy her, so that she would no longer be innocent or beautiful—so that she wouldn’t smile at anyone else ever again.
I knew these thoughts were evil. A person should not possess another person in their entirety, and I had even less of a right since she and I would never be matched.
I wish I wasn’t so close to her. If only he hadn’t remarried, these feelings would not be forbidden.
“Hello Hansel,” she sang, setting her basket down on the counter. “I sold them all today.”
I glared at the empty basket, imagining all the smiles she gave out. All the apples. I breathed heavily, trying to conceal the dark emotions that were too close to the surface.
“Are you alright, Hansel? You’ve seemed sick lately.” She bent over, giving me a view of her tits. They were so firm and...Good God, had they always looked like that? Ever since we’d turned twenty-one I was even more aware of her. Her body always felt too close to mine, as if she were breathing on my bare skin. As if, regardless of her position in the room, she were constantly touching me.
She pressed her cheek to my forehead. Her skin was so soft and smelled of flowers. How could she smell like that when she’d spent the entire morning in the town arguing with shopkeepers amongst all that smoke and dirt?
Her lips brushed against my hairline. They were soft—too soft. It should be impossible for someone to have such soft lips, and she should know not to touch things with them.
“You’re hot,” she whispered. My eyes focused on her lips as she wet them with her tongue.
My blood surged. I wanted to push her down on the table and climb on top of her, taking those lips between my teeth and biting down until I drew blood. I wanted to mark her mouth so no other man would ever dream of kissing it.
“I’m fine,” I said. It sounded strained even to my own pounding ears.
She frowned. “You’re working too hard in the fields again, aren’t you? Yesterday you didn’t return until after dinner. It was dark.”
Not dark enough, I wanted to say. It was never dark enough. These thoughts of mine seemed to breed in the dark. In the evenings, when I lay down in bed, I forced my body to remain perfectly still so I could hear her rhythmic breathing from the next room. Those quiet sounds she made unconsciously in her sleep undid me. I’d roll to my side, press my forehead against the wall, and take my erection in my hands. I’d start pumping, trying to rid myself of these demons.
It never worked. The more I did it, the more I wanted her, until I didn’t trust myself to look directly at her.
So I didn’t.
“I’m sorry for asking,” She whispered, voice shaking. My chest ached, but I didn’t do anything to comfort her. It was better to put distance between us. If she was afraid, she would stay away.
“I’m going to draw a bath. You can have the water when I’m done,” she said.
My cock twitched. Thank God I was sitting down and the table covered my lap, because if it wasn’t, she’d see just how much I wanted to slip into that warm water that had touched every part of her naked body.
Without another word, she crept upstairs.
***
Gretel
I SAT ON THE EDGE of my bed and dried my hair. Hansel still wasn’t talking to me. I hated how much distance had grown between my stepbrother and me as of late. Before, he would do everything for me—too much, some people would say, but they just didn’t understand our love for each other.
Then again, maybe they were right. Sometimes, when he worked in the fields, I’d hide in the forest and watch his muscles glisten in the sun. He wasn’t the strongest man in our town, but he was handsome. I wasn’t the only one who noticed this, or who watched him. Even my best friend Rosalind wasn’t immune. Since midsummer, she’d been spending a lot of time with Hansel, and when I asked her about it, she’d just smile.
I didn’t like that. I hated it even more when I had to lie about who I watched. Otto, I’d say, and the girls would giggle as my cheeks flushed. They thought I did that because I liked him, but really it was because I was ashamed.
I still didn’t understand why I couldn’t admit it was Hansel I came for. He was my stepbrother. Shouldn’t I want to see him? But very few of the other girls wanted to know everything about their brothers. They wouldn’t race home early just to see them, and when they did, they wouldn’t be in such a hurry that they’d fall.
I sucked in a breath as I straightened out my skinned knees. I didn’t mind the pain. Any amount of pain was worth being able to talk to Hansel. And besides, the pain gave a sense of permanence to our meeting. Tonight, I’d touch the raw skin and remember that I’d seen him, and for a little while, I wouldn’t feel the emptiness that consumed me when he left.
The springs on my bed bounced twice as I fell onto my back. Why wouldn’t he tell me what was wrong? All I wanted was to be close to him. When I checked his temperature, I’d allowed my lips to linger on his hairline. I’d tasted him—dirt and sweat and dust. I liked that taste. It was hard and bitter and dry, just like him.
As that thought entered my head, a strange, powerful feeling filled the space between my legs. I swallowed, trying to breathe.
No, I thought. Not again.
My body didn’t listen. It ached like a bruise, and when I rubbed my legs together, trying to force it out, it felt wonderful, even though it made the aching worse.
I pressed my palms against that secret place and held my breath. Why was my heart beating so fast? Why were my cheeks so hot? Why did it happen every time I thought of Hansel and imagined his long, lean body, his silence, and the darkness in his gaze when he looked at me? I felt those parts stirring when he did that, as if it were calling to him to do something.
God, what was wrong with me? Was I sick?
I wanted to tell someone about this, but I didn’t know who. Mother told me that I shouldn’t think of my forbidden area. It was wrong, she’d said. Sinful. And yet, a part of me liked it. I never wanted the aching to leave. I wanted it to build and build and build into something. My body thirsted for it.
My breathing was shallow, and my body was so hot and tender that it felt like even breathing was too much for it. I pushed myself up and staggered to the door. I wiped my hands on my thighs. They felt slick. Slick and...
I was dying. That had to be it. My vision blurred, and all I could think about was Hansel. I needed him to catch me. I needed him to tell me it was alright. If I was going to die, at least I wanted to see him. I wanted him to say something sweet to me—to tell me he didn’t hate me.
I fell into the hallway. It was oddly hot for September, but the air felt cold on my flushed skin. I moved as fast as I could to the bathroom. Hansel was in there, washing himself.
I pushed open the door. It slammed against the wall.
Hansel was in the tub, doing something with his legs. No, with something in between his legs. It poked out of the water, and he had one hand around it.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” he yelled, jumping up.
He let go of the huge thing between his legs and, for the first time, I saw it in its entirety. What was it?
“Hansel...” I murmured, begging for something I didn’t understand. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from that strange object, and the fever came back, even greater, building in my chest, making my nipples hard and my legs tight.
“Get out of here!” He sounded desperate. Something was wrong. Why did he hate me so much? My head was spinning. I fell forward, onto the tub.
“Hansel,” I whispered. “Please, help me.”
> As I raised my head, my cheek brushed against the thing between his legs. It twitched, moving over my cheek to my mouth, leaving a thin trail of something damp and—I flicked my tongue—salty.
“You need to leave now.” His voice was so low. Dangerous. Yet, I couldn’t move.
“What is that?” I whispered, fear and curiosity mounting inside me. I knew, instinctively, that I wasn’t meant to see it. Mother’s warning echoed in my mind. I shouldn’t think about those things between our legs—those sinful areas where the real difference between men and women lay.
But mother wasn’t here, and her voice was drowned out by the pounding in my head.
I reached up and touched it.
Hansel groaned and fell into the wall.
“What is that?” I asked, crawling over the edge of the tub. My knee landed in the water. It splashed on my breasts, and on the forbidden place between my legs. Its warmth made me ache even more.
“Get the fuck out,” he whispered. He was breathing harder than I’d ever seen him breathe before.
“There’s something wrong with me.” I looked up, begging him to see the pain within me that I was afraid to articulate. “I think I’m dying.”
His face softened. “What?”
“There is this feeling I get between my legs whenever I think of you. It aches, and it feels like fire, a fire I can’t put out. I want to touch it, but it’s forbidden. I’m not supposed to touch it, Hansel. Are you hurting too, when you think of me?”
His eyes were so wide. His lips parted, and his chest rose and fell to the quickening rhythm pounding inside me.
“Do you feel like you have a fever when you’re around me, Hansel? Is that why you avoid me?”
He looked at the ceiling. His hands flexed at his sides. “I can’t do this.”
“I always want to touch myself there, but I can’t,” I continued.
He groaned.
“Maybe I’m supposed to touch yours. Maybe if I do that, and you touch mine, both of us will feel better.”
I launched myself forward before he could respond. The tip of that thing between his legs hit my eye. It stung, but I didn’t care. I grabbed it and gently squeezed. I was afraid to hurt it. I was afraid to touch it. But Hansel had a fever—the same fever I had. He’d been touching it when I came in. Maybe that was the way to stop his fever.
