BASTARD: A Stepbrother Romance (These Wicked Games Book 1) (2 page)

He kicks the kickstand up, and pushes the bike fully vertical.

I panic and grab onto him, thoughts of jumping off fleeing.

“Good. But you don’t need to hold that tight. It’s a motorcycle, not a jet.”

I loosen my grip. “Yeah…”

Suddenly we’re moving, and despite the fact that it’s not a rocket-fuel-burning aircraft, I almost lose my grip anyway.

“Why didn’t you warn me!” I cry. “How are we moving?” I can’t hear a thing, except for the wind as he maneuvers through the parking lot and toward what looks like a dirt path.

“It’s electric. You might want to hold on.”

We’re flying through the air, despite his lie about this not being a jet.

I hold on for dear life. Literally. I’m pretty sure I’d die if I let go right now.

We land hard and the back tire slips out and we start going sideways in the loose gravel of this “road”, and I realize I’m about to die anyway, despite my death grip.

I feel Cade shift, and suddenly the rear tire’s back under us again and we’re going in a straight line.

My legs shake on the pegs as we drive down the dirt path; a lake on one side, trees on the other. In the distance up ahead, I can see part of downtown, and the high-rises poking out past the smog, which is particularly bad today.

I want to reach down and make sure my cellphone hasn’t flown out of my side pocket, but I don’t dare let go of Cade.

“Where are we going?” I shout.

Frighteningly, he lets go of the bike with his left hand and points ahead of us. It looks like he’s pointing at one of the tall buildings, but I can’t really tell.

“Please don’t do that,” I cry.

“This?” He lets go with his other hand, leaning back into me.

I scream.

He grabs the handle bars.

I would punch him, but that seems
really
dangerous right now, for at least two reasons. I could fall off, or he could be startled and jerk the handlebars and cause us to crash.

Or, three, I could hurt my hand.

So instead I shut up and hold tight. At least I have a helmet. That’s some small comfort. He wouldn’t do anything too crazy without a helmet, right?

We make it to the other side, where an embankment leads up to the city street.

There’s a set of stairs, which we’re headed toward. “Do you park your bike here?” I call.

He doesn’t answer. Maybe he didn’t hear me.

Before I can ask again, we suddenly are going faster. I clutch tighter to him, feeling like I’m going to be ripped off the back by the acceleration, and clench my jaw shut.

I want to scream, to ask what the
hell
he thinks he’s doing—and to simply release some tension—but we’re rapidly approaching the stairs, and I can’t seem to move any part of my body. My hands are iron. Even my toes are clenched. Not like they’re doing any good inside my sneakers.

Then we hit the stairs. Cade stands slightly, and I’m forced to stand slightly with him. Which I do not like at all.

I hear a girl scream.

We are halfway up the stairs, and Cade gasses it, causing the front wheel to lift.

The girl keeps screaming, and I realize it’s me as we crest the top of the stairs and are launched into the air.

We land even harder on the street than we did at the beginning of this insane journey, and horns immediately start blaring. I look to my right and see a car coming at us. I’m sure this would make me scream, if I wasn’t already.

Then we’re almost perpendicular to the ground, Cade has his foot down as we slide sideways, and out of the car’s path.

We slide all the way to the other side of the street, and jump the small, rounded curb.

We come to a stop on the sidewalk, where a woman walking her golden retriever jumps out of our way. The retriever just tilts its head at us.

I breathe deep, and relish in the sensation of being still. I look up to the sky, see the clouds ever so gently moving, so slow it’s almost imperceptible. I let out my breath.

I wipe my watering eyes. “I’m never—” I begin. Then we take off again, launching off the curb, and out into traffic.

When we finally stop, I find myself checking my crotch.

No, I didn’t piss myself. That’s one good thing.

“You’re insane,” I say, watching Cade as he gets off his motorcycle.

Again, instead of responding, he plucks me from the seat and sets me down on the ground.

“Let’s get this off you,” he says, reaching under the helmet. His fingers brush the skin of my neck, and chills erupt over my body. His touch has no right to feel this good. Not after what he’s put me through.

He gently pulls the helmet from my head—it’s not difficult, since it’s kinda loose anyway—and I brush my hands through my hair until it feels presentable.

We’re parked in front of a tall building. Not quite a skyscraper, but big.

“You’re staying here?”

“Not nice enough?”

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. But knowing your stepbrother—who was once the boy you spent long, languid summer days hiding away in a secret hideaway with; spent nights in the same shitty house playing Monopoly, stealing from each other or the bank when the other wasn’t looking—is now rich… And seeing it firsthand. Those are two very different things.

“Mr Dorn,” a man says as he opens the glass doors to the lobby for us.

Cade nods at him, and hands him the helmet. “Martin. I didn’t know you were here already. How are those investments coming?”

“Not as good as yours,” Martin replies with a light smile, taking the helmet with his free hand.

“You’ll get there.”

“I doubt that,” he says, his smile widening.

“Better each month though, right?”

Martin nods. “That they are.”

There are two sets of doors, like a space shuttle’s airlock—perhaps to keep the LA smog out—and Martin rushes ahead to open them for us.

“Stay here often?” I whisper to Cade.

He shakes his head. “He used to work at the one in New York.”

He says something more, but as we enter into the lobby, everything else fades away as I take in the sight. The roof is far above my head, and the sheer wastefulness of it takes my breath away: you could fit at least another two, maybe three floors. That’s like, fifty, a hundred rooms?

And yet, they sacrificed that space for a place where people get their keys. A place where they don’t spend more than a few minutes in.

It’s a far cry from our house—it’ll never be home to me—where we have a plywood structure in our living room so we can take advantage of the “obscenely” tall and wasteful ten-foot ceilings.

I used to think it was cool, when Dad built it when I first moved in with them. Now, I don’t. At least not at my house. Maybe if I were in college, and had roommates, it’d seem okay.

“Come on,” Cade says, taking my arm, pulling me from my reverie.

He leads me quickly toward the elevators.

“Worried your room won’t be there?”

“I don’t want to be spotted.”

“By who? Ow!” I trip, and almost fall over.

Cade catches me. “Are you okay?”

I look up into his face, feel his hard body press into my soft one, and I find myself unable to speak.

“Let’s get to the room.”

We begin moving again, slower this time, but not much.

Cade’s arm is wrapped around me, and I want to tell him if he’d let go of me, we’d probably move faster. It’s not like I’m going to run away.

But letting go is the last thing I want him to do right now.

The elevator ride is long, but not as long as I’d expect to go up to the twenty-second floor.

Cade has to use his keycard on the elevator to get it to go that high.

When the doors slide smoothly open, I see the reason. We’re in a small hall with only a single door.

And, as Cade slides his key and holds that door open for me, I’m stunned at the impressive sight.

“Is this a convention center or something?”

He chuckles. “It’s my room. Yours, too. Hungry?”

“Room? It’s a palace, not a room.” I stand there, staring. Directly across from me are huge panes of glass, looking out onto the city. I slowly walk across the improbable space toward them.

When I look down, at all the tiny cars and people, I get vertigo and a sudden fear that I’m going to fall to my doom, and quickly step back.

A menu is placed in my hand. I look at it, then at Cade.

“If you don’t know what you want, I’ll order for you.”

“Thanks,” I say quietly. I look around the room, taking in the opulence. I’ve seen places as nice, but only on Pinterest or Apartment Therapy. Or in movies. Never in person.

It’s bigger than my house.

It’s bigger than two of them put together.

“Who else is here?” I ask.

“Just you and me, little bird.”

Little bird.

Maybe it’s almost dying on a psychotic motorcycle-like contraption, but, instead of anger like I felt in the parking lot, a memory of betrayal, here, now, I just feel tears begin to form in my eyes.

The way he says it, just like he used to. I feel like I’m a kid again, relying on my big brother to protect me. To take care of me. To love me, like my dad and his mom never did or could. Or would. It’s like no time has passed.

My mom named me Maggie, after the Magpie: “The smartest, prettiest, most resourceful bird of all,” she used to say as she lightly shook my ear and tweaked my nose. I’d always giggle at that. When Cade found out that’s where I got my name, he started calling me little bird. After I moved in with my dad, it was one of the few connections to my mom I had left. I think I cried the first time he called me that after Mom…

But then I came to appreciate it, to love it. It was something we shared, a secret only we knew.

And now, hearing him say it here, brings back all those memories. All those emotions.

I sniff and wipe my eyes.

Cade walks past me, lightly brushing my bare arm with his fingers as he passes, his touch transmutive, instantly changing the longing I feel into another kind entirely.

I watch as he goes up the spiral staircase to the second floor. Of the
hotel
room. Jesus. I didn’t even notice there
was
a second floor. It must have been too much for my poor, peasant mind to take.

“Where are you going?”

“Changing.”

I swallow. “I’ll just wait here.”

He looks back at me and raises an eyebrow. “Don’t you want to see the rest of the place?”

“Maybe later.” My palms start sweating, and my blood starts to rush downward.

He shrugs. “Make yourself at home.”

When he comes back down again, I’m still standing in the same spot. I don’t know if he’s just gotten really fast at changing clothes, or if I spaced out the whole time.

But I do know that as soon as I see him, I can’t take my eyes off of him.

He’s wearing a pinstripe suit, that fits him
very
well. It hugs his shoulders and chest, and I find my eyes drifting to his crotch as he walks down the stairs.

“Never seen a guy in a suit?”

He’s in front of me now. I look up into his face.

“I… I’ve never seen you in one.”

“My wardrobe has necessarily expanded since I was a rebellious eighteen year old.”

“You look nice.”

“Not as nice as you.”

We stare at each other for what seems like forever.

Then Cade grins, touches my shoulder, and goes to the large kitchen, where a tablet sits on the island. He turns it on and begins swiping at it.

After a moment, he says, “I’ll have clothes for you waiting when we land.” He glances up at me. “To better fit the new you.” He leans over the counter, and swipes at the tablet for a few seconds more. “Okay. We fly out in about six hours.”

“Fly out?”

He looks up from the tablet, and the way he’s leaned over it, palms on the counter, makes me think of that night, when someone was over me that way. When Cade wasn’t there to protect me. When he wasn’t there to save me.

I can still smell the alcohol. Still taste—

I squeeze my eyes shut.

“Home,” I hear him say. “To SF.”

I shake my head, eyes still closed, because that’s the only way I can resist him. “Not
my
home.”

“And this is?”

“Not here,” I say, avoiding the question.

He lets out a bitter sound. “You call that shithole you live in a home?”

I open my eyes. “Not all of us are rich like you. You’re called the one percent for a reason. The rest of us just do the best we can.”

“Hey,” he says, coming out from behind the counter and toward me. And I realize I was wrong about needing to see him to feel his influence. Just his tone, how comforting it is. It is enough.

I’d need to close my eyes and cover my ears to resist him.

He reaches me, then reaches out and touches my cheek.

I’d need to cover my skin, too. Or tie his hands behind him.

The image accompanying this makes me wish I hadn’t thought it, and I try to push it away.

He leans in close to me, and his smell takes me back again to when he was there to protect me.

God, how I missed it. How I missed him. I try to tell myself I don’t, that I don’t need him.

That I hate him. And maybe I do. But I also still love him.

And now something else resurfaces, something I’ve tried to forget, to repress, because it’s wrong. So wrong that I’ve been denying it, maybe trying to cover it up with hate: I want him.

Want him to take me.

He pulls me into an embrace, and I find my arms wrapping around his body.

“It’s all right little bird,” he whispers, kissing the top of my head.

I squeeze him tighter, pressing myself harder into him. It feels so good.

His hands slide down to my back, keep going, stopping at my hips.

His grip tightens slightly. Not quite a squeeze, but close enough to get my attention.

I breathe in sharply, and his hand moves down more, resting on my ass.

Now he does squeeze, and my head starts spinning.

I look up at him, my chin sliding on his jacket, and see his lips, which are so close, yet just out of reach. Even on my tiptoes, I’d still be much shorter than him.