BASTARD: A Stepbrother Romance (These Wicked Games Book 1) (3 page)

But then he leans down, leans into me, while at the same time lifting me into him, both his hands under my ass now, and brings his lips to mine.

I wrap my legs are around him, and feel something hard and insistent against my crotch.

I can’t believe it. That I could possibly cause that in him. That this is happening at all.

Is it just pity? Does he feel sorry for me? Maybe—

But then his tongue pushes into my mouth, and I can’t think of anything but the warmth, the heat. His hardness pressing between my legs, separated from me by only my thin pair of shorts and his pants.

“Cade,” I moan against his lips, digging my fingers into him like I did on his bike, and for a very similar reason: I feel as though I’ll die if I let go. Or maybe I have, maybe when we landed sideways, he didn’t recover, and we crashed.

And
this
is what comes after.
This
is my heaven.

He jerks suddenly at my voice and lets go of me, stepping quickly back.

I fall on my butt on the polished tile floor, both wrists bending painfully as I land. I cry out, then stare up at him, stunned.

“I’m sorry,” he says, shaking his head and still stepping back. He bumps into the kitchen island and is forced to stop. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I haven’t seen you in so long. I got carried away. It won’t happen again.”

This is more disappointing to hear than it should be.

“We can’t do this.” He looks around, almost wildly, like he’s looking for a way out.

“Fuck you,” I say. I mean to scream it, but it comes out as barely a whisper, and even then, my voice cracks as the words leave my throat.

Cade doesn’t seem to hear. “This was a bad idea. I shouldn’t have come here. I’m sorry. Look, I’ll get you your own apartment.” He glances at me, sees me sitting there on the floor, flexing my wrists, and comes over. “It’s the least I can do.” He kneels in front of me. “Are you hurt? Fuck, Mags, I’m so sorry, I—” He shakes his head and looks away again.

“Take me home,” I say, as tears burn my eyes.

I expect him to fight me. But he doesn’t. And when he just nods and says, “Okay,” I realize I wanted him to.

Needed him to. Needed him to not let me go.

To not leave me. Again.

We ride the elevator silently down to the parking garage.

It’s only as the doors open and I see all the vehicles that I realize he didn’t bring even one helmet.

“Don’t we need helmets?” I ask, breaking the silence.

“We’re driving,” he says without looking at me.

Opposite us, there’s a wall of what look like small, one-car garages, or possibly storage units.

He heads to these, and I follow. He slides his keycard across a panel to the side of one of them and it opens slowly, eventually revealing a Mercedes SUV.

“Thought you didn’t drive a Mercedes.”

He finally looks at me for the first time since we left his hotel room. He frowns, then smiles. “Oh. No, it’s a rental. I don’t pay attention to those things.”

The doors unlock when he pulls on the handle. He glances at me. “Are you planning to sit on my—” He stops himself, and looks away.

I realize I’m at the driver’s side, and find myself saying, “I’m sitting in the back.”

He looks at me again. Again, he frowns. “Want to see what having a chauffeur is like?”

I shrug and raise an eyebrow.

So does he, and it makes me remember that it’s a habit I picked up from him when we were kids.

In the car, I sit directly behind him so he can’t look at me in the mirror.

We drive out in silence, leaving the garage open.

I stare out the window as we drive, but keep finding my gaze drawn to him. Leaning my head against the cool, darkly-tinted glass, I can see the left side of his face, and it hurts. Because he’s going to drop me off at my house, and then I’m never going to see him again.

And after the kiss… I should have known never to get my hopes up. I was right that he couldn’t like someone like me. Love me as a sister… Maybe. But not in any other way. Certainly not find me attractive.

But the kiss. It seemed so— I force myself to look away. It’s pointless to think about. It doesn’t matter. It’s over. It never even started.

I feel the heat of his tongue in my mouth, the heat of his cock against me.

“Why don’t you know?” I blurt out to distract myself.

“Know what?”

“Those things?”

“Mags?”

“The car.”

I see him nod slightly. “My assistants handle all the small details. This is the first time I’ve even seen this.”

“What about your motorcycle?”

“The bike is mine. There’s a builder near here. I picked that up from him myself.”

“So you’re driving back on your motorcycle?”

He laughs. “Hell no. It’s electric, and has a range of less than two hundred miles. I could probably use Tesla’s chargers, but I can’t spare the time right now. No, I’m having it shipped. It’s probably on its way there now. Or maybe that’s tomorrow. It will be there by Monday.”

We fall silent again.

I begin to regret my decision to sit in the back. Though it wasn’t really a decision, just something that happened.

Like almost everything else in my life. No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, things just go the way they go, ignoring my desires and intentions. Saying “Fuck you!” to any plans I make, before stomping them into oblivion.

Like that night.
The
night. I had planned to ask him to move away now that he was eighteen. To take me with him. Well, he moved away. He just forgot me.

But Cade hasn’t forgotten how to get to our house—well, not his anymore. We pull up in front, and he leans over the passenger seat to look at his once-home through the passenger window. “It’s the same,” he says to himself.

If I had been sitting there, I think, his head would have been deliciously close to my lap.

I open the door. “Thanks for the ride,” I say quickly, then get out.

“Hey!” he calls. He gets out too, and I’m already on the lawn. He catches up and grabs my arm, spinning me toward him.

I glare. “What?!”

“You’re just… going?”

“Doesn’t feel too good, does it?”

His grip loosens. “Mags…”

“Stop calling me that!”

“Mags? You love it when I do.”

“No.” I yank free from him. “I did when I was twelve. I’m not a little kid anymore. A lot’s changed.”

He touches my face, and goddamn my heart, I just want him to hold me. “I know.”

The front door of my house opens and his hand drops as he looks up.

I look over my shoulder and see Cynthia, my stepmom.

“Maggie? Is that you? Why don’t you invite your friend up?”

I turn back to Cade. “Hear that, friend?”

“She doesn’t recognize me.”

I turn and wave at her. “Be right in, Mom.” She loves it when I call her that.

“Okay sweetie.”

“Mom?” Cade asks when she goes back inside, an eyebrow raised.

“Like I said, things change.”

“I’m surprised.”

“Oh?”

“I didn’t expect her to change. But, she seems…” He shakes his head. “I guess I was wrong.”

I laugh without humor. “I thought no one fooled you, Cade. She probably saw that nice, expensive vehicle,” I point behind him at the SUV, “and assumed you have money. And that she could get some.”

“But, ‘Mom’?”

“Without you here to protect—” I stop myself, but it’s too late. I rush on. “When you left, things changed, got worse, and I had to adapt. She likes it when I call her Mom. I don’t know why.” Except, sometimes I think I do. And I don’t like to think about it. Because it makes her too human. Makes it hard to think of her as the monster she is. “So I call her what she wants, because it makes my life easier. Not easy, but not as hard as it could be.”

“But you’re getting along?”

“You really have changed. You used to see through her facade.”

He shakes his head. “No. I just still have hope.”

“Well, you shouldn’t.”

He locks me in his gaze. “Maggie.” Oh great, he never calls me that. “I can get you out of here. Into your own place. Let me help you.”

“I don’t want your charity.”

“But you need it.”

I shake my head as I turn and walk away.

“Mags!” he calls.

I halt and turn to face him. “What!”

“Come with me.”

“What the fuck, Cade! I can’t handle this. And even if I could, you’re just going to leave me again. Forget all about me.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Because it’s true! You’re just going to fly back home to your penthouse or mansion or whatever the hell multimillion-dollar structure you call home, and leave me here with my absent dad and your psycho mom. Again.”

“I didn’t leave you,” he says emphatically.

“It sure as hell seems like it.”

He is silent, staring at me. Then he blurts, “Then come with me. Live with me in San Francisco.”

I shake my head slowly. “So you can freak out on me again? No thanks.”

“Don’t want to leave your job? I know you’ve got a bright future ahead of you as Head Waitress, but I can find something at least as good.”

“So I can work at Hooters in San Francisco?”

“At my company.”

I laugh bitterly. “The only thing I can do on a computer is get on the internet.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. I know you, Mags. You have lots of things you’re good at.”

I look away, shaking my head.

He comes closer, and grabs my chin. “Look at me.”

I resist.

“Maggie.”

I lock eyes with him defiantly.

“You’re smart. You are great at talking to people. And at solving problems. You don’t have to be able to write code to make something life-changing.”

“I can’t. I can’t leave Mom and Dad.”

He lets go of me. ”Oh come on, that’s bullshit. What have they ever done for you?”

“Fed me! Gave me a house. Didn’t leave me standing alone in a dark kitchen, waiting for them to get home, to see the surprise I had made for them. Didn’t make me cry myself to sleep for months. Didn’t make me think I wasn’t good enough to be in their lives.”

“I di—”

“Don’t!” I interrupt. “Stop with the bullshit.”

He takes my hand. “Look. I want you to come with me. I need you.”

I chuckle without humor. “Yeah.”

“I’m serious. I need someone I can trust. It’d be a junior position, but you could move up. It only pays sixty a year, but you wouldn’t have rent, or anything else really.”

I stare at him. “Sixty what?”

“Dollars. Thousand.” He frowns when he sees how I’m looking at him. “What is it?”

I continue to stare. “You’re offering me, a nineteen-year-old with no college, and no programming experience, a job that pays sixty K a year?” I shake my head.

He raises an eyebrow. “Are we negotiating now?”

“No. What?”

“I can bump it up to sixty-five, if you insist. But people might get suspicious. And I don’t want the media to accuse me of nepotism.”

“That’s not my point.”

“So you don’t want the money.”

“No. I mean, yes. But no.” I exhale forcefully. “Stop changing the subject. I can’t go with you.”

“Because of our wonderful parents.”

“At least they were there,” I mutter, unable to meet his eyes.

“And now I am. And I promise I’ll take care of you.”

God, I want to believe him. It sounds so good. But he’s already hurt me once. I barely survived it. I can’t do it again.

“I came here for you,” he says.

“What?”

“I wasn’t at your restaurant by accident. I knew you worked there. I came for you. I couldn’t take being without you anymore.” He looks at the door to the house. “I didn’t know it was so bad. I would have come sooner. I thought you were living out a happy little life, and didn’t need me ruining it for you.”

I bark a bitter laugh.

“But I’m here for you now. Please Mags, I need you.”

My eyes burn and I can’t even think straight. I feel sick and happy. Like my body doesn’t know whether to vomit in joy or laugh in sorrow. “I can’t deal with this right now.” I turn away and walk quickly toward the door.

“Mags! Maggie!”

I ignore him, and pull open the screen door, which squeals loudly, then walk inside.

‘Mom’ is waiting.

“Who was that?” Cynthia asks, sitting at the kitchen table in that cutoff turtle neck sweater which shows a bit of midriff and which I secretly want to steal but could never pull off, working on her laptop. She hasn’t completely dropped the facade, but her artificial sweetness is gone.

“Just a friend.” I wipe my eyes and head into the kitchen. It’s not that I want to be with her, but I am hungry. And looking at the hotel menu, with all its amazing, and incredibly expensive dishes, didn’t help. And I need something to take my mind off of all this shit.

“Where’d you meet him?”

“Work,” I answer truthfully.

“I heard you left early. I see why now.”

I say nothing, instead opening the fridge. I thought she’d stopped checking up on me. Maybe Nina, my boss, just stopped telling me.

There’s a slice of cake.

I close my eyes and tell myself it’s not worth listening to Cynthia lecture me. I bend over and open the vegetable crisper.

“So you just walked right out on your shift, while you still had tables? Do you think that’s wise?”

“Why do you care? You hate the place.”

“Doesn’t mean you don’t do your job. You entered into an agreement.”

“Whatever.”

“Don’t be so apathetic. You wouldn’t want me to ground you again.”

I freeze pulling the celery out of the fridge, my mind immediately going back to that week, when I was sixteen, when my damnation well and truly began.

I try to shrug it off. I close the fridge and toss the celery on the counter.

I open the drawer noisily—on purpose because I know she hates it—and pull out a knife.

My fingers wrap tightly around the smooth wood and it makes me feel better.

I’m an adult now. She can’t punish me like she used to.

“Pretending to ignore me isn’t going to get you anywhere.”

I turn on her, glaring down at her face.