Dirty Wicked Lust: A Stepbrother Romance (4 page)

Mom turned back to me, chuckling humorlessly as if she had one ear on our conversation and the other waiting for Jerry to return and click the garage door opener in his sleek black Cadillac. “Just, you know,” she suggested. “Make microwave popcorn and watch TV with him at night. Have breakfast with him in the morning. Introduce him to some of your classmates, maybe… take him to dinner and a movie one night.”

“Sounds like a date,” I snorted nervously, shaking my head in disbelief. Not that any of it sounded distasteful, actually. A movie and dinner with Ryan sounded perfectly delightful, in fact. Just… my
stepbrother
?

Really?

Mom rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean, Heather,” she started to say when she became distracted, realizing she’d forgotten something. “Oh, shoot, my makeup case!”

Without another word she disappeared upstairs, her sandals clattering on each hardwood step, leaving me to sink into my chair at the breakfast table to contemplate the next two weeks.

“I’m not so sure about this,” I muttered, shaking my head as I heard her footsteps coming down the stairs.

Only, they weren’t hers. Ryan stood midway down the stairs, scratching his flat belly above the waistband of a pair of cotton boxers so thin they left little to the imagination as they clung to his long, lean torso. I sat watching, helpless, as he slunk down the stairs, his steps muscular, predatory and panther-like as I tried not to stare at the shadow of a thick, curved cock that hung beneath the clingy material of his well-worn boxers.

Until that moment, my interest in Ryan had been something abstract, like an urban legend or taboo—a
thing
to be twittered about with my BFF on smoke breaks or to fantasize about in the dark. But here he was—here
it
was—staring me in the face. Not just Ryan’s dick, barely hidden by boxers that must’ve been washed to within an inch of their thread count, but his very masculinity.

He oozed sex, or at least sexuality. In every step, every muscle, in every glance, smirk and action. I didn’t know if he was teasing me, or just like that all the time, but staring at him like I was, made me feel like a giddy schoolgirl the first time the hot, new kid walked into class.

“Sure about what?” he asked, reaching into the fridge with one too sexy and strong arm before beginning to drink from the orange juice carton, his lips full and wet around the carton’s opening, his Adam’s apple throbbing up and down before he wiped an arm across his mouth and turned to me. “Our parents hot footing it out of town the minute I arrive?”

“I’m sure it’s just coincidence,” I managed to mutter, staring at his broad shoulders and the array of tattoos that covered his shoulder and muscular arm. “Mom said it was a belated honeymoon, so…”

“Yeah, right,” he chuffed, sliding the half-empty carton onto the counter beside him as he leaned back against it. “Belated honeymoon my ass.” I snickered, both of us peering at each other across the kitchen as I waited for Mom to come down at any moment. Half of me wanted her to—if only to stop me from saying something ridiculous or flirty or obvious or all of the above. The other half wanted Ryan all to myself so I could enjoy the simmering heat of our private moment.

“You know your father and a buck,” I managed to say, suddenly inspired by my stepfather’s notorious cheapness as I struggled to do something other than stare at Ryan and his masculinity. “He probably got a good deal months ago, forgetting you were coming home this weekend.”

Ryan smiled, still radiating sex from every sleek, rippled, half-naked pore. “That’s nice of you to say, Heather,” he growled playfully, a crooked smile gracing his chiseled face. “But you and I both know why they’re leaving today, right?”

“Yeah,” I chortled, aiming at humor but falling far short. “So we can get better acquainted.”

Our eyes met, his soft and smoldering, mine anxious and uncertain. I’d meant to apologize to him about what I said through the door last night, but the sudden disappearance of his father had put that on the back burner. Before I could, he rolled his eyes, said “fat chance” and promptly left, scratching his perfect ass all the way back up the stairs to his bedroom.

I sat in my chair, wet where I shouldn’t be, breathing harder than I should have been and thinking how much harder the next two weeks were going to be than I first thought…

Chapter Five

“Missed a spot!”

Ryan stood, half-in, half-out of the sliding glass door leading from the living room onto the spacious pool deck. He was smirking, as he always seemed to be, that charming, rakish smile curling up his left cheek and reaching all the way to his warm, green eyes.

“Very funny,” I sighed, doing my best to ignore him as I blew a stray lock of blonde hair out of my face and continued cleaning the pool—one of my daily chores whether Mom and Jerry were on a luxury cruise liner for the next two weeks or not. I didn’t mind it, actually. On one of the deck chairs a few feet away my iPhone played some chill tantric Asian house music, my daily chore playlist. The sun was warm and serene on my mostly bare skin. The size of the pool gave me a good, gym-worthy upper body workout without ever leaving the house.

Unlike my other vaguely Cinderella-ish chores, like Wednesday’s laundry and Thursday’s dusting, cleaning the pool was a private affair. Unlike the stilted and silent interior of Jerry’s sprawling, Tudor style, 4,500-square foot house, the backyard deck was like an island oasis unto itself. Featuring dozens of towering palms interspersed with dozens more clusters of the smaller varieties. The cobblestone deck might as well have been its own private island, featuring a sparkling pool, gurgling waterfall pouring in at one end and a sloping, beach style access at the other.

A Jacuzzi bubbled day and night beneath an ivy trellis, not far from a built-in barbecue-slash-outdoor kitchen that was bigger than most two-bedroom apartments. I was in my usual pool cleaning attire—chocolate brown bikini bottoms and soft blue top—forgetting momentarily that there was a grown, bulging, hot ass man living in the house with me.

Or maybe I hadn’t forgotten at all. Maybe I wanted Ryan to see me cleaning the pool, bending and stooping, leaning and stretching wearing hardly anything at all. Maybe I wanted to see if Ryan ogled me the same way I ogled him.

Or maybe, just maybe, I wanted to enjoy my parents being out of town the way Ryan was. “Going out again?” I asked, arching one eyebrow at his stiff black jeans and button-up shirt. He’d been hitting the night clubs every night since our parents left for their cruise. Some nights he didn’t come home at all, other nights he came in around the same time I was heading out for my pre-dawn run.

He looked slightly bothered, rubbing the soft brown stubble that clung to his finely shaped head. “Just for a little while,” he said, inching farther onto the patio so I noticed the bottle of beer—real beer—in his large, muscular hand.

I made a mock gasp. “What would your father think?” I said, leaning on the rubbery handle of my net as it rested on the bottom of the pool. Jerry had a strict “no alcohol” policy in his house, one that was easy for me to abide since I did most of my drinking with April in her cheap off-campus apartment, anyway. But for a sexy, saucy ex-Marine like Ryan? I had wondered how long it would take for Ryan to break his own father’s rules—now I had my answer.

Immediately.

“What dad doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Ryan said, taking a swig for good measure. Like everything Ryan did, my sexy stepbrother made sucking down a beer erotic.

Sexy.

As.

All.

Hell!

“At least, not for the next two weeks, anyway.” He added, as he raised his eyebrow. Another sexy move.

“Well, my lips are sealed,” I said, admiring his as he wiped them dry with the back of one hand after an especially long swig. “That is, if you’ll share with me.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” he said, revealing his other hand behind his back, a chilled beer clutched neatly inside. I watched him walk toward me, his eyes meeting mine before they deliciously roamed up and down my body. I felt positively naked beneath his hungry gaze, a not unwelcome feeling as I shivered at his lustful approach.

I thought for a second I was imagining it, the leering gaze he gave me, starting from my toes to my ankles, my knees to my thighs, my clingy bikini bottoms, belly, breasts and then back down again, but no. Dude was straight checking me out!

And he wasn’t shy about it, either. In fact, the way Ryan drank me in—slowly, luxuriously, like a glass of sweet red wine— it was as if he wanted me to see him doing it. As if he got off on me watching him ogle me. And damn him—I did!

“Thanks,” I said, softly, unable to speak any louder for fear my voice might crack and expose how nervous I was to be standing so close to him—wearing little more than my underwear, no less.

“You looked thirsty,” he said, nodding at the glow of perspiration on my pale skin.

“Oh yeah?” I teased after a long, healthy sip. “And just how long have you been watching me?”

The thought of sexy Ryan peering out one of the upstairs windows to gaze at me cleaning the pool, perhaps even thinking the same wicked thoughts I did every time I saw him shirtless, made me clench with delight. Or maybe it was the way he was still gawking at me as if he’d never seen a girl clean the pool in a bikini before. Either way, my skin was practically alive with desire, my hormones in overdrive after more than six months of little to no sexy times.

“Long enough to see you looked thirsty,” he said noncommittally, apparently too cool to reveal just how long “long enough” really was. Either way, I felt flattered, sipping my beer slowly as he joined me with a sip or two of his own.

“Where are you going?” I asked, nodding at his sexy getup. He smelled good, too, a rugged cologne that was equal parts spicy and sweet, like cinnamon mixed with sage. The sleek gray and black outfit set off his chiseled features and natural olive complexion.

He shrugged. “It’s Ladies Night at Le Cirque so I figured I’d try my luck. See what happens… or doesn’t.”

I felt a little jealous, for absolutely no reason. Ryan was nothing to me—not really. We weren’t related by blood, and since he’d moved back into his father’s house, we’d barely said five words to each other. Hell, this was the most we’d said to each other in days! So why did I care where he was going—or who he might end up with at the end of the night?

I chuckled, the cold beer going straight to my hot head. “No luck necessary,” I huffed, setting it down on the end table next to me and going back to work as I mercilessly pushed the pool net along the tiled bottom surface. “Judging from your success all week.”

He blushed, readily and sexily, tossing back the last of his beer. “What can I say?” he teased, meeting my eyes with a salacious glee. “I’m just making up for lost time. Five years in the desert can make a guy pretty horny, you know?”

I blushed and continued dragging my skimmer along the bottom of the pool, feeling pretty horny myself as I felt Ryan’s eyes follow my every move. “I wouldn’t know,” I said, turning my back to him so he wouldn’t see the color rising to my face.

“You would if you could see what I’m seeing right now,” he said, pointedly, and I figured that’d be it. He’d toss off his little tease and then turn tail and run. But not Ryan.

I turned, one hand on the long blue pole of my skimmer and the other on my hip. “Are you… talking about me?” I chirped, figuring he was teasing me.

“Sure,” he said, setting his empty beer down on the table next to mine. “Why not?”

“Because…” I began, rolling my eyes. “It’s weird, that’s all.”

“What?” he pressed, inching closer so that his every move sent over a waft of his sexy-spicy cologne. “Weird that I lucked into a hot stepsister? Weird that I noticed? Or weird that I’m saying something about it?”

“Uh, all the above,” I said even though my brain was screaming, like a sixteen-year-old girl who’d just been noticed by the captain of the football team. “He thinks I’m hot! He thinks I’m hot!”

He shrugged. “Have you ever dated a soldier before?” he asked, switching subjects —or so I thought. I shook my head. “Well, we’re very direct. We know what we want, and we’re not afraid to get it. I’m sorry if I’m being blunt, but I’m simply making an observation.”

I nodded, biting my lower lip as I tried to process the flood of new information Ryan was feeding me—all in machine gun style. “I… I’m sorry if I’ve made you feel uncomfortable,” he said, reaching out a hand to touch my forearm and then, at the last minute, pulling it back. “That,” he said, hesitantly, as I looked up to see him walking away, “was the opposite of my intentions.”

“What were your intentions?” I challenged him, clinging tightly to the pool skimmer handle. “When you came out here, I mean?”

He turned, halfway across the pool deck, heading back toward the still open slider and the living room just beyond. “I’m not sure,” he said, as if his blunt speech had scared even himself. “I guess… I guess I just wanted to offer my hot ass stepsister a beer!”

This time Ryan did turn around, leaving me to ponder his gesture, his intentions and his fine, fine ass as he retreated deeper into the house until I could no longer see him. Which was a good thing, I supposed, since he could no longer see me and the hot, red blush that must have flashed across my face during the entire conversation.

Chapter Six

“You can’t sleep, either?”

Ryan stands in my open doorway, bare skin aglow in the dim light from the hall behind him. He’s right, of course; I can’t sleep. Not even a little. Not after our little exchange by the pool. Not after he told me he thought I looked hot. And definitely
not
with a sexy stepbrother sleeping half-naked right across the hall, hard and buff and restless in the middle of the night.

But how the hell did
he
know that?

“You either?” I croak hoarsely, sitting up in bed and tugging the top sheet higher to cover the thin, cotton night shirt I wear to bed every night. It was never a problem before, my nightshirt. That was before Ryan moved in, making everything a problem, including what I wore to bed.