RICH BOY BRIT (A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance) (8 page)

“Let’s go!” he laughed.

“You said it!” Annabelle giggled. “Let’s go and get hitched!”

Eli stared out the window as Dad pulled away from the house. I watched him for a few seconds from under my fringe. He looked handsome in his suit. I could almost trick myself into thinking that he was my prom date, and he and I would end this night with romance. But this wasn’t our day, it was Dad and Annabelle’s, and so I turned away from him and gazed out my side of the window, watching the highway speed by at seventy miles-per-hour.

When we arrived at the ceremony hall—a large function hall built on the outskirts of a hotel—Eli climbed silently from the car. I climbed out, too, and then Dad whisked Annabelle into his arms, laughing all the while, and jogged off toward the entrance, leaving me and Eli alone for a few precious seconds.

“Eli,” I said, and even as I said it I knew I should go along with the performance, should follow Dad, but I needed to know. The question would hound me otherwise.

He turned and raised his eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“Are you mad at me?”

“No,” he said, and stepped forward. He cast a quick glance toward the hall. Dad had set Annabelle down now and was kissing her over and over on the lips, both of them giggling manically like young lovers, and looking the other way, away from us. Eli leaned in and, before I could do anything (or maybe I purposefully didn’t do anything, maybe I wanted it), kissed me on the cheek. It was a quick kiss, but left a warm impression on my skin.

“I’m not mad,” he went on, “because I know you’ll make the right choice.”

Eli

Watching them get married was like playing tug of war within my own chest. On one side of the rope, there was the part of me that couldn’t believe how happy Mom was, knew she deserved it, and was happy for her. She was normally content, but never this euphoric. Her relationship with Andrew had allowed her to reach new heights of happiness. On the other side was the dread and the guilt, knowing that by doing this they were unknowingly changing the relationship of me and Jessica. But then . . . what sort of relationship was there, really? I had told her she’d do the right thing. That seemed like the extent of it.

“I do.”

I didn’t know whether to smile or scream. In the end, I followed Jessica’s lead and smiled widely.

“I do.”

My smile grew wider, so that when Mom looked at me she saw her smiling son, and not a man who had mixed feelings about what had just happened. I turned to Jessica, trying to make eye contact with her. She’d shown me her panties, and,
damn
, I wanted her again, badly. I wanted her so badly I could’ve taken her in the church. I seriously think if she’d turned to me in that moment and kissed me, I would’ve kissed her back, even with Mom and Andrew there. But of course she didn’t. She was too anxious for that. She was probably glad just to get through the ceremony without incident.

I turned back to the happy couple and returned their smiles. The three friends Mom had invited—all artsy, hippie types with colorful clothes and long hair and a live-free-and-peacefully vibe about them—clapped and sang softly. Jessica clapped, too, but I thought there was something forced in her clapping. It was too eager. It was disproportionate. It was like the clapping of a person who
really
wants to convince you they’re happy.

The photographer (who up to this point had stayed at the back of the hall) came down the aisle and began snapping pictures of Mom and Andrew as they walked back down the aisle toward the exit. He snapped picture after picture, and Mom’s happiness was like a knife in my chest. I smiled at her, and felt guiltier than I had known because she didn’t know. She didn’t know that the man and woman clapping for her from opposite sides of the aisle (Jessica looking very lonely) had betrayed her.

Finally, the couple was out of the door. The five of us—me, Jessica, and the three hippies—followed them out. They stood next to a Mercedes with the words ‘Bride & Groom’ on the back window. Mom ran over to me as I left the building,
bounced
over, really. She never seemed to simply move anywhere anymore. Her happiness infused her steps. She jaunted, she pranced, she bounced, she danced, she rushed. She was always moving faster and more purposefully than she had before she knew Andrew.

“I have some news!” she exclaimed.

“News?” I asked, keeping my voice impassive. I had no clue what this was. A slight tingle moved up my spine, telling me it might be bad news, telling me it might involve never seeing Jessica again. But that was just foolish speculation. Mom leaned forward, placing her hands on my shoulders. “We’re going to Malta for a week.”

“Malta!” I gasped.

“Malta!” she agreed, taking her hands from my shoulders and clapping them together. Behind her, I could see Jessica being told the same thing by Andrew, and behind them, near the car, I could see the three hippies carrying suitcases to the car. They must have planned this in secret, I guess. They knew we could take care of ourselves. Both of us had been to college, had lived alone.

“I’m—” I stopped. The tingle in my spine disappeared. It was replaced with warmth rising in my chest. Jessica
smiled
for a second when Andrew told her, smiled and looked in my direction. She smiled at me, and then quickly turned away. It all happened in less than a second, but I saw it. She was thinking what I was thinking, then. We’d be alone. She and I would finally be completely alone in the house for an entire week. “I’m happy for you, Mom,” I said. “Really, that’s great news.”

“Thanks, Eli!” she laughed, and kissed me on the cheek. “We’re going right now. Can you take Andrew’s car?” As she said
car
, Andrew moved around the side of her and handed me the keys. I took them numbly, like a man who had just been told he’d won the lottery. This was amazing. This was excellent. Suddenly, the next week was bright and optimistic in my mind. A whole week with Jessica!

“Sure,” I said, spinning the keys on the key-ring. “Why not?”

“Okay.” Andrew nodded. “I think it’s time for us to go, Annabelle.”

“I think it is, too, lover-lover-man!”

I cringed at that.
Lover-lover-man
. Jessica saw me cringing and offered me another smile. I smiled back. When we smiled at each other like that—or looked at each other, communicating silently—I felt as though an invisible rope was thrown around us, a rope that allowed us to share our deepest desires and fears with no need of words. I knew she was happy that we were going to be alone for a week, and I knew that happiness confused her.

But it didn’t confuse me. No, the time for confusion was gone.

I knew what I wanted.

Jessica

I had had no idea that Dad and Annabelle were going to randomly jet off to Malta. Apparently it had all been booked beforehand, though. Dad had said it was a last-minute thing last night. That was fine by me. I realized, as he told me, that a large part of my anxiety about living with Eli came from the necessity of being two people. I was the person Dad and Annabelle saw me as, the loving daughter who was happy for their marriage and looked at Eli like a stepbrother, and I was the person I really was, the wolf in the hotel, the woman who’d fucked a man she did not know. Yes, it was out of character, but since then when I’d thought of it, that woman had seemed much more
me
than this fake-smiling one.

I said goodbye to Dad and Annabelle with a smile and a wave, and climbed into the car beside my stepbrother. My
stepbrother!
It was official now. Dad and Annabelle were wearing their wedding rings, they had signed the marriage certificate, Annabelle had thrown the bouquet (Hippie No. Three had caught it) and they were jetting off to their honeymoon. There was no way to deny that the feelings I had for him right now, as he started the car (my inner-thighs hot and tingly, my mouth dry, my lips aching to be kissed, my eyes straying to his pants, my hands hungry to reach across and touch him), were wrong. They had to be wrong—he was my stepbrother.

But they didn’t
feel
as wrong as they had when Dad and Annabelle were here. “Are you ready?” Eli asked, hand on the wheel, engine rumbling.

“I’m ready,” I said.

I think we both knew that meant more than it did. He smiled at me knowingly, and I smiled back. He looked down at my breasts, and I let him. I didn’t fake smile. I real smiled. And I looked at his strong, tattooed hand on the steering wheel and imagined how it would feel on my body, touching me, pleasuring me, making me hot as hell and ready to come over and over.

Eli drove through the city quickly, not breaking the speed limits, but always on the edge of breaking the limits. He was in a rush to get home, it seemed, and I thought I knew why. He wanted to take me. Dad and Annabelle were gone, and he saw this as his opportunity to make something happen. I could have judged him for that. He was, technically, taking advantage of the situation. But I couldn’t ignore my body, and my body wanted him. My pussy heated up, my clit almost burning, and phantom hands moved up and down my thigh. My nipples were so hard now that when I looked down I could see they were poking through my bra. And I was calm. That was the craziest part, for me. I was
calm
. I was hot as hell and I was calm at the same time.

I felt like the wolf again.

Eli climbed out of the car and together we walked toward the house. It was strange not to hear Annabelle’s loved-up squeals or Dad’s teenager-like guffaws when we approached the house. A silence fell upon it, and that combined with the gates and the high hedges made me feel as though this was a secret place for me and Eli. This place was just ours, so I could trick myself. There was no judgment here. There was no
wrong
here. There was only us.

When we walked into the house, I was afraid for a moment that I had imagined it all. I had been getting hornier and hornier by the second, just from looking at him, and looking inwards and remembering the night, that personality-changing night when I’d shed Jessica and become the wolf. Eli didn’t turn and kiss me; he didn’t pick me up and carry me away. He walked, silently, toward my bedroom.

I watched him leave, and then, when he was almost around the corner, he said: “Follow me.”

His tone was implacable. I couldn’t ignore it. It was the tone of a man who expects to be obeyed. I was so horny at this point (I could feel the dampness in my panties) that I would have agreed to anything. I followed him to my bedroom, and gasped at what I saw. He’d picked up one of my belts and held it by his side, staring at me calmly with his earth-brown eyes.

“Bend over,” he said, in that same tone.

I had never been into this stuff. Some of my roommates back home were, but I never had. But when he said it, my sexual taste shifted. The idea of being spanked by some random frat guy back home didn’t appeal to me much. It made me feel cold and uninterested. But when I saw Eli with his dagger-tattooed hand grasping the buckle of the belt, the thin leather dangling by his side, my body told me all I needed to know. Wet, aching, my pussy
urging
me to do as he said, I walked forward, stood opposite him, and then turned around and bent over. I lifted my dress up to my lower back, baring my ass cheeks.

This is my stepbrother
, a part of my thought.
This is my stepbrother
. Our parents were just married. What we are doing is wrong. But it didn’t feel wrong. When he trailed his fingertips along my ass cheeks with his free hand, when he came close to my pussy and then skirted away, when he clamped his hand down on my clit and I gasped and moaned and writhed against him, it didn’t feel wrong at all.

“Ask to be spanked,” he said. “Ask me to do it.”

My heartbeat in my ears (but not with anxiety, not now), I said: “Spank me, Eli.”

Jessica

I knew it was wrong. I truly did. I could almost see Dad’s judgmental face, could hear Annabelle’s tears. But there was a war in my chest in that moment. There was the side of me that didn’t want to hurt Dad or Annabelle, and there was the side of me that felt Eli’s dagger-marked hand on my ass, that felt him push aside my underwear, that felt his fingers trail along my lips. He moved one finger down, toward my clit, and brushed it lightly. And this was the side I would listen to, I knew. This was the side I couldn’t ignore. They were in Malta, they were far away; Eli was here, his strong hands on me, compelling me.

He pulled his hand back, and I heard more than felt the spank.
Thwack!
The noise was violent, skin-on-skin, and then, delayed, I felt the impression his hand had left on my ass. It hurt, but there was pleasure in the pain. I bit my lip. My anxiety, before so forceful, had frittered away. I was done with that, I decided. I was done living in a prison of nerves and second-guessing. When I was with Eli (I thought frantically, awaiting the next spanking) I would be changed.

He spanked me again, jolting my body forward, and I let out a moan. “Fuck, Eli,” I moaned. “Yeah, fuck,
fuck
.”

“You want my cock,” he said calmly, in that in-charge voice which made me hot as hell. “Tell me.”

“I want your cock,” I moaned. I didn’t have to force the words. I didn’t have to pretend. I really did want his cock, right there, inside of me. I wanted him to pound me like he had pounded me the night when I was the wolf and he was the lion. I had felt something that night, as much in my own head as in the crushing of our bodies, and I wanted to recapture that feeling. I had felt somehow
freer
than I normally did. “I want it
now
, Eli,” I moaned, louder.