Stepbrother Romance: My Alpha Cowboy Stepbrother (Stepbrother Romance, Taboo, Forbidden, Stepsister, New Adult, Western Romance, Cowboy Romance) (7 page)
Authors: Celia Styles
I remember being nervous as all hell whenever I went out on a date with Alan. Part of it was serious-boyfriend jitters, part of it was the fact that he always chose these swank places and expected me to look the part. Not easy when you came from a house where your mother bought nearly-date-expired milk by the gallon, transferred it to plastic one-liter soda bottles, and froze it because of the dollar difference in the price tag.
But that was Evelyn Goodman. Easton Miles was cool. She did not stress about dates, because she always had her pick of men—and women, apparently. Where Easton was concerned, if a guy didn’t like the way she dressed, then he wasn’t going to like the things she said or what her past was hiding, either.
But a woman—I’d never considered dating women before. I mean, yeah, I was sexually curious in college, and Alan and I watched a good deal of lesbian porn because he believed “in equal treatment of the sexes” or some other bullcrap like that. But although the women I experimented with were open and sweet about sharing their bodies with me, it was clear that they were just doing me a favor, and that they weren’t interested in having a deeper connection. I was, at that time, just starting to date Alan, so my idea of a deeper connection probably wasn’t the most enlightened, either.
“Be Easton,” I told myself, when I got home. I brushed my teeth, let my hair down. I’d bleached it a bit, lightening it a few shades from Evelyn’s and adding highlights. I’d done a good job of it, too—the color looked natural, the hair glamorous. It was getting to that length that I no longer needed the extensions, and fell to my back in a rippling cascade of blondish-brown. I brushed it, spritzed it with some hairspray.
I chose a camisole top, red with lace trim. Black bolero, black pants, black ankle boots with a cantilevered heel. Sensible, yet sexy. Beautiful but not fussy. The look of a woman who knows what she wants and how to get it.
Except I didn’t really know what I wanted with Stella. Did I want a relationship? Or did I just want to have sex with a hot woman who liked me? I remembered the butterflies, and the look in her eyes when she asked. Did she want a relationship, or just hot sex?
“Well, you’re never going to know unless you go find out,” I told my reflection.
I stepped outside and took the first bus in the general direction of the bar. I went inside and Stella immediately waved me over to a corner booth, saying, “I’m so glad you made it! Reese and Katie—” she indicated the couple she was sitting with “—were taking bets on whether you’d show up.”
I was incredibly grateful to Stella that she’d invited other friends along—it would ease the pressure and I wouldn’t have to keep talking about myself. “I’m Easton,” I said, shaking hands. “I’m an artist.”
“Stella said you’re her barista,” Reese said. He was a tall guy, with a young face but completely white sides of his neatly trimmed hair. I wanted to punch him, but Katie made a face at me—a face I’d made for Alan in the past:
sorry, he gets this way when he’s had a few.
I felt bad for her—if Reese was anything nearly as terrible as Alan had been, he was already sleeping around and making her cover for him. I had to actively remind myself that Alan had been exceptionally awful, and as such was not the right man against which to judge all other men.
Stella ordered a pitcher for the table, and we all decided on sliders and onion rings. Reese abstained from another round, though. He seemed to realize that he’d been a jerk, and as the evening wore on he turned out to be a pretty cool guy. “Yep, that’s me, Evil Big Pharma,” he said, laughing. “My company is represented by Stella’s firm. Pre-emptively, of course. We’re not involved in anything scandalous.”
“Yet,” Katie reminded him. Katie was a doctor that Reese had met while doing one of his sales rounds. She was petite, red-haired, with wide eyes that reminded me of a praying mantis. Stella and I had a great time; we ribbed Reese and Katie about getting married, to which Reese firmly said, “Never.”
That put a damper on the evening, until he added, “The ring that could hold the amount of respect and love I have for this woman doesn’t exist.”
We
aww
’d at that. Then Katie called it a night, saying that she had to get up early for grand rounds tomorrow, and Stella and I moved to the still-crowded bar. I noticed a lot of men staring at us—half of them wishing we’d make out, the other half daring us to. We ordered tequila shots.
“So, do you think they’ll actually get married?” I asked Stella.
She smiled mischievously. “Don’t tell Katie, but Reese has already bought the ring.”
The bartender slid over two shot glasses of tequila, with the rims generously crusted in salt. I liked this place—they weren’t skimpy where it counted.
“So, tell me, Easton. Where are you from?”
“New England,” I said. That much was true. “Bad marriage,” I added, before she could ask. “I filed for divorce and signed the papers the moment they came. I didn’t even bother to negotiate alimony. The son of a bitch would’ve just dragged it on forever, and I just had to be free, you know?”
“He let you go, just like that?”
“He was sleeping with the receptionist,” I said, feeling the story grow even as I told it. “He said ‘It was love’ or some other bullcrap like that. And we’d been falling out for quite a while, so, yeah—sign on the dotted line.” I found myself believing it could’ve been like that, too.
“It takes guts to come out into the big city,” Stella said, taking my hand and giving it a friendly squeeze. I let it linger, wondering—hoping? Perhaps—that it would go on. Stella noticed, and she looked at my face, searching for something.
“You’ve never been with a woman before have you?” she asked, softly.
“I had a few wild times in college,” I said, not wanting to sound like a total newbie. “But being with someone—anyone, guy or girl—I want that. I just don’t know if I’m ready for it.”
Stella said, “I’d love to get to know you better, but I’m not going to rush you into things you’re not ready for. I had that kind of boyfriend, too. High school.”
“Did he—did he hurt you?” I asked.
She sighed and shrugged. “Technically it could’ve been statutory rape, but I never pressed to have him charged. I was fifteen, too young and too dumb to say ‘no’ or at least make him wear a condom. Luckily nothing ever came of it. And on the bright side, I discovered that I’m just not into guys.”
I found it hard to believe that she could be so blasé about it. She read my thoughts, and said, “It’s a regret that I rushed into sex, Easton, not a trauma, that’s all. Just like you regret marrying that jackass husband. I don’t want to be anybody’s regret, that’s all I’m saying.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. It was at that moment that I realized that she was the first person in my life who’d ever been willing to wait for me, which I simply hadn’t expected.
She reached out and touched my face. I didn’t exactly flinch, but the same butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling came back. “You’re still afraid,” she said.
“I thought being nervous was normal.”
“Maybe it is for some people,” Stella said. “But the people I want to sleep with have to want it just as much as I do.”
She stood up and handed me a card. Then she kissed me on the cheek and turned to leave, saying, “If you’re still interested, next weekend there’s a thing going on along Kelly Drive. I’ll be there, and we can talk.”
***
I walked home that night, alone, fingering the card that Stella had given me, trying to work out if she was right—was I afraid? It irritated me that I could be afraid. Easton Miles was not afraid. She’d done all sorts of stuff since I made her real. A coward doesn’t show up in a big city with nothing and make something for herself. A coward doesn’t leave her husband.
Maybe she just sensed my uncertainty. I wanted to yell, “But who the hell
is
sure about relationships?” I mean, wasn’t that what they always said—take it slow, get to know the other person, don’t go too quickly or else you’ll regret it?
I asked her these questions the following Monday. “Sure,” Stella replied, “And they’re for people who don’t know what they want. You want someone who muddles through—maybe they’ll fit, maybe they won’t? Well, go right ahead. I want you, babe.”
“But we hardly know each other—“ I gasped. “I could be a psychopath or really bad in bed and—“
Stella smiled. “I know. I also know that you always have my coffee ready when I walk in with my name done differently every time—“
“I do that for a lot of regulars,” I protested.
“Maybe, but you don’t smile like that for them, do you?”
“Smile like how?”
Stella grinned and walked out the door.
I turned to Jim, the guy who worked with me in the afternoons. He was twenty-two, splitting his time between the coffee shop and running mail as a bike messenger, while going to night school for graphic design. He was also twenty-two, and very much into women—and if anybody would know what Stella was talking about, it would be him. “Do you know what she’s talking about?” I demanded.
Jim put his hands up. “Whoa there. I’m not getting in the middle of this.”
“Come on, Jim. Just tell me.”
He just shook his head and grinned at me. “Easton, babe, I love you and all, but Stella’s right—you get this—” he put his hands on either side of his head and extended his arms, preacher-style. “She walks in and you go from ‘whew, survived another shift’ to ‘I can run another fucking marathon’.”
“So you don’t think she’s right?”
Jim rolled his eyes and began rearranging the baked treats. “I’m twenty-two, damn it. I’ve had exactly one girlfriend in my entire life and that ended after she met my brother. I don’t know how these things are
supposed
to work. Some people say that you need to wait and see. Some people say you’ll know when you know.”
“And what do you think?”
“Fuck, they never told me being Dr. Phil was part of this job.”
And it was probably for the better that customers began walking in the store at that point. Jim had a point, after all—nobody knows shit when they’re twenty-two. The truly smart ones know it.
***
By the end of the week I was going absolutely crazy. Between the head games Stella was playing—being cute and coy whenever she showed for coffee—and the bodily
need
for sex that she evoked, I almost didn’t go to the “thing” on Saturday. Despite the gorgeous weather, I spent the better part of the morning curled up under the sheets, trying to talk myself out of it, out of seeing Stella again, ever—after all, it wasn’t like that was the only coffee shop in town, and I was pretty sure I could do some street art to make the rent in between. Better to start over new, than to be blackmailed into a relationship I didn’t really know if I wanted.
Except that I
really
liked Stella, and we
really
did click. And as I remembered the hand squeezes that lingered just a little too long, the way she touched my face, the slyly suggestive gestures she always made when saying “good-bye” in the shop, I realized that would miss them, even more than I missed having my own studio to paint in. I would sob like baby if I cut her out of my life.
In the end I flipped a coin: heads I would go, tails I would stay. It was heads. I put on a tank top, denim jacket, a peasant skirt, and a pair of cowboy boots. It was totally mismatched in a fortunately-cute way, but I couldn’t afford to be overly picky because I hadn’t done laundry all week.
I went to the Art Museum, high-fived Rocky Balboa, and walked into one of the biggest Pride parties I’d ever seen. The historic boathouses on Boathouse Row were festooned with rainbow streamers and balloons, and people wearing nothing but body-paint and glitter were sprawled all over the grassy banks of the Schuylkill.
“There you are,” Stella said. I jumped. I hadn’t seen her come up to me.
“What is this?” I asked. “I thought Gay Pride was on South Street.”
“It usually is,” Stella said. “But two days ago a giant sinkhole opened up right in the middle of the parade route. The universities let the Gay Pride people do it here.”
She led me to a towel, where she’d left her bag to stake it. “C’mon, sit down,” she said. “I promise, I don’t bite.”
I followed her, smoothing down the billowy skirt as it ballooned around me on my way down. Stella put her sunglasses on and stretched out. “The weather is fantastic,” she said.
Is this how it all begins?
I wondered.
An innocent comment on the weather—
A topless lesbian couple walked by. I blinked, amazed that they could do this here.
“Hey babe, what’s on your mind?” Stella asked. She followed my eyes and laughed. “Yeah, they’re hard-core. You get used to it. And penis puppets.”
“A what—never mind….” As an elephant and Darth Vader walked by.
Stella took my hand, and gave it a squeeze. “If you ever want to leave, just let me know. We don’t have to be here.”
“No,” I breathed. “I want to be here. It makes me feel—safer, somehow.” For all the weirdness and nudity that was around us, it wasn’t a threatening space, and the vibe, unlike last week at the bar, was entirely ‘You do your thing, we’ll do ours.’
“Good,” Stella said. “I know it’s not everybody’s scene—but I figured that, if you saw a whole bunch of lesbians making out, you’d realize that it’s okay to have urges and desires, too.”
“I know that,” I said. “I read
Our Bodies
, too.”
“Yeah, but it’s one thing to know it here,” she said, tapping my forehead, “and another to know it—there,” she said, pointing to my chest. “You’re still nervous.”
“I know,” I said. “I just—I don’t want to lose you. You’re the first person I’ve met who’s genuinely liked me and wants me and I really like you I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do—” my rambling got cut off when Stella laughed.
“You don’t need to do anything,” she said. “Just
be
.”
Be Easton
. And Easton was
ready
to fuck in the grass. But Evelyn wasn’t quite so sure.
Stella had taken my hand again, and now she was kneading the fleshy part of my thumb with hers, tracing gentle but firm circles in her hand. “Stop thinking,” she said. “You’re overanalyzing things. Do you like this?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you like this?” Stella asked, getting up and moving behind me. Presently I felt her hands on my shoulders, pressing deep and hard into the muscles there. I felt my whole body relax, and then, after a while, I realized that my mind was quiet. I wasn’t nervous anymore. This felt good. This felt right.
“Let me take off your jacket,” Stella said, reaching around me and undoing the buttons. As she peeled it off my shoulders her hand grazed my breast, and I hoped—wanted—her to hold me, touch me. She brushed her fingers against my nipples as she resumed the massage—a gesture just erotic enough to stoke the first flames of “fuck me now” desire, and just innocent enough to pass for not trying. “It’s easier to get a feel for what I’m doing,” she said, as she kneaded the muscles in my shoulders. But now, with her hands against my bare skin, her touch took on another dimension—she was responding to me, her hands going where I opened up to her.
I tilted my head to one side, inviting her to knead the muscles of my neck. She did that with one hand, and then with the other tilted my head skyward and kissed me. Her lips tasted of strawberries, and felt just as soft and luscious, deliciously warm and tantalizingly responsive. I could sense her desire in the way she sought out my tongue, even as I fought for hers.
Then she lay down next to me, her breasts soft and warm against mine. We were still kissing each other, lying on her towel in the warm sun. My hand landed on her breast, and she made no effort to remove it, so I tentatively began to squeeze it. Through the fabric of her clothes I felt her nipple harden, and when I brushed it with my thumb we both gasped. It was a moment of beauty and realization for me—that I, too, could make her body do all of these things, and that she was going to let me.
And then two rainbows walked by, and one of them said, “Gorgeous.”
I jerked back, startled that anybody would comment on us here. Just when I was starting to feel comfortable, too.
“Sorry,” said the first rainbow. He was done in patches of body paint, all over his (perfectly sculpted) torso and face. The jeans he wore had been painted to match. “It’s just that the two of you make a gorgeous couple. I’m Zach, by the way. He’s Deke.”
“Yeah, well, you guys fucking killed the mood,” Stella shot back, annoyed. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been wanting to kiss this foxy lady?”
Deke, who was painted in broad stripes of color, said, “We could help you get it back,” he said, smiling mischievously. Because his face was painted red, it was a very odd look.
“I don’t think so,” Stella said. “Easton is mine.”
“Ooh, territorial. What do you say, Deke? Up for a challenge?”
Stella seemed unfazed by this turn in the conversation, but I couldn’t handle it anymore. “I’m not some prize to be won! I’m here on a date and—“
“Easton,” Stella said calmly. “Relax.”
“What’s up with her?” asked Zach.
“First time kissing a girl,” Stella said.
“And at Pride, too,” Zach finished. He whistled. “You are one incredible fox, Easton.”
“She’s new to the whole idea of sex for pleasure,” Stella added.
“I’ll say,” murmured Deke. I shot him a scowl. Zach elbowed Deke.
“Well,” said Zach, “what would you all say to showing the lady a good time?”
“A—what’s going on? I thought you guys were gay. Gay guys don’t do women,” I blurted out.
“We’re with each other because we happen to love each other,” Deke said, “but we’re, um, what’s the word again—pansexual? Transsexual?” He glanced at Zach, who shook his head, violently. “Well, whatever. We’ll do anything with a pulse that can give consent. But we prefer to make love to the beautiful ones.”
Stella was getting a feral look in her eye. “C’mon, Easton,” she whispered. “What d’ya say? Getting done by two hot men and me at the same time—it’s practically a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
I looked from one rainbow to another, and back to Stella. It had literally never occurred to me that it was possible to have sex with so many people at one time.
It had never occurred to me that I would feel turned on by the thought.
“All right,” I said. “But not here.”
***
We ended up in the Ritz Carlton hotel—not the penthouse suite, alas (that had been booked) but after looking through the amenities on offer we decided that the honeymoon suite was big enough. First Zach and Deke showered to wash off their body paint. Stella, in the meantime, ran the hot tub and set up the video—on the way to the Ritz we learned that they were merely passing through Philly when they chanced upon the Pride party, and they said they wanted to have the video as a little keepsake. “We’ll send you the edited version,” they promised. So we were propping up phones and video cameras.
