The Stepbrother Bargain (Book 1) (3 page)

***

“Oh, hell no,” I said five minutes later
when we walked into his room.
 
The
room itself was gorgeous – all shiny and new and modern, with abstract
paintings on the walls, crisp white bedding, and a full bar in the corner.
  
But there was only one bed.
 
“There’s only one bed.”

“So?”

“So that’s weird,” I said.
 
“Sleeping in bed with you.”

“Why?” he asked, setting our bags down on
the floor.
 
He grinned at me.
 
“Are you afraid of what might happen?”

“No,” I said, rolling my eyes.
 
But the truth was
,
I
was
afraid of what might
happen.
 
He was my
stepbrother.
 
My
older, domineering, jerky stepbrother.
 
The thought of sleeping in bed with him flooded me with
desire and fear.

“Good.
 
He glanced at his watch.
 
“We’re going to have to hurry if we want to be downstairs in
time.
 
Do you mind if I shower
first?”

“Whatever,” I said.
 
I sat down on the bed and picked up the
remote, turning on the TV and flipping to a Sex and the City rerun.
 
Cage disappeared into the bathroom, and
a second later I heard the water running.
 

I leaned back into the pillows and tried
to calm my racing heart.

Cage couldn’t possibly expect us to sleep
in the same bed, could he?
 

I
would have fucked the shit out of you.

His words echoed through my mind, and I
couldn’t help but imagining him
do
just that, his cock
hard and thick as he slid into my pussy.
 
My whole body started tingling, and an ache began pulsing between my
legs.

I wiggled around on the bed, trying to
get it to go away.

But it wouldn’t.

All I could think about was
him
.
 

I
would have fucked the shit out of you.

Is that what would happen if we slept in
the same bed?
 
I hated that he was
in my head already, messing with me.
 
And he
had
to be messing with
me.
 
He’d never shown me any kind
of interest or attention when we were growing up.

Of course, I was quiet then.
 
Bookish.
 
My hair had been lanky and brown, before my new neighbor
Brynn had given me blonde highlights while practicing for her cosmetology
license.
 
I’d been thirty or forty
pounds heavier, probably because I stress ate from living in a house where I
knew my stepmother hated me.

I hated Cage for leaving me.

Hated that I’d always been in love with
him, and he’d treated me like an annoying little sister.

Hated that now he was back here, having this
effect on my body, my thoughts, my emotions, and there was nothing I could do
about it.
 
It was like every time I
was around him, I was helpless.

I
would have fucked the shit out of you.

I imagined him sliding inside of me, his
body on top of mine, his weight pushing into me as he moved in a rhythm, his
hips bucking.
 
What would it feel
like to fuck my stepbrother, to have his dick inside of me, to feel him come?
 

I’d never had sex before.

I was a twenty-one-year-old virgin.
 
I wasn’t waiting for marriage or
anything like that –it was just that I’d waited so long that now I felt
like it would be stupid to just give it away randomly.
 

Although sometimes I was tempted.

Sometimes I was so horny, my pussy so wet
that I wanted to fuck, wanted to feel a dick inside of me.
  
Like right now.

I
laid
back on
the bed, making sure I could still hear the shower running.
 
As long as the water was still going, I
was safe.

I unbuttoned my shorts and slid my hand
into my panties, gasping as my fingers found my clit – I was wet.
 
Wetter than I could ever remember
being.

My fingers moved in a circular motion,
and I thought about Cage, his breath hot on my neck.

I
would fuck the shit out of you.

The bathroom door opened.

I pulled my hand out of my panties quickly
and buttoned my pants, my face flaming.

Cage came into view, wearing nothing but
a towel around his waist.
 
I tried
not to stare as he crossed the room.
 
It wasn’t as if I’d never seen Cage without a shirt on before–
we’d grown up together, after all.
 
That day he was playing basketball was just one of the times I’d had a
chance to see him shirtless.
 
There’d been trips to the beach, days by the
pool,
times he’d just been lounging around the house in the summer.

But those times, even though he was devastatingly
handsome, he’d still been a boy.

And now, Cage was a man.
 

His body glistened with water, his skin
sleek and taut.
 
The planes of his
chest were smooth and defined, his abs a perfect six-pack of ripples that
seemed to have been chiseled out of stone.
 
His shoulders were cut and broad, his biceps hard and
muscular.

A line of hair started at his belly
button and disappeared under his towel.
 
I imagined my hand following it down, and I started to feel
breathless.
 

“I left the water on for you,” he
said.
 
“So it wouldn’t get cold.”

“Thanks.”

I got off the bed and walked by him into
the shower, trying to calm myself down.
 
There was no way I needed to get all worked up over Cage Croft.
 
Not again.
 
He’d already broken my heart once when he left our family
and never came back.

I didn’t need it broken all over again.

***

Thirty minutes later, I was ready for the
rehearsal dinner, and already regretting my choice of outfit.

I’d picked out a black cocktail dress
from Macy’s, springing for the one that was a hundred dollars because I was
determined to wear the right thing, but now it seemed a little too revealing
and not sophisticated enough for a rehearsal dinner.
 
All of my parents’ friends would be there tonight, stuffy,
self-important people who would ask me what I’d been up to.

They would expect me to be doing
something amazing with my life.

When really, I hadn’t done anything.
 
I was twenty-one, and I’d only
completed one year of college.
 
I
had a crappy job at a publishing
company which
sounded
important until you realized I was only an assistant.
 
And not the kind of assistant that got to do cool things like
find manuscripts to publish.

First of all, my company didn’t find
manuscripts.
 
They published textbooks,
finding academics to write books on subjects they’d already come up with.
 
And even if they
had
solicited manuscripts from writers, it wouldn’t have been my
job to look through them.

My title may have been
assistant
,
but I was more of a glorified receptionist.
 
I answered phones, got coffee, sent out packages… I
suspected the only reason they’d slapped the assistant label on me was so they
could justify making me do whatever they wanted.

I sighed and was about to head back out
into the room when I heard Cage’s voice through the bathroom door.

He must have been on the phone.

“No,” he said.
 
“No, I’m not going to tell anyone.
 
They’ll put the pressure on.
 
No, I’m not sure they were following me… Of course they know
where I am, they always know where I am…. ”

He must have started pacing around, because
his voice began fading in and out, allowing me to hear only snatches of the
conversation.

I stayed in the bathroom, not wanting to
intrude.

But a couple minute later, Cage knocked
on the door.
 
“You almost ready?”
he barked.

“Yes,” I said, giving my lips one more
swipe of pink gloss.

I opened the door.

Cage stood there, wearing a suit –
dark grey, with a crisp blue shirt and grey tie.
 
His hair was still damp from the shower, but instead of
making him look messy, it only made him look fresh and put together.
 

He was so beautiful he took my breath
away.
 
I wondered what it would be
like to go through life like that – being so good-looking that people
would just stop and stare.

His eyes raked up my body, taking in my
full hips, my breasts, my legs.

His gaze both turned me on and made me
feel uncomfortably exposed at the same time.
 

Then his phone beeped with a text, and a
shadow moved over his face as he read it.
 

“Is everything okay?” I asked gently.

“It’s fine,” he said, sliding his phone
into the inside pocket of his jacket.
 
“Just paparazzi.”

“Oh.”
 

But something about the way he sounded
led me to believe it was more than that.
 
Whatever it was, his mood had darkened considerably.

He pushed past me to the door of the room
and opened it, then motioned me to walk into through into the hallway.

I hesitated, not sure how I felt about
the two of us going down to the rehearsal dinner together.
 
It seemed more of a boyfriend/girlfriend
thing to do than a stepbrother/stepsister thing.

Stop.
 
You’re just being silly.

You’re
letting him in your head again.

I took a deep breath and followed Cage
out of the room.

We waited for the elevator in silence,
Cage tapping his foot impatiently.

As soon as the doors opened and the car
had started its descent, he pushed the button to stop the car, and it lodged
between the third and fourth floors, stopping with a sharp grinding sound and a
lurch that made my stomach drop.

“What are you doing?” I demanded,
reaching over to hit the release.
 
But Cage grabbed me, his hand tightening around my forearm.

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?” I asked, trying
to wrench out of his grasp.

But he held me firmly and pushed his body
up against mine, so that my back was pinned against the side of the car.
 
His eyes burned with lust, the frustration
that had been there replaced with a look that was almost crazed. One hand was
on my waist, and the fingers of his other brushed over my cleavage.
 
“You are driving me crazy,” he
said.
 
“Do you know how fucking hot
you look in this dress?”

Longing filled my body, the result of
years of pent-up desire for him.
 
But I knew why he was doing this now, had seen it play out a million
times before.
 
Whenever Cage got
upset or frustrated, he’d bury his sorrows in some poor girl.
 
He’d have sex with her or take her out
and hook up with her, then discard her as soon as he’d worked out whatever was
bothering him.

And I refused to be his distraction.

But my body involuntarily responded to
his, blushing under his touch.

His lips were millimeters from mine, and
I longed for him to kiss me.

His hands moved to the back of my dress,
pushed it up until he was touching my bare ass.
 
I’d let the saleswoman talk me into buying a thong to go
with my dress, and so my cheeks were exposed, giving Cage full access to my
bare skin.

I sucked in a breath.
 
“Cage…” I said.
 
“I can’t….”

“You can’t what, little sister?” he
asked, his mouth settling into that cocky grin I knew so well.
“We can’t do this,” I said.
 
“It’s
not right.”

“That’s what makes it fun,” he
breathed.
 
“Come on, Grace, don’t
you want to be a bad girl for once?”

I felt my resolve melting.
 
My mind was screaming at me to push him
off, that he was bad, that I should hate him.
 
He’d left me, gone and made a life for himself in New
York.
 
He’d never offered to help
me, never even been in touch.