The Stepbrother Bargain (Book 1) (5 page)

He looked surprised to see me for a
second, but the thing I was most expecting to see on his face – pity for
overhearing my whole entire family basically trash me -- never came.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hey.”

He sighed and rubbed his hand over the
back of his neck.
 
“Let’s get out
of here.”

“What?”

“Let’s leave.”

“You mean, like… leave the hotel?”

“Yes.”

“And not go to the rehearsal dinner?”

“Yes.”

“We can’t.”

“Why not?”
 
Cage challenged.
 
He shook his head.
 
“They
don’t give a shit that we’re here, Grace.
 
They want to show me off as a prop, as proof that they were somehow good
parents because I’m successful.
 
And they won’t even let you stay in their house.
 
They don’t care about celebrating their
love, or whatever other bullshit they’re trying to shovel at us.
 
All my mom cares about is impressing
her friends, and all your dad cares about is keeping the peace.”

“But it’s their wedding.”
 
Even though I knew he was right,
leaving their rehearsal dinner seemed like a strong statement, one we couldn’t
take back.

“I’m leaving.”
 
He shrugged, like the choice was easy.
 
And maybe for him, it was.
 
He had everything
 
-- money, a career, a life in New York
and LA, away from all these people and all the memories that had been created
in this town.
 
Me, I had
nothing.
 
A
crappy dead-end job.
 
Half of an associate’s degree.
 
And no family except my dad and Renee.

And
Cage
, a voice whispered
in my head.

He’s
your family now, too.
 

But of course, he wasn’t.

Family didn’t leave you with nothing and
not speak to you for years.
 
Family didn’t not show up when your mom died.
 
Family didn’t act like you didn’t exist.

I hesitated.

Don’t
you want to do something bad for once?

I
would have fucked the shit out of you.

“Okay,” I said finally.
 
“Let’s get out of here.”

**

Ten minutes later we were in Cage’s car,
heading away from the hotel.

Cage held onto the steering wheel
tightly, guiding the car over the twisting and turning hills of the back roads
that wound through Clifton.

We drove in silence.
 
I wasn’t sure where we were going, and
I didn’t want to ask too many questions.
 
I was afraid that if I did he would take me back to the hotel.
 
And as much as I wasn’t sure being with
him was the right thing, I also didn’t want to be away from him.

Cage had only been back in my life for a
couple of hours, and I was already feeling more excited and alive than I had in
months.

A couple of minutes later, Cage pulled into
the front entrance The University of Clifton.
 
He followed the visitor circle around to the back, toward
the athletic center.
 
The campus
was deserted at this time of night, with most kids out at frat parties or in
the library.

“Where are we going?” I asked.
 
“Please tell me you’re not taking me to
a frat party.”
 
If I ‘d wanted to
see Cage get drunk and hit on college girls, I could just close my eyes and
remember what he was like in high school.
 

“I cannot believe you think so little of
me,” he scoffed.
 
But he didn’t
sound like he cared.
 
He almost
sounded like he liked it.

He pulled the car to a stop, swinging it
around and parking in front of the athletic center, which housed all the
gymnasiums and coaches’ offices.
 
It was a large brick building that towered high into the sky.
 
The building and everything near it,
including the parking lot, was shiny and new, right down to the bright strips
of
paint
 
that
delineating the parking spots.

The center had been built with money that
had been donated by some rich alumni the first year after my father had gotten
the school their first national championship.

Cage turned off the car and got out.

I hesitated.

Where were we going?
 
There was nothing going on in the
athletic center at this time of night.
 
The administration would be gone for the day, and even practices would
have ended by now.
 

I stepped out of the car, the smell of
freshly cut grass from the athletic fields hitting my nose.
 

“Where are we going?” I asked Cage as we
walked toward the side door of the building.

“It’s a surprise.”

“I don’t like surprises.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I don’t.”
 
I struggled to catch up with him.
 
His strides were long and loose, casual, and I couldn’t keep
up with him in the shoes I was wearing.

“You’ll like this one.”

“How do you know?”

“Trust me.”

I almost laughed out loud.

When we got to the side of the building,
Cage slipped around the corner so that we were in the back, by the loading
dock.
 
Then he pulled something out
of his pocket.
 

A key.

He inserted it into one of the back doors
of the building, one that was marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

“Where did you get that key?” I asked
him.

“Your dad gave it to me.”

“When?”

“A long time ago.”

“And you still have it?”

He shrugged.
 
“Thought I might need it someday.”

He pushed the door open, and I followed
him inside.

At first, I was disoriented, not knowing
exactly where we were.
 
I knew the
athletic center like the back of my hand—I’d spent countless hours here
with my dad.
 
After my mom died,
I’d set up camp here for two weeks, doing my schoolwork in his office and
having crying jags in the bathroom where no one could hear me.

But I’d always entered the athletic
center through the man door, which is why I didn’t know where we were at
first.
 
Then the scent of chlorine
hit my nose, and I realized we were at the pool.

The lights were off, but the pool was
lit, blue light filtering through the ripples on the surface of the water.

“We’re not supposed to be in here.”

Cage rolled his eyes.
 
“Stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Being uptight.”

I followed him to the bleachers, where we
sat down and stared out at the water.
 
He didn’t say anything for a few moments.
 
He put his head in his hands, rubbing his temples, like
maybe he was starting to get a headache.
 
I wondered if he was staring to have second thoughts about leaving the
rehearsal dinner, about giving our parents such a big fuck you.
 

His leg was pushed up against mine, and
all I could think about was how good it felt being this close to him.

Then, finally, he spoke.

“Truth or dare?”
 
he
asked,
turning to look at me with a wicked grin.

“What?”

“Truth or dare.”

We’d played truth or dare constantly
growing up.
 
We always picked
dare.
 
When we were younger, truths
were stupid – neither of us had any secrets the other one would be
interested in.
 
Cage was an open
book – if I wanted to know what he was doing, all I had to do was listen
to the rumor mill in our neighborhood or at school.
 
And if he even cared about what I was doing – which he
didn’t – he was going to be sorely disappointed, because I pretty much
had nothing going on.
 
Certainly nothing worthy of a juicy truth.

“I’m not playing
tru
—”

“Grace,” he said, his voice steely.
 
“True.
 
Or.
 
Dare.”

“Dare,” I said, the words out of my mouth
before I could stop them.

“I dare you to go swimming with me.”

“I don’t have a bathing suit.”

“Neither do I.”

My heart began thumping in my chest, the
adrenaline pumping through my veins.

I
would have fucked the shit out of you.

But if he wanted to fuck me so badly, then
why hadn’t he done it in the elevator when he’d had the chance?
 
Why had he stopped when he realized I was
a virgin?
 
Why had he been trying
to make it so that I wouldn’t have to stay in his room?

He was obviously toying with me.
 
I
knew
he was toying with me – he loved to tease.
 
I’d seen him once, when our parents were at an away game for
the weekend.
 
I was supposed to be
spending the night with a friend, but I’d forgotten something, and when I came
home, Cage was with a girl.

She was laying on the couch, naked, her
legs spread.
 
Cage’s mouth was on
her pussy, and she was going crazy, begging him to stop teasing her, moaning
loudly about how good it felt, pleading with him to just make her cum.

Cage loved to tease.
 
And he was teasing me right now.

He stood up, grabbed my hand and pulled
me up off the bleachers.
 

He wrapped his arms around my waist, then
tilted his head to the side and looked at me.
 
“You scared?” he breathed.

I shook my head.
 
“No.”

“You sure?”

I nodded, not trusting myself to
speak.
 
The air felt charged with
electricity, crackling and burning bright.
 

Cage brought his mouth to my ear and
whispered
,
“Turn around.”

I turned around, and instantly his hands
were on the back of my neck.
 
Goosebumps broke out on my skin as he gathered my hair up in one hand
and begin unzipping my dress with the other.
 
He did it excruciatingly slowly.

When he was done, he pushed his body into
my back,
then
kissed the back of my neck.
 
My body burst into flames.

“Turn back around. I want to see you.”

I turned back around and he grabbed the
sleeves of my dress, pulling them down slowly until I was naked from the waist
up.
 
I had on a black
demi
push-up bra, the kind of thing that was soft and silky
and made my breasts look proud and firm as they spilled over the top of the
cups.

“Shit, little sister,” he said as he slid
his finger down my cleavage.
 
“When
did you get so fucking sexy?”

No one had ever called me sexy
before.
 
No one had ever looked at
me the way he was looking at me, like I was a present that needed to be
unwrapped, like I was a delicious treat he was planning on consuming.

It made heat flood my body, made me wet
between my legs.
 

He slid his hands down my sides, his
touch searing my skin.
 
He grabbed
my dress and pulled it down over my hips, over my thighs and ankles until it
was a pool on the floor.
 
I stepped
out of it, leaving me in just my bra and thong.

No one had ever seen me this naked, and I
had the urge to cover myself.
 
I’d
always been self-conscious about my body.
 
Yes, I’d lost weight recently, but I was never going to have the kind of
body you saw on magazine covers, or even the kind you could see on random girls
at the gym.
 
I didn’t have the kind
of body Cage was used to seeing on the women he hooked up with, and it made me
want to cover myself.

I went to cross my arms over my chest,
but he pulled them down and pinned them at my sides.
 

“No,” he growled.
 
“I want to look at you.”

He released me and waited a beat, until
he satisfied I wasn’t going to try to cover myself again.