RICH BOY BRIT (A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance)(12)

I could’ve convinced myself of this, could’ve tricked myself into really believing it, if the memory of that night didn’t make my pussy ache so hard, didn’t make my clit yearn to be touched, didn’t make my nipples hard. Flesh, writhing, moaning, white-hot pleasure . . . all of them burnt in my mind like the trail of a comet, blazing through my consciousness, distracting when I wanted to focus, titillating when I wanted to calm. I remembered the feel of his rock-hard cock in my hand, and the way it had slid into me, hot and huge, stretching me.

I rubbed my eyes with my thumbs, rubbing away the images, blurring them. Dad had left the room, his footsteps receding on the hardwood floor. Now the footsteps returned. He poked his head around the edge of the doorframe. “You coming?” he said.

I nodded, perhaps a little overenthusiastically. “I’ll be there in a second,” I said.

Perhaps he would creep into my bedroom after we turned out the lights, perhaps he would lift my covers and climb in with me—

“Jess!” Dad called.

“Coming!” I called back, pacing from the room.





Eli



From my bed I had a clear view of the sky. My window opened out upon the wide-open night, and I laid there for around half an hour without even trying to sleep, just watching the stars. But I wasn’t just doing that at all. My eyes were watching the stars, but I wasn’t really seeing them. I was going over and over the last two days in my mind. It turned out that Andrew had strongly hinted to Mom that he was going to propose, and had intimated that he had bought a house for them. I learned about this from Mom, who woke me that morning with a smiling face.

“I knew he’d do it,” she’d said, before I even had a chance to rub sleep from my eyes. I’d risen in bed and watched as she paced up and down the room, excitement causing her to turn around every couple of seconds. “I just knew he would. I knew it. He’s such an amazing man. He told me on the web chat, pretty much. He basically said he was going to propose. And, do you know what? He’d already bought the house!”

I agreed that this was amazing. Her laughing, smiling face wouldn’t accept any less. Now, two days after I’d known daughter or father, I laid awake and pictured Jessica’s face. When we were moving furniture in earlier, positioning it after the delivers had brought it in, I thought I’d seen some freckles on her cheeks. They were light-colored, almost the color of her pale skin, but they were there. I thought about what it would be like to kiss those freckles. I hadn’t had that chance—before. Before, I hadn’t had the chance to kiss her at all. The masks hadn’t allowed for that.

I sighed and sat up in bed, my body aching from my workout earlier (nothing fancy, just some free weights I’d had since I was fifteen). The hardwood floor was cold, though it was a warm night. I padded across the room and opened the windows. Warm air filtered in, and the smell of fresh-cut grass made me think of Jessica, of that night.

I knew I wouldn’t get much sleep for a while. It was one am, and I was wide awake. I had gone past sleep, the way you do sometimes when you’re dog-tired one second and bright and ready for the morning the next. I walked back across the room and opened the bedroom door to the hallway. I had the upstairs bedroom two doors down from Mom’s and Andrew’s. I crept quietly, not knowing if anybody was awake, not in the mood to smile and laugh with Andrew and Mom, and padded down the stairs.

I was about to turn on the kitchen light when a sound came from the corner. “Huh!” somebody cried.

I jumped back, my finger grazing the switch as I did so, and cool yellow light filled the room. Jessica sat near the window, where moonlight had shafted in before I’d extinguished it with the light. She wore shorts and a baggy tank top which showed the tops of her breasts. Her feet were tucked underneath her and in her hand she had held a book; now, pages splayed, it was on the kitchen floor.

“Sorry,” I breathed. “I didn’t see you there.”

Jessica giggled softly, more of an embarrassed giggle than anything else, I guessed. I laughed with her. “I didn’t expect anyone to be here,” she said, leaning down and scooping up the book, flashing me the tops of her breasts, and a glimpse of her nipples. I averted my eyes, feeling guilty and horny at the same time. My dick went hard right then at that quarter-second of nipple. It was pathetic. “I saw this place earlier,” she went on, the book safely back in her lap. “I reckoned the moonlight might come in this way. It’s strange, isn’t it, sitting here in the dark?” Her eyes were downcast, her fringe just over her eyes, her fingertips trailing up and down the edges of the pages.

I shrugged extravagantly, trying to make everything seem normal, as though I hadn’t just walked in on a very strange scene. “No, not at all,” I said. “I was just getting a glass of water.”

“Don’t let me stop you,” she muttered. She turned back to her book, eyes locked on the pages. I knew the look. It was the look of somebody for whom characters and words were more real than actual people: the look of somebody who didn’t like real life all that much, and much preferred to lose themselves in prose. I was an English literature student. I understood the urge.

She didn’t look at me once as I walked across the kitchen and took a glass (brand new, expensive—it seemed Andrew Wright was well off indeed) from the cupboard and poured myself a glass of water. I tried to think of something to say. Half a dozen times I opened my mouth and then was glad she wasn’t watching me. Words wouldn’t form. This was a normal stepbrother and stepsister situation, after all. I was getting a glass of water; she was reading. It didn’t have to be more than that. And yet, I found as I made to leave the room, I desperately wanted it to be more than that.