RICH BOY BRIT (A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance)(26)

“I’ve thought about it, Jessica,” he said, his voice way too calm for the circumstances. Didn’t he understand how serious this was? Didn’t he realize that this could ruin everything? The scenario played in my head over and over. I told Dad, and he was so angry, so upset, so disgusted, that he broke it off with Annabelle, he took us back to the States, and I never saw Eli again. Or, worse, he shunned me and not Annabelle, and decided to stay married to her, but told me to go back to the States. Or, or . . . They were endless, and never good.

“So have I,” I laughed cynically. I slumped down on the bed, but my legs kept fidgeting, as though they wanted to continue pacing. “I’ve thought about it a lot. And I can’t see a way where we come out of this without destroying our parents. These days have been nice—nice, that doesn’t even come close, but you know what I mean—but we were idiots to think that they could last forever. Dad and Annabelle will be home soon, and we either have to stop doing what we’re doing, stop feeling how we’re feeling, or—” I stopped. The possibility was volatile, too unexpected. I felt about it as I would feel about priming a bomb. My hands weren’t steady enough for this task.

“Tell them,” Eli finished for me. He had knelt in front of me, and placed his hands on my knees, squeezing them, stopping them from shaking. “We have to tell them, Jessica.” I flinched, but he hurried on. “I know, it’s awful. But what is the alternative? We can’t pretend anymore. We can’t go on laughing and joking with them as though nothing’s wrong. Because they’re not just going to sense that something’s wrong. They’re newly married. They don’t know what’s happening outside their bubble right now. Newly married people never do. And they won’t know, unless we tell them.”

“So they won’t know!” I cried, pushing his hands away from me. If he kept touching me, I would want to fall into his arms. And that was the last thing I should do right now. I jumped up, walked past him, and stood at the door, ready to retreat if I needed to. But he didn’t try to hug me again. He just stood slowly and sighed.

“You know as well as I do that we can’t go on pretending that we’re just brother and sister,” he said calmly. “You know that, Jess. What about the hundreds of family events we’ll have to attend over the next few years? What about living here for the rest of the summer? Can you do all that and just see me as a friend?”

Part of me wanted to say yes. Part of me wanted to kill the love I had for him right there. I clenched my fists, digging my stubbed fingernails into my palm. I felt my lips quivering, and my eyes stinging, but I forced the tears to stay hidden. I breathed slowly, trying to think through the problem. But I knew the answer. I knew it without even having to think. “No,” I said. “I couldn’t.”

“Neither could I,” Eli said. “So we have to tell them.”

I walked back into the room and fell onto the bed. I was drained, exhausted. I loved Eli more than I could comprehend, more than made sense. And I knew he was right. This was the only reasonable choice. This was the only course of action that made any real sense. Keeping it secret forever was too painful. Breaking it off was also too painful, as well as unrealistic.

Eli left the room and returned with a bottle of wine and two glasses. He poured one for himself and then poured one for me. Sitting up, I took the glass and sipped it slowly. We didn’t say anything as we drank the wine—as the sunlight completely disappeared from my bedroom—just sat there, sipping. At some point, Eli leaned over and clicked on the lamp, filling the room with yellow electric light. The click when he turned it on was the only noise for almost forty-five minutes. I felt dizzy from the wine, but clear-headed at the same time. I felt as though I could think clearly.

“This is the right plan,” I said. “Yes, definitely. But we have to agree on something. We can’t do anything until we have told them, okay? We can’t have sex until we’ve told them.”

He agreed, and soon after he left the room. “It’ll be easier if we don’t share a bedroom until they come back,” I said, and he left. He didn’t argue, which made things easier. I would’ve caved in if he’d argued, I knew. I loved him too much to banish him unwillingly, but he saw the sense in it, too.

I finished my glass of wine, changed into my pajamas, and climbed into bed. We can do this, I thought, as I turned off my lamp. It’s only two days.

Ha! I was na?ve to think that he or I could go from making love every night to not making love at all for two days. I was on my side, missing his presence in bed (and it was late, and dark, and secret) when my door creaked open and Eli’s shadow fell against the wall outside my bedroom, lit by moonlight. I could’ve snapped at him, could’ve told him I didn’t want it, could’ve told him to go away.

He walked across the room and stood over me, and then reached down and smoothed his hand down my belly and to my pussy. I gasped, biting my lip, and was too scared to talk—not scared of him, but scared that if I talked, he would ask if I wanted him to stop. And no part of me wanted him to stop. I reached down and grabbed his wrist, and led him to my clit.

He pressed his finger down as he knelt beside the bed and buried his face in my neck. He kissed and bit my skin, and heat covered every part of me. Our promise from only a couple of hours ago seemed irrelevant when his hand was on me like this, when I felt the start of an orgasm building. Suddenly, he grabbed my hips and turned me, so my feet were off the side of the bed. He yanked down my pajama bottoms and my underwear, and then pushed his face into my pussy, furiously licking my clit.