Lovegame(122)

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Until next month ~Happy Romance!



Gina Wachtel

Associate Publisher





Read on for an excerpt from


Stepping Over the Line



by Laura Marie Altom

Available from Loveswept





Chapter 1


Garrett


In my thirty-one years, I’ve been called a lot of things—bastard, ass, jerk, motherf*cker, scumbag and soulless cocksucker. One title that has never been bestowed upon me is nice guy, which is why I couldn’t tear my gaze from the only woman I’ve ever truly wanted, but could never have.

Savannah. Where did I even begin?

I downed my neat scotch and tapped the bar for another.

Onstage, Jerry Baritone and the Tone-Ettes crooned Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl.”

My father, the great Richard “Dickey” Marsden, had summoned us all to the club—Julep, Mississippi’s Fairview Country and Golf Social Society for those who weren’t in the know—to celebrate clever Savannah’s med school graduation. She’s everything I’m not. Warm and welcoming. Friendly to dogs, kids and old people. As a doctor, she’ll no doubt possess flawless bedside manner.

I didn’t just want my stepsister beside my bed, but in it—on me—riding me, f*cking me hard enough to burn her from my soul.

Another scotch returned me to age sixteen.

“Son…” Dad planted his big hands on my shoulders, propelling me forward toward the girl who changed everything. “Meet your new sister, Savannah. Isn’t she a peach?”

The girl, fourteen, ducked her head. Her long hair spilled forward, a black wave shining in hot May sun, playing hide-and-seek with pale cheeks flushed from the heat. I couldn’t yet see her eyes, but her lips were large and full and pouty. She wore a slip-style floral sundress. The shoulder-strap had fallen, and I couldn’t stop staring at the creamy transition from her collarbone to her shoulder. She was tall for her age, but somehow not gangly. My attention-starved sixteen-year-old cock roared at a peek of side-boob.

“Dickey, you have such a charming way with words.” The girl’s mother, my soon-to-be-stepmother, Delilah, smiled beneath her giant pink Derby Day hat. My mother hadn’t been the hat sort—proven when she’d died in a motorcycle accident while not wearing a helmet. The fact that her death had come while she’d been on hiatus from being a wife or mom was never discussed. My sister, Jennie, older than me by two years, struggled with Mom’s passing to the point that she’d been in and out of in-house depression therapy that my father called her spa visits. That’s where she was today, and I shamefully didn’t miss her. Her black moods brought me down, and in this moment, with this girl, I only wanted to fly. “Savannah, where are your manners? Give your new brother a hug.”

The girl looked up and the shock of her green eyes made me bite my tongue. Blood, coppery and deep, flavored her first fleeting brush against me. She’d smelled clean. Of soap and sweat and the champagne allowed by the occasion.

My attraction had been visceral.

I’d popped my cherry at thirteen with my Dutch nanny, and continued munching cuntcake at the New Orleans boarding school where Dad tucked me away. No shit, I wanted Savannah, but this was different from my standard operating procedure. She was different. The fact that she was soon to be my sister? Was this a f*cking joke?

—

Another scotch returned me to the present.

Jerry and his girls sang Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher,” and instead of being repulsed, Savannah went with it, laughing and twirling and shaking her tight ass. As siblings, we’d shared countless celebrations. Holidays and weddings. Graduations and birthdays and Dad’s work promotions. She’d partied through them all while I typically sulked and wondered if I was a bad person for not missing my birth mother as much as Jennie. What can I say? I’m not a fun guy. As a general rule, people don’t like me, and I could give two shits.

When Jennie’d met and married Luke in college, and he and I had subsequently gone on to be friends and business partners, I thought it marked a fresh start for all of us—especially once they’d had three kids, but her depression had clung to her like emotional black tar and six months earlier, she’d taken her own life. Luke understandably took it hard. He’d packed up their children, resigned from the company and moved closer to his parents in Maine. We hadn’t seen them since. My father and I never spoke of Jennie’s passing or the three grandchildren—my nieces and nephew—who were for all practical purposes strangers.

Savannah and her mother had been especially kind to my sister, which only made me love them both all the more. Most of all, I craved their normalcy and light.

Sure, the booze and being back home and thinking of Jennie had turned me extra morose, but for real, nothing in life brought me pleasure but causing others legal pain. I had more money than I could spend in two lifetimes. I had great cars and houses and an endless supply of eager woman. Literally, the only thing I didn’t have—could never have, but had always wanted—was Savannah. And that fact killed me. It had fueled every horrible act I’ve ever committed and as she strode toward me in a red cocktail number, long legs bared to her American thighs, frustration and pain clenched inside. I wanted to pitch my glass against the nearest wall. Punch something. Kick a barstool into the club’s glowing aqua pool.