by Chloe Hawk
STEPBROTHER PROTECTS (HIS TWISTED GAME, BOOK SIX)
by Chloe Hawk
Copyright 2015, Chloe Hawk, all rights reserved. This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All characters depicted in this book are eighteen years of age or older.
COLE
I snapped.
It was wrong. I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t stop myself. Seeing someone put their hands on Avery, seeing someone try to hurt her, filled me with an uncontrollable rage.
I’d felt something shift inside of me as soon as that cop grabbed her. It was the same feeling I’d had the night I’d seen Gordon ogling her. I would give anything to protect Avery and keep her safe – taking a beating from some shithead cops was a small price to pay.
You’re in love with her.
The words echoed through my brain as the officers surrounded me, as they manhandled me and roughed me up and then, finally, handcuffed me.
Avery was crying, the tears sliding down her face and creating trails on her beautiful face. I hated seeing her cry, hated seeing her upset and vulnerable. I was supposed to be protecting her, and here I was, just making things worse.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “It’s going to be okay.”
She shook her head.
“Look at me.”
She looked at me.
“Take my keys.” I motioned to the driveway, where the keys had fallen out of my pocket during the scuffle. “Take my car and go back to my apartment. It’s going to be fine.”
I didn’t know if it was going to be fine.
But what else could I say?
They pushed me into the back of a police cruiser, and I watched through the window as Avery climbed into my car and turned the key in the ignition.
Good.
The only thing that would drive me crazier than not being able to protect her was knowing she was with Gordon.
That, and the words that kept echoing through my head.
You’re in love with her.
I couldn’t be in love with my stepsister.
It was too fucked up.
I shook my head.
We were connected because we’d grown up together.
What we had wasn’t love – it was just lust and dysfunction, swirling together to create something forbidden and destined to end in disaster.
As we pulled onto the main road and headed toward the police station, I told myself I needed to be careful.
Love was not a word I wanted to associate myself with.
Not with anyone.
Not ever.
AVERY
I gripped the steering wheel tight, trying to keep up with the police car in front of me. There was no way I was just going to drive Cole’s car back to his apartment in the city – not without knowing he was okay first.
But cruiser turned its sirens on and began zipping and weaving through the streets. I couldn’t keep up and after a few moments, I lost them. So by the time I got to the station, there was no sign of Cole.
I walked inside, but the cop manning the front desk told me I couldn’t see Cole, that he would be booked and arraigned tomorrow morning.
“I just need to talk to him,” I said. “I need… I just want to make sure he has bail money. I’m his sister,” I added, just in case the cop thought I was some kind of obsessed girlfriend.
But he was unmoved.
“You cannot communicate with a prisoner,” he said. “He’ll be allowed a phone call like anyone else.”
“He’s not a prisoner,” I said. “He just… he just got arrested. And besides, I was a witness. I am a witness. I need to give my statement. Please, can you just check with someone else?”
The officer sighed. “What’s his name?”
“Cole Buchanan.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Cole Buchanan?” he repeated. “What’s he doing back here?”
“He was…” I didn’t know how to answer that. Fucking me in my old room? Threatening his dad? Stealing some mysterious papers from my stepfather’s office? “Can you please just find out where he is?”
The cop sighed and then disappeared down the hallway. When he came back, he had that same look of tiredness on his face. “He’s being held on charges of resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer.” His lips hardened into a thin line. “There’s nothing that can be done until the morning.”
“Fine,” I said, feeling my blood start to boil. “Then I’ll just sit here until the morning.” I indicated the two plastic chairs in the lobby.
“Fine.” The cop shrugged. “Suit yourself. But he won’t be here. He’ll be transferred to central booking and taken to the county courthouse.”
I bit the inside of my mouth to keep from screaming.
What the hell was I supposed to do now?
Cole couldn’t get in touch with me. I had no phone since that asshole Jeffrey stole it.
Think, Avery, I told myself. What should I do? Call a lawyer? No. Cole probably had tons of lawyers already, much better lawyers than the ones I could find just from looking someone up randomly in a phone book.
I had no one to call.
No one to help me.
I hardly had anywhere to go.
Take my car and go back to my apartment.
That’s what he’d said.
I knew that’s what I should do, but I hated the feeling of helplessness that flowed through me. He’d been protecting me. He was in jail because of me. And there was nothing I could do to help him.
I stood there for a second, dejected.
But I had no choice.
I turned around and left the police station.
***
I wasn’t used to driving in the city, and even though it was late, the city showed no signs of slowing down – people crowded the sidewalks, limos went racing by, cabbies honked and stoplights turned red at inopportune times. I had to circle the block three times before I was able to find the entrance to Cole’s garage, and as I pulled in, I almost swiped Cole’s car against a cement pillar.
Good job, Avery, I told myself as I guided the car into a parking spot. You almost wrecked Cole’s super expensive car. That would have been a perfect capper to this shitty night.
I took a deep breath, then got out and walked into the lobby of Cole’s building. There was soft elevator music playing, the kind that was designed to make you feel calm and relaxed. But I wasn’t calm or relaxed. My stomach flipped as I realized I was going to have to convince the doorman, Graham, to let me into Cole’s apartment – I didn’t have a key.
But it turned out I didn’t have anything to worry about -- Graham handed me a key as soon as I walked in.
“Mr. Buchanan called and asked me to give you this,” he said, tipping his hat at me.
“Um, thanks.” I took the key from his outstretched hand and then hesitated. I was surprised Cole had called Graham from the police station, that he’d had the wherewithal to make sure I had a way to get into his apartment. I wanted to ask Graham if Cole had said anything else – if he’d mentioned me, or what was happening to him, or given any more information about his situation. But I couldn’t just go around asking Cole’s doorman if he’d heard anything about Cole being in jail. I had to protect his privacy.
“Is there anything else I can help you with?” Graham asked, a touch of concern in his brown eyes.
I swallowed. “I just…did Cole say anything else? Like did he leave any other message for me?”
Graham shook his head. “No, miss. “ He must have noticed the look of disappointment on my face because he added, “Is everything okay?”
“Oh, yes,” I said, forcing a smile to my face. “Everything’s fine. I’m just going to go upstairs and wait for my stepbrother.”
“Very good.” Graham tipped his hat at me again with one white-gloved hand, and I turned and headed for the elevators.
When I opened the door to Cole’s apartment, all the lights were off, and a shiver of trepidation instantly slid up my spine. Something was wrong. Cole would never leave all the lights off – there was no way.
We’d had an unspoken agreement ever since we were younger – never leave the house completely dark. If you left a room, if you were the last one up at night, you always made sure to leave a light on. That way, if Gordon were to decide he wanted to start something, at least there wouldn’t be any surprises. It didn’t always work of course –Gordon would turn the lights off if he found we’d left them on, screaming and yelling about the electricity bill.
But we tried.
Which is why I knew something was wrong when Cole’s apartment was completely dark. A heavy stillness had settled over the space, and I got that same premonition I would get sometimes, right before something was about to go wrong. I’d honed my instincts over the years, and I was usually right.
I flipped switch in the hallway, and the living room flooded with light.
I gasped, my hand flying to my mouth.
Cole’s apartment had been ransacked.
The couches had been stripped of their cushions, the end tables upended, the television smashed, an angry spider web of glass bleeding out from the middle of the screen. The kitchen drawers had been emptied, and pots and pans were haphazardly strewn about on the shiny hardwood floors. The espresso machine had been unplugged and tipped over on the counter -- dark black liquid dripped from its tiny steamer.
My heart began beating fast, the blood pumping rhythmically through my body. I listened carefully, trying to figure out if whoever had done this was still here. But there were no sounds – in fact, a creepy kind of stillness had settled over the whole place, letting me know I was alone.
I knew I should leave. I knew I should walk downstairs and call the police, tell Graham what had happened, have him pull the security tapes. But I didn’t know whether or not Cole would want me to do that.
I wasn’t sure if he’d want the police involved.
I remembered what he’d said – that the FBI was after him, that he didn’t know if Jeffrey had turned on him. I remembered the way the police had questioned me when they came to see me at Cole’s office, how they acted like Cole was some kind of criminal. I thought about the man who’d followed me, the one who’d tried to gain access to Cole’s apartment. He didn’t seem like the kind of man you’d want to call the police on.
No.
I couldn’t call the police.
At least not without talking to Cole first.
I took a deep breath and began walking gingerly through the carnage.
I was reasonably sure that whoever had been here was gone.
But even so, I picked a butcher knife up off the kitchen floor and went through the apartment room by room, making sure I was really alone. The whole place had been trashed. Cole’s bed had been stripped and the mattress had been slit with a knife. Most of the clothes in Cole’s closet had been ripped into shreds. My clothes had been ripped as well, the expensive fabrics hanging in tatters from the hangers in my closet.
But it was Cole’s office that had gotten it the worst.
His file cabinets had been completely emptied, folders and pages scattered and thrown around the room until it looked like there had been a paper blizzard.
It was the last room I checked, and when I was done, I fell to my knees. Now that I knew no one was here, that I wasn’t in any immediate danger, the adrenaline that had kicked in and kept me moving had started to dissipate. I curled up on the floor, putting my head in my hands as grief and terror flowed through me.
I wasn’t a stranger to robberies or stealing – growing up where I had, you always had to be on alert for someone trying to take what was yours. Or, conversely, you could find yourself on the other side of it, when your friends decided they wanted to stop in and rob a house on their way out to the club, just so they could score some extra money at the pawn shop on the outskirts of town, the one that would buy whatever you brought in, no questions asked.
But this -- what had happened at Cole’s house, this kind of malicious destruction -- this was more than just someone coming into your house and taking your laptop or grabbing your emergency money out of the freezer where you’d thought it would be safe.
No, whoever had broken into Cole’s apartment had come here looking for something specific. And when they couldn’t find it, or maybe even in the process of looking for it, they decided to wreck anything and everything they could get their hands on. They were doing it to send a message.
I didn’t realize I was breathing so heavily until I had trouble taking a breath. My chest felt like someone was sitting on it, and I laid down on the floor of Cole’s office, forcing myself to concentrate on a part of an abstract painting that hung on the wall. I listened to my breathing, trying to calm my mind and waiting for my heart rate to return to normal.
I laid there, on the floor, for over an hour.
I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
Cole.
Even with everything that was going on right now, my body ached for him. It was all kinds of fucked up, but it was almost like the crazier things got, the more I wanted him, the more I needed him.
The fact that he’d protected me, that he’d risked everything for me, that he’d been able to control himself until someone had messed with me, made me feel close and connected to him.
And every time I felt close and connected to him, I wanted to feel his hands all over my body. His strength and power, the way he was so sure of himself, the way he demanded things of me… a shiver ran up my spine, thinking about how he’d made me strip in his office, how he’d taken me in that closet the other night, how he’d tied my hands with his shirt and slid his cock into me, my pussy spreading out around his thickness.
I started to get wet thinking about his mouth on me, his tongue sliding past my lips, his arms wrapping around my waist. I slid my hand down over my stomach and into my panties, spreading my pussy lips and pretending it was Cole touching me, that it was his hand moving over my clit. I thought about him coming inside of me, how it had felt to have his hard dick thrusting inside of me as he filled me with warmth.
I imagined him pushing me to the ground, making me choke on his cock before taking me to bed and being gentle with me, making love to me slowly and sensually until I came all over him while he looked into my eyes.
I moved my fingers faster until I made myself come, my orgasm rushing through me.
But instead of satisfying a need, all it did was intensify my desire for him. I’d always been addicted to my stepbrother – but the hurt I’d felt when he’d first left me all those years ago had overwhelmed those feelings and allowed me to push my want for him deep into the depths of my soul.
But now he was back, and I was getting even more addicted. Every second away from him felt like torture. Now that I’d had sex with him, his touch, his kiss, his hands, his mouth, his fingers, his cock… they were all I could think about.
The phone rang.
Cole.
I sprung up from the floor and ran to the kitchen to grab the cordless.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Ms. Buchanan? This is Graham from downstairs. Sorry to call your phone, but no one was answering the buzzer.”
I glanced over to where the buzzer had been ripped out of the wall, its wires cut with scissors. “Yes, um, the buzzer is… malfunctioning.”
“Shall I send someone up to fix it?”
“No! I mean, no, that’s okay. I’ll just have Cole take care of it when he gets home.”
“Okay. I wanted to call and let you know that your mother is here to see you.”
“My mot
her?” That made no sense. My mom wouldn’t have come here. I’d just left her at home with Gordon. She was probably getting her punishment, either that or making a statement to the cops, telling them how horrible Cole was for breaking into their house and getting violent with a police officer who’d done nothing to him.
“Yes. She’s requesting to come up. Shall I send her?”
“I don’t… I’m sorry, I’m just a little confused. I’m not sure my mother would be here.” I frowned, thinking about the man who’d tried to gain access to Cole’s apartment the other night, the man who’d been turned away, the one who’d followed me. Was it possible that this new person, this woman, was someone else who was trying to gain access to Cole? “Can you describe her, Graham?” I asked.
“Certainly, Ms. Buchanan. She has short, dirty blonde hair, and she’s wearing jeans and a navy blue fleece.” It certainly sounded like my mother. And she did have a navy blue fleece. Graham lowered his voice. “She appears to be in some distress.”
“Distress?”
“Yes. She seems to have an injury to her lip.”
That was definitely my mother. But what the hell was she doing here? “That’s her,” I said. “Send her up.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Thank you, Graham.” I hung up the phone and stared at it in disbelief. What the hell was my mother doing here? Was it possible she’d finally come to her senses, that she’d realized after what happened tonight that it was time to leave Gordon? Had she figured out that he really was no good for her, that she could form a life without him?
Maybe she’d come here to ask for help. Cole would help her, I knew it. He’d let her stay here, he’d give her money until she could get back on her feet. Cole had never understood why I wouldn’t leave home, why I wanted to protect my mom, but the only problem he’d ever really had with her was the fact that she’d let Gordon walk all over us.
But now that she was leaving, he’d have no reason to be upset with her.
I gave myself a second – one tiny little second – to let the hope bloom in my chest. It was so overwhelming, the thought that maybe this nightmare would be over for our family, that maybe me and my mom would both get away from Gordon and start new lives in the city, that I felt short of breath again.