Stepbrother, Sort of...

by Natasha Tate

  Fuck waiting until college. This butterfly couldn’t wait another minute.

  I felt their stares, only this time they weren’t gawking at my awkwardness, my crooked, thick glasses, or the way I struggled to carry my books to class. They were checking me out. Guys and girls. I’d even heard them whisper things like, “Is that Romilly Furler? Can’t be…”

  “You can’t ignore me forever, Romilly.”

  I slammed my locker door only to see him standing there. Dominic. I’d avoided him all weekend at home, though admittedly it was mostly due to the fact that I was out and about, getting made over and doing my own thing.

  “It’s Romy now. And, yes, I can ignore you as much as I want.” I shrugged and walked off, a book in my arm. No more dorky book bag for me. I felt his eyes on me as I walked away, and when he wasn’t looking anymore, I smiled.

  ***

  Dinner that night was awkward to say the least. Mom made tacos, which were normally Dominic’s favorite, but he barely touched them.

  “Not hungry, son?” his dad asked.

  “Nope.” Dominic’s eyes burned into mine.

  “Bad day at school?” my mom asked.

  I chuckled and she shot me a dirty look.

  Dominic stood up. “I’m going to my room. Not hungry.”

  He left the room, and it secretly pleasured me to see him so upset. It didn’t feel good to be on the rejected side of things, I knew that firsthand.

  “What’s gotten into him?” my mom remarked to his dad.

  “Who knows,” he said. “You know, teenage boys and hormones.”

  “And I thought girls were bad!” she laughed, nodding towards me.

  “Aaaand I’m out,” I said, taking my dish to the dishwasher like a good the good girl that I was.

  I headed down the hall, noticing that Dominic’s door was cracked. I saw him laying on his bed. No T.V. No video games. No phone. He was just staring up at the ceiling, lost in thought.

  I almost felt bad for a second, so I let myself in.

  “What do you want, Romy?” he gritted, not looking at me.

  I shut his door and took a seat next to him. “Look. Like it or not, you’re my brother now. We can’t talk about whether or not we feel like brother and sister because we are brother and sister.”

  He groaned. “Our parents aren’t even legally married.”

  It was true. Though we were the only ones who knew that. My mother changed her last name to Drake as a formality, but she could never legally remarry. She’d lose my late father’s pension if she did.

  “Everyone knows our parents are married,” I said, putting air quotes around ‘married’. “Everyone at school knows we’re stepbrother and stepsister.”

  “I know.”

  “And even if we weren’t, you wouldn’t give me the time of day at school,” I said. Somewhere deep inside me, that awkward, geeky girl still lived on. Hard.

  “How do you know?”

  “Trust me.” I stood up. “You walk a day in my shoes, you know things.” I headed towards the door. “So to keep things simple and uncomplicated from now one, just know that I think of you as a brother and only a brother.”

  I lied. I lied so hard. I’d done nothing but think dirty things about him since the night he kissed me.

  I loved him. I hated him. I had no control.

  I loved him for protecting me. I hated him for all those years when I pined away for him and he wouldn’t even give me the time of day. I had no control over how I felt, and I hated that too.

  ***

  “You not going out tonight?” I asked him later that week, when I’d bumped into him in the kitchen. “That’s unusual for a Friday night.”

  “Not in the mood,” he muttered.

  “Where are the parental units?”

  “Out.” He turned to me. “No, gone. They went to visit your aunt Laura for the weekend in Rockland Falls.”

  “That’s right,” I said, lingering. It was just going to be us for the weekend. “Forgot about that. You want to watch a movie or something?”

  He turned to look at me, and I could feel the attraction between us, like some sort of magnetic pull we couldn’t deny no matter how hard we tried. I wondered, in that moment, if his mind was half as dirty as mine.

  “Yeah, we can do that,” he said. “My pick.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Fine. If it makes you feel like you’re in control for once.”

  We settled in on the couch in the family room, taking two seats side-by-side since they were the best for optimal T.V. viewing, and I popped us a bowl of popcorn.

  “This is cute,” he said as I returned with two bowls. “Family movie night. Adorable.”

  “Shut up,” I said, shoving the bowl towards him.

  He grabbed the remote and began streaming some action flick with a handful of gratuitous sex scenes. Each time the leading man would grab the leading lady and plant a kiss on her, their clothes would magically strip off and they’d begin fucking like rabbits no matter where they were. Planes. Restaurant bathrooms. Movie theaters.

  I began to tingle below with each sex scene. I wanted to feel that way again. The way I felt the seconds before I realized Chauncey was a stupid douche bag. I wanted to feel sexy. Pretty. Desired.

  I glanced over at Dominic, who was strategically holding his hand over his groin and fidgeting in his seat a little. He obviously had a raging boner. I smiled.

  “What?” he turned his face towards mine, scrunching his brow.

  “Nothing.” I flashed a smile. “Looks like there’s a party in your pants.”

  “What if I said there was?” He wasn’t backing down. He wasn’t apologizing. He was owning it.

  My heart began to race. I had nothing.

  He moved his hand to reveal the growing bulge in his pants. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It was huge. I could see that already. I swallowed the lump in my throat and forced my attention back towards the movie.

  “I can’t do this.” Dominic flung his hands in the air and got up to leave the family room.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Away from you.”

  I sat my popcorn bowl aside and tried to wrap my head around what had just happened. I followed him back towards the hallway and watched as he went into the bathroom. A minute later I heard the shower running.

  I knocked on the door. “Are you seriously taking a shower right now?”

  “Yes!” he yelled back. “A cold one.”

  I trotted off to my room and slipped into pajamas. It was getting late anyway. I tugged a silky camisole over my head and a tiny pair of matching shorts and crawled under the covers with a book, quietly priding myself in having gotten Dominic all worked up.

  Damn it felt good to have the upper hand for once.

  As soon as I’d gotten cozy under my covers and was knee deep in my delicious book, the door flung open. Standing in my doorway was Dominic with nothing but a white towel draped around his waist.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, sitting up.

  “Taking what’s mine,” he said, a determined look on his face as his eyes focused in my direction. He walked towards me, cupped my face in his hands and placed his mouth on mine, claiming it as his for the first time in weeks.

  “You’re my brother!” I squealed, pulling away.

  “I’m not your brother, Romilly,” he said. “I won’t call you Romy. That’s not who you are.”

  “You will call me Romy,” I barked back.

  “I think I liked Romilly a heck of a lot better than this Romy bitch.”

  I scoffed, “You created her.”

  He stopped, his sturdy, muscled body still hovering over mine, and our eyes locked for a minute.

  “I’m going to ask you this one more time,” he said through gritted teeth. “Do you think of me as a brother?”

  I cleared my throat. “No.”

  His mouth took mine hard, fast, and without warning, and he lowered his body on top of mine, pressing me in
to the mattress and pinning me beneath him.

  “This is wrong,” I objected, though I realized the words never left my lips. I’d only thought them. I wanted him. I wanted him on me and inside me. I wasn’t going to say no to him that night.

  He whipped his towel off and flung it across the room, spreading my thighs with his body until I could feel his hardness pressing against the outside of my shorts. His teeth nibbled my ear as I felt him breathe me in. My hands wrapped around his back, his muscles rippling beneath my fingertips.

  My lower body felt hot, tingling with desire as I could only imagine what he’d feel like inside me. And the fact that it was so wrong only made it that much hotter.

  “Do you want this?” he asked, his voice a low vibration in my ear that tickled my senses. “I need to know before we go further.”

  I nodded.

  “Say it, Romilly.”

  “Yes. Yes, Dominic. I want you.”

  “Do you want to feel me inside you?”

  I nodded hard. “Yes. I do. I want you inside me.”

  He ripped my shorts off, exposing my bare mound and slipped a couple fingers inside me. “You do.”

  He gripped the base of his cock and pressed the head at my entrance, pushing himself inside me gently. He wasn’t rough. He was careful. Intentional. His eyes never left mine for one second, and once we were in a comfortable rhythm, he lowered his lips to mine for a sweet kiss.

  This was how it was supposed to be. This should’ve been my first time.

  His hands scooped under my lower back as he thrusted. “Oh, God, Romilly …”

  All I could think about was how wrong it was … and how much he turned me on. If anyone found out, our parents, our friends, the kids at school …

  But Dominic was a risk worth taking.

  “Cum with me,” he moaned, his thrusts picking up in intensity after a while.

  I relaxed my body and rode the wave I’d been fighting since he stuck his cock inside me. Intense electric waves washed over me, intensifying with every plunge. I screamed out, thankful that we were home alone. And when I was done cumming, he pulled his cock out of me and stripped off the condom, stroking himself until white stuff flew out and landed all over my stomach.

  “We need to get some condoms,” he said, breathless. “I have to have that again.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “You can’t ignore me forever,” Dominic whispered in my ear as he walked past my locker at school the next week. I’d been avoiding him like the plague ever since we had sex.

  In the moment, I felt sexy. Alive. Desired. But afterwards, I felt dirty. Our parents may not have been legally married, but they may as well have been. He was my stepbrother. We had no business being in each other’s pants.

  I said nothing as I walked off in the opposite direction. At home we acted normal when our parents were around, and when they weren’t around, I stayed holed up in my room with the door locked.

  I fully intended on ignoring him for as long as I possibly could. And it became especially easy when another boy in school who wasn’t a giant douche bag asked me out. For the first time in my life, I had a real boyfriend. His name was Alex Meyer, and he was adorable, charming, funny and sweet. We both intended on going our separate ways as soon as we left for college that summer, but until then, we spent almost all our time together.

  Dominic hated seeing us together. Whenever Alex would come over for dinner, Dominic would eat in his room. When I invited Alex to family functions, like Christmas or Thanksgiving, Dominic would fake a stomachache and stay home or find an excuse to bail early.

  But it was Valentine’s Day that really did him in.

  I returned from my date night with Alex to find Dominic sitting in the living room in the dark.

  “Oh, geez, you scared me.” I clutched at my chest as I caught my breath. “Waiting up are we?”

  “Yep,” he said. I fully expected him to say no.

  “Why?”

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  “About what?” I glanced down the hall.

  “Our parents are out,” he said. “Don’t worry. It’s just us two.”

  I glanced outside, watching as Alex’s car pulled away. I’d been faithfully avoiding all instances of being alone with Dominic, though it was mostly because I didn’t know if I could control myself around him.

  I’d thought about the night we fucked a half a thousand times, each time getting me just as hot and bothered as the first time.

  “What’s there to talk about?” I gulped, feeling my face flushing in the dark as I thought about what he did to me that night and how badly I wanted a sequel.

  He stood up and strutted closer to me, reaching his hand up and twisting a tendril of sandy blonde hair around his finger before letting it fall back upon my shoulder. I drank him in, a heady mix of soap, aftershave, and mint toothpaste.

  “I wanted you to be the first to know I’m moving,” he said. “I’m going to live with my mom in Shellsberg.”

  “That’s, like, four hours away,” I said. “You’re going to move away from all your friends?”

  “I am.”

  “Why would you do that? It’s senior year?”

  “Fuck them,” he said, his face twisting into a painful wince. “I can’t walk the halls every day watching you and fucking Alex Meyers strolling by, hand in hand. I can’t go to prom, watching you dance with him. I can’t sit at home while you go out on dates. And I know he fucks you in the back of that pathetic ass Honda he drives.”

  I gasped. “How do you know?”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “Wait, don’t answer that.” I had a hunch he’d been following us one night.

  “Tell me,” he seethed. “Does that prick make you feel half as good as I made you feel that night?”

  I hung my head, unable to answer him. I knew the answer, I just didn’t want to face the truth.

  He stepped into my space, softly gripping my chin with his hand. “I asked you a question, Romilly.”

  “No,” I spit the word out. “The answer is no.”

  He placed his lips on mine, claiming them harder than he ever had before, but I pulled away.

  “I have a boyfriend.” I reminded him, though he knew. It didn’t need to be said.

  He pushed past me. “Goodbye, Romilly.”

  The next morning, he was gone. He’d woken up long before the sun had come out and left for Shellsberg. I tiptoed into his room. Everything was cleaned out. His clothes. His game console. All that was left was a messy bed and a dresser, as if he no longer existed.

  An emptiness consumed me that day, and Dominic’s leaving hit me way harder than I expected it to.

  “Alex,” I said, as I called him up that morning. “Let’s go do something.”

  I needed to be with my boyfriend. I needed to take my mind off Dominic. Walking by his quiet, vacated room half a dozen times a day was a stark reminder of what had happened – what we’d done. And knowing he wasn’t there if I needed him, cut me like a knife that never should’ve been there in the first place.

  I let myself cry once. That was it. I waited until my mom and his dad were out of town and I had the house to myself. I sent Alex home and I headed over to my room, buried my face in my pillow, and let it go.

  We weren’t meant to be together. We never were. I wasn’t allowed to want to be with him. Things were better this way anyway.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Six months later…

  My first week at college had gone swimmingly. I said my goodbyes to Alex the week before, and we vowed to keep in touch, hooking up on school breaks and random weekends if we weren’t getting enough ass at school.

  Alex was sweet and kind and understanding. He didn’t demand much from me, and that’s exactly how I liked it. Being with him was easy and uncomplicated, though the sex didn’t exactly set my world on fire. Only one man had ever made me feel that way, and that was a one time shot.

  “Romy! Romy!” my roommate
, Britney, said as I returned from class that Friday. “Holy shit. There is this really, really hot guy in my psych class. You’re not even going to believe how fucking hot he is. I want him, Romy. I want him so bad.”

  “Make a move,” I laughed. Britney was tall, blonde, beautiful, and fearless. She could have any guy she wanted, no question.

  “He won’t even look at me, Romy,” she whined like a petulant child. “This has never happened to me before.”

  I appreciated her honest. “Maybe he didn’t see you?”

  “Oh, no, he saw me,” she said. “I asked for a pencil and he looked me up and down and said, ‘no thanks’. He saw right through my little act of desperation.”

  “Find someone else then. There are thirty-thousand people on this campus, half are guys. You can find someone.”

  “None of them are even half as hot as this guy,” she sighed dreamily. “All those muscles. All that wavy hair.”

  I smiled. He sounded like Dominic. I could see, then, why she’d be so smitten. I thought about Dominic for a while. He’d been planning to go to college out of state, where some division four school had offered him a wrestling scholarship.

  “We’re going to a party tonight,” Britney said. “I overheard him talking on the phone. He’s going to some party on West street in this big, white house. We’re crashing it tonight.”

  I laughed. “You’re crazy. I like you, but you’re crazy.”

  “Do this for me?” she begged. “Please? Please? Please? I have to have this guy.”

  “You act like he’s a Coach bag you want or something.”

  “Romy, I’m begging you. Come with me. I need my wing girl.”

  “Fine.”

  Britney flung herself at me, wrapping her lithe arms around me and jumping like an excited child.

  ***

  The second we arrived at the party, Britney got sidetracked when she ran into a group of people she knew from high school. I bee lined toward the kitchen where people were coming out with red Solo cups galore, and mixed myself a drink.