Romance: Stepbrother On Top

by A. Valentine

  “How dare you make it seem like I’m the bad guy here! Dad it’s your fault for putting us on the spot like this! But whatever, I don’t care. I don’t give a damn about you or this worthless company!” Like a five year old throwing a temper tantrum, David quit and moved out of the home bought for him by his father. Jeffery was hurt by this but so be it. He was growing tired of David’s deceitful ways and manipulate attitude. When David left, Jeffery gave Lydia David’s job because after years of watching David work, she knew how to do many of the same things that he did. So losing David wasn’t as bad as David tried to make them think it’ll be.

  “Get on top now. I want to watch you ride me.” Daniel said and positioned them so that Rachel was on top of him. Rachel blushed but she did what she was told and rode him slow and so passionately that she was driving them both mad.

  “I’m… I’m so happy that I’m here with you,” Rachel said as she increased the speed of her hips. Her walls clenched around Daniel’s aching length and he knew that he wouldn’t be able to last much longer.

  “Me too… You’re everything to me,” Daniel bit out and gripped Rachel’s hips and made her move faster. “Ah!” he groaned as his orgasm was rapidly approaching. After everything had happened, Daniel was there for Rachel. He helped her move out of David’s house and Jeffery purchased a condo for Rachel. Daniel and Rachel started spending a lot of time together and eventually Rachel started returning Daniel’s feelings. After dating for a while, Daniel popped the question and Rachel eagerly accepted his proposal. “I’m coming!” Daniel arched his back and squeezed harder on Rachel’s hips.

  “Ah!” Rachel’s moans were loud and pleasured filled as she fell apart on top of Daniel. After they both were spent, Rachel lied on top of Daniel and he wrapped his arms around her. Daniel was the happiest man in the world because not only was he with the women of his dreams, but he’d also inherit his father’s company after Jeffery is gone. The best part of it all was that he was inheriting it the right way, through true love.

  “I love you so much, Rachel Marshalls.” Daniel murmured as he held Rachel tight and picked her up into his arms once he stood.

  “I love you too, Daniel Marshalls.” Daniel smiled and carried his bride into their honeymoon beach house. Everything was amazing with them and he was glad that Rachel didn’t have to worry about being a mail order bride in order to live a comfortable life. Rachel was truly a strong woman and when she expressed her need to work, Daniel was one hundred percent behind her. If Rachel wanted to find herself, he’d stand behind her, plus it’ll be good for Rachel to put her degree to work. If Rachel could support Daniel, Daniel could certainly support the one that he loved because unlike David, he didn’t view Rachel as an object meant to be used. Daniel viewed Rachel as an important woman in his life, his wife by love, not a wife picked out for him because she was employed as a mail order bride.

  The Sacked Mail Order Bride

  By: Krista Sparks

  The Sacked Mail Order Bride

  © Krista Sparks, 2016 – All rights reserved

  Published by Steamy Reads4U

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events are purely coincidental. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  This book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return it to the seller and purchase a copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Warning

  This book contains explicit content intended for readers 18+ years old.

  If you are under 18 years old, or are not comfortable with adult content, please close this book now.

  Chapter One

  I thought the night I watched Father’s print shop burn to the ground would be worst of my life. We’d been abed when there was a thunderous boom. Going outdoors, we saw the conflagration, violently oversized from the very first moments. Towering orange tongues of flame curled heavenward, nearly reaching the stars, while plumes of foul-smelling oily smoke banked all around us.

  “Dear God in heaven!” Father said, clenching at his chest. “This is a catastrophe!”

  In that moment, I feared I would lose my darling Father. He’d already borne so much loss and tragedy – my Mother’s passing when I was but five years old, then losing my older brother Henry to a Union bullet. The war had taken everyone’s fortune, and rebuilding hadn’t been easy. The print shop was only just beginning to turn a profit, and now it was in flames.

  “It will be all right,” I tried to assure him. “Surely the fire brigade will save the shop!” And truly, those stalwart brave gentlemen did come rushing through the night, bells clanging and their spotted dog howling with a devilish glee. They worked feverishly at the pump, sending up a spray of water that proved to be wholly inadequate against the conflagration.

  “We’ve got to let it go, Mr. Calhoun,” the fire marshal said to Father before too long. “We might be able to save the house, but that fire there’s just too hot. It’ll have to burn itself out.”

  Father stood as if he were frozen in place. His mouth was open, but no sounds were coming out. He shook his head as if to say no, but neither the fire marshal nor I were inclined to pay attention to that.

  “Please!” I beseeched the good man. “Save the house. It’s all Papa and I have left in this world!”

  The fire marshal nodded, and I could see from the look in his eyes that my proclamation was not news to him. “We’ll do our best, ma’am.” He gently guided Father and I further away from the burning shop. “We’ve got to pull the wagon through this way. Take care you don’t get hurt!”

  The smoke thickened, all but obscuring our view as the fire brigade began to soak down the side of our home and the thin strip of lawn that separated our domicile from our livelihood. Abandoned, the flames consuming the shop redoubled their efforts. There was a mighty crack, as loud as a rifle’s report, and I had to fight to not cover my ears.

  “That’s the ridgepole going,” Father said. “The roof’s not long for this world.”

  I’d heard my father sorrowful before. But never to the extent of the heartbreak echoing through his voice right now; he was absolutely despondent.

  “We will rebuild, Papa.”

  Father shook his head. “No, Abigail. We won’t. This is the end of the road for me.” He hung his head and kicked at the ground. “The good Lord’s decided I was never meant to be a happy man. And seeing as that’s the legacy I’ve left you, I’m truly sorry.”

  Chapter Two

  Father’s comments about an unhappy legacy puzzled me, but I put them down to the heat of the moment. While I always try to look for the hopeful path out of any situation, I know that not everyone can do that. So I held my peace and stood by Father, watching as the fire consumed itself.

  When the print shop had been reduced to no more than a forest of standing smoking timbers, and the smoke had died away to a low-profile fog that clung to our ankles, Father shook his head. “I’m going to bed. Perhaps when I wake up, this will all have been a bad dream. Or perhaps the Lord will be merciful, and I won’t wake up at all!”

  “Don’t say that, Papa!” I tried to embrace my Father, but he would have none of my affections. In fact he shoved me away gruffly; an action so shocking that I could not help but cry aloud.

  “Don’t mind him, miss,” the fire marshal said. He took his helmet off, revealing a white line across his forehead where the smoke had not yet reached his skin. “
Your Father’s had a great upset and he’s not in his right mind.”

  “Well, I’m upset too!” I exclaimed.

  The fire marshal nodded. “But you’re a lady, and ladies are cut from a stronger cloth than gentlemen.”

  I raised an eyebrow. The messaging I’d heard from my youngest days was quite the contrary: women were the fair sex, gentle creatures who needed protection from the harsh world. Acting as if one were the least bit capable opened one’s self up to stern reproach and vicious gossip.

  “Disappointment is a ladies’ lot in life, more often than not,” the fire marshal said. “And she’s no choice but to bear it with what grace she can muster. That takes strength.”

  Shakespeare has never failed me. Many long hours I have passed with my own dear Mother’s cherished volume in my lap, finding inspiration and solace in the Bard’s immortal words. “Perhaps,” I told the fire marshal. “It may be that this lady will take up arms against her sea of troubles, and in so doing, end them.”

  The marshal chuckled. “That will take strength too.”

  I nodded and stepped toward the steaming wreck of the shop. Perhaps the presses, which were wrought of heavy iron, weren’t damaged beyond repair. Whatever could be salvaged wouldn’t need to be replaced – a small comfort, perhaps, but it might make the dawn easier for my Father to bear if he knew he didn’t need to start again entirely from scratch. “Let us hope I’m equal to the task.”

  He caught my arm and stopped my progress. “It’s still plenty hot in there, Miss, and I don’t need you setting your skirts ablaze. I’d never hear the end of it.”

  “Father wouldn’t blame you,” I said.

  “It’s not your Father I’m worried about,” the fire marshal replied. Again, there was something in his expression that made me feel as if he knew something I did not. “Whatever’s there worth saving will be there when it’s cooled off.”

  Chapter Three

  There was nothing worth saving. I’d not expected to save any of the paper, and of course, the inks and solvents Father used in the print shop were all extremely flammable. They’d burned with such an intense heat that the old press was warped beyond recognition, and the new press – the one designed for high speed production – was totally destroyed.

  “We can’t fix it.” I wasn’t asking, but Father took it as a question.

  “I’m afraid not, my girl. It’s done for.”

  “What will we do about Mitchell’s handbills?” The advertising flyers, I knew, had been paid for in advance; they were no more than a pile of cinders now, and we had no hope of replacing them.

  Father laughed. There was no humor in the sound. “Those handbills are the least of my worries,” he said.

  “We’ll rebuild, Papa,” I said. I couldn’t bear to see him so sad. “I know it all looks hopeless right now, but before you know it, we’ll have the shop looking as good as new.”

  Father shook his head. “I wish that could be so,” he said, “but that’s not how it’s going to be. My days as a business man are over. This has ruined me.”

  “Surely not!” During the war, I’d seen many other businesses leveled; there were those who said not a single square mile in the Shenandoah Valley had gone untouched. But one after another, the shops and factories had slowly come back. Things weren’t equal to what they’d been, or so I’d been told, but due to our neighbor’s determination and hard work, the region was beginning to be prosperous once again.

  “Oh, my darling girl.” Father reached out and took me in his arms. His embrace was strong and passionate, quite unlike his normally reserved manner. “I am going to miss your spirit and optimistic nature.”

  I stepped back and looked at Father. “What do you mean, you’re going to miss me?”

  He looked at the ground and did not answer me.

  “Are you going somewhere, Father?” I’d heard about people had been finding gold out West, in the wild California country. Fortunes were being made, but I couldn’t imagine my Father making a cross-country journey at his age. Even if he arrived safely, would he be strong enough for prospecting? The thought of claim jumpers filled me with dread. “I am going to go with you!”

  Father shook his head. “It’s not me that’s leaving, darling.” He looked at the smoldering wreckage of the shop, and then at me. I was astonished to see his brown eyes welling up with tears; even at his most upset, my Father never cried. “It’s you.”

  “And where am I going?” I demanded.

  Father turned his back on me and started to walk into the house. “I think you’d better come inside,” he said. “The time has come and I can’t put this off any longer. You and I, we’ve got to talk.”

  Chapter Four

  “I want you to know I’ve never purposely kept things from you, Abigail.” My father was pacing back in forth in the kitchen; I sat propped in my favorite chair beside the cook stove. “But I didn’t want to worry you with a possibility that seemed remote at best.”

  I nodded. “I understand that, Father.”

  “You have to understand I had no choice.” He took a deep and shuddering sigh. “If the shop was to be viable, I needed the rotary press. We had to have it. Otherwise, we couldn’t handle the larger volume orders – things like Mitchell’s flyers.”

  Again, I nodded. Nothing Father was saying was news to me; while I hadn’t worked in the shop alongside him, I knew enough about the operation of the business to follow his thinking. “You did what you thought was best.”

  “No,” he said, with an anguished cry. “I did what I had to do.” His pacing increased in speed; I was worried he would lose his footing due to his agitation. “Neither a borrower nor a lender be, that’s the sensible way.”

  “So you borrowed money to purchase the press?” I smoothed my hands over my skirt. “It seems a sensible enough thing to do. Surely whoever leant the money to you will understand about the fire.”

  Father looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “When you take on a debt of this size, the lender often requires you to put up some sort of collateral – a guarantee that you’ll surrender in case you cannot pay the debt.”

  My stomach sank. Suddenly I understood what Father was saying. He’d put up our home as collateral for the business loan. The lender, whoever that might be, was going to be taking possession of it in lieu of repayment. We were going to be vagabonds; pitiful creatures without a roof over our heads. The idea made me frantic.

  “Who did you borrow the money from? We must go to him and plead for a little time.”

  Father shook his head sadly. “I’ve had that conversation already, my darling. The man’s heart is made of stone. He will not delay collecting his due by even a single hour.”

  I took a deep breath. “Then we’ll go West.” California, which had seemed an impossible destination moments before, was suddenly appealing. “Even if we can’t find gold ourselves, we’ll find work. Start fresh. Build a life for ourselves. You’ll see, Papa!”

  Father cocked his head, clearly puzzled.

  “It doesn’t matter if this man takes the house from us,” I explained. “I know it looks impossible right now, but we can start anew.” I thought of what the fire marshal had said about bearing disappointments with grace. “It will be an adventure.”

  Father looked sadder than I’d ever seen him. “It wasn’t the house I put up as collateral, darling.” He reached out and took my hand. “It was you.

  Chapter Five

  The blood in my veins had turned to ice; I was near to frozen through with shock. “Father,” I demanded sternly. “Who did you borrow this money from? What, exactly, have you promised?”

  My father broke down, weeping. Great racking sobs overtook his frame. He buried his face in his hands. “I can’t,” he said. “It is too terrible to tell you.”

  “No,” I said. There was steel in my voice I knew not the source of. It was unfamiliar to Father as well, who looked up, startled, at the sound. “It was terrible not to tell me, but that is
what you have done. Now you must let me know what is going to happen.”

  “All right.” Father began pacing again, wrapping his arms around himself one moment, flinging them wide open the next. “I am going to tell you.”

  I waited, but he was not any more forthcoming. The silence grew between us, long and uncomfortable. The whole house was quiet. I could hear the clock in the front room ticking, each second passing with a loud report.

  Finally, it grew too much for me. “Papa,” I pleaded. “You have to tell me.”

  “Robert Benson,” he said in a great exhalation. “I promised your hand in marriage to Robert Benson as collateral for the loan.”

  I stood up, shocked, and then sank back down into my chair, with my hands pressed over my mouth.

  “He’s a wealthy man,” Father said. “You’ll never want for anything as his wife.”

  It was true. Robert Benson was one of the richest men in the valley; his big brick house was the envy of the town. But while the property was desirable, the man himself was anything but. He was a big man, loud-mouthed and coarse, with a terrible temper and a worse reputation.

  “Papa!” I whispered. “He killed his wife. And you’re sending me to marry him?”

  “That’s a rumor. There’s no proof of it that anyone can find,” Father said, wringing his hands together. I knew he didn’t believe what he was telling me. “I asked the sheriff for the truth of it before I agreed to Benson’s terms.”

  “And the sheriff said Benson didn’t kill his wife?”

  Father’s gaze dropped toward his boots once again. “He said there was no proof to be found. Kitty Benson might have run off on her own accord.”

  “Or Mr. Benson might have strangled her in a fit of rage and thrown her body in a cave!” I snapped. I’d heard that story more times than I could count; the aging banker had not taken too kindly to his bride’s affectionate banter with a tradesman. Kitty had disappeared not long after a well-witnessed argument between the pair; the tradesman hadn’t been seen recently either.