Hard: A Step-Brother Romance

by Sosie Frost

  “Playing hookie already?”

  He loved that I was student teaching, admittedly so he could imagine me as a school-girl. But now wasn’t the time. I didn’t know what to say.

  I got fired.

  You get a half-day when your dreams are destroyed.

  Do I have enough money to build my own academy so I never have to deal with those douches again?

  Actually, the last idea wasn’t too bad.

  I leaned against the doorframe to the theater. Zach grinned at me. I didn’t understand it, but his dimples reassured me. Just his presence started to remind me of home.

  It was still weird that he did crunches and pushups while watching his favorite shows, but I certainly didn’t mind spying on his toned muscles during the slower episodes. He winked as he pressed against the floor.

  He constantly trained during his leave. I asked why his time off was so long. Apparently, he had a special arrangement. I figured it had something to do with his scars, but Zach did everything he could to avoid talking about those.

  Zach finished a set of one-armed push-ups and toweled off, pausing his show.

  “Tonight, Chef Orlando is preparing our dinner,” he said. “His representative says he’s known for his Latin influences. I thought tomorrow we’d let the Japanese-inspired chef take a turn, though I think you’re pretty set on Chef Vito.” He winked. “I won’t be upset if you say his spaghetti was better than mine.”

  I gave a timid shrug. “His was a bit more…professional.”

  “That’s why I’m paying him the big bucks.”

  I smirked. Zach took the initiative and braved my wrath. He hired a chef, maids, and landscapers for the estate. I couldn’t argue. Suddenly, everything operated a lot smoother, cleaner, and our dinners were always on time. Money made things so much easier.

  Except when no amount of money could buy a chance to achieve your life’s ambition. If I couldn’t buy a pallet of luck, maybe I’d send a personal assistant to appeal to the Dean instead.

  “What’s wrong?” Zach lowered the chef’s menu. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” I shook my head. “No. I just…I gotta…”

  The slightest curl of his finger called me to the couch. I dropped next to him. He made a show of wrapping his arm over my shoulders and crossing his feet on the ottoman. I didn’t care how arrogant it was. It felt nice to be held. Hugged.

  I curled against his chest and let myself mope for a long moment.

  “That bad?” He asked.

  “Worse.”

  “Wanna talk about it? I’ve had my share of bad days.”

  I bit my lip. “No. I’ll take care of it.”

  “Shay. I want to help.”

  Why did I believe him? I sighed. “I lost the student teaching position.”

  “What?”

  “My advisor and the teacher knew each other. They set it up deliberately, just to ruin me. My advisor thinks I was buying my way through the program.”

  “That’s bullshit! Can you get a new position?”

  “No. It’s a pass/fail credit. If my advisor hates me—which she does—she can screw me. I can’t do anything, the grades are up to her. And if the school doesn’t want me…”

  “We can fight it.”

  “I’ll have to transfer.”

  “Advisors?”

  I shook my head. “Colleges.”

  “No way.”

  “Sweeten will never pass me. I can’t get another teaching opportunity at the Academy, and she’ll never get another assignment. I have to transfer to another college…if my credits even count.” I pushed off the couch. Zach took my hand and pulled me down. “I gotta go take care of this.”

  “You’re upset,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Let this simmer for a day. Maybe there’s something we can do. We’ll find a way to change your advisor and get you a new gig. It’s not over. Don’t worry.”

  My lip trembled. I didn’t believe him. I sucked in a breath and tried to imagine anything else. Puppies. Good food. My favorite movie. My favorite kiss.

  That one was easy. It was every kiss I ever had with Zach.

  I’d have given anything to pretend that Zach wasn’t my step-brother, if only so I could lose myself in his arms for just a little while.

  Bad ideas. All of it.

  “What are you thinking?” Zach asked.

  Nothing I could answer honestly. Too bad the lump in my throat was just as painful to talk about.

  “I’ve always wanted to be a teacher,” I said. “Life goal.”

  “You’ll get there.”

  “And if I don’t? One bad professor today could be one awful administration tomorrow and one demented school board a year from now. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I wanted to be there for the kids.”

  “Why?”

  “In case no one else was there for them.”

  His arm tightened over me. I sighed.

  “When I was little, Momma was always yelling, and Dad was usually off with some new floozy on the side. They were both miserable, and they took it out on each other. And I was in the middle. Alone.”

  Zach toyed with my curls. “Yeah. I get that.”

  “When I got older, I realized instead of feeling sorry for myself, I could prevent a child from feeling that same way. I wanted them to know they were loved. What better way than to be a teacher?”

  “You’ll make a good one.”

  “And if it never happens?” I said.

  “It will.”

  “You never know.” I held his gaze. “What happens if everything you ever worked for in your entire life is suddenly…gone? Completely out of your control. Nothing you can do to prevent it?”

  Now Zach looked uncomfortable. He shifted against the couch. I pulled away.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t lay this all on you. I know what you’re gonna say. And you’re right. Look at my bank account. Why should I teach when I could have a home in the Maldives? I get it.”

  His jaw tensed. His dimples faded. “No. Some things you can’t buy with money. Look, Shay. I don’t have an answer for you because I don’t know. You can train and spend your life thinking things are gonna work out. And then?” He flexed. The scars over his arms shimmered in the faint light. “It can all be over.”

  “Zach—”

  “It won’t be that way for you,” he said. “I won’t allow it to go down like that.”

  I sighed. “It’s sweet, but I gotta do this on my own.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s…my job. My career.”

  He didn’t let me look away. “You know you aren’t alone. Not now.”

  My heart fluttered a bit too hard. I swallowed.

  “I’m not a little kid anymore.”

  “So you don’t need any help now?”

  “I don’t need you to protect me.”

  His voice edged. Apparently, other parts of him could get hard too. His words. His dedication. His promises. “And if I want to protect you?”

  The conversation shifted. I bit my lip. We weren’t talking about teaching or life goals or insecurities anymore. We broached a very dangerous subject, and stress already kicked my butt from one side of the county to the other. I didn’t have the strength to fight him too.

  “What do you want from me?” I asked. “Really.”

  “A chance.”

  “To get in bed with me?”

  “That and more.”

  Bed didn’t scare me as much as more. I had been resisting our fling for so long, I never once questioned the pounding of my heart over the tightening in my core.

  “It’s not a good idea,” I said.

  “Says who?”

  Society? No. That wasn’t true. We made for dirty gossip, but nothing else. Our families? That was a joke. Neither of us had one anymore. We were as much family as anyone.

  Says Me?

  I thought it was a bad idea to trust a man who lied the first night we were together—e
ither to get lucky or get money. Both reasons were equally bad, but neither seemed to fit Zach. Hell, I started to think the only reason he lived at the estate was for the pool.

  Or because I lived here.

  My blood scalded me, still heated from the last time I touched him, the last time I let him touch me. The pool jet wasn’t half as exciting as his hands.

  “One chance, Shay.” Zach’s voice was the whipped, creamy topping to my mocha grace. “That’s all I ask.”

  “You’re my step-brother.”

  “Baby, no one’s gonna see the family resemblance.”

  His lips touched mine. Tenderly. More a question for me to answer than a permission for him to continue. His calloused hands touched my cheek. He was right. Together, we looked like any other couple. Dark and light, petite and strong, timid and flirty.

  I knew what I wanted.

  I also knew it was quite possibly the worst idea I had since the day I antagonized my advisor.

  But now—with the lights low and Zach’s touch, his gentle kiss and my horrid day—a little attention sounded good.

  Right.

  Perfect with him.

  Besides, my body wouldn’t have listened to my head anyway. Not after he touched me.

  Held me.

  Pulled me into his lap.

  I groaned and almost exposed everything I tried to keep hidden from him. So much for scolding myself into chastity. If a kiss revealed my deepest desires, then the flick of my tongue invited him into my darkest fantasies, tied his ass to a chair, and whispered every naughty secret I ever imagined into his ear.

  I straddled his lap, threading my fingers behind his neck. His hair, blonde and buzzed, tickled under my touch. During our one night together, our time was experienced in frantic and desperate intensity. We didn’t savor or explore. Each second spent parted from the other was a pleasure lost.

  I had no idea I’d eventually end up in his lap again. I never expected the warmth of his lips on my throat. I hadn’t hoped for his powerful fingers to unbutton my blouse.

  I dreamed of him. Of parts of him. Of the greatest fullness and most deliberate lust ever gifted to me.

  And now? I had him again. And he was the man I remembered.

  Strong. Charming.

  And—above all else…

  Hard.

  I ground my hips against his waist. The thickness in his pants had absolutely no give, just as solid as any of the marble columns supporting the mansion. I was no better. Every part of me burned for him. A heat built in my belly, and I ached—actually whimpered—to feel this man over me.

  The blouse opened. Zach brushed it off my shoulders. His huge hands pressed against my waist. He kissed the timid peek of my shoulder as the shirt fell to the ground. His lips caressed over the soft darkness of my skin. My bra’s strap slipped. His fingers worked the other.

  The material fell away with a skilled squeeze of his hand against the clasp. I straightened as my breasts bared. He stared at the little chocolate buds that tightened under his attention.

  “So beautiful.”

  His words muffled as he took a nipple into his mouth. He suckled hard against my breast, as if I’d dare to take them away from him. The sensation rocked me to my core. I mewed, clenching at his shoulders. I puffed my chest out, offering him the rest. The dark caramel of my skin pressed against his pale cheek. God, we looked so good together.

  “Christ, Shay, you have no idea what you do to me.”

  I wiggled against the straining beast throbbing in his jeans. “I have an idea.”

  “You have a preview.” He grinned. “My nickname is flattering, but it doesn’t do me justice.”

  “What should I call you then?”

  God, he was strong. In a single movement, he stood and rested me against the couch. He kneeled between my legs, his fingers aimed for my skirt. The waistband tugged down.

  “Call me Desire. Pleasure.” He winked. “Gifted. Take your pick.”

  I never would have swallowed such a line if I hadn’t experienced him before. I remembered what his smart mouth could do to that crest, where he gloated and teased with warm breath and warmer words.

  “You don’t believe me?” He asked.

  His kisses layered over the hem of my panties. I swallowed. “I believe you.”

  “Are you sure? You sound hesitant.”

  I didn’t need to wear the little lacey panties to work, but the red, tempting silk was selected just for this moment. I prepared for the split second where I dropped both my guard and my pants and decided to let what happen, happen with no regrets and perfect bliss to guide me.

  “No hesitations,” I said. The panties peeled down. Too slow. I whined. “I’ll call you whatever you want.”

  “Let’s start with…Generous.”

  His eyes flashed a mischievous green. The panties rolled over my legs, and he spread my thighs. Two weeks ago, I might have fought him. I might have covered my slit with my hand, hiding the slickened and puffy folds from his view. But Zach rewarded me for being so forward. With gentle, tender, agonizingly slow kisses, he trailed a path of excitement from my navel and lower.

  “Jesus fuck, you’re so goddamned beautiful.” Zach’s words muffled between kisses, his lips drawing ever closer to that sensitive, waiting, aching spot. “All dark and bare. You have no idea how long I’ve waited to taste you again.”

  About as long as I had been dying to feel it. I squirmed, hoping he’d get the message.

  Zach grinned. “Tell me you want me, Shay.”

  No indecision. “I want you.”

  “Tell me you’ve been thinking about it.”

  Every waking moment. “Zach, please.”

  “Ask me to do it.”

  “Please lick me, Zach.”

  “If I didn’t know how freaky you could get…” His eyebrow rose as his mouth lowered just above where I needed it the most. “I’d think you were being shy.”

  “I am shy,” I whispered. “You do something crazy to me.”

  “You never have to hold back with me, baby. I’ll give you everything you can take.”

  I believed him. My hips bucked as a single lick of his tongue traced every fold of my slit. He groaned. My head lowered, resting against the soft leather of the couch.

  He dove forward, surging into my aching core and licking, lapping, tasting the slickness that shamed me—revealed me—in his presence.

  I couldn’t hide how much I wanted Zach. And I couldn’t convince myself that it was a bad idea because he was my step-brother or because he had a nickname that proved his damning reputation.

  But right now? With my legs spread wide, his pale fingers digging into my dark thighs, the flick of his pink tongue against my waiting petals...he treated me like I was the first, only, and last woman he would ever touch.

  The trace of his lips along my sensitive skin rolled wave after wave of shivers through my core. I wound up, tight, jerking my hips in the imaginary rhythm of his cock. My pussy clenched. I wanted something more than his tender kisses on the outside of my slit.

  I needed him inside me.

  With me.

  Holding me.

  “Zach—”

  “You have no patience, baby.” His smile grew. He licked his lips. He licked me off his lips. “I like that.”

  I didn’t have time to respond. He dove between my legs, spread me wide enough to reveal everything, and aimed right for that perfect button that I’d grazed with my fingers this morning in the shower. I fantasized about this moment, this naughtiness, this desire.

  Zach was better than any of my dirty little thoughts. His tongue flattened against my clit, lapping me up with long, forceful strokes. He watched how badly my body trembled for him. Each lick bound me tighter, cramping me from the inside out. My fingers clenched against the leather of the couch.

  His lips captured my clit.

  He suckled.

  One. Two. Three deep strokes of his sucking and pressing pleasure, and every single pr
oblem and conflict, humiliation and pain, concern and fear of my day evaporated in an instant. My life faded into the tiniest, smallest, most concentrated pinprick of sensation. He drew a long lap against my slit, and the world exploded, reformed with shudders and lit with the stars that blinded my vision.

  “Zach!” I thought I shouted. My voice cradled in a whisper. I shook and twisted. He didn’t release me. “Wait! I can’t—”

  He didn’t believe me. His lips unsealed from the little swollen nub he so expertly flicked and tormented. The draw of his tongue lowered, finding my entrance and savoring the slickness that overwhelmed my slit, my thighs, my core.

  God, I would have been so embarrassed had I not needed to feel his mouth so badly.

  I wove my fingers behind his head. He liked that. So did I. I pulled him close and held him to my aching slit, my lips moving in silent prayer as his tongue entered the tightness that needed something much more than his devouring lick.

  I wanted something bigger.

  Thicker.

  Hard.

  No wonder he had the nickname. No woman could resist the clenching emptiness so near his dusty scent, the prickle of his chin’s stubble against the soft folds between her legs, the hum of his excitement as he suckled and tempted her desire.

  “Please…” I whispered. “Please…”

  “You want me?”

  “God, yes.”

  “You sure?”

  I nodded. I released his hair if only to rub my own body, to ease whatever heat ached inside me. I held my beasts and squeezed. Who knew how wanton and terrible it looked, but Zach stoked the outside of his jeans, teasing the bulge waiting for me.

  This was more than a simple one-night stand.

  This was the beginning of something…different. Complicated. Absolutely messy and risky and probably the worst decision of my life.

  But Zach made bad decisions feel right, turned complications into an adventure, and forged an unrepentant desire.

  Worse…he made the forbidden seem forgivable.

  “Take me,” I said. “Fuck me. I want to be yours.”

  If only for one night.

  Zach’s grin wasn’t the boyish charm he lathered over me. This was a man’s excitement, a hunter’s mark, a waving flag to begin the race...even if I thought I headed in the wrong direction.