Erotica: Can't Keep Them Apart (New Adult Romance Bundle)(Erotic Sex Taboo Box Set)

by Audrey Drake

  She threw up her hands in exasperation. “I wish I could have…” She trailed off, and Callie could finish the sentence without a problem. But Gary wanted to wait, and I couldn’t convince him otherwise.

  “It’s alright. I’ve lost my appetite, and apparently, I have a lot of work to do. So, I’ll leave the two of you to gorge yourselves on your plates, and maybe you can split mine right down the middle like a divorced waffle.” She turned and headed out, texting Charlie to let her know she’d be waiting for him.

  He pulled up to the curb within five minutes, staring at her with a confused frown. “What’s going on, Miss Carmichael?”

  She wished she had a pillow to scream into. Through clenched teeth, she told him, “They’re getting divorced, and I have 24 hours to pack everything. By the way, I want you to come work for me, Charlie. That penny pincher will just fire you anyway.”

  Charlie chuckled as he pulled away. “Imagine that. You were just talking about moving away. Are you a fortune teller, or are you just wishing things into existence?”

  At this point, Callie wished she could take credit for something like that, but it wasn’t going to happen. She stared out the window with mixed emotions. Of course, life had to be better outside the walls of Hitler himself, but she wasn’t a big fan of change. She pulled out her phone again, texting Rena madly about the situation. Rena responded in kind, shocked and indignant, and they ranted back and forth about the cruelty of the short notice and being forced to do it alone. Rena offered to help, but Callie turned her down. She didn’t need any witnesses if she ‘accidentally’ scratched or broke something while she worked.

  As Charlie pulled into the garage, Callie looked around and reveled in the fact she wouldn’t have to stare at the car museum anymore, either. She sat for a second after Charlie parked, and as she reached for the door, her driver said, “Miss Carmichael, I would be honored to come work for you. Just let me know the details, and we’ll work something out.”

  She smiled at him in thanks and headed into the house. Considering she didn’t think she’d ever have a chance to come back here, Callie toured the rooms on the ground floor, deciding that, maybe, she’d put her name on a piece or two she liked and bring it with her. There weren’t many, but there was a beautiful vase in the sunroom she wanted, and in the formal sitting room hung a painting of her mother that was absolutely to die for, and she intended to have that and the frame it was in.

  She stepped back into the kitchen, but she didn’t find Judith, the maid or Alex, the cook. She would have to make a point of telling them goodbye, and she might even see if she could bring one or both of them to the beach house she still hadn’t seen, if for no other reason than to piss in Gary’s Fruit Loops. She ran her hand over the old cherry wood kitchen table where she’d hidden from her responsibilities so many times, drinking beer with some of the staff. She’d miss that, but nothing else.

  Irritated at the amount of work she knew she had before her, Callie finally climbed the stairs from the grand entryway she tried to avoid up to the second story. She wrinkled her nose at the gaudy spiral staircase, the banister ornately carved and studded with gold and jewels. This was a good reminder of what she wouldn’t miss, and that had been her purpose for coming this way rather than up the narrow stairs that led off the kitchen up to the third floor where the live-in help stayed. She leaned on the railing at the top and gazed at the chandelier made of real gold and crystal, and she had this sudden urge to find a way to knock it to the ground. It made this place look like some palace from the 1700s, and it just wasn’t her style.

  Forcing herself to let it go, Callie trudged over the custom Oriental runner that spanned from the far end of one wing to the other toward her room. It was part of the east wing suite, with two enormous bedrooms, each having its own office/study area. She had an entire library in there to pack up, and suddenly, she regretted telling Rena she didn’t’ want help and considered texting her back and begging her to come over.

  This was going to be a workout, she realized as she entered her room, and she didn’t even have any boxes here. She snorted as she found a note on her desk from Judith, the maid, telling her she could find all the boxes she needed now resting in her closet. She reached inside and thought about packing her clothes first, but she didn’t much care for that idea. They could go in her hanging luggage so they wouldn’t get wrinkled.

  Instead, she picked a small box, grabbed the tape roller that had also been left for her, and started filling it with the trinkets, supplies, and other small items on and in her desk. This was crazy. There was no way she was going to make it through all the packing in one day. What had her mother been thinking? Callie would have been quiet about it if she’d gone behind Gary’s back and given her some warning, a little more time to pack in an organized fashion. As it was, if she took the time to organize, she’d end up spending a week doing this. She had to just bite the bullet and throw stuff together. She supposed she could sort back through it in this new ‘home’. Or, she could leave it all packed while she found a place of her own.

  She stayed busy for quite some time, and when her stomach got the best of her, she sought Alex in the kitchen, who provided her with a gourmet salad. She ate quickly and guzzled some water, knowing she didn’t have time to dawdle, and she hugged Alex. “I’ll miss you, and please know that, if I can match your salary, I want you to come cook for me. Or at least teach me how to make a few things so I can survive this world!”

  Alex laughed and hugged her. “You give me a call when you get settled, and we’ll see what we can do.”

  With a smirk at how easily she seemed to be enticing the help away from Gary Carmichael, she headed back upstairs to continue her rushed packing job. Callie had to start moving boxes out of her room into the office so she could maneuver around the furniture to pack everything else. How had she collected so much stuff? Her room didn’t look cluttered, but then, a lot of the décor rested on a surface, hung on the wall, or sat on a shelf above.

  Damn, she’d have to figure out how to take down the shelves that lined every wall of her room a foot below the ceiling. They were coming with her, too!

  By early afternoon, Callie needed a break. She’d done a lot of damage on her room and only had electronics left to pack here. From this point, she had to move on to the library, and she didn’t exactly relish the idea of packing all the books. Those were going to be heavy boxes, and it would be a back breaking up and down job that involved ladders and squatting and…

  Callie fell back on her bed, already drenched in sweat. She was going to stop, assess and evaluate, and take a shower. She needed to go to the bathroom anyway, so she might as well get rid of the sweat and cool down in a room temperature shower. Gathering some cooler clothes from her closet – a tank top and a pair of short-shorts that would allow her body to breathe a little more as she worked – Callie stripped to her bra and panties, left her room and crossed the hall to the gym. Here was where she’d been so glad to see her stepbrother leave when she was a child. Everything else about her wing of the house was separate – her room, her library, her balcony.

  But the two suites of rooms that consisted of bedrooms, enormous walk-in closets, and the studies shared a gym and bathroom. The bathroom was the size of most people’s master bedrooms and contained a whirlpool tub, a standup glassed in shower with multiple nozzles that sprayed from above and all around, and a huge vanity with his and hers sinks. But her toiletries had spread across the entire vanity with the lack of need to share the space after Keegan was gone, and she’d had this entire side of the house to herself for the last twenty years.

  She’d asked one time if she could have Keegan’s rooms, too, and while Gary didn’t get along with his son or even seem to care about the kid he’d sent overseas, he insisted on keeping the rooms exactly as Keegan had left them. Callie peeked in every now and then, finding it odd that a kid who hadn’t yet hit puberty didn’t have some comic book theme to his room or model dinosaurs up on the
shelves around his room. It looked like a cross between a stuffy teenager and a very nerdy adult had lived there, with dark chocolate and tan sheets and modern art hanging on the walls.

  At the time she’d asked, Callie had wanted to paint the whole room purple and turn it into a princess castle. She thought about that, remembering how she’d pictured having a canopy bed and clouds and stars painted on the walls and ceiling, and as she walked through the gym toward the bathroom, she chuckled at what she imagined would be the look on Keegan’s face if he came home to that.

  The geeky boy she remembered probably would have pouted his bottom lip, gone to his father, and told him what a nasty trick Callie and her friends had played on him because they thought he was a dork. She’d grown up a lot over the years, but Callie couldn’t help laughing at the image. Everyone still carried a little child in them somewhere. Besides, she was plenty mature for her age. She didn’t need to be anymore of a grownup.

  She reached for the door handle to the bathroom and pushed it open, confused as to why it was steamy until she looked up.

  Callie froze. This couldn’t be real. She must have fallen asleep on her bed and dreamed it. But if she was dreaming, would her panties suddenly seem too tight, and would there be moisture leaking into them? She’d had plenty of wet dreams before and never had a reaction that felt this real.

  Chapter Five

  The shower door stood open, and the sexy man in front of her still had droplets of water all over his body. His black hair hung wet around his face, which was chiseled to fine angles and plains with lips so perfectly shaped she wanted to not only kiss them but eat them. They had to taste like strawberries fresh from the vine on a hot summer day.

  But Callie wasn’t even as interested in that amazing face as she was the fantastic body. Every muscle was deeply lined, and while none of them stuck out like a bodybuilder who’d juiced up, they were all tight and well developed, with not an ounce of fat there to cover up the unbelievable definition. By the time her eyes slid over the washboard abs, all Callie could think about was licking all that water off him.

  But it didn’t end there. Even soft after a hot shower, she could tell he was beyond well hung, and she had an impulse to drop to her knees and suck him till he was hard, just to see how long he could actually get. His legs were just as toned, and his hands looked like they could bring her with a single touch. Her loins caught fire, and her pulse quickened to a point that, had she been in the shape her stepfather was in, she would have keeled over from a heart attack.

  She imagined that body on top of her, his cock hard and thrusting inside while her tongue traced every indentation between muscles. She nearly came right there, just from the stimulation of the view, and when she finally made it back over his strong arms and broad shoulders to his face, it didn’t help to find that he was staring at her with the same hunger.

  For the first time in her life, Callie felt exposed and vulnerable, this guy’s expression much too predatory for her comfort, and she fell back against the door, using it to hold herself up as she fought the urge to say, take me now.

  As she got a little bit of sense back, she stared into his eyes rather than at his cock, which she could see getting longer out of her peripheral vision, and that devastating blue made her gulp. He seemed to be looking right through her, and she could almost see him picturing her bent over the bench press while he pounded into her, or maybe riding him as he sat upright on the military press. She would have done anything he wanted, if he’d been a stranger. At least, a complete stranger.

  Keegan Carmichael – or Pierce, she supposed – wasn’t someone she really knew, but he definitely was not a stranger.

  Her lust was wildly out of control, and she started to step forward to push him back in the shower so she could climb in with him. If they were under the hot spray, any sin they committed would be instantly washed away, right? Keegan obviously felt the draw, too. He hadn’t made a move yet to cover himself, and if Callie was going to resist the urge to touch him, he really needed to do so. His cock was flawless as far as she could tell, and it was growing quickly.

  As if someone had snapped their fingers, Keegan suddenly moved, turning around and wrapping the towel around his waist. When he turned back, he still dripped from the shower, which enticed Callie all the same, but the biggest draw was taken away, out of sight. She could still envision his lower body; she’d burned it into her mind. But now, it was just awkward.

  “Callie.” He said her name as a statement, his voice raspy and deep, and it rolled over her body with a shiver, like a caress. His eyes still roamed up and down her body, and Callie was again aware of her state of undress, more so now that Keegan was covered.

  She pulled the towel in front of her, blocking his view for what it was worth, and nodded with short, jerking movements of her head. Licking her suddenly dry lips with a tongue that felt like sandpaper, she replied, “Keegan,” with the same affirmative tone. “I was told you were coming this next week.”

  He smirked, his eyes twinkling with mirth and sarcasm, and the half smile was enough to make Callie want to melt into the floor. She clung to the doorknob behind her for support. “I was. But I don’t exactly want to please my father, so I thought I’d take an earlier flight and give him a not so pleasant surprise.”

  Great. In his little plan, he’d managed to give Callie an all too pleasant surprise…and she couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Not sure what to say, she swallowed and averted her eyes slightly. “You look…different than I remember.”

  When she looked back at him, he’d obviously been staring at her because his cheeks reddened and he instantly averted his eyes. “I got rid of the glasses, and I found some activities I actually like. I snowboard, and I train horses. Those things take a lot of strength, so I have to work out more than I really care to. But it seems to have done me well in making the scrawny pale guy disappear.” He nodded at her, giving her another onceover. “You certainly grew up. You were always pretty, but…” Rather than complete the sentence, he just gave her a look that was more effective in raising her temperature than standing next to a bonfire. Now could she jump him? They’d exchanged niceties, and she really, really wanted to see him fully erect.

  He stared at her expectantly, but Callie didn’t know what he wanted. With a teasing look, his soulful eyes dancing, he told her, “Listen, I can probably get out of your way faster so you can take a shower if you give me about five minutes.”

  Feeling completely stupid, something she wasn’t the least bit familiar with, Callie groaned inwardly. This was far more awkward than any situations she’d ever faced. “Sure, I’ll just…wait in the gym.” She fumbled with the doorknob behind her, unable to take her eyes off him, and backed out of the room. Once she’d finally shut the door, she released a huge breath, as if she’d been holding it throughout the entire encounter.

  Not trusting her legs to support her, Callie sat on the leg press machine. Being low to the ground usually helped when she was this dizzy. But as she rested her legs up in the air against the push plate, she imagined spreading them and letting Keegan straddle her right there. It was a perfect position for both of them to get a workout without feeling the pain.

  She jumped up and regretted it as her head spun, and she moved to the curl bench, leaning over it and putting her head in her hands. But the images wouldn’t stop. She opened her eyes and considered the bar in front of her. She stood and bent over it, finding it incredibly comfortable. It hit at just the right spot on her stomach so she could lean on it and let Keegan stand behind her and have his way as long as he wanted. She wouldn’t even have to worry about her arms giving out from holding her weight up.

  Moving away from all the machines, Callie finally decided that simply leaning against the wall was her best bet, and she walked toward one to do so, just as the bathroom door opened. Keegan stepped out, his hair still damp but loosely styled, and now, that lock that fell over his forehead wasn’t geeky but sexy as hell. He was fully
dressed in a plain gray T-shirt that was just fitted enough to show his perfect vee shape with a narrow waist and broad chest, as well as the flat stomach, and a pair of jeans that made the swell of his ass perfectly squeezable and clung tight enough to accent the package he carried at his groin.

  If Callie’s throat was parched before, now she felt like her body made sand instead of saliva. He gestured over his shoulder with a jerk of his thumb, still not controlling the way he assessed her, and gave her that devastating half smile. “It’s all yours. When you’re done, maybe we can catch up a little. I’ll help you pack later, if I take up too much of your time.”

  She nodded, not trusting her voice, and ducked into the bathroom. She couldn’t look at him anymore and resist. What was she thinking? She couldn’t be attracted to her stepbrother. Blood or not, it was just wrong! People would be disgusted.

  As she got in the shower for the second time today, she inhaled and could smell him. The cologne he’d put on, the Brut shampoo and conditioner he’d used on the hair that women would give their firstborn child to have. It made her core ache, and she crossed her legs, squeezing them tightly together in an attempt to ignore her need. She had tried showerheads in the past, and they did nothing to ease her desire. It would only be worse now, when she was more turned on than she could remember being in years, or maybe ever.

  Cactus, she thought. Cantaloupe, coffee creamer, peanuts. That didn’t work; she thought about spreading peanut butter and jelly over Keegan’s chest and eating it off slowly. Mom! Mother, grandmother, old women, Betty White. That didn’t work, either – Betty White made a lot of sexual remarks, and every one gave her another dirty vision of Keegan.