Bastard Stepbrother (Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance)

by Faye, Amy

  I move faster, my fingers wrapping around him where my mouth can't reach. I don't know what kind of a slut I must look like. Probably a big one. Even still, I'm not going to stop. Can't stop.

  His hips are moving, now, a thrust meeting me every time I bob my head forward. I can't suppress the choking sound it pulls out. And I can tell that he's getting close. I don't know how close until he growls out 'fuck' and misses a thrust.

  His fingers tighten in my hair and his cock thrusts deep into my throat, as deep as it can go, and he holds me there, his cock spasming as he shoots cum straight down my throat and into my belly.

  Part of me wants to be annoyed that I didn't get a warning. Another part, a much bigger part, wants him between my legs yesterday.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  She looks up at me with such fire in her eyes that I'm amazed that she doesn't tackle me right there. I've got to get control of her before she goes nuts. I can't help but crack a smile. That's exactly what I'd hoped for.

  I drop my hips and drive a hand into her chest, pressing her back against the sofa. She presses back, trying to claim dominance from me, but my teeth find her neck and bite down, hard, and she can't fight the pleasure that ripples through her. Her body arches a little into my mouth.

  Her shirt pulls up and over her head easily, and by the time it hits the ground I've already forgotten about it. Her legs spread easily around my hips and her ankles lock on the other side. I force myself back. I've got other plans, and she's just going to have to wait.

  I can see her trying to follow me with her hips, trying to force things into the position she wants, but I'm not going to allow it. My hand presses her down again, and she lets it, though not without letting out a little groan of disappointment.

  I make quick work of the button holding her skirt together, pull the clasp free, and then it comes down her hips. It joins her shirt somewhere in the room. Somewhere that doesn't matter, because my fingers are nearly where I want them.

  Her mound fits into my palm and my fingers find the sensitive nub at the top of her entrance, teasing and toying and never quite touching, and she's moving under me with a need that I can already feel starting to grow in myself.

  And then finally I give her what she wants—my fingers pull aside her panties and press gently inside. My thumb finds her clit, and her hips press into it, her body taking what it wants before she can even tell it to.

  I let my fingers probe deeper, moving faster. Harder. Rougher. And she lets me. She wants it, I know, and I've got every intention of giving it to her.

  When I finally let my fingers slip free, she lets out a groan of frustration until I move to replace them with my hardness.

  I take her deeply, with a single thrust that pushes me in all the way to the hilt, and then she can't stop her voice from letting loose.

  "God, you're tight," I growl.

  "Shut up and fuck me." Her voice is thick with need, and I do, pinching a stiff nipple and pulling it roughly as I use my other hand to pull myself into her harder, faster, more. Her ankles lock around my waist, her legs pulling me in, urging me faster and deeper and harder, and I've got every intention of giving her exactly what she's asking for.

  Both hands sit on her hips, pulling her up to me, using her like a toy. I can feel something building inside me. Need. And then I feel her legs tighten around my waist, her walls tightening down around my hard cock.

  She shudders, and I thrust into her again, teetering on the edge, and finally feel myself tipping over it. An electric shock runs through my body as the orgasm rips through, until finally it subsides and I'm left gasping for air above a perfect goddess.

  "Fuck," she purrs. "I needed that."

  And I have to admit, I did too.1

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  She's my mother, and I shouldn't be angry with her. Even if I have to be the adult here, I should be able to do that. No problem. But some part of me wants what it wants, regardless of what I should be thinking.

  I thought, on some level, that it would go away when I gave myself something else I wanted. Like a compromise. Well, you can't just tell her to sit and spin, Autumn, but you can have the night of your dreams.

  Like offering a child a cookie if they finish their chores first, or something.

  As it turns out, dark desires don't act anything like children trying to get out of chores. You can't just bribe yourself with something else that makes it all alright. Give yourself an inch, and a mile seems that much more possible.

  Mom knew better when she stole that stupid dress. It was just another in a long line of things she had done, knowing they were stupid, knowing they'd get her into trouble, and not caring.

  No, that was too charitable. She cared. She wanted to get into trouble. She thought, I guess, that it would mean that I'd have to pay attention to her again.

  I turn over in bed. Eric lays beside me, his toned body laid out smooth and flat across the surface of the bed, the slow, even, shallow breath of sleep. I smile looking at him and try to let it distract me.

  But I don't know if I have it in me. I don't know if I can even manage that much any more. The thoughts come again, and this time I don't know if I can shut them off.

  When does it end? When do I get to be myself again? When does my time come, when I can think about myself? When I finally can stop thinking about her first?

  When can I stop living her life for her, and start working on my own? I thought that I'd be able to do it now. I thought, I'd be in my own place, I'd have a job, I'd be working towards a career. I'd be set.

  But it couldn't last. It never lasts. She always needs someone to come along and tell her that it's all going to be okay, that she's fine. That it doesn't matter that she screwed up, that she knew she was screwing up when she did it. She wants to act like she's five years old, and that it's okay that she acts like she's five. That nobody is mad at her about it.

  Well, I am mad. And I don't know what to do now.

  Because I can't let her go to jail, not if I want to look myself in the mirror tomorrow, and next month, and next year. I can't just let her down like that, even if it's exactly what she's done to me all these years.

  But she can't just keep getting away with it, either.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I have to roll out of bed before I can take the call. Autumn squirms a bit, and for a moment I think she might be waking up. Then she rolls over and pulls the blankets to take the slack back out of them, and empties my side of the bed of the blanket.

  I smile. I'm sure that on the other end of the line, Tom is wondering why I'm not answering him. Fuck him. He can wait a second.

  She's so beautiful. It almost hurts me to do this to her. To her mother, at least. And then I put the phone to my ear and stepped out through the door and I was back in work mode.

  "Hey, sorry. I was just stepping out of a meeting."

  "At eleven o'clock? Boy, you defense boys do work late."

  "Cost of the job," I answer. I don't know or care if he believes me. It doesn't enter into the equation.

  "That's why they pay you the big bucks, I suppose."

  "Suppose so. What's up?"

  "I looked into that case you've been asking about. I already told you Leah's working on it, right?"

  "Sure."

  "But since you've been talking it up so much, I just had a look into it. An hour or so, off the clock. You're so weird about it, I mean—I had to see what the fuss was all about."

  "Yeah."

  I settle into my writing desk. It's an antique. Much like writing, these days. But I like it when it comes to taking notes, trying to put my thoughts down outside my head. There's a stack of blank papers in the drawer and I pull one out and then pull a pen from the holder.

  "What's up with you and this woman?"

  "Nothing's up. Did you find anything?"

  "Look, your business is your business. You don't want to talk about it, then just say so. But don't insult my intelligence."

/>   "I knew her a while back. She was an old girlfriend's mom."

  "Ah."

  Let him think what he wants to think. That he owes her a favor, or that he wants to flush her down the toilet. Either way, as long as he does as he's told, Tom can think what he wants.

  "So anyways. You find anything?"

  "What should I have been looking for?"

  I'm starting to get sick of Tom playing coy. He's usually straightforward with me, so it feels strange that he's trying to dodge the question.

  "I don't know. She's always getting herself into trouble. I can't imagine that you won't find anything if you start digging."

  "Well, I couldn't find much."

  "Much?"

  "There was one thing, but it's little."

  "Little?"

  "I don't know if it's anything at all, really. But it would take a lot more digging than I'm honestly prepared to do for a petty theft case. Man, you want this to go away, it's so small. I can just drop it. We can plea her out. Wouldn't even be any skin off our backs."

  "No, no. Do what you have to do. What have you turned up?"

  "She's got a kid. Autumn? Your old girlfriend, you said?"

  "Yeah, what about her?"

  "She's not the biological daughter."

  "What's the problem? That happens all the time."

  "The problem is, she's not really adopted either. Just showed up in the records twenty years ago."

  I almost write it down, and then I stop myself.

  "Huh." I can't think of anything else to add.

  That could be a problem.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  "Mom, I need you to calm down."

  She's fidgeting. She always does this whenever she gets nervous. She should always be nervous. She's always moving too fast, always making decisions that anyone else would regret.

  There are some people like that who can make it work. People who are just freaks of nature, who can do whatever they want with impunity.

  Mom isn't like that. She's as human as anyone. She just never regrets anything, either, because the past gets left behind the moment that it's finished. She's less the sort of person who can get away with murder, and more the sort of person who takes off an oven mitt seconds before deciding to grab a hot pan, and then wonders what she did to deserve her hand hurting so bad.

  It's never her fault, and it's never avoidable. Regardless, of course, of how avoidable it is, or how much it's certainly her fault.

  She hasn't answered me, thirty seconds later.

  "Mom, look at me."

  She looks at me for an instant, and then she's back to looking out the window.

  "Are you waiting for something?"

  "I'm waiting for the mailman, Autumn. Now, can you just—"

  "I thought we were going to talk about getting you out of this mess."

  "You said you'd take care of it," she says. My teeth grind together. I can't honestly believe that I'm doing this on my day off.

  "I can't do everything by myself, Mom. I know you want to avoid this, but you really can't avoid it forever."

  She looks at me for what feels like the first time in the entire conversation. Really sees me. And she's not in a great mood about it.

  "Yeah, I know that, Autumn, but I'm just, I'm waiting for a package, okay? Can you just go do whatever, for a while? Figure it out yourself, okay?"

  I take a deep breath. She's not herself. She's never herself. She's just being like this because—

  I have to stop. I have to stop thinking about it, I have to stop thinking too hard about it, because I'm getting inside my own head at this point, and there's nothing worse. It's not as if I'm not going to go and do it, and there's no hope of getting her to apologize.

  So at this point my choices are, I go on and leave her be and build a defense without her help, or I go on and skip building a defense because I'm pissed off. And as good as it might feel in the moment, it's really not an option.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I set the phone down gently on the desk. It takes some care, because I'm a little more frustrated than I probably should be. Perhaps a lot more frustrated than I probably should be.

  They're not going to pursue the case any further unless someone really fucks it up bad. Someone being either Autumn or Deb. And I don't foresee Autumn letting her mother make a worse mess of things than she already has.

  So if she can just keep her mouth shut, it's thirty hours of community service. Thirty hours of community service, a little restitution, and a class on why you don't fucking steal things. Well, I guess it could be worse.

  At least something will happen to her. I pick up the work phone and cradle it in my ear. Legal business doesn't stop just because I've got other things to worry about.

  The phone rings twice before he picks up. "Jim. This a good time?"

  The other end of the line is a guy who I can't believe can afford my legal fees. I've met him three times in person. Only those three, but every one of them suggested to me that he seemed no different than any street thug. A con artist at best, an armed robber at worst.

  And then you see his offices, and you see his car, and you see all the people who he does business with, and you wonder who the fuck he does business with. Privately, I think he's probably involved in drugs, but as long as the checks keep clearing, whatever he's involved in is none of my business as long as nobody tries to bring charges.

  "Yeah, give me a second." I can hear him set the phone down for a moment. He says something that I make the decision not to hear on the other end of the line. Private business is private business, and the less I know, the less I have to deny when the checks finally stop clearing. "Is it that time again, Eric?"

  "Is there anything I should be on the lookout for?"

  "Yeah, I got some weird letters from some guys over in Europe. I think they're pretty upset about something, but I've got no idea what it could be."

  I don't know what sort of crime goes on in Europe. It's not a business I'm in. I don't practice law in Europe. But I know that they don't supply drugs. So if he's stepped on feet, it's either that he screwed over someone else's deals, or it's not drug-related, which is somehow more worrying.

  "You think it'll turn into anything?"

  "No, probably not. But if I don't show up one day…"

  I let my mind start to drift. A guy like this, you have to keep him on a leash. As long as he's not concerned about you going to the cops, it's not too hard to get him to talk about business, at least in general terms.

  But it's important not to let him get too far off-track without knowing where the mess is about to fall on your head. Because it always comes down eventually, and you want to be well out ahead of it when that comes barreling down on you.

  Which is exactly what I should have done with Deborah. I guess that all that shit way back was my own fault. Sort of. I should've known better. Should've prepared better. Should've had the knowledge I have now. Always have a backup plan and always have proof.

  Things really felt like they started clarifying in college. If I'd known that shit ten years ago, I wouldn't have had the problems I did. But that's just not how it was, and I have to accept that.

  Jim fucks me over on some deal, I can't blame anyone but myself. I wanted the money, so I dealt with a guy I knew was scummy as hell. That's exactly what has occurred so far. I know he's trouble, but the money's good so I turn a blind eye.

  I'm sure, at some point, he will try to fuck me over. He's a grifter who's just done uniquely well for himself. What else could I possibly expect from a guy like that? Not a whole hell of a lot, let me tell you.

  But now I know to prepare for it. And I'm not holding it against him. So why hold any of this shit against Deborah? Because she got through the shell? Because she fucked me over at a time when I didn't know to expect it?

  I got the fuck over it. I'm not even sure if I'd be in the position I'm in today if I wasn't so fuckin' pissed about that shit. I know that having to lea
ve my family behind definitely lit a fire under my ass. I worked harder in uni, powered through law school.

  Because I had to. Because there wasn't anything else for me. So in a certain sense, the entire thing led to my success, right? That's the way to look at it.

  Just forgive her. Let it go. It'll be easier that way, and I'll at least be able to stop lying to Autumn. We'll be able to figure something out, at least. Something's better than nothing.

  "Wait a minute, Jim. What's going on with Paco?"

  He stops talking abruptly. I'm almost worried I've pissed him off, but the connection legitimately went bad.

  "I was saying he and his wife were into some shit. She wants another kid, but he's not too sure about it."

  "You know how that's going to go, though."

  "Sure, I know how it goes, but now he's being a bitch about it with me."

  "And in a year, he'll be telling you all about his little darling and how he couldn't live without her."

  "You're telling me."

  I close my eyes. I'm at peace with it. Just let it go. Forget it ever happened. Autumn will get the good news tomorrow. For now, I'll just let it go and in the morning I'll be happy for her. Simple as that.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I don't like meetings. It didn't take a terribly long time to learn that they're not great. People don't go to meetings to tell you that there's no surprise coming. They don't hold meetings to say 'everything's going as-expected.'

  That's a phone call at best. At absolute best. Most of the time, you're actually worrying about something else. Anything else. There's a thousand possibilities of what could go wrong, and relatively fewer possibilities of what could go right.

  If it was a client, then I'd expect something like 'well, maybe you should keep your head up for something that maybe I forgot to mention up until now.' It would be nice if Mom would give me some heads up like that, every now and then, but that would no-doubt ruin the surprise for her, so of course she's not going to do that.