by Megan Crane
But she didn’t say a word.
Vaughn moved behind her, his hands were on her, and before she could think about anything but the simple, extraordinary fact of that, he was lifting her up and into his arms.
And his arms were so strong, and he held her so high up there against his chest, that she could do nothing at all but loop an arm around his neck, and revel in how close she finally was to him.
Finally.
She felt weak in all the best ways, and shot through with a kind of gleaming gold thread that seemed to swell and shine with every step he took.
Vaughn carried her across his dark little sitting room, up the stair to the left, and then into the next room. There was even more light here, pouring in from the street outside and tumbling over the wide platform bed that took over most of one wall.
That was where he took her, putting one knee on the mattress and then tumbling them both into the center of it.
And then the two of them blazed there, high and hot.
It was better than any dream Devyn had ever had, and all the fantasies she’d pretended she’d never had about Vaughn in particular, way back when.
“Tell me what you want,” he said against her mouth, and she didn’t answer him with words.
Because she had no words.
Not for this.
She kissed him, and that was even better than it had been downstairs. She could tell instantly that he’d been holding himself back in that bar, because he wasn’t doing it any longer.
He was obviously, gloriously, not doing it any longer.
Vaughn fastened his mouth to hers and she locked her hands in his thick dark hair and everything...ignited.
His hands were beneath her shirt, tracking over her belly and then finding her breasts.
She worked her own hands beneath his shirt, finding the smooth skin of his back and tracing all the smooth, hard muscle she found there, reveling in how strong and lean and sculpted he was, and how it made her shiver.
Then he was rolling, or she was, and either way she found herself astride him, sitting up so she could feel how hard and ready he was for her. And both of them shuddered a little when he tested that, rolling his hips against hers.
But they were still wearing so many clothes.
He laughed, making Devyn realize she’d said that out loud.
Vaughn helped her pull her shirt up and over her head. She worked on her bra, and he muttered something that sounded like a prayer when she tossed it to one side. Then his hands were wrapping around her back and angling her down toward his mouth, so he could taste her.
One nipple, then the next. He took his time, as if her breasts were the only part of her he planned to sample tonight, and he wanted to make sure he got it right.
It was the hottest thing she’d ever experienced.
It was unbearable.
When she couldn’t take it anymore, Devyn found herself rocking against him with a neediness that might have embarrassed her if she’d stopped to let herself think about it. She didn’t. Instead, she fought so she could move down and help him get out of the shirt he was wearing, too.
And for a while they were chest to chest, skin to skin, and everything was that hot, wild slide.
Everything was perfect.
And still not enough.
He rolled off of her and laughed again at the little noise she made in protest. Or disappointment. Or straight up longing, she couldn’t tell. But he only moved down to her feet, tugging off her boots and tossing them over the side of the bed, then moving up to unbutton her trousers and yank them off of her too, sweeping her socks and panties with them.
She lifted her hips to help him and it was her turn to laugh when he muttered another one of those little prayers that might also be curses at the sight of her, naked there before him on that big bed. And whether it was prayers or curses, she knew they were compliments forged from the same fire that stormed through her and threatened to consume her whole.
He removed his own jeans and boots with more brute force than grace, then came down over her again.
Devyn would have said they were already burning too bright. That they couldn’t get any hotter or wilder.
But she was wrong.
She couldn’t get enough of him, so big and long and stretched out above her, beside her, beneath her. He was too hot and so hard and perfectly, mouthwateringly formed. She explored him, unable to believe that it was really Vaughn.
That it was Vaughn who kissed her that way, dirty and thorough, and touched her with such intense certainty. It was Vaughn who lay back and let her climb all over him, rubbing herself into a wild little frenzy against all his magnificent strength, cut and beautiful.
His hands were wicked and his mouth was worse—or better—and right when she thought she might lose her mind if he didn’t slide inside of her, he flipped her over and settled himself against her back to begin the torture anew.
She was making insane little sobbing sounds by the time he let her turn over again, and she wasn’t sure she was even speaking in English when she demanded he stop messing around and get to it.
At least that was what she thought she said.
But it didn’t matter. She knew he could understand her.
He knelt up to handle the protection, and then he reached down to slide a big arm around her hips and lift her in a kind of arch toward him.
And then, only then, did he fit himself to her entrance.
It flashed through her then, who he was. Who they were. How truly insane all this was, that this was Vaughn—
“You can call me stepbrother if you want,” he told her, in that mocking voice that seemed wired tight to every single nerve inside her body.
And even as that rolled through her like a kind of explosion, he thrust himself deep inside.
Devyn broke apart. She shattered. She heard herself cry out his name as she bucked against him, and when all he did was hold her tight and let her rock it out, it made everything that much more catastrophic. And that much better.
It went on and on and on.
And when the fierce grip of it finally eased, she was breathing much too heavily, her nails were dug into his back, and it took her a moment to become aware that he was still lodged there, huge and hard and deep inside of her.
Inside of her. Vaughn was inside of her.
She shivered all over again, a new fire licking over her skin and pooling in the place they were joined.
“I would never call you stepbrother at a time like this,” she said, very primly. “I’m horrified at the very suggestion.”
“Horrified. Yes. I can tell.”
“Appalled,” she whispered.
“Me too, darlin’,” Vaughn murmured. “Down to my very bones.”
And then he began to move. Slow, though not exactly sweet. He pulled back a little, then surged forward again, lazy and easy. As if he was doing nothing more than making room for himself.
As if he wanted to make sure they really fit like this, snug and tight.
Perfect, she thought, like a vow.
And every time he moved, every lazy thrust, it was better. He went deeper.
Building that fire again. Making her burn.
But he wasn’t satisfied with that, so he braced himself on one hand and reached down with the other to grip her hip, hauling her closer against him and changing the angle.
More fire. A thicker, deeper burn.
But still, he kept it slow. Deliberate. Something like unbearable again, except she loved every stroke. She met each one, her head thrown back and her fingers digging deep into his shoulders, in a kind of wild abandon she knew she’d never felt before.
And there was no way he could know her body, but he learned it. All of it. He found parts of her she hadn’t even known were there. He rubbed himself against her, tossing her from sensation to sensation, and challenging her to do the same for him.
So she did. Devyn wrapped herself around him. She dug her heels into his tight butt
and she urged him on.
But it was when she lifted her mouth to the crook of his neck and found his pulse with the flat of her tongue that she broke his control at last. She felt it go. He groaned out her name, and those long, slow, drugging strokes of his got wilder.
She met him there, too, powerful and perfect—just like him.
And when he finally hit his edge, he dropped his head down close to hers. Those clever fingers worked between them as he groaned out her name again, until Devyn found herself shattering all over again, following right behind him and hurtling off into impossible bliss.
She tried to leave when they were finished, lying there in that exhausted, naked heat.
“What are you doing?” Vaughn asked, his voice a low kind of rumble that seemed as much inside her as next to her.
She’d thought he was asleep. She looked over her shoulder and smiled at him, wishing her eyes hadn’t adjusted so well to the shadowed room. Because it would be a lot easier to leave if she couldn’t see him so easily. That rangy, athletic body of his, built like a quarterback. Big and hard and sprawled there in the bed behind her, and she knew that every inch of him was as delicious as he looked.
“Oh, you know. A girl does like her underpants.”
He laughed at that, though she didn’t think she’d said anything particularly funny, and then he reached over, grabbed her, and hauled her to him again.
And this time, he lay her on her back and settled himself between her legs, licking his way into her until she rolled and rocked and even screamed a little bit, but not for him to stop.
Which was a good thing, because he didn’t.
He licked her until she shattered once, then again, and then he flipped her over and held her in front of him, as if they were kneeling there together, and thrust into her that way.
And it began to feel less like shattering and more like falling apart.
A crucial distinction, she thought in a daze as she sprawled there against his chest, unable to move a single limb.
The next time she tried to leave, he didn’t laugh. He just picked her up again and carried her into the shower, where the water and the heat and all that slippery soap turned into something else again. She discovered that he was just as strong as he looked when he lifted her up, pulled her legs around his waist, and took her there against the tiles, hard and fast, like they were both addicts.
Devyn felt like an addict.
She definitely meant to leave when she woke up the next time. She could see hints of dawn in the sky outside his windows, but Vaughn was warm and hot against her back and she couldn’t seem to stop herself from turning over to get a bit closer to him. The next thing she knew she was pushing him over onto his back and climbing on top of him, wincing a little when she took him inside her—but that little pinch only added to the fire. The wild, deep blaze.
It was intense. Fierce. Slow and earth-shattering, all the same.
When she finally woke up again, dawn had broken and there was light outside. Bright winter light, pouring into every corner of the hotel bedroom. And worse, every dark corner of her, too. She was sprawled out across the rumpled bed, alone, and it took her a minute to realize she could hear the shower running in the bathroom.
And Devyn knew that if she stayed where she was, the way every last part of her wanted to do, it would be more of the same.
But there was no way she could allow that.
Reality slammed into her then, and it hurt. She had the beginnings of a headache, though it hadn’t tipped over into anything real, and she thought she could solve it with a glass of water. But she couldn’t solve anything else from Vaughn’s bed.
There were her parents to contend with. Melody’s other exes who would no doubt be streaming into town, all of them problematic in their own ways. The reality of the party that her mother was throwing, the activities that would likely lead up to it whether sleigh rides were included or not, and the role she’d be required to play, like it or not.
Last night had been her little adventure. Her trip over to the irresponsible side of things, and she couldn’t pretend she hadn’t enjoyed every second of it.
She had no intention of making it worse than it already was.
No matter how much she wanted to.
Because like it or not, she wasn’t her mother. Most of the time—when Vaughn Taylor was a memory instead of a troublingly attractive presence right there in front of her—she didn’t even want to be.
Devyn scrambled out of the bed before she forgot who she was. Something clutched at her chest when she looked around for her clothes and couldn’t find them—then did, neatly folded on the chair near the window. There was something like a lump in her throat, but she couldn’t indulge that, either. She dressed as quickly as she could, stamping into her boots and heading for the door before she finished buttoning up her pants.
Behind her, she heard the water turn off.
But she was easing out into the hallway. She didn’t dare wait for the elevator, because she had no idea what Vaughn might do, so she threw herself into the stairwell instead. Her heart was pounding as she made her way downstairs, trying to right her clothing and shrug into her coat, so she wouldn’t look as wrecked as she felt when she appeared in the lobby.
Once there, she decided she could spare a second to get a little caffeine into her body, so she could be well fortified before she was forced to face her mother.
And possibly her father, too—but she couldn’t think about that. It was too weird and gross and there was no need to borrow trouble. Maybe it had stopped with the bizarre flirting and what she would call sexual tension had it been literally any other two people alive. Maybe her father had gone off to a hotel somewhere after that coffee.
Maybe she didn’t actually want to know either way.
Coffee first, she told herself. Existential panic later.
But when she walked through into the hotel bar, which was transformed into the hotel’s breakfast area at this time of day, she stopped short.
Because two of her Grey cousins were sitting there, right in the place where Devyn had been kissing Vaughn—who was not, in fact, her stepbrother—last night.
Staring right at her.
At eight-thirty in the morning, when there was absolutely no reason on earth that Devyn should be in this hotel.
Chapter Six
“Hey, Devyn,” her cousin Skylar said, sounding nothing more sinister than pleased to see her.
But it still slammed into Devyn like a sledgehammer. That was how guilty and caught she felt.
Skylar was a couple of years older than Devyn, and the only one of Devyn’s cousins who also wore her hair in a longer pixie cut—something they had bonded over in the past. Today she held a coffee mug between her hands and was dressed in jeans and a sweater, no snow boots or parka in sight, which told Devyn that she was staying here in the hotel. Next to her at the high table in front of the bar and dressed similarly was her sister Scottie, who was frowning down at her phone and typing furiously in her keyboard, because she was a high-powered San Francisco attorney who could never completely step away from her office.
And when she looked up from typing to smile her hello at Devyn, the considering look in her eyes a beat later made Devyn wish she’d looked in a mirror before venturing out in public.
You mean running out of Vaughn’s room like it was on fire, a little voice inside corrected her. Does that count as venturing or was it just a cowardly little escape?
Devyn didn’t want to answer her own internal question. She wanted to die. She wanted the floor to open up beneath her, suck her inside, and bury her somewhere in all this Wyoming snow so she would never, ever have to face what she’d done last night. Much less her cousins.
So obviously, her only possible course of action was to go big.
She produced a giant smile. She made some noise. She ran over and dispensed hugs and tried to make it seem perfectly normal that she was here in this hotel so early in the morning.
“You look a little...weird,” Scottie said when all the hugging was done. She put down her phone and picked up her own coffee mug, but she was studying Devyn as she took a sip.
Devyn had never had to contend with the walk of shame before. Not her own or anyone else’s, now that she thought about it. She felt a sudden pang for the good girl she’d been all through college because like hell would she repeat her mother’s mistakes, when surely, she would have been far better served by engaging in drunken shenanigans like everyone else. If only so she might have known how to handle this moment a bit better.
But she didn’t have a clue. And her cousins were staring at her.
Worse, Vaughn was only a few floors up, and she could still feel him all over her. Inside of her.
Something she had no intention of sharing with anyone when she hadn’t had time to decide how she felt about it herself, least of all her nosey cousins, no matter how much she adored them.
She manufactured a cough. She aimed it into her elbow, as if she was concerned about spreading her germs, and then smiled.
“I feel a little bit weird,” she confessed, and that part was easy because it was the truth. “I don’t know if I’m actually coming down with something or if this is just a reaction to the fact that when I was at my mother’s house last night, easing into this birthday madness, the doorbell rang, and what to my wondering eyes did appear but...” She waited, to add as much drama as possible so her cousins could truly feel her pain. “My father.”
“No,” Scottie breathed at once, sounding gratifyingly appalled.
“I can’t even imagine that,” Skylar agreed, in much the same tone. “You were at the wedding this summer.” Their brother Jesse had gotten married in Marietta, Montana, the little town out in Paradise Valley that the Grey family considered their collective family seat, ever since the first disreputable Grey had turned up there before the town had even had a name—or much else besides hardy men and women looking to make their own way—in the 1800s. “I think it’s the first time my parents exchanged words in years. It was two quick sentences and it was actually civil, but it was still horrifying.”