by Wanda Edmond
“I know. You told me.”
“—If I agreed to never see you again.
Kristina stopped at the corner of the park.
“Finn, exactly how much money..?”
Chapter 9
Finn said he wanted a relationship.
She should have been happy.
All Kristina could think was what Finn told her. Ian had given him $500,000 to keep Finn Matthews away from her? Who did Ian Knight think he was? Some kind of ‘King’, who could wield his power any way he wanted..?
Kristina asked Finn if he knew Ian’s business Knightware. Finn didn’t know where the company was, but Kristina called in a favor from her boss at her PR company, Syren. Kristina asked Finn if she could meet him later. She wasn’t certain she was ready for relationship after learning how much her stepbrother paid to keep her under his thumb. 500K was nothing to sniff at—but what Ian had paid was a fortune.
After A couple of texts later and Kristina got another surprise. Turned out Ian Knight kept a summer home and it was right here in Atlanta!
She dialed Lyft and booked a ride to the outskirts of town. The pangs in her stomach had gotten worse, but she believed she knew what was causing them. She made a visit to a friend who knew a physician who could fit her in along the way…Then Kristina had a few things she wanted to tell her stepbrother before she wrote him off, for good!
***
Kristina rang the bell on the large Antebellum door and she was greeted by an older bald-headed man dressed in charcoal slacks and shoes, a vest and dress shirt, and—white gloves.
“Good evening.”
Kristina introduced herself then she asked if Ian was home.
“Mr. Knight is not receiving guests through the week.”
“He’ll see me.” The butler started to close the door and Kristina slipped past.
“What—? What are you doing?”
Kristina walked through the entryway, peeking in rooms, but they were too dark for her to see if they were occupied.
***
Ian watched the video screen of his sister running her hands through her hair, and touching her breasts while she undulated her hips on him wantonly. His new maid used her mouth on him and had made him hard enough to fit inside her—but the maid was tight.
Marissa squatted down on his thickness, sinking slowly over the wide mushroom flange of his cock. Ian looked from the maid’s rump back to his video of Kristina. He had only eyes for the woman he planned to have.
***
“Where is he?”
Kristina darted in and out of rooms from the living room to the indoor pool at the opposite of the mansion. She stopped at large staircase flanked by two bannisters, when she heard noises. “Is that him?”
Kristina slanted her eyes up the stairs. The butler stood on the lowest step of the stairs. “Mr. Knight is entertaining.”
The moans she heard from above became louder. “I’ll bet he is.” Kristina ran up the steps in her Daisy Dukes and Dukes of Hazzard wife-beater as fast as her New York cowboy boots could take her. She’d found the shoes when she and her PR author Bree Summer were on the way to the company’s hotel room they’d reserved.
Kristina thought she’d treat herself to something after Bree’s book signing party had led to landing Bree a second book contract. Kristina had stopped halfway up the staircase when she got a text from Syren.
The PR company texted Kristina she was to accompany Bree to London, following Bree’s mammoth fan-base that was growing out of the UK. Great. Fabulous. She had almost gotten to the UK already via Ian’s jet. All she needed was to find a man who wasn’t an Alpha heathen, and she’d be fine. Suddenly she heard two loud groans rattle from the top of the stairs.
“Miss, wait—. You can’t be up here,” said the butler.
Kristina popped her phone back into her hip pocket opposite her wallet.
“Watch me.”
Chapter 10
The door to a large study was the first room Kristina could slide into before the butler could catch her. She slammed the door closed and leaned against it in victory, ignoring the butler’s raps on the door. When she saw a girl bouncing feverishly up and down a man’s very large penis.
A penis she would recognize anywhere.
Marissa Renaldo bobbed off of Ian’s cock, her breasts dewy and her face red. Kristina crossed her arms watching Marissa collect what looked like part of a white cap, and an apron!
Oh, no, thought Kristina. She’d walked in on Ian and while he was doing his ‘maid’?
Kristina passed the maid as the maid grabbed her things—and a personal check from a large mahogany desk. “And you are?” Kristina said.
“Marissa. Excuse me—.” The Latina peeked over her shoulder and slipped her underwear and maid uniform on before she reached for the door.
When Marissa opened the door and yelped at the butler she called Potter.
Potter stopped rapping, his fist mid-air. The butler stood, staring at Marissa and then at Ian, bending to one side when Marissa tried to close the door, his mouth agape.
Marissa poked her head back into the room. “Will there be anything else, Mr. Knight?”
“Meet with Jeremy as we discussed. Marissa? Call me, Ian.”
“Yes, Mr. Knight. I mean, ‘Ian’.” Marissa closed the door tugging Potter with her.
Kristina watched the maid depart, and turned back to Ian. Her stepbrother was seated in an oversized antique wicker chair, his legs splayed and his hair-roughened abdominals flexing as his erection bobbed in the air.
Kristina didn’t know which was more impressive; her brother lounging like a lion prepared to savage his next willing prey, or his exceptional length. She saw her brother’s cock flounce against the side of the iPad he held—Kristina marveled how Ian’s shaft reached past the top of the tablet. Maybe he impressed her most by how shamelessly he looked at her, while his dick stood at full mast—as if Ian Knight expected her to continue where the maid stopped!
***
“I supposed you’re going to tell me what a rake I am?”
Ian laid his computing tablet down on the desk, and he glanced at Kristina.
Oh, she thought something all right.
Ian Knight was a lying, manipulative man, who stopped at nothing to get what he wanted. Worse, he used people and ordered them around like they were servants, not people! Kristina wanted to pick up the iPad and lamb Ian on the head. Then she remembered she had a new life to get to—and she wouldn’t be able to do it until she made peace with her brother.
She would have preferred her brother have the decency to remain fully clothed!
Chapter 11
Ian sat in the wicker seat, his erection bold, and unsated. His stepsister caught him doing his staff in flagrante delicto, and she didn’t seem piqued his was naked in the slightest. It gave him reason to hope.
He and Krissy had known each other forever. Yes, they had grown apart for many years, almost seven. They had lived separate lives, without knowing what happened to the other one. Ian tried to trek down Kristina through private investigators, and he learned Krissy’s mom had changed her family name. Ian hadn’t known Kristina went by her mother’s maiden name Layne, until he saw Kristina on the local Miami news online. He’d been in town on business, and when he’d found her at a spa, their attraction burned hot.
They’d almost made love on a private beach in Miami then.
Then Kristina had gotten cold feet.
Ian told her he would shake earth and sky to have her.
She hadn’t taken his promise to heart.
Ian rose from the chair, his muscled, lanky body unfurling with leonine strength. Kristina uncrossed her arms, stepping back towards the door in the study. She hadn’t had time to peruse the antebellum house or its rooms. She’d wanted to get to her brother and tell him what he could do with his antiquated view of her and women in general.
“You can’t control people when you feel like it.” Kristina stood her ground
watching Ian draw closer.
Ian approached Kristina, gazing at her honey blond pigtailed head, to her southern booted toes.
“So he’s told you.”
“How could you?” Kristina glared.
Her stepbrother circled her slowly, and she felt his breath fan the tiny hairs at the nape of her neck. “Bribe a man to stay out of my way?”
Kristina pushed at Ian. “Use his family’s illness to blackmail him is more like it!”
“Now you think you can do the same with me?”
Ian closed the space between himself and his sister.
All he’d ever wanted was to have a life with her. He’d fight any beast and slay any dragon until her stepsister understood she and he were meant to be together.
“You misunderstand.” Ian pressed his groin against Kristina’s cutoff jeans as he stood at full attention.
“I’d do anything, be anything, say anything to prove my devotion to you—.”
Ian touched his lips to Kristina’s naked shoulder. “All you have to do is ask.”
He kissed Kristina lovingly, pecking her sensitive flesh over her arms, making her stomach flutter and her head swoon.
Kristina could feel his massive hard-on prodding her navel because he was so exceptionally long. Ian’s short, dark belly hair grazed her smooth skin, making her tank top ride up her tummy every time she took a breath.
Her brother reminded her of a wild animal; his feral need to dominate her made her weak in her knees—but she wouldn’t give in to desire.
“So that’s why you paid Finn Matthews? So you could prove you care?” Kristina turned away and she headed for the door. “You care about one thing only. The best part of all of this is I will never have to see you again.”
Ian grabbed Kristina by the waist, his eyes darkening with heat.
“All right, I blackmailed him. I paid Finn Matthews one million dollars to stay away from you.” Ian held his sister close when she tried to pry away. “We’re going to have this out, Krissy, and we’re going to do it, now.”
Chapter 12
He was an insufferable, controlling jerk!
Ian Knight admitted he gave Finn money—and he did it so he could control her. What other lengths had her stepbrother gone to in order to show his ‘devotion’ to her?
Kristina wrested her arms from her brother, and she went for the door. Ian reached the door first and he spun her, sending her back against the wood. She felt his hardness press into her body as she stared into his black eyes. She’d remembered they turned from brownish gold to black when she’d let Ian slip inside her and forcibly take her while they flew to Paris…only to have Ian stop their flight short, and now she knew why.
Her stepbrother wanted her—but he only wanted her as a trophy.
“Get off me,” Kristina brushed away Ian’s hands as he caressed her cheeks.
“I’m not some play thing.”
She wasn’t something he could pull out of his toy chest when he wanted sex. “If you happened to have forgotten, we are brother and sister!
Ian slammed the door shut.
“You’re lying.”
Kristina glared, her emerald eyes burning hot like fire.
“You want me as much as I want you. The difference is I’m willing to fight for us, and you want to play it safe—.” Ian marched to the wicker chair and reached for his pants, with Kristina watching his firm round buns the whole time. Oh, the man was gorgeous.
“That has nothing to do with it.” Kristina yelled.
“You want to know why I ran from you between here to almost Paris? I don’t want to be hurt. I saw how you treated me when you thought I was falling in love with Finn Matthews.”
Ian hoisted up his pants. “Yeah, and you wanted me to,” he said.
“Yes, I wanted you to, I wanted to make you jealous, okay?”
Ian twirled back to his sister and he stuck his face into her personal space. “Oh, so now we’re getting to it. You wanted me to come after you, then you pushed me away. Who is really the play thing, Krissy? You? Or me—!”
Kristina froze.
She watched her stepbrother pull on his shirt and button it unevenly, then stood on one leg at a time, donning his socks. He had a wonderful physique. His pecs and biceps made her think of a knight who must have honed his body from years of battle.
Suddenly she realized her thoughts weren’t far from the truth. Ian had risked his heart to come to her. She had turned him away each time. Then she was the one who came to his home and accused him or dirty dealings. Still, Finn had been the one to take Ian’s money. Finn admitted he had ‘debts’. Kristina didn’t know that much about Finn when she thought about it…she did know the man who stood in front of her in his antebellum study. Because Ian had made certain she did.
Why had she fought so hard to stay away from him?
Ian frowned and he turned to find his other shoe. Kristina touched him and he straightened on instinct.
“What.”
“Ian?”
Kristina stepped in front of her brother. “Ian, you were right. I’ve been running but it wasn’t from you.”
Ian stilled seeing Kristina glance at him nervously.
“I’ve been running from me.”
“I guess seeing that girl with you made me see I don’t want you with any other woman.” Kristina admitted silently.
Ian glanced at Kristina, wide-eyed. “You were, jealous?”
“Yes. I saw you with that woman at the hotel at the book pre-signing party first.”
“I told you we were friends.”
Yeah, a friend with ‘benefits’, thought quietly.
Ian sat his hip on the edge of his desk. “Then you saw me with Marissa.” Kristina saw Ian bow his head and she touched his cheek. He looked up and she could see the pain in his eyes.
“I never wanted you to know about the women. It is just I have needs. I work hard, and I love harder. Maybe all of it is more than I can ask of any one woman—.”
Kristina touched her brother’s chin with her hand; when he looked up again, she smiled.
“We may have been apart the better part of six years, but I remember enough about us to know you like sex.” Kristina smiled ruefully and she noticed her brother look a little brighter.
“Are we okay, then?” Ian wanted Kristina, but not if she wanted someone else.
He was beginning to think love wasn’t the gift two people shared when they realized their hearts were one. Maybe the treasure he thought he’d found with his stepsister wasn’t meant to be?
“Oh, I’m plenty pissed. I didn’t like seeing those other women with you. But I know you didn’t like seeing me with any dude either. I’m beginning to wonder if we really aren’t two of a kind.”
Ian glanced at Kristina, wide-eyed. “You were, jealous?”
“It is more than that—.” Kristina bit her lips, trying to figure out how she was going to say what she’d found out hours ago.
A pang gripped her stomach.
”Kris, are you all right? What’s wrong? Ian held her tightly.
“Ian, I’m pregnant.”
Chapter 13
Ian started at Kristina. She had told him the best news he could dream. Only she didn’t look happy about it. They’d had a rocky time of things since he’d vowed he’d win her. The night they shared making love while flying across the Atlantic—he’d planned, certainly. He’d thought he could show his stepsister how much they belonged to one another.
He fantasized secretly how hot their lovemaking would be.
Hearing his sister confess she was pregnant was better than his wildest dreams. Could he and Kristina have conceived a child together? With his head for business and athleticism, and his sister’s tenacious work ethic and good looks, their little boy or little girl were sure to have hit the genetic lottery.
There was one question he had unanswered.
***
Kristina knew she should say something, anything. She had been with he
r stepbrother and also with Finn. One of them had to be the father of her child. She didn’t know if she should stay or run, but run…to where?