Stepbrother Romance: My Alpha Cowboy Stepbrother (Stepbrother Romance, Taboo, Forbidden, Stepsister, New Adult, Western Romance, Cowboy Romance)

by Celia Styles

  “Did he—did he hurt you?” I asked.

  She sighed and shrugged. “Technically it could’ve been statutory rape, but I never pressed to have him charged. I was fifteen, too young and too dumb to say ‘no’ or at least make him wear a condom. Luckily nothing ever came of it. And on the bright side, I discovered that I’m just not into guys.”

  I found it hard to believe that she could be so blasé about it. She read my thoughts, and said, “It’s a regret that I rushed into sex, Easton, not a trauma, that’s all. Just like you regret marrying that jackass husband. I don’t want to be anybody’s regret, that’s all I’m saying.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. It was at that moment that I realized that she was the first person in my life who’d ever been willing to wait for me, which I simply hadn’t expected.

  She reached out and touched my face. I didn’t exactly flinch, but the same butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling came back. “You’re still afraid,” she said.

  “I thought being nervous was normal.”

  “Maybe it is for some people,” Stella said. “But the people I want to sleep with have to want it just as much as I do.”

  She stood up and handed me a card. Then she kissed me on the cheek and turned to leave, saying, “If you’re still interested, next weekend there’s a thing going on along Kelly Drive. I’ll be there, and we can talk.”

  ***

  I walked home that night, alone, fingering the card that Stella had given me, trying to work out if she was right—was I afraid? It irritated me that I could be afraid. Easton Miles was not afraid. She’d done all sorts of stuff since I made her real. A coward doesn’t show up in a big city with nothing and make something for herself. A coward doesn’t leave her husband.

  Maybe she just sensed my uncertainty. I wanted to yell, “But who the hell is sure about relationships?” I mean, wasn’t that what they always said—take it slow, get to know the other person, don’t go too quickly or else you’ll regret it?

  I asked her these questions the following Monday. “Sure,” Stella replied, “And they’re for people who don’t know what they want. You want someone who muddles through—maybe they’ll fit, maybe they won’t? Well, go right ahead. I want you, babe.”

  “But we hardly know each other—“ I gasped. “I could be a psychopath or really bad in bed and—“

  Stella smiled. “I know. I also know that you always have my coffee ready when I walk in with my name done differently every time—“

  “I do that for a lot of regulars,” I protested.

  “Maybe, but you don’t smile like that for them, do you?”

  “Smile like how?”

  Stella grinned and walked out the door.

  I turned to Jim, the guy who worked with me in the afternoons. He was twenty-two, splitting his time between the coffee shop and running mail as a bike messenger, while going to night school for graphic design. He was also twenty-two, and very much into women—and if anybody would know what Stella was talking about, it would be him. “Do you know what she’s talking about?” I demanded.

  Jim put his hands up. “Whoa there. I’m not getting in the middle of this.”

  “Come on, Jim. Just tell me.”

  He just shook his head and grinned at me. “Easton, babe, I love you and all, but Stella’s right—you get this—” he put his hands on either side of his head and extended his arms, preacher-style. “She walks in and you go from ‘whew, survived another shift’ to ‘I can run another fucking marathon’.”

  “So you don’t think she’s right?”

  Jim rolled his eyes and began rearranging the baked treats. “I’m twenty-two, damn it. I’ve had exactly one girlfriend in my entire life and that ended after she met my brother. I don’t know how these things are supposed to work. Some people say that you need to wait and see. Some people say you’ll know when you know.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “Fuck, they never told me being Dr. Phil was part of this job.”

  And it was probably for the better that customers began walking in the store at that point. Jim had a point, after all—nobody knows shit when they’re twenty-two. The truly smart ones know it.

  ***

  By the end of the week I was going absolutely crazy. Between the head games Stella was playing—being cute and coy whenever she showed for coffee—and the bodily need for sex that she evoked, I almost didn’t go to the “thing” on Saturday. Despite the gorgeous weather, I spent the better part of the morning curled up under the sheets, trying to talk myself out of it, out of seeing Stella again, ever—after all, it wasn’t like that was the only coffee shop in town, and I was pretty sure I could do some street art to make the rent in between. Better to start over new, than to be blackmailed into a relationship I didn’t really know if I wanted.

  Except that I really liked Stella, and we really did click. And as I remembered the hand squeezes that lingered just a little too long, the way she touched my face, the slyly suggestive gestures she always made when saying “good-bye” in the shop, I realized that would miss them, even more than I missed having my own studio to paint in. I would sob like baby if I cut her out of my life.

  In the end I flipped a coin: heads I would go, tails I would stay. It was heads. I put on a tank top, denim jacket, a peasant skirt, and a pair of cowboy boots. It was totally mismatched in a fortunately-cute way, but I couldn’t afford to be overly picky because I hadn’t done laundry all week.

  I went to the Art Museum, high-fived Rocky Balboa, and walked into one of the biggest Pride parties I’d ever seen. The historic boathouses on Boathouse Row were festooned with rainbow streamers and balloons, and people wearing nothing but body-paint and glitter were sprawled all over the grassy banks of the Schuylkill.

  “There you are,” Stella said. I jumped. I hadn’t seen her come up to me.

  “What is this?” I asked. “I thought Gay Pride was on South Street.”

  “It usually is,” Stella said. “But two days ago a giant sinkhole opened up right in the middle of the parade route. The universities let the Gay Pride people do it here.”

  She led me to a towel, where she’d left her bag to stake it. “C’mon, sit down,” she said. “I promise, I don’t bite.”

  I followed her, smoothing down the billowy skirt as it ballooned around me on my way down. Stella put her sunglasses on and stretched out. “The weather is fantastic,” she said.

  Is this how it all begins? I wondered. An innocent comment on the weather—

  A topless lesbian couple walked by. I blinked, amazed that they could do this here.

  “Hey babe, what’s on your mind?” Stella asked. She followed my eyes and laughed. “Yeah, they’re hard-core. You get used to it. And penis puppets.”

  “A what—never mind….” As an elephant and Darth Vader walked by.

  Stella took my hand, and gave it a squeeze. “If you ever want to leave, just let me know. We don’t have to be here.”

  “No,” I breathed. “I want to be here. It makes me feel—safer, somehow.” For all the weirdness and nudity that was around us, it wasn’t a threatening space, and the vibe, unlike last week at the bar, was entirely ‘You do your thing, we’ll do ours.’

  “Good,” Stella said. “I know it’s not everybody’s scene—but I figured that, if you saw a whole bunch of lesbians making out, you’d realize that it’s okay to have urges and desires, too.”

  “I know that,” I said. “I read Our Bodies, too.”

  “Yeah, but it’s one thing to know it here,” she said, tapping my forehead, “and another to know it—there,” she said, pointing to my chest. “You’re still nervous.”

  “I know,” I said. “I just—I don’t want to lose you. You’re the first person I’ve met who’s genuinely liked me and wants me and I really like you I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do—” my rambling got cut off when Stella laughed.

  “You don’t need to do anything,” she said. “Just be.”
<
br />   Be Easton. And Easton was ready to fuck in the grass. But Evelyn wasn’t quite so sure.

  Stella had taken my hand again, and now she was kneading the fleshy part of my thumb with hers, tracing gentle but firm circles in her hand. “Stop thinking,” she said. “You’re overanalyzing things. Do you like this?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you like this?” Stella asked, getting up and moving behind me. Presently I felt her hands on my shoulders, pressing deep and hard into the muscles there. I felt my whole body relax, and then, after a while, I realized that my mind was quiet. I wasn’t nervous anymore. This felt good. This felt right.

  “Let me take off your jacket,” Stella said, reaching around me and undoing the buttons. As she peeled it off my shoulders her hand grazed my breast, and I hoped—wanted—her to hold me, touch me. She brushed her fingers against my nipples as she resumed the massage—a gesture just erotic enough to stoke the first flames of “fuck me now” desire, and just innocent enough to pass for not trying. “It’s easier to get a feel for what I’m doing,” she said, as she kneaded the muscles in my shoulders. But now, with her hands against my bare skin, her touch took on another dimension—she was responding to me, her hands going where I opened up to her.

  I tilted my head to one side, inviting her to knead the muscles of my neck. She did that with one hand, and then with the other tilted my head skyward and kissed me. Her lips tasted of strawberries, and felt just as soft and luscious, deliciously warm and tantalizingly responsive. I could sense her desire in the way she sought out my tongue, even as I fought for hers.

  Then she lay down next to me, her breasts soft and warm against mine. We were still kissing each other, lying on her towel in the warm sun. My hand landed on her breast, and she made no effort to remove it, so I tentatively began to squeeze it. Through the fabric of her clothes I felt her nipple harden, and when I brushed it with my thumb we both gasped. It was a moment of beauty and realization for me—that I, too, could make her body do all of these things, and that she was going to let me.

  And then two rainbows walked by, and one of them said, “Gorgeous.”

  I jerked back, startled that anybody would comment on us here. Just when I was starting to feel comfortable, too.

  “Sorry,” said the first rainbow. He was done in patches of body paint, all over his (perfectly sculpted) torso and face. The jeans he wore had been painted to match. “It’s just that the two of you make a gorgeous couple. I’m Zach, by the way. He’s Deke.”

  “Yeah, well, you guys fucking killed the mood,” Stella shot back, annoyed. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been wanting to kiss this foxy lady?”

  Deke, who was painted in broad stripes of color, said, “We could help you get it back,” he said, smiling mischievously. Because his face was painted red, it was a very odd look.

  “I don’t think so,” Stella said. “Easton is mine.”

  “Ooh, territorial. What do you say, Deke? Up for a challenge?”

  Stella seemed unfazed by this turn in the conversation, but I couldn’t handle it anymore. “I’m not some prize to be won! I’m here on a date and—“

  “Easton,” Stella said calmly. “Relax.”

  “What’s up with her?” asked Zach.

  “First time kissing a girl,” Stella said.

  “And at Pride, too,” Zach finished. He whistled. “You are one incredible fox, Easton.”

  “She’s new to the whole idea of sex for pleasure,” Stella added.

  “I’ll say,” murmured Deke. I shot him a scowl. Zach elbowed Deke.

  “Well,” said Zach, “what would you all say to showing the lady a good time?”

  “A—what’s going on? I thought you guys were gay. Gay guys don’t do women,” I blurted out.

  “We’re with each other because we happen to love each other,” Deke said, “but we’re, um, what’s the word again—pansexual? Transsexual?” He glanced at Zach, who shook his head, violently. “Well, whatever. We’ll do anything with a pulse that can give consent. But we prefer to make love to the beautiful ones.”

  Stella was getting a feral look in her eye. “C’mon, Easton,” she whispered. “What d’ya say? Getting done by two hot men and me at the same time—it’s practically a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

  I looked from one rainbow to another, and back to Stella. It had literally never occurred to me that it was possible to have sex with so many people at one time.

  It had never occurred to me that I would feel turned on by the thought.

  “All right,” I said. “But not here.”

  ***

  We ended up in the Ritz Carlton hotel—not the penthouse suite, alas (that had been booked) but after looking through the amenities on offer we decided that the honeymoon suite was big enough. First Zach and Deke showered to wash off their body paint. Stella, in the meantime, ran the hot tub and set up the video—on the way to the Ritz we learned that they were merely passing through Philly when they chanced upon the Pride party, and they said they wanted to have the video as a little keepsake. “We’ll send you the edited version,” they promised. So we were propping up phones and video cameras.

  We slipped off our clothes and got into the hot water, feeling our bodies relax as we submerged ourselves. It was quiet, just the bubbling in the tub and our contented sighs, with the sound of Zach and Deke in the bathroom, running the shower. I felt myself getting nervous again, now that I’d had time to think over what we were doing.

  Stella looked over at me and read my mind. “Don’t you dare,” she said.

  “I’m trying not to, honest,” I protested. But I couldn’t deny that the thoughts disease and pregnant weren’t bouncing around in my head like a squash ball with rockets.

  Stella leaned into me, her wet, naked body sliding deliciously against mine. “You want this,” she said, pressing her breasts against mine. “You need this,” she said, kissing me firmly, but with the same ardor as she had at the park. “You deserve this,” she whispered, and all of a sudden I felt her fingers ghost against my clit, and my entire body shuddered with excitement.

  “Whoa there, is there enough for us?” Zach came out of the shower first, followed by Deke.

  I couldn’t speak. Stella lifted me out of the hot tub and sat me on the edge. I felt my hands begin to cover my body but Zach caught me and gently pinned my arms back while Stella began to work nipples with her mouth. Warm sparkling sensations cascaded up and down my body, and my body went limp as I rode the wave of ecstasy.

  Suddenly there was another mouth against mine. It was Deke, kissing me with all of the fervor that Stella had, and none of the containment. It came as a surprise, then, when suddenly he pulled away, and I fought to keep him with me, fighting to hold onto his lips and taste his tongue. With Stella’s fingers tapping against the tender bud of flesh between my legs, filling my body with a liquid warmth, and her mouth sending little pleasing shocks of pleasure straight down into my core, it was already more than I’d ever known, and I tried to break away to catch my breath.

  “Bed,” Stella gasped. And all of a sudden I was lifted up by the three of them and placed onto the bed, on my back. Zach was spreading my legs apart, sighing as he gently fingered the shaved skin and peeling apart the petals of flesh. “Go for it,” Stella urged, and when his tongue kissed my lips all of the liquid warmth that Stella had stoked began to flood my body. I could feel my back begin to arch, but he and Deke were holding my legs apart. I fought against them—the need to come was all-consuming. Beads of sweat began to form on my belly as I tried to hold it back, even as Zach kept his lips and tongue whispering against mine.

  Then Stella straddled me. I could smell the fresh, animal scent of her, open and inviting. She took my hair and pulled my head back so that I couldn’t see what Zach or Deke were doing. I suddenly felt very vulnerable, very exposed, naked but unable to see anything. Deprived of being able to see anything, the hands on my breasts took on an ever-larger presence in my
conscious. My body began to rock into the mouth that was eating my pussy, and Stella smiled and let me have her. The sweet-sour-salty taste of her filled my mouth, and her baby-smooth lips were as hot and wet as my mouth was.

  Her clit was like a rose, warm and sweet and soft, and I kissed it, licked it, every little gasp from her sending a shot of pleasure straight through me, as well. I could feel her hands pressing my head deeper into her, and at the same time I felt someone slide inside me, one, two, three, four—the rocking sensation began slowly, softly, and only gradually became stronger and stronger, each pulse of pleasure building up on the wave before it. Stella’s thighs pressed against my head—I couldn’t hear her but I could feel her body seize into a spasm of pleasure, and as she let me go and collapsed on the bed next to me the only reason I didn’t ask how she was doing was because in that moment Zach—somehow they’d managed to switch without me knowing--starting kissing me as well, licking the film of liquid that Stella left on me, grunting his delight and approval.

  Deke was inside me, now, rocking me up and down as he thrust himself deep inside me. I was literally seeing stars, and I don’t know if it was just an illusion or if it was real, but something was vibrating, humming inside me, drawing every nerve in my body taught with anticipated pleasure.

  And that was when I felt a hand snaking to my dripping wet pussy from behind, fingering my clit so that a liquid warmth spread all over my body. I felt Zach behind me—his body was hard, and his teeth nibbled gently at my ear, sending little tickles of joy careening through me. Somehow he pushed me up to a kneeling position—out of the corner of my eye I could see Stella working on his cock below me, but my attention was taken by Deke, who was sliding against me, smiling—distracting me from the hands spreading my ass apart, kissing me—while Zach groaned as he pushed his way inside me. Fondling my breasts—while they looked at each other while they found a pace. I couldn’t move—just breathing felt like a dare, with these two men—larger than Alan, both of them—inside me, thrusting against gravity. And I was completely caught off guard by the exquisite sensations that came from Zach, the almost-but-not-quite release I was getting every time he withdrew himself a little.