Wrong

by Stella Rhys

  But then he finally caved. And when he did, the look on his face sent such a tremor up my legs that I thought I might fall to my knees. His eyes were filled with lust and desire but there was anger, shame and regret storming in there, and I remember feeling so confused – even more so when he gave me something that looked like a sneer before getting out of the hot tub. He didn’t talk to me again, and walked with Natalie for the rest of the night.

  But back at our parents’ house, when we were both still drunk and sneaking into our beds for the night, he passed my room and said something I thought I’d imagined because I was so completely out of it. But now, thinking back, I was sure I hadn’t imagined it at all.

  “Was that something I shouldn’t have brought up?”

  I was too lost in my memory to say anything when Tuck hustled me aside to speak to me in private. Across the floor, Riley and Natalie had Liam occupied, forcing him to train them on squats. But I felt his eyes flick over to me every minute or so, keeping tabs on Tuck as he spoke so close that I found myself leaned up on the cold tile wall.

  “Why would it be something you shouldn’t have brought up?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Liam looked like he was ready to kick my ass just now. Probably because… well. You looked like you should be on the cover of Maxim or Playboy that night. No disrespect.” Tuck held up his hands. “It’s just a memory that’s seared into my brain. And as weird as it sounds, around this time of year, I always think of you. You know, the way November comes and everyone wants pumpkin spiced everything. For me, when November comes, I just want to see Sasha Blakely.”

  I raised my eyebrows and gave a true laugh. “Really.’”

  “Yeah.” Tuck winced to convey embarrassment, but his body language was still cocky as ever since he leaned in closer. When a staffer had to get behind me to grab some towels, Tuck took me by the waist to move me aside. He let his hand fall a bit and linger on my hip as we kept talking. “I find myself talking about you. Wondering if you’ll be in Hudson Valley for Thanksgiving. You’ve probably noticed that I’ll like anything you post on Facebook, even if it’s a drunk typo or something.”

  I blinked, peering at Liam from afar. Max was with him now. Liam’s eyes stayed fixed on me as he muttered something to Max, both of them looking at me and Tuck from time to time.

  “I… guess that’s true,” I said, though I really hadn’t noticed anything about Tuck’s activity on my social media. I really hadn’t thought about anything in recent months except Liam.

  “Anyway, I’m really sorry for unloading all this shit on you at once. I swear I never would’ve if Nat didn’t push my buttons,” Tuck laughed apologetically. “I shouldn’t have confessed the thing about the white dress though. That’s on me.”

  “It’s not such a big deal.”

  “Well, it is because I was talking about a memory when none of us could stop staring at your perfect body.” Tuck said. He eyed me, waiting for a reaction I didn’t give him. “Anyway, I suspect I just pissed off your stepbrother now because, I don’t know, he’s probably secretly in love with you or some shit.”

  “That’s not true,” I blurted. “Not at all. What would make you say that?”

  Tuck blinked. “I don’t know, because it’s a common fantasy? I didn’t really mean it…” he said, trailing off in a way that made me think he was going to follow it up with, But now that you’ve reacted this way, maybe I do mean it. Our eyes were locked hard now as I tried to read him, to gauge him for any reactions outside the normal. Damn it, Sasha, I cursed myself just as Max cut in.

  “Sorry to interrupt.” He offered Tuck a half-assed smile before turning to me. “Sash, come with me. Iris just got back from her trip. She’s only here for a second and she wants to see you.”

  “Oh. Okay. Tuck, sorry I – ”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Tuck offered hastily. “I’ll see you soon, anyway, Sash.”

  I managed a wave before Max whisked me off. I followed him with a laugh to myself, shaking my head and rolling my eyes because we both knew Iris didn’t exist. She wasn’t a real person. She was Max’s first dog and a code word among the boys – generally used for getting someone out of an unfavorable situation.

  “Sorry if you were feeling that guy,” Max finally said as we made it to the renovated men’s locker room. It was mostly finished but still closed to the public. Of course, if Liam and Max visited, they were allowed to use it. “Liam said to have you meet him here once you were done talking.”

  “And he made you interrupt us so I’d be done talking soon, didn’t he?”

  “Just following the general’s orders,” he smirked.

  I laughed. “Well, thank you. I guess. You always end up in the line of fire, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. But I don’t mind it,” Max grinned in a way that I had a feeling had to do with Halloween. Then with a kiss on the cheek, he said, “Go shower,” and turned to go as I walked into the locker room.

  * * *

  The showers at Liam’s gym reminded me of high school with the metal lockers and rough, gritty feeling. The showers at Onyx, however, were more of a spa. The lockers were all wooden and the towels that stacked the glass shelves were all thick, white and plush.

  I could hear the pitter patter of just one shower as I walked through in search of Liam. There was something erotic in the sound alone. It came from way far down in this gleaming space that today, was a hundred percent ours. I could feel the heat, too. The thickness of the steam wafted out at me, unfurling over my skin and lulling me into a sense of security that I knew I shouldn’t have considering Liam was pissed. Maybe not at me, but he was pissed nonetheless. I had seen the look on his face when Tuck came close to me. When he touched me, I could see Liam’s fists ball around the weights he was holding. He was practically strangling those things as he watched us from the very corner of his eye. The second Tuck put his hands on my hips, Liam started over to us, but Max held him back and apparently offered to break us up himself.

  I was thankful for that.

  I trusted Liam. I trusted him to keep his anger in check. But just now, I saw him jealous for the first time in my life. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, and I wasn’t sure how to feel about the fact that it turned me on.

  Shaking out my hair, I followed the trail of clothes strewn about the floor that led me to the steamed glass door behind which Liam stood. I could see him fully naked in there – blurred but still defined. I had to grin. Only he was ripped enough to have every back muscle still visible through the fog of a piping hot shower. I watched them twitch and flex as he ran his hands through his hair.

  Good God. When I opened the door, the suds were running from his neck down the tapered V of his back, trickling into every ridge and crevice. I let my eyes trail down to the dimples above his perfect ass before meeting his wolfish gaze.

  “Mad at me?” The words rolled off my tongue and bounced off the walls in an echo. He smirked.

  “Yeah,” he said, pulling me into the shower, my clothes still on.

  “Why?” I asked, eyes on his as they gazed down at me, down at the water trickling between my breasts, under my bra. I wet my lips as I felt my stretchy cotton bottoms soak through in seconds. A rumble came deep from Liam’s chest as he turned me around, pressing my breasts up against the tile wall.

  “Nothing rational,” he replied, pulling my skintight yoga pants down just under my ass. There was pause as he took in the fact that I had nothing on underneath. I closed my eyes as I felt the flared tip of his cock rub against my opening, already sopping wet and pulsing with the need to feel the rest of him inside me. “Should’ve guessed.”

  “Guessed what?” I breathed my question, intoxicated, feeling as if the steam of the shower had us hypnotized.

  “That you weren’t wearing panties.”

  Without warning, he pushed the length of his shaft inside me. I gasped, lost instantly in bliss. My hands slid up the wet walls, pulsing against the tile with a beat of their
own as I felt my stepbrother slide in and out of me with ease. I moaned as I recalled the memory of him walking past my room two years ago, after that night in the hot tub. “Prude my fucking ass,” he had smirked, lingering in the doorway. “I know why you kept that dress on, babe.”

  “You knew,” I whispered, panting hard, letting Liam rip and tear at my tight bra till it was a soaked ring around my waist. His stroke inside me deepened as he growled low in my ear.

  “Knew what?”

  “That I was ass naked under that white dress,” I gasped, biting my grinning lips as he filled his hands with the softness of my breasts. He squeezed them hard, yanking me back against his every angry thrust inside me. My pussy felt tighter than ever, my thighs bound together by the skintight cotton of my pants still wrapped around my legs.

  “Of course I fucking knew,” Liam grunted, his voice like gravel as he hammered against me. “Every single fucking time you walked in front of me,” he thrust between each dirty sentence, “I thought about what you had on underneath. What color. Whether it was cotton or lace stretched nice and tight against that pussy.” I was spiraling out of control now as Liam punished me, fucking me with a fury that heightened by the thrust. With each one, I cried out, his balls slapping against me, the filthy sound echoing the showers in a rhythm. “Such a fucking sweet pussy,” he growled in my ear. “I want everyone to know it’s mine.”

  “Liam, they can’t…”

  “I want you to tell them. I don’t want to watch another fucking man touch that body in front of me again. I want them to know that body belongs to me.”

  “No,” I breathed desperately, rubbing my clit as Liam’s steel cock throbbed inside me. “We can’t.”

  “I don’t give a fuck,” Liam growled. “Let them know how you spread your pussy for your stepbrother,” he whispered huskily, the taboo of his words lighting a fire in my core. “Let them know how you take my cock like such a good fucking girl.” He changed up his pace, fucking me with a deep, slow force, making sure to push every last inch of himself inside me before pulling all the way out, reveling in the torment of my gasp before plunging all the way back in. Over and over and over again. “Look how wet you get for me, baby. I can fucking hear it,” Liam groaned. “You were fucking made for me, Sash. I want to show the world you’re mine.”

  I wanted that too. I already felt so impossibly good – I could only imagine how much better it could feel if we weren’t such a big secret. But we were, and there was no way around that. At least none that I could see. So I said nothing, only whimpering as Liam moved in and out of me so slowly I could feel his every throb as he pushed between my walls.

  “Holy shit – ”

  Yanking back my wet hair, Liam kissed me. “Do it Sasha,” he murmured roughly, telling me in three words that he could feel my pussy pulsating around him, ready and aching to come. “Go on, baby.” Eyes closed, I heard the filth in his voice. “Come. Come all over your stepbrother’s cock.”

  A ragged moan dispelled from my lungs as Liam’s orgasm mirrored mine. His arms wrapped tight around me as my body shook against his, hot water still beating onto our skin, the pitter patter fading back into my ears. We let the shower run for a moment as we recovered, our hot breaths dancing with the thick steam. Then, as if we’d gone in reverse, Liam undressed me, peeling off my soaked clothes and tossing them over the door. Naked together, we kissed under the rain, the rough warmth of his mouth lulling me into utter relaxation despite the buzzing of his phone on some surface somewhere within the locker room. I knew someone was trying to find him. Maybe Riley. Maybe Natalie. Whoever it was, I knew I was getting sloppy with our lie. I knew I was taking longer than I should with Liam. That my sister was looking for us.

  I knew everything I was doing was wrong.

  But I was too far gone – in the moment and the entire affair. I was lost in the nonstop pleasure and the gratification, so I stayed there with him. In that shower, the water still beating, I kissed my stepbrother, his tongue hot in my mouth and his seed warm down my thighs.

  It felt too good to stop.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  After ten minutes of tearing through my closet, I gave up, plopping on my bed in my T-shirt and panties. Normally, before any sort of dinner or party, Aria came by to help me stay motivated in terms of getting dressed and doing makeup. But tonight, she was off helping A.J set up his annual Friendsgiving dinner.

  He’d been holding it for half a decade now, and I’d come to look forward to the night more than actual Thanksgiving. It was more fun and more food, held every year at his parents’ Polish diner in the East Village. After closing, A.J and his brothers went into the restaurant, pushed together all of the tables and brought out two giant turkeys that Mr. and Mrs. Rutkowski had been cooking for them all day. Then they surrounded the birds with dozens of platters of stuffing, kielbasa, cornbread and bigos – basically every classic American and Polish staple.

  And then, of course, there was booze. An absolutely absurd amount of booze.

  “So what’s the deal now with Aria?” Riley asked, wandering into my room since Liam had just jumped in the shower. “Is it official now?” she asked, downing her second glass of red and then picking up mine to continue drinking.

  To my relief, she hadn’t acted any differently to me since our day at Onyx Fitness. She was, however, angry with me for a solid few hours because I’d left her alone with Natalie – or “chatty Cathy and her six-pack abs” – and that I’d disappeared without giving her the combination to our shared locker, which admittedly, was truly shitty of me. She had apparently looked for Liam and me everywhere, and had even asked Max why the hell we had disappeared together. Max improvised a half-lie about how Liam was showering, and how he’d seen me run into a friend at the juice bar and go off with her somewhere. Of course, I promptly ruined the front by acting clueless when Riley finally found me and asked who I’d run into. “Why is your hair wet?” she’d asked. “How did you already shower? I was in the locker room for the past twenty minutes waiting for you to come back. I didn’t see you in there.”

  In my panic, I blurted that I’d gone outside the building with Tuck – that I didn’t want an audience while I was trying to flirt. “I was with Tuck for awhile,” she said with narrowed eyes, but eventually, she dropped the subject. She was in a huff and kept shooting me looks for the duration of our shift at the bar that night, but to my serious relief, it wasn’t long before she was back to normal.

  And now, with wine in her veins and gossip on her mind, she was more normal than ever.

  “You mean Aria and A.J?” I smiled at the sound of their names together. “If it isn’t official yet, it will be soon.”

  “Ugh, that makes me sick,” Riley joked. “Fucking lovebirds everywhere I go. You and Tuck. A.J and Aria. Hey, if I weren’t married, A.J would’ve gone for me, right?”

  I glanced up at Riley. I couldn’t help but feel anxiety whenever she talked about her crushes lately. “I don’t know, Riles.”

  Pounding the last of her drink – rather, my drink – Riley set the glass on my dresser. Crossing her arms, she leaned on my doorframe, quiet for a second. “You can’t hook up with anyone tonight. Okay?”

  “What?”

  “Promise me you won’t.”

  My pulse picked up. “Why are you saying this?”

  “I’m talking about how I usually flirt with A.J at these dinners and now he’s all wifed up, so I can’t,” she grumbled, easing my tension. “So you have to stick my by side all night. In single girl solidarity.”

  “You are very much not single, Riley.”

  “I might as well be.”

  I dropped the shirt in my hands and looked up at her. “Alright, what’s going on? Are you guys going to like… divorce or something?”

  “What? Fuck no. I’d be broke if we divorced. I just like to pretend sometimes, Sasha. You’ll learn when you get older and marry a guy who stops fucking you. Sometimes, you just need a little crush to get by.
It’s not like I’m cheating. All I’m doing is flirting. It’s harmless.”

  “Fine. I just don’t know how to respond sometimes.”

  “I’ll tell you how to respond – you respond by telling me I’ve still got it and I’m not in fact the oldest twenty-eight-year-old in the history of man.”

  I tossed her a long-sleeve black dress that I borrowed from Aria. “You’re not. You’re still the hot chick, alright? Now go prove it to me by trying this slinky thing on.”

  “Christ, it’s tiny.” Riley’s eyebrows ascended, trying to stretch the barely stretchable fabric. “I won’t be able to eat more than half a fucking corn muffin tonight.”

  “Just try it,” I said, only half-joking as I stared her down till she left to change in the bathroom. I breathed out when she was gone and flopped back onto my bed, closing my eyes and wishing I could just open them and be ready.

  When I finally did open them, I wasn’t magically dressed for dinner, but I had another treat waiting for me. Lying in bed, I gazed out my door to find a freshly showered Liam returning from the kitchen with a beer. I relived the insanely hot sex we’d had in the Onyx locker room as my eyes caught on his water-flecked abs. Shamelessly, I trailed them down to those gorgeous hipbones. That V was cut so deep I wanted to fucking lick it.

  Tied well below those carved lines was a plush, white towel. It was all that Liam wore but the second we exchanged silent grins, he whipped it casually off, tossed it in my room and kept walking, leaving me open-mouthed and unblinking as I watched his muscled back and naked ass stroll into his room.

  “Uh-oh, I think I love it,” Riley called from afar in singsong, emerging from the bathroom just as Liam’s bedroom door closed. She frowned when she walked in to find me blinking, still revisiting the image of Liam’s swollen dick right before he tossed me his towel. “Hello? Now is the time when you shower me with compliments.”