I didn’t feel strong, empowered and sexualized. I felt weak, cheap and used, and I couldn’t understand why I’d thought this whole thing was a good idea. I didn’t want to be a virgin anymore, but was this really how I wanted to remember my first time - a hotel room with a perfect stranger who’d never give me a second thought afterwards? Earlier on, I would’ve said yes, but I now knew that was naïve. Now that I was actually in the moment, I realized exactly how much I didn’t like the idea of casual, no-strings-attached sex. Something about it just felt so wrong, like I’d have to be dead on the inside to enjoy the total lack of real intimacy and meaning.
As I hesitated, Drew’s hands were all over me again, stroking, caressing and squeezing, and I abruptly got up and pulled my skirt back down over my thighs before hunting for my top.
“What the…”
His eyes narrowed with confusion, and I looked down at the floor. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “I have to go.”
“Huh? What the fuck are you talking about?”
I cast my eyes around, looking for my black and silver clutch purse. “I have to go,” I repeated.
“You can’t be fucking serious,” he said. “You tease me and get me all hard and raring to go, and then you just fuck off before we even start? You can’t do that!”
Ugh. He sounded like such an entitled prick. My cheeks burned, and I glared at him.
“I don’t owe you anything. You know, women are allowed to change their minds,” I said. “We’re allowed to say no. Amazingly enough, we’re even allowed to vote!”
He rolled his eyes at me. “Thanks for the lecture, Miss Feminism 101. I wasn’t insinuating anything sexist, I was just saying it’s pretty fucking rude to purposely give a guy blue balls.”
“Well, I’m sure you can find someone else to take care of that,” I said, gesturing towards the trash can as I finally located my clutch.
He looked mystified, as if no one had ever dared to reject him before, and as I turned and strode towards the door, he called out to me.
“Wait!”
“What?” I replied, turning back to face him. Maybe he wasn’t so much of a jerk after all. Maybe he was about to say he’d be okay with taking things slower.
He smirked and put his hand on his crotch again. “You don’t know what you’re missing out on,” he said. “You could’ve had the best night of your life.”
Nope.
I rolled my eyes and continued towards the door, not even bothering to look back. I was making the right decision. Yes, I’d led him on, but that was before I’d had the stark realization that this whole thing was wrong for me. It was far better that I leave now rather than do something I knew I’d end up regretting. What did it matter if I’d pissed off Drew the Adonis? He was obviously an arrogant asshole who deserved to be taken down a peg or two for once.
Besides, I was never going to see him again, was I?
CHAPTER TWO
SOPHIE
“I still can’t believe you left that hottie up there all alone,” Cerie said, twirling a red fruit roll-up around in her hands. I wasn’t with her, but I could see her on my computer monitor.
It was the morning after our big night, and I was on a group Skype chat with her and Lana. I sighed. “I had to leave. I changed my mind. It wasn’t for me.”
Lana’s forehead creased with concern. “Sorry for pushing it on you. We really thought we were helping.”
“You were helping!” I said. “The whole thing was my idea. It’s not your fault. I just decided I’d rather sleep with someone I actually knew. No big deal.”
“I was actually referring to the sheer willpower it must have taken you to leave him,” Cerie said. “Seriously, I’d dump my boyfriend for just ten minutes with that Drew dude.”
“Does your boyfriend know that?” I teased as Lana giggled.
A voice almost identical to mine called out to me from downstairs in our Redmond home. “Honey, I’m back! Can you come downstairs?”
“In a sec, Mom!” I shouted before turning my attention back to the screen. “Gotta go. Mom just got home from her business trip.”
My Mom had spent the last seven years working like crazy to keep us afloat, and for the last couple of years that job had entailed regular trips all over the country. I’d always been pretty self-sufficient, so it suited me just fine. Her most recent trip had been to Nevada, and I headed downstairs with a yawn, rubbing my eyes. Hardly anything had even ended up happening last night, but I was still exhausted for some reason.
I found my Mom in the lounge room, and she threw her arms around me in a warm hug before gesturing for me to sit.
“What’s up?” I asked, puzzled. I could smell espresso, and I could hear something clanging around in the kitchen. I craned my neck and looked towards it. “Who’s in there?”
Mom stared at me and played with the hem of her shirt. She only did that when she was anxious about something. “Honey, there’s something we need to talk about,” she said. “You remember how I told you that I may have met someone a few months ago?”
“Uh-huh,” I replied. She hadn’t given me any details other than the fact that she’d started seeing someone, and I assumed she hadn’t wanted me to know because it was her own private business.
“Things have become a lot more serious between us,” she said.
“So you want me to meet him.”
“Well…it’s a little more complicated than that. Tony, could you come in here?”
A tall greying man came out of the kitchen with two cups of coffee, and he set them down on the coffee table in front of me before rising back up to his full height. No way. It was our old neighbor, Tony Buckley. Thirteen years ago, he’d been a single father barely scraping by and trying to build his own company, but when I was around ten, his business had suddenly exploded. He’d moved away from our middle-class neighborhood to somewhere more suitable for someone with newfound riches, and I hadn’t seen him since.
His only son, Andrew, had been my best friend during the time they’d lived next door, and my heart warmed at the memory. He’d been a scrawny kid with glasses and perpetually messy hair, and although we’d both been considered the geeky outcasts of all the neighborhood kids, it had never stopped us from having tons of fun with each other. When his Dad’s company had taken off, I’d been devastated that Andrew had been forced to move. I’d only been ten, and he’d only been eleven, so we were hardly in a position to argue against the decision. They’d left very suddenly, and I’d never even had the chance to say goodbye properly. I’d had to find out about it from my Mom.
“Mr. Buckley!” I said. “What are you doing here? Wait…you’re not…”
My voice trailed off. Tony must have been my Mom’s new boyfriend! Why else would he be in our house making us coffee while my Mom nervously spoke about someone she’d been seeing?
“It’s good to see you again, Sophie,” he replied, giving me a warm smile. “Now, I guess your mother’s told you that we’ve been seeing each other.”
“Err…she was about to tell me, yes,” I replied.
They both looked at each other with soppy expressions on their faces.
“We ran into each other on a business trip down in San Francisco a while ago,” Mom said. “We decided to have a coffee to catch up, and well…the rest is history.”
“Oh. Um…that’s great,” I said, breathing a quiet sigh of relief.
Tony had always seemed like a decent guy, and my Mom deserved a little happiness. She hadn’t exactly had the best luck when it came to relationships. She’d been married to my father for thirteen years, and he’d been a violent son of a bitch up until the day he disappeared.
I’d been eleven at the time, and he’d gone off on a fishing trip with a friend of his. There’d been some sort of freak storm which led to an accident, and my Dad had fallen overboard and been swept away. By the time the Coast Guard had arrived, it was too late and he was gone. They never found his body, but it was assumed he had drowned. So m
y poor Mom had gone from having an abusive husband to having no husband at all. For someone like her, that was hard. She’d married my father quite young, so she’d never really been alone before until his death, and despite the awful way in which he’d treated her, I could tell she still missed having the company of a man. Since then, she’d gone through a string of douchebag boyfriends, but Tony would be a nice change.
Mom began to pick at the hem of her shirt again, and I arched a brow. There was more.
“Mom?” I said, and she sighed.
“This is going to be hard for you to hear, so I apologize in advance, but we got a little carried away while we were in Nevada,” she said.
I hadn’t realized they were both in Nevada this week, and my chest tightened a bit as a silly little thought burrowed into my brain. Las Vegas was in Nevada. Surely they hadn’t secretly run off and gotten married at one of those insta-wedding places…they had to be referring to getting carried away with something else.
But even as I thought it, a broad grin crept across Tony’s face, and Mom held out her left hand to display an enormous sparkling diamond, although it wasn’t half as bright as her eyes at the moment.
“We were talking about what we want for the future, and we decided to throw caution to the wind and just do it.”
“So you got engaged?” I said, hoping to God that was all it was.
“No,” she said. ‘We’re married. We went down to one of those silly little Elvis chapels in Vegas and tied the knot, and well…now we’re here.”
I felt a twinge of hurt in my stomach as her words washed over me. They couldn’t have waited to get married and had a proper wedding? My Mom couldn’t have invited me, her only daughter?
“I know it’s all such a sudden thing, but it just felt so right. We wanted you to be there, but you’d just graduated and we didn’t want to get in your way while you made your final decisions about college,” my Mom said, seeing the crestfallen expression on my face. “But we couldn’t keep it from you any longer.”
“You would hardly have been getting in my way,” I replied, my expression darkening momentarily.
“Things are going to change as little as possible,” Tony said, trying to defuse the situation. “I don’t want to uproot you from everything, so until you go off to college, I’m going to come and live here rather than make you and your Mom move to my Medina place.”
Mom looked at him as he spoke and then stared back at me, waiting for me to respond.
Oh hell. I guess I should have been happy for her, despite her running off and getting married behind my back to our old neighbor. At least I knew Tony and Andrew, or at least knew them almost a decade ago. It was better than her marrying some complete random.
“It’s okay,” I said, getting up and throwing my arms around her. “I understand. I…um…I’m happy for you guys.”
“Thanks, honey,” she whispered in my ear as she hugged me back.
I pulled away a moment later and looked over at Tony. “So what about Andrew?” I asked. “I guess he’s technically my stepbrother now. When are you going to tell him? And how’s he been?”
He smiled. “He’s been great. Working hard since he finished school last year. I actually already told him about your mother and me, and he’s coming over here to see us all soon. It’ll be nice for you two to catch up after all these years. I can still remember you two running around and playing in the mud together like it was only yesterday.”
Right on cue, the doorbell rang, and I smiled back at Tony. “I guess that’s him. I’ll get the door.”
I dashed out of the lounge and into the hall, and my pulse raced with excitement as I wondered what Andrew looked like now that he was all grown up. Was he still the same scrawny-looking geek, or had he grown into his looks? My question was immediately and horrifyingly answered as I threw the door open.
Oh, hell no.
Standing at the door with a polite smile on his smarmy face was Drew. Drew the model from Mint nightclub. God, no wonder he’d looked so familiar to me the other night! I hadn’t just recognized him from his modeling campaigns…I’d recognized him from my childhood as well. Now that I knew the truth, I couldn’t believe that it hadn’t occurred to me. He was several heads taller now, with perfectly chiseled features and muscles that would make a professional boxer jealous, but the eyes were the same twinkling blue ones that I remembered from so long ago. I’d been stupid to miss it. Dammit, why wasn’t I one of those people who Facebook stalked all their old childhood friends? If I was, I would’ve known who he was the second I saw him last night.
Speaking of last night, I’d been in his hotel room...in his bed. I’d kissed him. I’d seen him naked, and I’d very nearly let him swipe my V-card. And now he was my stepbrother.
Oh, crap.
CHAPTER THREE
DREW
What the ever-living fuck? The gorgeous brunette who’d given me the worst case of blue balls in history last night was Sophie Ramirez? My old best friend and neighbor from when I was a kid…Christ, what the hell was going on here? My mind reeled with confusion as I took in the sight before me, and my father’s voice boomed out from beside her a second later. Sophie’s Mom, Marie, trailed behind him, a massive diamond on her hand. Jesus. They really had gotten married. When Dad had called me to tell me the news earlier and invited me to the Ramirez house, I’d thought it was his weird idea of a prank.
“Ah, there you are. You remember Sophie, of course,” Dad said, patting her on the shoulder and beckoning me inside.
A thin smile crept across my face. “Yeah, how could I forget? How’ve you been, Tatiana?”
Her face paled, and her brown eyes nearly bulged right out of her head as my father’s forehead wrinkled.
“It’s Sophie, Drew,” Dad said.
I feigned an innocent expression. “Is that not what I said?”
Marie laughed. “No, you said Tatiana.”
I pretended to absentmindedly think things over. “Hmm, I guess I got my words all mixed up. Ah, I know what it is. I was just watching a movie with a main character called Tatiana. I must’ve had the name on the tip of my tongue. Anyway, Sophie, how’ve you been? Long time no see. It must be around eight hours since I last saw you! Sorry, I mean eight years.”
Two red splotches had appeared on her cheeks now, and she didn’t meet my eyes as she responded. “Um…I’ve been good. It’s great to see you again, Andrew. Or is it Drew now?”
Her voice sounded sweet, but it was tinged with a hint of sarcasm that could only be picked up by someone who knew exactly what had happened between us last night at the hotel. I still couldn’t believe it was her. When I’d first seen those sexy curves and later had those delicious lips of hers pressing over mine, I’d never suspected in a million years that the hottie I knew as Tatiana was actually my old childhood friend, Sophie. And how could I have known? She’d given me a fake name for fuck-knows what reason, and she looked completely different. There was no way I would have ever picked her as the same girl from all those years ago. The Sophie I remembered was kinda chubby with frizzy black curls, an overbite and a shy demeanor. Somehow that little girl had grown up into the goddess standing before me right now.
Judging by the look on her face when I’d walked in, she hadn’t recognized me the other night either. She wasn’t the only one who’d drastically changed. Since we’d last seen each other before me and my Dad moved away, I’d grown about two feet, gained a shit-ton of muscle and lost the shitty haircut and baby-face. I was a completely different person now. Back then, I’d been a stupid little nerd who liked collecting tadpoles and reading books. And now? Now I was the total opposite. Since I’d grown into myself in high school, I’d morphed into the kind of guy who didn’t give a fuck what anyone else thought, which of course made me seem awesome in everyone else’s eyes. The looks and money didn’t hurt either. I’d had girls lining up around the block to try and get with me since I was fourteen, and that wasn’t going to change anytime soon.
Thank God for that. Since hitting puberty, I’d loved women, and it was a blessing that they loved me right back.
We all went into the lounge room, and fragmented memories swept through my mind as I took in the faded floral sofa set, the same old lamp, and the mantelpiece above the fireplace where photos of Marie and Sophie sat along with a few figurines. When we were seven, Sophie and I had dug up some clay from beside the creek that ran through our backyards and tried to make a teapot for her Mom. We’d even painted the ridiculous lump it had turned out as, and there it was, in the exact same place Marie had lovingly placed it.
I sat down next to Sophie, who seemed horrified by the arrangement, if the expression on her face was anything to go by. Dad and Marie sat across from us, both of them beaming from head to toe, and I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes. No way was this real. There had to be something else going on here. We hadn’t seen Marie or Sophie in years…or so I’d thought. I’d helped out Dad with his company whenever I wasn’t doing photo shoots or promo work, so I spent a lot of time with him. I would’ve liked to think that I’d have known if he was seeing a woman, but apparently he was better at hiding things from me than I thought.
I leaned towards Sophie and murmured. “So is that what you do for fun, go out at night with a fake identity? Do you solve crimes and do other superhero stuff, or is your area of expertise focused purely on teasing the fuck out of men?”
Her face was bright red now, and she turned her head and ignored me. I found myself wondering again…what the hell was her problem? When you’ve been hitting the nightlife for a while, you learn to read signals from women as easy as traffic signs. And Sophie had wanted me last night. Oh yes, she’d wanted my body pressed up against hers, my lips crushing down on hers, my dick pushing inside her. But just as I’d gotten her out of those clothes, something had changed her mind…and thank fuck it had. I doubted my Dad would be too happy to find out I’d fucked his new wife’s daughter, even if she was an old friend of mine.
Dare: A Stepbrother Romance Page 2