Lock Step: An Enemies to Lovers Accidental Roommates Stepbrother Romance

by Jamie Knight

  “K.”

  I dropped my phone on the bed and rushed out of my room. Going down to the basement, I passed the couch and bar. Looking at it, I recalled the night with Phil that seemed like a hundred years ago now.

  Fortunately, the couch didn’t look stained or anything. I turned over the cushions, just in case.

  Finding the water, I turned it on. To make sure it was working, I went to the hose outside and started that up. The water came out and I was good. Then I went back upstairs and found Phil standing outside my room. He was looking at my phone!

  “Hey! What the hell?!” I objected, snatching the phone back.

  Phil suddenly looked angry and hurt. He made a face, then stormed into his room and slammed the door. What was his problem? It wasn’t like I was his girlfriend. He avoided me, treated me like shit, and now got jealous I was texting someone else, even in a platonic way?

  Jeez, what a nut he was. I wish I wasn’t so damn attracted to him and I wish I could forget our amazing sex we had had.

  “Hey, Ryan. You there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I left my phone and Phil found it. He didn’t type anything odd, did he?”

  “Don’t think so. What did he say?”

  “Nothing. But he looked hurt,” I relayed. “Stormed into his room to pout, I guess.”

  “Wait, because of me? Did I mess something up?”

  “No! Don’t be ridiculous. He’s my stepbrother.”

  “Yeah, but… you know.”

  “That’s in the past now,” I assured Ryan. “I don’t even think about him anymore, quite frankly. I mean, it really was a one-time thing.”

  I was lying, but I kind of had to say that, or he would think I was a freak.

  “Probably for the best. Would’ve made for some awkward holiday dinners, I’ll wager!”

  “Oh, my God! Right? Thanksgiving and Christmas. ‘This is my boyfriend- slash- stepbrother, everyone!’”

  “Yeah, I guess you really wouldn’t want to do that! Hahahaha.”

  “Ryan, it’s so great to talk to you. Well, text to you anyway.”

  “Hey, it’s not like we have anything else to do, right? I mean, locked up because of the virus.”

  “When is this going to end? They have to find a cure, right?”

  “I read online that it takes sixteen years to develop a vaccine correctly.”

  “What?! Are you kidding? They were saying 18 months.”

  “Well, I guess you could take that vaccine, but I wouldn’t. I mean, not that I’m an anti-vaxxer in general or anything. But you have to do your own research. And you have to get a good vaccine. It could make you worse if you get the wrong one.”

  “Are you saying we’ll be in lockdown for years?”

  “Oh, no,” he assured. “No one is saying that. I’m just saying that a vaccine is probably not the answer. Eventually, herd immunity will immunize everyone. That’s what happened after the 1918 flu, anyway, back before they had the technology to develop vaccines.”

  I hoped he was right.

  At this point I just wanted there to be some light at the end of the tunnel.

  Chapter Sixteen - Tracianne

  The time dragged by. I didn’t see Phil for two days. Two days!

  It felt like everyone was avoiding me. Things kind of broke down, I guess. We all got so bored living in the house non-stop.

  I was never good at being alone. When I was little, being an only child, I’d sometimes cry if it rained. Because that meant none that of my friends could come over and I couldn’t go over to their houses, since I walked there. Dad would sometimes reluctantly drive me and then it would be better, but not always.

  And at night, at home alone, I’d get really scared. I mean, I knew my parents were somewhere in the house, but I’d still be scared.

  It felt so maddening to be alone. It was like I was going crazy because I had no one to talk to. I guess that must be how prisoners felt in isolation, and why it was the maximum punishment.

  At one point, I thought I spotted Phil. He was rushing out of the kitchen. I jogged after him, but by the time I realized it he was upstairs, his door shut and locked. I burst into tears. It wasn’t fair!

  Despite all my talks with Ryan, I still thought about Phil. I knew that sounded awful. I shouldn’t have been so hung up on my stepbrother when he was clearly over me after our regretful hook up. But I couldn’t take this loneliness.

  For a few hours, I tried listening to music, but I had to stop. Happy music just made me more annoyed and sad music, although appropriate for the times, just made me cry.

  I tried watching some shows on Netflix, but I couldn’t get into any of them. I found myself sitting on the couch, unable to get comfortable.

  Then I started looking at the couch and imagining my face squished into the cushions as Phil fucked me with his big, hard cock again.

  No! I had to stop doing this to myself. It was torture.

  Obviously, Phil didn’t want anything to do with me and Ryan was too far away. Maybe I just needed to hang on long enough, then I could fly to Alaska and surprise him.

  Part of me was afraid. I hadn’t seen Ryan’s face.

  What if I wasn’t attracted to him?

  I mean, part of me felt shallow for thinking that, but everyone has a limit, right?

  What if he had physical characteristics that I found undesirable?

  What if that was how he had so much time to text me, because no other girl wanted to date him?

  And what if the girl had given him a fake number because she wasn’t interested in him?

  It was terrible, I knew, but attraction did mean something in a relationship, right?

  Just because we had chemistry over the phone, didn’t mean we’d have chemistry in real life. At least I could talk to Diamond and Gillian about Ryan. They thought I had made him up. The good part about Ryan was that I didn’t have to tell them he was my stepbrother!

  Typically, Diamond said that I had to see what he looked like. Gillian thought the whole thing sounded romantic. It was like a movie where the hero was revealed at the end. That would be nice. I could take a flight up to Alaska and Ryan could meet me at the airport and I could see him in the flesh for the first time.

  It was cold, so I’d have to wear a parka or whatever. I actually scouted out a few online. Some of them get pretty pricey, if you wanted something that was warm and not too bulky, yet fashionable, that was how much you’d have to pay.

  I wasn’t quite sure how to explain Ryan to my dad. Maybe I could just tell him I wanted to go to Alaska on a tour or something. I could make it part of a college class. I didn’t mean to look too far down stream, but if I were to move there for Ryan, I’d have to visit a few times to understand what it was like, right?

  Then again, I was really nervous about the whole bears thing. I didn’t know if I could get used to that. I’d have to look out every window to make sure there wasn’t a bear.

  And what if Ryan went out first and got attacked, what would I do? Call the police? It would probably take them hours to find me.

  I’d have to go out bravely in the snow and fight the bear for my man!

  Guns! I’d have to learn how to shoot, right? Ryan probably had plenty of guns. I mean, if he lived in the wilderness and was constantly under the threat of attack by bears and wolves, he needed a gun, right?

  That sounded kind of scary, but I guess I could get used to it. He could take me to the range.

  I’d have to ask him if he had one, next time I talked to him.

  In my head, I saw a handsome hunter in camo gear showing me the ropes on a rifle or a machine gun or whatever. I’d fire the first shot and squeal in surprise, and we’d laugh.

  In no time, I’d be handy with a gun. Then when Dad and Daphne came to visit it, they’d be shocked that I was so handy and confident.

  I wouldn’t be like Daphne at all. Poor thing. I think she’d wither and die
without my dad around. Maybe it was this whole crisis that was causing her to break down. No wonder she and Dad spent so much time together. He was probably spending the whole time building her self-esteem back up.

  I got out my phone to text Ryan and hesitated. Was this long-distance “relationship” healthy? Was it a relationship at all?

  It was more of a friendship, just chatting, and I wasn’t really into him. I was into Phil, even though I didn’t want to have to admit it.

  Maybe being cooped up for so long, I was building things up in my head that weren’t true. For all I knew, Ryan was a lonely old man who started texting me just for fun. I didn’t ask for a picture, but getting a fake one would be easy enough, so it’d probably be pointless to request one, anyway.

  I’d heard there were a lot of scammers out there, too. Could Ryan be trying to con me all this time? That would be awful! Oh, I’d be so mad.

  Gillian told me she knew a guy that got conned out of a lot of money through an online dating service. I could totally see that happening to guys. Some thirsty dude sees a pretty face and goes nuts, but wasn’t I just as vulnerable? Was I just as thirsty?

  You already slept with your stepbrother, Tracianne. I think you know the answer.

  But I had no money for Ryan to steal. I was just a college student, who stupidly hooked up with my stepbrother during a pandemic and needed to talk to someone, anyone, even a complete stranger, about it.

  Jeez, looking back, I had to say I had no regrets. Despite all that had happened and Phil’s behavior, those was no denying that the sex was mind-blowing. He had definitely raised the bar and would make it hard to find someone in the future who could compare to him, but it had still been worth it.

  Of course, I hadn’t been with a lot of guys. Was Phil special or just really great at sex? These were definitely things I wished I didn’t have to ask myself about my stepbrother.

  I really wished I could find a guy who was as good at sex as Phil was, without it being my stepbrother. And personality wise, he could be more like Ryan. I mean, Phil could be funny, and fun. But he could also be an ass. And he had been so mopey lately.

  Now that I knew the true Phil— the angry, distant Phil? No thanks. Or at least that was what I tried to tell myself, probably just to make it easier to get over him.

  Although I guess, when you looked at it, it was all the anger and tension that made the sex so great. Damn, that was going to be hard to replicate, if that was true.

  How could I love someone and be mad at them at the same time, to keep the sex good?

  Life was so confusing! I’d had way too much time to think about all this.

  I should have been back at school, going to class and hanging out with Diamond and Gillian. Then I could hear about Diamond’s sexcapades and not have any myself. Living vicariously through her was much safer for my heart than fucking my stepbrother was turning out to be.

  Part of me, deep down, really wanted to tell Diamond the truth about what happened with Phil. If only so I could finally have the last word on a story!

  She’d never be able to top having sex with one’s own stepbrother. Especially the wild, passion fueled night that Phil and I had shared.

  God, it didn’t even seem real anymore after all the time that had passed.

  I had to do something to get over Phil. I was so sick of moping around about him when he had clearly moved on.

  I checked my phone. Ryan was still online. It was time to take this to the next level.

  “Hey, Ryan,” I texted. “Miss you.”

  “You miss me? You just talked to me a few hours ago!”

  “I know, but I wish you were here,” I told him, deciding to really jump off the deep end and see what happened. “I’m feeling so lonely today!”

  “What if I could come and see you?”

  “Ryan, I don’t know if you can,” I texted back, my heart racing. “No one is flying now. They’re still in lockdown everywhere here.”

  “What if I was already here?”

  “What? I don’t understand. Are you going to send me a picture or something?”

  Ryan sent a picture. It was just of his legs crossed. He was sitting in a chair and I recognized the pattern of the rug. Wait a minute…

  Was that the rug in this house?

  Was Ryan really Phil this whole time?

  I was still trying to comprehend it all when my phone dinged with another text that had come in.

  “Come downstairs,” “Ryan’s” text said. “It’s more than time we played another game of strip poker.”

  Furious, yet also quite excited, with my heart beating fast and my pussy already dripping wet for my stepbrother who I thought I had to get over but who apparently had been texting me all along, I stormed down to the basement.

  Chapter Seventeen - Phil

  Well, here she comes, I thought.

  I hope she wasn’t too mad I lied to her. It was the only way. Tracianne did not have a poker face. My God, she should’ve seen herself coming down to breakfast that morning. It was a dead giveaway.

  Tracianne ran down the steps and I stood up. For a second, I thought she was going to jump into my arms and kiss me. But instead, she slapped me in the face as hard as she could. Guess I deserved that.

  “Why?!” she cried. “Why did you put me through that?”

  “I’m sorry,” I apologized. “But you’re a terrible actress. Before you came downstairs that morning, your dad was asking me questions about noises he heard that night. I made up some bullshit story about being in the basement because I said I heard a noise, too. You came down beaming. I had to make it so that you thought we were over so that you wouldn’t give us away. But I couldn’t just not talk to you, so I invented a fake person.”

  “It was so mean!” she whined.

  “I know, I know,” I said. “I’m really sorry. But trust me, if you had seen it from my perspective, you would’ve been on board.”

  “I would’ve never given you up, Phil,” she swore. “I would’ve said anything to protect you!”

  “Trace, no offense, but you’re a little emotional these days,” I said gingerly. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed.”

  She nodded, with tears welling up in her eyes. She started crying and buried her face in my chest. I guided her back down to the couch and she cried in my arms for a good ten minutes.

  Finally, I got her a tissue, and she blew her nose. Composing herself, we started talking again.

  “Don’t do that to me again, Phil,” she demanded. “If you do that to me again, we’re through.”

  “Fair enough,” I replied.

  With the air cleared, we sat back on the couch.

  “I feel like I got to know a whole new person or a whole new you, with this so-called Ryan character,” she said. “How do you know so much about Alaska?”

  “I was reading entries from Wikipedia while we were chatting,” I admitted. “Seemed pretty realistic, right? The bears and wolves.”

  “Yeah, I was totally prepared to run away to Alaska and be with Ryan,” she admitted.

  “Really?” I laughed.

  “Yeah. Mostly to just get away from the temptation of hooking up with you again.”

  “So, I guess, technically, now you have no choice but to hook up with me again.”

  She blushed and started kissing me. It started to get hot and heavy, so I pulled back.

  “What? What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “The question is, can we make this work? Cards on the table here. What’s your dad’s reaction going to be? I have to think he’ll lose his mind.”

  “He doesn’t have to know,” she assured me.

  “He almost figured it out on the first night, Trace,” I pointed out. “He’s no dummy. If we start this up on the reg, he’s gonna sense it. My mother, too. She knows me better than anyone else. It wasn’t easy to fool her. She asked me questions later, too.”

  “Like what?”
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  “She asked me if I was seeing anyone at school? Had I been texting a new girl? That kind of thing,” I related. “It’s not that they knew anything, it’s just that they sensed a shift in both of us. If this is going to work and we’re going to hide it, we have to be very, very careful.”

  “That’s true. She asked me questions too, but I thought she was just trying to get to know me better and bond. Now that I think about it, her questions were pretty weird and invasive, and I guess she was trying to steer me in a direction other than being with you. Ha. I guess they figure it could happen, since we’re cooped up here in a pandemic. So, what if we didn’t hide it? We’re not doing anything wrong,” she pointed out.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I guess they do figure it might be inevitable, under these circumstances.”

  “Speaking of which, is this lockdown ever going to end?” she asked. “Now they’re saying the economy could collapse.”

  “That’s true,” I agreed. “It’s not looking good financially. Millions of people already lost their jobs. Food prices are going up. And our government is not giving us our tax money back to help us survive. People in Europe are getting monthly income payments and small businesses are having their paychecks covered so they can get by. But here, we’re having no such luck. It could get very, very bad.”

  She nuzzled into me and for a long time we just sat there. At some point, we leaned over and went to sleep together on the couch.

  I was awakened several minutes later by the most amazing feeling. Looking down, I saw that Tracianne had opened up my pants, stripped off all her clothes and was sucking on my cock. My God, she was an angel with those lips!

  “Are you sure this is okay with you?” I asked, not wanting her to feel obligated to do anything.

  She nodded, then proceeded to lick down my shaft and started sucking on my balls.

  Holy fuck! This chick was amazing.

  “Does that feel good, dear stepbrother?” she whispered.

  “Fuck yeah!” I replied. “I missed you so much.”

  “Me too. This feels so right to me,” she said, slurping on my balls. “I know we shouldn’t have done what we did but now I can’t get enough and I’m so glad we’re back together. Wanna do it again?”