DONKEY: A Stepbrother Sports Romance (With FREE Bonus Novel Charged!)

by Stephanie Brother

  “The police have put a hold on the inheritance money until this mess of this murder is solved. That means I can’t legally sell the property until it all gets sorted out.”

  Esmeralda straightened up. Kleenex on a red wine stain was like fighting the aids virus with a throat lozenge. “Put the legal team on it”, she said. “You’ve got meetings here, we need you back.”

  “It’s not as simple as that”, Leighton said, and Esmeralda knew exactly what that meant without him needing to go any further. It meant there was something that interested him more than just the money. There was a girl. That thought made her heart leap.

  “Don’t get involved in something you can’t fix”, she said.

  “Since when have you ever known me to do that?” Leighton retorted.

  “Since when have I ever known you?”

  Leighton felt a pang of guilt. He’d kind of abandoned Esmeralda, even though he was clear with her that any interaction they had together was simply just that. A fuck and nothing more. A good fuck at that, but a fuck nonetheless. He knew he shouldn’t feel guilty for moving on, but he did anyway. Even before he got with Esmeralda, he always knew he would.

  “Is that a professional or a personal question?” he asked.

  “That depends on whether we have a professional or a personal relationship.”

  Leighton sighed. This was always the difficult thing with women, they became too attached. He never thought Esmeralda would be one of them. She was a ball breaker if ever he knew one, but here it was, as clear as day. She resented him for whatever they had ending.

  “I knew you’d fuck me and leave”, Esmeralda said. “Is that it now? Is that us over?”

  “Are we really doing this?” Leighton asked.

  Esmeralda sighed.

  “I thought we were clear.”

  “You were clear”, Esmeralda said, suddenly feeling angry. “That’s not the point. Why are you calling anyway?”

  “I’m going to be here for a bit longer. At least until they get the assets released again.”

  “Or until she says yes you mean?”

  “I’ll be back soon.”

  “She must be something.”

  “Can you reschedule all important meetings, send anything crucial over to me for conferencing and get the rest of the team to handle anything else?”

  “That’s it then is it?”

  “Look, don’t make this harder than it is already”, Leighton said.

  He knew that if things didn’t work out with Gracey, Esmeralda would take him back in an instant, but he didn’t like to be pessimistic. Gracey may take some work, but he felt confident that eventually she would definitely be his. And besides which, Leighton liked nothing more than a challenge. Even with the slight chance that she wouldn’t, of course, there was always the commiseration fuck of Pandora. He couldn’t go back to Esmeralda after that, it just wouldn’t be fair. Cheating was not in Leighton Tempest’s make up. He’d been on the receiving end of it once before, and he knew how painful it was to know not to do it. Honesty was the best policy in the long run, even if in the short run it would make him public enemy number one. He owed Esmeralda that.

  “I should have known.”

  “I thought I was clear about that before we began”, Leighton said.

  “So it meant nothing to you.”

  “That’s not what I said. Come on Esmeralda, I expected more than this from you.”

  She was trying to be strong, and trying not to let it bother her, but it did. It had taken long enough for Leighton to give her the time of day, let alone give her the best orgasms she’d ever had. She knew better than anyone that no-one actually got to keep Leighton Tempest, but now she was on the receiving end of that information, it seemed a lot harder to take than she imagined. It had been almost two weeks since he’d first gone away, which was enough time for her to prepare, only it really wasn’t. And it wasn’t as if he was being direct. Clear yes, direct no.

  “Fuck”, she said again, unable to hide her frustration.

  “I thought I should call”, Leighton said. “I get it if you feel like you can’t work with me anymore.”

  “What has she got that I haven’t?” Esmeralda complained, embarrassed she was going this low, but unable to stop herself.

  “It’s not like that”, Leighton said.

  “What is it, big tits? A virgin? I let you fuck me in the ass, twice. I even sucked your cock after-”

  “Esmeralda, please”, Leighton said. “You’re embarrassing yourself. And anyway, it was three times. And you were the one who suggested sucking it after anyway.”

  “Fine”, she said. “Fine. Look, just don’t break her heart will you, or yours for that matter.”

  “Call me if there is anything urgent”, Leighton said. “Can you do that?”

  “Yes”, Esmeralda said. “I can do that.”

  “I’ll be back soon”, Leighton said, even though he was unsure whether he really meant it.

  Chapter 11

  Gracey wondered if she’d fucked things up completely. She’d not seen Leighton at the house for the last few days, and there was no sign of when he planned to be back. She knew there was a hold on the inheritance money, and she worried that as soon as that problem was sorted, Leighton would be out of their lives forever, especially now that he’d shown her his true feelings, and she’d denied him. She felt like time was slipping away from her. She also had no idea what she planned to do if Leighton sold the house. She had a job, which meant she had enough money to find an apartment if she needed to, but what if she couldn’t find somewhere that allowed pets? What would happen to her sisters and her mother too? She had enough money for herself, but definitely not enough to support them as well. Besides which, she didn’t want to think of a situation in which Leighton wasn’t with them. Whatever she felt for him, she knew it was significant, even if there was something stopping them from being together. She knew it wasn’t technically illegal, but she knew it wasn’t right either, no matter how much she wanted it. But what was the alternative? If she let Leighton slip through her fingers, what would happen to her and her family? She knew that bitch Pandora would be all over Leighton as soon as he gave the go ahead, and now that she’d said no to him, she worried that he would say yes to her.

  It was all happening too fast for Gracey to think properly. One minute everything was fine, the next her stepfather was dead, his long lost son had come back to claim his inheritance, and Gracey had fallen in love with him. She tasted the word on her lips just to see if it made sense. It didn’t make sense. All it did was make her stomach do somersaults.

  Who was this man that had come out of the middle of nowhere to steal a heart he had no right to steal? It wasn’t fair that the only man she had ever felt this strongly about happened to be the one man she wasn’t allowed to be in love with. Well, something had to change. Gracey knew she had to make a decision, and she knew she had to make it sooner rather than later. She hoped that it wasn’t too late already.

  ***

  Alexis had called a family meeting. It was the first one of such since Philip’s death. When Gracey got to the living room, everyone else was already there waiting for her. She took a seat quietly on a three seater couch where her two sisters were already sat, and waited for her mother to begin. Family meetings were a mainstay of her mother’s methods of bringing up her children, to the point where they featured heavily in Gracey’s memories of her childhood. They were always between only the four of them, and always involved a dictatorship style of delegation. They were used as a means of communicating information in two directions. Alexis asked her children questions, and told them what she wanted them to do. There was no negotiation, and punishment would be metered out for insolence and disagreement. Historically, Pandora was always the one who got punished the most, but conversely always the one most ready to please her mother.

  The ice in Alexis’s glass of whisky cracked. Isabella blew her nose on a handkerchief and Pandora clicked he
r tongue against her teeth, obviously bored.

  “So who did it then?” Alexis asked the three of them.

  Pandora and Gracey looked at each other, while Isabella looked at the floor.

  “I don’t care that he’s dead, I want to know how likely it is you’re going to get caught.”

  Silence.

  “Pandora?” Alexis said, her eyes going to her eldest daughter first.

  “Fuck, no”, Pandora said, quick to defend herself. “I wouldn’t know where to start. Ask Gracey. She probably planned it with Leighton all along.”

  “Yeah, right”, Gracey said. “And why would I do that?”

  “So you can fuck and make babies.”

  “Isabella”, Alexis said, ignoring her other two daughters. “What do you know about this?”

  “Nothing”, Isabella said. “It wasn’t me.”

  Alexis’s eyes narrowed. “Hmmm”, she grunted, angrily.

  “As soon as the police find out who it was, or when they find out that Leighton had nothing to do with it, whichever is quicker, and if Pandora continues at her failed attempts to seduce him, we are quite clearly fucked.”

  “How do we know it wasn’t him?” Pandora said. “I mean, he had more motive than any of us.”

  “No-one knew what was in the fucking will. My dear husband abandoned Leighton when he was a baby. You don’t know how many times he told me that god-awful story, pushed into it by that psycho of an ex partner he had to put up with.”

  “Exactly”, Isabella piped up, suddenly pulling herself out of a thoughtful moment. “That’s a perfect reason to kill him.”

  “Leighton wasn’t here to kill him”, Alexis spat out angrily, “The police already know that. What they haven’t established yet is whether he had a connection with anyone here who did-”

  Alexis raised her hand to point at her children. “-or anyone else who managed to get past security and into the house to murder him.”

  “Anyone could have done it”, Pandora said, an emery board running across her nails.

  “Whoever did it is running on borrowed time. Leighton Tempest is a billionaire, I checked him out. He had even more money already than Philip did. There would have been no reason for Leighton to kill him. No reason at all.”

  “There would have been a reason if he hated him enough”, Isabella said, and it made Alexis narrow her eyes again.

  “He didn’t do it”, Alexis said, “and I don’t reckon it’ll take his lawyers long to prove to the courts that the injunction they have in place to stop him receiving what is rightfully his is unlawful. When that happens we are fully submerged in shit creek without a goddamn paddle. Gracey pour me some more whiskey.”

  Alexis shook her glass violently and Gracey reluctantly pulled herself off the couch to retrieve the bottle and fill her mother’s glass back up.

  “Only if he sells the house”, Pandora said.

  “Or kicks us out of it”, Isabella added.

  “I’ve seen he’s sweet on you”, Alexis said, grabbing her daughter’s arm suddenly and making Gracey gasp. “You’ve got your mother’s complexion. Pale and virginal.”

  Pandora smirked.

  “That’s enough. I gave you one simple task and you fucked it up. I could have done a better job myself.”

  “I haven’t finished yet”, Pandora whined

  “Yes you have, I’m giving the job to Gracey.”

  Alexis smiled up at her daughter, her thumb making Gracey’s wrist red where it refused to let go.

  “Gracey?” Pandora complained.

  “I don’t want it”, Gracey said, finally pulling her hand away from her mother’s grip.

  “That wasn’t a question”, she said fiercely. “If you don’t let Leighton into your precious little panties, this family will be finished.”

  “Then maybe that’s for the best”, Gracey said.

  Alexis rose from her seat. Even at full stretch she was almost a good foot off the height of her youngest daughter. “What did you just say?”

  Gracey could see the veins come to the surface of her mother’s neck, whiskey shining on her lips. “Nothing”, she said eventually, and turned away.

  “I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you. The first time a man shows any interest in you and you act like a nun. Getting laid will do you good. It’ll do everyone good. I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”

  Isabella couldn’t help but chuckle, while Gracey felt as though she’d been stabbed in the heart.

  “If you don’t want him to sell the house and kick you out, why don’t you just ask him?” Gracey said.

  “You think that’s going to work?” Alexis scoffed. “Leighton is a businessman. The business part of that means he doesn’t care about anything but making money and the man part of that means he doesn’t care about anything but pussy. And in this case, it looks like that pussy happens to be yours. That means you have a responsibility to give him what he wants so we can get what we want.”

  “You think if I fuck him, he’ll let us keep the house?”

  “I think if you let him fuck you, he’ll do anything that you ask him. I thought I’d taught you all well enough, but it seems like Pandora is the only one who’s been clever enough to get it. That fucking hole in between your legs isn’t for pissing out of. It’s the most powerful thing on this planet and it’s for women everywhere to show everyone else they can and will take control. How the fuck do you think I got what I did from your stepfather? It wasn’t by telling him I loved him and rubbing his back when the rain came down. Fuck, no. It was by opening my legs and letting him fuck me. Use it for Christ sake. Use the power that I’ve given you. Christ knows you won’t get another opportunity looking like that.”

  There was a moment of silence in the room, broken only by the clatter of ice in Alexis’s glass.

  “Fuck you”, Gracey said, before she burst into tears and ran out of the room.

  “Fuck”, Alexis barked, spittle flying everywhere.

  “I can make him mine”, Pandora said, cutting through the awkward silence Gracey’s dramatic exit had left. “I just need a bit more time.”

  Alexis sipped her whiskey and lit a cigarette, coughing smoke out into the room. “Make her fuck him”, she said. “That’s your task now. Do whatever it takes, but make her fuck him. I refuse to lose this house. Fuck.”

  Alexis knocked back her whiskey.

  “And you two, if I find out either of you are lying to me about Philip, I’m going to kill you before the police get a chance to drag you in, do you hear me?”

  “Yes, Mom”, Pandora and Isabella responded in unison.

  Chapter 12

  Detective Foster was thinking about Alexis when the report came in. There was something about the leather skinned trollop that stuck with him. He found himself imagining her in all manner of pulse quickening positions he once practiced with assiduity with his now ex-wife and as much as it disgusted him, he couldn’t help himself. It was problematic, not only because he suspected her of wrongdoing, but because the thoughts left him both horny, and with chills down his spine. It was a confusing matter he’d much rather do without.

  “You’re going to want to see this.”

  Foster eyeballed Benjamin Pope and then eyeballed the report that he’d slid across his desk like a bribe. The words he picked out were digitalin, traces, massive quantities, Gracey and beyond reasonable doubt.

  “Gracey”, he said. “The butter wouldn’t melt.”

  Benjamin nodded gravely. He was a square jawed man from a family of square jawed men, with square jaws that went hundreds of years back into his heritage. He was the kind of man who made love in one positioned only, considered penne arrabiata pushing the boat out a little too far and always looked better with glasses on, even with his eyes closed.

  “Traces of it all over her room”, he said, pushing his glasses back up his nose. “She didn’t try and hide it well at all. Or she tried to hide it and didn’t do it well at all. We need to wait for anoth
er report to tell us that.”

  “And the rest of the house? The mother, Alexis? Pandora?”

  “The rest was clean.”

  Detective Foster looked stern. The report seemed to suggest an open and shut case, it seemed to suggest that Gracey, the one person who sat by her stepfather while he tried to hold desperately onto his quickly fading life was responsible for putting him there, but something didn’t sit right with him. It was never this open and shut. There was still no motive. Yes she might have felt guilty which was why she was there at the hospital in the first place, but why do it? Why kill him at all? Foster knew what he needed to do. He needed to get Gracey back in, there was no doubt about that, but more than that, he needed to know exactly what kind of relationship Gracey had with Leighton Tempest. As far as he could tell, Leighton Tempest was as clean as a kidney dish. He had a soft spot for beautiful women, but didn’t any man? What was he still doing here anyway? Why was he still hanging around when the inheritance had been granted already, alright restricted due to the temporary injunction Foster had managed to get in place, which wasn’t really anything but a delay for the inevitable anyway, but granted all the same? They both knew that as soon as Tempest’s crack team of lawyers managed to get it seen to in court, the money would be back on its way, and that was probably in the process of happening already. There was something else keeping him here, and Foster wanted to know what it was. He was hoping Gracey would be the one to tell him.

  “Digitalis”, Detective Foster said, testing the words on his tongue.

  “It’s a brutal poison”, Benjamin said, a flicker of excitement chasing across his lips. He enjoyed his job, and there was something about the use of digitalis in this particular case that fascinated him. He’d first heard about the poison from an Agatha Christie novel and hadn’t encountered it at work until now. When he’d been given the case to work on, he’d had a bit of a geekgasm.

  “How would she know how to use it?”

  “Well to be honest”, Benjamin said, taking a seat that hadn’t been offered to him, and standing up again almost immediately when Detective Foster gave him an inhospitable look. “I don’t think she did. If she had, he wouldn’t have spent a week in the hospital in a considerable amount of pain. Unless that’s exactly what she wanted. We’d have to wait for the psych evaluation for that.”