“I’m fine,” I said, wincing.
“Oh, fuck, sweetheart. I’m so sorry.”
“No, don’t pull out!” I dug my nails into his ass, holding him there. I was already adjusting to his size. The pain had mostly gone by now. What was left was the body wracking need for him, a need that screamed out for him to fuck me into the bed. I needed him to make me his.
“Do you need me to stop?” he breathed raggedly. I could feel his hips trembling. Aching to fuck me senseless, but held back by his fear for me. I shook my head.
“Please, don’t stop.”
“Nat. Don’t just say that because you think you have to.”
“Fuck me, Cal.” I reached up and touched his face, running my fingers gently along his grizzled cheek. His eyes were burning into mine. Sweat dripped down his temple. He wanted me. He wanted me so fucking bad.
But not as much as I needed him.
“Natalie,” he groaned. “Are you … are you sure?”
I reached up and took his jaw in my hand. I pressed my lips to his, kissing him long and deep. His tongue ran along my lower lip, and I moaned into his mouth.
Then I looked into his eyes.
“Cal,” I growled. I put the same passion into my voice that I had that first night, attempting to seduce him into staying in my room. His breath caught. “I need you to fuck me.”
“Oh, God, Nat!”
His hips rammed into me, forcing a helpless gasp out of my mouth. Oh, fuck, that was good. Cal buried his face in my neck and hair again as he fucked me hard and fast. “Take it, Nat,” he groaned. “Fuck you’re so good. Take my cock, sweetheart. Take my cock—take my body—oh, fuck, you’re tight. Take everything, baby. It’s all for you.”
My legs trembled. I was close again. So close.
“Don’t stop,” I whispered.
He could tell by the way my moans grew louder and more desperate. His hips began thrusting harder into me. His thumb reached between my legs and grinded mercilessly against my clit, drawing the pleasure out of me in quick moans.
“Come on, Nat,” he growled. “Come for me, sweetheart.”
“Cal,” I begged.
“That’s it, Nat. You’re a good girl, aren’t you? Then come for me like a good girl.”
“Oh—fuck!”
He drove me over the edge, and I came squirming and screaming into his shoulder. He growled encouragements into my ear as I came. “Fuck, yes, Nat—don’t stop—come for me, sweetheart. God, you have no idea how fucking sexy you are when you do that. Dig your nails harder into my back, baby.”
I wrapped my legs around him. His thumb massaged circles into clit, drawing the orgasm out longer and harder.
“Oh, God, Cal,” I breathed as I floated down from my climax. His hips bucked into me harder as my panting slowed. He was close too, I realized. His arms crushed me to him.
“Oh, fuck Nat.”
“Come for me, Cal.”
He kissed me hard, pressing his lips to mine so intensely that I was sure they’d be bruised in the morning.
“I love you,” I whispered.
He groaned into my lips as he came.
I pulled his lips to mine again as he came down from his own orgasm. “Oh, sweetheart,” he groaned into my mouth. “You have no idea how good you are.”
He curled his body into mine, pulling my face into his neck again. His arms wrapped around me. He buried his face in my hair and whispered sweet nothings as we drifted to sleep. I sighed contentedly as his fingers combed through my hair again. Finally, we were as close as we were before we were separated. Finally, we were together again.
But this time, nothing could tear us apart.
“I love you,” he whispered.
Cal’s warm lips kissed along the back of my neck.
“Mmm,” I mumbled. His fingers rubbed small circles into my hips where he held me, and his face was buried in my hair. The warmth of our bed and body heat swallowed me. I never wanted to leave. In bed with Cal was where I really belonged, I thought to myself with a sigh of pure satisfaction.
“Are you awake, sweetheart?”
“Mmm hmm.”
“Good. Because it’s almost 4pm.”
“What?!”
Cal smirked as he watched me shoot straight up, one hand clutching at my frazzled hair as I searched for the clock. The numbers 4:13 blared at me in red.
“Oh God,” I moaned.
“What’s wrong?” he said, kissing my shoulder and down my arm. His fingers intertwined with mine, and he brought my hand to his mouth with a small, warm contented groan.
“Mom. I’ve been gone since midnight.”
“I thought you said we were safe? That she wouldn’t worry, she’d just think you were being dramatic?”
“Yes, but … but what if she checks my room?”
“Did you leave the door locked?”
“Oh. Well … yes.” I laid back onto the pillows. Cal cuddled next to me, continuing to kiss every inch of my skin. The afterglow was still clinging to us, and every muscle in my body was deliciously sore. Memories of last night came flooding back to me.
Cal’s tongue lapping at me until I screamed.
Cal growling ‘spread your legs.’
Cal fucking me into the bed.
“Sweetheart?”
“Sorry,” I said, rolling into his embrace. “I just get distracted by how sexy you are.”
“If you keep stroking my ego, I’ll have to fuck you again.”
“Yes, please.”
I reached for his cock, but he grabbed my hand. “No.”
“Ugh. Why not?”
“Because. We’ve got somewhere to be, remember?”
He rolled his eyes at my confused look. His hand reached forward to touch the diamond stud in my ear.
“Prom, Nat. I told you we were going together, didn’t I?”
“Prom? Seriously?” I shook my head. “Cal, I’m supposed to be grounded, and you’re supposed to be off in whatever gulag your dad dragged you to. And we’re—or at least, we were—step siblings. Family. Do you have any idea what kind of rumors are going to go around if we actually show up?”
“The same kind of rumors that go around when perfect Natalie Harlow slaps her perfect boyfriend Nate?”
“Don’t remind me.”
“You don’t have to be perfect all the time, Nat.” He held me tighter. “If they don’t love you when you aren’t perfect, they don’t really love you. So they gossip about it. So fuck them. They didn’t deserve you in the first place.”
I ran my fingers along his strong arm, tracing the dark lines of his tattoos as they coiled around the muscles.
“Do it, Nat,” he urged. “If not for me, then for you. Do it to prove that you don’t have to be perfect. Do it to prove that you are just as gorgeous—”
A kiss on my cheek.
“—and sexy—”
A kiss on my neck.
“—and fuckable—”
A kiss on the top of my breast. My heart fluttered. If he kept going down, we wouldn’t get out of this bed for a week.
“Alright, alright. I get it,” I said.
“… that you’re just as good when you’re imperfect as when you’re pretending to be perfect. I know that, but I don’t think you do. Not yet. Do it to prove it to you and to them.”
“I don’t know. Nate will be there…”
He nuzzled my neck. “If you go to prom with me, I promise that when we get back, I will fuck you so hard you forget your own name.”
Oh God.
“Let’s go to prom!” I said, throwing off the covers.
***
I struggled with the zipper of the pink taffeta dress, watching my ridiculous self in the mirror. Cal had helped me climb back into my bedroom through the window, allowing me to leave the room for a few minutes to assure Mom that I was still alive in the room. Throwing a tantrum, not dead. Which now left me hopping on one foot, pulling on a fluffy pink prom dress in front of the vanity mirro
r as Cal waited below in the bushes.
“Come on, Pink.”
His whisper-shout sounded from the window. I winced. Mom was going to hear him, and then I really would be dead.
“Hold on,” I whisper shouted back.
“You’re so slow.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
I finally pulled the zipper up, then slipped on my converse. A pebble plinked against the glass of my window, and I sighed. Cal was many wonderful things. Patient was not one of them.
“Alright, calm down, I’m done,” I said, throwing the window up. Oh, crap. Climbing up in pajamas was hard. Climbing down in a prom dress? While staying hidden from Mom? Impossible.
“Jump,” Cal ordered.
“You’re crazy.”
“Yes, I am. Now jump.”
“I am not breaking my neck. You will not cart my corpse to the morgue in a prom dress.”
His overdramatic sigh came from the dark bushes below me. I couldn’t even see him. I was not jumping.
“Do you trust me?” his voice asked.
I sighed. Ugh.
I tumbled out of my window with about as much grace as someone in a ball of pink taffeta could manage. My converse kicked through the air as I plummeted to my demise, my curls blinding me as the wind blew them in my face.
“Oof!”
Cal’s strong arms wrapped around me as we tumbled back into the bushes. My shook the dizziness from my head. I had knocked Cal flat on his ass, but as far as I could tell, we were both alive. I smiled down at Cal and rubbed a smudge of dirt off his cheek with my thumb. Considering how things in our lives had gone so far, that was a definite accomplishment.
“Come on, Pink,” he said, setting me on my feet. He ran his fingers through his hair as he shook his own head.
And then he looked at me for the first time.
“Jeeeesus, Pink.”
His jaw was slack again, and his eyes searched me up and down. The same starstruck look he had given me when he had first seen me in Maneater.
He shook his head.
“I’ll have to beat the boys off with a stick.”
“If I don’t die on the way there,” I said, eyeing the bike. Once again… pajamas was easy. Prom dress, not so much.
“Do you trust me?” he asked, taking my hand.
“Ugh. You know I do.”
He grinned crookedly. “Good.” He kissed my hand. “Then I hope you won’t be too mad about this.”
Before I could fight him off, Cal had swept me off my feet and over his shoulder. I slapped his back as he laughed a delicious deep chuckle. He patted my ass as it struggled in the air.
“Cal, goddamnit!”
“Sorry, sweetheart.” His tone was very not sorry. I huffed and crossed my arms from my undignified position tossed over his shoulder. “Now hold on tight. I don’t want to ruin that dress.”
“You. Are. Terrible.”
“And you’re beautiful.”
He gave my ass a playful spank.
The bike was parked behind the bushes, allowing us a quick getaway with Mom none the wiser once again. He set me right side down on the bike, and I gathered up my skirts and dignity. He mounted the bike and drew my arms around him.
“You really do look beautiful.”
“You’re an asshat.”
“You’re so sexy when you’re mad.”
“I will murder you in your sleep.”
He kissed my cheek.
Then he hit the gas. The bike took off with such a jerk that I nearly fell off the back, and a breathless gasp escaped my throat. Cal caught my arms and wrapped them around him, saving me from a pink silk wrapped doom in the middle of the street. I pressed my body against him as tight as possible, mortified at the idea of death by deranged prom date.
“Converse?” he asked as we hit the road. “You’re wearing tennis shoes to a dance?”
“Not so beautiful now, am I?”
“You’re always beautiful, Pink,” he said, locking our fingers together. “Now, come on. Let’s go to prom.”
“Name?”
“Natalie Harlow.”
“And yours?”
“Callum. Callum Gatlin.”
The chaperone’s eyebrow raised, and his fingers fumbled with the clipboard. He looked from me—my hair frazzled, muddy Converse on my feet, and a ruffled pink dress clinging to my scrawny body—to Cal, who was looking as cool and perfect as ever in his black t-shirt and jeans. Still, not the tux the chaperone was probably expecting. I could already hear his thoughts now:
Nat Harlow?
With Cal Gatlin?
Impossible.
But lately, it seemed like we were doing a lot of impossible things. The chaperone shrugged after checking the list of senior names one last time. “Thought you would have been expelled by now,” he said to Cal.
“Oh, I’m not the bad one. Haven’t you heard yet?” Cal asked, wrapping an arm around me and pulling me to him. “This one is a troublemaker now. Got herself suspended.”
The chaperone rolled his eyes and pushed us through into the crowded gym.
“You’re terrible,” I whispered.
“Me?” His eyes widened as he gestured to himself innocently. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m not the one who got suspended, Nat. I think you’re beginning to be a bad influence on me. What if you smudge my flawless reputation?”
I pushed his arm playfully. He swept me up by the waist to kiss me. I could feel a blush creep across my face as he did. The room was dark, only lit by flashing strobe lights, and the music was deafening. The throngs of people were all crowded together, bending to scream in each other’s ears over the music. I knew no one could see or hear us.
But it was still a dangerous, delicious thrill to kiss my own stepbrother in public. Especially if that stepbrother was Cal.
“Oh. My. God.”
My head whipped around. I could hear the faint sound of Cal’s deep, rumbly laugh by my ear through the pounding bass of the pop music. I squinted my eyes through the darkness, just barely making out a brunette bobbing on her feet with wide eyes and a wider smile.
“Oh. My. God!” Jess cried.
“Hush!” I screamed over the music. I could barely hear my own voice, but panic was starting to take over. Jess and Cal ignored me. Both of them had stupidly giddy smiles smeared across their faces. “Jess, are you tipsy?”
“Knew it,” she sang. “I. Knew. It. Knew you were together, called it ages ago. Incest is the best, right?”
“Step-incest,” I said, swatting her away.
“Bahahaha, this is great. Nate’s face is going to be—”
“Nate is here?” I asked, freezing.
“Duh, Nat. He’s on student council, remember? It’s kind of a rule that he has to be here?”
Crap. I didn’t expect that. I should have, but in the haze of romantic midnight getaways and sex in motel rooms with my bad boy stepbrother, it may have slipped my mind.
Cal’s arm squeezed around me.
“You shouldn’t worry,” he whispered.
“I know. I’m still going to, though.”
“Hm. I’ll have to distract you then.”
“Cal—no!”
It was too late. Cal had grabbed my arm and was pulling my helpless body onto the dance floor. A few stares followed us, which I knew he loved. Behind us, Jess was bouncing on her toes, screaming something about “oh my god, so romantic.”
He wrapped his arm around my waist. “Come on, sweetheart,” he said into my ear. “I bet I can distract you.”
Yes. Yes he could.
Cal was a crazy good dancer. I had never expected it from him, but I guess it made sense—he loved drinking, women, and being a slut, all of which readily accessible at clubs. After every dance, he would pull me to his chest and yell something sweet into my ear.
“They’re watching you,” he said once. He nodded at a gaggle of boys chattering amongst themselves as their gaze followed me, twirling along t
he dance floor with Cal’s arms around me.
“They probably think you kidnapped me.”
Save Me: a Stepbrother Romance Page 14