by Violet Blaze
“But now that you're mine, that means I get to do whatever I want to you, right? I mean, you do know what you're asking? If I stay, it's not going to be as your brother. Instead of squinting my eyes and pretending that you're a nun, I'm going to be wastefully wicked.”
Stepbrother Inked
Copyright © Caitlin Stunich 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
For information address Sarian Royal Indie Publishing, 1863 Pioneer Pkwy. E Ste. 203, Springfield, OR 97477-3907.
www.sarianroyal.com
ISBN-10: 1938623878 (eBook)
ISBN-13: 978-1-938623-87-5 (eBook)
Cover art and design © Amanda Carroll and Sarian Royal
"Futurist Fixed" Font © WSI
"Epoxy History" Font © Segments Design
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, businesses, or locales is coincidental and is not intended by the author.
This book is dedicated to hope.
Even when you think it's lost, it can always be found.
Hello, hello, hello, fellow readers and lovers of literature! Thank you for picking up my debut novel and taking a chance on my new favorite book boyfriend, Florian Harper Riley. I hope the words on these pages bring you twice as much joy as a long island iced tea (or a really good virgin strawberry daiquiri, if that's what you're into). As you're reading, Tweet and Instagram your favorite passages to me @IAmVioletBlaze #stepbrotherinked. I can also answer questions, hear compliments or complaints, or just chat!
Now, sit down, read, and enjoy. After all, there's a man with tattoos, piercings, and lips that burn like fire in these pages. Read on, my friends, read on!
~Love, your new best friend, Violet Blaze
www.violetblazebooks.com
www.facebook.com/violetblazeauthor
www.twitter.com/IAmVioletBlaze
www.instagram.com/IAmVioletBlaze
play.spotify.com/user/iamvioletblaze
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14114387
Three years earlier...
I curled my own fingers around my throat and bit back a gasp. It shouldn't feel so good to be touched like this. The hand wrapped around my own was firm, but insistent. There was no way I was getting out of it this time.
“Flor.” The word dropped from my lips like a cinder, one that I thought had gone cold but that always managed to flair back to life in a surge of heat and desire that I knew was wrong. Knew it. But couldn't stop the fire from fanning itself into a raging flame.
My brother – sorry, my stepbrother because let's be honest here, there's a big difference – pulled me forward so forcefully that I stumbled, fingers still at my throat in a gesture of surprise. What, exactly, he was doing here, I wasn't sure, but the hard glint in his eyes and the firm set of his mouth told me what I feared most: that he still, and maybe always would, think of me as a sister. If he didn't, then why was he so angry? Why did his full lips twist down in a scowl at the corners? And why was his grip so hard and his aura so … messy. His emotions twisted down his arm, following the colorful lines of his tattoos as they wrapped his bicep, bleeding into me and choking back my breath. Messy. I couldn't tell if he was just pissed or if he was disappointed, too, if maybe he couldn't believe he'd just caught me with a boy's arms around my waist and his tongue in my mouth. I was supposed to be the good one, right? The one that didn't give my dad or my stepmom any trouble because Flor gave them more than they could handle.
His dark hair bled into his eyes, dripping with sweat from the heat of the party and the crush of bodies, and I stared in simple fascination as he swept it back and glared at me.
“What the fuck,” he began as I cringed, “are you doing here?” I watched in horror as my stepbrother's gaze lifted and met that of the boy's behind me. I kept one hand on my neck, sliding it down to my chest so that I could feel the rapid thump and slam of my heart, much like the chilling bass beat that was tingling up my toes and making me blissfully deaf. Maybe then I wouldn't have to hear the sound of my father's disappointment when he sighed and then later probably screamed at me for this little adventure? “And who,” Florian continued, “the fuck is that?”
“None of your business, bro,” my mystery date said, curling his own fingers around my hip in a strange mockery of the way I'd done to my own throat, caught up in surprise when Flor had appeared out of nowhere and pulled me from my make out session and back to the harsh, gritty twang of reality. “Hey, are you alright?” the guy asked me as I glanced over my shoulder and swallowed hard. I guess he mistook my speechlessness for fear because he stepped around me and got in Flor's face. “You can't make her leave if she doesn't want to go.”
“I can,” Flor snapped back at him, grinding his teeth and squeezing my wrist even tighter than before, “if she's my sister.” He leaned in and let my date have it with a simple whisper of words. “Oh, by the way, she's only fifteen, asshole.” My new friend tore his hand away from my hip like it was on fire – but not the good kind, not the kind I was feeling right now as Flor's sweaty fingers tugged me forward. No, this was more like he was terrified of me now, like he wouldn't touch me with a ten-foot pole. I guessed he wouldn't want to, considering he was twenty-one. Guess I shouldn't have lied about my age.
“Hey, Flor,” a girl with long black hair and brightly colored extensions giggled as we passed by. “You in a hurry or something?” She eyed me with no small amount of contempt as Flor dragged me through the crowd and paused only when we were standing on the porch outside the little green and white house. In the middle of a neighborhood known locally as The Whit, it was unlikely the cops would get called on this place, so it was a hotspot for parties. I knew because I'd followed Flor here more than once. Tonight, though, tonight I'd really believed him when he'd told his mom he – and I quote – felt like shit and was going upstairs to lie down. Florian never lied about going to parties. He just … went. No matter what sort of fight his mom put up.
“Yeah, I sort of am,” he growled, ignoring the girl and pulling me down the steps in my heels. His broad back filled my view, blocking the clusters of teenagers and young adults hanging out on the sidewalk at the bottom of the steps. The fabric stretched across his muscles in a way that was criminal. I was young, sure, but I wasn't so young that I couldn't appreciate that, couldn't appreciate the way Flor's body had changed from a lanky teenage boy's to a … to a man's.
I flushed from head to toe and rolled my eyes. I'd binged last week during spring break, reading each and every single one of the romance novels crammed onto my stepmom's shelf. It was part curiosity, I guess, that encouraged me to read them. That, and part disappointment and frustration that Flor got to go away and I didn't. Since then I'd been saying and thinking strange things, like how Flor always smelled so good. Or how I was glad he didn't shut his bedroom door when he was changing his shirt. That kind of stuff.
I looked away from Florian's back to stare at the pavement for a moment, trying to pull myself together. If he was a mess of emotions then so was I. Nervous, anxious, frustrated … jealous. I swallowed hard and glanced back over at the girl. She was standing with her arms crossed over her flat chest, her lips pursed, looking from Flor's face to his hand, the one that was wrapped around my wrist, and then back again.
“You brought me here,” she said accusingly, the fabric of her black dress reflecting the light from the flickering street lamp above us. I watched her eyes as they moved over my stepbrother, taking in each and every line of his body like she was lost in the desert and he, he was a nice, tall glass of wat
er. When her eyes moved over to me, I saw a primal response, a surge of jealous anger that made me swallow twice – not because I was scared but because I was angry. Didn't she know that Flor didn't belong to anyone? He said that all the time when his mother asked why he never brought girls home. Then, of course, he'd whisper under his breath that he actually brought girls home all the time, only that she didn't notice.
I tried to pull my arm from Florian's grasp, but he wouldn't let go of me.
“This isn't a good time,” he said, pausing to glance over at me. I refused to meet his eyes. I didn't know how to feel towards him. Why was it okay for him to party, to kiss whoever he wanted, to … do whatever with whoever he wanted? I had a right to experiment, too. “This is my sister.” I cringed again, hating the way he said that word. Sister. I wasn't his sister and hadn't even known him as long as I'd known my best friend, Addison. Florian and I had met ten years ago and had only lived together full time for eight of them. “I've got to get her home, okay?” I looked back at the girl and saw her face soften. Sister. The word always did that to them, like I was no longer a threat. Because, of course, Florian would never want anything to do with me. I wasn't a girl to him, just an obligation. I was safe. “And then maybe I'll be back after,” he added which did nothing to enhance the slowly building smile on the girl's face. Her red lips turned down and she rolled her eyes, spinning on her heels and marching up the white steps we'd just come down.
“Abigail,” Flor said, and I swallowed again, this time to get past the lump in my throat. I wished he'd let go of me; that would've made things easier. “Let's go.” But Florian didn't release me and instead, pulled me towards his car, double parked next to a white Honda Civic, its silver paint dull in the shadowy corridor of the street. Only two street lamps on either side of the house worked; the rest had been broken sometime in the last few years. “Get in,” he said, finally letting go of my arm. I spun then, surprising him, tears welling up unbidden from God only knows where.
“Why?” I asked him and it was his turn to roll his eyes and shake his head, like he knew better, like he had room to talk. He reached out to take my arm again, but I stepped back, pulling it out of his reach. He mistook my emotions for fear and opened the car door with a sigh.
“I won't tell your dad,” he said as he tilted his head to the side and watched me. The eyebrow ring in his left brow winked as a car behind us turned on its headlights and pulled forward, zooming around Florian's illegally parked Mazda like it didn't even exist, like we were in our own little world. “If that's what you're freaking out about, don't worry.”
I watched him watching me, drank in the details of that moment, the way his eyes were focused wholly and completely on mine, the way his tongue brushed against his lower lip, the way his newest tattoo – a girl with a wolf skin draped over her shining brown curls – gleamed with lotion and a dabbling of sweat.
“Why do you get to have all the fun?” I asked, and I knew I sounded exactly the way I didn't want to sound – like I really was fifteen. “Why do you get to bring girls over to the house when Dad and River are at work? Why do you get to go to parties on school nights and disappear over spring break, long enough that your mom actually thinks about calling the cops?” I wrapped my arms around myself and took another step back as Florian's eyes narrowed.
“You're fifteen, Abi,” he said, confirming my worst fear. Eighteen year old Florian knew everything and here I was, his whiny younger sister who played the cello and had just had her first kiss with some stranger. He probably thought I was crazy. “Get in the car and let's go home.”
“No,” I said and he growled low under his breath, sending a chill straight up my spine. A cool breeze drifted down between the houses on either side of us, teasing my skirt and bringing goose bumps up on my exposed thighs. Florian's school blazer was hanging loosely from my shoulders, but not because he'd given it to me. Because I had decided to go to the party in my school uniform the way the rest of the girls did and wanted to wear burgundy – the color of the senior class.
“Why are you being so goddamn stubborn?” he snarled at me, running a hand through his sweaty hair. I wondered briefly how long he'd been at the party before he'd found me. “Do you want me to call your dad and tell him you're here?”
“Do whatever you want,” I snapped back, taking a step towards him this time. I needed him to know I wasn't going to back down without an answer. I watched as he scowled and shoved his hands in his front pockets, looking down at me as he sucked in a deep breath. I could tell he was pissed but trying not to show it. His eyes, green and sharp as thorns, took me in from head to toe, pausing at the black and white skull patterned socks I'd pulled up to my knees. Those definitely weren't regulation for Mercy High School students, but I'd worn them anyway and scraped by without detention for it. I'd even rolled the waistband of my skirt up a few times, hiding the bunched fabric by pulling my white dress shirt out and letting it hang loose – another fashion statement I'd never participated in before today. I could tell Florian noticed. “I'm not going home, Flor. I want to stay.” He looked up at my face then and took his own step forward, the toes of our shoes just this side of touching.
I tried not to meet his eyes, keeping my gaze on the bleeding rose pattern that decorated his shirt, convinced that I could see every muscle in his chest and belly through the tight fabric.
“You're my sister,” he said, and this time, when I cringed, he noticed. “I'm not leaving you at some second-rate, shitty party to get taken advantage of.”
“It's not your decision,” I whispered as his hands came up and touched my elbows, sliding to my shoulders and pulling the blazer down my arms. Flor's face was ridiculously close to mine when he leaned in and tossed the jacket onto the front seat. I could feel the warm brush of his breath against my lips, like an indirect kiss, a ghost of a wish that would never come true. “And I'm not your sister.”
Then I did look up at him, meeting his green eyes with my blue ones and trying not to let him see how nervous I felt, how his nearness and his touch undid me. The things I felt for him, that I didn't feel for any other guy, they were wrong. I knew that. I knew that. Still, it didn't matter. He wasn't my brother and I was about three-fifths sure I was in love with him.
“I know.”
I thought for one brief second there that Flor was really going to kiss me. I could practically taste his mouth, smell the scent of his shampoo, could practically feel that cinder on my tongue burning against his, igniting some sort of … blaze between us that would burn us both to ashes.
But he didn't.
He didn't kiss me, just took a step back and went around to the driver's side of the car, opening his door and leaning on the roof with his arms crossed. His face was smooth-shaven, but the shadows from the trees looming above us played tricks on my mind and made it look like he had stubble across his jaw, rough and untamed. My eyes managed to find the single scar on his chin, the one he'd gotten from a bike ride gone wrong, even in the dim lighting. I focused on that instead of his eyes.
“Up to you,” he said, and his voice was easy to hear, even with the pulsing thump of music radiating from the old Craftsman. Flor always had a sharp, clear voice and a tone that brooked no argument, not even from his own mother. It was like he just knew everything, and that annoyed me. “Come with me now or I'll follow you back inside and tell everyone that you're fifteen. Then they can kick you out themselves and you can wait on the street corner for your dad to pick you up.”
“I hate you,” I whispered, even though that wasn't true.
Flor nodded like the know-it-all jerk he was and climbed into the car.
I followed after him, slamming my door to let him know I didn't like this and that I was pissed.
“I really hate you,” I said again, brushing away a slight swell of tears with an angry hand.
“Yeah, I'm a real piece of shit,” he told me as I slammed my foot on the dashboard and left it there, resting my cheek against my thigh
as I gazed out the window. There was a long pause before Flor started the car and when I glanced over, I caught him staring at me. I narrowed my eyes and looked away again before he could see how hurt I was, how desperate I was for his attention.
Then the engine started and we were whizzing through the city and towards South Hills, towards the four bedroom house that I spent most of my free time in, reading and doing massive amounts of AP homework. Neither of us spoke as Flor drove me home.
When we got there, I shoved open my door before Flor had even put the car in park and stormed up to the front porch, tugging down the hem of my skirt as I went. Even if Flor didn't rat me out – which I wasn't at all sure about – my outfit might give me away.
I raced up the cement steps to the dark green door and pushed it open, hearing my stepmom's laughter ring down the staircase. She and Dad were probably upstairs snuggling and watching their evening movie. They always made time for it, no matter what happened. I sort of envied them their relationship. Must be nice to have someone to hang out with all the time. All I had was a best friend who'd just moved nine hundred miles away and a stepbrother that hated me.
“Hey,” Flor said, reaching out and grabbing at my arm again. The front door shut softly behind him as I turned, looking down at his fingers curled around my bicep. He licked his lips again and for a split second there, he looked almost nervous. “I meant what I said, you know. I won't tell your dad a thing.” I didn't respond. “But that doesn't mean I like what I saw.”
“Like I enjoy finding you with your hands up girls' shirts on the living room couch.” I started to pull away again, but Flor pulled me back. I spun around, intending to give him a piece of my mind and found him way too close to me, smelling too good, breathing too hard, eyes even sharper than normal.
“You never said anything before,” was all he said, and since I didn't know how to respond to that, I decided to be flippant.