NEVER KISS A STRANGER (A Stepbrother Romance)

by Winter Renshaw

  “What are you doing here? I thought I made it clear when I told you to fuck off.” I crossed my arms as he stood up. He towered over me as he stepped into my space, making me feel small and powerless in his presence.

  “I need to explain,” he said. “Can I come in?”

  I wanted to kiss her so bad on her heart-shaped lips the color of two red roses. I wanted to kiss away the dried tears on her cheeks.

  But two things prevented that from happening: she was livid with me and I didn’t want her to know I was starting to fall for her. If she knew the way I really felt about her, she’d never talk to me again. Feelings were never part of the deal.

  She consumed my every thought, proving that I was wrong all along. I was capable of feeling again. My heart wasn’t permanently ruined. Banged up, scar-tissued and slightly mangled, maybe. But it was still bleeding red. The ice was thawing, and Addison was the warm sun.

  She pushed past me, jamming her key into the lock and asserting her way into her apartment. I stood in the doorway, unsure if I was being invited in and watching as she threw her purse on a chair and slammed her keys on the counter.

  She spun around, golden hair spilling down her face in an uncharacteristically disheveled fashion. “You going to explain, or what?”

  I closed the door, stepping toward her and resisting the urge to cup her pretty face.

  “The reason I picked Kyle,” I said, drawing in a long, slow breath, “is because choosing you would be a huge conflict of interest.”

  “How so?” One perfectly arched brow raised above one teary eye. “You and I aren’t dating, Wilder. There’s nothing between us.”

  “Two things you should know about me right now,” I said. “I have two very distinct, very significant interests.”

  “Which are?”

  “Real estate,” I said. “And you.”

  She pulled away, stepping out of the tension that enveloped us, and cocked her head to the side as her brows furrowed. “Wilder…”

  I pulled her back toward me, resting my hands on the dip above her hips. “I’m not saying I love you, Addison. I’m not saying I’m your boyfriend. I’m not even saying I want to date you. But this thing we’re doing? Whatever you want to call it? I love it. I can’t stop seeing you. Not yet.”

  She wouldn’t look at me. She kept shaking her head as she stared out the living room window. Her arms hugged her sides, shielding her cool skin from the chilled April air.

  “But you gave the deal to Kyle, of all people,” she said. “Kyle.”

  Kyle was a fucking jackass, of that I was certain. I’d already decided I hated the prick, and I’d spent all of one lunch with him. It was after Addison removed herself from the table temporarily that I knew exactly what I had to do.

  “I see you checking her out,” Kyle said to me, his voice low. “Hot piece of ass. Bat-shit crazy.”

  “Excuse me?” I’d asked.

  “We used to date,” he said. He spun his finger against the side of his head in a circular motion. “You don’t want that. Trust me. She’s pretty to look at. Nice lips… if you know what I mean. That’s about all she’s good for. I’d never trust her to sell a property for me.”

  So it was Kyle. He was the guy who had hurt Addison. Who’d made her the guarded, broken-winged baby bird I found myself irresistibly addicted to. I could’ve bashed his face in right then and there, but I decided to play along.

  I was going to destroy him.

  Professionally-speaking, anyway.

  Which was precisely why I had to pick him over her. At least temporarily.

  “Trust me,” I said to Addison. “Everything’s going to work out exactly the way it’s supposed to.”

  “You realize I’m going to have to work extra hard now,” she said. “Harder than I was working before. I have goals, Wilder. I’m not sacrificing them for this. I don’t even know if I’ll have time for this anymore.”

  My hands slid down the curves of her sides, cupping her firm ass and giving it a punishing squeeze. “Don’t ever say that again.”

  I claimed her lips with mine before hoisting her up on the cool, marble counter top.

  “I’m still angry with you,” she said, ending our kiss. My lips found the indentation below her jaw and I quietly reveled in the sweet taste of her soft skin.

  “You can’t stay angry forever,” I whispered. My right hand skimmed down her side to the opening of her skirt, then trailed along her inner thigh until it reached the silken fabric of her panties. I slid them aside and worked a finger into the inviting wetness of her folds. A faint moan passed through her lips as her head fell back, blonde hair spilling in every direction.

  “Give yourself to me, lovely. You’ve had a long day. Just let go.” I lowered myself, leveling my head between her legs and kissing the tenderness of her delicate inner thighs.

  I craved her taste. Her smell. The way her fingers pulled my hair as she was just about to come. The low, sultry rasp of her voice as she begged for more. The look in her eyes when I brought her to the brink and told her not to come just yet.

  The way she obeyed.

  I could get lost in her for hours. An hour a week wasn’t enough, and I wasn’t sure it ever would be.

  Addison was different. She didn’t throw herself at me. She didn’t pretend like most girls did. Her authenticity was addictive, and I’d never be able to resist, no matter how hard I tried.

  Addison was the sun shining bright into my dark world.

  And she had no fucking clue.

  I was falling for her.

  And she could never know.

  My alarm blared at five in the morning, but when I leaned across the bed to silence it, my hands grazed over top of a warm body. I jerked back.

  “Wilder,” I whispered, pushing the hair from my face as my eyes adjusted. He squinted. “What are you still doing here?”

  The light that filtered in through the curtains shown just enough for me to realize he was sleeping on top of the covers.

  “You asked me to stay until you fell asleep, remember?” he said, his hair disheveled and his voice groggy. He leaned forward and rubbed his eyes.

  “Are you sure? I don’t remember saying that.”

  “You’d had a couple glasses of wine. You really don’t remember?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t remember drinking wine, either. Then again, the day before was one of the worst days I’d had in a long time. I wouldn’t have blamed yesterday-me for drinking an entire bottle of wine in an attempt to forget it.

  “I’m kidding.” He slid off the bed. “We were talking. I fell asleep.”

  I slid out of the covers, instantly realizing I was buck-naked. Pulling a sheet from the bed, I wrapped myself in it.

  “Ah, you’re shy in the morning,” he said.

  My cheeks burned hot. I was sure I’d slept off most of my makeup, and my lashes crunched with dried mascara as I blinked. My fingers combed through the tangled knots of my hair.

  The last guy to ever see me one hundred percent au naturel was Kyle.

  I wrapped the sheet tight around my body. “Just so you know, this is something a boyfriend would do, so don’t let it happen again.”

  I ambled toward the bathroom, starting the shower and rinsing off any remnants of the night before, hoping my confusion might swirl down the drain along with it. My life was a perfect row of dominoes I’d spent years setting up, and falling for Wilder would send them all toppling down.

  My eyes closed as I faced the streaming water, letting it bead and trickle down my skin as I breathed in the warm mist. Two warm hands gripped around my waist, pulling me backwards until I was pressed against a very naked, very erect Wilder.

  “What are you doing in here?” I pushed him away.

  “You looked lonely in here. Thought you could use a hand.” His right hand slid down my stomach until he reached the soft core between my thighs, slipping his fingers between my folds and massaging my clit.

  The war inside me
raged again, my body enjoying every second of his hands all over it and my mind reminding me that this was quickly turning into the very thing it wasn’t supposed to be.

  I bit my lip. “Wilder… you can’t… we can’t…”

  He took my ear between his teeth, gently nibbling before releasing it. “This is purely physical, you and me. Just wanted to remind you.”

  His hand left my core and the heat from his body left my back as he lowered himself to his knees. My hands pressed against the front of the shower wall as he separated my backside and his tongue found my wetness from a completely different angle.

  I’d never had an orgasm for breakfast, but I supposed there was a first time for everything.

  When we were finished in the shower, we got ready side by side, sharing the marble vanity of my bathroom like we were some old married couple partaking in a morning routine.

  “You smell like a sunflower,” I teased him. He’d had to use all my soaps and shampoos and body lotions. “With a hint of coconut.”

  “I smell like you,” he said with a smile that caused my heart to sink to the pit of my stomach. I wasn’t sure he even knew he was smiling like that. My expression faded as I turned back toward the mirror and slicked on a smooth coat of red Chanel lipstick. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I lied. “Just thinking about work.”

  “You really can’t shut it off, can you?” His head shook as he slipped on his dress pants from the night before.

  “I love my job,” I said, capping the tube. “I live for my job.”

  “Then why do you only seem like you’re enjoying yourself when I’m buried in that exquisite pussy of yours?”

  My cheeks warmed as I pushed him away and headed out of the bathroom. He followed, his white button down shirt in his hands.

  Wilder rushed up from behind me, slipping his hands around my waist and tugging me close. “I just want to know that you’re enjoying yourself even when you’re not with me.”

  “I am,” I said. At least, I thought I was. I supposed if I laid my levels of happiness side by side and compared my time with Wilder against the rest of my day, my time with Wilder would have won by a landslide. I’d never tell him that, though.

  “Let’s get dinner tonight,” he said. “As friends.”

  I spun around and shot him a look. “Can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we’re not friends.”

  His face fell slightly before a smirk took over his lips. “So if something happened to me tomorrow and you could never see me ever again, you’d be okay with that? Since we’re not friends?”

  “I’d miss him,” I said, grazing my hand over the top of his pants where his prized cock rested. “I’d miss him so much.”

  I’d miss Wilder too, maybe even more than his cock, and I hated that.

  He slipped his shirt on, studying my face as he fastened each button, and I stepped into a pair of red Gucci pumps.

  “Guess I’ll just eat dinner all by myself tonight,” he said with a faux frown.

  “I’m sure you have friends,” I said. “Lay the guilt on me as thick as you want, but I refuse to fall for it.”

  My phone went off in my bag. “Sorry, I have to take this.”

  He pulled his jacket and shoes on and followed me out to the hall as I took a call from a client who wanted me to show them a Brooklyn brownstone that morning. I promised him I’d do my best, but most showings needed to be arranged well in advance. As I tried to appease my client, I’d completely neglected to say goodbye to Wilder. I was already outside, heading up the street to the office, and he was nowhere to be seen.

  By the time I slid into my desk and placed a call to the listing agent on the brownstone, my phone rang again, forcing my heart to skip a beat. I knew who it was, and I knew he wasn’t going to drop the dinner thing.

  “You’re just not giving up on this, are you?” I said as I answered.

  “Hello? Addison? Addison, is that you?” It was my mother, Tammy Lynn.

  “Oh, sorry, Mom, thought you were someone else,” I said.

  “Oh, that’s fine, sweetheart,” she said in her full, Kentucky drawl. “The reason I’m callin’ you is because I have a bit of news to share.”

  “I heard,” I said. I couldn’t even fake excitement for her. At this point, she was just making a fool of herself by getting married more often than she replaced her vehicles.

  “Heard what?” She loved to play dumb.

  “That you’re engaged to some guy,” I said. Thank God she couldn’t see my massive eye roll.

  “He’s not just any guy, Addison,” she said. “He’s the greatest guy I’ve ever met in my entire life. I can’t wait for you to meet him and his son.”

  “One big, happy family,” I said as I responded to an email.

  “We’re going to come to the city in a couple weeks,” she said. “We’d like for the five of us to spend a little time together, and then he’s going to spend some time with his son, and I’ll spend some time with you and Dakota.”

  Mom still refused to call Dakota “Coco,” claiming she’d be damned if she called her anything other than her Christian name.

  “Okay, so two weeks from tomorrow, we’ll be arriving in the Big Apple,” she twanged. “Can’t wait to see you, sugar. I’m gonna let you go now. My man is taking me out for breakfast.”

  “Don’t you have to work?”

  She giggled. “He’s also my boss.”

  I lowered my head, faux face-palming. No one had ever accused Tammy Lynn Andrews of having a lick of common sense when it came to her choices in men.

  “I knew you’d come around,” I said as the host escorted Addison to the table. The fresh coat of lipstick and the faint breeze of flowers that floated off her body told me she’d freshened up before coming.

  It’d taken most of the afternoon and a few back and forth phone calls, but I’d eventually convinced her to meet me for dinner.

  “Kind of nice to relinquish control outside of the bedroom, isn’t it?” I whispered as I leaned across the table.

  When I looked into her pretty blue eyes, I saw a tightly wound woman with scars as deep as the ocean. I fully intended to peel back her layers one by one and get to the heart of who she really was.

  I wanted to know what made her tick. And it wasn’t because she was pretty or a good lay. Meeting Addison was like cracking open an oyster and finding an enormous pearl. For the vast majority of my twenties, the oysters I’d cracked had been empty.

  Maybe I didn’t deserve her, and I sure as hell didn’t know what to do with her, but I’d found her. What was that saying? Finders, keepers?

  “This looks like a date, Wilder.” Her lips turned down at the corners as she feigned disappointment. I only knew she was faking it because the flickering candle between us threw soft shadows on her face, illuminating the fact that her eyes were all lit up.

  “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.” I cleared my throat.

  Her eyes widened. “Um, okay?”

  “Will you… will you be…” I purposely drug it out to torture her. “My friend?”

  She buried her face in her hands, shaking her head. And when she lifted her gaze to meet mine, she was grinning. “You scared me.”

  “Can we be friends?” I was completely serious. “I want to call you my friend.”

  “You’re falling for me.” She cocked her head to the side. “I knew this would happen.”

  “I’m not falling for you,” I lied.

  “I’m in love with my job, Wilder,” she said, speaking about it as if it were a living, breathing entity and I was just a torrid affair.

  The server approached, cutting our conversation off and taking our orders. We spent the rest of the dinner making small talk, with Addison making concerted efforts to avoid speaking about anything remotely personal, and we headed outside the moment I’d paid the check.

  “Thanks for dinner… friend.” She poked her finger into my
chest. Her pretty lips opened wide into a yawn. “You wore me out last night. I need to go home and go to bed.”

  “It’s only eight o’clock,” I objected. “The night’s young… friend.”

  I reached for her arm, but she yanked it away before I had a chance to pull her in. “Not tonight.”

  She stepped toward the curb as a Yellow Cab approached, flagging her arm high in the air. The cab came to a screeching halt and she tugged the door open, turning to me to wave goodbye.

  Something came over me in that moment, and I found myself climbing into the cab alongside her.

  “What are you doing?” she asked with a bewildered look in her eyes.

  I gave my address to the cabbie and pulled Addison onto my lap, my hands finding her mouth in the dark of the backseat as city lights played across the side of her face like a movie scene. Pulling her face to mine, I kissed her like I meant it.

  “I’m taking you home with me tonight.”

  * * *

  No woman I’d been involved with in the last few years had set foot in my apartment. Not since Nikki. My space was sacred. And bringing girls home usually gave them the wrong impression, anyway.

  “Nice,” she said as we rode the elevator to my penthouse. I’d purchased it after I made my first ten million, one year after my mom passed. “This is beautiful.” She kicked off her candy-apple-colored heels and toed across the room to the slider that went to the balcony. “I had no idea we were neighbors, either. When were you going to tell me?”

  “You didn’t want to know anything about me.”

  Sometimes it felt wrong living there, as if it were paid for by my mother’s death in some fucked up, roundabout way. But my aunt reminded me that it was what my mother would have wanted. She would’ve wanted me to live comfortably with the world at my fingertips, the way she never could.

  I came up behind Addison, slipping my hands around her waist and bringing them up to her ripe breasts. My lips found the curve between her jaw and her neck as she melted into me.

  “I don’t know if I have the energy.” Her words were a faint whisper. She turned to face me, halting my opportunity to devour her inch by inch. “Please. Stop doing do this.”