They had eaten together and fought together, chased each other around the house and hidden side by side in a closet as their parents raged at one another over issues they had been too young to understand. The boys hid her stuffed bunny to torment her but put her to bed when she was small and they were home alone, their parents rarely calling a babysitter even though the twins were only six at the time. Wyatt remembered their locker combinations when they forgot and Hollis knew every word to every song and Aviana was their sister in the ways that counted. But lust had gotten the better of her and Hollis.
Through Wyatt’s eyes, she could see how strange this was. They never should have crossed that line, a line that couldn’t ever be uncrossed.
“He’ll calm down,” Hollis said, although Wyatt’s reaction had startled him, too.
Aviana hadn’t heard the car pull away. Getting up, she rushed to the front door and went outside. The sun was setting in an orange blaze. The Libation was in the garage; the Phemus was parked in the driveway. If Wyatt had walked around to the pool in back, she would have seen him through the living room windows. Wherever he had gone, it was on foot.
She jogged to the base of the driveway and looked both ways down the road. In the distance, a dark-haired man was walking away with his hands shoved into his pockets. Aviana took off after him, temper overriding the tiredness in her leg. There hadn’t been any reason for Wyatt to get angry. If it made him uncomfortable to see his twin brother with their former stepsister, then he should have just said it.
At the park, she caught up with him. The summer spent in a cast had left her out of shape, and her chest was heaving. “Wyatt!”
“Go home, Aviana.”
He kept walking. Dry grass crunched under his shoes. She caught his arm to stop him. “Who are you to judge me?” she spat. “It’s not like we’re really family. Who cares if we date? What is it to you? Do you think I’m not good enough for him?”
He grabbed her upper arms and shook her gently. “Is that what you think this is? I know what you are and aren’t to us. Why do you suppose I haven’t stayed in contact with you?”
“You were too damn busy at work, you said!”
He let go of her. “I was trying to forget you! I’ve been trying for years! But it doesn’t matter how hard I work or how many women I date, Aviana. They’re not you. It killed me all summer not to call after your accident. I wanted to come over there and take care of you. And I couldn’t. I knew that it would be too hard for me to see you. But then you moved in . . .”
“I can move out.”
“Hearing your voice on the phone made it stronger than ever. So I gave up. I came home to tell you, figuring you’d laugh in my face since you think of me as nothing more than a stepbrother and that would end this. But all to find out that you’re already with Hollis! The one guy in the world I won’t challenge for you!”
Stunned, she said nothing. She’d caught her breath only to lose it again at Wyatt’s words. That embrace when he had gotten his college acceptance, the moment she thought he was about to kiss her . . . it hadn’t just been him swept up in joy at his accomplishment but also with her. Even back then, there was heat between them. She just hadn’t recognized it for what it was, and he was holding back.
“I wish you had told me a long time ago,” she said.
“I couldn’t,” Wyatt said through gritted teeth. “You needed to go out there and see what the world had to offer. It has a lot more than the boy down the hallway.”
“I’ve seen what it has. I’m not impressed. And if you were actually trying to forget me, why are there pictures of me in your room?”
“Every time I put those away, I missed them. You’re part of me. I’d put them back and try to force myself to see you as the little sister you appear to be.” He looked away from her. “I thought you and Hollis were just friends.”
She hated the tinge of defeat in Wyatt’s voice. “It just happened. I’m sorry.”
“Avvie, you apologize too much and for very stupid reasons.” A man walked by on the footpath, mumbling to himself. Wyatt moved closer to her. Compelled to protect her from the big, bad world, even when he was furious.
Traffic droned past on the road, lights flicking on as the sky turned a deeper shade of blue. The mumbling man turned at the corner and a mom called her kids off the playground equipment to go home. A breeze with a hint of autumn in it blew past, tossing a lock of Aviana’s hair. Wyatt smoothed it back, his touch making her heart ache. “What would you have said?” he asked. “If I had told you long ago how much I love you?”
“I don’t know,” Aviana confessed.
“I see.”
“What do you want from me? You’ve been out of my life for years!” Aviana exclaimed. “Hollis hasn’t been that great about calling or visiting, but at least I got texts from him every week. And that’s just him. He’s like that with everybody, so I never took it personally. You just disappeared. Like we’d never been anything to each other, not a card or call at Christmas or my birthday, nothing. For you to waltz back into my life now and say you’ve had a special place in your heart for me all along and want to be together . . . no, I have no idea what I would have said! The time to tell me was years ago. Even with us at different colleges. I would have . . .” She flushed and turned away from him. If he had been honest with her at eighteen, Mark never would have happened. Aviana would have waited for vacations and visits when she and Wyatt could be together.
“I didn’t contact you at Christmas or on your birthdays,” Wyatt said behind her. “But you weren’t ever far from my mind.”
There was nothing more to be said about this, nothing that could make it better. She walked away, Wyatt coming along at her side. She could read his mind like an open book. It was getting dark. There had been that strange man. Aviana shouldn’t be alone so Wyatt would escort her back. She could scream at him to go away and that wouldn’t make any difference, just like it hadn’t made any difference how she screamed at him at thirteen when he was dragging her home.
“I’ll still buy you the car,” he said as they reached the front door. “I wasn’t using that to try to get into your bed. You need one, and I want to give it to you.”
She would have been shocked at his revelation. Shocked . . . but happy. He was handsome, ambitious, and went after what he wanted with single-minded purpose. She’d worked harder at school because of how hard she saw him working.
And he was kind, under all of his snapping and seriousness. When their parents couldn’t be counted on to think of anyone but themselves, Wyatt had put Aviana first. He protected her body when she was about to sell it off, knowing it would destroy something precious in her heart and soul.
She knew how she would have answered. She loved him, too. Her fingers dropping from the knob, she pivoted and kissed Wyatt over his scar. “I would have said yes,” she whispered in his ear, and left him looking stricken on the porch.
Chapter Seven
That night, she went into Hollis’ room. “Maybe we shouldn’t,” he said when she closed the door behind her.
She wanted to cry at how this had pulled him away. But she was too proud to let him see her tears, or her growing need for him. Frozen at the door, she looked at him in his bed and said, “Why?”
“I don’t want it to be so strained between all of us.”
The first whiff of an emotional complication was sending him off at a gallop. She shouldn’t have expected anything more. “So we’re done then.”
He didn’t say yes. He didn’t say no. He didn’t seem to know what to say. His eyes touched upon her breasts beneath her T-shirt and slipped away. “All right,” she said to his silence.
“I don’t want you to feel badly about this.”
“How else am I supposed to feel? Do you know what I wish for you, Hollis?”
“Infinite punches to the balls,” Hollis said without humor.
Aviana put her hand on the doorknob. “I hope one day you meet a girl who is special to
you. Not just for a fuck for one night, or a few nights. I hope you really fall in love with her.”
“And then she shoots me down?”
“No. I hope she is so special to you that you can find it in yourself to fight for her.” With that, she walked out of the room and returned to her own. She lay on the bed, wide awake and listening to the small rustles coming from Wyatt’s room as he unpacked. She wished that he had never come back from New York.
To hear Hollis say together only to withdraw it scant hours later. . . that stung. She was craving sex with him, the cuddling and falling asleep with her buttocks tucked into his groin and his muscled arm under her breasts. Denying his body made her desire him even more. She wanted those big hands in an iron hold around her hips or her wrists. For him to stand beside the bed and lift her like she was a feather to bring her closer to his stiff cock. For him to swipe scarves from his closet and restrain her . . .
With the shared wall with Wyatt, she didn’t want to use her vibrator. The buzzing was too loud. Going to sleep in discontent, she had one sexualized dream after another. In the morning she woke up in the shudders of a weak orgasm. Blindfolded on all fours in her dream, a cock being driven into her, she didn’t know if it was Hollis or Wyatt and didn’t care just so long as he didn’t stop.
She hung around in her room and read to avoid both of them. The Phemus eventually rolled down the driveway and some of the tension in the house faded. Or perhaps that was only within her. There had been no yelling or screaming outside of her room. Hunger pushed her downstairs to the kitchen by eleven. Wyatt was nowhere on the ground floor, nor was she hearing sounds from his room upstairs.
After eating a bowl of cereal, she glanced out the window and spied a dark head in the spa. A glass beside him, Wyatt was sitting in the hot water with sunglasses on. His lips were set and unhappy.
He hadn’t meant to upend this for her. Going out the back door, she went to the spa. His head turned as she sat down on the rim and stuck her legs into the hot, frothing water. The late summer heat had broken at last, and a cool breeze slipped over her shoulders. “What are you drinking?” she asked. He nudged the glass to her. She took a sip and made a face at his vodka on the rocks.
“I was an asshole last night,” Wyatt said.
All of her anger at him went away. “Oh, Wyatt.”
“It always felt like a dirty secret.”
“It was a secret, but I don’t want to call it dirty.”
“When we were in high school, this guy in my group of friends made a comment about you having a cute ass. I almost slugged him. Not because he was talking about my sister, but because you were going to be mine one day. I was about sixteen then, and juniors sure as hell didn’t date freshmen. I told myself that I just had to wait until the difference wasn’t as jarring.”
“But you did wait, and then you still didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t want you to think of me as a creep. If all I’ve ever been, Avvie, was a big brother to you, then telling you was only going to make you feel very uncomfortable around me. I didn’t want that.”
After years of dealing with Milan, she knew damn well what a creep was. Wyatt had never made her feel uneasy or frightened. Tracing a finger around his glass, Wyatt said, “It was a shock to find out you’re with Hollis. I won’t be a jerk about it anymore.”
“Well, I’m not with him anymore, so there’s nothing to be a jerk about.”
His eyes were invisible behind the dark lenses, but he appeared to be looking straight at her. Was he happy deep down to hear that? She couldn’t tell.
“I fucked everything up for you, didn’t I?” Wyatt asked at last.
She shrugged. “The odds weren’t good for Hollis and I to have a long-term relationship. He doesn’t do that.”
“He’s changing. I can see it in him. He can goof around a lot longer than I can, but even so, he still comes to a point where he wants something real. He isn’t who he was at eighteen or twenty.”
“Are any of us?”
“No. We shouldn’t be.”
“How have you changed?”
“I don’t feel as frantic as I once did. I was panicked at the thought of never making anything of myself. Why did you go out to get a job?”
That was an odd question. “There was no choice unless I want to be homeless. I had to.”
“And I didn’t,” Wyatt said. “I didn’t have to do anything. You can’t understand how insidious that is. To face a paper, a hard exam, and to realize that none of it is necessary. All I had to do was sit back and bide my time until I turned twenty-one. So many times I had to fight against that impulse. Who cared? I had tons of money coming.”
She wasn’t sure that she could have done the same at fifteen and nineteen with the awareness that a massive trust fund was rapidly coming over the horizon. “How did you keep fighting?”
“When I gave in to watch television, settled for a C instead of an A, I felt disgusted with myself.” He sipped his drink. “The money was supposed to make everything better. To some degree, it does. I live in a home most people can only dream about. I have a luxury car; I could have twenty cars and a yacht and a mansion in every state if I wanted. I’m grateful. But I didn’t do anything for this except be born into the right family. I had everything locked into place from the day I arrived on the planet. It’s emasculating. Does that make sense?”
“I can see that.”
“I didn’t earn it. My great-grandparents did. In a way, even though they’re dead more than twenty years now, this is their house and their spa and their car.”
“And their handcuffs?” Aviana blurted, instantly wishing she could stuff the words back into her mouth to swallow them into oblivion.
He took off his glasses and gave her a long, measuring look. “Did you enjoy going through my things, Aviana Rose?”
She wanted to die, and the way he tacked on her middle name made her feel all of five years old and in trouble for being naughty. “I didn’t go through your things. I stopped in your room while taking a tour of the house and the drawer on your nightstand wasn’t closed all the way.”
“Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“Those are my restraints. I have quite a collection.”
“I never fingered you for the sort to like being tied up,” she teased.
“Oh, no. I use them on women who like to give up their power to me.”
The day hadn’t grown any hotter, but she had. “What do they like about it?”
“How it feels to surrender. Or to not surrender, and be chastised until they do.”
“They don’t feel demeaned?”
“No. In the end, they’re holding the control. Once I hear safeword, everything stops. If she’s not willing, I’m not interested.”
“What do you like about it?”
He smiled wickedly at her. “I like when I have to convince them that submitting is in their best interest.”
“And how do you do that?”
“Why are you so curious?”
“Don’t tell me then. The wonderful and extremely reliable world of the Internet can be my teacher.”
“So instead of giving me an honest answer to my question, you’re being sassy and sarcastic. That wouldn’t fly with me in my room.”
“What would you do? Give me a time-out in the corner so I can think about my behavior?” she asked sarcastically.
“No. I would give you a spanking until you apologized for being such a brat.”
God. “And then?”
“Then I’d have a raging erection, and you would have a chance to make it up to me by some method of my choice.”
Affecting a cool look of disinterest, she helped herself to his glass and took another sip of his nasty vodka. He slid the sunglasses back up his nose and said formally, “All that aside, I wish I hadn’t handled it so poorly last night. If you and Hollis were going to flame out, it shouldn’t have been because of me.”
“It was a fling. Fun,
but just a fling. Did you see him this morning?”
“Yes, right before he left for work. I tried to make amends.”
“He wouldn’t let you?”
“It wasn’t like that. He’s just climbed back into the box he keeps in his head for when something upsets him. All I got out of him was Good Time Hollis where nothing is ever wrong.”
“He talked to me like he was a real person once or twice over the last week.”
“About anything in particular?”
“Your mom.”
Wyatt nodded. “He’s still working that out. Not letting it wound him so much. The ties that bind, or should . . . they simply don’t with her.”
“Did you go with her to that charity event?”
“No. She was blathering at me on the phone about how Clive was going to be there and how nice it would be for me to see him again. I declined immediately. I’ll put up with her for an evening, but I won’t put up with him.”
Clive was the ex-boyfriend who had given him the scar. “How could she ask you to see him?”
“She has a very convenient memory. I’d bet that she doesn’t even remember that fight.”
“Neither you nor Hollis told me exactly what happened.”
“Clive was a former military man, dishonorably discharged, as I learned later. All of his family’s oil money couldn’t change that. He was an asshole, all temper and no brain. Five minutes after walking into our lives, he was issuing orders. Stand up straight, stop talking, get him a snack, show him some respect. But we weren’t his recruits, or his children. And we were in college by then, still teens living at home for vacation but college-age, for God’s sake. Hollis got mouthy with him and the guy went ballistic. He shoved Hollis into the wall and I jumped on him. It went downhill from there.”
Stepbrother Romance: The Complete Box Set Page 12