They stared at me like deer caught in headlights, not even bothering to try and explain their strange behavior. I looked to one, and then the other, my smile growing as I waited and waited for one of them to try and cover.
“You guys are… really bad at this,” I laughed.
Noah’s face twisted in a playful glare. Kevin started huffing and walked past me, slapping me a few times with the towel. “Hey, why don’t you mind your own business?”
Noah followed him, walking up close to me. He leaned down and in heated whisper said, “Yeah, why don’t you mind your own business, babe?”
“Why don’t you make me?”
Noah smiled and gave an evil little laugh before he dropped a kiss on my forehead and moved past me into the bar.
As I watched him go with a smile, I wondered if he realized it didn’t take an investigative journalist to figure out what a ring box in the pocket of a pair of jeans looks like.
Bonus Book 3 - Slade
The next bonus novel is Slade - a bad boy Stepbrother romance. Following this will be the followup novel, Kellan.
~ Prologue ~
Slade
“Slade, wait… I’m a virgin.”
That’s what Iris said to me two months ago, when we were in the same position then—only that first time, her ass wasn’t on the kitchen counter of her parents’ pool house. Our parents’ pool house.
The first time we’d fucked had been in her bed, still made up in frilly comforters and pillows and being watched by the stuffed animals on her shelves. You would’ve never guessed Iris Walker was eighteen years old. Not by the way she still clung to her innocence like it was her very own lifeboat.
Maybe that was what lust was to her—a deep, dark ocean just waiting to swallow her up. Maybe I was the shark circling her little raft, and she’d been chumming the waters with her creamy thighs, her raven hair, but most of all, those smoking-hot lips of hers.
Whenever she wrapped ‘em around a straw and puckered, I damn near saw God. They were so full, so succulent, like ripe peach flesh just dying for me to take a bite. She’d sweep her tongue across them every so often, a little pink dart of motion that always drew my attention, always beckoned me to steal a glance at her big, innocent brown eyes and sultry pout.
She was sex on two very long legs, and she didn’t even know it. She was also my stepsister.
And that was exactly why I had to get inside her.
It took months. Months of teasing. Months of half-joking innuendos and smoldering glares as I passed her in the halls of the house we both shared. Ever since my father had married her whore mother, Iris and I had been trapped together like two animals in the same cage. Proximity could be dangerous, and I was going to make damn sure Iris felt every ounce of the danger she was in the longer she shared my cage.
I was leaving soon. I was headed to Harvard at twenty-one, young, dumb, and full of cum, but also a goddamn genius. That was what everyone had always called me, anyway. Especially my mom, the saint of a woman my father had promptly forgotten all about the moment he caught sight of Ms. Evelyn Walker.
Call me Evie, she’d said the first time we’d met, when my father brought her to the same house Mom died in and wanted me to shake this strange woman—this homewrecker’s hand. Call me Evie. Yeah, right. Like I was ever gonna call her anything other than Evelyn, the Harpy, Evelyn, the Interloper, Evelyn, the Bitch Who Stuck Her Nose Where It Didn’t Belong.
How Iris had come out of that was beyond me. Kellan, too, her little brother—thirteen and all smiles and smart as a whip—he was a good kid. He was always looking at me, watching what I did. I liked basketball, so now he’d started to play. I was good at Call of Duty, so he’d begged his mom to get him the game so he could be just as good as me. I tried to set a good example for him, praising his good grades and making a big deal out of how great it was to go to medical school. “Don’t let any assholes ever tell you A’s are for nerds,” I’d say, and he’d nod, eyes bright as I helped him with his homework. That kid was going places, and I wanted to make sure he had someone he could look to for how to get there.
Which was why I kind of felt bad about leading my stepsister on.
Because what I told her was that it was love. That I couldn’t get her off my mind in a romantic sort of way. That ever since I’d lain eyes on my eighteen-year-old stepsister with the body of a twenty-five-year-old supermodel, I’d been smitten.
And poor Iris, with her stuffed teddies and her never-been-touched, blushing cheeks—she’d believed me. She’d bought the fantasy I was selling. Hook, line, and sinker.
But it was for the greater good. I just couldn’t tell her that.
Not then, when she’d looked at me with wide eyes and her heart in her throat, telling me she was a virgin and to take it slow, and we’d fumbled with each other’s clothes and knocked teeth when we kissed.
And not now, either, with her up on the kitchen counter, her legs spread, toned thighs quivering, her bikini bottom on the floor and her tits pulled out of her top.
“Slade, wait… I’m a virgin,” she’d said two months ago.
Today, all she said was, “Hurry up and cum for me, Slade, before Mom and Dad get home.”
I pushed up inside her in one long, pulsating stroke, perfectly content to take my time. Iris was more than just a hot body now. She’d learned a lot in the past couple months, and I’d learned that I was a damn good teacher. I’d seen her plump lips wrapped around my tip more times than I could count, and now when I plunged to fruition inside of her, she knew how to roll those hips and make me groan.
She was doing that now, urging me to finish, to leave all evidence of our forbidden lust inside her. Sweet, innocent Iris was on birth control now—I’d convinced her it was easier for both of us that way. No condoms to hide. Just my stepsister strutting around with a warm, creamy center.
That thought alone almost made me pop. Christ, I had to chill. I had to make it last. Because if everything went according to plan, then this would be the last time I got to fuck her.
Goddamn, some part of me was gonna miss this.
“I’m almost there,” I assured her through gritted teeth, leaning back a little to watch my dick speed in and out of her. I was covered in her desire. Iris had a hair-trigger, and she’d already gotten off multiple times, soaking the counter and me in the process. When my tip left the clinging wetness of her core, it made this popping sound I just couldn’t resist. Normally I’d have lost it right then and there, but the way my stepsister was digging her nails into my chest was killing me.
“Watch the tattoos,” I whispered. They were new and they were sore, and when Iris grasped them, they burned like hellfire. Which, given what we were doing, was awfully fitting.
“Sorry,” she moaned, leaning her head back so the damp curtain of her hair tumbled down her shoulders. I kissed the swan-like curve of her throat and she panted for me, her tits bouncing with the effort. Keep it cool, Slade. You can’t finish yet. Still got a few minutes…
“You’re close, Slade. I can feel it.” I drew back and her gaze met mine, hazy from her most recent orgasm. Her lips were swollen too, puffy and red, first from sucking my cock, then from my mouth on hers, stifling her moans and screams. “Cum inside me, baby. Please. Someone’s gonna catch us…”
Of course they are. That’s the point, Iris. But if she’d known that—if she knew this was all just a way to piss off my dad and put my brand new stepmom in her place—she never would’ve let me inside her. And that would’ve been a shame, because then I wouldn’t have known that turning a virgin into a succubus was a very worthwhile pursuit.
I couldn’t tell her the plan. Instead, I reached down between us and jiggled my thumb against that little bud I knew would send her over the edge again in no time.
Iris’ eyes widened. Her breath caught. “Oh, Slade. I can’t take it…” She raked her nails over me again and I just barely twitched out of range before she drew blood from my tattoo again. “I’m g
onna…”
“Scream,” I told her, pumping in harder, faster, pushing her limits as well as my own. God, she was tight, and the way she writhed all over me was making my toes curl. “It’s our last time together, Iris. At least, for a while. I wanna hear you, baby. C’mon.” I turned the movement of my thumb into something more urgent, a tapping that made her wail. “That’s it. Louder, Iris. Scream for big brother.”
Yeah, that was nasty. But isn’t all sex, at twenty-one? And anyway, it worked. Shamefully, it turned us both on.
Iris began to shriek, spreading her legs wider to take the pounding I inflicted. She’d forgotten all about our parents, about what we were doing, about where we were doing it. She forgot how bold we were and how we were damn near out in the open. I could see it in her eyes when she looked up at me, her teeth embedded so deep into her lip that she’d broken the skin: all Iris Walker was thinking about, right at that moment, was cumming on my cock.
Shit, I was thinking about it, too.
Right up until the moment the pool house door opened.
The sounds that followed are ones I’ll never forget. The high-pitched cry of Iris helplessly surrendering to her orgasm, almost drowning out the sharp click of the doorknob turning. Then the little whine of the hinges as the door swung in, flooding the room with daylight and a single shadow, one that looked an awful lot like my dad’s.
Sweet vindication filled me as I filled Iris right in front of him. I couldn’t tell which was better: revenge, or my orgasm.
I expected a whole lot of yelling next. I thought Iris, for sure, was gonna start to scream. And my dad had always had a temper, albeit only a verbal one. I could almost taste his bellow on the back of my throat as I swallowed, turning toward him, following Iris’ horrified gaze.
His face was ashen. There were deep, dark lines where none had been before. His eyes, cold as ice, made my skin prickle with pins, needles, and goosebumps. There was anger in him, all right, but it wasn’t the hot, explosive kind I’d anticipated. This was the silent kind, with a warning vibration that made the hairs on my nape stand on end.
Iris was the one who spoke first, only it wasn’t really a word that escaped her lips so much as a strangled sob. The smirk on my face faltered for a fraction of an instant. I hadn’t been expecting that, either—that the sound of Iris’ grief would put a little crack in my stone heart.
“Is this what you texted me for, Slade?” my father said. Disgust shimmered in his eyes, pulled taut at his lips. “You wanted me to see this, didn’t you? That’s why you said your mother and I needed to come home so urgently.” He shook his head. “Thank God she’s still in the main house.”
“You did this?” Iris whispered, lip curled, brow furrowed tight. There was a note of disbelief in her voice at first, but the longer she searched my face, the more her denial abated and turned to rage. Disgust. “You bastard. You… did this. Used me.” Then she lost all expression, staring blankly at the floor. “Oh, my God. Everything you said was a lie…”
I knew what she meant. I knew she wasn’t talking about the little stuff. Not about how I’d told her she was pretty, or that she had the best rack I’d ever seen. She was talking about those three little words I’d said. The ones I’d lost sleep over, thinking maybe I’d pushed it too far.
I love you, I’d told her once, just to get her legs open. Or that’s what I told myself. Because thinking any other way, entertaining any other possibility, might make me back out. Might change my mind. Might fuck up all my plans to get even with the man who’d used my mother until she was dead, and then traded in her memory for a younger model.
My father inspired a rage so strong in me that sometimes, I couldn’t see straight. Feeling anything for Iris, anything at all, was a threat to that. Because every time I even thought about the idea of those feelings, my vision got blurry in an entirely different way.
And that just wouldn’t do.
“Get out,” my father said. Despite how low his voice was, it seemed to shake the room. “Get out of here, Slade. And don’t you dare come back.”
Iris withered as I withdrew, covering herself with her arms and legs while I pulled up my swim trunks. I risked a look in her direction and my stomach sank. Those eyes were wide again, but not with pleasure or sweet naiveté or even shock. They were wide with pain. Wide with rage.
How could you? her gaze said to me. I just gave her a shrug and watched her eyes get wet.
It didn’t matter how hurt she was. The fact of the matter was that Iris was better off without me. I would have told her as much, if she’d have listened. If my father would’ve let me stay in the same room with her for one second more. But I knew neither of those things were going to happen now, so I’d just have to say it to myself: Come on, Iris. This is the best thing that could’ve happened to you. Years from now, you’ll look back and see. Splitting our parents up was something I had to do. For me. For my mother. And in some ways, for you.
‘Cause being related to Slade Jarvis? Now that’s a hell I wouldn’t put my worst enemy through.
My father moved to let me pass without so much of a word. I thought I saw a few gray hairs glinting in the sun, right around his temples, where there hadn’t been a single one before. I held his gaze and my cocky grin, savoring my triumph, knowing that I’d done what I set out to do. That I had won.
I didn’t let him see it in my eyes or in my swagger, but at the same time, I wondered to myself: if I’d really beat my father, once and for all, then why the hell did I feel so shitty?
Why the hell couldn’t I get the look on Iris Walker’s face out of my head?
Chapter 1
Iris
SEVEN YEARS LATER
“Dad, come on. You know it’s the right thing to do.”
My stepfather looked down his nose at me, the wire frames of his glasses dangling precariously close to the tip. He looked like he’d aged ten years in the past three days. Ever since Kellan left home, our house had practically become a morgue.
You would’ve thought my younger brother died, and maybe for Dad, that was, in a sense, true. He certainly wasn’t the kid we once knew.
Dad shook his head and fixed his gaze outside the breakfast nook window again, like staring at the front lawn would magically make Kellan appear there. This was part of the Waiting Game, the one our family always played whenever Kellan took off on one of his benders. He was never gone for more than a week at a time—apparently, that was how long it took for him to run out of drug money and come crawling back home on his knees, begging for more. Or he’d call us from the drunk tank at the police station to plead for bail money so he wouldn’t have to spend the night.
Whatever the case, my little brother had a self-destruct mechanism set for seven days. No matter what else he got himself into, we could rely on him to end up at our door a week later, just like clockwork.
Until now.
Three days ago marked one week since Kellan left the house. He’d used his usual ruse, promising Mom he was going to a job interview or the Army recruiter or whatever it was this time. Kellan used the guise of bettering himself as an excuse to relapse, and when his cellphone went straight to voicemail that night, we braced ourselves for another week of the Waiting Game.
But now ten days had passed, and still no one could reach Kellan. Not even me. And I had one hell of a bad feeling about this.
“We don’t have any other choice,” I continued, even as my stepfather looked away from me to his newspaper. “Not one that I see, anyway. We’ve already called all the hospitals and police stations. And I doubt you or Mom are going to be able to smoke him out. We need a bigger gun.”
My stepfather snorted. “Fine choice of words.”
I sighed and closed my eyes. It had been seven years since my parents caught me and Slade in the pool house, doing… what we’d done. Dad had sworn me and Mom to secrecy, along with Slade. Kellan was never to hear a word of it, and when Dad kicked Slade out the next day, he used Slade’s going off to
Harvard as the perfect excuse. Still, for all his talk of secrecy, he was so obvious with his disdain for his own son that everyone knew how he felt. He thought Slade was an asshole. Dangerous. And maybe he was.
But he was smart, too, and capable. And there were times were he had been incredibly sweet and kind to me. I hated the idea that it was all just an act to screw me, literally and figuratively, just to get back at his father and my mother. When he first left I clung to the belief that those were true parts of him, and that what he’d done at the end had just been him acting out in… whatever. But over the years, after never hearing from him again, I’ve all but lost that hope. Maybe he was the complete jerk that his dad seemed to believe him to be.
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