by Hawk, Chloe
STEPBROTHER WANTS (His Twisted Game, Book Eight)
By Chloe Hawk
Copyright 2015, Chloe Hawk, all rights reserved. This book is a work of fiction, and all resemblance to any persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental. All characters depicted in this book are eighteen years of age or older.
COLE
It took a second for me to figure out exactly what it was I was seeing. It was so far out of the realm of possibility, so far removed from anything I could ever have imagined that my brain had a difficult time coming to grips with what was on the screen.
It was Avery, out in the middle of what looked like a forest. There were tree branches and leaves in the frame, and everything looked dark and dusty, untouched, like she’d been dropped in the middle of nowhere. She was wearing a bikini top and a dark jean skirt, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, her cheeks slightly sunburned.
“Tell me you want it,” Jeffrey’s voice came though the speakers of my phone.
Avery smiled, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes.
“I want it,” she said. Her words were slightly slurred and color rose high on her cheeks.
“Get up against the tree,” Jeffrey said. His voice sounded giddy, high, like a child who was about to get away with something.
Avery turned around and put her hands on the tree, pushing her ass up into the air.
Jeffrey’s hand appeared at the bottom of the frame, and I watched in sick fascination as his fingers snaked up under Avery’s skirt and pulled the crotch of her panties over to the side.
The camera or the phone or whatever it was he was using to record her jostled then, and a second later I realized why. Jeffrey was pulling his pants down, getting ready to fuck her, to slide inside of her, to take her right there in the woods.
Blazing hot rage seared through my veins, so hot and scorching I was afraid it was going to physically burn me.
Time stood still.
Everything came to a halt.
The room was quiet.
No one moved for a long moment.
Then, finally, I snapped out of my trance and hit the pause button, stopping the video.
My stomach rolled in on itself, and for a split second, I thought I was going to lose it, thought I was going to throw up. But my anger swallowed my nausea, used it as fuel to burn brighter.
I became aware of the fact that Kalia and Easton were still in the room.
“I need a moment alone with Avery,” I said. My voice was controlled, even, no trace of the turmoil that was going on inside me, no sign of the rage that was boiling so fast and hard I’d never felt anything like it.
Kalia and Easton glanced at each other, anxious looks on their faces.
They’d heard enough, saw enough, to know exactly what was on the video.
They would have to understand they needed to keep this quiet.
But I would deal with them later. Office gossip or my company’s reputation was the least of my worries right now.
They shuffled out the door, and it shut behind them with an audible click.
I turned to Avery.
She was standing behind me, her face pale, her hand gripping the side of my desk.
“Do you want to explain?” I said, holding up my phone. “What the hell this is?”
AVERY
The room spun in front of me, fading in and out.
I felt like I was looking at everything through a tunnel – Cole’s voice, the sound of the video coming through his phone, the look on Kalia and Easton’s faces -- all of it seemed like it was happening at the end of dark corridor.
My vision swam and I gripped the side of Cole’s desk so tightly that it pressed into my skin hard enough to cause pain. The pain grounded me in reality, and I forced myself to push into the wood harder. I imagined the sharp edge breaking my skin open, imagined myself bleeding to death all over the rug. But when I looked down, there was only a small indent on my palm, nowhere even close to breaking the skin.
When I glanced back up again, Kalia and Easton were gone, and Cole was standing there in his office, holding up his phone.
His blue eyes were icy hot, his jaw set in a firm line.
He was looking at me expectantly, like he was waiting for me to say something.
But there was a roar in my ears and I couldn’t focus on what he was saying.
“Avery!” he barked, and the forcefulness of his voice overwhelmed the whooshing sound in my ears, causing it to retreat into the background.
“Yes?” I said.
“What the hell is this?”
My first instinct was to lie, to deny it was me. But there was no way I could do that. I was there, on video, for everyone to see.
“It’s a video,” I said quietly.
His chest was heaving, like he’d been out running instead of just standing here in his office.
“A video of what, Avery?” he said.
I closed my eyes. “A video of me and Jeffrey.”
The admission seemed to confuse him. He looked back up at me, and shook his head slowly. “No, this is… you were never with Jeffrey.”
“It was just… it was a mistake,” I said.
“He must have somehow faked this,” he said, dazed. “It’s photoshop.”
I swallowed, wishing I could tell him it was, wishing I could tell him the video wasn’t real, that it was just some girl who looked like me, or some kind of weird CGI thing Jeffrey had been able to come up with to make it seem like there was a sex tape of us.
But none of those things would be true.
And even though Cole might have been in a haze of denial right now, eventually he was going to come out of it.
He stood there, the silence between us pressing down on my shoulders like a weight, suffocating me.
“God damn it, Avery,” he raged, and then he threw his phone at the wall. The screen shattered and the phone dropped to the floor.
He crossed the room to me, grabbed my arms. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded.
“I don’t… I don’t know,” I said.
“Why. Didn’t. You. Tell. Me.”
“I was embarrassed,” I said, and I could feel the tears starting, could feel the numb feeling retreating and being replaced with shame and grief.
“You were embarrassed?” Cole asked. He turned and bent over his desk, laying his palms flat on top of it. His hands curled into fists. “That motherfucker,” he said, shaking his head. He stood back up. “Stay here. Do not leave this office.”
He started heading for the door, but I stepped in front of him. “Where are you going?”
“Avery,” he said, his voice calm. A vein throbbed in his neck. “Get out of my way.”
“No.” I shook my head and stood in front of the door, spreading my arms out over it. “Cole, you cannot go see Jeffrey.”
“This doesn’t concern you.”
“Stop saying things don’t concern me!” I said. “You keep saying that. And this does concern me, Cole. It has everything to do with me, and you know it.”
“Avery,” he said again, and his blue eyes blazed, cold as steel. “Get out of my way.”
“No! What are you going to do? Go kick his ass? Really smart, Cole. He’ll just use it as an excuse to come after me more.”
“Avery – ”
“Stop saying my name!” I said, my hands balling into fists at my sides. “If you do this, it’s just going to make it worse for me, don’t you see? This is what he wants. He wants you to go over there and lose your shit. He’ll call the police, and won’t that be great for their narrative? Cole Buchanan arrested for assault twice in two days.”
&n
bsp; “I don’t give a fuck about that,” he said. “Stop protecting him.”
“I’m not protecting him!”
“Then why don’t you want me to go over there?”
“Because it’s going to make it worse,” I said. “Aren’t you listening? Jeffrey only sent that video to you, Cole. If you go after him, who knows what else he’s going to do with it.”
Cole shook his head and took a few steps toward me, pushing his chest up against mine. He pinned me to the back of the door, put his hand on my face and traced my cheekbone with his index finger.
“Why?” he asked, his voice soft. “Why didn’t you tell me, Avery?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just...I didn’t want you to judge me, I guess.”
Cole’s brought his mouth down on me, crushing his lips against mine, his tongue pushing past my lips. When he pulled away, his eyes were crazed, intense. “How many times?” he demanded.
“What?”
“How many times were you with him? Was it just that once?”
I closed my eyes tight, feeling tears of shame well up behind my eyelids. “No.”
“How many times?” Cole growled.
I didn’t say anything.
“Avery! How many times!”
“I don’t know,” I said meekly.
“You don’t know?” he repeated incredulously.
“Maybe five or six.”
“Five or six?” He shook his head. “And you never told me?” He looked at me. “Jesus, Avery.”
“You never tell me anything, Cole. You didn’t tell me about Lucy, you won’t tell me about the papers you took from Gordon’s office. You keep secrets all the time.”
“This is different.”
“Why? Because it’s me and not you?”
“No, because I don’t like thinking about him having his hands on you.”
“It was in the past.”
“I don’t care.”
I shook my head. “This is insane.”
“Is it, Avery?” he said. “Is it?” He took my face in his hands again and came in for another kiss. Our tongues danced together until I was breathless, his teeth nipping at my bottom lip when he finally pulled away. He rested his forehead against mine, his thumb brushing over my cheekbone. “I don’t want anyone else touching you.”
He skimmed his hand down into the waistband of my jeans, his fingers skating over my hipbone. His touch sent shivers through my body. “I want my initials on you,” he said. “Right here. The way I have yours.”
I closed my eyes, thinking about his tattoo, the one he had of my initials. The thought of getting his initials branded into my skin was exhilarating. A hot thrill skittered up my spine. “Okay,” I said. “But Cole, you have to promise me you’re not going to go after Jeffrey.”
Cole had seemed like he was calming him down, but this seemed to send him right back over the edge. “Stop protecting him.”
“I’m not!”
“Avery,” he said. “I think you should leave.”
“What?”
“You should leave.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This is too fucked up, this is … ” He stepped away from me, pain and torture clouding his face. “We’re not good for each other. I can’t… I can’t control myself around you, and it’s not going to end well. For either one of us. Even now, just looking at you… I want to grab you, I want to strip you and fuck you. I want to control you.”
“So do it,” I said, panicked at the thought of not being with him. “Take my body, Cole. Use me. I want you to.”
I reached my hand out to him, but he pushed me away.
“Dammit, Avery,” he said. He turned and walked back toward his desk, increasing the distance between us. “You need to stay away from me. I’m serious. I need you to leave. Right now.”
“So what?” I asked. “You’re just going to send me home?” I hated the way my voice sounded, so weak and wounded. But he had the power to destroy me, and there was no hiding it.
“No,” he said. “You can’t go home. I’ll help you find an apartment, I’ll get you set up with a job.”
I stared at him for a long moment, our gazes locked on each other. I waited for him to take it back, waited for him to tell me that he couldn’t live without me, that he would treat me the way I deserved to be treated the way he’d promised the other night at our parents’ house when we were lying in my bed.
But he didn’t say any of those things.
Instead, he just moved over to the windows of his office, gazed out across the city. “We’re fucked up, Avery,” he said. “And we’re just going to fuck each other up more.”
His voice sounded resigned, accepting, with no trace of anger or sadness. It was a stark contrast to how I felt, the feelings and longing I had for him bubbling up inside of me, sharp and brittle and threatening to break me into a million pieces.
I felt my knees buckle a tiny bit, and for a horrible second I thought I was going to fall to the floor, that I was going to collapse into a puddle right here in Cole’s office. But instead, I put the pieces of my soul back together and somehow forced them to hold.
I looked at my stepbrother, standing there, so strong, so beautiful.
I’d thought he was different from all the other men I’d met.
I’d thought he wanted to protect me.
But I’d been foolish.
I’d ignored all my doubts, all my reservations about his secrets, the warnings from my mom, the things I’d seen him do. I’d let myself get caught up in the warmth of his body, the ache that permeated through me whenever he was close, how my own damaged psyche craved being dominated by my him.
He was just like all the other men who’d let me down, made me promises.
He was a liar.
And I wasn’t going to stand here and let him find me an apartment or a job or whatever other things he wanted to do in an of effort to soothe his guilt over tossing me aside like I was just some crumpled up piece of garbage.
I wasn’t going to let him off that easily.
I turned around and walked out of his office.
There was a group of people at the end of the hallway – Cole’s employees-- huddled together in a group. They must have heard at least some of what had been going on in Cole’s office. The sound his phone had made as he slammed it against the wall had reverberated through the room.
Had they heard what we were talking about? Had they heard him say he couldn’t stand the thought of another man putting his hands on me? Or was it more likely they’d just heard fighting, just knew there had been some kind of drama and were now gathered together, gossiping and speculating about what it could be?
I didn’t care.
It wasn’t my problem anymore.
I walked down the corridor and out of the building.
But even when I got outside, I could still feel their eyes on my back.
***
Once I was out on the streets of New York, I lost it.
I’d been holding myself together by the thinnest of threads, and once I was outside, that thread snapped.
The sun was shining bright and hot, the sky a brilliant shade of blue. It was the kind of day that made everyone want to be outside, the kind of day that caused tourists to flood the streets, for people to slow down on their walk back to the office, the kind of day that caused the lines in front of the pretzel carts and hot dog stands to stretch three or four deep.
The deluge of people and sounds, car horns honking, the smells of exhaust and the sun beating down on me, caused me to lose my grip on what little sanity I was holding on to.
I collapsed onto a bench and put my head in my hands, my eyes squeezed shut tight as I started to cry. I tried my best to keep my shoulders from shaking as the tears came in shuddering sobs – the last thing I wanted was someone asking me if I was okay.
I sat there for a long time, right in front of Cole’s office, crying for what felt like forever.
Finally, I couldn’t cry anymore. My eyes were raw, my face swollen, my insides withered into a husk.
You should have told him.
It was the first coherent thought I’d had since Cole had seen that video, and I instantly hated myself for it.
I should have told him? Why? So he could have kicked me out faster, so he could have blamed me for not telling him sooner? It wouldn’t have been enough for him.
Not to mention the secrets he kept from me. For that reason alone, I didn’t owe him anything.
It was a double standard, one I’d been willing to put up with because I craved his touch, his kiss, his promises. I’d thought I was falling in love with him.
You are falling in love with him.
I hated the voice in my head, hated the pull I felt back toward him, toward his arms, his mouth, his soul, his everything.
I’m not falling in love with him, I scolded myself. How could I be falling in love with someone so callous, someone so willing to just throw me to the side like I meant nothing to him?
He hadn’t even come after me to make sure I was okay. He knew I had nowhere to go, knew I had no cash, no credit cards, nothing. I didn’t even have an ID since my purse had been stolen.
And yet he just sat up there in his fancy office.
I turned around and glared at the building. It stared back at me, unfettered, shiny and intimidating.
I hated him. I hated that he was up there in his office, probably moving about his day as if nothing had happened. I imagined him barking orders at Kalia, going into damage control mode. He’d never cared about me. All he’d cared about was his sick obsession with dominating me.
And who even knew if that was even about me? He might have wanted to dominate anyone.
But he has your initials tattooed on him.
Stop! I wanted to scream at the voice in my head, the voice that was a traitor, the voice that wanted me to go back to Cole. Stop defending him.
Rage pumped through my body. How was it that Cole was allowed to treat people like garbage, and yet he was so successful, so rich, so adored? He could have anything he wanted – any house, any car, any woman.
And here I’d been trying to play by the rules my whole life, and where was I? Sitting on some bench with no money, no family, no home.