by Nan Comargue
Jeanne laughed. “That wasn’t what I was talking about anyway. I remember that on Nik’s seventh birthday, he made his wish out loud—”
Cringing, Alexa suddenly recalled what was coming. “Jeanne—”
“And he said he wanted to marry you when he grew up,” her friend concluded with a lingering snort of amusement. “You scowled at him like he’d stabbed you with the cake slicer. He took one look at your face and started howling that you didn’t love him back. Then Val had to take him away and quiet him down.”
Alexa was silent. Now, with yesterday’s knowledge, she wondered what Val had told her son to calm him. Had she told him the truth that day, that he and Alexa weren’t really siblings? Is that why he’d come back wreathed in smiles, ready to play with his friends again? Or had she used some innocent motherly platitude?
She looked down at the table. “Maybe Val told him the truth, that all he had to do was wait eighteen years until he was twenty-five and I would give in. How’s that for strange wisdom?”
It was Jeanne’s turn to be silent for a moment.
“Is that what happened last night, Lex? You gave in?”
She shook her head but she wasn’t denying it. Not anymore. “It wasn’t last night. It was this morning—or afternoon, if you want to be specific.” She managed to lift her eyes to her friend’s face. On it she saw only sympathy—and a little envy? “Maybe Nik is sexy. Maybe he’s everything you and other women have been saying about him for the past few years. I don’t know. All I know is that he’s strong and I’m not. Not right now.”
“Oh, Lex!”
Jeanne’s hand fumbled for hers and they sat there, fingers clasped, for a full minute.
“Everything I knew was a lie,” Alexa said, her voice shaky. “That was the reason I never fit in, because I never knew the whole truth. And I can’t help partly blaming Nik for it. He knew and he never told me.”
Jeanne squeezed her hand hard. “Maybe he knew that he was too personally invested. Maybe he really did think it was your father’s decision to make. Either way, I don’t think you should blame him for it. Haven’t you hated him for long enough?”
But Alexa merely shook her head again. How much hate was enough? It seemed as though there was little else in her life. Could she let go of everything that was familiar to her? Could she move on?
Her dislike of her younger half-brother had given shape to her life. She’d moved across the country ostensibly to escape him.
But why had she needed to escape?
For years she’d suspected Nik’s feelings for her were complicated and not in the least familial. Two years ago, he’d proven it. And last night she’d proven that she’d felt the same way all along.
She hadn’t hated Nik then. She’d wanted him. She’d lusted after him. Now that he’d shown he was capable of tenderness and restraint—and hadn’t he been cocky about his restraint?—she wasn’t so sure it was just lust after all.
Lusting after a man you’d grown up with believing to be your brother was bad enough. Falling in love with him could be disastrous.
Chapter Four
“What do you feel like doing?”
Alexa bit her lip. She wasn’t supposed to say ‘you’, right? No, she didn’t think that was the purpose behind Val’s brainstorm that Alexa and Nik needed to spend some time together. An outing, was what Val had called it. A date, was more the truth.
Of course, it had started the way every adolescent date she could remember had—with the eternal debate over what to do.
“I don’t know,” Alexa said, gazing out of the window of the Range Rover, for once enjoying the thought that she might run another car over, rather than being squashed by a homicidal SUV. She drove a Mini Cooper and even that, fairly rarely. Her job was mostly legal research and she could do the vast majority of it from home, hence Val’s pointed annual inquiries.
“You choose,” she urged.
She was trying not to look at Nik. His face was in profile—gorgeous, of course, more so now when he was trying to be serious, the strong set of his shoulders and lean length of his legs, his hands resting lightly but capably on the steering wheel.
Yet the more she didn’t look at him, the more aware of him she became.
His scent was all over the car, crisp and clean. He’d even combed his hair for her, taming the usual tousled waves into somber order. And his jeans were missing—not in a nice way but replaced by a pair of close-fitting gray trousers. Topped by a blue and white checked shirt, he appeared like he could fit into an office. A hipster office, but an office nonetheless.
But that wasn’t the real Nik.
Nik was the eternal vagabond. He’d once called her from Manila, waking her in the middle of the night. He’d tried to Skype with her from Sydney and had gotten frustrated when she’d claimed not to have a web camera. She actually didn’t have one, but he’d seemed to think she was lying, as if such a technological lapse wasn’t possible.
How he supported himself—or had bought the car she was sitting in, for that matter—she had no idea. She suspected that Val knew a great deal about it.
But how could Alexa respect a man who couldn’t even earn his own way through life?
Alexa smoothed down the pleats of her navy blue dress, glad that she’d packed mainly the old-fashioned tailored clothes Val approved of, rather than the more stylish outfits she wore back in Chicago. After all, she was here for a family holiday, not to party.
Nik’s voice came from the driver’s seat, almost shrouded now in darkness except for the dim lights of the dashboard.
“If you let me choose, it’s going to defeat the purpose of this date in the first place.”
Get to know each other, Val had urged. Be friends.
Of course her stepmother didn’t know that her son and Alexa were already lovers. The idea of a first date between them was ludicrous. She knew more than she ever needed to about Nik.
“All right,” he said, when Alexa didn’t respond. “I choose here.”
He swerved onto a driveway. A bright yellow sign shot past. The Ridgemont Inn.
“Don’t,” Alexa said quietly.
He appeared not to have heard her as he eased the vehicle into a parking spot near the main entrance. It was a Tuesday night. Perhaps the usual escorts and adulterers preferred the weekend.
He shifted the car into Park then turned to her, his face all angles and planes in the poor light.
“You’re mine,” he said on a ragged note. “You can pretend all you want and keep dressing like somebody’s grandmother, but remember that I know what’s under that ugly dress—and I know the real you.”
The insult burned, even if she secretly agreed that the dress wasn’t terribly flattering. Somebody’s grandmother… That was even worse than his older half-sister.
Alexa snorted. “You don’t know anything about me. I was a teenager when you were born and I was an adult when you were still in kindergarten.”
His teeth flashed in the dimness. “I know you catch fire every time I touch you. How about that for a start?”
“That’s nothing.” She tried to wave it away with a dismissive gesture. “How do you know I don’t react the exact same way to every guy I sleep with?”
Silence. For a delirious moment she thought he’d given up, and she couldn’t tell if her deflated feeling was because of disappointment or relief.
Then, from the semi-darkness, he said roughly, “Like hell you do,” and suddenly she was in his arms, then sitting on his lap.
The feel of him—hard, hot and angry—made her own irritation creep away, leaving only excitement.
She wanted him. Moving against him in an experimental slide, she could tell that he wanted her too.
“I wanted us to have dinner here,” Nik muttered.
“Yes,” she agreed. “Dinner. But first—”
Alexa had to bend her head to kiss him. It was a powerful angle, giving her access to his mouth in a way she hadn’t experienced before. He
parted his lips to let her tongue in, groaning as she shoved deep, reversing their roles from the previous night, taking now instead of giving.
He moved his hands behind her to brace her back and keep her pressed to his chest while she dragged her fingertips over his neck and chin, both faintly rough with stubble, learning every sculpted contour.
She teased him. Kissing long and deep and wet then retracting to barely touch his lips with the tip of her tongue. He was wonderfully reactive, alive to each change as he alternately sucked her tongue and nibbled at her lips. But soon she was driving herself crazy being so close to him and not being able to feel him properly.
“I want to ride you,” she murmured, amazed at her own temerity, yet reveling in it.
What was it about him that always made her react in such extremes?
Nik’s answer was halfway between a laugh and a grunt. “Why not? The windows are tinted.”
He went very quiet when she reached between them to grasp at his crotch. The thinner material made it possible for her to trace the clear outline of his cock. Thick and heavy, just the way she liked it.
Despite his growing impatience, she took her time freeing it, working the leather belt from its buckle then oh so slowly pulling down his zipper. His cock sprang free, as if waiting for only for her invitation. She filled her hands, savoring the long hard wonder of it. She wanted to get closer to him but the cramped space made for minimal movement.
Nik reached along the side of the driver’s seat and pulled a lever that sent the chair gliding backward. Suddenly the steering wheel was no longer an encumbrance but part of the support system. Maybe she could…
“What are you doing?” Nik protested when she swiveled atop him.
He shut up when she sat back down, pressing her ass right next to his erect cock. Alexa braced her palms on the steering wheel as she rubbed up against him. He soon got the picture, reaching down to grasp her panties and pull them down to bare her cheeks. He squeezed them with just enough force to remind her of his strength and the fact that he could easily seize control but that he had ceded it to her for now.
Nik cursed below his breath as her movements stiffened his dick even more, until it was an iron rod rubbing up along her crease. He reached forward, slipping his hand between her thighs and finding her clit with unerring instinct.
Alexa gasped when he plied her sensitive nub with his fingertips, ever so lightly, ever so maddeningly. He began to stroke her in synchronism with her wiggling ass, rocking them both in the same sweet rhythm.
He was driving her crazy. But the only succor was the knowledge that she was driving him crazy too, if his groans were any sign.
“I need to be inside you.”
“Yes.”
Those were the only words they spoke, yet somehow they seemed to know exactly what to do. Alexa lifted herself up, just far enough for him to completely dispose of her panties, slip on a condom then maneuver his cock into the right place. She lowered herself back down to where it waited, the thick head nudging her pussy lips, seeking its way blindly.
She moaned when he entered her cunt. His heat and hardness was intoxicating. And he knew just what to do, slowing down her retreat to an exquisite impalement, excruciatingly paced, until she was nearly mindless with the need to have him completely engulfed within her.
Finally, at last, she was seated on top of him, his dick imbedded completely. Her entire body trembled. She dropped her head back onto his broad shoulder. Even with no further coaxing, her pussy muscles worked around his shaft, grabbing at it in sporadic convulsions.
Nik’s breaths sounded harshly in her ear. “Are you just going to sit there?”
She knew he wanted to fuck her properly, to bounce her on his cock until they were both crazed with pleasure. But sitting on him like this was somehow even more intimate. Braced against his chest, snuggled into his arms, his shaft filling her, she felt surrounded by him—protected. It was perfect.
He’d shown her how beautiful restraint could be. Someday, though, she wanted to see him completely lose control.
“Make me come,” she urged.
He immediately grasped her hips, preparing to lift her off of his cock.
“No, not like that,” Alexa protested. “Make me come just like this, sitting on you.”
He dug his fingers into her waist. “I thought you wanted to ride me.”
“I want to stay like this,” she told him, “with you all the way inside me. I think I can feel your cock in my tummy.”
Nik moved his hips spasmodically, lifting her upward. “Fuck, that shouldn’t be as hot as it sounds when you say it.”
She brought his hand around and laid it on her abdomen, as if he could really feel his dick filling her.
“It’s right in here—and it feels so good.”
“God, what are you doing to me?” Nik groaned into her hair. “I need to fuck you.”
He tightened his arms around her waist until they became living chains, forged out of muscles that felt like hot iron.
Alexa stared through the windshield as she dragged her fingertips along his arm. “Make me come first. Please.”
He needed no further plea.
Reaching around her, Nik delved his fingers around her wet pussy and found her swollen clit. Instead of teasing it, this time he took it between the sides of his fingers and grasped it tightly before he started to stroke it. He rubbed it faster and faster, his touch merciless, until Alexa was trembling and her pussy clenching under the pressure of waves of pleasure.
Her climax hit her as if she were under the car and not in it, leaving her breathless, her head spinning with crazy thoughts.
Like the idea that she belonged with him, that they could have a future together.
Crazy.
Nik’s cock twitched inside her, scenting its goal, and before she’d even stopped shaking, he pushed her forward, bending her over the steering wheel. She could only lay there compliantly when his hands covered hers on the warm leather. He used the steering wheel for balance as he lifted her ass for a moment. Then he arched upward to meet her until his hips were once more pushed up hard against her buttocks.
He started to fuck her from behind.
He worked slowly, sliding in and out of her with careful—almost dangerous—control, while Alexa lay limply before him.
It was incredible, the feeling of having so much power over him then relinquishing it.
Alexa had spent so much of her adult life wrestling with men who were intimidated by her career that she’d never realized how wonderful it was to be dominated—to be owned, as Nik probably would have said.
He was right. She belonged with him. Just as his cock belonged in her cunt.
He worked her slowly, pushing in and out of her moist pussy in an increasingly devastating rhythm, as if testing the limits of his own control. Then, when her inner walls squeezed his dick tightly, he pumped faster.
“God, you feel so good!”
Alexa smiled weakly, even though she knew he couldn’t see it. How could he think she could pretend otherwise when she had to bite her lip to keep from making confessions she suspected he might not want to hear, in spite of his goading? The emotions he thought he could tease and taunt out of her would weigh too heavily on his twenty-five-year-old shoulders. Nik was young and carefree. He didn’t want to be tied down, certainly not by her.
Nik nuzzled his lips against the side of her neck and she reached up and behind to push her fingers through his hair, to hold him to her in the only way she could.
Nik pushed hard into her one final time, making the steering column bite into her chest, and he shouted when he reached climax.
He shouted her name.
Chapter Five
The hotel lobby was decorated in generic American standard with the addition of a bit of yellow paint and a few tropical plants to remind the tourists what part of the country they were in.
To one side of the lobby, a pair of young women stood behind a podium emb
lazoned with the adjoining restaurant’s name. But Nik turned to the other side, his face strangely set.
Alexa trailed behind him, partly because she was curious and partly because he was holding her hand in a grip she didn’t think she would be able to break.
She watched as he approached one end of the long reception desk and her pace slowed even more. Did he intend to spend the night, even after what he’d said earlier?
‘I wanted us to have dinner here.’
She had a long history of falling for his lies. Except maybe, because of his youth, he didn’t know that they were lies, nor did he know how much she wanted to cling to the promises he made, spoken and unspoken, even when she knew they might soon be forgotten.
Two men were sitting behind the desk. They weren’t wearing the business uniforms of the other hotel staff ranged along the counter but mock military uniforms in a dark color between black and blue.
The younger of the two men was smirking widely as he saw them approach.
“How much for the tape?” Nik said.
Due to his conversational tone, it took Alexa a full minute to understand the question, but the two men got it right away.
“Those tapes belong to the hotel,” the older man said.
“We don’t use tapes anymore,” the younger man chimed in. “So there’s nothing for you and your girlfriend to buy.”
Girlfriend. For some reason, that word gave Alexa a not-altogether-unpleasant shiver along her backbone.
Nik held his gaze for a moment then dug into his back pocket. He thumped a large leather wallet onto the desk.
“Five hundred for the hard drive,” he said in the iciest tone Alexa had ever heard anyone use.
The two security guards exchanged glances.
“It’s more than our jobs are worth to start selling surveillance footage,” the older one started to say.
“One thousand,” Nik said, pulling a stack of bills from the wallet’s depths and spreading them on the desk before he covered them casually with one of the hotel’s glossy pamphlets. “Assuming, of course, that there aren’t any other copies or it doesn’t get instantaneously uploaded to the cloud or something.”