Forbidden Attraction: A Contemporary Romance Box Set

by K. C. Crowne

“Easy there,” he said, his voice calm. “Give me that before you take your damn foot off.”

  I gripped the axe handle as tightly as I could, not giving it up easily. But one look into my big brother’s gentle, brown eyes, and I released it to him. I wasn’t going to fight with him. He was the one person who always had my back; I wasn’t going to let the bullshit with Hazel get between the two of us. It hadn’t back then, and it wouldn’t now.

  Wyatt dropped the axe to the ground with a solid thump, seemingly relieved that I gave it up so easily. There was a sadness in his eyes, however. I knew he’d suffered what had happened with Hazel, and it hurt him too. How could it not? After all, he was always closer to her than I was, which was something I used to envy back in the day. Now, we were both on the outs, and from the looks of it, neither one of us were getting back into her good graces anytime soon.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket, announcing an incoming text, and I reached for it, a slight flare of hope that it was Hazel blossoming within me— a blossom that died on the vine when I saw who was calling.

  “It’s Boone,” I muttered, opening the message. I stared down at the screen, reading and re-reading the message. It didn’t make any more sense with each successive read through.

  “What’s he want?” Wyatt asked.

  “I think he’s drunk,” I said, putting the phone back in my pocket. “It’s just gibberish.”

  “Huh. Drinking this early?”

  I ran a hand through my sweaty hair, shrugging. “I guess so. I’ll text him in a bit to see what’s going on.”

  My phone buzzed again, and we both looked at it. This time, the message made sense. “Whatever you do, don’t tell my sister anything.”

  “Don’t tell Hazel anything? What about?” Wyatt asked.

  “Beats me,” I said. “Probably got himself into trouble or something. Maybe he needs to be bailed out of jail.”

  We shared a chuckle. It had been years since Boone had gotten himself into that kind of trouble, but it certainly wasn’t unheard of with him. Before he moved out to L.A, we’d get calls and messages a lot— sometimes from jail after he’d had too much to drink and had gotten into a stupid bar fight, or for stealing liquor— all while underage, of course.

  He never wanted his sister to know about his troubles and had sworn us to secrecy. She looked up to him and worried about him when things weren’t going well. And for his part, Boone loved his sister more than anyone else in the world. He didn’t ever want to disappoint her.

  I typed a quick message, asking him what kind of trouble he was in this time and sent it. I waited but there was no immediate response. I put my phone away and shook my head.

  “Probably drunk,” I muttered again.

  “Yeah, you’re probably right,” Wyatt said.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” I said. “Try to cool off a bit.”

  “Sounds like a good idea,” he said. “If you hear anything else from Boone, let me know, alright?”

  “Sure thing,” I said, heading to our house.

  I glanced towards the Hudson place one more time before stepping inside, hoping to catch sight of Hazel again. Even just a quick glimpse. But the curtains were drawn and there was no sign of her in either the front of the backyard.

  Yet all I could think about was her in that skimpy little sundress, showing off not only her arms, but her amazing cleavage as well. Green was a perfect color for her too; it went great with her hair and skin. She glowed, even from that far away.

  What I wouldn’t give to rip that dress right off her. The blood rushed from my head to my lower regions. Over the years, I’d dreamt about seeing Hazel again, but she’d never looked as hot as she did in real life, not even in my sexiest dreams.

  As I entered the house, I made a beeline for the shower. Not just because I was drenched in sweat, but because of the growing erection in my jeans. Seeing Hazel brought up a lot of memories, including one that had been a wet dream of mine since I’d gotten my very first boner.

  As soon as I was in the shower, I turned the cold water on to cool off. The chilly water ran down my face, my chest, and my back. I closed my eyes, memories of Hazel and my fantasy overwhelming me. I gripped my cock firmly in my hand.

  The water only added to the fantasy for me.

  It was late summer, right before the party. Wyatt was away for work since he’d had to take over dad’s business after he’d died. Boone was grounded for stealing again. Hazel was bored and caught my attention by throwing rocks at my windows. It was silly because my parents were gone by that point and it was just me in the house. Alone. She could have come to the door, but for some reason, she preferred that method of getting my attention. I never complained— at least she wanted my attention then.

  “Let’s go swimming!” she called out to me.

  That was all I’d needed to hear. I’d grabbed my swim trunks and was out the back door as quickly as possible. We ran down toward the river. I was confused because she wasn’t wearing a swimsuit— just jean shorts and a t-shirt— but I didn’t ask any questions. We reached the riverbed and she stripped off her shirt, and that’s when I realized she wasn’t wearing a swimsuit at all. My jaw dropped.

  “What? Never saw boobs before?” she laughed. “Besides, I’m wearing a bra.”

  “Don’t you have a swimsuit?”

  “Nah, I outgrew my last one and haven’t gotten a new one yet,” she said, pulling her shorts down, leaving her with just her panties on.

  Both her bra and panties were white. She didn’t see a problem with it, so neither did I.

  We were eighteen and fresh out of high school. I was no virgin, but seeing Hazel like that had made me feel like one. I suddenly got very nervous and wasn’t sure what to do.

  She gave me a quick once over, followed by a wink and a smirk.

  “Perhaps I should lose the bra and panties too?” she asked, her gaze falling to the very obvious hard-on poking through my swim trunks.

  “If you want,” I said, a coy smile on my lips.

  “Only if you ditch your clothes too,” she said.

  She didn’t have to ask me twice. I dropped my shorts in record time and watched her cheeks turn bright red as she saw me naked for the first time. Her eyes were fixed on my cock for a few seconds. I had nothing to be ashamed of; I knew I was well-endowed, so I stood there, showing off for her, secretly hoping it would spark something between us.

  She chuckled nervously. “I didn’t think you’d actually do it.”

  “Why? Did you confuse me with Wyatt or something?” I teased.

  “No, I just thought maybe…I don’t know actually,” she said, tongue-tied.

  “Like what you see?” I asked, smirking. “Are you going to live up to your side of the deal? Or did I strip down for nothing?”

  Hazel laughed, but it was a nervous laugh. I started to tell her she didn’t have to undress if she didn’t want to, but she reached around and undid her bra, letting her perfect tits fall free. My jaw nearly hit the ground, and I didn’t think it was possible for my cock to get as hard as it did when I saw her breasts for the first time.

  And that was where fantasy and reality unraveled. In my fantasy, she finished undressing and we went into the water, my body pressed against hers. Maybe we fucked, maybe we didn’t. Sometimes, all it took was imagining my cock pressed against that perfect body of hers to get me to come.

  In reality, however, we’d heard footsteps in the woods and had just enough time to throw our clothes back on, her bra and my swim trunks. Boone made his appearance from amongst the trees, grinning like an idiot.

  “What? You didn’t think you’d leave me behind, did you?” he asked, obviously not noticing the erection in my trunks and the fact that his sister was in her bra and underwear.

  “Boone, what the fuck are you doing here?” Hazel asked.

  “I snuck out. Mom and Dad are asleep, and I wanted to swim,” he said, dropping his jeans.

  He was only wearing his boxers. I gues
s the Hudsons didn’t see much difference between underwear and swimwear, or maybe it was too dark for him to notice his sister. She grabbed her shorts and pulled them back up, much to my dismay. She was huffing and puffing, clearly upset at being interrupted. Hell, so was I. I almost saw Hazel Hudson naked with the possibility of so much more, and Boone had to ruin it for me.

  Hazel slipped on her shirt, pushed past me, and headed home.

  “Where ya going, sis?” Boone called out.

  “Home,” she grumbled. “I no longer feel like swimming.”

  Back then, I was a confused boy, but thinking back, I had a better idea of why Hazel had suddenly decided to not swim. Had Boone not stopped us, who knows what might have happened. I knew what I wanted, but what she wanted would forever be a mystery to me because of her brother’s shitty timing.

  In my head, however, I imagined exactly what I hoped would happen. With my cock in my hand, I pictured Hazel dropping her panties, letting me see her fully naked for the first time. I pictured a small patch of hair covering her pussy, a pussy I wanted to plunge into more than anything else in the world. We got into the water. Her legs wrapped around me as I kissed her deeply. I continued stroking myself, thinking how it would feel between her thighs, sliding into her tight, wet hole.

  I groaned, falling forward and resting my free hand on the wall for support. With my eyes closed, I stroked myself until the cum bubbled up inside me and my balls tightened against my body, ready to explode. I steadied myself and let go, losing control and picturing filling Hazel’s pussy with my seed as my entire body shook with pleasure.

  No real experience had ever made me come as hard as imagining Hazel did. No one even came close. She had always been the woman in the back of my mind, the one that had gotten away. I wanted her so badly, and in my post-orgasm haze, I convinced myself that her being back made that possible. If I could get her to talk to me, maybe we could pick up where we left off. Maybe we could hook up. Hell, maybe we could do more than hook up. She was the perfect girl, always had been for me. The only one I could ever see myself settling down with.

  If only she’d talk to me. There has to be a way to get through to her, I thought as I washed the sticky mess down the drain. I finished washing myself quickly and got out of the shower. There was another missed message from Boone waiting for me.

  Please, man, you two are the only ones who can help me.

  I typed a response, suddenly feeling uneasy.

  Help you with what? What kind of trouble are you in?

  I waited for a response from him, but it took him forever to reply. He hadn’t answered my question from before either. Finally, after drying off and getting dressed, another garbled message came through, this one just a series of numbers.

  I typed another message.

  I don’t get it. Are you drunk man?

  His response was simply No. Nothing else. No explanation, nothing . Sighing, I typed a few question marks and waited. Nothing else came. I put my phone away and decided to wait for a message from him. He’d get back to me eventually and maybe it would make sense in time. If he wasn’t drunk, maybe he was high. Or maybe he was lying to me about being drunk. Who the fuck knows, I thought. I sure as hell didn’t.

  Hazel

  “No news yet? Maybe I should just head back to L.A.,” I sighed into the phone.

  I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples, doing my best to stave off the headache threatening to split my head in two. The stress was getting to me. In all my years on this planet, I’d never gone this long without talking to my brother.

  “There really isn’t a reason for you to rush back,” Christina said. “Not unless you want to. You need to relax a bit, Hazel. You deserve it.”

  I opened my eyes and stared at the photo of my brother and me sitting in a frame on top of the mantel above the fireplace. Boone and me at our high school graduation. Being twins, we always had a special bond, something most people would never understand. It sounded silly, even to me, but I could always feel my brother when he was out in the world. He was a bright light inside of me, and the longer I went without hearing from him, the dimmer that light became.

  “I don’t know, maybe I could do more searching there,” I said.

  “I’ve already called all of his friends and coworkers, anybody else I could think of,” Christina said. “I’m doing everything I can here, and so far, I’m coming up empty. The only other place he’d be is there, right?”

  “Yes, I mean, I thought so, but obviously not,” I muttered.

  “I’m sure he’ll show up eventually,” Christina said, though her voice sounded less certain than her words. I knew she was just as nervous as I was.

  “But what if—”

  Christina cut me off before I could finish. “He’ll show up eventually, Hazel, and we’ll both kick his ass really good when he does.”

  That brought a chuckle to my lips. Little old Christina kicking big, old Boone’s butt.

  “Now that’s a sight I can’t way to see,” I laughed.

  “Hey, I might be small, but I’m mighty,” she said.

  “Oh, I know it,” I agreed. “And Boone knows it too, surely. He’s quivering in fear wherever he’s hiding.”

  “Yeah, explains why he’s not eager to come home, huh? He has two badass girls waiting to kick his ass.”

  We both laughed, and it felt good to laugh after everything I’d been dealing with over the last few days.

  “I hope so,” I said once the laughter quieted down. “God, I really hope so.”

  “Me too,” Christina said, her voice softer than before. “Listen, I have to go to work, but I’m meeting with Hank Cromwell this afternoon, and figured I might ask him if he’s heard from Boone.”

  Hank was the producer of one of Boone’s latest projects. They’d kept in contact over the last few months. It was well worth talking to him.

  “Good luck. Hopefully he’s heard something.”

  I was tired of sitting around with my hands tied. I knew Christina wasn’t the only person capable of asking around. People at home knew Boone. All I had to do was ask them and see if anyone had seen or heard from him. Of course, that meant starting with the two men I was doing my best to avoid, Ryder and Wyatt. While Boone had initially backed off from them, I knew he’d reached out to them over the years and they got together once in a while. He’d tell me about it, without details. I knew what I had to do.

  Christina and I said our goodbyes, and I looked at the clock. It was early, just barely seven a.m. I didn’t want to bother Ryder and Wyatt so early. I knew both men tended to be up fairly early, but I listened to my excuse anyway.

  The day before, when I saw Ryder, I also noticed that my dad’s garden had died over the years. Of course, it made sense that he wasn’t there to care for it or eat the crops from it, but it hurt me to see the lack of tomato plants growing around the back porch. Originally, the tomato plants were for my mother, who could never get enough of them, but my father had kept them up even after her death. I might not be there for long, but I wanted to at least clean the garden out, and perhaps pick up some plants. Gardeners came out a couple times a week, they could care for them and maybe donate them to a local food bank or something. I wasn’t typically a sentimental person, but it just felt like something I had to do.

  The shed door had been tampered with, obviously so, but I blamed the gardening crew or even Ryder and Wyatt. I knew the Douglas brothers took care of my parents’ house while they were gone, so it didn’t bother me too much. I opened the door, grabbed a shovel and some other tools, and quickly got to work on clearing the garden.

  Every few minutes, I checked my phone, distracted by my thoughts about Boone. I’d lost my mother, and at times it felt like I’d lost my father when he’d remarried. I couldn’t lose Boone too. He got on my nerves most of the time, sure, but there was no one in the world who understood me like my brother did. I went to work, digging and digging, sweat dripping down my face and mixing with tears as I fear
ed the worst.

  What would my life look like without Boone in it? I couldn’t imagine it. I didn’t want to imagine it. I buried the shovel deep in the soil, hitting what felt like a large rock. I dug deep again, hitting the same solid surface.

  Cursing under my breath, I dug up the rock. Bits of blue peeked out from underneath the dirt and my heart stopped. I almost couldn’t continue. Dropping the shovel, I knelt and used my hands to push the dirt away, making out the words more clearly.

  It had our names on it— Hazel and Boone— in our mother’s handwriting, along with our birthdate. I remembered the rock, one of many my mother painted before she died. It used to sit right on the edge of her garden but over the years, got buried and lost in the dirt.

  Lifting it out of the dirt, the rock crumbled into several large chunks. The shovel had broken it. I’d broken it. Holding onto the bits and pieces, I let out a scream of frustration and pain. The tears fell heavily down my cheeks. Like the rock, something inside me just broke.

  I wasn’t sure how long I’d been crying when two strong arms wrapped around me and steadied me against a solid wall of chest. I knew who it was before he even said a word. I’d have known his scent anywhere.

  “Hazel,” Wyatt said, his voice soft yet strong, as if he was trying to break me out of a daze. “Hazel, please, what’s happening? Are you okay?”

  I let him hold me. Truthfully, it felt good to be in his arms. I didn’t want to pull away. The past was forgotten, at least briefly, and all I could think about was Wyatt holding me close, soothing me, and I never wanted him to let me go.

  I wiped my tears, hoping they were no longer obvious, and pulled myself together. Sitting upright, I removed myself from his arms.

  “I’m fine. Just a bit stressed, that’s all.”

  I stood up and Wyatt followed me. It was hard not to look at him and swoon, but I did my best to compose myself. When our eyes met, my heart raced. His eyes were brown with flecks of green and gold in them. I’d never seen eyes like his before, and I’d forgotten just how powerful they could be. I gasped and backed away from him, feeling dizzy from the flurry of emotions running through me.