by Caz May
“Tonight? What for?” I ask confused.
“We’re going to my new lady friends house for dinner. So we can meet her kids.”
“Oh, I didn’t realise that was tonight. I’ll go get changed.”
“Wonderful, honey. Take your time,” he tells me before turning back to the sink of dishes, whilst I go upstairs to get changed.
I haven’t unpacked all my clothes yet, but I know what I’m planning to wear.
From my suitcase, I pull out one of my favourite dresses. A blue tie-dye halter neck, with a handkerchief hem that sits just above my knees. I slip some gold bangles on, and change my earrings to some simple drop pendants, before pulling my hair up into a ponytail.
I slip on some black thongs, with diamente’s on them, and run back downstairs to find Dad has changed as well into some chino shorts and a polo shirt.
“You look nice, Dad,” I tell him.
“You look beautiful, honey. And to be quite frank, I’m nervous,” he tells me with a soft chuckle.
“I’m sure it will be fine. She seems lovely from when we spoke on the phone. And you’ve met in person.”
“That’s true, so are you ready to go?”
“If you are,” I reply smiling as we head out to Dad’s Range Rover.
I climb in, and we drive towards the beach on the other side of town. I can’t help but marvel at how the houses change from quant small townhouses like ours to huge elaborate mansions, right on the beach with big gates and intercoms. Dad pulls up in front of a beautiful white mansion, with huge windows and a large double stained glass front door.
I’m completely dumbstruck by the lavish house in front of me. It feels like I’ve stepped into another world, that I couldn’t dream of ever being a part of.
I get out of the car, and Dad takes my hand, leading me up to the front door. He presses the doorbell, and the singsong sound reverberates through the house. I can’t help but wonder if they can hear it in the whole house when the door opens and a stunning blonde woman opens the door, looking at my Dad with a huge smile.
“Matias,” she says with a sweet tone, pulling him into a hug, and kissing his cheek softly.
“I’m so glad you’re here.” She turns to look at me. “And you must be Te? My dear, you look beautiful.”
“Thank you, um, Ms,” I stammer, realising I don’t know her name.
“Ms Castello, but please dear, call me Sascha.”
Castello. Ashton’s last name is Castello. Surely not.
“Come in, come in. My son is in the rumpus room, and my daughter will be down in a moment. Follow me.”
We both follow her inside, and I take a moment to glance around the house, my eyes at first looking at the grand staircase before they spot two people in the rumpus room as we walk past to the dining room.
Sitting on the chaise, playing a video game is Ashton. He looks right at me, dropping his controller. His eyes flare with the same lustful look from earlier at school in the change rooms, and with more revealing clothes on I feel my whole body blush.
Ashton Castello is going to be my stepbrother. This cannot be happening.
Eight
Ashton
Stepping into the room her eyes boggle at me, her whole body flushing when my gaze locks on her.
My temptress is in my house, looking sexy as fuck, but oh so innocent.
I lick my lips, staring her down, taunting her and waiting for her to bite. But instead, she turns on her heels, and clomps straight back out the door, with the slap of her thongs against her feet echoing around the room.
Her dad looks annoyed, turning his attention to me. “Hello again, Ashton. I’m sorry about my daughter. She’s not normally so rude.”
“Hello, Mr Davies. And it’s fine. I’m sure Tem was just shocked to see me outside of school.”
“Oh, so you know my Tempany?”
“You could say that. But we’re not exactly friends and she’s in year eleven,” I tell him.
“Right yes,” he replies, giving my mum a smile. “Sascha, I’m so sorry. I’ll be back in a moment and can meet you in the dining room.”
“No worries, darling,” she tells Tem’s dad with a sweet smile before she turns her attention to me.
“Ashton, dear. Will you go get your sister to come down, and be in the dining room in ten minutes?”
“No worries mum,” I reply as she heads to the kitchen.
The smell of roast lamb is wafting out into the hallway, and it smells fucking delicious. Mum had always been a great cook, and her roast with all the trimmings, lashed with rich meaty gravy is my fave.
I stand up from the couch at the same time Zeke does.
He slaps me hard on the back, grinning.
“Shit man. It got real. And as much as I'd like to stay for this shit show I'm out. Catch ya at school.”
My best mate walks out, leaving me still standing in the rumpus room, and processing what has just happened.
Tempany or Te, as she wants to be called now is going to be my new stepsister. And I’m fucking cut.
And damn confused about what to do.
I can’t disappoint mum by being an arse to her, but my anger threatens to spill over every time I lay eyes on my temptress, not to mention the hard on’s in my daks when I think about her.
I’m so fucking screwed and not in a good way. I hate Te Davies. She still has the power to make my life hell and I fucking hate her for that and what she did ten years ago.
I can hear mum in the kitchen finishing off the food, and I’m about to head upstairs to get Ava to come down when she comes bounding down the stairs like she’s as high as a kite.
Which is not possible.
My little sister is a nerd, popular but a nerd. Much like my temptress, who with her dad decides on that very moment to make her grand re-entrance to the house.
Ava bounds up to her, squealing. “Oh my god, hi...you’re here. I’m Ava and you must be Te. You’re so pretty.” My sister wraps Tem into a hug, jumping up and down on the spot. And I pull her back, berating her, “Av’s. Calm down yeah? You’re not five.”
“I know, Ash. But I can’t believe how perfect this is.”
Tem doesn’t know where to look, and gives her dad and then me a shy smile when Ava takes her hand to lead her into the dining room.
She still seems angry, barely able to look at me. And I can’t decide whether that’s a good thing or not. It doesn’t stop the anger in me and doesn’t stop my dick trying to say hello at the front of my daks.
Mum comes out holding a dish of roast potatoes and I take it from her, heading into the dining room as Matias follows her into the kitchen. I put the dish on the table, and sit down across from Tem, staring at her. She completely ignores me, chatting away with Ava like they’re besties.
Our parents come in then, putting the rest of the food on the table and Mum sits at the head of the table, Matias next to me.
The tension is so thick, you could cut it with a knife. I literally want the floor to swallow me whole. This is a hella awkward dinner, and absolute fucking torture.
We say grace, ending with Ava and I chanting out a bellowing, “Amen, amen. Oh, I said Amen, yeah.”
I high five my little sister and we laugh. Mum smiles at Tem and Matias.
“They always do that as our ending to grace,” she tells them, and a smile cracks the corner of Tem’s lips. I hate that she’s getting to see this side of me. The not so cocky Ashton that only my family gets to see. She’s not my family, and she’s not going to feel at home here. She shattered my world ten years ago. And things haven’t exactly been happy families since then, so she can go fuck herself.
Oh fuck me. She’d look sexy as sin riding me.
I shake the thoughts away, thinking of dead rodents to get my screaming dick to calm down. I’m sitting next to her father for fucks sake. And I’ve got a hard on, thinking about having dirty hot hate sex with his daughter.
“So dig in, plenty to go around.” Mums voice b
reaks into my wicked thoughts and I start piling on food in heaps on my plate; slices of lamb, roast potatoes and green beans. I practically pour half the gravy over my plate and mum chastises me, “Ashton, please leave some for everyone else.”
I decide to be a dick. She knows I love my gravy.
“Should have made more, mum.”
She gives me parental dagger eyes, the how dare you eyes.
“Don’t be a brat, Ashton Oliver. We have guests.”
Fuck, she hit me in the damn feels. Using the full name card against me. “Sorry mum,” I reply, sheepishly giving her a smile.
“Thank you, dear, just mind your manners and language.”
I nod and start to devour my pile of gravy and lamb. It tastes delicious and I moan, licking my lips and glaring at Tem at the same time. She shifts uncomfortably in her seat, obviously pressing her tingling thighs together. She doesn’t look at me, just slowly eats her food, putting her fork down with a clank against her plate when mum asks, “So Te, how was your first day back at Lockgrove prep?”
I stifle my laugh, trying not to choke on my food when Tem takes a deep breath in. I’m fully prepared for her to throw me under the bus, but she smiles at mum, sweetly.
“It was great. It was lovely to see my best friend Lorena again.”
“Oh yes, Mayor Baker’s daughter. Lovely girl.”
“Yes, and all my classes are good. Excerpt for P.E being mixed with the year twelves this year,” she tells mum, kicking me in the shin under the table.
Fuck shit. Fuck. God that fucking hurts.
“Oh, that’s interesting,” mum replies, turning to me. “Ashton dear, do you know anything about that?”
“No mum. Why would I know anything about that?”
“Haven’t you talked to your father lately? He throws money at the school. Surely he could be in on them hiring more teachers.”
“Well, no mum, I haven’t seen daddy dearest lately. But I’ll be sure to ask him to throw more money at ‘my’ school so he can further fodder his hate for me and Av’s.”
She glares at me, but doesn’t entertain my taunts, nor does she say anything else about my father. Talking about him at the dinner table isn’t really the best of conversation anyway, and the shocked looks on Tem’s and her dads face confirm that.
Speaking of her dad, he suddenly breaks his silence, “So Ashton, Ava, your mother and I were thinking it would be a lovely idea for you kids to go out for a day together. Get to know one another before the wedding.”
My mouth falls open. In absolute shock. This is the first I’m hearing of a fucking wedding. Yeah, Tem’s dad being with my mum kinda makes her my stepsister, but them getting married makes it official.
Sign, sealed and delivered.
Here Ashton, stepsister delivery. And guess what, you hate her.
“Excuse me?” I question, looking at my mother angrily. “Why is this the first time we’re hearing about this wedding?”
“We wanted to wait and tell you, until tonight. It didn’t seem right to do over FaceTime.”
“Well, of course not. But springing it on us tonight isn’t exactly right either,” I taunt, emphasising the word right and air quoting it.
“Well, Ashton dear. I’m sorry, but it’s happening. And I’d appreciate it if you’d pretend to be happy for me,” my mum says sobbing.
Matias reaches out to touch her arm, looking at her with so much love. I feel like the worst son ever.
“I’m sorry mum.”
“I know Ashton,” she replies, giving me a smile that tells me I’m only just forgiven. “Now be a dear and help me clean up.”
I stand up, grabbing my plate and Matias’. I nearly trip over when Tem stands up the exact moment I walk past her chair. “Would you mind telling me which way the bathroom is?” she asks, not really to any one of us in particular.
“Straight up the stairs, second door on the left,” Ava replies, picking up her plate and handing it to me.
“Thanks,” she says singsongy, heading up the stairs with her dress swishing from side to side.
Again as I’m heading to the kitchen I nearly trip and drop the plates because that dress is barely a scrap of fabric and I get a little flash of her white lace knickers that has my dick doing a dance in my daks.
I hate Tempany Davies. But fuck she gets to me in ways no stepsister should.
My body clearly hasn’t gotten the we hate Tempany message. Traitorous fucker that Ash Jnr is.
Dropping the dishes in the kitchen sink I think about Zeke’s words about fucking Tem. About fucking Tem before she’s my stepsister, and it being dirty hot hate sex. Ash Jnr certainly likes the idea of that and I’m beginning to as well.
Because I’m now standing in my kitchen, semi hard for my temptress that I hate with a burning passion.
Nine
Tempany
Rushing up the stairs, I pass the first room which has the door shut so I presume it’s Sascha’s room.
Ashton’s mum seems nice but private and I like that. Like that she seems like she’s the complete opposite of what my mother was. She put her rude son in his place and I wanted to hug her and blurt out thanks and tell her everything her son did to me today.
The Castello home seems foreboding from the outside, a mansion that I couldn’t dream of being in, but being inside it I feel welcome and after dashing to the bathroom, I can’t help but wander down the landing hallway to see the other rooms.
The bathroom, which was simple but stunning with black tap ware and a double open shower with a claw foot bath to finish it off is next to a room that also has a closed door. It’s clear whose the room is because it has a pink sign with hearts on it that says, ‘Ava’s room’.
The next room is empty and my heart leaps in my chest wondering if it will be mine to decorate how I want. I’d never had my own room growing up, having slept on the sofa bed in the lounge room in mum’s one bedroom dump of a house. It smelt like cat wee, and the blankets I’d had to wrap around me to keep warm had been full of holes and thin. I shiver thinking about bitterly cold nights of the past when she’d come in drunk or high and climb onto the sofa next to me. She’d yank the blanket away and clutch it tight sobbing like a wounded animal because one of her deadbeat boyfriends had again dumped her.
But the shiver I’m feeling now is also because I’ve reached the end of the landing hallway, and I’m standing in front of an open door. In front of a room that is clearly Ashton’s.
It’s messy, the double bed in the middle strewn with black sheets and a mink blanket with a basketball picture on it. The walls are covered in posters, of famous basket ballers—Shaquille O’Neil and Kobe Bryant—as well as pictures of half naked women draped over cars in compromising positions. I feel like a prude looking at them, but that’s probably because I am.
I’d kissed a few guys, but that was all. No guy has ever really given me the time of day, and the few who have never stuck around after kissing me or when they found out my mother was the town whore. I was expected to put out because of who my mum was, and when I didn’t I’d always been discarded and called names like a prude, and frigid little bitch.
I know I shouldn’t but I step further into Ashton’s room, intoxicated by the smell of him that permeates the space—earthy, and a mix of leather and chocolate chip cookies.
Some clothes are tossed on the floor by the bed, basketball shorts and a blue basketball guernsey. My mind wanders to seeing him in that with nothing on underneath, and I feel a tingle in my knickers. The same tingle I felt at the dinner table when he wouldn’t stop staring at me whilst he ate. The way he licked his lips made me think again of kissing him. I shouldn’t be having these feelings about Ashton. He’s going to be my stepbrother, but something about him stirs up lust in my belly like I’ve never experienced before.
I’m about to pick up the guernsey to sniff it—stupidly—when I hear footsteps coming down the hallway. I rush out but I’m not quick enough and stepping out of his room I
bump into Ashton, and he pushes me against the wall, his anger flaring in his cloudy grey-blue eyes.
Ten
Ashton
After finishing the dishes I head upstairs, feeling off as though something is amiss. I’m fully aware that Tem didn’t make an appearance after heading to the bathroom, and that was easily fifteen minutes ago. So unless she was doing a huge shit, she was snooping.
I creep down the hallway to my room, manoeuvring around the creaky floorboard so to not alert her to my presence. And just as I suspected when I reach my bedroom door, Tempany is in the middle of the room about to pick up my basketball guernsey.
I take a step back, so she doesn’t see me. but she knows I’m there for sure. She rushes out and I pull her aside, pushing her against the wall outside my room.
Standing close to her—I glare into her stormy eyes—taunting her, “What were you doing in my room, temptress?”
Her breath hitches, her tits rising against my chest.
“Um, nothing. I...got lost.”
“Oh really? Lost huh?”
“Yeah, I couldn’t remember which way Ava said.”
“Sure, Tempany. You were snooping. Admit it.”
She mumbles something I can’t understand, biting down on her plump lower lip, drawing my eyes from hers.
Fuck me.
Watching her bite her lip sends a jolt of electricity through my body, and fuck me, I want to kiss her. Kiss her and take her lip in between my teeth. I’ve practically got precum dripping out of my dick just thinking about it.
It’s clear she’s not going to respond, so I seethe at her, “If you set foot in my room again, Tem, mark my fucking words you’ll regret it.”
I take a step back, releasing her from my hold on her. Still staring daggers at her though, so she gets my point. I can hear her breathing, her deep breaths to calm herself. And before I can walk into my room she steps aside, placing one foot just inside my bedroom door as though she’s deliberately trying to piss me off.