Dick: A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance (23 page)

We
were
so fucked.

My father wasn’t the type of guy
who’d just call up his son and his soon-to-be stepdaughter and invite them over
for dinner and drinks. Hell, my father wasn’t the type of guy who did that for
anyone but his favorite clients, and even that was an awfully short list. If he
wanted to see both me and Maddy, that meant that something was wrong, and I
couldn’t help but wonder if it had anything to do with what we’d done last
night.

But that was crazy. He’d have no
way of knowing that I slept with her. We’d been completely alone. It wasn’t
like he’d bug my office, or anything. Right?

My father was a resourceful man,
but as far as I knew, I’d given him no cause to feel that drastic measure like
that were necessary. Yet the fact remained: he wanted something from both of
us. If that wasn’t the reason, then what was?

“Maybe it’s my mom,” Maddy said.
She was still sitting on my bed, though she’d wrapped herself in the sheets now
to cover up. I guessed that in my own way, I was doing the same thing. We were
both distancing ourselves and we knew it, but neither of us seemed ready to
talk about why. “Maybe they want to go over the wedding or honeymoon plans.”

I felt my insides untwist a
little. I nodded slowly. “That’s possible.” But the wedding was months away.
What could they possibly want to consult us about at this stage?

Whatever it was, I knew there was
no avoiding it. Maddy and I would have to show up, which meant that we were
also going to have to discuss what had happened between us last night.

I looked over at her on my bed.
God, she was beautiful. She had one of the most incredible bodies I’d ever
seen. She was naturally gorgeous, organic in ways I’d not experienced in a
woman… well, ever. All the girls I dated were always plastic Barbie dolls
shaped by the most skilled surgeons on the planet into the ideal image men
desired most. They were like modern art while Maddy was a classic. Even the
freckles across the bridge of her nose gave me the shivers.

And yet she was my stepsister, or
she would be soon enough. That meant she ought to be off-limits. We’d already
been playing the part of siblings… or had we? Had I misread both our emotions
all this time? Had my closeness to Maddy been fueled not by familial affection,
but by raw, primal, sexual attraction?

I’d never felt this way about a
woman before, so it was hard to tell. The only thing I knew for sure was that I
wanted her, no matter what. But if our parents got married, that would be impossible,
or at the very least something we’d forever have to hide. What if she wanted a
family? What if I did? Then where would we be? Could I ask her to give up the
future she deserved just to be with me?

I hesitated, rubbing the back of
my neck as I stood before her in nothing but my underwear. “You should get
dressed,” I told her softly. I didn’t want to come off cruel, but for the time
being, I wasn’t sure what else I could say. “We’ve got work to do before we
head over there this evening.”

“Sure,” Maddy said, though her
voice sounded chilled and hollow. “I’ll get right on it, Mr. Harvey.”

It felt like a slap in the face,
but at this point, I wasn’t completely sure that I didn’t deserve it.

The rest of the day passed by in
total silence. Maddy busied herself with the tasks that kept her far away from
me, and I hid in my office trying to forget the taste of my stepsister’s skin,
the warmth of her as I sank in, the way she’d gasped and moaned and writhed
beneath my weight. Every time I blinked I saw a flash of the way I’d slid my
dick up to the hilt inside of her, and that only made distracting myself from
those thoughts a more arduous task than it had been before.

When she’d gone to lunch, I had
tried a little self-soothing meditation, and when that’d failed, I spent half
an hour running hard on the treadmill in the corner of my office. Nothing
worked. All I could think about was her, and that was making it hard to walk
around without making that fact exceptionally obvious in my dress slacks.

By the time we had to leave for
our family dinner, I was struggling to keep from getting hard every time she
walked in front of me. The rhythmic sway of her ass sheathed only in the thin
material of the skirt she’d picked up from her apartment had me completely entranced.

I opened the car door for her.
When she swept under my arm with a soft, “Thanks,” the scent of her perfume
antagonized me. I couldn’t take it anymore.

With a grunt, I grabbed Maddy by
the arm and turned her, pinning her between my body and the car. I searched her
eyes and found only wanting there. Helplessly I pressed my mouth against hers,
ravaging her with my tongue, drawing her against me by the small of her back.

Maddy resisted only a moment.
Then she moaned. She fit so perfectly in my arms, and I never wanted to let her
go.

“I can’t do this,” I told her. “I
can’t pretend like last night never happened. I need you, Madison, and not in
the way that a brother needs his sister.”

I pressed my thrumming cock
against her through her skirt. She gasped. I began lifting up the hem,
revealing the creamy white tops of her thighs inch by inch until finally, I
caught a glimpse of her underwear.

I pulled my dick out and nestled
it against her crotch. I felt my balls seize and I snarled in her ear. “I could
blow my load right here, Maddy. I could soak these panties before dinner, and
your mother and my father wouldn’t know a thing. You’d spend the whole night
with my cum staining your panties. That’s what you do to me. You make me want
to do the nastiest things to you.”

Maddy shivered and looked up at
me with hooded eyes. “Preston… Jesus, we can’t. What we did last night was
wrong. I wanted it… We wanted it… But you know it can’t happen again.”

I pulled her panties open,
letting the tip of my dick violate the space between them and her sweet,
soaking wet lips. I thrust, overwhelmed by the sensation of being so near to
her, of feeling my bulging head slip around in her honeyed nectar. “It has to,”
I whispered. “Every time I look at you, all I want to do is get inside you
again.”

I was so close. But Madison
gently, yet firmly took me by the wrist. I could see lust in her eyes, but
there was something else too. Maybe it was self-restraint, but it sure as hell
looked like regret.

“We can’t,” she repeated, and
this time there was no “maybe” in her tone. I withdrew and she let her fingers
brush mine. “I’m sorry, Preston, but think of what could happen if we got
caught…”

I nodded. As frustrated as I was,
she made sense. But dammit, I didn’t want her to. All I wanted was to throw
caution to the wind and bury myself in my darling little stepsister.

She fixed her skirt as I stuffed
my dick back inside my pants. “Let’s hope there’s wine tonight,” I said as she
slid into her seat. “I think I’m going to need it.”

“You and me both,” Maddy agreed
as I closed her door.

It
was
so strange not having Preston’s driver take us to our parents’ house. For the
most part, he took us everywhere, and I’d grown accustomed to sitting in the
back with my stepbrother and sipping sparkling water or sometimes champagne as
Mr. Fletcher whisked us to our destination. Somehow sitting in the front seat
with Preston felt more intimate to me, almost like we were a couple.

I looked over at him as the
sunset painted his handsome face with warm, Technicolor hues. I wondered if,
had circumstances not been what they were, I could have been with him. We
probably never would have even met, had it not been for my mom, but if we had…

My heart threatened to break as I
realized that I really could see myself with this man. We were like Romeo and
Juliet, if they’d been practically related instead of just from warring
households.

Yet our progression toward our
parents’ home felt like an oncoming war. It would be a battle, certainly. My
mother would see to that. One way or another, she would find fault. I almost
wished I could tell her Preston and I had slept together. The look on her face
might have been well worth it.

“I’m sorry,” Preston said beside
me. I looked over and saw his lips drawn into a grim line. “If I crossed a line
back there.”

I shook my head, resisting the
urge to place my hand on top of his. “We both did,” I told him. And if I was
being honest with myself, I wished we could again.

As we pulled up to the gate in
front of Preston’s father’s house, I stared up at the magnificent estate
looming just beyond. Preston’s grandfather had custom built it right after
World War II as a present to his wife. I couldn’t imagine gifting someone an
entire mansion, but life was different for people like the Harveys, even in
those days.

I’d been here before, yet I still
felt distant, like this place wasn’t really meant for me. Being at Preston’s
side made me feel a little better, but knowing that I’d have to contend with my
mother soon kept the hairs on my nape raised, regardless.

“Are you ready?” he asked me as
we stood just outside the massive front doors. They reminded me a lot of the
ones outside his office-slash-second-home.

“As I’ll ever be,” I affirmed,
taking a deep breath before Preston reached up and knocked heavily on the door.

I heard the sound of heels
clattering across marble, and a moment later, my mother’s face appeared as she
pulled one of the doors wide to greet us.

“Well, Maddy, you’ve managed to
get here on time. You must be growing up.” I bristled as she turned her gaze on
Preston. “It was so kind of you to bring her. You must be exerting a positive
influence.”

He smiled tersely. “Good evening,
Vivian,” he said. It was obvious from his tone that he was trying to remind her
to show some goddamn manners.

But my mother didn’t take the
hint. Her diamond earrings sparkled in the fading light as she turned back to
me. “It was nice of Preston to take pity on you like this. I hope you’ve
thanked him.”

“Oh, trust me,” I said, fixing a
grin on my face, “I most certainly have.” Preston nearly giggled at that. I
thought his eyes were going to bulge right out of their sockets.

“Well, come in,” she sighed, as
though burdened by my mere presence. She’d been doing a lot of that lately
since she and Preston’s father had announced they were getting hitched.
“Dinner’s almost ready. I really have no idea what takes this damn cook so long
just to prepare a meal. It’s not like we expect her to catch and kill the
chickens herself, or anything…”

She walked toward the formal
dining room while we let ourselves in. As he closed the door behind us, Preston
raised an eyebrow at me and said, “I thought you were ashamed of what we’d
done?”

I shrugged. “If anything will get
me through this evening, Preston, it will be the knowledge that if my mother
ever found out about us, she’d have a stroke right there in her French onion
soup.”

This time, both of my
stepbrother’s eyebrows raised. “Does that mean there
is
an ‘us?’_”

“Let’s just get dinner over and
done with,” I suggested, trying desperately to weasel out of having to answer.
“If we survive, then we can have that talk.”

“Your wish is my command,”
Preston replied, escorting me to the dining room where our parents were
waiting. I bet he said that to every single girl he wanted to fuck…

The table was set with the kind
of care and exactness that almost seemed compulsive. Preston was nice enough to
pull out a chair for me, but as I sat down, I couldn’t even figure out where to
put my hands. I didn’t want to ruin the delicate flower that had been somehow
magically crafted from an ordinary cloth napkin, and God help me if I moved one
of the pieces of silverware. They were placed at an exact distance from the
edge of the table, each one gleaming as if it had never been used…

And
knowing where I was, it probably hadn’t.

Despite my discomfort, I did my
best to settle in as I pondered the need for two different forks. Food appeared
in front of me almost as if by magic, flown to my table by a man in the
cleanest pair of white gloves I’d ever seen in my life. The plate was a work of
art. It would be a shame to tear it apart, but I was willing to face the peril.
My momentary bliss was only broken as my mother spoke up.

“So,
Preston, how is Madison working out for you?”

I rolled my eyes as my mother
glanced at Preston over the rim of her wine glass. I knew what she was trying
to do. She was hoping for some hesitation on Preston’s part, some sign that I
wasn’t very good at my job.

I had no clue what my mother had
against me, but whatever it was, she loved to take me down a peg at every
opportunity.

But Preston didn’t hesitate.
“She’s wonderful, really,” he answered as he cut his meat. We were having some
kind of chicken stuffed with dates and herbs. “Best PA I’ve ever had.”

“Better than that Jane girl?” his
father asked. “I thought she was working out rather nicely. It seemed to me
that the two of you were… close.”

I looked at Mr. Harvey across the
table. He was damn near the spitting image of his son, though with a touch of
steel at his temples that made him seem more distinguished and intimidating. He
had hawkish, amber-colored eyes that never left his son’s for one moment as he
grilled him about his ex-assistant, and probably ex-girlfriend.

Preston and I hadn’t discussed
Jane much in the wake of my arrival. I had a pretty good idea of what had been
going on between them, but ultimately, it was none of my business. We’d not
seen hide nor hair of her since the day she got fired, and neither of us had
thought to bring her up.

But now I understood why Preston
had entertained her for so long. Whether or not he was willing to admit it, I
got the distinct impression that gaining his father’s approval was something he
cared about very much despite how much he hated him. Families were complicated
like that, I supposed.

He answered, “It didn’t work
out,” and tried to leave it at that, but Mr. Harvey wasn’t having it.

“I can’t see why. Jane was a good
match for you. When she was still around you very clearly worked harder than
you ever have. She certainly seemed competent enough to me.”

“Well, then I suppose you didn’t
really know her,” Preston snapped, taking a long draught of his wine. As usual,
things were dematerializing pretty quickly between all of us, maybe even more
so since Preston hadn’t shown up drunk this time. I cleared my throat and
interrupted their talk of all things Jane with what seemed like a reasonable
question.

“Was there something you wanted
to talk to us about this evening?”

Mr. Harvey didn’t answer right
away. He glanced from me to my mother, then back to Preston. For a moment, I
was sure he knew about us, about what we had done. Just as the knot in my
stomach grew too heavy to hold down anymore, he spoke.

“I
heard about the Verger deal.”

I let out a long breath into my
glass as I drank, swallowing both the red wine and the bile that had risen into
my throat. I had to stop being so on edge. There was absolutely no way either
of our parents could know what had happened, or might what continuing happening
between Preston and I.

Was I really considering this?
Was I really giving serious thought to continuing my affair with my soon-to-be
stepbrother?

The mention of the Verger deal
made me question myself even more. That was the client Preston had been on the
phone with last night, the one who wanted to tear down a homeless shelter to
put in a luxury condo development. It was infuriating. It was absurd. It was
unethical. And yet Preston’s father seemed almost proud of him for it. I
wondered how proud he would be when Preston called the whole thing off.

“I take it you want this to
happen?” Preston said. He tried to play it cool, but I could hear the note of
anticipation in his voice clear as a bell.

Mr. Harvey nodded, leaning back
in his chair. “I’ll be honest, Preston: I wasn’t sure you’d have it in you to
make a bold move like that, especially without Jane around to give you a little
shove in the right direction. I thought maybe you’d gone soft on me. Not
everyone in your position would have the stones.” He chuckled softly. “They’d
be too afraid of going to hell.”

I couldn’t help but scowl. It
twisted across my face before I could stop it.

“Rightfully so,” I muttered,
knowing well the magnitude of the argument I was about to start. “It’s
disgusting. You’re talking about taking the one safe haven these homeless people
have and replacing it with a glorified apartment building for the wealthy. You
ought to be ashamed.”

Mr. Harvey seemed taken aback at
my little outburst, as if he wanted to reach across the table and smack me for
speaking out of turn and beyond my station, but before he could say a word, my
mother stepped in.

 
“Oh, Madison,” she sighed, amused by what
she might call my “misguided pluck.” I watched her nine-carat engagement ring
glitter under the prismatic spray of the chandelier above our heads. “You can’t
possibly think we’re responsible for their misfortune. It’s not our fault
they’re homeless.”

I
met her gaze first, then Preston’s. “It is now,” I said.

Though I doubted it would make
any difference, for once, nobody argued with me. The elder Harvey just smirked
as he chewed on a bite of his disgustingly beautiful food while holding a
silver fork that was probably worth more money than one of those poor homeless
people would come by all year…