Risk: A Military Stepbrother Bad Boy Romance (2 page)

I giggled in spite of myself and leaned into his hug. I was suddenly surprised by how warm it was, how natural it felt—as if he had never left. As if he were my biological brother, and as if we had grown up together.

“It’s nice to see you, I guess,” I said, still giggling as we broke apart. He smelled good—like leather from his jacket, and a light citrus—maybe his cologne? And his eyes were dark and… Hungry. I felt a chill go up and down my spine as his gaze seemed to bore into me. I couldn’t help but imagine him undressing me…

“I guess we should go inside,” Damien said after a few moments. “So I can meet the rest of the family. Again.”

I bit my lip again and nodded.

“Let’s go… Big bro.”

DAMIEN

Sarah. Sarah. Sarah.

Why did my sister have to be so cute?

An adorable, petite little thing with a pixie face, freckles, and crystal blue eyes that were clear as a spring day. Hair down to her curvy butt. Petite with an ass—my favorite.

The feeling of her in my arms, the smell of her hair, scented by shampoo—it was all intoxicating. God, it had been so long since I had a girl in my arms.

She led me into the house: huge, antiquated, falling apart. It looked exactly the same as it did years ago when I left.

I remembered those days all too well.

See, my dad, my real dad, had died two years before. He was a great guy—a musician in the Boston Symphony Orchestra who had brought his family over from Italy. But then, he developed an early onset form of arthritis in his hands that kept him from playing violin anymore. He became depressed.

He killed himself, leaving my mom and I alone. My mom opened up a pizza shop in Boston and I would work there after school. One day, a smooth talking Southern lawyer wandered in, ordered a few slices, and hung around talking to my mom. He was on business in town, looking for something to do now that his meetings were over.

A year later, they were married and we were down in Georgia.

I had despised him from the beginning—his drawl, the sneer on his lips and in his eyes. He was cruel, I could tell. He thought he was better than us, thought he was doing us a favor.

Well, he could go to hell. I didn’t need any favors from him.

He was a drinker too. He would come home late and start raging at me, at his daughters, at my mom. I couldn’t take it. Any little thing would set him off—if a bed was unmade, if dinner was cold, if no one had gotten the mail.

I finally hauled off and socked him in the face one night. The next day, he took me to the recruiting office, which was fine by me.

I loved the Corps. I liked being overseas, learning a new language—by now, I spoke fluent Arabic—meeting new people. I loved being in a squad, being on a team. I was the youngest in my platoon but the guys all took me under their wing, teaching me things, practically raising me.

I was in Iraq for three years, finally getting my honorable discharge after an IED blew up in my face. I was lucky to be alive, but as it was, it slashed my cheek up something awful.

The Marines were keen to send me home, but I wasn’t keen to go. Finally, an agreement was reached—if I went and got my GED, and then went to college, I could go to Officer Candidate School and re-enter as an officer. I wasn’t sure if that was what I wanted—I don’t think I’m officer material—but I took it anyway.

But that left a problem—I needed a place to live while I got my degree. I needed a home base before I went to college. And the Marines still had that goddamned house in Laramie, Georgia down as my home address.

But Harry was happy to take me back. Or at least, that’s how he acted in his email. But it sounds like he didn’t tell anyone else about it, so who even knows? That asshole was probably drunk when he wrote me.

Still. I had gotten registered for my GED class without any problems at the school. I stopped by the pizzeria to see my mom and she had embraced me, sobbing—after all, I hadn’t been “home”—calling it that felt wrong—in years. And now, I was here. Here with my… Sister.

“No one’s home, I bet,” Sarah murmured as we began turning on lights. “Dad usually gets home late and so does Maria… uh, your mom, I guess.”

“What about your sisters? I remember… There was Christina, and who was the little one? Dakota?”

“Well,” Sarah said sighing, sinking down onto a couch in the ornate but dusty and decayed living room—this really was an old Southern manor house that had seen better days. They didn’t have slaves to keep everything clean anymore. “Christina is at Powell University—“

“That’s just down the street, isn’t it?”

“Right. Dad teaches law there part time. But… She doesn’t really come around anymore. Mostly, she just doesn’t talk to dad.”

I wonder why.

“Gotcha. And Dakota?”

Sarah bit her lip, a somber sadness blanketing her pretty freckles.

“She’s our wild child, I guess. She comes home later than either dad or Maria—I think they’ve just given up with her.”

“Shit. Isn’t she only…”

“Fourteen. But she stays out with boys… Does things… You know. Bad things.”

I nodded. “Sucks.”

“Yeah. I don’t know what’ll happen to her.”

I don’t like sitting still, and before long, I found myself on my feet, wandering around the living room, picking things up, turning them over, putting them back down. Pictures—old and new, going back maybe a hundred years, even including old black and white daguerreotypes of Confederate soldiers posed in front of the stars and bars, brandishing their bowie knives.

On the walls were hung portraits of Logans going back centuries too. More and more that I didn’t like about this family, about this house—the smug, sneering, probably drunken faces that leered down at me from the paintings were the same as the face that I remembered raging at my mother years ago.

Meanwhile, Sarah had spread a bunch of brochures and pamphlets over the coffee table in front of her. I peered over her shoulder. Colleges.

“Where do you want to go?” I asked. She jumped a little bit. She had been fondling them, as if in a dream. It was as if she had forgotten I was there.

“Oh, I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“So think about it,” I ordered.

She smiled a bit and sighed.

“I just… I never thought I would leave the state. But my counselor is really encouraging me to look at some pretty… fancy… places. I don’t know if we can afford it.”

“Uncle Sam would pay for it.”

She laughed now.

“I don’t think I’m the military type. But maybe I could get some sort of financial aid.”

“I think you’d fit in with these kids,” I said, picking up a brochure for Princeton. It showed a bunch of pretty girls of all races, smiling, wearing their Princeton sweatshirts on an autumnal campus. They all sat around in a circle, calculatedly casual, as if the photographer had just happened upon a perfectly heterogeneous group of co-eds having a light, intellectual discussion one Friday afternoon after class. As if.

“Ugh, no, I’d never fit in somewhere like that… Just look at them…”

“I’m looking at them,” I replied. “And I’m looking at you.”

She flushed hot pink. I liked that.

“And what do you see?” she asked, her eyes barely able to meet mine.

“I see a kid who should probably get the hell out of Laramie, the hell out of Georgia, as far away from your dad as possible.”

Sarah closed her eyes, nodding slowly.

“You’re right. I know you’re right. But…”

“But what?”

“But it’s scary.”

I took her by the shoulders, looking deep into her crystal blue eyes, pulling her close.

“Listen to me, kiddo—“

“Kiddo?” she giggled. “I’m not that much younger than you. How old are you?”

“I’m twenty-one.”

“And I’m seventeen. I’m not your kiddo.”

“You’re my kiddo if I say you’re my kiddo,” I replied coolly. “And kiddo, listen—if your dad is the same person he was four years ago, then you need to get the hell out of here and don’t look back. Especially if your counselor thinks you have a shot at a place like Princeton.”

“Really?” she asked. Somehow, she had drawn ever so slightly closer to me and I could smell that sweet scent of her shampoo.

“Really.”

“Thanks,” she whispered. And leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek.

“I’m sorry, we like, barely know each other,” she continued. “And I’m totally dumping my problems on you… But it’s like, I feel like I just don’t have anyone around here who believes in me, you know? I guess it’s the classic middle child syndrome… I just feel forgotten.”

“I can believe in you,” I said, my voice low and controlled. I slid a hand around her waist. She felt good in my arms.

No. No. Shut it down. She’s your sister, man. Turn off the charm. Turn it all off and keep it in your pants.

“Thanks,” she said, leaning in for a hug. I felt the soft squish of her tits against my arm and my cock definitely twitched in my pants. Damn it all to hell.

“I’m glad you’re back. It’ll be nice to have someone else around. And you’re taking a GED class at the school?”

I pushed her away, gently but firmly.

“Yeah, that’s right. It seems pretty lame but… You know. It’s something I’ve got to do, I guess.”

“Well, you’ll see me at school every day now. We can sit together in the cafeteria and everything,” Sarah said, giggling, looking back at her college brochures. “You can defend me from my bullies and everything.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Do you have bullies?”

She laughed uneasily. A glint in her eye told me she might.

“No, not really, I guess… Having bullies would require someone to pay attention to me…”

“I’m paying attention to you,” I said without thinking.

“I—“ Sarah started when we heard the door opening. I realized suddenly how close we were sitting together on the couch. I stood, just in time to see my mother coming in.

Maria Calabruzzo. Logan, now, I guess—I guess it’s been Logan for years, though all of my ID’s still say Calabruzzo. She had aged, definitely, and she looked tired, with lines drawn deep into her tanned skin all over her face.

“Damien…” she whispered when she saw me. She was wearing a smock from her pizzeria—Maria’s (very original name, I know) and she had bits of cheese and sauce splattered all over it, but nonetheless, she dashed to me, embracing me hard, Italian spilling from her lips.

“Damien, damn it, look at your mother! Oh, I’ve missed you, hun,” she rattled off in rapid-fire Italian, so fast that I barely understood.

“Ma, ma, calm down,” I murmured back, using Italian I hadn’t spoken in years. “Sarah is here. I think she’ll feel left out.”

“Sarah, Sarah,” Maria said, turning to my sister. “Come here. You’ve met your brother? Give him a big hug and a kiss. We’re Italian. Brothers and sisters kiss each other all the time.”

“Yeah, that’s right, sis,” I said, teasing. “Come here and give me a big ol’ Italian kiss.”

Sarah blushed but she stood up and came over to us, came into our arms. I drew her close and kissed her, her eyes wide and giggling as our lips touched.

“See, not so bad,” I whispered as I pressed another kiss to her lips, even letting my tongue graze them. I felt her shiver in my arms. My mother didn’t notice.

“Sarah, your papa will be home early, so I’m gonna’ make up a big mess of lasagna for everyone… You seen your sister at all today?”

“I saw Dakota this morning when she left but…”

“Poor girl will be out till whenever o’clock…” my mother murmured, whisking us both into the kitchen. “Those boys and girls she hangs around with, I don’t like them one bit. She don’t listen to me. I wish your papa would talk to her. Talk to her, not hit her, you know.”