Stepbrother Studs: Taboo A-Z Boxed Set Volume 2: A Stepbrother Romance Bundle (Stepbrother Studs Boxed Sets) (4 page)

More than that, she was feeling it.  The more secrets she read, the closer she felt to Evan.  The closer she got to her own feelings, and they surprised her.  She wasn’t angry.  She wasn’t disgusted or horrified, like he thought she would be. 

Like she should be. 

She read another entry. 

Dearest Faye,

The last thing you need in your life is a man who says he loves you and then can’t follow through.  I know how much it hurts you that your dad’s in jail, and mine isn’t much of a replacement.  Look, I know our parents love each other and all—I think they must, otherwise why did they marry each other?  —but your mom isn’t much of a mom and my dad’s not much of a dad.  They’re just so lost in their own world, I think they don’t notice us most of the time. 

Which is probably a good thing, because if they knew half the stuff I was thinking, they’d probably lock me away in a loony bin.  Thank God this journal’s locked.  Your mom’s so nosy.  Although sometimes, secretly, I wish you’d find it and read it.  In my dreams, you come to me in the middle of the night and tell me you read my journal and instead of stabbing me in the heart with a butcher knife, you climb into bed with me and tell me you love me. 

Yeah, I know, right?  In my dreams. 

I hide these secrets under a stack of MILF porn I bought to throw your mom of the scent, keep her from digging underneath and finding my real truth, but honestly, all I can think about is you.  I don’t get off on that crap.  It’s you, Faye.  It’s always been you. 

The MILFs I fuck for money—it all makes me feel so empty.  If you knew what I was doing, you’d hate me even more.  But I can’t have you, Faye.  I can’t have the one woman I want more than anything, so what should I care?  I fuck women who pay me to do it, because I can’t have you. 

It’s not your fault, Faye.  It’s mine.  I’m broken. 

It’s just sex.  They tell me I’m a good boy, when I know I’m a bad boy.  They tell me they love me, but it doesn’t mean anything.  Because the one woman I want to love me, hates me.  Has to hate me.  Keep hating me.  Go find a good man who will love you, maybe, half as much as I do. 

Because I can’t. 

And I can’t help it. 

Faye heard a door slam downstairs. 

“Hey, smells good, what’s for dinner?”  Evan.  He was home. 

Her heart slammed in her chest as she closed the journal, locking it again and putting it in the bottom of the box.  She arranged the DVDs the best she could.  Why hadn’t she paid better attention to which had been on top?  She hoped he didn’t keep track, wouldn’t notice.  She couldn’t spend any more time on it. 

She put the box back under Evan’s bed and crept out of his room.  She just made it to her room when she heard him coming up the stairs, whistling some tune. 

Evan didn’t talk to her at dinner and Faye didn’t look at him. 

She hardly ate anything—she hated corned beef and cabbage anyway—besides, she had graham crackers hidden up in her room to tide her over, even though her mom didn’t allow them to have food in their room.  What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, right? 

And clearly, Faye’s mom had no idea that her stepson had a box full of MILF porn under his bed.  Or that there was a journal hidden under that stack of porn that revealed Evan’s true feelings about his stepsister. 

Until that afternoon, Faye hadn’t known either. 

She thought about it as she got changed for bed—a tank top and soft pajama pants. 

She didn’t know what to feel about it all right away.  It had happened like an avalanche falling onto her head, and she was trapped at first, numb, unable to move. 

But the more she thought about it, the more her feelings arose.  She explored them as they bobbed to the surface, turned them over, peered underneath.  Curled up on her bed with her iPhone and a box of graham crackers, she flipped through her photos.  She had hundreds, thousands of them—she never remembered to download them to her laptop and hated to erase them. 

She flipped back and back, seeing Evan’s scowl, Evan flipping her off, Evan rolling his eyes.  That morphed slowly into Evan’s smirk.  A small smile.  Him looking at her mischievously from under that dark mop of hair.  There they were, Evan teaching her how to drive, him hiding his face behind his hands while she took a picture.  From the driver’s seat no less.  She chuckled. 

When had it happened?  When had Evan stopped asking her to watching horror movies with him in the den?  When had he stopped coming into her room, asking how her day was?  When had he stopped telling her how he really felt? 

When he stopped smiling at her. 

When he stopped giving her a quick one-armed hug in the morning and started flipping her off instead at the breakfast table. 

When he stopped coming down the hall to her room at all. 

But he still got up to take her to school.  He didn’t have to.  He picked her up every day, too.  All the while scowling and growling and pushing her away more and more.  He had been trying, all that time, to make him hate her.  But he had failed.  Miserably. 

And she had to tell him so. 

She waited for her mother to peek in—making sure to hide her crackers under the covers—and say they were going to bed.  It was time for lights-out.  Faye told her goodnight, said she was tired.  Asked her to turn out the light. 

Faye laid in the dark, listening to her own ragged breath, watched the shadow of the ceiling fan, ears tuned to the sound of crickets outside her window.  She waited for the moon to rise, chasing away the shadows. 

Then she crept down the hall.  Her parents’ room was next to hers.  Then the bathroom.  Then Evan’s room, at the end. 

His door was closed, light off.  She stood outside, listening, her heart pounding.  Slowly, as quietly as she could manage, she turned the knob, easing the door open.  He slept with the window open.  She heard the crickets, felt a warm breeze as she pushed the door further open.  His curtains blew over his bed and she saw him in the light of the full moon, sleeping on his back. 

She shut the door behind her and then clicked the push-button lock.  Just in case. 

Standing beside the bed, she looked down at him.  One hand rested on his broad, bare chest, the other thrown over his dark head.  With his eyes closed, his face relaxed, he looked like the Evan she loved.  Had always loved.  First, as a brother, then, as a man. 

Even when he’d tried to push her away, it hadn’t changed the years they’d spent together, building a foundation for their feelings.  He hadn’t been the only one falling, after all.  Faye gazed at him in a way she was never allowed when they were together, when they weren’t supposed to notice things. 

She looked at those broad shoulders, his tapered waist—and now she knew what he was hiding under that sheet.  It irked her to think of his muscular, young body being offered up as a delicacy to dissatisfied housewives and bored divorcées. 

Mine
, she thought possessively. 

Her jealousy surprised her—and proved to her like nothing else what she was really feeling.  Yes, he was her brother.  Yes, it was forbidden—taboo.  She wasn’t supposed to want him.  He wasn’t supposed to want her. 

But she did.  He did. 

And now she knew it. 

Just looking at him, remembering how he looked that afternoon, hands above his head, gripping the four-poster as that awful woman sucked his cock, made her mouth water.  She wanted to be the one who gave him that kind of pleasure, made him feel something besides just the physical pleasure.  But that, too. 

Oh, definitely that, too. 

Faye’s hand moved over the sheet, easing it slowly downward.  She bit her lip when she saw he slept in the nude.  His cock was soft, but even in its non-aroused state, it rested in a nest of dark hair, still long and thick. 

Then she touched it. 

It was like her hand was a magnet and his cock was steel.  And it soon became as hard as steel.  She grazed her fingers over the head, rubbing the tip.  It rose slowly from his pelvis like a snake, swaying in the moonlight, casting a shadow on his thigh.  God, he was gorgeous.  He made her mouth water and her pussy clench. 

With delicate strokes, her fingers worked to circle the shaft.  Once hard, she could barely close her fist around it.  Her thumb and pointer finger teased the sweet spot beneath his cockhead.  The head became sticky with his pre-cum.  With every motion, she held her breath, waiting for him to wake, to ask her what the fuck she was doing, to tell her to get out of his room and never come back. 

But he stayed sleeping.  A few times his breath caught, and she would stop, biting her lip, waiting.  By this time Faye's hand crept beneath her pajama pants.  Her pussy gushed.  She rubbed her pussy lips and worked to find her clit.  Her body shivered in delight at the sensation.  She wanted to climb on top and ride him. 

“Evan,” she whispered, looking at his sleeping face.  Did she really want to wake him? 

She’d gone this far.  She had to keep going.  Something compelled her. 

“Evan, I’m sorry.”  She swallowed, rubbing her fingertip over the head of his cock, down the shaft.  “I should have seen.  I should have known.  I’ve been so stupid.” 

She glanced at his face.  His breathing had changed.  It was softer, lighter. 

“I read your journal,” she confessed.  She pushed her pajama pants down her hips, stepping out of them.  “You said you wanted me to come to you in the middle of the night.  To climb into bed and...”

“You shouldn’t have looked.”  His voice startled her as he grabbed the hand she was using to caress his cock. 

“I’m sorry,” she said again, standing there, wearing just her tank top now, naked from the waist down. 

“Go back to bed, Faye.”  He grabbed the sheet, pulling it up to cover his erection.  “Go back to bed and forget it.” 

“I can’t.”  She cringed when he pushed at her wrist, edging his body closer to the wall, away from her.  “I can’t, Evan.  Please...”

“Go away.”  His voice was pained.  “Just go.” 

“Please.”  She knelt beside his bed in the darkness like she was praying, reaching for him, feeling his muscles, his body tense, taut.  “Evan, don’t do this.  I read your journal, I know—”

“You don’t know anything.”  He moved her hands away, grabbing her wrists, keeping them caught in his big hands.  “You might think you know, but you don’t.” 

“Why did you fuck that woman today?”  She winced, but didn’t cry out when his grip tightened on her wrists. 

“What are you talking about?” 

“I saw you,” she confessed.  “I came into the house.  I watched you together...”

“Jesus, Faye.”  Evan let out a slow breath.  “What the hell?  I
told
you to stay in the car.  Why can’t you just listen!”