Page 12 of Jealous Stepbrother
I should shake my head, maybe work on that scoffing.
Instead I step closer. Once. Twice. My heels click against the floor like a countdown I’m helpless to stop, pulled by invisible strings only my stepbrother can operate.
When I stop in front of him, he doesn’t touch me. Just watches, letting the silence press against my skin until my pulse is louder than my thoughts.
I lean in, slow, careful, a prisoner inching toward the lock on her cell, and brush my lips against his.
It’s meant to be quick. A benign gesture.
It’s not.
The second my mouth brushes his, Asher grabs my shoulders. Seals his mouth hot and hard and dirty on mine. His sensual mouth moves against mine like we’ve been doing this every day for the last four years.
My hand comes up without permission, fingers curling into the lapel of his suit jacket.
The second my lips part and my tongue probes his lips, he makes a low sound—the kind that slides right down my spine—and my body reacts like it’s been waiting for that exact note. Capturing it, he flicks and strokes and suckles until stars shiver behind my lips, until my nipples bud so damn hard, I’m stunned they’re not poking holes through my clothes.
I’m not even sure which one of us deepens the kiss, but within one heartbeat and the next, I’m pressed tight against my stepbrother’s insanely hot, whipcord body, tasting heat and memory and something dangerous I don’t want to name. Making noises in my throat that scream the needy surrender in my throat.
Then he’s the one pulling back, his hands closing gently around my wrists, lowering them from his jacket. His breathing is heavier now, but his mouth curves in that maddening way, like he’s the only one who decides when the game ends.
His pale, icy-blue eyes catch the light, like winter skies before a storm. They hold me still as if movement isn’t an option until he allows it.
The short stubble shadowing his jaw is darker now, sharper, framing a mouth made for wrecking bodies andlives.
God, those lips.
Full, firm, and smug enough to make me want to bite them just to see if they’d bruise. I’ve wondered more forbidden nights than I care to admit how they’d feel tracing down my skin, latching on my pussy. I cut the thought off before it burns me alive.
He’s my stepbrother!
A fact he’s puzzlingly always treated with equal parts rumbling fury or as a pesky non-issue.
He’s taller than I remember, broader through the chest, his rolled sleeves revealing the black, geometric ink crawling overhis forearms, all precision and control. Every detail of him makes my pulse trip, and I hate how much I’ve missed it.
How much I’ve missed him.
How of all the people in the world, fate chose him to hold the keys to what makes every single cell in my body tick.
“Hello, beautiful.”
The words slide over me like heated honey, making my knees soften. I sway into his body without meaning to, desperate for another illicit taste—the absolute final one because this is insane…right?—another pull into the orbit I swore I’d escaped.
“Careful, sweetheart,” he murmurs. “You know how easily this gets out of hand.”
The sharp knock at the door snaps the spell.
“Later,” he says.
Asher’s penthouse swallows me whole with the kind of silence that lets you hear your own heartbeat.
Three stories of glass, chrome, and city light.
Floor-to-ceiling windows wrap the entire space, offering an unbroken sweep of Manhattan’s skyline. It’s pristine but lived-in, sleek but edged with the kind of danger only Asher could bring.
There’s a rooftop deck with an infinity-edge pool that looks like it’s pouring straight into the skyline, a fully kitted-out gym on the mezzanine level, and, off the main living space, a glass-walled studio filled with racks of unfinished garments, mannequins draped in silk, a drafting table scattered with his sketches, and the faint scent of cedar from the tailor’s forms.
My bedroom is on the opposite wing from his. A corner suite with its own balcony, a king bed that could swallow me whole, an en suite bathroom in white marble and gold. It’s a polar opposite from the bedsit which was as shitty as Asher described.
