Page 19 of Jealous Stepbrother
I reach him just as he grabs the door handle.
My hand closes over his. Skin to skin, his muscles flex under mine.
For an eternity, he stares down at our hands.
And… my breath stuttering harder than a fault line mid-earthquake, I reach behind me and unhook my bra. It falls from my nerveless fingers.
His hand stays on the door, a silent threat.
Heat and helpless rage and an emotion I’m desperately loathe to label anything but arousal flare through me. His grip tightens.
I hook my fingers into my panties and drag them off, stepping out of my shoes as they drop to my ankles.
And just like that, I’m naked in my stepbrother’s office, my mind spinning as my body reacts to the deranged look in his eyes.
His hand drops from the door and, in one lethal, unhesitating lunge, he snakes an arm around my waist, hauling me clean off my feet in a display of unbridled, domineering possession.
“Good girl,” he breathes in my ear. “Now we can begin our day properly.”
I’m plastered to his side as he marches to the far end of the studio.
I didn’t see it before, too distracted by the man himself, but beneath the largest sun-flooded window in the room sits a sprawling work table wide enough to command the space like a king’s throne.
It’s pure Asher, with clean black steel legs, a matte walnut top worn smooth in places from years of relentless creation.
One corner is stacked with sketchbooks, edges softened by constant use. Another holds a neat army of mechanical pencils, fountain pens, and fine-tipped markers, arranged with precision only he would demand.
Draped across the middle is an expanse of crisp white paper, unrolled like a battlefield awaiting its first strike. A dress form stands beside it, pinned with half-finished muslin in sharp, asymmetric cuts, the silhouette already promising something both dangerous and beautiful.
The summer sun pouring in illuminates silks in pale gold and bone white, chiffon in shades of champagne and blush. His current work leans toward a sensual kind of minimalism with fluid lines, barely-there draping, cuts that tease the skin while leaving the imagination strung tight.
But there’s always an edge with Asher, a flash of metallic thread, an unexpected slash at the hip, a deep plunge that borders on scandalous.
Without releasing me, he drags a high-backed stool to the table, sits back in his chair with his legs splayed, and places mein his lap. Then he rests both hands on the table, bracketing me in his shadow.
“You’ll start here,” he says, the command cool and absolute. “You’ll observe, take notes, pull fabric, cut swatches, draft rough outlines when I tell you. I want your instincts on color pairings, your eye on proportion. And”—his gaze dips, slow and deliberate—“you’ll learn the discipline of stripping away what’s unnecessary until only the strongest, most striking thing remains. Same principle applies to people, sweetheart.”
I swallow the scream building at the back of my throat, the banshee-like wail that wants to demand if he’s totally lost his mind. I manage to keep it inside because the truth is the wildest thing to comprehend.
I’m naked from hair to heel, perched in my fully clothed stepbrother’s lap while he instructs me on fabrics and composition as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. As if he doesn’t have a care in the world.
Well… no. There’s acare.
A very blatant, masculine, virile care in the form of the thick cock pressing against my ass every time he leans in to correct my stance, adjust the tilt of my wrist, or reach for a pencil beside my hand.
His cologne, sharp cedar and something darker, curls into my lungs, muddling my thoughts as much as the low drag of his voice. His fingertips graze the slope of my spine when he shows me how to smooth a fabric swatch without creases, linger at my elbow when guiding me toward the mannequins. Every brush of skin is deliberate, like he’s sketching his claim on me with invisible ink.
When I shift away to put breathing room between us, he only follows, closing that space until my bare hip grazes the edge of his thigh, until his mouth is close enough to murmur somethingabout the “importance of clean lines” while his breath slides hot over my shoulder.
I last barely ten seconds away from him before he drags me back to the stool. Into his lap. With the cage of his body and his arms.
My pulse is a trapped bird in my throat, manically searching for escape. I tell myself I’m unaffected, that this is just another one of Asher’s power plays, but the way my skin prickles where his lips whisper over the curve between my neck and shoulder makes a liar out of me.
“You smell incredible. And your skin. Fuck, it still feels as silky as I remember.”
I shiver, and my nipples pucker hard enough to make me gasp. “Asher… why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?”
