Page 59 of Jealous Stepbrother
Unhinged eyes flick between mine. “Because I’m beginning to suspect that even if we were blood, I would still want this. I would sell everything I own, beg, borrow and steal what I don’t, and hide us in a cave at the bottom of the world. Just to keep having you like this.”
My mouth falls open. The only thing that emerges is his name. “A-Asher.”
I don’t know if I’m horrified or elated or both, a little sick with it. Tears sting. I blink them back because I need to see him, to see the raw truth in his eyes, the naked intent that says he means every word.
He doesn’t say anything else.
He just shifts his weight, flips us onto the bed with effortless control so that I’m astride him. Then he settles my knees to bracket his hips, guiding without forcing now, setting me where he wants me.
Where I want to be.
His eyes are heavy-lidded, fixed on mine. His hands grip my waist, feral tight, possessive, waiting.
Power unfurls inside me, heady and sudden, a goddess waking in her own skin. I rise a fraction, breath trembling, and his hands tighten in helpless convulsions. He drags in airthrough his teeth, gaze flicking over my face as if he’s carving this into bone.
“Look at me,” he says. “Stay with me.”
“I’m right here,” I whisper, though part of me is scattered around—in his penthouse, in his studio, on his vanity, and years ago, right here in this quiet room where everything went too far and somehow not far enough.
Where we began and I thought we ended.
But no. I’m realizing now we were just beginning.
He sits up, our chests brushing, and the world narrows to warmth and breath and the soft, indecent sound of fabric and skin. His mouth finds my throat; my fingers curl in his hair; the bed sighs its old wooden sigh.
Every little movement pulls a sound from one of us that makes the other move again. The ocean keeps its rhythm beneath the window, a metronome for something we shouldn’t be doing.
A laugh catches in my throat, too bright, too close to a sob. “We’re going to be caught.”
“Then be quiet,” he murmurs against my skin, and the shiver that goes through me has nothing to do with fear. “Or be loud. I don’t give a shit about anything or anyone but you, Scarlett.”
My heart lurches, catches, soars and dips on the power of his words. On the power of the feeling moving through me.
Time loosens. The lamp throws a halo at the ceiling; the shadows breathe around us. His hands move with ruthless tenderness, commanding and coaxing. When I stutter, he steadies me; when I falter, he urges me on; when I cling, he murmurs my name like an incantation.
It’s slow, then faster. Gentle, then not. The kind of possession that feels like surrender because I’m the one choosing it.
“Don’t look away,” he says again, and I don’t. I want to see him come apart as much as he wants to own the way I do. “Fuck me. Fuck me. God, baby, fuck me.”
Floorboards creak.
Voices hush on the other side of a wall. I bite my lip to swallow a sound and he catches it with his thumb, eyes blazing.
“Mine,” he says, barely a breath, powerful as a bomb.
The rest blurs into a gasp I can’t swallow, a rush that leaves me weightless, the shock of how much I want this and how much I hate that I do.
“I’m coming, Asher,” I whisper against his mouth.
“I know. God, you’re beautiful, baby. So fucking beautiful when you’re shaking in my arms. When you fall with everything you have.”
With a hoarse cry I don’t bother to stifle, I shudder and shatter and sob.
He follows, silent and shaking, forehead pressed to mine, both of us breathing in ragged pants.
For a long moment, neither of us moves.
Then he eases me down, arms wrapping me tight with the kind of aftercare that makes me want to cry again because it’s the last thing I expect from him and exactly what he gives without asking.
