Page 16 of Stepbrothers with Benefits
“Melted like butter left in the sun,” Mason noted with a laugh.
I almost mentioned that he wasn’t much better when it came to Jace…on their good days, but bit the comment back before it left my treacherous mouth. Taunting Mason was a good way to invite him to screw up my plan or owing him for keeping his mouth shut. Better to count my losses and run. Owing Kayden couldn’t be that bad, could it?
Which is precisely what I did as I stepped away from Mason and hurriedly made for the door through the crowd. I knew better than to look back to see if Moira noticed my escape. Her eyes could paralyze faster than Medusa’s.
Opening my phone, I looked for a ride and grinned when I saw one would show up within five minutes. It gave me a chance to grab tacos from a food truck just down the sidewalk, probably parked there to take advantage of the hotels in the area, before I was alerted that my ride had shown up.
“Hello,” I said happily as I slid into the backseat, carefully tucking the food onto the seat next to me so it didn’t spill. I’d once had to pay for the cleaning of a ride share when my curry had exploded after hitting the floor, and I didn’t want a repeat.
I settled back into my seat as the driver pulled away from the curb. I could be chatty, as pretty much everyone in my life liked to remind me, and I was trying to be better about not talking everyone’s ears off.
Instead, I settled in and put my headphones in to blast music. I texted Eli to ask if he was up yet, and then texted Raf. He had gone in today to make some extra money at the club where he was a bartender, to do some deep cleaning for his boss, who was apparently too cheap to hire a service. Raf responded before Eli, his texts brief, which told me he was busy, but he was texting at least. Sometimes he could be a little slow to text back. While that usually made me worry, I had to remind myself that people used to date without a source of constant contact and did it without having self-conscious meltdowns all the time.
Eli hadn’t gotten back to me by the time the car pulled up to the curb outside our apartment building, so I assumed he was still sleeping. The smell of tacos would be a perfect way to wake him up because I knew he wasn’t the best at eating. It was funny, I could forget so many different things, but eating? I didn’t forget to eat...most of the time. Ironically, it was Eli who forgot to feed himself, and God save me, the man was useless in the kitchen if it involved more than microwaving or boiling water. I might be a mess in the kitchen, but that was just what I left behind. I was actually pretty good at cooking, so long as someone was willing to clean up after me, which Eli did in exchange for food.
Humming, I mounted the stairs to the fifth floor since I hadn’t bothered to go to the gym, and I’d been too lazy to walk to the apartment. I paused and noticed the handle jiggling more than usual as my key slid in. Raising a brow, I twisted it, sighing when I found it was unlocked. I knew Eli had come in late last night and had gotten up early, hence why he was probably taking a nap, but damned if his sleep-deprived forgetfulness wasn’t going to cause us to be broken into one day.
I closed the door behind me gently so I didn’t wake him up. I was going to wake him up anyway, but it was better to be woken up with the smell of good tacos rather than the front door being slammed like the FBI had broken it down. Kicking off my shoes, I walked into the living room, lurching to a stop hard enough that I almost flung the bags onto the floor as there was a flurry of movement from the couch.
My eyes were wide enough to drop a teacup onto them as Eli jumped to his feet to face me, and the person under him snatched the blanket from the back of the couch. Dimly, I recognized Eva, Eli’s ex-girlfriend, turned friend, turned on-again, off-again friends with benefits. My attention, however, was locked on Eli, who was staring at me with a look of shockand then embarrassment as he realized it was me and not some random person wandering in off the street.
Now, I had seen Eli in different states of dress over the years. I’d seen him wander around shirtless so many times my eyes didn’t even linger on the sight despite it being a good one...most of the time. He wasn’t quite as liberal about wandering around in his underwear, but even then, I had gotten quite good at not noticing his almost naked state. The one thing I had beenreallygood at was avoiding seeing him naked, averting my eyes on the rare occasion the chance presented itself, which wasreallyrare because, as comfortable as he was with me, Eli was exceptional at not being naked around other people unless he was sleeping with them.
As a matter of fact, it had only happened once, when he’d been fifteen and I’d been just shy of it. Much like today, I had wandered into his room not realizing he was coming out of the shower, and he hadn’t known I was coming because I was supposed to be at a soccer practice that was cancelled. I had stopped, face burning at the sight of his body still wet from the shower, and every teenage hormone in me had fired off at once. It was a miracle I didn’t drop on the spot, blood leaking from every hole as my blood pressure surged to unhealthy levels.
But that was then, and I had seen enough and looked away. Eli hadn’t been fully grown or developed, and he had beensoft. There was nothing soft about Eli now, considering I had interrupted him in an...intimate moment. It wasn’t nearly the monstrosity Mason said Jace had, but it was definitely enough that anyone with an appreciation for dicks would nod their approval...and maybe lick their lips unconsciously. His chest and stomach had a faint shimmer, and I felt the insane urge to run my tongue over the fresh sweat and enjoy the taste of salt on his skin.
Aw, hell, it had been almost two years since I’d gotten hard at the sight of Eli, and all of that was utterly ruined. I briefly wondered if there was a stepbrother fuckers anonymous out there for me to look up. Would they have tokens for people who managed to go years without thinking about sleeping with their stepbrother? Would they be the type to forgive someone readily for relapsing? Would it just be for people with the thoughts or those who’d actually done it? Would I be more forgiven if they saw Eli and realized that the quiet man was stupidly hot and that God clearly hated me if he was going to give me someone like him in my life and make it oh so bad to even think about touching him?
What was my life?
“Milo?” he barked, embarrassment making him sound harsher than usual. “What are you doing home so early?”
I wasnotpaying enough attention to his groin to notice he was quickly going soft. It was definitely because I liked the sight of a dick that had gone from hard to soft. Usually, it was because it only happened after a guy had gotten off, so the still thick but soft sight was a sign of sexual contentment, generally because I had been involved. That wasn’t the case here, but that didn’t stop my brain from making the same connection, and my already tight jeans were getting even tighter. Thank God no one was paying attention to anything other than my face because I had an obvious bulge in my pants.
“Eli,” Eva barked with a laugh. “Your dick is still out.”
Eli looked down and turned beet red. Grumbling, he darted off, and I definitely did not pay attention to the curve of his bare ass or remember the brief sight when he’d been on top of her.
Nope, wasn’t doing anything like that.
“Hi, Eva,” I said grimly as she sat up, casually wrapping the blanket around her. Ironically, I had seen her naked more times than I’d seen Eli just because of circumstances and her ratherlaid-back approach to things. Of the handful of girlfriends Eli had had since he was thirteen, Eva was the only one I’d ever really liked. The rest had been...okay, for the most part anyway, but who hadn’t had a rotten boyfriend or girlfriend somewhere in their history? And yes, my dislike of most of them probably came from jealousy, but I knew better than to let that be the only reason. It was enough that it made it hard for me to connect with most of them, but I’d never been actively mean to any of them, except the truly nasty ones.
“Hi there, Milo,” she said with a chuckle, stretching her bare legs out from the blanket, flexing her toes as she did so. “We weren’t expecting you for a few more hours.”
“I didn’t have to worry about class today because I have everything done,” I said as I heard a thump of something heavy hitting the wall and a muttered curse. If I had to guess, Eli had been trying to pull on his pants in a rush and had tipped into the wall. I, of course, did not picture him bent over, ass out, dick flopping enticingly as he fought to get his pants on. “I was not aware that you were...going to come over.”
I watched as she tucked the blanket in, perfectly recreating the towel wrap I’d seen women do after a shower. “You’re looking...red.”
“Gee,” I grumbled, turning away before she noticed anything else off about my appearance. I rounded the corner to drop the bags of food on the counter in the kitchen and opened the fridge. With a grunt, I grabbed one of the beers left from the other night and cracked it open. It wouldn’t be enough to wipe the mental image from my mind, but maybe with the drink from earlier, I could get a bit of mental peace. “I can’t imagine why.”
Yeah, right.
Her voice sounded amused. “If it makes you feel any better, he’s probably just as horrified as you are.”
“Right,” I grunted as I took a deep drink from the bottle, glad Eva couldn’t see me. Horror was the last thing I was feeling at that moment, and she was pretty good at poking into other people’s heads. Sometimes she unnerved me with how she looked at me, and I would swear she knew thoughts I would have preferred were kept private. That was especially true regarding my true feelings for Eli, which I would swear up and down some part of her was aware of or at least suspected.
She hadn’t done or said anything to make me think that, but the idea was stubborn. Maybe it was just paranoia, but I would swear she sometimes watched me carefully when I was with Eli. And in moments like that, I was desperate she didn’t ferret out what was going on in my head...and my body.
