Page 107 of Heartless Stepbrother
“Tell me,” he asked, voice silk-wrapped danger, “were you ever planning to answer them?”
My pulse thrashed.
Because I didn’t know the answer.
My throat tightened. Every possible truth I wanted to tell Sienna and Chiara gathered behind my teeth. Every frantic heartbeat, every terrifying moment with him, every twisted jolt of attraction I refused to name.
But I couldn’t tell them any of it.
Not with Riley standing here.
Not when he could read every word I sent the moment it left my fingers.
So I swallowed the truth, forced my voice steady, and told him quietly, “No. I wasn’t going to answer.”
His head tilted.
A predator making sense of wounded prey.
“No?” he echoed softly. “Shame. They seem desperate for details.”
His thumb hovered over my phone screen, tapping lightly as if testing the weight of temptation.
Then his eyes lifted to mine, dark and sharp with something that was not kindness.
“Well,” he murmured, “if you cannot answer under the circumstances…” His smile, slow, sinful, knowing, deepened. “…it looks like I should answer them for you.”
My pulse stuttered.
A cold slash of dread cut through the warmth of the bath.
“Do whatever you think you have to,” I forced out, trying to sound indifferent, unbothered, perfectly in control.
But the moment the words left my mouth, his grin sharpened.
It was not a smile.
It was a blade.
“That,” he said softly, “was an invitation you should not have given me.”
My stomach dropped, a clean, sickening plunge.
Because I realized it an instant too late.
Realized what I had given him.
Permission.
Not in words, but in the absence of resistance.
Permission for chaos.
Permission for humiliation.
Permission for him to author the story my friends would now believe.
And he knew it.
