Biker Stepbrother - The Complete Series (Parts 1, 2, and 3) (6 page)

“It’s been over an hour,” I said to Alfonso. “He said he’d been here in twenty minutes.”

Alfonso peered out the curtains of Holden’s living room windows and looked down toward the street.

“I don’t think he’s coming,” I said.

“Try calling him again.”

I dialed his number. No answer.

“Something’s going on,” I said, fearing the worst. Holden was a very jealous man and I could only imagine the extremes he would go to to secure the thing he wanted the most: me. “I have to get Sterling involved. He’s the only one who can talk some sense into Holden.”

Alfonso and I headed towards the mansion in Brentwood, and my stomach dropped the second I saw Dalton’s gray Range Rover in the driveway.

“He’s here,” I said, unbuckling my seatbelt and slowly climbing out. I tried asking myself why he’d have run to Sterling before coming to me. Nothing was adding up. Nothing made sense.

Unless Sterling was in on it too…

Alfonso followed me inside, where voices were echoing from the kitchen area.

“Mom?” I called out.

I rounded the corner only to see Gray and Mom in a heated discussion.

“Gray,” I wrapped my arms around him and breathed him in, squeezing him tighter than I’d ever squeezed anyone in my entire life. I pulled away and cupped his strong jaw in my hands. “You’re okay?”

He nodded. “I’m fine. Your mother on the other hand, she’s on a train to crazy town and there’s no way to stop her.”

I glanced at my mom who held her phone in her hand. Judging by the crazy look in her eyes, she was about to call the cops on Gray. He must’ve said something to piss her off, which wasn’t hard. The only thing that truly pissed Tammy-Dawn Conners off was when someone pointed out the ugly truths she tried so hard to bury along with her dirty past.

“What is Alfonso doing here?” Mom’s jaw hung half open.

“What is going on here?” a voice boomed from the hallway. We all peered behind us to see Sterling staggering toward us in his bathrobe, his white hair disheveled every which way.

“Holden kidnapped Gray,” I blurted, giving him the condensed version.

“Who is Gray?” Sterling asked, his eyes adjusting to the light.

I slipped my arm behind Gray’s back. “He’s my... my friend. My…”

I didn’t know what the hell he was to me anymore. All I knew was I loved him more than anyone in the whole world.

“What’s this about Holden?” Sterling asked. Of course Holden would be his main concern. Holden was his fucking golden child.

“I’m sorry, Sterling. Mom. I’m not marrying Holden,” I said. Gray pulled me tight in a supportive move. He had my back. He always did.

Mom’s glare burned holes in my back. I could feel their heat. Sterling raked his fingers through his thinning hair, looking as if someone told him the stock market had just collapsed. He took a seat in a nearby chair at the table.

“You don’t love Holden?” Sterling looked crushed, and in that moment, I realized I cared more about hurting Sterling than my own mom. But it didn’t change anything.

“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “I don’t love him.”

“I thought you two were crazy about each other,” he said, scratching his head and crinkling his nose. “That’s why I made him a junior executive at the company. That’s why I was setting you up for a good life, Eve.”

“You did that for me?” I asked. All along I’d thought he was doing it because Holden’s dad was his best friend.

“I did,” Sterling said. “I figured when I’m long gone, Holden could take over the company, which would be in your name of course, and you’d be set for life.”

It felt as if someone had thrown a bag of bricks at my chest, and my feet wanted to give out from under me. Sterling was a good man. A very good man. My mother didn’t deserve him.

“Can you do me a favor tomorrow morning?” I dared asked.

“Anything, princess.” Sterling’s blue eyes gazed up at me in a fatherly sort of way. A decade of being married to my mom, he always treated me like his biological daughter. Sometimes I regretted never calling him “dad”. He was the closest thing I ever had to one.

“Fire that fucker,” I gritted.

Sterling laughed and everyone seemed to lighten up around us. My mother stayed quiet, as if she were trying to process the entire thing. I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t look at the woman who was ready to obliterate my future all so she could live comfortably well into her golden years.

She deserved to be out on the street.

“Consider it done,” Sterling said, rising up from his seat. He walked toward me and wrapped me in a hug. We didn’t hug much if ever, but it seemed appropriate in that moment. “I’m so sorry I misunderstood what you wanted, sweetheart.”

I clenched my eyes and breathed him in. I’d never told him I loved him before, but it lingered on the tip of my tongue for just a moment until he pulled himself away.

“If you’ll all excuse me, I’m heading back to bed. I’ve got an early conference call in the morning with China,” he said, shuffling off to bed.

“Alfonso, can you give us a lift back to the hotel?” I asked.

“Where are you going?” Mom interjected, her eyes still wild with disbelief at what had just transpired.

“It doesn’t concern you,” I spewed at her, turning back toward the guys. The three of us headed toward the front door, my mom following behind, throwing down remark after remark.

“Don’t do it, Eve,” she begged. “Don’t get messed up in the gang. Don’t make the same mistake I did. Women are second-class citizens. They don’t care about us. Don’t be an idiot and don’t believe a single promise he makes. He’s just like his piece of shit daddy…”

Her word vomit continued long after we left the house and shut the door. Alfonso dropped us off at the hotel, where we gathered the rest of Gray’s things and hopped on his bike.

“You need shoes,” I said. “How did I not see that? And how did that…?”

“Don’t ask,” he said.

We pulled into a big box store, where I ran in and got him a pair of size 13 leather boots, and he gratefully slipped them on.

“Was needing a new pair anyway,” he said.

“Do you care if I run over to Skylar’s real quick?” I asked. “Before we leave town? I should probably tell her goodbye.”

“Skylar?”

“My best friend.”

His bike rumbled and groaned across town, the wind blowing in my hair felt like it was peeling off my old layers so the new ones could emerge. Within minutes, he’d parked in Skylar’s parking lot, and I ran up to her door.

“Eve?” Skylar pried the door open. It was late. Maybe eleven. She’d been sleeping.

“I’m so sorry to stop by so late,” I said. “Can I come in for a sec?”

“Um, yeah, okay, sure,” Skylar’s words fumbled as she let me in.

I took a seat on her sofa, the spot on the end was practically worn from all the talks we’d had over the years. I ran my fingers over the soft microfiber.

“Everything okay?” she asked, reaching over and clicking on the lamp on the side table.

“I’m leaving town for a bit,” I said, watching her face for a reaction. “I just wanted to say bye for now.”

Skylar shook her head and scrunched her nose. “What? Wait…”

She lifted her hand to tuck a strand of blonde hair behind her ear, and that’s when I saw it. A glimmer of sparkle and shine on her left ring finger reflected off the lamplight and nearly blinded me from across the room.

“Skylar? What’s on your finger…” I stood up to walk closer to her, but she yanked her hand behind her back like a child hiding a stolen toy. I reached for her arm and pulled her hand to my face. There it was. The diamond ring I’d seen in the Cartier box in Holden’s sock drawer. “Huh.”

Skylar’s hand trembled a bit, like a girl who’s biggest secret had suddenly come to light, and I suddenly remembered the fact that she’d bailed out of the proposal dinner on account of having a stomach ache. She loved Holden. She loved him so much she couldn’t bear to watch him propose to me.

“This from Cartier?” I asked. I wondered how long they’d been secretly engaged and what exactly Holden was planning to do about having two fiancés, but then I realized none of it mattered anymore.

Skylar bit her lip, not answering me, and focused on the carpet beneath our feet.

“It’s beautiful, Sky. I mean, really. Beautiful. You and Holden are going to have a lovely life together. Congrats.” I released her hand in haste and gathered my composure, shocked that it didn’t hurt me the way it should have. Had I loved Holden, truly loved him, I’d have been crying. Instead, a smile spread across my lips. It was a simple twist of fate, but a perfect one at that. Those two truly deserved each other.

Good riddance.

I showed myself out and climbed back onto Gray’s bike.

“Everything go okay?” he asked as he started it up. The vibration of the bike rumbled beneath me, and I could feel it inside me as well. Every nerve and cell of my body was alive with a sort of vibrant energy I’d never felt in my life.

“Everything went exactly the way it was supposed to go,” I said, resting my cheek against his back.

Into the night we drove. Hours and hours of black sky and twinkling stars and dust and wind and road. Gray said we were headed east, and I didn’t ask any more questions. I trusted him with my life, and I didn’t care where we were going as long as I was with him.

He was the one person who’d never let me down.

“I’m going to have to get some more clothes tomorrow,” she said as she stepped out of the bathroom in nothing but one of my white t-shirts. It barely covered her ass, which I gathered from the accidental peek I snuck was uncovered.

We’d stopped at a hotel in some dust bowl of a town in Nevada in the wee hours of the morning, and the only vacant room they had was a king room with one bed.

She climbed under the covers next to me, heat radiating off her damp body. Her blond hair was beginning to dry and small waves formed around her clean face. She smelled like soap and hotel lotion, and her nipples stood at attention through the thin, white t-shirt she wore.

Get your mind out of the gutter, boy.

I handed her the remote. I was never big on T.V. anyway, probably on account of never having a working one growing up. I watched from the corner of my eye as she mindlessly flipped through channels. After the day we’d had, sleep should’ve been the only things on our tired minds, but for some reason we were both up. I blamed adrenaline.

“What are you thinking about, Gray?” She broke the silence. “I feel you staring at me, you know.”

I smiled. “Everything, I s’pose.”

She flipped the T.V. off and turned towards me. A sliver of a break in the curtain let just enough light in that I could see the outline of her pretty face.

“Mind if I cuddle up to you tonight?” she asked. “It’s kind of cold in here.”

I slipped my arm underneath her back and pulled her in close. Her cheek pressed against my chest and she slowly slipped her arm under mine. An audible sigh escaped her lips as she nuzzled in to me. I felt her body relax in my arms, as if she’d been holding in the tension of a thousand years for as long as she could remember.

The scent of her wet, shampooed hair filled my lungs, and the sensation of her generous breasts against my body, separated only by a thin cotton t-shirt, suddenly made my dick hard before I had time to hide it. I quickly shifted to my back.

“What was that?” she poked her head up.

“Nothing, go to sleep.”

“I felt it, Gray…”

“You felt nothing.”

Her hand flew down to my crotch, where she gripped my throbbing member. It should’ve made me shudder. It should’ve made me vomit or roll away from her or lose my hard on. But it didn’t. Her hand lingered, her fingers gripping my shaft and not indicating they were going to let go anytime soon.

“Wow,” she whispered. “Gray Daughtry is packing…”

Her hand slipped away and she scooted over about a foot.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that,” she said meekly. It was dark, but I was quite sure she was blushing. “Wasn’t thinking. I keep forgetting you were my brother.”

“It’s okay,” I said. I didn’t want her to feel bad, and I sure as hell didn’t want to make things anymore awkward between us. “We’re just a couple of adults now.”

“Do you ever think of me like that, Gray?” she asked. “I mean, we’ve only been back in each other’s lives a few days, but sometimes when I look at you, I forget that we’ve only ever known each other in a brother-sister kind of way.”

I bit my lip and felt blood rush to my throbbing cock once again. I didn’t do emotional sex. I didn’t do lovey-dovey tenderness. I didn’t make love to girls the way a girl like her would want. I fucked.

Gray Daughtry only fucked.

“I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t had a single dirty thought about you since seeing you… all grown up,” I admitted against my better judgment, and I watched as her lips curled into a pleased smile. Or maybe it was relief. It was dark. I couldn’t quite tell. All I knew was my heart was beating like a runaway train and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. “You’re a very beautiful woman now.”

She released a deep breath she’d been apparently holding in and her body nonchalantly wiggled closer to me. I could feel her breath against the bare flesh of my chest as her fingers searched for mine under the covers.

“You don’t want me like that,” I said, my voice a growl of a whisper.

“How do you know what I want?”

“Trust me,” I said. “I’m not good for you in that sort of way.”

Her hand released mine and her fingers tugged on the waist of my boxers. “The way you look at me, Gray. It scares me and makes me feel loved all at the same time. I can only imagine the way you’d feel inside me.”

I swallowed the lump that rose in my throat. My mouth was dry. I couldn’t believe this was happening. She snapped my waistband and found my hand again, placing it over her perky breast.

“It’s okay,” she said earnestly. “You can touch me.”

I squeezed my fingers, gripping the full flesh of her breast and forgetting that she was ever my kid stepsister. My cock throbbed hard and my balls began to ache. The things I wanted to do to her…

She leaned in closer to me, pressing her body onto mine and placing her lips on my collarbone. Wisps of her hair tickled my skin and sent pinpricks all over my body as her hot lips peppered me with kisses. My body was on fire and it took all the strength I had not to roll on top of her and make her scream my name.

Her hand reached below, searching for my waistband again, but I stopped it. My cock throbbed like a son of a bitch, and I wanted nothing more than to bend her over, grab her ass, and fuck the shit out of her tight, sweet pussy. But I stopped it.

“Everly…” I breathed.

She quit kissing me. “What’s wrong? I thought you wanted this?”

I understood that my cock was sending the wrong message, but I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t risk hurting her emotionally when the poor girl had already been through so much. I had to protect her, even if that meant protecting her from myself.

“I don’t make love,” I said. “I fuck.”

“Then fuck me,” she begged. She sat up in bed and tugged the thin, cotton t-shirt over her head, revealing supple round breasts that begged to be touched. “Please, Gray. Fuck me.”