Cruel : Stepbrother Billionaire Romance (2 page)

When he tore her tights open, rubbed the darkening cotton of her panties, her hips writhed and snaked. Mine, too. As his fingers pressed along the center and the fabric clung to the folds of her crotch, her thighs opened and stretched apart, and my fingers found their way into my own panties.

I had to bite my wrist to keep from making a noise as he pulled up the wet, white gusset and ripped it. His fingers dove into her swollen lips, hooked inside her and hammered in and out. My own fingers did the same.

Her back arched, and her head lolled from side to side. She bit her lip as he pulled her thighs wider apart. She leaned back against him. I saw a spark of his wicked grin as he pushed her back.

Then he hauled the front of his pants open.
 

My fingers opened my weeping folds and rubbed over my thrumming clit as he grabbed the back of her hair. His eyes flashed right into mine as he jammed his cock in her mouth. I don’t know how she didn’t hear me as my dam burst.

I bit into my arm and gushed into my hand as all of my muscles spasmed in orgasm. I knew then how much I wanted him. I didn’t care if it was wrong or right.

My stupid Mom stayed with the Asshat, so, as soon as I possibly could, I got a place at a community college in Manhattan and a job in a bakery. In Orange, New Jersey, I shared a tiny, dark brown room with a billion roaches.

Half the time that I had for my studies was in the mornings and evenings, rattling on the
 
train to and from Manhattan. I had to try to read or even write essays standing up and jammed between grey commuters.
 

Relationships for me were rare, brutish and short. I had a particularly horrible breakup with a boy who was more interested in my weight than I was—and not out of any concern about my health. I quickly began to suspect that he was much more interested in my weight than he was in the person inside it or anything else about me.

After the screaming about stupid possessions, I was exhausted and miserable as well as being about to flunk college.

Even after all the work, all the damned double shifts and all the money that I’d sunk into it, I was going to flunk out. My professor told me, “You need to get some proper sleep. You aren’t putting enough effort into your work.”

Well, duh! I was putting in more than enough effort, it’s just that most of it had to go on working to pay for my classes, my books, and my rent. Even though I lived way out in my tiny, toxic room in an Orange, NJ brownstone that should have been condemned in the 1900s, I still had hardly enough money to feed myself.

Wandering dejected around downtown Manhattan on a sunny afternoon, I felt totally alone and miserable. Lost in familiar surroundings. Like a zombie, I passed the hip lunchtime shoppers in Union Square. Meandering up Broadway and past the Flatiron in the hazy heat, I barely registered the spicy scents of lunch vendors in the amiable bustle around Madison Square Park.

Following nothing but my feet, I drifted alone through the crowds, up Madison and across to Park Avenue. Down by Grand Central, I saw a Hamptons Jitney minibus pull up. On a whim, I jumped on the little bus and took off for an afternoon at the beach.

The Jitney was full of immaculately dressed refugees from Manhattan to the Hamptons. Quiet voices with long vowels spoke the weary drawl of Long Island natives.

The long journey soothed me. As the dark, shiny Hudson slipped by below the ridge, the high canyons of the city gave way to scraggy suburbs. Along the endless roadwork delays and stop-start of the Long Island Expressway, I thought,
This must be one of the worst-named roads on the planet
.

Four passengers alighted at the Southampton stop with me. None of them wore drab jeans and dirty sneakers, or a grayish t-shirt. None of the other passengers departed without a car to meet them or an SUV parked nearby.

The route on foot from the Jitney stop to the beach came back to me like I was there yesterday. The bigger sky and a little salt in the breeze lifted my step as I crossed the dry grasses and my feet sank into the pale sand.

It wasn’t a place people came to be miserable. Or ‘contemplative.’ I wasn’t the only person on the beach carrying their shoes, but I was the only one wearing normal clothes. Everyone else wore this season’s beach colors, the shorts all at exactly this week’s length, t-shirts with this morning’s logo or ironic slogan.

More than that, I probably stood out for not wearing expensive shades. It didn’t matter to me. My life was heading for such a drab wreck, I couldn’t care less how I appeared. After I wandered a while in the salty air, my eyes drifted gradually up from the sand and found the misty horizon.
 

At that point, I had no clue whether I could make up enough grades to pass the year, or even if it was worth trying at this point. Next year, I’d only have to work even harder than I did this year, just to stay in place.

If I did flunk, then all that I’d worked for and spent on classes would be wasted–I didn’t believe at that point that I’d ever find the energy to go back and pick up my studies later.

On the other hand, would there be any point making the effort? Wouldn’t I just be throwing good money after bad? A shudder went through me, like it did whenever I caught a cliché that I associated with the Asshat.
 

It was only because of him that I knew this beach though. Him and Balthazar. The bright afternoon wasn’t exactly cheering me up, but at least getting some distance had lightened the load some. It all seemed as awful as it had back in the city, but out on the ocean shore, it didn’t feel as if it mattered quite so much.

Hunger called, and I looked around for somewhere to get food. It was stupid of me not to eat in Union Square or Madison Square Park where food would have been way less expensive than out here. I was determined to find something that I would enjoy, though.

I’d scrimped as long as I could remember. This one afternoon was going to be mine, even if it meant walking a couple of miles for a train back.

A white clapperboard cafe in the distance had a wide deck around the outside. Gray roofs sloped to the surrounding tufts of pale grasses and my pace picked up as I trudged towards the promise of refreshment.
 

When I stepped up onto the deck, a waiter in smart whites with a sliver tray gave me a look up and down. Most of the tables were vacant and heavy white linen tablecloths rose just a little in the sea breeze.

I picked a table in the shade, the one with the most empty space around it. Solitude wasn’t a great comfort, but I wasn’t ready to give it up yet. The same waiter gave me a sideways glance as he set a menu card on the tablecloth in front of me. He raised an eyebrow as he stood with his pad poised.

“Something to drink, madam?” he had a trace of a European accent, maybe Dutch.

“A glass of white wine.”

He turned the menu card and pointed. There was a whole column of white wines by the glass. I chose a white Spanish Rioja. The sails of a few little boats wove along the horizon. Seagulls squawked above. I wished I had a pair of shades, even cheap ones.

The deck shuddered under the pounding weight of a tall, blond-haired man in a gray suit. Surrounded by a milling entourage, he strode to the table next to mine. Maybe half a dozen boys and girls in their twenties buzzed around him. They all wore similar pale khaki pants and short-sleeved shirts.

The way they hung back, made space for him, cocked their heads to everything he said, I figured they were minions, attached to do his bidding. All of them carried tablet computers, little folders and flappy shoulder bags. They all wore very nice shades, although not as nice as his. I shifted my chair so my back faced the group.

The waiter brought my wine in a high-stemmed glass on a sliver tray. He set it out nicely and took my order for a club sandwich. The voice at the next table was one that could not be ignored. He was talking quite loudly into a phone. I thought it was funny how people in the best places often had the worst manners.

“I want a Gulfstream G 150 ready for my pilot to collect.” A lump of ice dropped through me. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Not the words, those didn’t matter, but the voice was so familiar. “I want it at LAX, certified and fueled up the day after tomorrow. Call me back in ninety minutes with your best price. No second chance, understand?” It couldn’t be true. I was afraid to turn my head.

“When you call back, state only your finished, all-inclusive price. Just one number.” I turned. It
was
him. “It will be a straight cash purchase for the best bid.” And he hung up. Then he looked up, over his shades. Those golden-brown eyes shone into mine, and way down inside me a depth charge thudded.

The entourage fell silent and their eyes all swiveled to me. I hadn’t seen him in, like, forever. I almost didn’t recognize him with the short beard.

It was the sound of his voice I had responded to. And, I mean, I responded. God, the purring rasp of that voice had reached down inside me and stirred me up like a Long Island Iced Tea.

He raised a hand. The entourage all turned to look. His fingers flicked like they were dusting the air. Silently the group gathered their tablets, notepads, and bags, and they melted away.

When he stood, my heart pounded. His muscles were tense, but not as tense as the expensive fabric on the front of his elegant pants. That was tented tense. A weight pressed against them. It prodded familiar feelings in me. The deck shook under his feet as he strode the short distance to my table.

He stood with his feet apart. He was so near, so tall, that I had to crane my neck to look up to him. He stared at me, although I couldn’t see his eyes through the Oakleys or whatever they were.

The waiter came up behind him with my sandwich on the silver tray, but he couldn’t get around and he was flustered. Balthazar didn’t even turn his head, he just took the tray.

“This your sandwich, Sis?”

When he said, ‘
Sis
’ my stomach fell down a hole. My thighs slackened apart. My throat tightened and my breath caught. All the feelings, all the wrong sensations that I had experienced around him, time after time when we were younger, all the things I thought I’d never have to go through again.

They all flooded back at once. I felt thoroughly drenched. He was still waiting for me to answer, with that half smile on his face that I remembered from the first time I saw him.

“Well?” that familiar sarcastic edge, that slightly superior tone was in his voice. His scent was unmistakable; he had on some elegant and probably expensive, exotic cologne, but behind it was a darker note. A note that lit a sense memory. It revived thoughts and feelings that I knew I shouldn’t have had at the time. But I loved them and I wanted them then. And I wanted them still.
 

His head cocked a little to one side. He’d asked me a question. I’d forgotten. I realized that he was still holding the tray.

“Yes,” I told him, “It’s my sandwich.”

He set the tray down. My eyes didn’t leave his as he bent with the tray. The waiter clearly wanted his tray back but he couldn’t find the nerve to ask Balthazar to return it. He bobbed his head uncertainly. Balthazar showed no sign of noticing. The waiter shuffled away, trayless and dejected.

“Aren’t you going to eat it?”

“While you stand there and watch me?”

“I’ve watched you eat before. I never noticed it troubling you.”

“I seem to have lost my appetite.”

“Oh. I put you off your food?”

No!
I wanted to shout at him but I held back. I said, “I’m very surprised to see you, that’s all.”

“Likewise.” My stomach curled at the sound of his voice.

I said, “Are you going to just stand there?”

“Until you invite me to sit, of course.” His manners were much more polished. He had reinvented himself. That same spirit burned from his eyes but he had a kind of an assured confidence, a new certainty.
 

I told him, “Then, it’s my pleasure.” Try to match him. I didn’t feel like I succeeded. “Won’t you please join me?” My voice trembled as I waved my hand to the chair, and my hand shook.

He hitched the knees of his gorgeous suit and his lithe, athletic frame settled into the seat. He laid his phone on the table with his hand on top of it.

He sat in front of me with his thighs spread, like he had when he was a teenager. The bulge was prominent, high and strong. He made no attempt to hide it.

Finally he said, “It’s been a long time, Sis.” My stomach flipped again when he said ‘Sis.’

I said, “You didn’t exactly keep in close touch.”

“With the family?” His lip curled.

“With me.” I was aware of sounding pouty. I hated that.

“It was partly because of you that I left.” It was like a slap in the face.

“I always knew you hated me.” Now I really did sound whiny and hard done by. Suddenly the whole of the day, my professor, the prospect of flunking college, the yawning sense of failure, everything threatened to well up behind my eyes. I held my breath, but still my chest shuddered.

“I never hated you.” A breeze blew my hair into my face. He reached over to brush it away. I knew that it couldn’t stand it if he did. I would collapse. More than anything, I didn’t want to go to pieces in front of him.
 

As his hand approached my face, I seized his wrist to stop him. I misjudged and I used a little too much force so I smacked against the inside of his wrist. But when my skin came in touch with his, it was like all the lights went on in a huge room inside me with a great
whump
.

He looked at me as I held his wrist.

“Nobody else would dare to do that. You know that, Sis?”

It didn’t matter how hard I peered at his sunglasses, I couldn’t see his eyes behind them. My mouth tightened. “You said you left because of me.”

“I did. Not because I hated you, though.” His lip twitched. His fingers drummed on his phone.

His voice was flat as he rose. “Enjoy your sandwich.”

“Yeah,” I said stiffly. “Keep in touch.”

There was a sharpness when he said, “Like you did?”