Dirty Little Secret: New Adult Rock Star Romance (Not Exactly A Stepbrother Romance Book 1) (12 page)

“He’s pure sex. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched him play live, but the way he moves on stage?
Girl
. And I know for a fact he can fuck. Those videos leave
nothing
to the imagination.”

I almost said
I know,
but instead I pressed my mouth shut in a hard, angry line.

“And he hasn’t stopped staring at you since we came out on the dance floor,” she added.

Don’t look, Gemma, just take her word for it
, I repeated in my head, as I fought the gravitational pull of Bret’s gaze. As with all of our other battles, I lost miserably. It wasn’t a surprise he stared; I’d been moving my hips and grinding against Nikki in a way he had to pay attention to. But when I saw the look on his face, the raw fucking need that only came when two people shared things not meant for the rest of the world to see, I knew we’d gone too far. We should’ve never come out tonight.

I dropped my beer bottle and pushed through the crowd until I got to the door.

People came after me. A bouncer, ready to do what I was already taking care of myself. Nikki, trying to push past him and insisting I wasn’t loaded and I’d just dropped the bottle. And in the background, Bret moved in slow motion, his hand on Nikki’s shoulder, calming her down, and then using his charms in a similar way on the bouncer. I looked at my reflection of the storefront window of the bar, like it was someone else’s life I watched on TV. One of those cheesy cable movies, where the heroine fell for her stepbrother.

No.

I’d go to Jersey, get naked, and collect my five million. I just couldn’t think about what I was doing. Or let it mean anything.

Bret’s motion sped up, and I broke into a run along the brick sidewalk. “Gemma,” he called after me. I ducked down the side street. Stupid, since I had nowhere to go. He drove me here, he was paying my way, and he was catching up to me. “Gem. What’s wrong?”

“
Everything.
” I slumped against the wall. “Nikki’s telling me I should fuck your brains out—”

Bret put one arm on either side of me but didn’t touch me. “Shh.” He moved in closer. The heat from his body could melt the skin away from my bones. “Nikki’s drunk.”

At least he didn’t tell me to calm down. That was the worst. It would’ve sent me into a sheer bat-shit crazy rage. “Let me finish. She saw the way you were looking at me, Bret. Everyone in the bar could see it. They know there’s something going on with us.”

He shook his head. “Everyone in the bar was watching you dance. The way you move your hips, Gemma…” He moaned, his hips pressing me to the brick wall, his erection obvious against my belly. “There’s only one thing any man could think about when you’re on the dance floor.” His hair grazed my cheek. He closed his eyes and licked his lips.

I pushed against his chest. He didn’t move. “Don’t you dare,” I said.

He stumbled back but caught himself, caging me right back in. “Don’t I dare do what?”

“You were going to kiss me.”

“Like hell I was.” Bret scoffed. “I was thinking how fucking hot you’re going to be on stage, naked and swinging around a pole.”

I slapped him across the face. It startled him enough to give me a chance to duck under his arm and make a run for the parking lot. My choices sucked. He was going to catch me in seconds. Sneakers beat heels every time. He gripped my arm, but I didn’t fight him as we marched to the SUV. Prisoner and warden. We’d drawn enough attention to ourselves already.

“Get in the backseat,” he growled, as he unlocked the doors.

“Why?” My body throbbed with anger and need, as I leaned against the door he wanted me to open. I wanted to scream at him that he wasn’t listening to me, but I didn’t really care, because this was so fucking hot.

His face was close to mine again, but this time there was no mistaking what he wanted. “Because I’m going to fuck you, and then I’m going to sweet talk your sorry ass back into the club. I was having a good time. I’m not ready to go home yet.”

“Neither am I.” I refused to look away, because I really needed his cock inside me right now. If it wouldn’t mean the end of the world as I knew it, I would say,
to hell with getting in the car
, and let him take me in the parking lot.

“Then you can tell Nikki what it’s like to fuck me, because there’s going to be no mistaking what we’ve done.” Bret pulled me away from the car, like I weighed nothing, and opened the door. “Get in.”

Traffic in Connecticut was always ridiculous, and Bret had some speed metal on blast. Every time the singer screamed, I side-eyed Bret, and he joined in. I couldn’t wait until it was my turn to pick the music.

“Are you sure these people won’t know who I really am?” I asked for the thousandth time, as we crawled south on the interstate. “Because we can’t have a repeat of the blues club.”

“Yes, Gem. I’m sure.” Bret launched right into a duet with the singer, if you could call him that. I turned down the stereo. He laughed, tongue still out. “It was just the story I told Ellen, that it was a mutual friend from high school. Nothing else made sense for us to get away together. And the other night’s all on you.”

“Bullshit.”

Bret had pushed me in half, my calves up against my shoulders, and slammed into me while I chided him, saying he could start fucking me any time. I was so glad we could never be a normal couple. It would take all the fun out of everything.

When Bret and I had walked back into the bar, much to Nikki and Matt’s astonishment, there was no way to cover up what we’d done, quick, hard, and dirty in the backseat of our dad’s SUV. That didn’t stop me from trying. I insisted to Nikki that we had a knockdown, drag-out argument. With our private parts, but she didn’t need to know that.

“I’m sticking to my story,” I told Bret. “I wanted to go home, you insisted on going all Alpha male on my ass, trying to teach me a lesson.”

“I should’ve fucked you up the ass. Maybe it would’ve shut you up for five minutes.” He chuckled. “Alpha male? You’ve been reading too many of those books. No one actually acts like that. That’s why you don’t have a boyfriend.”

I’d cause a major pile up outside of Stamford if I strangled him. Not worth it. But still tempting. “I don’t have a boyfriend because it’s hard to explain why I’ve got to fuck my stepbrother out of five million bucks.” I smiled as sweetly as I could when Bret rolled his eyes. “Once I have that money in the bank, it will free up some time to pursue other options. Or maybe I’ll meet a nice guy on this trip.”

“At the strip club?” Bret asked.

I nodded.

“Yeah, that romance will be exactly what you’re looking for. A one-way ticket to doctor school.”

“It’s graduate school, dumbass.” We both laughed. Before I started fucking Bret, I never realized how much I liked our verbal sparring. Now it was our twisted version of foreplay. “And what do you know about romance novels?”

“That they’re complete bullshit.” Bret scoffed. I raised an eyebrow, and he knew exactly what I meant. “I was trying to date this girl. Not really my type—quiet, smart, and she loved to read. But she had the tightest little body. Great tits. Not as good as yours, but still amazing. She had these dark rimmed glasses. I loved those things. I don’t know why, but they turned me on. You should get a pair. Anyway, she read the dirtiest shit I’d ever seen. She’d highlight passages she wanted to try out, and have me read them. That part was hot. But the way the guys were portrayed? Come the fuck on. I’d punch those douchebags straight in the face if they were real.”

“It’s a fantasy.” Guys didn’t get it. If we made a movie out of the story and called it porn, they’d be too busy jerking off to care. Make them actually fill in the blanks on their own, and they got all bitchy about things. “Use your imagination. No one wants to read about their boring husband. That’s why the whole sex industry exists. To provide a service you can’t get in real life.”

“What are you looking for?” Bret’s tone changed, serious now. “You know, in a boyfriend?”

His question was completely sincere, and a total shock to the system. For all general purposes, he
was
my boyfriend right now, even though that could never be. I looked at the commuters in the other cars, as we crawled into New York State. I always thought people looked miserable when they drove. Wasn’t it supposed to be about the journey, and not the destination? Anyway.

“Someone who knows what he wants and isn’t afraid to do what it takes to get it. He’s got to keep me on my toes. And make me laugh. And do stupid girl shit with me.” I bit my lip, still staring out the window. I was describing Bret. We didn’t do stupid girl shit together, but he planted flowers and was willing to read romance novels. Even if it was just for the dirty parts. Close enough. “And the sex better be insane.”

“Right?” Bret chuckled. “Or else you’d have to keep reading those books.”

“They serve a very important function in American society. I’m sure they’ve saved a marriage or two. They saved my sanity after a semester of Anatomy and Physiology and research papers. What about you?”

Bret ran his tongue along the inside of his bottom lip as he thought about his answer. He didn’t look at me, but at the brake lights that glowed in the twilight in front of us. “Someone with amazing tits, as you know. But I could buy those for the right girl. It’s not a deal breaker. She can’t think I’m God’s gift to the earth, just because I play guitar in a band. I need a challenge. But I like it when she actually cares what I’m doing. That’s pretty huge.” He glanced over at me. “Someone I can’t stop thinking about. The reason I fucking wake up in the morning. That’s what I want.”

“That’s sweet.”

“Fuck you, Gem.” His hands curled tighter around the steering wheel.

“I’m being serious. It really is. You say you’re not a romantic, but I think you are.”

A blush crept up under Bret’s cheeks. I made Bret Starling blush. Too bad I couldn’t put that on Tumblr. Talk about scandalous. “Maybe I am. But a girl like that doesn’t want to put up with my shit,” he said.

“You’d be surprised.” I’d spent most of the summer with him, seen him in action when he didn’t know anyone was watching, had been alone with him and shared secrets that no one else knew about me, and he checked all my boxes. “You make the right girl happy, and she’ll move mountains for you.”

“Probably,” he mumbled. “But I’m having fun now. I’ll worry about that when I’m old.”

“You should be worrying about it now. The world is your oyster, and you’re pissing it away, fucking those groupies.” He put himself out there on every level, but he was afraid to let people see the real him. The one that cooked dinner for his stepmother every night, and took sailing lessons to honor the memory of his father. The one who touched me so tenderly in the middle of doing the filthiest things to me, it took my breath away.

Bret glared at me. “Who are you? My mother?” He slammed on the brakes, inches away the car in front of us.

“Watch where you’re going.” The staring contest was back on. “And why the hell are you taking the George Washington Bridge? We’ll be in traffic forever.”

“Now you’re a fucking traffic expert, too?” Bret turned back to the road when the car behind started honking frantically. Bret flipped the driver off. “You know everything. Don’t you,
doctor
?”

I should know better than to take anything Bret ever said to heart, but that stung. “I do know you should’ve gone around the city.”

Bret’s mouth was pressed in a hard, angry line. “This was a terrible idea.”

Why? Because we were stuck in traffic? No, there was more to it. Something really upset him, and it happened when we started talking about our perfect partners. He’d been in a great mood before that.
Don’t read more into this than it is
, I told myself.
It can’t ever be that, even if that’s what you want, too
. It wasn’t like we could talk about it. It wouldn’t make it better. In fact, it would do the opposite. I had a funny feeling I felt the same way he did.

“Fine,” I said. “Turn the car around, make a stop at the lawyer’s office, and I’ll have that money in the bank first thing in the morning.”

“Not a chance in Hell.”

“Are you sure? Because that’s where we’re going.” I smiled, hoping Bret would think the joke was funny and lighten the fuck up, but he didn’t even acknowledge me. “Listen, I’m sorry if I said something that upset you. Let’s just forget that whole conversation happened, and have a good time for the rest of this trip.”

We were in Hell, and damn, it was cold. I apologized to Bret. Again.

I could only see one side of his face, but the corner of his lip turned up. It was enough to make my pussy pulse. That no-good, fucking smirk. “A good time? Jersey’s not going to know what to do with itself once we leave,” he said.

“How about we start the party a little early?” I bit my lip and unhooked my seatbelt, as Bret glanced over to me. We needed to talk about this in the language we shared. I leaned over and considered my options. “Can you get your seat back a tiny bit and still drive?”

His mouth fell open. “Gemma.”

I unzipped his shorts and pulled out his cock. “What? You’ve never had a little road action before?” I pumped his shaft. Bret’s breathing changed. He pressed his lips together for a very different reason now, as he eased the seat back an inch. Just enough for me to get my face in his lap.

“I didn’t expect it from you.” He groaned, as I pulled on the ball of his piercing with my teeth.

I sunk my lips down the length of his shaft, and his hand fell into my hair. He twisted it, stroked it softly, and pulled it hard when I least expected it. I showed his cock the same mercy, going low and slow. Bret’s leg went back and forth against my shoulder between the brake and gas pedal, adding to my rhythm as the car inched forward. We would be stuck in traffic forever. I’d been caught in this nightmare more times than I could count, getting back into the city—until I learned to go other ways, but I wasn’t going to remind Bret of that. I wanted this to last.

I made sure to catch every single drop when he came, licking him clean while he moaned. Couldn’t have him checking into the hotel with cum stains on his shorts. Once I was happy with my work, I tucked his cock back into his shorts and carefully zipped them up. Dizzy from sitting up too fast, I wiped my mouth and leaned against the window. I wasn’t surprised it was a little fogged up.

“You said you wanted to fuck in the middle of Times Square. Close as we’re going to get tonight is the Cross Bronx Expressway,” I said.

Bret was trying to catch his breath, and we were still stuck in New York City.

“Get over the bridge, and I’ll do it again.”