Dirty Wicked Lust: A Stepbrother Romance (9 page)

He chuckled, another hit down and smoke curling lazily around his thick, luscious lips as he said, “Well, I
am
the older sibling, Heather.”

“You haven’t been acting like one, Ryan,” I growled.

“Who saved your ass last night?” he countered, wagging a fatherly finger. “Who needed saving from her big, bad brother?”

“Maybe I didn’t
want
to be saved,” I countered, so overcome by emotion that I blurted it out before I could help myself. “Maybe… maybe I just wanted you to notice me.”

His eyes focused for just a moment, the smoky haze seeming to clear as he nodded, gently, before shaking his head. “I noticed you, Heather. I wanted you. I… want… you. I just can’t have you, okay?”

I glanced around the room—dirty laundry in a heap, crushed beer cans on top of the desk in the corner, wilting sunlight streaming through half-open slats. “Fine,” I huffed, hating the shrill tone of my voice. “We can’t have each other. Great. Super. Got it. Understood. So what are you going to do instead? Lay in bed smoking weed and drinking beer all day?”

Ryan smiled, at last, charming as ever, crooked and sly. “Hell yeah,” he said, reaching for a half-empty beer as if I’d just reminded him. “I think I’ve earned it, don’t you?”

I nodded, giving him that much. “What about your dad’s strict ‘no drinking in the house’ policy?”

He shrugged. “What Dad doesn’t know won’t hurt him, will it?” His tone was threatening but his eyes too bleary and red to hold much menace. Either way, he was clearly over whatever we’d had – or hadn’t had. Whatever had taken hold of him last night – my little black dress, perhaps, or my small, wet tits or maybe just my sopping panties – had clearly passed. I knew where I wasn’t wanted, and for whatever reason, Ryan would rather make love to his precious joint than his wet and willing stepsister.

I thought I might be able to turn him around, especially once I smelled the waft of pot smoke and felt my hangover leave by degrees. I thought I could just twirl my robe sash, flash a little tit, and win him over, but clearly Ryan had a stronger force of will than I did. Either that or the pot had sapped his libido! Either way, it was clear that throwing myself at him was only accomplishing two things—humiliating me and pissing him off.

Neither one was getting me any action.

Turning on my heel, I left his room without another word – this time remembering to slam the door on my way out. Pausing in the hallway, my ear to the door, I heard Ryan’s mattress squeak with movement before he let out a long, low, mournful sigh.

Then again, that was probably just wishful thinking, too—he’d probably just taken another toke off his joint!

Chapter Eleven

“Cook him something.”

I rolled my eyes, the cigarette smoke swirling around my head as April leaned against the building beside me. It was another lazy mid-afternoon, our classes done for the day and another cigarette or two shared before we parted ways for the rest of the night.

“Who, Ryan?” I asked, April’s train of thought as chaotic as the constantly hazy wreath of smoke around her tom-boyishly cut hair.

She nodded. “I mean, if you want to make peace with him before your parents get back next week, make him a meal and talk it all over.”

“The fuck for?” I snorted, still stinging from Ryan’s blatant, flat-out rejection the morning after we’d almost gotten it on. Since then he’d grown even more petulant, more hermit-like, hiding out in his smoke-filled room all day and night, not even bothering to go out whoring at the after hours’ clubs. I wasn’t sure which I was madder about: Ryan rejecting life, or him rejecting me.

“Why do you hate him so much?” April asked, arching one jet black eyebrow as I squirmed beneath her laser-like gaze, waiting for her to figure out the obvious–and hoping for dear life that she wouldn’t. I hadn’t told April
everything
about Ryan–especially not the sordid details I still kept struggling with myself, but enough that she could tell there was some kind of friction between my stepbrother and me, sexual or otherwise.

“Who said I hated him?” I huffed, tamping out the half-burned cigarette in frustration. “I just… he’s kind of a dick, you know?”

April snorted, a plume of smoke streaming from each flared nostril. “That’s what a stepbrother’s supposed to be, Heather,” she explained, suddenly wise in the ways of extended families. “It’s their job to tease you, and your job to tease him. Don’t you know anything?”

I smiled knowingly to myself, hoping April wouldn’t notice. One thing I knew how to do, was tease Ryan. And vice versa. If only we could just ignore each other and go our separate ways, life would be so much easier – and my long, restless, horny nights so much more peaceful. And yet, despite the thigh clenching every time I saw—or thought of—Ryan, we couldn’t keep torturing ourselves like this. So if there was one thing April didn’t need to school me on, it was teasing my sexy stepbrother!

“Besides,” she added, apparently ignoring the sinful expression on my face as she peered down at her grubby sneakers. “I’m sure he complains to his buddies about what a bitch you are!”

We chuckled until I realized, from the minute I’d met him until just now, I’d never heard Ryan call a friend, talk about hanging out with friends, or even mention one – particularly from his days in the Marines. He was certainly popular with the ladies, my stepbrother, but what about the guys? Had he had enough male bonding in his tours overseas, or was he just a loner by nature? Was that why he was spurning me so easily? Or was it just… me?

“I’m not sure he has any buddies left around here,” I said, solemnly, as if a grim, dim light bulb had just gone off over my head. “All he does is hide out in his room, drinking and smoking pot.”

April’s eyes widened. “Forget cooking then,” she said definitively, patting me on the back as we both began the silent trudge to our cars. “Get him Chinese food. The smell of fresh pork lo mein and shrimp egg rolls will be enough to lure any stoner out of his man cave!”

She was right, actually. A few hours–and close to forty bucks–later, the table was set with a variety of takeout Chinese dishes. I didn’t know what Ryan liked, food wise– let alone Chinese food wise–so I just acted like it was my first time ordering takeout, going down the list of perennial favorites and checking off items one by one: egg foo young and steamed dumplings, wonton soup, even pork lo mein and shrimp egg rolls. It steamed on top of the dining room table, a room we rarely used for actual meals but the only one big enough to hold the spread I’d ordered for a chance to lure Ryan down out of his man cave with—

“What’s that smell?”

I smirked to myself, the sound of Ryan’s voice at my back causing me to turn around and find him standing there, leaning against the kitchen wall to the left of the fridge. He looked unkempt, but sexily so – clean but shaggy in long black track pants with a gray stripe up the side and a clingy gray T-shirt with “USMC” printed across the chest in black, block letters.

His hair had yet to grow out but looked adorable, slept on, to say nothing of the four days’ worth of stubble gracing his handsome face. He was waiting expectantly for an answer, and after making him wait just a little longer, I gave him one.

“A peace offering,” I said, grabbing two of the Chinese beers I’d picked up on the way home from school with my fake ID. “To make up for me being a drunken idiot, and to thank you for saving my ass the other night.”

He waved his hand and made a literal
peshaw
sound before sinking into a chair at the table, accepting one of the beers in my hand but putting it down on the placemat in front of him before actually taking a sip. I sat in the chair across from him, showered and fresh with my hair pulled back into a casual ponytail and wearing my favorite sundress and sandals. I’d worn makeup, but just enough to look freshly scrubbed instead of “hot to trot.” I wasn’t sure if Ryan was waiting for me to take a sip of his beer, or just shocked into submission by my sudden change of attitude–and fashion sense.

I’d put on music in the background. Jerry had set the wireless player to some subscription smooth jazz channel, and try as I might, I couldn’t figure out how to change it but turned down low enough. It made pleasant enough background noise. The dim lighting and jar candles flickering all around the living room, including on top of the dining room table, didn’t hurt, either. All in all, I’d done pretty good for whipping something up at the last minute. Now all I had to do was find something to say.

“Thanks,” Ryan said, raising his glass and nodding toward the spread. “I can’t remember the last time I ate.”

“I figured you were due a decent meal,” I said, handing him a paper plate and a pair of chopsticks.

“You were right,” he sighed, digging in with gusto as I sat back, sipping my beer and watching him as if studying a creature in a zoo. For so long I’d watched Ryan with the sole intention of seducing—or being seduced—by him. Now that I’d given up on that idea entirely, I could see him more as a person – not just a thing to possess or consume.

In the end, he was just a guy. Hungry, lonely, bored, restless, unsure of himself and where he fit in. He ate hungrily, but politely, never slurping or burping or scratching himself under the table, a far cry from the slouched, slacker, stoner boy I’d confronted in his room a few days earlier. He seemed uncertain, almost furtive, focusing on his meal and not his table partner, rarely looking up except to gauge his next bite from the sampling in front of him.

In between his larger portions I reached in with my own pair of chopsticks to grab the occasional dumpling or egg roll, snacking as he scarfed, nibbling as he munched. When he was done, Ryan pushed his plate away and burped, wiping his lips and tossing the crumpled napkins he’d amassed onto his clean–and I do mean clean– plate.

“My compliments to the chef,” he said, leaning back in his chair and patting his non-existent belly proudly. I tried to ignore it, having promised myself I’d behave and let my lips, and not my dirty mind, do the talking. It was hard, but somehow, I resisted temptation.

“I’ll tell him next time I’m at…” I paused, squinting through the room’s dim lighting at the name on the to-go containers. “General Chow’s Takeout Emporium.”

He chuckled, but I could see from the clarity in his eyes and the wry, crooked smile he wasn’t stoned. At least not to the point of frat boy asshole-dom like he’d been the other day.

“Seriously, though, Heather, thank you. I…” He paused, looking around the room as if seeing it for the first time, then back to me. “I guess I haven’t been taking such great care of myself lately.”

“Why?” I asked him, reaching for my beer and drawing my knees up under my chin to get more comfortable on the oversized dining room chair beneath me. It felt strange to be interested in Ryan for something other than his hot bod, but at the moment, I wanted an answer–a true, real, and honest answer. Something that might tell me more about my sexy stepbrother than his prowess in bed.

He shrugged. “I can’t explain it,” he said, avoiding my eyes but talking all the same. “Ever since I’ve been back, I just can’t get into the same gear as everyone else.”

I nodded, the constant smell of stank weed and stale beer oozing out of Ryan’s room a reminder that this was more than just a transition period. This was a funk, deeper and darker than it should have been, teetering on dangerous.

“But it’s more than that, right?” I asked knowingly, watching his eyes slowly meet mine as they widened with curiosity. “I mean, a lot of guys come home from overseas and have… dark thoughts. You know… you know what I’m talking about?”

I didn’t want Ryan to know I’d been Googling things like “post-traumatic stress disorder” and veteran’s rights to free, or at least cheap, mental health care. He nodded silently, full lips parted gently to speak before thinking better of it. Then he must have thought again. “I’ve had some dark thoughts, Heather,” he finally confessed.

“How dark?” I asked, knowing full well the suicide rate for returning vets from overseas, even if Ryan didn’t.

He smiled at last, weakly, but a smile nonetheless. “Not
that
dark, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he finally said, before taking a long, slow drag off his beer. “But I appreciate your concern just the same.”

“It’s what stepsisters are for, right?”

He nodded, smirking. “I doubt most stepsisters google PTSD to help out their older sibling, Heather.”

“How… how did you know?” I gasped, thinking I had been pretty secretive about my internet searches lately. Then I wondered what else Ryan might have found on my computer if he’d been snooping around, like all the Navy SEAL and soldier porn I’d been watching lately.

He held up a hand as if reading my mind. “Relax, Heather,” he insisted. “I was looking for you the other day and you’d left your laptop open to a story about post-traumatic stress disorder.”

From panic my thoughts turned to relief. “You… you went looking for me?” I asked, my heart growing warm as if someone had just turned on the defrost setting.

He shrugged, shoulders broad and arms at his side as he sank a little lower in his oversized chair. “I just wanted to talk.”

“About what, Ryan?”

He sighed heavily, looking down at the plate in front of him before peering back at me. “About the other night—”

“Whose dog tags are those?” I asked abruptly, interrupting him–with good reason. I’d finally laid our late night kiss to rest, body and soul. No longer did I toss and turn at night, sweltering and panty-less in my bed, fingering myself in the dark to finish off the wet dreams that woke me at random, late night hours. I’d given up on seducing Ryan, or even teasing him. The last thing I wanted now was to revisit what had happened between us, and why I’d started it in the first place.

This much I’d learned since that warm, sultry night—Ryan was my stepbrother, plain and simple. If we were going to live under the same roof, we had to make peace. Peace, I knew, came from understanding—that’s all I wanted from tonight’s dinner.

Nothing more, nothing less. I wanted to move forward, not backward. The sooner we left that wet, naked night behind us, the sooner we could get on with being eunuchs in our own house.