PLAYED - A BRITISH BAD BOY ROMANCE (69 page)

Morning
was… different.

Neither
of us had expected to pass out. I could tell that much from the way we were
still on top of the covers, the summer breeze licking our dried sweat. I turned
over beside Preston, making sure that what I’d dreamt of had actually been
real. There he was, flesh and blood and muscle beside me. It was strange, but I
didn’t know how to feel.

The
passion we’d succumbed to last night had been… intense. And it wasn’t like I
hadn’t enjoyed myself. But now, in the broad light of day, I couldn’t help but
feel a creeping sense of shame. I was waking up in bed next to my naked, spent
stepbrother. Who does that?

Swallowing
the conflict for now, I sat up and looked around, trying to find a clock that
could tell me the time. I’d have to settle for Preston’s cell phone instead,
but that was easier said than done when I had no idea where he’d put it.

I
crawled over his sleeping form, reached over the end of the bed, and searched
the pants he’d been wearing the night before. As I looked at the crumpled heap,
all I could think about was how he’d dropped them in the heat of the moment,
what it had felt like to endure his twisting, tantalizing tongue…

I
lifted his phone from his pocket. It was seven a.m. The morning light must have
woken us. At least we hadn’t slept the whole day.

Just
as I was raising back up, Preston asked me, “What are you doing?”

I
turned to look at him. He was awake, though he hadn’t yet moved. He was looking
at me strangely, probably in the same way I’d looked at him when I’d woken up
in his arms. Last night had been incredible, but it had happened under the
cover of darkness. Morning was an entirely different animal, and it seemed
neither of us knew precisely what to do with it.

I
decided to try to avoid it for now. “Your phone,” I told him, holding it up. “I
wanted to know what time it was.”

“It’s
ringing,” he told me, and I looked at it. Indeed, since I’d picked it up, his
phone had received a call.

It
wasn’t making any noise, though, and it wasn’t vibrating. I looked over at him.
“Do you want me to answer it?”

“No,”
he said. He sat up, and I watched his muscles coil under his skin like snakes
winding their way through the desert. “I’ll handle it.”

He
moved past me down to the foot of the bed, retrieving his Bluetooth earpiece
and pushing it in. He plucked his phone out of my hand, but didn’t look at me
as he answered the call. “Hello?”

He
was quiet for a moment, listening to the other end. I pulled some of the sheets
around me, shielding myself from his view, though he didn’t even bother to look
over. We had a lot to talk about, that was for sure, but it seemed like neither
of us felt like this was the time or the place. Not while he was on the phone,
at least.

“What
time?” he said, startling me from my thoughts. I tried to look at anything but
the planes of his muscles as he added, “Fine. We’ll be there.”

He
hung up the call and looked at me, taking his earpiece out again. “We’re having
dinner tonight,” he said.

I
frowned at him, watching as he got up off the bed and walked to the dresser for
a pair of underwear. “And why, pray tell, do you need your personal assistant
to come along? Is there a children’s hospital to tear down?”

“Maddy…”

“Or
maybe you could turn a city park into a landfill?”

“Maddy!”

“I’m
still angry with you Preston.” I said firmly.

“You
can stop now. Lets just say I’m having second thoughts about the whole homeless
shelter deal,” he replied.

“Because
I talked you out of it, or are you saying that because of what happened last
night?” I asked, almost wishing he wouldn’t answer.

Preston
didn’t answer, the silence biting as he was clearly trying to pick his words
carefully.

“Well
if it’s not some cutthroat business deal with one of your rotten clients,” I
asked, “what are we doing? Who’d want to have dinner with the both of us?”

Preston
slipped his boxer briefs over his legs, pulling them up and letting the
waistband snap around his hips. When he looked at me, the smile on his face was
strained. “Our parents.”

I
felt my stomach plummet to my feet. Never had two words devastated me in the
way that these had.

We
were so fucked.

My
father wasn’t the type of guy who’d just call up his son and his soon-to-be
stepdaughter and invite them over for dinner and drinks. Hell, my father wasn’t
the type of guy who did that for anyone but his favorite clients, and even that
was an awfully short list. If he wanted to see both me and Maddy, that meant
that something was wrong, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it had anything to
do with what we’d done last night.

But
that was crazy. He’d have no way of knowing that I slept with her. We’d been
completely alone. It wasn’t like he’d bug my office, or anything. Right?

My
father was a resourceful man, but as far as I knew, I’d given him no cause to
feel that drastic measure like that were necessary. Yet the fact remained: he
wanted something from both of us. If that wasn’t the reason, then what was?

“Maybe
it’s my mom,” Maddy said. She was still sitting on my bed, though she’d wrapped
herself in the sheets now to cover up. I guessed that in my own way, I was
doing the same thing. We were both distancing ourselves and we knew it, but
neither of us seemed ready to talk about why. “Maybe they want to go over the
wedding or honeymoon plans.”

I
felt my insides untwist a little. I nodded slowly. “That’s possible.” But the
wedding was months away. What could they possibly want to consult us about at
this stage?

Whatever
it was, I knew there was no avoiding it. Maddy and I would have to show up,
which meant that we were also going to have to discuss what had happened
between us last night.

I
looked over at her on my bed. God, she was beautiful. She had one of the most
incredible bodies I’d ever seen. She was naturally gorgeous, organic in ways
I’d not experienced in a woman… well, ever. All the girls I dated were always
plastic Barbie dolls shaped by the most skilled surgeons on the planet into the
ideal image men desired most. They were like modern art while Maddy was a
classic. Even the freckles across the bridge of her nose gave me the shivers.

And
yet she was my stepsister, or she would be soon enough. That meant she ought to
be off-limits. We’d already been playing the part of siblings… or had we? Had I
misread both our emotions all this time? Had my closeness to Maddy been fueled
not by familial affection, but by raw, primal, sexual attraction?

I’d
never felt this way about a woman before, so it was hard to tell. The only
thing I knew for sure was that I wanted her, no matter what. But if our parents
got married, that would be impossible, or at the very least something we’d
forever have to hide. What if she wanted a family? What if I did? Then where
would we be? Could I ask her to give up the future she deserved just to be with
me?

I
hesitated, rubbing the back of my neck as I stood before her in nothing but my
underwear. “You should get dressed,” I told her softly. I didn’t want to come
off cruel, but for the time being, I wasn’t sure what else I could say. “We’ve
got work to do before we head over there this evening.”

“Sure,”
Maddy said, though her voice sounded chilled and hollow. “I’ll get right on it,
Mr. Harvey.”

It
felt like a slap in the face, but at this point, I wasn’t completely sure that
I didn’t deserve it.

The
rest of the day passed by in total silence. Maddy busied herself with the tasks
that kept her far away from me, and I hid in my office trying to forget the
taste of my stepsister’s skin, the warmth of her as I sank in, the way she’d
gasped and moaned and writhed beneath my weight. Every time I blinked I saw a
flash of the way I’d slid my dick up to the hilt inside of her, and that only
made distracting myself from those thoughts a more arduous task than it had
been before.

When
she’d gone to lunch, I had tried a little self-soothing meditation, and when
that’d failed, I spent half an hour running hard on the treadmill in the corner
of my office. Nothing worked. All I could think about was her, and that was
making it hard to walk around without making that fact exceptionally obvious in
my dress slacks.

By
the time we had to leave for our family dinner, I was struggling to keep from
getting hard every time she walked in front of me. The rhythmic sway of her ass
sheathed only in the thin material of the skirt she’d picked up from her
apartment had me completely entranced.

I
opened the car door for her. When she swept under my arm with a soft, “Thanks,”
the scent of her perfume antagonized me. I couldn’t take it anymore.

With
a grunt, I grabbed Maddy by the arm and turned her, pinning her between my body
and the car. I searched her eyes and found only wanting there. Helplessly I
pressed my mouth against hers, ravaging her with my tongue, drawing her against
me by the small of her back.

Maddy
resisted only a moment. Then she moaned. She fit so perfectly in my arms, and I
never wanted to let her go.

“I
can’t do this,” I told her. “I can’t pretend like last night never happened. I
need you, Madison, and not in the way that a brother needs his sister.”

I
pressed my thrumming cock against her through her skirt. She gasped. I began
lifting up the hem, revealing the creamy white tops of her thighs inch by inch
until finally, I caught a glimpse of her underwear.

I
pulled my dick out and nestled it against her crotch. I felt my balls seize and
I snarled in her ear. “I could blow my load right here, Maddy. I could soak
these panties before dinner, and your mother and my father wouldn’t know a
thing. You’d spend the whole night with my cum staining your panties. That’s
what you do to me. You make me want to do the nastiest things to you.”

Maddy
shivered and looked up at me with hooded eyes. “Preston… Jesus, we can’t. What
we did last night was wrong. I wanted it… We wanted it… But you know it can’t
happen again.”

I pulled her panties open, letting the tip of
my dick violate the space between them and her sweet, soaking wet lips. I
thrust, overwhelmed by the sensation of being so near to her, of feeling my
bulging head slip around in her honeyed nectar. “It has to,” I whispered.
“Every time I look at you, all I want to do is get inside you again.”

I was so close. But Madison gently, yet
firmly took me by the wrist. I could see lust in her eyes, but there was
something else too. Maybe it was self-restraint, but it sure as hell looked
like regret.

“We can’t,” she repeated, and this time there
was no “maybe” in her tone. I withdrew and she let her fingers brush mine. “I’m
sorry, Preston, but think of what could happen if we got caught…”

I nodded. As frustrated as I was, she made
sense. But dammit, I didn’t want her to. All I wanted was to throw caution to
the wind and bury myself in my darling little stepsister.

She fixed her skirt as I stuffed my dick back
inside my pants. “Let’s hope there’s wine tonight,” I said as she slid into her
seat. “I think I’m going to need it.”

“You and me both,” Maddy agreed as I closed
her door.