ROUGH RIDER (54 page)

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.

W
e
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.

I
t
was so strange not having
Preston’s driver take us to our parents’ house. For the most part, he took us everywhere, and I’d grown accustomed to sitting in the back with my stepbrother and sipping sparkling water or sometimes champagne as Mr. Fletcher whisked us to our destination. Somehow sitting in the front seat with Preston felt more intimate to me, almost like we were a couple.

I looked over at him as the sunset painted his handsome face with warm, Technicolor hues. I wondered if, had circumstances not been what they were, I could have been with him. We probably never would have even met, had it not been for my mom, but if we had…

My heart threatened to break as I realized that I really could see myself with this man. We were like Romeo and Juliet, if they’d been practically related instead of just from warring households.

Yet our progression toward our parents’ home felt like an oncoming war. It would be a battle, certainly. My mother would see to that. One way or another, she would find fault. I almost wished I could tell her Preston and I had slept together. The look on her face might have been well worth it.

“I’m sorry,” Preston said beside me. I looked over and saw his lips drawn into a grim line. “If I crossed a line back there.”

I shook my head, resisting the urge to place my hand on top of his. “We both did,” I told him. And if I was being honest with myself, I wished we could again.

As we pulled up to the gate in front of Preston’s father’s house, I stared up at the magnificent estate looming just beyond. Preston’s grandfather had custom built it right after World War II as a present to his wife. I couldn’t imagine gifting someone an entire mansion, but life was different for people like the Harveys, even in those days.

I’d been here before, yet I still felt distant, like this place wasn’t really meant for me. Being at Preston’s side made me feel a little better, but knowing that I’d have to contend with my mother soon kept the hairs on my nape raised, regardless.

“Are you ready?” he asked me as we stood just outside the massive front doors. They reminded me a lot of the ones outside his office-slash-second-home.

“As I’ll ever be,” I affirmed, taking a deep breath before Preston reached up and knocked heavily on the door.

I heard the sound of heels clattering across marble, and a moment later, my mother’s face appeared as she pulled one of the doors wide to greet us.

“Well, Maddy, you’ve managed to get here on time. You must be growing up.” I bristled as she turned her gaze on Preston. “It was so kind of you to bring her. You must be exerting a positive influence.”

He smiled tersely. “Good evening, Vivian,” he said. It was obvious from his tone that he was trying to remind her to show some goddamn manners.

But my mother didn’t take the hint. Her diamond earrings sparkled in the fading light as she turned back to me. “It was nice of Preston to take pity on you like this. I hope you’ve thanked him.”

“Oh, trust me,” I said, fixing a grin on my face, “I most certainly have.” Preston nearly giggled at that. I thought his eyes were going to bulge right out of their sockets.

“Well, come in,” she sighed, as though burdened by my mere presence. She’d been doing a lot of that lately since she and Preston’s father had announced they were getting hitched. “Dinner’s almost ready. I really have no idea what takes this damn cook so long just to prepare a meal. It’s not like we expect her to catch and kill the chickens herself, or anything…”

She walked toward the formal dining room while we let ourselves in. As he closed the door behind us, Preston raised an eyebrow at me and said, “I thought you were ashamed of what we’d done?”

I shrugged. “If anything will get me through this evening, Preston, it will be the knowledge that if my mother ever found out about us, she’d have a stroke right there in her French onion soup.”

This time, both of my stepbrother’s eyebrows raised. “Does that mean there
is
an ‘us?’ ”

“Let’s just get dinner over and done with,” I suggested, trying desperately to weasel out of having to answer. “If we survive, then we can have that talk.”

“Your wish is my command,” Preston replied, escorting me to the dining room where our parents were waiting. I bet he said that to every single girl he wanted to fuck…

The table was set with the kind of care and exactness that almost seemed compulsive. Preston was nice enough to pull out a chair for me, but as I sat down, I couldn’t even figure out where to put my hands. I didn’t want to ruin the delicate flower that had been somehow magically crafted from an ordinary cloth napkin, and God help me if I moved one of the pieces of silverware. They were placed at an exact distance from the edge of the table, each one gleaming as if it had never been used…

And knowing where I was, it probably hadn’t.

Despite my discomfort, I did my best to settle in as I pondered the need for two different forks. Food appeared in front of me almost as if by magic, flown to my table by a man in the cleanest pair of white gloves I’d ever seen in my life. The plate was a work of art. It would be a shame to tear it apart, but I was willing to face the peril. My momentary bliss was only broken as my mother spoke up.

“So, Preston, how is Madison working out for you?”

I rolled my eyes as my mother glanced at Preston over the rim of her wine glass. I knew what she was trying to do. She was hoping for some hesitation on Preston’s part, some sign that I wasn’t very good at my job.

I had no clue what my mother had against me, but whatever it was, she loved to take me down a peg at every opportunity.

But Preston didn’t hesitate. “She’s wonderful, really,” he answered as he cut his meat. We were having some kind of chicken stuffed with dates and herbs. “Best PA I’ve ever had.”

“Better than that Jane girl?” his father asked. “I thought she was working out rather nicely. It seemed to me that the two of you were… close.”

I looked at Mr. Harvey across the table. He was damn near the spitting image of his son, though with a touch of steel at his temples that made him seem more distinguished and intimidating. He had hawkish, amber-colored eyes that never left his son’s for one moment as he grilled him about his ex-assistant, and probably ex-girlfriend.

Preston and I hadn’t discussed Jane much in the wake of my arrival. I had a pretty good idea of what had been going on between them, but ultimately, it was none of my business. We’d not seen hide nor hair of her since the day she got fired, and neither of us had thought to bring her up.

But now I understood why Preston had entertained her for so long. Whether or not he was willing to admit it, I got the distinct impression that gaining his father’s approval was something he cared about very much despite how much he hated him. Families were complicated like that, I supposed.

He answered, “It didn’t work out,” and tried to leave it at that, but Mr. Harvey wasn’t having it.

“I can’t see why. Jane was a good match for you. When she was still around you very clearly worked harder than you ever have. She certainly seemed competent enough to me.”

“Well, then I suppose you didn’t really know her,” Preston snapped, taking a long draught of his wine. As usual, things were dematerializing pretty quickly between all of us, maybe even more so since Preston hadn’t shown up drunk this time. I cleared my throat and interrupted their talk of all things Jane with what seemed like a reasonable question.

“Was there something you wanted to talk to us about this evening?”

Mr. Harvey didn’t answer right away. He glanced from me to my mother, then back to Preston. For a moment, I was sure he knew about us, about what we had done. Just as the knot in my stomach grew too heavy to hold down anymore, he spoke.

“I heard about the Verger deal.”

I let out a long breath into my glass as I drank, swallowing both the red wine and the bile that had risen into my throat. I had to stop being so on edge. There was absolutely no way either of our parents could know what had happened, or might what continuing happening between Preston and I.

Was I really considering this? Was I really giving serious thought to continuing my affair with my soon-to-be stepbrother?

The mention of the Verger deal made me question myself even more. That was the client Preston had been on the phone with last night, the one who wanted to tear down a homeless shelter to put in a luxury condo development. It was infuriating. It was absurd. It was unethical. And yet Preston’s father seemed almost proud of him for it. I wondered how proud he would be when Preston called the whole thing off.

“I take it you want this to happen?” Preston said. He tried to play it cool, but I could hear the note of anticipation in his voice clear as a bell.

Mr. Harvey nodded, leaning back in his chair. “I’ll be honest, Preston: I wasn’t sure you’d have it in you to make a bold move like that, especially without Jane around to give you a little shove in the right direction. I thought maybe you’d gone soft on me. Not everyone in your position would have the stones.” He chuckled softly. “They’d be too afraid of going to hell.”

I couldn’t help but scowl. It twisted across my face before I could stop it.

“Rightfully so,” I muttered, knowing well the magnitude of the argument I was about to start. “It’s disgusting. You’re talking about taking the one safe haven these homeless people have and replacing it with a glorified apartment building for the wealthy. You ought to be ashamed.”

Mr. Harvey seemed taken aback at my little outburst, as if he wanted to reach across the table and smack me for speaking out of turn and beyond my station, but before he could say a word, my mother stepped in.

“Oh, Madison,” she sighed, amused by what she might call my “misguided pluck.” I watched her nine-carat engagement ring glitter under the prismatic spray of the chandelier above our heads. “You can’t possibly think we’re responsible for their misfortune. It’s not our fault they’re homeless.”

I met her gaze first, then Preston’s. “It is now,” I said.

Though I doubted it would make any difference, for once, nobody argued with me. The elder Harvey just smirked as he chewed on a bite of his disgustingly beautiful food while holding a silver fork that was probably worth more money than one of those poor homeless people would come by all year…