Shame: A Stepbrother Romance (21 page)

“So, that night… At the club?” I say indignantly, “It wasn’t a coincidence that you were there at the next table, was it? It wasn’t a coincidence you approached me out of all my friends?”

“No,” he answers after a pause that’s laden with his guilt. “Nothing was a coincidence, but Jo, you can’t think like that. Let me tell you the rest of the story and you can make up your mind then. I swear I’ll be done in a couple of minutes.”

I don’t say anything. My mind is back at Ashleigh’s bachelorette party, my head in Andrew’s lap, his erection rubbing against my cheek, and it hurts like hell. What I’d taken as my drunk recklessness, as my one moment of being wild, has been carefully engineered by him and this Chloe.

It finally downs on me who Chloe is. The mysterious woman he’s been getting all those calls from and whom he’s been meeting with was not his girlfriend or an ex. It was his other step-sister. His
ex
-step-sister.

He takes my silence as a sign to carry on and he does.

“I made you trust me and I can’t tell you how hard it is for me to think back to my behavior then. I hate myself, Jo. I hate myself for letting you think I was this friendly, all-changed step-brother who you could take with you to that wedding and trust not to make a fool out of you.”

“I’d booked the room in advance and I’d set up the camera before we went up there. I knew it would be easy to make you sleep with me one more time. I was cocky enough to realize my influence over women and it had happened once in the club already…”

His lips are now trembling and his face is contorted with self-hatred. Even in my resentment I can see he is suffering through every word that spills forward.

“I’d done my part and now it was Chloe’s turn to take the recording, fix it and slip it anonymously to the media. I asked her to wait, trying to convince her that the moment wasn’t right. I’d already started to fall for you, Jo, and I was afraid of what I was feeling. It was stronger and more empowering than every ounce of hatred I ever felt towards my father.”

“Then we started seeing each other and I knew I was slipping. I realized I was setting myself up to no good, but what we had together, those couple of months were the first time in my whole life when I felt at peace. I felt optimism and the completely foreign feeling of caring for someone else other than myself.”

“It was getting harder and harder to keep Chloe from releasing the video and going through with our initial plan. I tried to stop her, but the moment she started suspecting there’s something between you and me, she saw herself threatened. All of her efforts had been good for nothing and she would be no richer than before she’d contacted me.”

“But I couldn’t stop. I realized I love you, Jo, and I wanted to spend my every minute with you. Even when we weren’t together, all I could think about was when I’d see you next and what I could do to surprise you and make you happy, hear you laugh…”

“Stop!” I call out in despair. My heart has started to race inside my chest once again and I can’t keep it together any more. I burst into tears, wild, noisy, unrestrained tears that shake my whole body and I can hardly draw a breath.

Andrew jumps off his seat immediately and I can’t stop him before he is next to me, scooping me up from the couch and holding me in a tight embrace against his chest. He kisses my hair and my wet cheeks and before I know it, his lips are on mine and we are locked in a hungry, desperate kiss. I’m not thinking. The only thing that exists is our burning lips searching each other and the thrashing tongues that can’t get enough of the other’s taste.

“She did it, Jo,” he says at last after we’ve parted, but I’m still pressed to him, feeling his heartbeat through his radiating warmth chest. “It’s my fault I couldn’t stop her and I couldn’t protect you. If only I could go back… If only I’d known you’d be so… so perfect…”

“Stop,” I say again, but this time quietly, peacefully.

“I tried to call so many times,” he says as if he hasn’t heard me begging, “I waited outside your door on the off-chance that I’d catch a glimpse of you, my sweet Jo. I couldn’t let myself fuck up the only good thing that’s ever happened to me. I even followed you around. I followed you to that place, to the clinic…”

“Stop it, Andrew!” I say firmly and seeing that he can’t calm down before he’s let it all out, I do the only thing I can think of to shut him up.

I reach up and kiss him deeply again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

What is it about that kiss that takes away all the feelings of nausea, insecurity, resentment and fear? Andrew’s lips are so hot and alive over mine that the warmth I feel radiating from him soon spreads from our mouths to my chest and further down and out until my every fiber tingles with electricity.

His hand travels down my cheek and his fingers linger over my jawline, tracing a line up to my ear and down my neck. He’s barely touching me with his fingertips and yet I shiver in his arms, recoiling from the strong sensation and yet I’m impatient to feel more of it.

The way I’m sitting in his lap, I can feel his desire for me grow and push into my hip and my own body responds with a sweet twitch between my legs. There is still time to push him away, to stop this madness. I haven’t reached the point of no return yet, but when I inhale his musky scent, my need intensifies and I tell myself, “
Just a bit more. Just a little bit more.
”

My own hand moves over to the back of his neck and slowly descends to the solid ripples of his muscular back. We are both touching each other so lightly that it feels like we are both afraid that a heavier touch would ruin the heady magic of the moment.

Andrew is the one to pull away first and I can physically sense the emptiness that comes with parting our lips. He hasn’t reconsidered. The flames in his smoldering eyes when he looks at me tell me that it’s only out of consideration for me that he hasn’t ravaged my body already.

He doesn’t wait too long to make sure I want this. Instead, he picks me up and we both stand up to our feet. I put my flat palm up on his chest and look up at him, searching for those intoxicating lips again, but he flips me around and presses my back along the length of his body, clasping my waist with one hand and my breasts with the other.

His burning breath is now on my neck and he sucks on my earlobe, quickly moving down to the sensitive skin underneath. I feel his teeth dig in the soft spot and I almost jump, electrified. He holds me even more tightly with both his arms as I whimper and squirm in his firm grip. His hardness is rubbing over the small of my back and I can’t wait to feel him, to hold him in my mouth.

This is the moment when I push away all thoughts and my clothes feel like a hindrance. I want to be out of their confines and feel the skin on skin sensation, which alone can drive me over the edge. It seems he knows what I want faster than I take to realize it, for he is already peeling layers of clothing off me, not taking any care to keep clasps and buttons intact, but instead ripping everything off in his impatience to get to the real me.

“Don’t turn around,” he whispers and it’s a torture, because that’s what I want to do most of all right now—see his face and his thick, straight, beautiful cock, which I only feel poke at me from behind. He’s out of his own clothes soon and his fingers start dancing over my stiff, scrunched up nipples, while his tongue is teasing my back, making me shudder with want.

I’m so ready for him with the wetness spreading between my legs and smoothing the way for him, but he is taking his time, lowering himself down on his knees and grabbing my hipbones. My nipples itch for more stimulation, but then I completely forget about it as soon as he grabs the cheeks of my ass and parts them, running a moist tongue down between them. I moan and my legs tremble. If he wasn’t holding me tightly as he keeps licking my anus, I’d have crumbled to the floor with the sudden sweet weakness that has possessed me.

I arch my back to give him even more access, my slick pussy aching for him, and I don’t even realize I’m pushing my ass against his face as he hungrily twirls his tongue, driving me insane. In the next moment, he flips me around so my twitching, pumped-up with blood pussy is right in front of him. I only manage to bury my fingers in his hair before he plunges his tongue in my wet slit, parting the plump lips and taking my pulsing clit in his mouth.

I bend my head back and release a long sigh of pleasure. My fingers keep holding on to his hair as I can hardly rely on my legs now. My knees are weak and it if wasn’t for Andrew to keep me upright with his hands digging into my ass, I’d have melted already. I know if he keeps doing this, I’ll come all over his mouth as my hips have already started bucking forward impatiently.

“Please, Andrew,” I manage to utter hoarsely, “Oh, God, please. I’m gonna come…”

“No,” he says, coming up for air, “No, you aren’t. I’m not anywhere finished with you.”

He stands up and takes me by the hair, bunching it up around his fist. The tugging pain feels like electric currents running through me and my mind short-circuits completely. I’m no longer thinking or wondering or questioning. I’ve completely surrendered to the raw urges of my body as he takes me over to the armchair and pushes me down to sit, while at the same time directing his painfully erect cock into my mouth, not letting go of my hair for even a moment.

I finally feel the salty taste of precome on my lips and the velvety tip of his cock sliding along my tongue. I immediately lock my lips around him and before I have the chance to start moving them up and down his rock-hard shaft, he takes charge and begins fucking my mouth, frantically pushing my head forward. Tears of strain emerge along my eyelids and I’m barely sustaining my breathing through the muffled moans that escape my nostrils.

His groans are echoing around the small apartment and I look up at him as he keeps reaming my mouth only to see his eyes tightly closed and the physical pleasure written all over his contorted features. Just the thought that I’m the reason his body pulses with the approaching ecstasy makes me all hot again and I start sliding my butt back and forth over the arm rest, trying to scratch the unbearable itch in my convulsing pussy.

A harder thrust that he seems unable to control sends me flying back and I land down on the armchair cushion. With a primal glint in his eyes, Andrew grabs my extended legs and swings them around and over his shoulders and finally enters me in an unrestrained, wild plunge forward. I can feel his cock throbbing inside me and beg him to fuck me.

There’s nothing gentle or delicate about what follows next. He is an animal, a hungry beast let loose as he fucks me harder and deeper than ever before. I grab his small, tight ass and hold on to it as he shoves his cock inside me with such force, I scream with a mix of pleasure and sweet pain. I know he is close and the thought is enough to bring me to the brink of my own culmination.

Another ripping thrust and we are both screaming wildly in the grips of a blinding orgasm that shakes me to my core. I can’t breathe. I don’t want to ever let this feeling go as I press my body to him and we brave together the overwhelming waves of complete ecstasy that rock us again and again.

“So, you’ve forgiven me then,” Andrew says with a smug smile as he uncovers one of my breasts from under the blanket we’ve covered ourselves with on the couch and lowers himself to tease the soft, rosy nipple with the tip of his tongue.

I’m completely numb with exhaustion and still I shiver at the new sweet, pinching sensation.

“Not yet,” I say, smiling, and smack him lightly. His head moves up and he kisses me slowly on the mouth, sucking my bottom lip and biting it lightly. I give in once again though reality has started settling in little by little and I’ve begun to realize that our undeniable physical attraction cannot possibly be a basis for forgiveness.

“I meant every word I said, Jo,” he says seriously, “And if you want me to spend the rest of my life trying to prove to you how much I love you and how sorry I am for causing you all that pain, I’ll do that.”

“Well, you might need to, seeing that you are my step-brother and we might have to see each other a few more times…”

“That’s not what I meant,” he says quietly, waving off my attempt to turn the situation into a joke. “I know it will take time before things go back to the way they were, but I want you to know I’m not going anywhere. I know how I feel and I know I can’t be away from you unless you want me to be.”

“What are we going to tell our parents?” I say, knowing fully well that I couldn’t be apart from him again, even if it takes us years to build the trust he managed to ruin in only a few days.

“You leave this to me. It’s my turn to make an ass of myself in front of my father. You’ve paid your dues many times over. If there’s any more shame to be taken on, I’m taking it, okay? All I want you to think about now is that you and the baby are well and we’ll take everything else one step at a time.”

I had almost forgotten about the baby. Andrew hasn’t. He flips open the blanket and I suddenly feel shy in my complete nakedness when only a moment ago I had bared all of myself to him without even a passing thought of shame.

He gently places his head over my stomach and rubs it lightly with his warm hand.

“I still can’t believe our baby girl is in there…” he says and I flinch.