Stepbrother Commands (His Twisted Game, Book Seven) (2 page)

Finally his mouth met mine, our tongues
tangling together in a frenzy. He
kissed me until I was breathless, kissed me until my lips were swollen and my
chin was raw from brushing against his stubble.

“More,” I begged, trying to grind my
pelvis against his. But he stayed still
on top of me, teasing me, playing with my tits, kissing me, not taking it any
further. He was in charge, and he
was going to mess with me until I couldn’t take it anymore.

“More what?” he asked wickedly, his hands
wandering over my stomach.

“More of you.”

“I thought I told you I wanted you naked
at all times,” he growled, grabbing the drawstring of my pants and pulling it
back before letting it go so that the waistband snapped against my skin.

“You did.”

He slid his body down a bit until he got
to my stomach, then began kissing my abdomen as he pulled on my pants gently,
slipping them further, further down…

There was a knock on the door, hard and
insistent.

I began to sit up, panicked, yanking my
shirt down over my breasts.

“Relax,” Cole said, seemingly amused at
my reaction. “The door is locked.”

He grabbed my hips and yanked me back
down onto the couch. But the knock
came again, louder this time.

“Cole?” a voice called. “Cole? Are you there?”

It was a woman’s voice.

Lucy.

She knocked again, apparently not caring
that she was showing up here so early in the morning that it was practically
the middle of the night.

She’s
having trouble with the break-up.

I’m
going to get him back, no matter what it takes.

I gave Cole a pointed look, a
leave-her-out-there-or-else
kind of look. But he wasn’t even looking at me.

Instead he was standing up, crossing the
room to the door.

He flung it open and there she was, Lucy,
standing there in the tiniest little dress I’d ever seen. It was red and threaded through with
sparkly strands so that she seemed to shimmer when she walked. Her hair was tousled around her
shoulders sexily, like she’d been wearing it up and then just pulled her hair
tie out, letting her loose curls fall.

Her shoulders were covered with a faux
fur stole that was blinding white, a stark contrast to her dark red dress and
dark lips. Her eye makeup was
smudged sexily, like she’s spent the night out partying or making out with
someone in a corner of a club.

I hoped she’d been spending the night
making out with someone in a club. But from the way she was looking at Cole, I doubted she’d been making
out with anyone.

“Hey,” she said to Cole. She breezed into the room with a
certain familiarity, but she sounded tense and stressed.

When she saw me standing there, she
looked startled. But not in a bad
way – it was a genuine look of surprise, with nothing else underneath it,
no ulterior motive.

“Oh!” she said. “Avery, hi. I
didn’t realize you were here.” If
she was annoyed that she’d found me here with Cole, she didn’t show it.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m here.”

“I didn’t wake you guys up, did I?” She bit her bottom lip, and it turned
an even darker red than it already was.

“No,” Cole said. “What’s wrong?”

“I just…” She glanced at me, looked me up
and down, apparently trying to see if I could be trusted. Cole gave a slight nod of his head, like
it was okay.

I tried not to show my annoyance. Why was Lucy here, and why did she have
to act like her and Cole were this private little unit? It was irritating. I knew logically that I couldn’t really
blame her – she thought I was Cole’s stepsister, not his girlfriend. But
she
wasn’t Cole’s girlfriend either.

“I was just at Crave,” she said, naming
one of the hottest clubs in the city. “And we ran into Jeffrey and his friends.”

At the mention of Jeffrey’s name, the
hair on the back of my neck stood up, and goose bumps broke out on my arms.

This
is what girls like you do, this is your life now, baby.

“And?” Cole prompted.

“They were drunk, of course,” Lucy
said. “And doing blow right in
front of everyone.” She crossed
the room to the kitchen, her dress shimmering under the lights. She opened the refrigerator and pulled
a bottle of sparkling lemon water off the shelf, undid the cap and took a long
sip. Everything about her was tiny
and delicate, even the way she drank water.

Her nails were manicured in a red and
silver chevron pattern, and she played with the bottle cap, turning it over and
over between her fingers as she talked. “He started talking loud, you know, getting going like he does. And he said tomorrow there’s going to
be a huge announcement, that his app is going paid.”

I had no idea what she was talking about,
but I saw the change on Cole’s face. He went from listening intently to being concerned, a furrow appearing
in the middle of his forehead.

“Are you sure he was serious?” he asked.

“He sounded serious.” Lucy bit her bottom lip again, then
reached out and put her hand on Cole’s forearm, bare skin against bare skin. I
remembered the two of them, how they’d looked earlier at that photo shoot, his
arms wrapped around her slim waist, her head tilted back as she laughed. They looked like something out of a
fashion spread, and I felt jealousy, bright and green, flow hard through my
veins, so vehemently it felt like I was on fire.

“Fuck,” Cole swore under his breath.

Lucy’s hand was still on his arm, and
Cole didn’t make any move to pull away.

“Are you okay?” Lucy whispered, like she
didn’t want anyone to hear what she was saying. But it was more than that. It wasn’t that she was just trying to keep me from hearing
what they were saying. Her tone
sounded practiced, almost like she’d honed the perfect way to calm Cole down. She was standing so close to him that when
she tipped her head down, her long curls fell against his forearm.

I hovered in the background, feeling
completely out of place. I wasn’t
sure what they were talking about or what was going on. All I knew was that Lucy was the one
comforting the man I was falling in love with.

“I’m fine,” Cole said. He stood up and I watched as whatever
stress and tension had been on his face transformed into steely determination. “Thanks for telling me.”

“Of course,” Lucy said. She glanced over at me and gave me an
apologetic smile, like she was trying to tell me she was sorry for honing in on
my family time with my brother.

I wondered what she would think if she
knew what Cole and I had just done in that hot tub, how he had a picture of me
in his phone now with my face covered in his cum, how he’d been on top of me on
the couch just a moment ago, his cock hard as he sucked and played with my
tits.

I gave her a tight smile.

“Well, I should go,” she said
finally. She took her open bottle
of water and set it back in the fridge, like she was going to be back for it
later.

“I’ll walk you out,” Cole said. He was halfway out the door before he
stopped and came back into the room. He grabbed the papers he’d taken from Gordon’s office, shoved them into
his back pocket and then walked back toward Lucy.

The two of them disappeared through the
door of the suite.

As soon as they were gone, I crossed the
room to the kitchen, pulled Lucy’s bottle of water out of the refrigerator and
dropped it into the garbage.

Somehow, it made me feel better.

But only for a minute.

Because it soon became clear that Cole
wasn’t coming back.

Five minutes passed.

Then ten.

It should have taken him three minutes at
most to walk Lucy downstairs, maybe another minute to put her in a cab and send
her home.

Twenty minutes.

My mind started knotting up with jealousy
and theories, imagining the two of them talking it out, making up. His hands in
her hair, running over her body, which was tight and toned and everything mine
wasn’t.

She’s
having a hard time with the break up.

An hour later, just as I was about to go
completely insane, Cole finally returned.

He didn’t say anything, instead just crossed
over to the sitting area and picked up our plates of uneaten food. “Do you want any of this?” he barked.

My stomach rumbled. I was starving, but eating anything
right now seemed impossible. I
shook my head.

He dumped the food into the garbage.

“Is everything okay?” I asked quietly.

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“You were just… you were gone a long
time.” I twisted my hands in my
lap, hating that I felt this way, hating that I was jealous of my stepbrother’s
ex-fiancé.

He didn’t answer me.

“Is Lucy okay?”

“Yes.”

I was sick of the one-word answers, sick
of the way he would just shut down completely whenever I questioned him about
anything.

“Is that all you have to say?” I asked.

“Was there something else you wanted to
ask me?”

“Yeah, actually, there is,” I said,
starting to get angry now. I got
up from where I was sitting on the bed and crossed my arms over my chest, ready
to do battle. “What’s going on
with you and Lucy?”

“What’s going
on
with us?”

“Yes,” I said. “You were gone for an hour. Where were you?”

“I took her home.”

“You took her home?”

“Yes, Avery. I ordered her a car, and then I took it home with her. She wanted to talk.” He moved past me and began turning off
the lights in the suite, flipping switches one by one, causing darkness to
settle over the room in waves.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting ready for bed.”

“You’re going to sleep now?”

“Yes, Avery, I’m going to sleep now. In two hours I have to be at work. In two hours I have to deal with the
mess you created by meeting with Jeffrey Adams after I specifically told you
not to.”

My jaw dropped. “The mess
I
created?”

“Yes. How do you think Jeffrey knew we were planning to launch a
paid section for our app and then decided to do it before we could?”

My blood ran cold. “Because he got my phone and gained
access to your network.” It was a
statement, not a question.

Cole didn’t say anything. Instead, he disappeared into the
bathroom, pulling the curtain that encircled it, effectively shutting me
out.

I felt sick.

To think that I had anything to do with Cole’s
company being in trouble flooded me with guilt and regret.

I heard the sound of the water running,
and then a second later Cole came back out of the bathroom.

He was wearing just his boxers, his
muscular frame on display. I let
my eyes wander over his body, remembering how he’d been touching me just a
little while ago, the look in his eyes as his hands explored my body.

He got into bed, reached over and turned
off the light on the nightstand.

I hesitated for a moment then slid into
bed next to him.

I glanced over at him, but his back was
to me. I thought maybe he would
reach for me, that maybe he would pull me close and tell me it was okay, that
he didn’t blame me for what had happened.

I imagined him stripping me naked,
sliding his cock inside of me nice and slow, the way he’d done before when we
were lying in my old room in New Jersey. I hated that he was so hot and cold, hated that he wouldn’t let me in.

I tossed and turned, not able to get
comfortable.

The room felt too hot, like the heat had
been turned up high and wouldn’t shut off. I didn’t dare get up and check the thermostat. Instead I kicked the covers off, but it
didn’t help.

Finally I fell into a fitful sleep, the
kind of sleep that didn’t feel like real sleep, the kind of sleep that made you
feel as if you’d just opened your eyes no matter how long you’d been out.

When I woke, the clock next to the bed
said it was 8:07 am.

The blinds had been cracked and sunlight
streamed into the room in narrow strips.

I looked at the spot next to me on the
bed.

Cole was gone.

I laid there for a moment, not sure what to
do.

Did he expect me to go to work today? Was I fired? The room, which had felt like a burning furnace last night,
now felt cold. I grabbed the blankets
and wrapped them around my body in an effort to warm up as I tried to work out
what to do.

The room was eerily quiet. Last night it had seemed sophisticated
and modern, all clean lines and sleek furniture. But now it felt empty and still, the kind of room that
nobody really lived in, the kind of room you just came to when you had nowhere
else to go.