Stepbrother Soldier: A Forbidden Military Romance Novel (3 page)

I was sobbing, too, I guess, or at least I was sobbing by the time
he’d rolled me over onto my back and grabbed my flailing hands, dragging them above
my head. He pinned me in place with his body, his strength stopping me from
further movement. His face was inches from mine. I do remember, vividly,
staring into his green eyes while gathering all the saliva in my mouth and
spitting it up onto his face. He barely flinched.

“Get the fuck off me, you pervert,” I said. “If
you ever fucking accuse me of…”

“Calm down, you little brat. I was just fucking with you,” he said,
pressing more weight down as I struggled. I could feel his chest rising and
falling with each breath, could smell his musky, masculine odor. My own heart
was racing.

“You weren’t. I saw your eyes in there. You’re fucked in the head,” I
retorted, still struggling but growing weaker each second. He was probably only
using about half his potential strength, but I saw him flinch slightly as I
wiggled underneath him. Then, I wasn’t sure what I felt, but it certainly
felt…big. I can’t say for sure, but I thought, at the time, that I could feel a
hard, long bulge against my bare thighs.

“Just be careful getting close with him,” Ashton said, his tone
suddenly changed along with the way he was looking at me. He didn’t have hate
in his eyes anymore. Just…pain. And maybe even worry.

Ashton raised himself off me with a grunt; I tried to glimpse at his
package, to see if I’d felt what I thought I’d felt, but before I could orient
myself or even really see straight, he was off again, walking away from my
prone body towards the open fields.

I watched him walk off, growing smaller and smaller as he approached
the never-approachable horizon. Finally, I stood and brushed myself off. There
wasn’t anything to do, nothing to say. He was gone. And I was alone in the
house with nothing but his words to think about as they rang in my ears.

I let myself in quietly, even though there was no one around. I
stopped and looked at myself in the hallway mirror. My tank top and shorts were
dirty, but that wasn’t what I was really looking at. I was looking at the way
the tank top hugged my slim torso, curving around my perky, B-cup breasts. I
looked at my shorts, wondering if they really were too short. They ended
mid-thigh but were tight, and my ass looked plump and round in the worn denim.

I was a little surprised, but not too surprised, when I looked up and
saw that my blue eyes were teary. It happened so often those days that I would
find myself crying without really even being aware it was happening that I had
accepted it as a normal part of my life without Mom. My long blonde hair was
matted from the scuffle outside.

I blushed as I remembered my foolish attempt to take Ashton down, to
fight him. He was so much stronger than me, what was I thinking? I couldn’t
compare to a normal guy my age, never mind a man with a military background. I
remembered, not really wanting to, the weight of his body on mine, pressing me
into the dirt.

That’s enough of that,
I thought, turning away from the mirror and
stepping up the stairs, still moving silently through the house. I wanted to be
a ghost at that moment. I wanted everyone, including myself, to forget I
existed. I buried myself in my bed, turned off all the lights, and didn’t think
of anything.

5

When the Admiral got home that night, I’d put the incident behind me –
mostly – and been working on my thesis. With nothing to do except think about
my mother, I was desperate to fill my time in the farmhouse, and I’d already
completed the first chapter. My mentor at school had circulated it to some
colleagues and written back with some suggestion and edits.

He had also written that the people he had showed it to had been
immensely impressed, and he said that my thesis was quickly becoming a topic of
some interest amongst the faculty. There had already been some discussion about
publishing potential. The praise felt good, and inspired me to work even
harder.

“Christy, do you want burgers?” The Admiral called up the stairs. I
hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I heard the word “burger” and my stomach
grumbled. That glass of milk in the morning had been the only thing in my
stomach all day, and I was starving.

“Yeah, gimme ten,” I called back. I put some finishing touches on the
work I was doing, making notes so I could easily pick up where I’d left off,
and rushed downstairs. I’d changed into sweatpants and a hoodie, deciding that
if there was one thing I was going to take away from my conversation with
Ashton, it would be the way I dressed around the house.

I’d successfully buried my confusion, anger, and mixed feelings about
the morning under work, but almost as soon as I pushed myself away from my desk
and headed downstairs I started getting a sick, sinking feeling in my stomach.

I tried not to think about the way Ashton had looked at me, the things
he’d said to me, the feeling of his body on mine, the hardness I thought I’d
felt in his pants. I wanted to just forget it all had happened. Soon, I hoped,
he’d be sent to wherever the army was sending him and I wouldn’t have to worry
about it. In the meantime, I just needed to keep my feelings in check. First,
though, I probably needed to figure out what my feelings were.

Because I knew what they should be: rage, disgust, hatred. And all
those things were there, at least a little bit. But there was also excitement,
confusion, and…something else. Something like a painful emptiness in my belly.

I shook my head, trying to physically remove the thoughts from my
brain, as I walked into the kitchen.

“Veggie?” I asked, picking up a foil-wrapped burger from the table
that was marked with a “V”. I’d been a vegetarian since I was ten. The Admiral
nodded, picking up one of the other burgers arrayed on the table. There were
two left. For, I assume, Ashton, wherever he was. I hadn’t heard him return
from his walk in the fields, but that didn’t mean much. He could have been in
his room for all I knew.

“I asked Ashton to have dinner with us one of these days,” I said,
settling down at the table. The Admiral cocked his eyebrows at me, seeming
unhappy. “He didn’t seem too eager.”

“You should have asked me first,” the Admiral said, frowning. He took
a huge bite of his burger. I felt a little disgust watching the juices run; the
sight of it never ceased to turn my stomach a little, but this time I was also
a little upset by what he’d said first.

“I should have asked you…if it was alright…to ask Ashton to dinner?” I
said, taking a bite of my own burger.

“He’s a very private man, Christy. He needs to be left alone. You
shouldn’t pressure him to spend time with you. It’s just who he is,” the
Admiral said. He ended the sentence with a tone that implied that he was also
ending the conversation.

“Well, I mean, he just seems…lost, in this house.
I thought…”

“Just trust me, Christy. Don’t try to talk to him again. He won’t
appreciate it,” the Admiral said, putting down his burger and fixing me in a
stare. He looked like a father reprimanding his daughter for asking to stay out
all night at a party. Except, of course, he wasn’t my father, he was my
stepfather, and I was about ten years too old to be told what to do. I mimicked
him, putting my own burger down.

“Well, I mean, he said some hurtful things, but
maybe he just needs…”

“Like what?”

“Nothing, nothing important, just hurtful, but I
mean…”

“You tell me what he said,” the Admiral demanded, dropping into his
military voice. I recognized it from the few times he’d actually tried to
discipline me. It was an intimidating voice, to be sure, but it didn’t
intimidate me.

“He just said some bad things about my mother,” I said, lying through
my teeth. I obviously wasn’t going to have a conversation with the Admiral
about how his son thought I was trying to screw him. I didn’t really know why
we were having the conversation at all; I regretted bringing up Ashton in the
first place.

When I looked back on it later, after dinner, I realized that I’d only
brought it up because I hoped the Admiral could help explain what had happened,
at least on Ashton’s end. I didn’t think he could explain why
I
was feeling the way I was feeling, but
he could possibly give me some clues as to Ashton’s motivations.

But now, he was acting like I was wrong to have even say “hi” to the
guy. I mean, what did he expect, for us all to live in the same house and
totally ignore each other? For the first time, I began to suspect that there
might be more going on than I knew about.

The Admiral’s bossy tone wasn’t sitting well with me, but I decided
not to let my claws out. It was, after all, still recently after my mother’s
death, and I knew he was trying to deal with it as much as I was, and lord
knows there had been things in the past month that I couldn’t believe I’d said,
done, or thought. Grief impacts us all in different ways. But the conversation
still inspired me to keep my eyes and ears open.

“I’ll talk to him. That’s not right. No son of mine is going to act
that way in my house. But, still, please, Christy, don’t try to talk to him
again. Trust me, he’ll come to you when he’s ready to make nice,” the Admiral
said with a sigh, picking up his burger again. We continued to eat in silence.
We’d eaten right out of the foil, so there were no dishes to do when we both
finished.

“Would you like to watch Walking Dead tonight?” The Admiral asked with
a slight smile. We both liked that show, and it was far enough removed from
anything political that we could watch it in peace. But that night I needed to
be alone, and I wanted to keep working. I’d been on a streak before dinner, and
now with some food fueling me I thought I didn’t want to give it up.

“I’m actually going to go back to work for the night,” I said,
returning his smile. The Admiral nodded and stretched, exaggerated.

“Don’t work too hard,” he said, rising from the table and striding
into the living room. I watched him as he left, thinking about the resemblance
between him and his son. They shared the same bright green eyes, and the
Admiral’s physique implied that at least some of Ashton’s physical attributes
were inherited rather than earned.

For an older guy, the Admiral was very attractive. Not to me, of
course, but I could see why my mother had been so gaga over him, and I thought
that if he ever decided to marry again, he wouldn’t have much trouble finding
someone.

That thought was like a dark cloud in my mind: I hated the idea of the
Admiral seeing someone new. Because I hated the idea that he could forget my
mother. I reprimanded myself for getting emotional about something that
certainly wasn’t happening yet, and might easily never happen. If, in five
years, the Admiral started dating again, I’m sure I would have been okay with
it. But in the immediate moment, the thought that he could even desire anyone
else disgusted me.

I shook my head, knowing that whatever the Admiral did really wasn’t
any of my business, and that I really had no reason to think he was putting
himself back on the market. Hurrying upstairs, I lost myself once more in the
beautiful routine of work and research.

The next two days, I saw neither hide nor hair of Ashton. I heard him,
in his room, in the bathroom, in the kitchen, but I never actually laid eyes on
him. He was back to being the ghost, slinking around in the shadows. I found
myself getting lost in time while looking at his pictures on the walls and
coffee tables. I’d just be sitting on the couch thinking and suddenly I’d find
myself with a photo of him on a snowboard in my hand. Thinking about him, about
his outburst the other day, about his body on mine…

I feel now would be the right time to tell you the extent of my
virginity. It was very…complete. I’d kissed boys, but that was it, pretty much.
Outside of some awkward, under-the-bra fumbling, I’d never been intimate with a
man. I never really even thought about it much. I’d learned the term “asexual”
in my dealings with the LGBT community and thought it applied to me extremely
well. I had the female equivalent of wet dreams sometimes, but during my waking
life I never had desires or felt my pulse racing or had any desire to touch
myself.

Looking at Ashton’s pictures made me feel…different. It made me feel
kind of lost, kind of confused, kind of excited. I found myself blushing a lot
more. After a while, if I let my mind wander enough, I’d find my flesh seemed
more sensitive. I could feel my body in my clothes. I started finding damp
spots on my panties.

It was all very new, and to be honest it was embarrassing and
uncomfortable. I mean, it would have been one thing if it was just some guy
from school, but my stepbrother? I mean, of all the people who
aren’t
supposed to turn you on,
“stepbrother” has to be in the top five.

But I wasn’t stupid. I knew that it was exactly what was happening. I
was getting hot and bothered over my super-military, super-secretive,
super-obnoxious stepbrother. The guy who had actually accused me of having a
thing with the Admiral. I didn’t want to admit any of that to myself, but I had
to. I had to admit it to myself in order to deal with it.

The problem was, even though I’d acknowledged the issue, I still had
no clue what to do about it. How do you stop being attracted to someone? I
tried playing mind games with myself where every time I thought of Ashton, I
thought of something disgusting, like vomit or spiders. It didn’t work. I tried
to make lists of his flaws. It didn’t work. I tried to write it out in a
journal. It didn’t work. Every night I’d lay in bed, praying for sleep and
thinking of him.

After doing some research online, I was even more confused than ever.
No one seemed to have a very good answer to my question: how do I stop wanting
to fuck my stepbrother? One blog I read suggested that I masturbate while
thinking of him to get it out of my system. That seemed like it would just lead
to more, but I was willing to give it a shot. I was willing to give
anything
a shot.

The only problem with that was that I’d never masturbated before. I
didn’t really know where anything was down there – I mean, of course I
knew,
but I didn’t know how to approach
any of it. I lay down in my bed on my back, letting my fingers run along my
torso and up to my small, bubbly breasts. I imagined my fingers were Ashton’s.
I imagined him above me, tracing my body.

It sent a shiver through me and I felt wetness developing between my
legs. Letting one hand rest on my breast, I slowly moved the other down to my
mound, parting the lips and feeling the slickness. I gasped as my body reacted
to the light touch, jumping as my finger found my clit for the first time.

I saw red as my fingers began to circle the nub, my body knowing what
to do even if my mind didn’t. While I gently toyed with my clit, I imagined
Ashton standing before me, naked and handsome and strong. I imagined his finger
where my finger was. I began to play with my breasts with my other hand,
enjoying their soft roundness, the way my nipples stood at attention as I let
my fingers graze them. It seemed to add warmth to the blood that was now
flowing quickly through my body.

I felt my body temperature rising, my blood pulsing, a hunger growing
inside me, a pressure starting to balloon in my pussy. My slit was dripping
now, and I used the juices to lubricate my finger as it traced my clit. I was
breathing shallowly, imagining Ashton’s hard cock at my entrance. I didn’t know
what it would feel like to have him enter me, but I knew I wanted it, knew
somewhere deep down in my bones that it would feel amazing.

I imagined him pushing slowly into me, imagined his hands at my
breasts, his green eyes looking down at me. It was those eyes that drove me
over the edge; I was rubbing my clit furiously at that point, feeling the
hunger grow uncontrollably until I felt like I was nothing
but
hunger, until my body was quaking with tension, my muscles
stretching and clenching as I panted, finger circling, circling, circling,
until finally the hunger exploded into a million shattering lights.