Stepbrother WHOA! (The Stepbrother Romance Series #5) (2 page)

BOOK: Stepbrother WHOA! (The Stepbrother Romance Series #5)
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Chapter
Two

When we finally got to the mountain it was early
afternoon; I was confident—I’d been boarding for years, and I was looking
forward to Jaxon’s comments on how I could make some minor tweaks to make
myself even better. We went down a few passes together just to warm up and to
get into the zone, and I watched him; he was even better than I remembered,
landing clean and grabbing sick air. The first day of lessons would be a piece
of cake, I thought as we both slid to a halt at the bottom of the track.

“Okay, so I noticed that when you go into your
aerials, you’re not bringing your knees up enough,” Jaxon told me, going from
being the sweet, laughing guy I cared so much about to a serious critic in an
instant. He went on, finding something in seemingly every little thing I tried
to do that I could be doing better; I wasn’t coming out of my grabs fast
enough, I wasn’t timing my landing right, I was shifting my weight on the board
wrong for a particular jump. At first I felt myself going defensive; after all,
I was good enough to get second place in my division, wasn’t I? I had always
been good—I had broken bones and twisted ankles and sprained wrists, devoting
blood, sweat, and more than a few tears to the process of becoming the best
possible snowboarder I could be. Who was he to pick apart my tricks?

I fought him on it, trying not to pay attention to
his advice, to keep doing it my way for a few runs, just to prove how wrong he
was. When I nearly twisted my ankle coming out of an aerial combo, I recovered
and glided down to the end of the track, fully prepared for him to tell me “I
told you so.” I set my jaw, crossing my arms over my chest. For just a moment I
was on the verge of telling him to go to hell and to take me back to the dorms
or I’d find a cab and figure out a way to pay him myself.

“Mia, babe—you nearly had it that time,” Jaxon said
with a little smile. “Look, I know it’s weird to change up what feels
comfortable, but I really don’t want to see you get hurt just because you think
I’m being mean. Don’t push it so hard.” I frowned.

“It just seems like you’re saying I suck at
everything.” Jaxon shook his head, wrapping his arms around me tightly and
giving me a lingering kiss on the lips. I felt his hands wandering over
me—soothing with an undercurrent of lust between us—and I smiled in spite of
how irritated I felt.

“If you sucked at everything you wouldn’t be on the
team and you wouldn’t have placed second at that meet. I don’t think you suck,
I just think you’ve gotten into a few bad habits, and that if you changed them
a little tiny bit you’d be even better.” I wanted to stay mad at him; I wanted
to keep feeling offended that he wanted me to change up my whole method,
everything about the way I did things on the slopes.

But it was too easy to melt into him when he hugged
me, and way too easy to realize that he meant what he said; I wasn’t a bad
boarder and he wasn’t trying to say that I was. I was being defensive because I
was used to being great—I had to get used to the idea that he was better than
me, that
he knew more about it than me. I should be jumping
at the opportunity to improve instead of sulking when he pointed out what I was
doing wrong—it was the attitude I’d had about everything I’d ever done before.
It was tough coming from a guy I was attracted to and wanted to impress, but I
had to separate that out from the advice he was giving me.

I started to do things the way he suggested and
immediately I noticed the difference. By shifting my weight like he told me to
in a certain trick I didn’t have that panicked moment right before the landing
where I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to hit the slope clean. By bringing my knees
up just a little bit more I had more control of a jump. It wasn’t comfortable
right away, and I knew it would take lots of practice before I could do exactly
what he’d suggested, but I could feel how much more control I had over the
tricks just based off of the few suggestions he made.

We took turns watching each other go down the
slopes, riding down to keep pace, and I saw over and over again what a
phenomenal boarder Jaxon was. It was easy for me to see that snowboarding had
been the thing that had really taken him out of his bad days as a teenager;
that he had thrown himself totally into it. He had some natural ability, but
he’d also worked hard relentlessly to get to where he was. I realized that I’d
been coasting on the fact that I was something of a badass among my friends,
willing to try tricks that no one else did, working hard but more or less just
going for the flashiest things instead of actual technical skill. I had been
distracted at the tournament, but if I’d been working harder at perfecting my
tricks—if I’d worked as hard as Jaxon did, for example—being distracted
wouldn’t have mattered as much.

After all, based on how hot and heavy he’d come onto
me at the lodge afterward, it wasn’t hard to believe that Jaxon had been every
bit as distracted as I was, and he’d come home with the gold for that
tournament. He had every possibility of taking home the same first place prize
at the next meet; and I wanted to be right up there with him, getting my
picture snapped, getting attention from the people I admired most.

I started to relax and things got better and better.
Jaxon and I started to fool around, goofing off on our way down the slopes,
joking to each other. Jaxon’s advice was really starting to work, and I felt
more and more confident in my abilities. We kept going for it, shooting down
the slopes together, hitting aerials, trying more and more adventurous tricks
as we got sillier over the course of the afternoon. “We should really head
back,” Jaxon said. “I’m starved.”

I agreed. I was hungry—our lunch had been huge, but
hours of going down the slopes had burned all the calories I had eaten at the
taco place Jaxon and I had chosen. We loaded up our gear into Jaxon’s car;
before I could get into the passenger seat, Jaxon pushed me up against the door
and kissed me hungrily, his hands wandering over my body slowly. “Keep your
cool,
Jax
,” I murmured, chuckling lowly as he began
to nip at my neck. “We don’t want frostbite—at least I don’t.” Jaxon laughed
and kissed me once more before opening the door to let me in.

 

Chapter
Three

“So we’re going to keep things cool back at the
house, right?” Jaxon tweaked my braid playfully.

“Yeah,” I said, shrugging. We didn’t really talk
about it over dinner—we’d sort of danced around the issue. We both knew that
things would be complicated, but we were mostly just going to see how they
went. It was obvious that the guys in the frat knew that something had happened
between us; it wasn’t worth dealing with the drama to have to explain how it
had changed. If we just acted as normally as possible, it would be better all
around. We didn’t even come close to the subject of our parents.

Jaxon pulled away from me just a little bit, and we
both tried to compose ourselves as much as possible as we made our way towards
the front door of the Phi Kappa house. When we’d left earlier in the day, no
one had really been up—the party the night before across campus had apparently
been a
rager
. I giggled to myself at the thought of
putting one over on the guys I hung out with; it was petty, but there was a
thrill to the idea of having a secret relationship—at least one that was secret
from people other than our parents.
Just
keep it cool,
I told myself.

“Hey! We were wondering when you two lovebirds would
get back,” one of the brothers said as Jaxon and I walked into the frat house.
My face burned up with a blush.

“Lovebirds?” Jaxon snorted. Alex, coming through the
living room with a beer, laughed out loud.

“Dude, everyone knows.”

“Everyone knows what?” My voice went squeaky with
embarrassment—I hated it. I swallowed against the tight feeling in my throat.
One of the other brothers laughed.

“Everyone knows you guys hooked up last night.”
Jaxon and I stared at everyone around us in shock for a long moment. So much
for our idea of keeping it cool, keeping it secret from everyone.

Then Jaxon started to laugh. “Yeah, I should’ve
known someone would have seen.” The fact that everyone was so relaxed about it
made me feel a little
weirded
out at first; I mean, I
was friends with most of the guys in the frat—wouldn’t they treat me
differently for seeing Jaxon? But someone put a beer in my hand and asked for
my predictions about the game that night, and it was oddly just as it had
always been.

The guys talked about it, but not in the way that
they normally chattered about the girls they hooked up with; someone
complimented Jaxon on nabbing the one girl who “got it” and Peter collected
money from everyone else who had apparently been involved in a betting pool on
the subject of when Jaxon and I would finally get together. It was like
everyone had seen it coming but Jaxon and me; I wasn’t entirely sure how much I
liked it—but the guys knew us both so well.

While we sat around and hung out with the rest of
the boys, I realized that it was kind of obvious to anyone who had been paying
even the least bit of attention to Jaxon and me—the way that Jaxon had started
treating me differently months before, the way we avoided each other and then
started spending time together again, thick as thieves, acting like friends. I
could almost laugh at how oblivious I had been the whole time; after all, I’d
only just commented to Jaxon that morning that it seemed like the harder we
tried to stay apart the more we ended up throwing ourselves at each other.

The weirdest part of the situation was that everyone
seemed to be really okay with it. I wasn’t sure how much the other guys
knew—after all, I hadn’t said anything about Jaxon’s dad and my mom to anyone,
but Jaxon probably had told at least one of his friends in the frat about the
situation. I couldn’t really imagine him keeping it completely a secret, even
if I had more or less managed to. So it must have been common knowledge that we
were related by marriage; but no one treated it as weird, no one told us we
were freaks. Everyone just assumed that we would get together, and now they
were all relieved that it had finally happened.

Jaxon waylaid me as I went to the bathroom, pressing
me against the wall in the deserted hallway and kissing me. “It’s kind of weird
how okay they are with this, right?” he asked me. I nodded.

“Yeah, it’s pretty strange. But I guess we just go
with it? I mean—no one’s calling us sick freaks for banging each other.” Jaxon
laughed.

“I don’t know how many of them know about Dad and
your mom. But as long as no one thinks it’s disgusting, why not ride the wave?”
I shrugged.

“I was kind of excited about the idea of having a
secret relationship. Climbing the tree outside in the middle of the night to
sneak into your room. Ending up in the wrong room. Explaining why I’m sneaking
around to Jeremy or Johnny.” Jaxon laughed out loud.

“We can still do that, just, you know, everyone will
know you’re lying.”

“I guess we should just be happy that we can be
‘out’ or whatever.” Jaxon nodded.

“Never really a good idea to try and keep a secret
like that in a frat. It always falls to pieces.” Jaxon kissed me again.
“Besides, this way I can kiss you in front of everyone and show off how hot my
girlfriend is.”

We went back out into the living room where the
makeshift party was still going on. One of the guys asked a crude question
about my oral skills and I retorted that it wasn’t for no reason that I had
picked up French so well in high school. It was weirdly fun, and even more weirdly
comfortable, to be around people who knew that Jaxon and I were into each other
without making a big deal about it. Jaxon held my hand, or touched me, or
kissed me—nothing too aggressive, but enough to give me a tingle and to make me
hopeful for even
more later
.

It was so exciting—even more exciting in some ways
than our secret relationship might have been if we had been forced to keep it
that way. To know that everyone approved, that I didn’t have to torture myself
anymore, was such a great feeling that I thought I might explode from
happiness.

The night wore on and I got more and more used to
the attitude of acceptance that surrounded us. I went into the kitchen to get
myself another beer, and Jeremy pulled me aside. “Hey, Mia, I just wanted to
say I’m really happy for you.” I blushed a little bit—I remembered Jeremy
telling me weeks before that he didn’t know what was going on between Jaxon and
me, but that he wanted me to hang out with the guys anyway.

“You are?” Jeremy nodded, grinning. He shrugged.

“I mean, don’t take it like I care or anything, but
I couldn’t help noticing how miserable you’ve been.” I rolled my eyes.

“I haven’t been miserable.” Jeremy pinned me down
with a level stare.

“You were miserable. You were avoiding all of us at
one point, remember?” I laughed.

“Oh, right, that.”

“Well, you and Jaxon were both obviously miserable
without each other. Whatever else is going on, and whatever kind of craziness
you’ve got in your lives, it’s obvious you’re really into one another—so when
word got around that you guys had hooked up and were hanging out together, we
were all pretty relieved.”

BOOK: Stepbrother WHOA! (The Stepbrother Romance Series #5)
2.91Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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