Stepbrother Inked(14)

"You're wrong," I growled quietly back at her, my eyes never leaving my  stepbrother's. "He's not Satan, he's an incubus. He probably feeds off  of all the skanks he brings home." I knew I was being a brat, and a  little sexist, too. If the girls Flor brought home were 'skanks', then  so was he. A scumbag. A whore. A  …  a  …  I sighed and tried to bite back  my anger.

Rhonda was smiling, holding onto Flor's arm with her bubblegum pink  nails. Her big blonde hair was fluffy and perfect, styled like some sort  of beauty queen, and her mouth was full and slathered in red lipstick. I  noticed that, despite her over the top makeup, her buxom body was  swathed in a pale green dress the color of lichen, earthy but  flattering. It was totally at odds with her face and earrings, her sharp  brows and sultry smile. Trying to make a good impression on her  boyfriend's parents? His parents. My parents. See, that was the problem.  I could never go and meet Flor's parents because well, they were mine,  too.                       
       
           



       

Everything felt so hopeless that I just wanted to scream.

River took Rhonda's arm, promising to give her a tour of the house and pulled her away, towards the dining room.

"How ya doin' dope?" Flor asked, moving up to stand in front of Addi and  me. He tucked his fingers into his tight jeans, his bright eyes cutting  me into a million pieces and his smell  …  Jesus. I wanted nothing more  than to reach out, curl my fingers in the black fabric of his hoodie and  pull him close, smell his sweet, spicy scent, have him kiss my hair.

"Don't call her that, asswipe," Addi said, in full defensive mode. Flor  raised his pierced brow at her, shrugged and nodded his chin at me.

"How's that tattoo? Mind if I take a look at it?" One hand slid out of  his pockets and curled around the waistband of my jeans, pulling me  close before I could protest. My breath slid from my mouth in a hiss and  I could practically hear Addi scowling behind me. "I like the color in  your hair, Abs," he said, reaching down to unbutton my pants.

Holy crap.

My hormones spun into overdrive, heating me up, making me hurt. I wanted  him so bad, could practically feel Flor filling me up, taking me right  here, against the wall and not giving a shit who saw. Rhonda could go  fuck herself.

"Do you have any sense of propriety?" Addi said, grabbing his arm and  keeping him from his task of unzipping me. "We're standing in your  parents' house with your freaking girlfriend. Hands off, you dick."

Good thing I had Addison there because my mind just flat out refused to  work right in Florian's presence. I pretended to be mad at him, fixing  my jeans and stepping back, but my hands were shaking as I did it. I was  so turned on, it wasn't right. And just before family dinner, too. Fun.  I could sit across from my dad with a throbbing pulse cursing me from  between my thighs.

"What's the matter, Addi? I can't check my little sister's tattoo? I  don't see anything wrong with that." His face was perfectly stoic as he  said that, still and calm like he really meant the words that were  coming out of his mouth. "It's not like there is or could ever be  anything between us." That sentence tore from his lips in a rush,  completely at odds with how he'd just sounded.

Both Addi and I watched in stunned silence as he suddenly stormed off  towards the dining room, leaving the two of us gaping at one another.

"What was that?" Addi asked, turning to look at me with both brows  raised. I had no clue, no freaking clue. I shrugged at my friend and we  followed after Flor, finding him standing in the recently redone kitchen  that my stepmother was so proud of. Marble countertops, Shaker  cabinets, built-in appliances like a fridge that I still could never  find when I was going through the cabinets. I thought it was sterile and  impersonal, but River loved it, so I pretended to love it, too.

"It's so nice to finally meet one of Florian's girlfriends," my dad said  while Rhonda smiled away and watched Florian from across the room with a  glint in her eye, like she was fully aware that she'd managed to do the  impossible by catching a guy like him. I slumped against the cabinets  while my dad and River chattered and touched Rhonda's arms, encouraging  her to eat one of the fifty freaking hors d'oeuvres that my stepmother  always made. Trays and platters and bowls lay in perfect order on the  white marble, filled with things I couldn't even pronounce.

Flor glanced over at me and I caught his eye, wondering what the hell  was going through that thick skull of his tonight. He brought a girl  home and yet he was acting like it was no big deal. He wasn't even  talking to her. I watched as Addi made her way over to the counter and  started picking at something that looked like a miniature croissant.

"What do you think?" Flor asked, slumping against the cabinets next to  me. Close but not close enough to touch, just like he'd done after that  fateful kiss. Before that, it had never been a big deal. He'd bump  shoulders with me, grab my arm in the hall at school, smile at me. He  never smiled anymore, not unless that smile was more of a smirk or a  cocky grin.

"About what?" I asked, looking away and pretending I didn't hear my dad and stepmom chittering away like birds. Flor sighed.

"About Rhonda. Do you like her?"

"I've met her twice," I said sulkily. "For like two seconds each. I  mean, unless you count the day you did my tattoo for me and stepped out  to fuck her. Then it's three times."

"Don't be like that, Abigail," Flor said, and I noticed that he sounded  tired. Worn-out. Oh well, that was his problem, not mine. I watched out  of the corner of my eye as he fished a pack of cigarettes out of his  back pocket and slapped them against his palm. My dad's eyes wandered  over and locked on, narrowing almost imperceptibly. My father was,  almost ironically, a pulmonologist. In plain English, that's basically a  lung doctor. Flor's smoking had always infuriated him, made worse by  the fact that there was nothing he could do about it but lecture, pretty  much incessantly.                       
       
           



       

"Take it outside, Florian," my dad warned, eyes flicking over to me and  then, as if he'd seen something terrifying like, oh I don't know, a  bloody wound or a black widow spider crawling on my shoulder, his eyes  widened. "Abigail."

Uh oh.

I glanced down and found  …  that my tank top had ridden up, revealing a  narrow strip of skin between the black cotton and the blue denim. My  tattoo was showing.

"Oh, Art," Flor said, sliding a cigarette between his smirking lips. He  tucked his pack away and then snapped his fingers, reaching over and  lifting up my tank top. His hot fingers grazed my bare flesh, drawing a  moan to my lips that I had to struggle to bite back. "Abi didn't tell  you that I inked her up a few weeks back?" Flor's index finger swiped  around my tattoo, circling it, infusing me with more heat, more desire,  more longing that I really didn't need.

I tried to smile, reaching down and taking hold of my own shirt, pulling it back into place.

"How was your first time, Abi?" Flor asked, wrinkling up his brow and  looking down at me. The obvious innuendo in his words wasn't lost on  anyone, not even my dad.

"When did this happen?" my father ground out, his fingers curling too  hard around the stem of his wine glass. Even balding, even in a pair of  thick rimmed glasses and a mauve tie, my father could be intimidating.  "And how could you keep something like this from me, Abigail?"

I felt my cheeks growing hot, even though I knew I had nothing to be  ashamed of. I was eighteen, going on nineteen really. I had my own  place, a killer GPA, and  …  I relied on my father's generosity to keep  going to school at the U of O. Shit.

"I, uh, it was sort of a  …  I wanted it to heal before I showed you, you  know, so you could appreciate it." I moved around the kitchen island,  all eyes on me, and scooted past Rhonda and my stepmom, proudly lifting  my shirt as my dad wrinkled his brow and lowered his wine glass.

"A deer?" he asked, obviously not pleased by the tattoo, the placement  of it, or the design. "I didn't think you were big on hunting, Abigail.  Don't you and your liberal friends picket against that sort of thing?" I  groaned and Florian laughed, drawing my dad's ire back over to him. If  my stepmom hadn't moved forward and placed a gentle hand on his wrist, I  don't know what might have happened.

"If she was going to go forward with it, which is her choice," she said,  emphasizing the word, "then at least we know she was in good hands. If  you're going to get a tattoo, who better than your older brother?"