Reading Online Novel

Bad Boy: A Stepbrother Romance(39)



I felt bad for judging him the way I had when he’d shown up to our first family dinner with his shirt spattered with blood. I was now willing to bet that had happened under similar circumstances to tonight, whereas at the time, I’d thought he was just a typical bad boy douchebag who’d gone out looking for trouble and found it.

As if he were gifted with the ability to mind-read, Finn turned to me. “I guess you know now why I showed up to dinner that night looking like a filthy street rat.”

I didn’t quite know what to say, and he grinned. “Relax. I don’t blame you for judging me that night. I looked like hell. Should’ve gone and got changed before I showed up.”

“It’s not often I see a man show up at an expensive restaurant with blood on him,” I admitted. “Then again, it’s not often that I see someone defending another person the way you just did, either. Most people don’t bother helping others.”

“I try,” he said with a shrug.

So he was modest, too. As I got to know him better, I was discovering more and more things about him and his personality that I’d incorrectly assessed upon our first few meetings. I guess first impressions could be bullshit sometimes.

We headed into the hotel, and I followed him into a small office behind the main reception desk, which had an attached bathroom. “There’s a first aid kit in here,” he explained. “I think I’ve got a few cuts on me. That prick was actually scratching me at one point. Dude fought like a little bitch. Anyway, you can go up to your room if you want; you don’t need to stay.”

“No, I’ll help,” I said, quickly washing my hands at the basin in the bathroom. “Where’d you get cut? I’ll help put the…”

I turned, and my voice stopped dead in the middle of my sentence. Finn was shirtless behind me, and I faltered with the cloth I’d just grabbed to dry my clean hands as I tried and failed to avert my eyes. Holy mother of abs and biceps…

Standing right before me now, he somehow looked even more built and muscular than he had the last time I’d seen him shirtless, which was when he’d caught me eavesdropping outside his room a few weeks ago. Cringing at the embarrassing memory, I opened my mouth to say something, but hardly anything came out.

“Uh…I…”

“There’s a few cuts here and here,” he said, seemingly not noticing the fact that I was practically drooling. He gestured towards his chest and right arm before frowning and looking at his left arm. “One here too. Jesus, that asshole really got me good.”

Not as good as you look, I wanted to say.

“Um…well, he didn’t get you as good as you got him,” I said instead, finally finding my tongue. “Sit down, and I’ll put some antiseptic and bandages on you.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, saluting me.

I rolled my eyes and grabbed a bottle of Betadine antiseptic and some cotton balls from the first aid kit he had retrieved. I looked for some tissues to wipe up the antiseptic once I’d finished with it, but there were none in the kit, so I dug around in my handbag to look for some.#p#分页标题#e#

As per my usual bad luck, the Ziploc bag containing the vibrator fell out along with a work notepad as I rummaged around, and my face flamed a bright red; at least I imagined it did.

Tell me again why I’d thought my freaking handbag was a good hiding place for anything?

“Putting a new meaning to mixing work with pleasure, are you?” Finn asked, raising an eyebrow as I stuffed the things back into my bag.

“Uh...no, I was just going to take the thing back to the store today, but I forgot,” I replied, a little too fast. “It…er…I didn’t want it.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, an amused smile quirking the corners of his lips up.

Jeez, I was such a prude sometimes. I couldn’t even say ‘vibrator’ out loud; I’d called it a ‘thing’ instead.

There was an awkward silence for a moment as I doused a cotton ball with Betadine, and I tried my hardest to ignore the growing wetness between my legs as I swiped the cotton over Finn’s small injuries.

“So…I guess you’re kinda like Batman, huh?” I said as I carefully dabbed some of the brown liquid onto a long scratch. Anything to change the subject. “Sneaking around the dark alleys of the city defending helpless innocents. You’re just like him.”

He looked like a superhero, too. All those muscles…damn.

He shrugged. “Not exactly. The holiday season seems to bring out a lot of crazy assholes. Sometimes I just happen to be in the right place in the right time, so I do the right thing.”