“Always, Gretchen.”
She hummed. “Why don’t I believe you?”
“Because if I listened, I’d never have to call you again.”
“You’re probably right.” She donned a pair of designer glasses and glanced me over before turning back to him. “I’ll see you next week.”
I pushed past him into the house. He scheduled his sexcapades in front of me!
Goddamn it. He teased me with a promise of a night of blind, perfect, passionate sex to mirror the amazing night we had before. Had I less willpower, morals, and a hell of a lot more alcohol in me, who knew what might have happened!
I didn’t care how many centipedes he dispatched for me. He was a no good, perverted, fiend who probably had a girl in every port. Now I was sure of it. He wanted to get with me so he could humiliate me and take my family’s money. Unbelievable.
The front door closed. I stormed into the kitchen. His dirty dishes cluttered the sink, including a glass with a lipstick print on it.
Gross.
Zach followed me. He should have crawled on his knees to apologize.
“This isn’t how it looks,” he said.
I turned, facing a man who thought only with his cock. “Oh, so you didn’t invite Goldilocks over to my house?”
“Our house.”
“Don’t start.”
“Look, Gretchen is a close friend of mine. She was helping me with—”
“Stop,” I said. “I don’t need the details. I know exactly what she helped you with. The same thing I helped you with two weeks ago.”
“Shay—”
“You know what?” I took a cleansing breath. “You’re a grown man. You’re entitled to do whatever or whoever you like to do.”
“Listen to me—”
“I don’t care what you do, Zach. Drink the milk out of the carton. Invite over all your friends. But you will stay out of my way.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, from now on, we’re two separate people in this house. I’ll live my life, and you’ll have yours. I’m done with you.” I shoved the dirty plate and two glasses into his arms. “You can buy your own food, wash your own dishes, and keep out of my rooms. I want nothing to do with you.”
He laughed. “You think you’re just going to…ignore me? We live together, Shay.”
“No. We share the same house. That’s it.”
“The least you can do is hear me out.”
“Oh, now you want to talk?” I poked at his chest. “Where was that initiative two weeks ago? We needed to have a very important conversation before you decided to fuck your sister.”
“For Christ’s sake, you’re my step-sister.”
“You’re only after what doesn’t belong to you. And not just me. This house. The money.”
He had the audacity to get irritated. “The house and money are legally mine.”
“Not for long. Once you’re gone, I’ll be glad to get your ass-print off my furniture.”
I left him with his dishes. He yelled after me.
“So you’re giving me the silent treatment?”
That was the plan.
“It won’t work, Shay.”
Watch me. I didn’t answer. He didn’t deserve it.
He chuckled from the kitchen, setting the plates back in the sink.
Unwashed.
“This is going to be a fun game, Shay. Just you wait. You’ll break before I do.”
Like hell. Nothing else was going to break around here. Not my resolve. Not my anger.
And not my heart…even if a tiny fragment already cracked.
Used and hurt.
Chapter Nine - Shay
Sex dreams didn’t count as incest…right?
I mean, people couldn’t control what they dreamed about. What flashed in my head wouldn’t damn me forever as a perverted, reprehensible sex-fiend. It just meant that the heart-pounding, muscle-rending, core-clenching visions were the result of my subconscious—a part of my mind that was much more deviant than I realized.
I tried to avoid Zach, but three days of radio silence was hardly a punishment. We still lived in the same space, and the mansion somehow shrunk to the size of a walk-in closet. We bumped on the stairs. Brushed hands in the garage. Accidentally blessed each other when we sneezed in the hall.
Zach grinned whenever he saw me, and I fell for the dimples every time.
I stayed away from him during the day. But at night?
My dream had us meeting in the garden, embracing under the roses, and committing delicious sins right there in the dirt. It was where we belonged. We were sex-crazed, immoral menaces, and it nearly ruined our lives.
Zach thought our indiscretions were harmless. After all, our parents weren’t married that long. It was easy for us to rationalize, but if our friends or families found out? That was a shame I couldn’t confront yet.
Hell, I couldn’t even approach Zach after having the sexiest dream of my life. I hid in my room all day just to steer clear of him. I longed to busy myself with lesson plans, but nothing for my classes or student teaching gig had been assigned yet. I checked the calendar. Four months until I graduated from college, one semester early, all thanks to Dad. He bought me a couple extra credits my freshman and sophomore year because I planned to get out into the real world as soon as possible.
Everyone—even my family and friends—assumed I wanted to inherit my trust early.
They thought I was in it for the money, and I hated having that reputation. I wasn’t a money-hungry, trust-fund baby, step-brother humper. That was not the legacy I wanted to leave on this world.
Fortunately, I could get rid of the step-brother easy enough. As soon as I got my trust, I’d buy his stake in the mansion, and he’d be out of my life quicker than I could say skeleton in the closet.
But first, I had to live with the man-whore. Except who was I to judge him? I slept with him, a complete stranger, just to have a quick, one-night stand. It was the greatest sex of my life, but it didn’t make me a pillar of morality.
Still, there was a big difference between me and Zach. He was an unrepentant playboy who propositioned me, was rejected, and then immediately leapt into bed with the first bimbo he could find.
A woman he brought into my house.
It shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did.
I abandoned my laptop and ducked into a cold shower. It didn’t dull the fire in my belly or the dreamy, forbidden fantasy that swirled in my mind. He wasn’t worth my anger. Hell, he hardly deserved the passing glance I gave him when we headed to bed last night.
I just needed to clear my head. I spent entirely too much time thinking about that ass.
Literally.
I was supposed to be enjoying myself. I had two weeks until my student teaching job began, and I deserved a vacation from the insanity that was weddings, funerals, inheritances, and incest.
My stomach grumbled. Momma always said she could tell a proper lady in two ways—how graceful she acted in the face of adversity, and the quality of her shrimp and grits.
Well, I already humiliated myself with my current adversary, including indulging in activities in the bedroom I wasn’t sure had real names. The least I could do was have a home-cooked meal.
I showered, dressed, and spent too much time and money at the grocery store. Zach and I had a new agreement.
What was mine was mine.
What was his could rot in the sun for all I cared.
I bought my own food, claimed my own rooms, and smacked his hand when he stole one of my chocolate chip cookies. We shared the house, and that was it. I’d be damned if I let him near any of my desserts.
Including me.
My car’s trunk filled with groceries. I thought hauling the bags in from the curb to my old apartment was difficult. No wonder people hired help in estates this big. I was out of breath by the time I hit the hall and struggled just to lift the plastic bags onto the island. I grunted and went back for the bottled water.
Zach watched it all in amusement. He munched on an apple over the sink, but he didn’t offer to help—the silent treatment went both ways.
He set a box of spaghetti, a giant pack of ground meat and sausage, and a can of marinara sauce on the counter. I watched as he filled a pot too small for noodles with water. He warmed a skillet for his meat and claimed the entire cutting board for his mess.
What an ass. It was no accident that he started cooking the instant I got home. He just wanted to get in my way and under my skin while I made my dinner.
The mature, responsible thing to do would have been to surrender the stove until he was done. Screw it. I wasn’t letting that bastard chase me out of my own damn kitchen.
Shrimp and grits were on the line. Wars fought for less.
I dropped the fresh shrimp on the counter—whole and raw like Momma and Gran preferred—but the sink filled with his dishes. Two glasses were rimmed with his chalky protein powder supplements. A plate smeared with mustard. The colander for his spaghetti haphazardly angled to the side so he wouldn’t have to load the dishwasher.
I scowled and piled his mess before rinsing my shrimp. He laughed, still crunching on the apple.
The serpent in the garden had more tact that him.
But I wasn’t going to scold him. He wanted that. Expected it. If he couldn’t get me to talk, he’d try to rile me up. And usually it worked.
Not this time.
No way.
If he was that bored, he could call little Miss Tasty-Cake for a romp.
I ignored him as I cleaned the shrimp, but I needed the stove to get my bacon rendering and the grits on to boil. Zach paid no attention to the chunk of meat he burned in the skillet. I turned, nearly dropping the bowl of deveined shrimp.