Stepbrother Thief(48)

It shouldn't be happening, but it is.

I am so going to regret this later. My brain gets that one last jab in before I'm a mess of hormones, a sighing, sweating, tangled mess of heartstrings and sighs, of throaty moans and hitched breathing.

Gill … he's like an animal, his eyes dark and his body hard beneath my hands, hot and sweaty and wet where we slide together, our bodies joining in a wild frenzy that I haven't felt in years. I've had other lovers since Gilleon, yes, but they were nothing like this, droplets to his storm, a pond to his ocean. I feel like I've spent a decade being eternally thirsty and now I'm drowning, drowning in him and his smell and the way his mouth always tastes bright and fresh like citrus.

My body begins to pulse, my muscles holding tight to Gill, to the long, firm length of him, while his hands cup my ass in a bruising grip that's still only a fraction of his real strength. He holds me up as easily as if I weigh nothing and yet he's still holding back, keeping himself in check.

I can feel the pleasure curling in the base of my spine, crouching there with the same feline grace that I see in Gilleon's every move. It creeps up on me quick, drawing another gasp from my throat as Gill snarls and lifts one hand up, slamming his palm into the wall while he comes, his entire body stiffening even further as I do the exact opposite and relax, letting the pleasure hit me in waves.

The sensation's so intense that I feel dizzy, my vision blurring as I come down from the burst of adrenaline and hormones that are surging through my body, making it difficult to stand when Gill pulls out and sets me gently on the wet surface of the deck.

I fix my panties, pull my dress back into place, and smooth a hand over my hair while Gill turns away, panting and straightening out his own clothing.

When I head over to the back door and move inside, he doesn't follow.



I take a long, hot bath, my knees up to my chest, arms curled around them as I close my eyes and force my racing thoughts to a crawl. If I let them run wild like that, I'll never get myself together. What just happened between Gill and me, that was good. It was necessary. We were so caught up in all the hormonal bullshit brewing between us that we weren't thinking clearly. Maybe now that we've both gotten some of that weird hate/makeup sex crap out of the way, we can realize the truth of the situation: me and Gill back together, never going to happen. I can only hope that he understands that and stops saying and doing weird shit.

“Merde,” I curse, putting my forehead against my knees. Knowing that Gilleon knows about Solène is a weird sensation, one that I'm not even sure I can put a name to. I can't tell if I'm relieved or freaked out. I'd love to talk to someone about this, but I don't know if Aveline's a great option at the moment. The look she threw me when I walked into the kitchen was nothing short of lascivious. Let's just say, avoiding her company has now shot right up to the top of my priority list.

Then again, Gill did say I could call Leilani or Anika. But then he also said I should use caution, that there's a possibility—however small—that Karl might decide it's worth the effort to use them against me, against him, as leverage for the diamonds.

I decide that no matter how conflicted I am, I can't risk them.

“Fuck this,” I growl, the sound reminding me of Gill and the wild look on his face while he screwed me against the wall of his 1912 fucking Mount Baker goddamn Colonial. Ehh. The conversation we're going to have when I leave this room, it's not going to be fun, is it? And I can only imagine how Cliff will react when he finds out. Even if I don't intend to tell him, he'll know. He's just like that.

I stand up and grab a towel from the stand under the window, drying off with the plush pink perfection as I try to decide what to wear. Obviously this morning's dress is not an option. I don't know if I'll be able to wear that in front of him ever again, or at least not for a while. And that's assuming it's even clean—I know my panties have certainly seen better days.

I swipe the towel across the mirror and lean in, staring at myself, at the blurry dampness of my reflection, my skin flushed and pink, my lips swollen and my pupils dilated. I'm not even going to give half the credit for that to my bubble bath. Sex with Gill is … well, it's always been the best. Mathis, and the dozen or so men before him, none of them could hold a candle to my first love, to the stepbrother I never wanted and then grew to never want to live without.

But I learned to. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done, learning to adapt to the absence of his smile, to the coldness of my bed at night, to the quiet in the mornings.

Young love is so manipulative to the heart, promising that if you lose it, if that person leaves, that you will quite literally shrivel up and die. At least, that's what it told me, but I survived, and I'm a better person for it.