ARROGANT BRIT (A BRITISH BAD BOY ROMANCE) (32 page)

Morning was… different.

Neither of us had expected to pass out. I could tell that
much from the way we were still on top of the covers, the summer breeze licking
our dried sweat. I turned over beside Preston, making sure that what I’d dreamt
of had actually been real. There he was, flesh and blood and muscle beside me.
It was strange, but I didn’t know how to feel.

The passion we’d succumbed to last night had been… intense.
And it wasn’t like I hadn’t enjoyed myself. But now, in the broad light of day,
I couldn’t help but feel a creeping sense of shame. I was waking up in bed next
to my naked, spent stepbrother. Who does that?

Swallowing the conflict for now, I sat up and looked around,
trying to find a clock that could tell me the time. I’d have to settle for Preston’s
cell phone instead, but that was easier said than done when I had no idea where
he’d put it.

I crawled over his sleeping form, reached over the end of the
bed, and searched the pants he’d been wearing the night before. As I looked at
the crumpled heap, all I could think about was how he’d dropped them in the
heat of the moment, what it had felt like to endure his twisting, tantalizing
tongue…

I lifted his phone from his pocket. It was seven a.m. The
morning light must have woken us. At least we hadn’t slept the whole day.

Just as I was raising back up, Preston asked me, “What are
you doing?”

I turned to look at him. He was awake, though he hadn’t yet
moved. He was looking at me strangely, probably in the same way I’d looked at
him when I’d woken up in his arms. Last night had been incredible, but it had
happened under the cover of darkness. Morning was an entirely different animal,
and it seemed neither of us knew precisely what to do with it.

I decided to try to avoid it for now. “Your phone,” I told
him, holding it up. “I wanted to know what time it was.”

“It’s ringing,” he told me, and I looked at it. Indeed, since
I’d picked it up, his phone had received a call.

It wasn’t making any noise, though, and it wasn’t vibrating.
I looked over at him. “Do you want me to answer it?”

“No,” he said. He sat up, and I watched his muscles coil
under his skin like snakes winding their way through the desert. “I’ll handle
it.”

He moved past me down to the foot of the bed, retrieving his
Bluetooth earpiece and pushing it in. He plucked his phone out of my hand, but
didn’t look at me as he answered the call. “Hello?”

He was quiet for a moment, listening to the other end. I
pulled some of the sheets around me, shielding myself from his view, though he
didn’t even bother to look over. We had a lot to talk about, that was for sure,
but it seemed like neither of us felt like this was the time or the place. Not
while he was on the phone, at least.

“What time?” he said, startling me from my thoughts. I tried
to look at anything but the planes of his muscles as he added, “Fine. We’ll be
there.”

He hung up the call and looked at me, taking his earpiece out
again. “We’re having dinner tonight,” he said.

I frowned at him, watching as he got up off the bed and
walked to the dresser for a pair of underwear. “And why, pray tell, do you need
your personal assistant to come along? Is there a children’s hospital to tear
down?”

“Maddy…”

“Or maybe you could turn a city park into a landfill?”

“Maddy!”

“I’m still angry with you Preston.” I said firmly.

“You can stop now. Lets just say I’m having second thoughts
about the whole homeless shelter deal,” he replied.

“Because I talked you out of it, or are you saying that
because of what happened last night?” I asked, almost wishing he wouldn’t
answer.

Preston didn’t answer, the silence biting as he was clearly
trying to pick his words carefully.

“Well if it’s not some cutthroat business deal with one of
your rotten clients,” I asked, “what are we doing? Who’d want to have dinner
with the both of us?”

Preston slipped his boxer briefs over his legs, pulling them
up and letting the waistband snap around his hips. When he looked at me, the
smile on his face was strained. “Our parents.”

I felt my stomach plummet to my feet. Never had two words
devastated me in the way that these had.

We
were so fucked.

My father wasn’t the type of guy who’d just call up his son
and his soon-to-be stepdaughter and invite them over for dinner and drinks.
Hell, my father wasn’t the type of guy who did that for anyone but his favorite
clients, and even that was an awfully short list. If he wanted to see both me
and Maddy, that meant that something was wrong, and I couldn’t help but wonder
if it had anything to do with what we’d done last night.

But that was crazy. He’d have no way of knowing that I slept
with her. We’d been completely alone. It wasn’t like he’d bug my office, or
anything. Right?

My father was a resourceful man, but as far as I knew, I’d
given him no cause to feel that drastic measure like that were necessary. Yet
the fact remained: he wanted something from both of us. If that wasn’t the
reason, then what was?

“Maybe it’s my mom,” Maddy said. She was still sitting on my
bed, though she’d wrapped herself in the sheets now to cover up. I guessed that
in my own way, I was doing the same thing. We were both distancing ourselves
and we knew it, but neither of us seemed ready to talk about why. “Maybe they
want to go over the wedding or honeymoon plans.”

I felt my insides untwist a little. I nodded slowly. “That’s
possible.” But the wedding was months away. What could they possibly want to
consult us about at this stage?

Whatever it was, I knew there was no avoiding it. Maddy and I
would have to show up, which meant that we were also going to have to discuss
what had happened between us last night.

I looked over at her on my bed. God, she was beautiful. She
had one of the most incredible bodies I’d ever seen. She was naturally
gorgeous, organic in ways I’d not experienced in a woman… well, ever. All the
girls I dated were always plastic Barbie dolls shaped by the most skilled surgeons
on the planet into the ideal image men desired most. They were like modern art
while Maddy was a classic. Even the freckles across the bridge of her nose gave
me the shivers.

And yet she was my stepsister, or she would be soon enough.
That meant she ought to be off-limits. We’d already been playing the part of
siblings… or had we? Had I misread both our emotions all this time? Had my
closeness to Maddy been fueled not by familial affection, but by raw, primal,
sexual attraction?

I’d never felt this way about a woman before, so it was hard
to tell. The only thing I knew for sure was that I wanted her, no matter what.
But if our parents got married, that would be impossible, or at the very least
something we’d forever have to hide. What if she wanted a family? What if I
did? Then where would we be? Could I ask her to give up the future she deserved
just to be with me?

I hesitated, rubbing the back of my neck as I stood before
her in nothing but my underwear. “You should get dressed,” I told her softly. I
didn’t want to come off cruel, but for the time being, I wasn’t sure what else
I could say. “We’ve got work to do before we head over there this evening.”

“Sure,” Maddy said, though her voice sounded chilled and
hollow. “I’ll get right on it, Mr. Harvey.”

It felt like a slap in the face, but at this point, I wasn’t
completely sure that I didn’t deserve it.

The rest of the day passed by in total silence. Maddy busied
herself with the tasks that kept her far away from me, and I hid in my office
trying to forget the taste of my stepsister’s skin, the warmth of her as I sank
in, the way she’d gasped and moaned and writhed beneath my weight. Every time I
blinked I saw a flash of the way I’d slid my dick up to the hilt inside of her,
and that only made distracting myself from those thoughts a more arduous task
than it had been before.

When she’d gone to lunch, I had tried a little self-soothing
meditation, and when that’d failed, I spent half an hour running hard on the
treadmill in the corner of my office. Nothing worked. All I could think about
was her, and that was making it hard to walk around without making that fact
exceptionally obvious in my dress slacks.

By the time we had to leave for our family dinner, I was
struggling to keep from getting hard every time she walked in front of me. The
rhythmic sway of her ass sheathed only in the thin material of the skirt she’d
picked up from her apartment had me completely entranced.

I opened the car door for her. When she swept under my arm
with a soft, “Thanks,” the scent of her perfume antagonized me. I couldn’t take
it anymore.

With a grunt, I grabbed Maddy by the arm and turned her,
pinning her between my body and the car. I searched her eyes and found only
wanting there. Helplessly I pressed my mouth against hers, ravaging her with my
tongue, drawing her against me by the small of her back.

Maddy resisted only a moment. Then she moaned. She fit so
perfectly in my arms, and I never wanted to let her go.

“I can’t do this,” I told her. “I can’t pretend like last
night never happened. I need you, Madison, and not in the way that a brother
needs his sister.”

I pressed my thrumming cock against her through her skirt.
She gasped. I began lifting up the hem, revealing the creamy white tops of her
thighs inch by inch until finally, I caught a glimpse of her underwear.

I pulled my dick out and nestled it against her crotch. I
felt my balls seize and I snarled in her ear. “I could blow my load right here,
Maddy. I could soak these panties before dinner, and your mother and my father
wouldn’t know a thing. You’d spend the whole night with my cum staining your
panties. That’s what you do to me. You make me want to do the nastiest things
to you.”

Maddy shivered and looked up at me with hooded eyes.
“Preston… Jesus, we can’t. What we did last night was wrong. I wanted it… We
wanted it… But you know it can’t happen again.”

I pulled her panties open, letting
the tip of my dick violate the space between them and her sweet, soaking wet
lips. I thrust, overwhelmed by the sensation of being so near to her, of
feeling my bulging head slip around in her honeyed nectar. “It has to,” I
whispered. “Every time I look at you, all I want to do is get inside you
again.”

I was so close. But Madison gently,
yet firmly took me by the wrist. I could see lust in her eyes, but there was
something else too. Maybe it was self-restraint, but it sure as hell looked
like regret.

“We can’t,” she repeated, and this
time there was no “maybe” in her tone. I withdrew and she let her fingers brush
mine. “I’m sorry, Preston, but think of what could happen if we got caught…”

I nodded. As frustrated as I was, she
made sense. But dammit, I didn’t want her to. All I wanted was to throw caution
to the wind and bury myself in my darling little stepsister.

She fixed her skirt as I stuffed my
dick back inside my pants. “Let’s hope there’s wine tonight,” I said as she
slid into her seat. “I think I’m going to need it.”

“You and me both,” Maddy agreed as I
closed her door.