HIM—A Stepbrother Romance: With BONUS NOVELLA: PERSONAL (8 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Kate

His lips were on my ear again, biting on my earlobe, teasing me relentlessly as he filled me in every delicious way possible. I was coming from his sexy drives and persistent and passionate control as he thrust his hips and filled me deeper.

“Yes, Bradley! Yes! Yes!”

I awoke to find my hands in a ball, the sheets tightly clenched. I was breathing hard and could feel the sweat beads along my hairline.

And it was a dream.

God, what sweet torture. My core flinched and butterflies traveled up and down my system like it was an open border joining countries.

I will be in you.

Where the heck was Bradley? I threw off my covers, determined to find him, wherever he was, and pull him into whatever closet we were near. Heck, pull him behind whatever couch was nearby. So we could finally be together. Body and soul.

My need for him was so damn hot, I couldn’t take it.

I reached for my phone to see what time it was. 7 PM.

What! That was impossible.

Had I managed to sleep a full twelve hours? Was all that had transpired: one crazy, teasing dream?

I sat in a daze as I stared at the wall in lust and wonder. It all came flashing back to me. Everything.

No, it wasn’t a dream. It happened. It all happened and I needed Bradley. Now.

              I practically ran into his room, busting open the door. But it was empty.

              I quickly made my way into the sitting room, the man cave, everywhere he normally would hang out. I even peeked outside.

              He was nowhere. Was he hiding from me? Had he changed his mind?

              I finally found Mr. Fox in the kitchen inspecting the silverware. He held it high before polishing a knife and I suddenly felt super shy. Had he seen us last night? Or heard?

“Hello, Miss Meadows,” he greeted me without looking up from his task

“Um, hi. Hi, Mr. Fox.” I muttered sheepishly and looked down at my bare feet.

“I’m looking for Bradley. Have you seen him?” I tucked a loose tendril of hair behind my ear, my heart pounded wildly in my chest with apprehension and feeling embarrassed.

“Mr. Rainshaw’s privacy is my number one concern. I can assure you.”

There was something strange in the way he addressed the situation. Either he was uncomfortable because he knew of what happened in the hot tub or it was something else.

I swallowed down the lump in my throat. My nerves were going crazy.

“Is there something you want to tell me?”

Good God, he knows.

“Please don't go to the press.” It was all I could manage to say.

              “Of course I wouldn’t. How indecent, exposing such a thing.”

              Oh fuck.

“Well, he’s seen the police more than he should have in a lifetime. Between you and me, those country cops have it out for him.”

“Wait, what police? What are you talking about? Please tell me.”

“They were at the door this morning and wanted to question him.”

“Oh my god. At what time?”

“Right before 8AM.”

“And we haven't heard from him or anything?”

“Well, the phone lines are down. I just figured they had a few questions about that situation from last month.”

“What happened last month?”

“Something frivolous about him drinking and leaving the wine bottle in the sand.”

I shook my head feeling worried. “Oh no…”

“No one got hurt. It should just be a simple fee. I just figured he went back into the city with your mom.”

“My mom went back to the city?”

“She said she told you. She wanted to hunker down with a few of her cast mate friends. She said it was too depressing to do that here. There’s some party she’s attending.”

I nodded in a daze. She had mentioned something to me this morning but honestly I was so tired, I didn’t hear her say that part.

“In all honesty, I just work here and do my best to make everyone happy.”

I just stared at him with a blank look across my face.

“Is there something that happened?” he asked me.

“He broke into the library to bring back books for me. Which means he broke into the library. He hasn’t come back.”

“Let's go.” He nodded quickly, the worried look plastered across his face indicating that the message was understood loud and clearly.

It was cold and quiet. I couldn’t believe the law was still working but that’s the thing about government workers: we needed them rain or shine. We drove slowly but we finally made it to Suffolk County Sheriff’s office.

“We’re here to see Bradley Rainshaw,” I quickly said to a creepy man with a mustache so long and ratty that it belonged on a pirate ship.

“He’s locked up.”

“Locked up?”

“I'm afraid you will have to come back tomorrow. Unless you have an emergency to report.”

“Emergency? The emergency is that it’s freezing in here and he doesn’t deserve to be locked up like a criminal.”

“There's nothing that can be done here, miss.” His words were as sharp as a knife. “And he is a criminal.”

“He doesn't deserve to be locked away like that.”

He stood up and looked at me square in the eyes. He made me tremble, he was so creepy. His dirty fingernails twirled that disgusting mustache as he used his tongue to clean across his teeth, making the grossest sound ever. Ugh, creep!

“Listen very carefully, ma’am. There’s nothing to be done. Now I believe it’s best you be on your way.

“No! You can’t just leave him in here overnight. Has he even eaten? Does he have a blanket? It’s freezing in here.” I wrapped my own jacket around me tighter. Mr. Fox lightly tapped my shoulder as if to say to calm down. He cleared his throat to emphasize the point.

“You are disrupting my establishment.” He stood up with his hands flat across the desk.

“Your establishment? This isn't your establishment.”

“Do you question an officer of law?”

“Well, yes I do. You have no right to—”

“When you enter this line you enter the law. And I’m the law.”

I looked quickly around to see if there was any other officer I could speak with. It was eerily empty and I wondered if he was the only officer on duty. “I’d like to speak to someone else! I’d like to—”

The cold metal against my wrists caused a shiver to run down my spine. I was handcuffed. By this creepy man who probably belonged to be locked up himself, with anger like this.

“You can't cuff me. I didn't do anything wrong. You can’t do this! I didn’t do anything wrong! Mr. Fox, please call my mother! Or get ahold of her somehow! You can’t just keep me in here for no reason.” My voice was high and I was screaming. If anyone else was in the county jail office, they heard me. I’m sure of it.

“You’re interfering with the law. That’s obstruction of the law.” He forcefully pushed me down a hallway and Mr. Fox was now left behind. “Get my mom!” Everything was happening so fast, I couldn’t believe my own eyes that I was being led down a dimly lit hallway past creepy, small cells.

“You people think you can get away with anything and get whatever you want. Well, I’ll tell you what.” The iron bars slid open before me as he pushed me in. “You wanted to see him. Now you see him.”

Chapter Fifteen

Kate

I spun around to see the iron door slid shut. And there across the hallway laying on the ground, curled up in a ball, was Bradley. Naked. His eyes were shut and he looked oddly pale.

“Bradley! Oh my god. You animal! You have him locked up without a blanket like that! He could die! He could die!”

“You two are perfect for each other.”

“What the fuck! Look at him! Look at what you’re doing! He’s freezing to death!”

“Yeah, well, not my problem! Not so tough are you now, huh, tough guy?”

“Hey! Hey!” I called out after him, screaming at the top of my lungs. “There’s a very hot place in hell for people like you!”

My hands grabbed the iron bars  and I could just stare at him. He looked so freezing and his lips looked blue. There was blood everywhere and I couldn’t stand to see him like that.

“Bradley! Bradley! Can you hear me? Can you hear me? It’s Kate! Don’t think you’re getting away with this, you asshole! You just messed with a Rainshaw.”

“Well, Rainshaw or no Rainshaw, enjoy the blizzard. See you when the city opens back up. Might be a few days.”

The door slammed shut.

“Wait, what! You can’t do this! You can’t do this!”

After yelling until my throat ran dry, hearing my voice echo off the walls of this cold and sterile cell, all I could do was cry and visualize warmth around him as I called out to him.

“Bradley! Bradley!”

He’d moan occasionally and say odd things.

“I’m soo….soo….” His head rested against the wall. I shivered as I called out to him, which worried the hell out of me because he wasn’t covered up, himself. “It’s going to be okay! It’s going to be okay,” I called out a thousand times but deep down inside, I didn’t have a clue if he was going to be okay.

I don’t know how much time passed. Every torturous minute felt like an hour when finally the door at the end of the hallway swung open and I wondered if I were seeing a ghost.

“That bastard really thinks he’s something,” the officer muttered until he finally opened my cell. “Oh, thank God!” I ran immediately to Bradley’s cell to get a better look at him. He didn’t look good at all.

“Would you look at him?

“He looks awful.” He opened the door and I ran to Bradley and covered him in my jacket. He was cold as ice. I felt his pulse. It was slow, but still there. He moaned and I tried to get him to open his eyes. They rolled to the back of his head.

“We need to get you two to a hospital, stat. Let me help you get him.”

The big officer picked Bradley up as best as he could. “Follow me. Hurry. I’m not about to let a blizzard take two innocent people’s lives. It’s bad out there. Real bad. All of New York City is shut down. It’s like a ghost town. And I heard you screaming about Bradley, too. He had a bucket of water thrown on him. It wasn’t right. I had this nagging feeling all day. When I left to go home, I knew with the temperature dropping in the low 20s, no blankets, well, I may have barely graduated high school, but I do watch a lot of shows on The Discovery Channel. Hypothermia doesn’t just happen to people lost in the forest. I wouldn’t be a real American, a real officer, if I didn’t think of his life in danger. Which it is.”

We finally made it to his police car and I couldn’t stop the tears from falling and the panic from flooding my chest.

I rubbed my hands up and down his cold limbs but he just lay against me, barely moving. “Come on, Bradley. Come on.” I kissed his ice-cold skin over and over again.

“The thermal conductivity of water is thirty-two times greater than air. The fact that he was slapped with that icy bucket water wasn’t right. It wasn’t just hazing. It was a death sentence. If I would have left you two over night, he could have died. Not to mention that excessive alcohol raises your risk of hypothermia. Did you know you could even get hypothermia in summer from your wet clothes? If you body heat drops too drastically and it’s windy. It happens.”

My mind was racing as he droved slowly through the blizzard. I was listening, but it sounded like background music. I was scared to death I was losing Bradley. Just when I finally had him.

“Maybe you should go into the medical field.”

“Yeah. Maybe. Maybe I will with the hefty sum of ransom money. I mean, award money from Mr. Rainshaw once he comes to.”

We finally pulled into Southampton Hospital.

“He hasn’t eaten all day either, or all night. His body doesn’t have any nutrients to help him stay warm.”

“Thank you for saving our lives. I’ll spare you in the upcoming media firestorm that you know is coming.”

“Yeah, well, about that compensation.”

“Of course. Of course.”

“Promise he’ll remember me? He’s not coherent right now.”

“I promise. Thank you.”

As soon as we made our way through the doors with the help of Officer Jackson, we were assisted.

With the blizzard and the special circumstances of practically the entire island being shut down, it was an eerie sight with the hospital being like a ghost town.

Once Bradley and I were seen, Officer Jackson tapped his hat to us and I promised we would remember him and compensate him. I no doubt would have Bradley do so; he saved his life.

The nurses and doctors immediately administered humidified oxygen via an air mask as they removed my jacket from him and he instantly shivered, naked. He was so weak. So tired. So incoherent. They immediately wrapped him in a special blanket before laying him down to administer an IV.

“Is he going to be okay?”

“He came at the right time.”

“We need to check your vitals, as well. You don’t look so great.”

I wasn’t even aware that I was shaking all over until a nurse began to check my vitals.

“Will he need stitches on his lip? He’s so bloody and swollen. I gave him my jacket. I wasn’t there for long, though.”

“There?”

“Jail. But uh, it’s not like you think.”

“DWI?”

“No, God, no. I, well, some asshole I guess decided to administer me into custody because I kept asking questions about, my, uh…uh… boyfriend.”

Just saying that term of endearment caused color to rush to my cheeks.

“And you were left how long? I feel like I should bring our officer in here. It’s not every day you see a man naked and barefoot.”

“For hours. In the dark. Cold. They left him like that!” I began shivering thinking about it all.

“Okay, I’m going to administer a sedative and get fluids and nutrition in you as well. You should get some rest, as well. I’m sure that was quite traumatic.”

“I…I’m not cold like he is. I don’t think I have hypothermia.”

“Sweetie, you’re in shock. It’s written all over your body.”

“Well, it was quite…stupid…stupid…crazy! I didn’t think you could just be put into jail like that. I didn’t do anything.”

My breaths were coming quickly now and everything I had held back to stay strong for Bradley—giving him my jacket, trying my best to stay calm to keep him calm, well, it all came crashing into me like a freight train. That pound of bricks. The restricted breathing. The anxiety attack.

“Are you on any medications?”

I nodded. “I sometimes take Xanax when an anxiety attack is coming.”

“I’ll get you something. I also need to get you an IV and an oxygen mask.” I went weak in the knees and sat in a chair by the hospital bed. I felt spent. I felt like I was cast into angry waves at sea, seeing Bradley suffer like that. It really took a toll on me. Being freezing, fear. I shivered thinking about it all.

“Please don’t separate us. I can’t handle that right now. I don’t want to be alone in a place like this right now.”

“I understand, sweetie.”

A while later, Bradley was peacefully sleeping and the doctor agreed to let me stay in the room with him.

“Do you want to provide rescuer’s body heat?”

“What’s that?”

“You can lay next to him. Your body will keep his warm. Hypothermic skin is very sensitive to burns. His body will respond more naturally to his girlfriend.”

Girlfriend.

I nodded and smiled, the feeling of pride covering my body. It was the first time anyone had ever said it. It sounded beautiful and amazing.

“I am. Of course, I’d love to.”

“He’s very dehydrated and is lacking nutrients. He will probably sleep for a long time. But he’s stable so there is no need to worry about anything bad happening to him now. If you need to get up to use the restroom, just help yourself. Make sure he’s covered, though.”

“Oh, I’ll take excellent care of him between your rounds.”

Minutes later when it was just the two of us lying in the bed together for the first time, I kissed his cheek and brushed back his hair. “Thank God, you’re okay, Bradley.” I whispered. “I can’t lose you again.”

And just like that, all in a day’s journey, I found myself next to him again, wrapped in his arms in a bed, waiting for the first ray of dawn to dress our skin; I just didn’t ever imagine it to be like this.

I awoke again to the nurse checking my vitals.

“Uh, a Mr. Fox came by a few hours ago with clothes for you and a few of your things. He said that that officer came to the estate to notify him of Bradley’s condition.”

My heavy eyes dashed toward the bench and it brought a smile to my face. He brought my school bag and next to it was a few books, my computer and my files. It was so sweet of him to be so thoughtful. Heck, it was sweet of him to risk being stuck out in the blizzard!

“How have your stress levels been lately?” Her question snapped me back to the present.

“Um, through the rough. My stepfather passed, I’m in graduate school. I’ve been running from my family members. I…I’m going to be okay now, though. I am…I have him again.” My hand rested on his.

“Well, you’re too young to be this stressed. You don’t even have children yet.” She winked at me. “Do yourself a favor. I know who this man is. Have him take you on a month-long vacation. God knows your adrenals need it.”

“My adrenals?”

She looked down at her chart, marking a few things off, and then adjusted Bradley’s IV and drip.

“Uh huh. It’s responsible for your endocrine system. When your adrenals are shot, and I mean shot, like from stress, you get run down and fatigued.”

“Well, I for sure have been fatigued like forever. What do you take for that?”

She shook her head. “It’s not just about taking something. It’s an overhaul on your health. You treat it nutritionally and with the right supplements, but you also have to take it easy with your stress levels. Sleep more. Relax. Remove as much stress as you can because if you don’t, you can really mess up your thyroid levels and if you do want a family one day with this handsome guy, well, that can make it a long road.”

“Huh. Never heard anything about that.”

“It’s around if you research it. With you being on Xanax, and now this whole episode, seeing the man you love in despair like that, sweetie, you need a vacay.”

She glanced over at my heaping pile of books and paper and whistled a long note. “And ditch those big books for one of those trashy novels. Make you feel good real quick.” She winked.

“Oh, I don’t have any of those books.”

“Oh, but I do. I’ll be back soon.” She winked again. “Trust me, you’ll love this book! It will sweep you away and make you think about nothing but sunshine, feeling good and happy.” Her hands advertised the promise as she slowly made a wave in the air, like a natural born salesperson. She really made me believe her.

Minutes later, she was back faster than Amazon Prime one hour shipping itself!

I glanced at the cover. It was a shirtless man. Bradley looked way better than him, though, but that’s because Bradley’s a demigod. Still, the man looked pretty good.

The title:
Heat
.

“Oh honey, don’t judge. You just get past those three pages. You’ll be hooked.”

One hour later, I felt so hot, I swear I was burning even Bradley up!

This book really was just the trick. I was feeling loopy, happy, and blissful. I wasn’t sure if it was from the sedative drip, being cozy next to Bradley in a hospital bed in the middle of a snow storm, or being called his girlfriend, but one thing for certain was I felt heat, alright, like the title of the book, so hot, I wanted to wake him up to satiate the need that’s been buried in me for so long it was becoming a part of me.

I was dreaming of the warmest place on the beach with the sun shining down on my face, and I was wrapped up next to him, making love on the beach. It was so sinfully sweet and he filled me so deeply just like he had promised me a day ago, when my ring tone woke me up, snapping me out of my lustful but perfect dream.

My ring tone!

Damn phone.

Wait…the phones are working!