Step Lover Read online

  “Fine.”

  “Do you like working at Sarta?”

  Zoe dabbed at her mouth with a linen napkin before answering. “I do. There is a lot of variety, and it seems like a good place to launch a career.”

  “You’re planning to stay in the city then?” He speared a tomato on his fork as he asked.

  She nodded. “If they’ll have me. I love San Diego, but I kind of feel like I’ve outgrown it.” Zoe found it easy to laugh and realized her wine glass was full again. “That sounds silly, considering how large it is, but I want to be someone else.”

  “It’s hard with the family there reminding you of who you were.”

  She nodded, a thrill shooting through her that he understood so well what she meant. “Is that why you left, Hale?” Somehow, she managed to make the question sound casual, though she was desperate for an explanation that was three years overdue.

  “No, not really.” He focused his attention on his plate.

  Zoe took a deep breath, reaching for her glass to drain it. “Then why?”

  Hale looked up, his expression dark. “Dad told me to get out until I was able to come back.”

  She frowned. “That’s completely confusing and makes no sense.”

  He lifted a shoulder. “It makes perfect sense, but I guess you had to be there.” With renewed vigor, he turned to eating, making it clear he was done with the discussion.

  Sighing with frustration, Zoe reached for her glass, surprised to find it refilled again. From the corner of her eye, she stared at her stepbrother, finding his glass half-filled. The wine bottle looked almost empty, so who had drunk the majority of the wine? Was it her?

  That would explain why she was suddenly sleepy and dizzy-headed. Stifling a yawn, Zoe returned her attention to the pasta, hoping it would soak up the wine she had too freely imbibed.

  The room was quiet as they finished eating. It wasn’t entirely comfortable, laden with unspoken emotions and unasked questions, but she didn’t have the courage to break the silence and demand answers. Instead, she ate until her head no longer spun, studiously avoiding more wine.

  “Dessert?”

  Zoe let out a little groan. “No, thanks. I wouldn’t know where to put it.”

  His gaze burned as it raked down her body, resting for an overly long second on her breasts and the curve of her hips. It reminded her of how thin and beanpole-like she’d been the last time they had been so close to each other. How she’d been crying about how plain she was, and he’d offered comfort.

  Clearing his throat, he looked away with a nod. “It’s just some ice cream, so it can wait.”

  “Yeah.” Sliding to her feet, she was standing so close to him. Neither of them had gained any height in the last three years. He was still just about five inches taller than her own five-nine, and it was nice to have a man who stood above her. It made her feel safe rather than smothered, and she had to resist the urge to grab hold of the front of his shirt and pull him closer.

  He’s your brother. What the fuck is wrong with you?

  That annoying voice in the back of her head, the one of reason that she had to heed, snapped her out of her haze, and she took a step back, busying herself with the task of putting away the salad as Hale cut the lasagna and portioned it into smaller containers to store in the freezer.

  Once again silence stretched between them, making her overly conscious of the deepness of his breathing, the tang of his cologne, and the sound of his fabric rustling with each move he made. Clumsily, she shoved the container of salad into the fridge and focused on loading the dishwasher. Anything to keep her gaze from him and her body out of his proximity.

  When that was done, she thanked him for dinner and escaped from the kitchen to the living room. That wasn’t much of an escape, since there were few places one could go in an eight-hundred-square-foot apartment, but just being out of his sight helped restore her sense of calm.

  On autopilot, Zoe moved to the loveseat. As soon as she sat down, the striped tabby slunk out from wherever he’d been napping and jumped onto her leg. Bomber gave her a green-eyed stare, dug his claws into the cotton of her yoga pants, and stretched before plopping on her lap.

  She reached for the remote, her heart racing as the minutes ticked past. She was dreading Hale’s reappearance and hoped he had plans for the night. When he finally emerged from the kitchen a few minutes later, she barely looked at him.

  “I’m going out to meet some friends for a drink. You wanna join us?”

  Zoe shook her head. After the wine she’d drank, the last thing she needed was more alcohol. The idea of meeting his friends was daunting, especially if they included the female variety, and she wanted to be out of his presence, not spending more time with him. “Thanks, but I’m going to relax.”

  “Okay.” Hale disappeared down the hallway, pausing briefly at the closet to select something from his shelves and rod before entering the bathroom. The water came on a couple of minutes later.

  Zoe moaned low in her throat, her head sinking backward against the couch as she imagined him in the stall. If his preferences were the same as when they had shared a bathroom, he liked his water hot, so there would be a haze of steam in the air. The citrusy shower gel he used was more potent in the heat, and she could almost smell it teasing her nose, though she wasn’t really close enough to the bathroom.

  Her breathing grew shallow as she imagined his large hands moving over his muscular frame, slippery with the foamy soap. Imagining the frothy white lather covering his body, she moaned again, unable to resist picturing her fingers running over that soaped skin.

  In her mind’s eye, she splayed her hand across his abdomen and mimicked the motion on her own stomach. Slowly, she let her fingers glide down his skin, seeking out the hard length of him. On the loveseat, her fingers crept into the waistband of her yoga pants and under her panties. As she imagined stroking his cock, her own fingers expertly caressed her flesh, working her into a state of slick need in no time.

  Zoe kept the image of his body in her mind, drawing on memories of having seen him without his shirt when they shared a house, though she had never seen him naked. Her imagination helpfully filled in the blanks, and she had no trouble visualizing her stepbrother lifting her in his arms, hands under her buttocks, and driving the length of his erection into her core.

  Her fingers took the path she wanted his cock to blaze as her thumb circled her clitoris. Zoe whimpered and barely bit back the urge to cry his name as she came. It was only as the post-orgasmic rush faded that she realized the shower was no longer running. Having no idea how long it had been since he’d stopped the water, she jerked her hand out of her panties and pressed it under her thigh, as though she could hide what she had done by keeping her hand out of sight.

  It was a silly, irrational action, but she still kept her hand pressed there as her heart slowed back to normal. Cautiously, Bomber approached her, giving her a wary glare as he returned to his position on her lap. She had inadvertently displaced him during her heated self-pleasuring.

  Hale appeared less than a minute later, his body wash and cologne mingling to make the scent that would always be his. He paused for a second as he entered the living room space, frowning and inhaling deeply. After a moment of stillness, he moved again, an inscrutable expression on his face.

  “Well, I’ll see you later, Zoe.” He scooped up his keys from a small ceramic dish on the table near the door. “Have a good night.”

  “Thanks, you too.” Her voice was still husky with passion, and she couldn’t deny her nerve endings had started tingling again the moment he’d entered the room. She couldn’t guarantee she wouldn’t go for round-two as soon as he’d left the apartment, especially with the tantalizing sight of his tight jeans resting low on his hips, easily visible through the heather-gray T-shirt stretched over his tight muscles and flat stomach.

  Chapter Three

  Hale let himself into his apartment late that evening. He’d only nursed a coupl
e of beers while he’d played pool with his buddies, but his head was still pounding as though he’d drank a keg by himself. Stress. Self-denial. Had to be.

  What the fuck was he thinking when he’d invited Zoe to stay here? Had it been some kind of test of his will power? Congratulations, moron, you failed. If it had been some attempt to prove to his dad that he was worth allowing back into the family, that was probably going to fail too.

  With a small sigh, he saw she had contorted herself onto the loveseat rather than take a section of the king-size bed. Zoe snored softly, but her head was at an awkward angle. She looked damned uncomfortable, and he couldn’t just leave her there like that. What kind of brother would let his sister sleep that way?

  “Stepbrother,” he muttered aloud, acknowledging the critical difference. The key element that had fucked up everything and made such a mess of his life the past three years. Professionally, he had kicked ass and taken names, but that was because he’d had nothing else to focus on, aside from some friends and getting over his forbidden attraction.

  Bomber hissed at him when Hale gently pushed the cat off her lap and to the floor. Ignoring his old friend’s outrage from the displacement, he bent down to lift her. She was tall and willowy, but she somehow curved against him as though she were a petite little thing built just to fit in his arms.

  “Dangerous thoughts, Hale.” His whispered admonition made her stir in his arms, and she turned her face into his neck. He nearly dropped her when she exhaled against the sensitive spot that revved his engine like no other. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he muttered as he carried her to the bed and laid her on one side.

  The faint scent of sex lingered in the air, and he briefly wondered if she had fucked some loser in his bed. His head throbbed with anger at the thought, before he dismissed it. A slow smile broke over his lips as he remembered leaving the bathroom earlier and being hit with the sweet perfume of what he could have sworn was her arousal.

  Had she been in the living room touching her pussy while he’d been in the shower stroking himself? He’d been unable to resist the urge for a quick jerk-off after enduring the pleasurable torture of being so close to her during dinner but forbidden to touch her. Had she been imagining him in the shower, or were her thoughts of some other guy? Had she been in a similar state of arousal from their closeness, or had she just been randomly turned on?

  The thought that she had been as aroused by him as he was her should have raised a dozen red flags. An alarm klaxon should be blaring in the back of his mind, reminding him why he had to put distance between himself and his tempting stepsister, but only the soft chuffing of satisfaction buzzed in his ears.

  “Fuck,” he whispered again, forcing himself to turn away from Zoe and go to the bathroom. He’d have a quick wank, get his filthy thoughts under control, and try to grab a few hours of sleep. With any luck, he’d be up and out of the bed before she ever woke up.

  He supposed the chivalrous thing to do was to sleep on the loveseat, but hell with that. It wasn’t just to avoid a painful crick in his neck or lower back pain all day. No, he was going to seize the only opportunity he’d probably ever get to sleep in the same bed with Zoe. He wasn’t going to touch her, but just being near her would be enough. It had to be, because anything else was out of the question.

  ***

  Zoe woke feeling warmer than she ever had. It was like being pressed against a furnace. A warm, fleshy furnace with sinewy muscle and a hard-on.

  Her eyes snapped open, and she turned her head to find the source of even breathing from her left. Her mouth dropped open as she saw Hale’s head on her pillow. Or was her head on his? They had rolled together into the center of the bed, limbs tangled. His skin pressed against hers wherever they weren’t separated by fabric.

  Glancing down, she swallowed a small gasp at the sight of the impressive bulge tenting the front of his plaid boxers. The cotton hid any skin from inspection, but she could see the general shape and outline, not to mention feel it poking against her hip. Hale was seriously blessed, based on her modest experience.

  When she looked upward again, heat flamed in her cheeks as her gaze locked with his silver-blue orbs. He gave her a lazy smile that oozed sex appeal, and she squirmed. “Morning, sweet Zoe.”

  “What…how…why am I in bed with you?” Her voice was somewhere between a timid squeak and a shrill shriek.

  “You looked so uncomfortable on the loveseat.” He lifted a shoulder. “The bed is huge, so why not share?”

  “This is why not.” She gestured to their bodies, still pressed together. Realizing they were touching, she scooted backward to separate them. “It’s wrong to sleep with your brother.”

  “Stepbrother.” He reached out to push a strand of hair out of her eyes. “We aren’t really related, Zoe.”

  “No, but our families…I mean…it’s complicated.” She trailed off, closing her eyes as his fingers stroked down her cheek. When he brushed his thumb over her mouth, she opened them again to stare at him. “I need to get going, or I’ll be late.”

  “It’s Saturday.”

  “Oh.”

  “There’s no reason you can’t just spend a lazy day in bed, right?” His words were innocent, though his expression was anything but. “We could put on a movie and just veg out.” His fingers drifted down her neck as he spoke.

  She tried to focus on his words and block out the sensual stroke of his fingers. “I…” Clearing her throat, she tried again. “I can’t. Things to do.”

  “Like what?” He traced the scooped neckline of her tank, but his fingers didn’t dip beneath it.

  “Groceries. We’re running low on rutabagas.” She winced, having seized the first word that came to mind.

  His lips twitched. “I guess we are, since I’ve never bought them. You really like rutabagas, huh?” His index finger sneaked just under the satin ribbing of her tank.

  “I love them.” Her voice was a breathy whisper.

  “I’m more of a fruit man. Apples…” His hand slipped lower, his fingers gliding over her breasts above the fabric. “Bananas.” As his palm rested lightly over her taut nipple, he gave her a wicked grin that was hot enough to make her panties disappear in a puff of smoke. “Melons.”

  Her throat was dry, but she somehow managed to summon enough saliva to respond. “How crude of you, Hale. I thought you’d be much smoother than that.”

  “I’ll be smooth later.” He scooted closer, his mouth getting nearer to hers. Wiggling his hand made his palm rub against her nipple, and his eyes told her he knew exactly what he was doing to her.

  As his lips almost brushed hers, she moved her head back. “We can’t, Hale.”

  “Why not?” His breath blew across her lips.

  “I really have to go.”

  Before she could roll out of bed, he put his arm around her waist, holding her against him. “Don’t you wonder what it would have been like?”

  “What what was like?” Her stomach quivered under his arm, and it took every bit of concentration to focus on his words and not his proximity.

  “That night, three years ago.” He took a handful of her hair, rubbing the silken strands between his fingers. “The night you came home crying because some idiot insulted your gorgeous body, and I hugged you.”

  “It was for comfort.”

  “It started that way.” His fingers traced lazy patterns on her hip. “But you looked up at me, your lips trembling, and the pain in your eyes so real that I wanted to crush that idiot boy.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t remember.”

  “Liar,” he whispered. “You were finally in my arms, and I was about to kiss you. Don’t you wonder how it would have felt?”

  The memory swept through her of her disastrous blind date with a friend’s boyfriend’s cousin. The guy had been clearly uninterested and was rude enough to say bluntly in front of her that her chest was too flat, and her curves too nonexistent, for him to have any interest.

  She’d come home
crying to find Hale in the kitchen preparing a sandwich. Her stepbrother had hugged her, whispering sweet words to her as he coaxed the story from her. She still remembered the intensity in his eyes when he had spoken to her. “You’re beautiful, and don’t let any fuckwad make you think differently.”

  He had cupped her face in his hands, and their heads had moved closer together. Only a sound from the other room had made them jump apart before their lips met. Confused and guilty at the way she had suddenly noticed her stepbrother was a man, not just her relative by marriage, she had pulled away from him and run up to her room.

  Remembering that, she did a similar motion, rolling away from him and dropping to the floor on all fours. Zoe got to her feet and glared down at him where he sprawled on the bed, looking bewildered.

  “I wonder about a lot of things, Hale. Maybe about the kiss that didn’t happen, but I’m more curious about why you just left? You were gone the next day, and you never called or wrote to me. You didn’t even say goodbye.” Her voice broke on the last word as the pain from his departure returned as fresh as it had been the morning after the almost-kiss, when she had woken to find him gone.

  His eyes widened, and he suddenly sat up in bed. As he swung his legs over the side, she gave in to the urge to flee, turning to run toward the door. Even in her bare feet, she would rather get out of the apartment than face down her stepbrother.

  A second later, he grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. Zoe hit the wall, though his hand was behind her head to protect her. Hale trapped her there with his body, his hands on either side of her head. “Let me go.”

  “Not until you listen.” He breathed raggedly, clearly angry. “I left because I didn’t have a choice. My dad saw us almost kiss.”

  She swayed slightly. “Oh.”

  “Yeah, oh. He blamed me, of course, because he’d seen how I’d been watching you for months.” His expression softened when she gasped slightly. “I’d wanted you for a long time, Zoe, and he knew it. He told me to get the hell out and not come back until I was over the sick obsession I had for my sister.”