Stepbrother Savior Read online

  I could see Jake’s point. My mom had fought hard to find love again. She was happy. I didn’t want to do anything to fuck that up for her. But I also felt like I was getting a second chance here with Jake. That this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I couldn’t let pass me by. “What if we agreed to keep it secret, even if things go south? What if we just decide to enjoy a good time together, and we don’t tell anybody, ever.”

  Jake’s fingers tapped on my knee, then slowly slid a few inches up my leg, showing me that he was tempted. But in the end, he said, “Not my style.”

  The finality of that struck me hard, and my belly ached a little. I don’t think I even realized how much I wanted him until it was made clear, again, that I couldn’t have him. Only this time it was so much worse, because I knew he wanted me too.

  He hung his head, forgetting the video game completely. And he sat like that for a long moment, before glancing at me to say, “Besides, it was never just a good time that I wanted from you, Nicole. I always wanted more.”

  ~~~

  My heart suddenly banged hard against my rib cage, forcing me to sit up and squeak. “More?”

  I watched redness crawl up my stepbrother’s neck. He couldn’t look at me. And his skin suddenly felt like it was ten thousand degrees. “A lot more, yeah. You’re sexy. Super sexy. I’m not going to deny it. But what I feel for you…”

  He felt something for me? I was so surprised I forgot any notion of trying to play it cool. Instead, I stared right into his eyes and asked, “What do you feel?”

  “I dunno,” he said, fists curling. “But I feel something. And I haven’t—I haven’t felt anything since…since before I went to war. And I wasn’t sure I could still feel anything.”

  I didn’t make him spell it out for me. I didn’t think he was capable of it. I think he tried, but whenever he opened his mouth to say more, his expression was so pained it was as if he couldn’t.

  He just sat there, making balls of his fists and releasing them again. Until all at once, I think he tried to show me instead of tell me.

  He took my face in his big boxer’s hands so gently, it was if he was afraid he might break me, and goosebumps raised on my arms. Then he kissed a soft line down my injured jaw, eliciting from me a little whimper. Before I could really make sense of the soft sensations, he rubbed his thumb over the hollow of my throat, and traced it down between my breasts, where it rested on my sternum.

  And I sat there, too stunned to move, because I’d never been kissed—or touched—this way before. I didn’t do gentle. And yet, I felt suddenly so small and cherished that I didn’t know what to make of my own trembling reaction to it. Especially when he said, “You are the most beautiful fucking thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  I guess there were a thousand different ways it could’ve gone in that moment. I knew how to seduce guys. I could’ve grabbed at his shirt and peeled it off him. I could’ve grabbed for his cock, and encouraged him to take me hard and fast on the couch. But something about this felt so different…that I asked, “Do you want to… make love?”

  The words felt naive and awkward in my mouth.

  But they also felt true.

  Jake gulped a deep breath. “Oh, yeah. But I’m having trouble believing that’s what you want. Or that it’s best for you.”

  “I have to start learning for myself what’s best for me,” I said, stroking his side, just where his jeans and his shirt met. “And right now, I’m pretty sure it’s you.”

  Jake stood up. And for a moment, I was afraid he was going to walk away, but then he picked me up. Literally picked me up. And he carried me to the bedroom.

  I dragged in a ragged breath, realizing that this was really happening. After all these years, we were really going to find out what was between us. And I got so instantly wet between my legs that I thought I was melting into a puddle.

  Setting me down on the end of the bed, Jake stripped off his shirt and jeans, then knelt before me. And while he was watching me so intently, I peeled off my own shirt and dropped it on the floor. My god, the way his eyes feasted on my pale breasts was enough to make my heart flutter.

  “Jesus Christ,” he murmured, worshipfully. “I think I’m going to burst into flames. Your body is everything.”

  I appreciated that. I really did. But I was way too busy picking my own jaw up off the floor at the way he looked naked. Because while his toned boxer’s torso was a thing of beauty, the whole package was…well, quite a package. Even feeling him hard against my thigh, I hadn’t anticipated how well endowed he was.

  My mouth watered to get my hands on him. Unfortunately, he was all about getting his hands on me. His thumbs found my rosy nipples, and brushed them both. Then his hands trailed down my hips, skimming his pajama bottoms off me and exposing my body to him, naked. Entirely naked.

  “I want to touch you, too, Jake.”

  “Awesome,” he said. “But first, I need to taste you. Or I’m going to snap and lose my shit…”

  Whoa. Ok. There was no arguing with that. I loved how turned on he was, and I loved even more when he just lowered me back onto the bed so that he could get between my legs. First he planted a soft kiss on my pussy. Then his fingers found my aching, pulsing clit, but he didn’t linger there. Instead, he found my entrance, and slid into the first knuckle, then back out again before tasting me on his fingertip.

  It made me wetter to watch him do it. Wetter to know that he must’ve liked my taste, because he made a small sound of appreciation at the back of his throat, then lowered his head between my legs to wriggle his tongue against my clit.

  It wasn’t the first time a guy had gone down on me. But it usually wasn’t my favorite thing. It usually felt kind of sloppy and hurried, not to mention incredibly vulnerable. Not with Jake. At least not the sloppy hurried part. He wordlessly settled my knees over his shoulders, and began to explore with such interest and focus that I felt like the center of his world—even if he’d done this a hundred times before with a hundred other girls.

  I started to squirm, but he pinned my hips down with his hand. “I’m going to make you come, Nicole,” he said, then gave a flick of his tongue over my clit that made my whole body tremble. “Don’t fight me.”

  The thing is, I’m pretty sure if I did fight him, I’d have won. Jake would never force something on me; I knew that. But the way his hand held my hips still gave me some kind of permission I needed to enjoy what he was doing. And oh boy, I enjoyed it. Because Jake knew how to use his whole mouth—tongue, lips, teeth—to drive me wild. And that’s to say nothing of his fingers, which steadily stroked a spot inside me with a come-hither motion that turned my mind to mush.

  “Oh, god. Oh, god. Oh! Please,” I murmured, my hands gripping the sheets because I was afraid I might lose control of myself and yank on his hair.

  Jake chuckled as if he had me in exactly the state he wanted. “You’re so sweet and sexy I could lick your pussy all day, but this is just the warm up.”

  No, there was nothing warm about this. I felt nothing but white hot fire blazing between my legs, and singing my insides with desire. “I—I—”

  Some words were trying to slip out, but they were drowned in a sudden scream as Jake sucked my clit, hard, and I bucked against his mouth in orgasm. The pleasure fanned out from where he sucked and licked me to my belly, my legs, my hips…and just kept going until my toes were curling, and my hand did make a fist of his hair. “Ohgodohgodohgod I’m sorry!” I cried.

  When it was finally over, and I was panting, writhing and spent beneath him, I worried that I’d pulled the hair from his head. And he chuckled, an unexpected leer in his eye. “Don’t apologize. That was sexy. Sooo sexy. Spread your legs for me, baby,” he said, pressing his cock against my leg. “Because I’m aching for you.”

  This was such a new side of Jake. A sexy, playful, intense side. I liked it more than I would’ve imagined. In truth, I loved it. Which is why I not only spread my legs wide for him, but tugge
d him up into a kiss. His mouth tasted like me, but I didn’t care. I just wanted him inside me.

  I knew he wanted it too, but he stopped to get a condom.

  “I’m on the pill,” I said. “You don’t need that.”

  He raised a brow, as if he didn’t think I should trust him. Or maybe he didn’t trust me. Maybe he shouldn’t have. But I’d always used a condom with Carlos and every other guy. Always. This time was going to be different and I knew it. I wanted a connection to him in a way I’d never wanted it with anyone. “I’ve never done it without a condom before, but I want to feel you bare, Jake. I want to feel the warmth of you flooding me.”

  He groaned, steadying himself against the dresser for balance. “You just made my knees weak,” he said, nearly quaking with desire. A moment later, he crawled atop me and pressed the knob of his shaft against my opening. Oh, it was so hot. It felt so good sliding between my wet folds that I moaned, and clutched him.

  But when he should have slammed his hips into me and taken me hard, he hesitated, he just held himself over me with one muscular arm that bulged at the bicep.

  “Oh, god, why are you stopping?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “At this moment?” he asked, staring down at me. “Nothing in the fucking world is wrong. Which is why I want to savor it, and take it slow. Because I’ve been waiting for this, and wanting this so long…I think my heart’s gonna pound its way out of my chest.”

  I knew how that felt. It might’ve sounded silly to anyone else, but I could actually hear his heartbeat. And the way he was looking at me…I knew he meant every word. Which made my insides pirouette with something like happiness—an emotion I wasn’t used to associating with sex.

  “I just really want and need you to fuck me,” I said, sheepishly, then blushed furiously, not knowing if he liked that kind of talk in bed. “Sorry, I kind of have a dirty mouth.”

  He pressed his forehead to mine. “I love it. Those are the sexiest words I’ve ever heard in my life. Can you say it again?”

  I breathed a sigh of relief, basking a bit in his obvious pleasure and approval. “I want you to fuck me, Jake. I need you to fuck me. Please, please, fuck me.”

  “Happily,” he said, while he bent to suck my nipples into his mouth. Oh, that felt like he was tugging on some little ropes of arousal in me that ran right between my legs. Running my hands down his back, I urged him on with a tiny thrust of my hips, and he moaned.

  Then he sank into me, inch by exquisite inch, filling me with a thickness that forced me to sigh.

  “Oh, Christ,” he hissed. “You feel so good. Better than anything I ever imagined—and I imagined a lot.”

  Realizing that he’d been thinking about me all these years was driving me crazy. Panting near his ear, I asked, “Did you ever masturbate thinking about me?”

  “Every. Fucking. Night.” To punctuate his answer, he began to stroke into me hard, as if to prove he could. I was so wet, and swollen inside from having already orgasmed, that it was a tight, slippery friction. But it felt like more than sex. The way he was looking at me felt like devotion. A feeling so indescribably fulfilling that I wondered if I’d ever been fucked by any man who cared about me before.

  It felt so amazing…that I actually laughed a tiny laugh.

  Grunting a bit as he hammered his hips, Jake raised a brow at my giggle. “Laughter isn’t usually the reaction I get out of girls.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, laughing again, gasping for air. “It’s just…it’s just so good. I can’t even believe we’re doing this and that it feels this amazing.” It was too hard to talk while getting fucked hard, but I managed to add, almost apologetically, “And I think I’m going to come again on your cock. Like, right away. Like, right now.”

  About two seconds later, I was holding him around the neck like a drowning woman, biting softly into his shoulder, crying out helplessly as waves of orgasm washed over me and stole my breath away. He sped up, thrusting as I came, making the whole bed creak underneath us.

  He growled with lust, nearly beyond speech. His muscles were tight, his body was on fire, and as he battered his body down on mine, he finally choked out, “That’s it. I’m going to come so hard inside you, baby.”

  He slid in and out, faster and faster, as he spent himself inside me. The hot rush of his semen filled, then overflowed me, and I loved every minute of it. Every unusual sensation. So much so that I clung to him, my hips tight around his waist, both of us breathless and overwhelmed.

  ~~~

  “Oh. My. God,” I panted, collapsing on his pillow and sweeping sweaty hair from my brow. “Can we do that again?”

  He grinned, rolling onto his side. “You don’t want to cuddle or something first?”

  “Cuddle?” My sweaty skin still red and tingling with pleasure, I began to kiss my way down his chest, intent on sucking his softening cock into my mouth to make it hard again. “What kind of girls have you been dating?”

  “The wrong ones,” he said, threading his fingers into my hair. “Obviously.”

  My heart swelled a little at his answer. After so many years of thinking he hated me, I hadn’t realized what a great guy he was behind the wall he’d put between us. Now that the wall was down, I wanted to keep it down. I wanted to smash it down.

  Which is why—I think—after licking his cock and balls clean with the flat of my tongue, I tried to engulf his shaft in my mouth in one stroke. And that was a mistake. Because I was nearly blinded by the crack of pain I felt in my sore jaw when I opened wide to take him.

  I’m not sure if I yelped, or screeched or moaned or all three. But Jake seemed to know exactly what had happened as he reached down for me, and it was a stark reminder of just how we’d got to this place. “Motherfucker,” Jake said, bitterly. I didn’t think it was just because blow jobs were temporarily out of the question. “You do realize that the reason I wanted you to go to the cops was so that I wouldn’t have to break this guy’s face, right?”

  Uh. No. That had really never occurred to me. “You don’t seem like the face-breaking type. At least not outside of the boxing ring.”

  He snorted, as if I didn’t know the first thing about him. “I’m supposed to protect you, Nicole. I’m your…”

  I think he was going to say stepbrother.

  I didn’t want him to say that—desperately didn’t want him to say that—so I quickly filled in, “Lover?” It sounded kind of old-fashioned, and vaguely European. But I couldn’t think of a better word.

  And it worried me when he didn’t reply.

  “Can I get you something for your jaw?” he finally asked. “Some aspirin or some more frozen vegetables to hold against it or something? I think there are some carrots in the freezer still.”

  Oh, he was retreating. I could feel it. He was retreating from me again, and I just couldn’t let that happen. Not given the way I felt or the way he just made me feel. I was only a kid in high school the first time he pulled away from me. But I was twice as strong as he thought I was, maybe even stronger than I knew, and I wasn’t letting him go without a fight this time. “No, Jake. I don’t need aspirin. I don’t need frozen carrots. I need to know what you meant when you said you hadn’t felt anything since the war and that you weren’t sure you could feel anything.”

  Jake’s eyes dropped away, but I rested my head on his belly, staring up at him, making it clear that he was either going to have to answer me or push me away with his bare hands. Otherwise, I wasn’t going.

  “I can’t…I can’t explain it really.”

  “Try,” I said, holding his hand.

  He made a little sound of disgust, then finally gave in, speaking in clipped tones, revealing as little as possible. “After tromping around in sand waiting for an IED to explode, I just felt. I dunno. Detached. Numb. Food isn’t even right. It’s like I can’t taste anything.”

  The food thing was interesting. “But you liked my potatoes.”

  He met my eyes. “I like everything
about you, Nicole. I came home because it was the last place I remember feeling stuff strongly. But now I think maybe it wasn’t the place, but the girl. I’m not feeling numb right now. Not with you. Nobody could ever feel numb with you. You always turn up the voltage all the way. And now I feel anything but numb.”

  My heart squeezed in my chest, and I brought his hand to my lips to kiss. “Me neither. Not numb. And not miserable. And not wishing for more drama or whatever. Just happy, which is weird.”

  “Happy isn’t weird.”

  “Sounds like it might be, for us. I think we might be pretty fucked up…”

  He laughed, darkly. But at least it was a laugh. “You think?”

  “Maybe we should get some help for it.”

  He stopped laughing. “Like what?”

  “The army pays for counseling, right? I mean, I’m flattered that I can make you feel stuff. More than flattered. I’m kind of dying of joy to hear that, and terrified that you’re going to make me fall in love with you and break my heart.” Oh god, why did I say that? Hoping he’d forget I ever uttered such a thing, I rushed forward with, “But it sounds like there might be more going on in there than really hot sex or romance or whatever we’re doing can cure.”

  Jake was quiet a long time.

  Then he said, “Fuck.”

  “It’s not a bad thing,” I chirped, worried that I’d pushed things way too far. “I’m not trying to say—”

  “I know what you’re trying to say,” Jake interrupted. “You’re giving good, sensible, responsible advice. Which is my thing, not yours.”

  I grinned, relieved. “Maybe we’re rubbing off on one another.”

  His eyes narrowed lustfully, and he trailed a hand down my breast to cup it. My breasts really loved that. And also loved when he said, “Maybe we should do a little bit more rubbing off on each other…”

  It was tempting to get distracted by him and call a halt to this awkward conversation. More than tempting. I wanted almost nothing more than to climb on top of him and ride him until we were both screaming. But when someone cares about you, and you care about them, you do the hard stuff. You don’t lose control. You find it. That’s what I was learning.