FIERCED 3: Finale of the Stepbrother Raider Romance Series Read online

  The pure love etched all over him moved me back through time. The years liposuctioned from my body and I was a curvy sexy twenty something all over again, belonging to a man who would climb walls and throw things across the room, destroying anything that stood in his path to reach me. You never forget the force of that love. There was no way I could consciously allow myself to stand between these two.

  I knew the second I suggested he move on and forget about this one - there were plenty more women out there for him. As soon as his face turned obstinate in fury and he flatly informed me that he would fight for this one, beyond amazing woman forever. I knew instantly the depth of his love for her. He passed my little test with merit and honor. If a man can leave, he should do so. Because only a man truly in love will stay and fight despite all obstacles.

  Losing a lover is the hardest thing but if he’s taken from you by fate. Well, no one was surprised that the young girl was too deranged by the loss to cope with it after everything else she’d been through. Her mother was a master of managing the journalists because they’d adored her for years, but the Father -well he was something else entirely.

  I stayed in the room with my charge, watching over her like a she was my last dollar in a den of thieves. Finally the doctor pronounced her alive, but with liver damage from the pills and possible brain damage. Lisa remained in a coma and appeared to be unresponsive to the most expensive attempts to revive her.

  “I can’t deal with an invalid,” her father snapped out before his new wife, Monica de Angelis, the superstar movie queen laid her hand on his arm with a calm warning glance.

  “Grief is making my husband quite out of his mind,” she purred, eliciting massive sympathy from the usually rabid press crew.

  Was I the only one wondering why grief hadn’t taken her down as well? Her only son had been found slain in the desert just last night and she barely registered the loss of him.

  I watched them spin the media junkies around into a tale of woe that made them seem like the most perfect grieving parents on the planet. How they were setting themselves up as the figureheads for any parent who was struggling with the loss of a child. And that could be every parent that ever was seeing as children eventually leave and the parent grieves in one way or another.

  The ambassador can’t get his daughter out of the hospital fast enough. Because she’s damaged goods or because the media will be moving on to the next disaster within the day. He will do anything to extend his limelight into just one more news cycle to build on his announcement to run for president.

  A white gondola appears and Lisa is carried by stretcher. It makes a heart-wrenching photograph to see her motionless body swallowed by the felze. The little cabin on a gondola was invented to shield lover’s trysts from prying gossips, but poor Lisa’s internment is like seeing her deposited in her tomb. When the cameras turn toward her, Monica wipes a tiny tear from her cheek which has miraculously leaked without any damage to her prodigious eye make-up.

  I’m over-awed by the excess of role-playing for the cameras from all around the world following this intimate scene. As the parents create a real-life spectacle for the masses, I almost forget I’m required in the boat with the patient. It makes a comedic interlude for the TV news as they capture me running, okay tottering, along the quay, waggling my arms at the gondola to wait for me.

  The gondolier has already pushed off and I almost make the supreme error of leaping across the widening expanse of water. Instead, two hunking boatmen grab me under each armpit and swing me, one, two, three, out across the gap. How I long to be thrown around by two burly men again. It’s been so long. Then I land in the arms of the surprised gondolier and clasp his neck as though we’re both drowning. Which had he not punted his oar expertly into the wash, we may well have from the way the boat tossed on the current following my ungraceful tumble into the slender craft.

  Oh my heavens, can you imagine if I had not been along for this final journey. Everything would have taken a most unfortunate turn without my presence. And we’d already scraped through a near-death experience in the hospital mortuary.

  Chapter EIGHT

  I’m jabbering I know and I’m really not the doddery old woman everyone has been led to believe. The past two days have thrown me over the edge of reason as could happen to anyone living through this charade. After Lisa was unplugged from life support and taken down to the mortuary things took a disastrous turn.

  There was no reason for her father to come and identify the body. He’d already watched her heart stop beating courtesy of machines and the whole world was well aware that she was no longer with us. But one final photo opp, one more retweet at his daughter’s expense was more than he could resist.

  “Really sir, there’s no reason for you to put yourself through this,” I inserted myself, okay hurled myself, between the Ambassador and the poor dear girl lying on the slab without effect.

  He moved me aside like a beggar in the street and went through with his role. His face contorted into something reptilian when he looked down on the girl’s face for the last time ever. He looked up at me, eyes narrowed and I almost fell to the icy floor as my knees lost their power to hold me up.

  But then he walked straight past me, back to the reporters and his loving wife and said his daughter was definitely gone and asked that he should have some quiet time alone with his beloved wife.

  Shock made me dithery, you see. And it wasn’t until we were on the boat heading towards the crematorium on an island out in the lagoon that her father’s actions made any sense to me at all.

  ROCCO

  When that odd little nurse told me to let her take care of it, I resisted with all my force even if the feds were about to bash out the door. There was no fucking way I was leaving Lisa again. I’d promised I’d be back for her and no way I wanted her to wake up and discover I’d run out on her for a second time. Especially now they were drugging her every night to keep us apart and her under her father’s control.

  Monica Mommie Dearest had temporarily lost her reason, swanning around in her latest role of First Lady of the Universe. It was like talking to an amnesiac, too stunned to face facts when I asked her to intervene for Lisa. In the old days she’d have taken up any cause of mine but for now—useless.

  Perhaps it was meant to be. If we wanted to get away from our parent’s smothering and control, the only way was to step away. Not come asking for help and interference when the mood suited us. I was breaking Lisa out of her personal prison tonight no matter what.

  Then the goons were breaking down the door again and I can face down another army of suits with tasers or I can do as the crazy psychiatric nurse is telling me and exit the way I came. Before I leaped over the balcony and land on the floating dock, she muttered a hurried plan in my ear. First I thought she was insane, lost in her past fantasies. Then I thought it just might work.

  My death in the desert was a perfect foil to get Lisa’s old man off my case. I thought about telling my mother the plan and saving her the sorrow. But then I thought, why deny her the glory of being the world’s perfect grieving mom. She was going to be needing all the ammunition she could muster to insert herself, a foreigner, into the hearts of the American public. She’ll be grateful for my choice when she discovers my reasoning.

  Hey—Don’t judge unless you’ve also grown up with a publicity hound parent.

  Anyway more eyes on the plan only made it more vulnerable to discovery.

  My intention was to come and bust Lisa out of that palazzo hotel as soon as they were convinced I was gone and no longer a threat. But the old man, the sleaze, was one step ahead, drugging his daughter out cold and putting a spy right at her bedside. The nurse had a plan that would outwit him permanently.

  I steal into the crypt like a jewel thief—and in truth that’s what I am because Lisa is the perfect gem in my life. I don’t give a fuck if that sounds corny. When I took her to Africa, fuck I can’t forget how her inner thighs gripped me in fear a
nd exhilaration, she showed me her passion and drive, her kindness and humor. Not to mention that incredible lush body that welcomed me inside until we merged into one. It was like climbing completely inside her skin and being her. With her, part of her. We are one.

  Watching the live stream of news on my phone, I had a fucking heart failure when I saw her father emerge after identifying her body. How could that be happening? Something had gone badly fucking wrong if he was declaring her dead.

  All I could think of was finding that nurse and getting some answers and maybe wringing her scrawny fucking neck. I should have taken Lisa when I had the chance. Past out cold, I could have strapped her across my shoulders and climbed down from the balcony. Even if we’d fallen, at least we’d have been together. Now she was gone and I’d lost my chance.

  I let that nurse convince me to save myself to fight for Lisa another day and now it seems like she double-crossed me. It was her plan all along to get me away from the only woman I’ve ever loved. Jealousy? Bitterness? I don’t care. Whatever the reason someone’s going to pay for the double-fucking-cross.

  I look down on her tranquil beauty like I did when I watched her sleeping peacefully under the desert starry sky. She’s so still and serene in surrender, a small smile playing across those sumptuous lips like she’s dreaming through all this. My cock twitches in my tight pants at the memory of being buried deep in the sweet sweet mouth of this beautiful cadaver. I woke her that night to take possession of her body again and I’m determined to wake her now.

  “Baby,” I graze my forehead to hers. “Come on Principessa, let’s go.” I promised to take her with me and I’m not leaving her here, abandoned and alone even in—I can’t say the word. I can’t believe she’s gone.

  “She won’t come back -” I lash backwards at the unexpected noise behind me, breaking into my reverie. The voice coming out of the shadows makes me lunge into attack mode. I’m across the cold stone floor in a flash with my arm pinned around the intruder’s neck.

  “Don’t throw me to the ground again, Rocco, please. I don’t think my hip joints could stand the suspense.” She really is a feisty old bird, completely lacking in fear.

  “You’re still here with her even now she’s gone? If you’re the bait set to catch me, you better realize this neck will snap before they ever get me?”

  “As I was trying to say before you jumped me, she won’t come back for another hour. The herbal concoction I made to knock her out was a little strong. It’s been a long time since I was asked to make anyone appear to be dead.”

  “She’s gonna be okay?”

  “Of course. Aren’t you the eager one—you’re here an hour earlier than we agreed.”

  “The waiting was destroying me. I had to be here for her.”

  “My stars, you gave me a fright. I though the zombies were coming for me.”

  “I saw the news. The ambassador identifying her dead body, I thought something went wrong. That maybe she really -”

  “That part I still don’t understand. The Ambassador identifying the body we put in Lisa’s place as that of his daughter. And why your Mother didn’t catch wise to the scenario.”

  “Why would she?”

  “Her having been in the movie of Romeo and Juliet, knowing the script inside out.”

  “I don’t think my mother’s ever read a script in her life. She has all her lines fed to her and chooses her roles based on the costumes.”

  “I didn’t realize they’d both be such lens hounds in the midst of grief. My bad, as you say.”

  “So Lisa’s father identified the body of the wrong girl as his own daughter. He didn’t make a mistake blinded by grief?”

  “Uh-huh and I was sure he was going to have me arrested and sent to that Guantameenio place.”

  “He had no choice. What could he tell the press and anyway he was eating up the attention and sympathy votes.”

  “Still I’ve been terrified all through my own personal fright night. You two lovers had better make this work after all the damage to my heart strings.”

  “We’ll make it work. Whatever I have to do to make her happy now is all I can think about.”

  I lift my sweet sleeping angel from the cold stone and carry her in my arms out to the waiting speedboat. There are guards at the quay—Americans talking into their lower lips. I have no idea what they’re doing here but I’m helpless with the precious cargo in my bridal hold. Does her father suspect something and sent the agents to check out the crypt? No one is taking her from me again now that I finally have her in my arms.

  I lob her over my shoulder then move like a thief in the night along the wall of the stone tomb. I scale the sea wall, traversing the rock right beneath the feet of the idiot agents talking like they’ve got me for sure this time. Asshole jerks won’t even cop to losing every time they grab me.

  I’m halfway across the lagoon, gunning the speedboat to skim the tide, when I’m jumped from behind. Two arms fling themselves around my neck and those delicious shapely thighs entwine around my pelvis. In a second my cock is leaping and shoving against my pants, desperate to be set loose and bury itself all the way inside her.

  “Hey Sleeping Beauty, nice of you to wake up at last, now that all the excitement’s over.”

  “Hi, my prince.” Those soft lips brush tantalizingly against my ear as she nuzzles into my neck.

  Lisa

  I play my fingers across the raised keyboard of Rocco’s solid stomach, working down to the deep groove that starts at his hipbones. His black sweatpants are slung precariously low and the deep grooves of muscle point down, under the waistband. Inviting me to the irresistible shaft pulsating inside.

  “Was it your idea to play out the script of Romeo and Juliet in our real lives?”

  I can hardly believe we pulled off the audacious plan. I get to disappear and travel the world with Rocco to protect and care for me. My dream actually came true. I get to spend my life with my rock.

  “Hardly. I’ve never been one for love stories. It was that crazy old guard dog your old man hired, who saw herself in the same role as the nurse in the play, bringing together the star-crossed lovers.”

  “I didn’t know whether to believe her when she told me she was giving me a herbal potion to make me appear to be dead.”

  “I hear you screamed loud enough that the whole of Venice leapt outta bed when you heard I was dead. Don’t get any ideas about acting.”

  “I’ve had enough of pretense. I want honest communication and real feelings now.”

  “You got that babe.”

  I curl my arms around his solid shaft of ab muscles, happier than any woman deserves. No, actually, we should all get a man that makes us this blissed.

  “She told me I was lucky to have a man like you and I better take care of you forever.”

  “Yeah, same here but that was already my intention. You were literally the death of me.”

  He groans out loud when I slip my hand under the fabric of his sweats and tug the solid burning rod out into the balmy air. His thighs wobble just a little as he stops the boat right there on the Adriatic ocean, whips around and cups my face in his powerful hands. He pulls my mouth to his and enters me hard, entwining his tongue around mine in a dance of seduction as we bob gently on the tide.

  His thigh wraps behind mine to collapse my knees into a dip that drops me all the way to the floor. Then he’s over me, tearing open the white gown I was buried in and exposing my naked arching body. A long content sigh emerges from my lips as he thrusts all the way into the length of my pussy, fitting into me like a key into a lock and taking complete possession of me.

  Forever.

  Thank you for reading the final part of FIERCED.

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  About the Author

  Stephanie Brother writes scintillating stories with step-siblings as their main romantic focus. She’s always been curious about the forbidden, and this is her way of exploring such complex relationships that threaten to keep her couples apart. As she writes her way to her dream job, Ms. Brother hopes that her readers will enjoy the full emotional and romantic experience as much as she’s enjoyed writing them.

  Want some of my other titles?

  Novelettes:

  Soldier Stepbrother

  Claimed By Her Billionaire Stepbrother

  Twister and Shout With My Step

  Novellas:

  Escape

  Fierced

  Novels:

  Fade Back

  Anthologies:

  Stepbrother Rogues

  Stepbrother Alphas

  Addicted, Obsessed & Rocked

  Now read on for a snippet from Escape

  I hear Sammie’s bare feet padding on the hardwood but I don’t turn. I feel her hand rest lightly between my shoulders and all the love I feel for her seems to spill out of my heart and into my chest, pulled by that small touch of her palm against my t-shirt covered skin. I swallow and it’s so damn quiet in the room that it’s audible.

  “Bran,” she says rubbing my back. “It’s okay.” When I don’t turn she places her other hand against my cheek and draws me until we are facing each other. I can’t hide anything from her. I never could. Sammie’s always been my best friend and my home. We stare at each other, her eyes so sad and filled with a yearning that I know is reflected in mine. It’s like the threads that had bound us together when we were kids are fusing back together. She licks her lip and the sight of her tongue makes my dick prickle. It’s a tiny reaction but it freaks me the fuck out. But then she’s got her hand around my neck and she’s pulling me towards her and we’re hugging and it feels so good, so perfectly right. She soothes me with her hand that rubs up and down my back and her words that she whispers in my ear.