Break Me: A Stepbrother Romance (4 page)

“That's a sensible move, at least for now.” My dad pushed back his chair. “But never say never, Bram. You're a young man. You just don't know.”

We cleaned up the dishes, and then Dad settled on the couch in front of the TV. Bram disappeared. I sat with Dad, watching the local news, which featured the recent mayoral election in Terre Mills. Our new mayor, Rob Tanner, was at some kind of public function, smiling and waving. At his side were his wife and his son, who looked to be about twenty. People clapped and cheered.

“That man is a damned crook,” my dad said.

I turned to him in surprise. He was lying back on the sofa, his eyes half open, watching the screen. “Mayor Tanner?” I said.

“No, the son,” Dad said. “He comes into the body shop sometimes. If you see him, Summer, don’t ever go near him. He’s into some shady stuff. I’m sure his father knows about it, which makes him a crook, too.”

I looked back at the TV screen. The mayor was still smiling. His son was smiling too, but now I saw something sinister about it. Maybe that was just my dad’s influence. In any case, I wondered what Dad had seen to give him such a strong opinion.

We watched more TV until I looked over and realized Dad had drifted to sleep. The broken leg had taken more out of him than he admitted, and he got tired more easily now. He looked so relaxed, flaked out on the couch, that I just extracted myself and tiptoed out of the room. I even left the TV on, so the sound would lull him into dreamland.

I quietly picked up my purse and keys and slipped my feet into my sandals. I let the front door close silently behind me, breathing in the air of the summer night. I was halfway across the pitch-black porch when I heard Bram's voice.

“Summer.”

I froze. My blood went hot and cold in my veins. He was sitting on one of the porch chairs, I realized as my eyes adjusted, a black silhouette in the dark. “What is it?” I said.

“Sit down,” he said. When I didn't move, he added, “Is he asleep?”

“Yes,” I replied. “In front of the TV.”

“He does that a lot,” Bram murmured. “Every night since I've been home.”

It felt like a punch to my gut. I should know all of this. I should know how tired my father was, how his injury affected him. But I didn't, and Bram knew more than me. I dropped into one of the porch chairs, letting my purse hit the ground. “He won't let me stay,” I said. “I offered to move in here when it happened, but he said no.”

“He's proud,” Bram said.

Tears stung the backs of my eyes, and I shook my head. “Not around you, he isn't.”

He was quiet for a minute. “I'm a guy,” he explained. “It's different. You're his daughter. He wants to look strong to you, invincible. He wants you to look up to him. He doesn't give a shit about those things with me.”

Now the tears spilled over onto my cheeks. God, what an embarrassment I was. I wiped them quickly, hoping Bram couldn't see them in the dark. “Of course I look up to him,” I said. “What the hell is he thinking? I just want to help.”

“Summer,” Bram said, “maybe you haven't noticed this, but men can be fucking idiots.”

I gave a quick laugh, wiping the tears from my cheeks and sniffling. I couldn't do it—I couldn't reconcile this Bram, the Bram I knew, with the man who had put someone in the hospital for three weeks. It didn't make sense. “Okay,” I said. “I guess if he's going to be an idiot, then I'm glad you're here.”

“You shouldn't be,” he said.

He was driving me crazy. The darkness was too warm, too quiet, to intimate. I grabbed my purse. “Make sure Dad gets to bed,” I said. “I'm going home.”

“Just one more thing.”

I froze.

“What did he do to you?” Bram said, his voice low and dangerous.

“Wh—what?”

“Your ex-boyfriend.” The words cut like a knife through the air. “You got a look on your face when Nate mentioned him. You think I didn't see? I very much fucking saw it, Summer. I'd like to know what he did to you to put that look on your face.”

My lips were numb. I stood up from the chair in a jerky motion, grabbed for my keys. “I have to go.”

He called after me again, but I kept running, until I got to my car and drove away.

Damn Bram Riordan. Damn, damn, damn.

B
ram

I
'd been so fucking
close.

She was crying. Summer was crying. Just the thought of it ripped my guts out, made me want to break something in half. I'd wanted to reach out, stroke my thumbs over her cheeks, wipe her tears away. My hands had been raised off the arms of my chair, ready to do it. But instead I just sat there, doing nothing. Because I knew she didn't want me to do that.

And because I wanted more. After I wiped the tears from her face, I wanted to sink down on my knees, push her skirt up, spread her knees, and bury my face between her legs. I wanted to inhale the smell of her pussy and push her panties aside and lick her until she made the little animal sound I'd made her make six years ago. Until she forgot about all of the bad things in her life, about everything except my tongue.

And she definitely didn't want me to do that.

Still, I'd been hard just thinking about it. That was the kind of guy I was. She was crying about her dad, and my cock was rampant in my jeans. After she left, I went upstairs and took a shower and jerked off, thinking about her. I imagined the way her pussy would smell, the taste of her cream. I pictured her arching her back, those perfect tits in the air, moaning
Bram, Bram.
I'd spurted jets of come down the shower drain and watched them spiral, my chest heaving, thinking
You are a piece of fucking garbage, Bram Riordan. You are fucking worthless. You're not even good enough to breathe her air.

Then I'd gotten dressed, gone downstairs, and helped Nate to bed.

She was my weakness, like a knife in my back that I couldn't get out. It was worse since I'd gotten out, since I'd seen her. I had dreams about the way her lips moved when she talked. The mention of her ex-boyfriend had made me think of her fucking some other guy, and the idea made me sick. Me, the guy who had lost count of how many women I'd put my dick into before I went to jail. All I wanted was this one woman. That afternoon on the beach had been the only time that mattered. The only time I couldn't get out of my head, in a loop going around and around.

I should probably go find myself a woman. Six years of celibacy was poison for a man—any man. Celibacy made us crazy. I wasn't exactly prime material now that I was a con, but I was pretty sure I could go to one of Terre Mills' lower-end bars and pick up some pussy. It might not be quality, prime pussy, though it would be better than nothing.

But it wouldn't be Summer.

Even after six hard, dry years, I'd rather have nothing if I couldn't have Summer.

Oh, shit. Shit. I was a goner.

To fuck her would make me a selfish bastard. It would also be a rotten way to repay Nate, who had been better to me than I deserved. Paying him back by mounting his daughter and riding her until she begged for mercy was beneath even me.

So, fine. I'd keep my distance, and I'd suffer. It was the only way.

In the meantime, I had enough worries at the shop.

Nate had started the auto repair shop years ago, when he got out of prison. He'd been like me, a guy no one would hire within a million miles. So he'd created his own job—started a business fixing cars. At first he'd done work for other ex-cons at a discount rate, since he knew what it was like to be fresh out of prison with no money, how important it was to have your own car. Just that little bit of dignity made a difference. He'd expanded slowly as his reputation built, and now the shop had seven employees—five guys in the body shop, one woman in the front office, and me.

It wasn't a million-dollar franchise, but Nate didn't care. He made enough to pay his bills, pay alimony to his ex-wives and child support for Summer until she came of age. And he still helped out ex-cons when he could. That was all Nate had asked for.

When he'd been married to my mother, I'd had an idea that Nate was the kind of guy you looked up to. He was certainly better than my own dad, who had pissed off when I was four and dodged support payments every day afterward. I hadn't even spoken to my dad in over a decade, had no idea where he lived or what he was doing.

Nate was different. He was a guy who had made mistakes, then spent a lifetime rebuilding, making a life for himself. He owned his mistakes and didn't blame anyone else for them, but he still hadn't let them sink him. It was admirable, but in my youthful cockiness I'd thought,
That will never be me.
Those kinds of mistakes were the kind that other people made. Me, I was untouchable. I was immune. I could do whatever I wanted, and there would be no consequences. Not for me.

Until one day, there were.

So here I was. I was no better than Nate—I'd learned that long ago. In fact, he was better than me. So it made me very fucking angry that someone was stealing money from his shop.

I'd started to have suspicions that fourth day, the day of the dinner. We had a lot of customers who paid in cash—lots of cons didn't have bank accounts, let alone credit cards—and cash transactions went into the office safe. Except that day was the first day I'd been given access to the safe, and when I deposited money in there from the last customer of the day, I saw the safe was empty.

The first thing you'd think is that the cash had been deposited in the bank. Except that was Lisa the office manager's job, and she'd taken the day off. She hadn't been in at all that day, and no one else had made a bank deposit. And we'd been putting cash in there all day.

Only Nate, Lisa, and now me had the combination to that safe. Nate had given it to me as a sign of trust. But the other guys working there had been there for a while. I wasn't blind. Any one of them could have gotten that combination if he was determined enough. The easiest way would be to watch someone else key in the combination in secret. Watch over someone's shoulder, or even use a simple video feed if you have a little tech savvy. Boom, you now have access to cash every day.

But that day, I didn't know if Nate knew about it. I didn't want to bring it up at dinner, with Summer there. And then Nate fell asleep. Maybe someone else had deposited the cash. Maybe it was none of my business. I figured if he opened the safe the next day and found the cash missing, he'd raise a stink soon enough. Maybe heads would roll.

Maybe I'd be blamed.

That would be the end of me.

But it wasn't me. And since it wasn't, I wanted to know who it was. Anyone stealing from Nate was going to have a problem. It was nice to have something to be angry about, to take my mind off Summer.

But as I drifted to sleep that night, I thought of her. Just like always.

S
ummer

T
here were
days when running a business was the pits. This was one of those days.

First of all, it was raining. The only drawback to the space I'd rented for the shop was the back alley, where I did my deliveries and received shipments of the furniture I'd bought. There was no room to pull a truck right up to the back door, so the delivery men had to park at the end of the alley, then carry the furniture to and from my door. And when it was raining, the furniture—antique, precious furniture—got wet.

So I'd had to call and put off the delivery time until evening, hoping the rain would stop. Then a woman who had bought a lamp from me had called me, complaining that she'd seen a similar lamp on Craigslist for one third of the price. I'd explained to her that I'd refinished the wood base of the lamp by hand, and that I'd had a new shade made to replace the ratty old one, which had to be custom made. That was why I charged more. But still she shouted at me until I told her she could come in and get a refund. The entire exchange left a bitter taste in my mouth, wondering why I bothered.

It had been a week since the dinner at my dad's, and I was itchy, irritable, bothered. I knew the reason why. But I was so disgusted with myself that I refused to admit that Bram had set me off-balance. He didn't even have to be present in the room to drive me crazy. It seemed I was able to do that all by myself, while he was off, doing whatever he was doing, with me the last thing on his mind.

The shop had finally closed for the day—it had seemed a million years long—and I was in the back room, changed into jeans and a t-shirt, my hair tied back, sanding a huge teak sideboard. It was a monster of a thing, but I had gotten it cheap at an estate sale, and with a bit of sanding and some new finish it would be a beautiful piece of work. I thought maybe the vigorous sanding would work off some of my frustration, but so far it wasn't working. I stopped to call the delivery company to cancel the delivery entirely for the day, then returned to the sanding, cursing the space I'd rented and wondering what I was thinking, doing this at all.

My phone beeped with a text. I picked it up. It was Caitlyn.

So, Mike. ?? I have his new number. You want it??

Oh, great. Just great. Why did everyone think that me and Mike were their business? Why couldn't I get it through anyone's head that I never wanted to see Mike again?

My thumb hovered over the buttons, and then I typed,
We're not compatible.
Understatement of the year.

What do you mean?
She texted right back.
You liked the same movies.

I stared at the words, unbelieving. Was she for real? Did she actually think that liking the same movies made two people compatible?

I threw the phone down as my brain burned with shame. I could still remember the night Mike and I had been in bed after a few glasses of wine. I'd been really turned on, and I'd grabbed him and whispered in his ear,
Fuck me.

He'd jumped back like I'd burned him. And the first words out of his mouth were,
What did you just say? God, Summer, that's disgusting.

It had gotten worse from there. He punished me with long stretches of no sex at all. He never wanted the lights on, never wanted to do it anywhere but in his bed. When, during one of our infrequent bouts of sex, I'd suggested he give me oral sex, he'd said in shock,
Are you kidding me? That's gross. What kind of girl are you?
He wouldn't touch me, rub me. He didn't want me to go down on him. He thought only sluts did it doggie style—he actually said that to me.
Only sluts, do it like that, Summer, for God's sake. Just lie down.

We'd lasted five months. Everyone I knew thought he was a great guy, perfect for me. He was good-looking, well dressed, and had a great job, where he was getting promoted regularly. They’d all assumed Summer had found The One, that she’d settle down and get married. And on the surface, everything had looked fine. Why wouldn't it? We couldn't admit to our families and friends that our sex life was a total disaster. I wouldn't admit that I felt shamed, humiliated. That I almost never came. He'd pump himself into me every once in a while in the missionary position in the dark, giving a little groan as he jerked into the condom, and I'd think,
Is this all there is? It can't be.

He wasn’t the only boyfriend I’d had. I’d dated other guys, too, guys who looked great on the surface. But something was always wrong. I caught one guy making stupid jokes with his friends about how many blow jobs he was getting. Another guy lived with two roommates, one of which was a girl, and didn’t seem to have any problem having sex behind the thin walls of his bedroom with his roommates listening in. Yet another, a football player I’d met during my brief college stint, had not only been quick and boring in bed, but had liked to call me “kitten,” which squicked me out and totally turned off my mood. Wrong, wrong, wrong. There was always something
wrong.

Maybe it was me.

That was the problem. I
knew
there was good sex out there somewhere. I knew because Bram had showed me.

One day, after Mike and I had argued yet again, I thought of Bram whispering to me,
Have you ever made yourself come?
I thought of him driving into me, unapologetic, saying
Fuck yes
and swallowing the cries I made, and I got up the courage to dump Mike. He hadn't taken it well. “You know, I was thinking about marrying you,” he said nastily as I roamed around his apartment, picking up the things I'd left there. “But now I realize I can't. I just can’t know how many men you've had, since you've obviously had enough to pick up all your filthy habits.”

I wanted to shout at him. I wanted to say,
Just one. I only needed one man to pick up my filthy habits. Bram Riordan taught me more in one hour than you could in five months. He fucked me until I couldn't see straight, and he ruined me for anyone else.

Instead, I'd left and slammed the door, and I hadn't looked back. And everyone was still asking me why I didn't get back together with him. Just the thought made me shudder. Especially now, when Bram was here, in my brain, in my body, the thought of him making me feel things I'd thought Mike had erased forever.

I kept sanding, scrubbing the sanding block back and forth, sweat dripping down my temples. God, it was frustrating. I hated celibacy, and the thought of one-night stands did nothing for me at all. I could get myself off—I was pretty much an expert at it, though while I’d been with Mike I’d been too ashamed to do it—but that wasn’t good enough. So here I was, horny and stuck working all alone.

When the sanding was done, I needed to move the sideboard to the other side of the room so I could finish it. I picked up one end and groaned. It was too heavy. I'd never be able to move this stupid thing by myself.

I put it down again. I could hear the rain pouring on the roof, relentless. I wished it would stop, that my whole aggravating life would stop. I was thinking of kicking something in frustration when the phone rang.

Oh, God, not Caitlyn. But no, it was Dad. I answered it, trying not to let on what a bear of a mood I was in. “Hi, Dad.”

“Hi, sweetie. You want to come for dinner tomorrow for your old man's birthday? Bram has to go see his counselor, so it will just be you and me.”

Bram wasn’t on parole, but he had to check in with a counselor from the halfway house for another week. “Sure,” I said. “Why don't you let me take you out to a restaurant?”

“Oh, no,” he said. He always said that—Dad ate a lot of take-out, but he believed that a dinner at a sit-down restaurant was some kind of sinful waste of money. “We'll have dinner at home.”

“Okay. But this time you're going to let me cook. Deal?”

“Deal,” he said, and I silently thanked my stars that I wouldn't be having spaghetti and meatballs again. “You sound a little down. What's going on?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I'm just working on this sideboard, and it's too big for me to move it. I have no idea how I'm going to get this thing across the room. I'll have to see if the guy in the shop next door can help me tomorrow.”

There were muffled voices on the other end of the phone, as if Dad had covered the receiver while he talked to someone. Then he came back on. “Bram's on his way over to help you.”

What? “No, Dad, it's okay, really.”

“Too late. I've given him marching orders. He does enough working out, he can move some furniture for you and put those muscles to good use.”

“But—”

“No buts. He's already on his way.” And he hung up.

Could my day possibly get worse? I was so panicked I actually thought of getting in my car and making an escape before Bram got here. But no, that was the coward's way out. I ran into the little bathroom at the back of my shop and splashed water on my face. Under the harsh fluorescent light, I looked like hell in the mirror. I'd put makeup on this morning to work in the shop, but now most of it was gone, worn off while I'd been sweating in the back room. I pulled my hair from its ponytail and let it fall to my shoulders. I tried to fluff it, but it was no use. I couldn't make myself look hot without at least a shower and an hour's work.

I didn't even ask myself why I wanted to look hot for Bram.

I adjusted my boobs in my bra under my shirt, perking them up a bit, and hoped the flush on my skin would calm down by the time he got here.

He didn't take long. There was a knock on the back door, and I opened it to see Bram standing in the rain, looking at me.

“Summer,” he said.

I stepped back and let him in. He swiped a hand quickly through his short hair, brushing the water out of it, and looked around. “You have a lot of stuff here,” he said.

I realized he hadn't seen my shop yet. And at the same time, I realized in a bolt of electricity that we were alone. Completely alone. I was in private with Bram for the first time in six years.

“Yeah,” I said. “I buy stuff from auctions, estate sales, that kind of thing. I refinish it back here, then I put it out front to sell it.”

“Not bad,” he said. I cursed myself for the tingle of happiness I got from the compliment. “This what you need moved?” he asked, gesturing to the sideboard.

“Yes. I need it over there. I can take one end, I just can't move the whole thing.”

“Don't worry about it, I got it.” He gripped it, picked it up as if it was styrofoam and swung it around. God, he was fucking huge. He was wearing the gray hoodie again, but as he worked he unzipped it and shrugged it off, revealing a black t-shirt. I looked at the dragon that crawled up the side of his neck, the same dragon that had fascinated me at my dad's wedding so long ago.

His muscles flexed as he picked up the sideboard again, moving it carefully, and I felt an answering pulse between my legs. Maybe this day wasn't so bad after all. I should hire Bram to come over here and lift things every day as I watched. He could fling furniture around until he had a fine film of sweat on those muscles. Maybe I'd turn up the heat so he'd have to take his shirt off. And when he was finished, I'd lick every drop of sweat off him.

Now I was getting hot. I cleared my throat.

“There,” he said when the sideboard was in place. He turned around and looked at me, a half smile on his face. “Enjoy the view?”

I shrugged. “It's okay, I guess.”

“Sure,” he said, coming toward me. “I think you just undressed me with your eyes.”

“Bram, you have a big ego.”

“Not really. I just know you, Summer. I know what you look like when you're mentally undressing me. I've seen it enough times.”

He was getting to me. He was always getting to me. I tried to keep my defenses up. “I was eighteen. I didn't know any better.”

“Didn't you?” He stepped closer to me, then traced a finger along my jawline. “You sure knew plenty that day on the beach.”

I was robbed of speech. I'd always wondered if he'd even remembered that. It seemed like he had, but that didn’t mean it meant anything to him, not the way it meant something to me. When I didn't say anything, he pulled away again. “How did you even get that piece of furniture in here?”

“Um.” I tried to right my lust-scrambled thoughts. “The delivery guys put it there. But they couldn't come tonight because of the rain.”

“Why?”

So I fumbled some words out, explaining about the rain and the back alley. Bram swung the back door open, then walked out into the alley, seemingly oblivious to the rain pouring down, checking out what I was talking about. “You need a proper loading dock if you're going to sell furniture,” he commented. “This space is no good.”

“I know. It's what I could afford when I was starting up.”

He looked up, and the rain slid down his neck, soaking his t-shirt. “You can't even put an awning back here without the neighbors' agreement,” he said. “And there's no legal parking on the street.”

He was actually trying to solve my problem, I realized. My stomach did a little flip. “It's okay, Bram,” I said. “I'll just look for a new space. You're getting wet.”

He froze perfectly still at those words, as if they'd struck him somehow. Then he lowered his gaze and looked at me.

My mouth went dry. “What? What is it?”

He turned toward me, a huge muscled panther of a man. I froze in the doorway. The water made the shirt stick to his skin, outlining every contour. “Does that bother you?” he said.

I could see everything through the thin fabric of the shirt. I could see the ripple of muscle on his stomach, and I could picture the line of hair there, that I’d first seen years ago, the line that led down into his jeans. “It’s just that—you’re soaked,” I rasped.

He watched me staring at him, and suddenly I knew he was picturing me naked, just like I was picturing him. He’d been so gloriously sexy and naked on the beach, and—I could admit it—I wanted to know what he looked like now. I wanted to know if he looked the same.

As if he was reading my mind, he said, “Sure, I guess I am a little damp.” Then he grabbed the hem of his t-shirt and stripped it off, pulling it over his head and dropping it to the ground.