Burned: A Stepbrother Romance (5 page)

I book the restaurant the next morning and spend the next eight hours fiddling with my thumbs at HQ nervous and also slightly skeptical at what’s to follow.

Brock seemed like he wanted to prove something, show me another side of himself, but maybe I don’t want that. Maybe I want that dirty bad boy I remember so vividly, or so I think. Can I even trust myself with these memories? Who is to say I haven’t added hyperbole where necessary, filled in details that didn’t exist in the first place? I had a real good imagination growing up, always the one surrounded by dolls, all of whom had a name and occupation. I was
that
kid.

I arrive home, bypass the main house and get straight into Operation Dinner Date.

Date?
Yeah, that does sound kind of weird, doesn’t it? What do I even say if someone asks if we’re together? ‘No, sir, we’re just stepbrother and stepsister out on a romantic dinner date. Nothing to be concerned about. Nothing to see here.’

I put my hair up, put it down. I try on a dress. I take off a dress. I pace around my room. I can’t remember the last time I put in this effort for a dinner, and why? It’s not like he’s going to care. I could dress in a burlap bag and he probably wouldn’t know the difference.

As the hour approaches, and Brock’s still nowhere to be seen, I grow increasingly anxious. I finally settle on a tight black mini-dress—simple, understated. I add blue heels for a bit of pop (and much-needed height), little diamond-studded earrings I haven’t worn since prom. I curl my hair loosely and leave it at that. I add a squirt of Chanel No.5 I got for a Xmas present two years ago, bottle still unopened. I towel off the heavy make-up and go light, still quite bemused at why all this is suddenly so precious to me. I’m not a Kardashian. I don’t care what people think about me.

But I do care what
he
thinks. Why I do not know.

I hear the Camaro prowling down the driveway five minutes before we’re supposed to leave.

He doesn’t rush. He strolls in and stops dead when he sees me, whistling. “Wow, you look… stunning.” He scents the air. “Number Five. Classy.”

He strolls on past me to his bedroom.

“We’re late,” I snap at him. “We have to go.”

He saunters back a minute later a changed man. I actually have to blink twice to make sure my eyes can be believed.

All he’s done is lose the leather jacket and replace it with a navy blazer, pointy leather shoes instead of sneakers, and I’ll be damned but those two things completely change his look. He’s gone from Rebel Without A Cause to Bond in five seconds flat.

Oh, you’re good.

“What?” he says, trying to gauge my expression.

“It’s just… where did you even get a blazer?”

“I told you. I’m an educated man of the world.”

He places his hand into the exposed pocket of skin at the base of my back and gently herds me towards the door, his own natural scent intoxicating.

*

I wasn’t lying. I do like eating out, but as we pull up to The Glass House I’m starting to think even this place might be out of my league in terms of overall cool.

The entire restaurant sits on a hill overlooking the water like a see-through box, cold and warm light blending together inside.

Brock reluctantly hands over his keys to the valet, a pimple-pocked teenager who looks like he’s just won the lottery.

Brock tenses up as he watches his beloved disappear around the corner.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was cheating on you,” I tease, taking his arm. “Don’t tell me you have a name for your car.”

“Like Champers?”

“Hey, don’t knock Champers, okay?”

A pleasant, perfectly presented man greets us past the doors. He looks at us both briefly, Brock passing the test with flying colors.

“Reservation for Collins,” I announce.

“This way.”

As we’re guided through the restaurant, the man turns. “Special occasion tonight?”

The man goes to pull out my chair, but Brock is already there, subtlety pushing him aside and taking over. “A reunion of sorts,” replies Brock.

“Splendid,” says the man, disappearing.

Brock takes his seat, his look so at ease here among the young crowd. I was actually surprised we got a booking at all.

Two menus arrive. I glance at mine briefly, most of the ingredients lost on me, but, it seems, not Brock.

He leans back, observing the menu. “What do you think, Maddison? I’m thinking the robata grilled raw beef with the shitake mushrooms and endive.”

He just dribbles it all out perfectly.

“I don’t even know what an endive is,” I admit.

Brock just shakes his head. “You can learn a lot in prison, you know, about all kinds of things. I read
a lot
. Learnt to cook, too.”

“You were only in there three months,” realizing my mistake as soon as the words are out.
Opps.

Before he has a chance, to reply, I add, “I looked at your file.”

“It’s only fair. Anything interesting?”

“No, it was very clean actually.”

“What were you expecting? Shankings and brawls?”

At ‘shankings’ the couple at the table next to us bristle up.

I clear my throat, taking a sip of (no doubt hideously overpriced) Voss water. “You yourself said you got into some trouble.”

“That was all behind the scenes. Nothing you need to worry about.”

“Should I worry about you? Because I do.”

“Are you saying you care for me?”

I have to think about this. “Yes, I guess I do.”

We look at each other. I mean, we
look
at each other. Something passes between us that is more. I press my legs together tighter under the table. I’m hot, flushed. Something is happening and it has nothing to do with the ambience.

The dinner passes on pleasantly. Brock wasn’t kidding. He helps me order, talks me through the dishes from the foraged mushrooms down to the miso dressing. It’s so at odds with the Brock I know I constantly have to look sideways to watch us in the window.

We
do
look like a couple. We look like we could be together.

We look happy.

The serving sizes are deceptively small, but I’m still stuffed after desert. The wine too, again Brock’s selection, has left me light-headed and open. I talk freely, letting everything just sort of ramble out, including the financial trouble Dad and Michelle are in.

“How bad is it?” asks Brock.

I hold up five fingers.

He looks slightly stunned. “I see.”

“I’ll deal with it,” I tell him, Maddy the fixer-of-all.

“You can’t repair everything, you know. Sometimes people have to figure it out themselves, no matter how hard it may be initially.”

I get the impression he’s talking about himself.

“And me? Do I need fixing?”

“No,” he replies quick as can be, “in my eyes, you’re perfect.”

When the bill arrives, I almost drop dead at the figure, but Brock takes care of it, just lays down a wad of bills from nowhere. Alarm bells ring, but the wine dulls everything, makes it light and fluffy.

I’m sitting in the passenger seat of the Camaro, Brock driving, and for the first time I realize I’m horny, like
really
horny. I’m not seeing the Brock of old sitting in the driver’s seat. I’m seeing Brock 2.0, new and improved, cultured and caring and with a real big cock—if the rumors are to be believed. I didn’t get a good look the other morning.

Maddy, how crass you have become.

I squirm and twist in the seat, eyelids fluttering and boozy brain in overload how to get this party started.

On the way back through town we pass by the Emporium, an old 1950s movie theatre screening classics. I remember coming here with Mom. In fact, the three of us came here right before she left.

Brock points at the board. “Hey,
Vanishing Point
is on.”

“What?”

“Classic 1970s road movie, Barry Newman?”

“Sorry. If it doesn’t have someone by the name of Gosling or McConaughey in it, I don’t want to know about it. Hell, it’s Tuesday. I’ll take Owen Wilson if needs be.”

“With his fucked-up nose?”

I run my finger over Brock’s, broken countless times, not quite straight but still perfect in its imperfection. “Says you.”

He parks on the side of the road and gets out, coming around to open my door. “We’re doing this.”

Yes, we are.

He tugs my arm toward the ticket box. “Come on. My treat.”

I’m tired, I’m horny. I just want to get back home to bed, to getting that leather jacket off and find out if my stepbrother still works out as much as he used to.

We purchase our tickets from a teenage girl who has all the personality of a potato crisp packet and proceed into the lobby, a crazy cross-hash of cultures, kids and adults prepping pre-movie, stocking their arms with popcorn, candy and soda. The ADA would have a heartache just looking at it.

“Arrrrrgggggghhhhhhh,” some kid goes screaming past me into the semi-darkness of the cinema.

“Someone’s excited,” Brock says, his hand tight in mine, a weighty anchor. I hadn’t even noticed him take it. The cinema’s large, a sort of art deco vibe about the place. We stand in the middle sweeping the seats for somewhere quiet where we’re unlikely to get some idiot kid spilling drink on us or crawling down the aisles.

We head for the back row. A group of hipsters swings past us throwing popcorn at each other. This whole area has come in for a quasi-urban revitalization of late. Only the hippest of the hip need tread these streets now, and hip I am not.

Mercifully, the back row remains empty, the theatre half-full, a giddy excitement continuing on through the ads.

Brock places his hand on my leg, the exposed flesh there, covering the goose bumps that have risen in that chill all cinemas seem to exude. It’s a bold move.

The movie starts off with a delivery driver in a black car. He’s at a biker bar, wants pills. He’s a bit like Brock in many ways. Of course, I’m concentrating more on the feel of Brock’s touch, and for the first time in a long time I feel safe. I feel at home.

I wriggle in my seat, lift my feet from the floor. It’s sticky, with what I really don’t want to know.

I look to Brock, but he’s right into the movie, probably seen it a hundred times already. He always loved this kind of stuff even as a gangly teenager, all cars and guns and black and white morality.

A flicker goes through my head, an idea. I dismiss it at first, as always, mitigating risk, but it refuses to go. It lingers there, a heat.

What’s the worst that could happen? You get kicked out. Whoopee doo. No one here knows you. They’re complete strangers.

I reach down to the hem of my dress. Color strobes across the material from the screen, my flesh green, red, white.

I lift my bum ever so slightly off the seat, feel material and float there in the no man’s zone.

I take my hem in my fingers and drag it back slowly, the edge of the dress riding up over my thighs.

Brock looks down to me, a quizzical look. I have his attention.

His hand hasn’t moved on my thigh.

I spread my legs wider, feel the cool air sweep between them, goose bumps now rising on the soft skin of my inner thighs.

Only a sliver of dress and shadow keeps my panties hidden.

Brock’s eyes look on hungrily.

I see his pants start to tent.

I spread my legs until my knees hit the arm rests and push out with my pelvis. My skirt rides up onto my hips showing my bare legs and, between them, the cobalt silk of my panties, a flat, thin strip of fabric.

I take the hand on my leg, his hand.

Wow, you’re really doing it, huh?

I move it up, over my leg, feel his finger pads glide over them until they’re so close to the silk border, refugees at its edge.

I lift his hand entirely from my skin. I cup his fingers. I press them into my groin.

Tension leaves his body. He falls into his seat and exhales. His fingers press against me and already I feel the cleft of my panties getting wet.

He slides his index finger over the silk, pressing down on my slit. I arch my back and push my pelvis forward to meet it. Every time his finger brushes my clit, trapping the silk between his fingers and the delicate mound, my lips part ever so slightly and I look at him wide-eyed and wild.

The cinema laughs, not at the movie but some idiot who’s fallen over in the aisle, a few late-comers chuckling post-joke and Brock’s fingers continuing to move with confidence, cupping and pressing, pulling at the material, desperate to please me.

I’m breathing hard, hot.

He brings three fingers together and adds pressure to my clit, moving them in a circular motion. Blood rushes to meet them and my entire lower half feels flush.

He presses them down and I moan, loud enough that an old biddy two rows forward looks back, yet even though my body burns below I retain total calm in my expression, eyeing him back.

My panties dampen where the two cheeks of my ass meet the seat, trapping the moisture in the wedge there, sliding away in a thin rivulet from my heated core.

I watch the images of cars racing together underwater, a lusty, thick fog enveloping my senses. I flick my eyes sideways, see the pointed bulge in Brock’s pants, obscene in this environment, and wonder if there are cameras around. Some kid in the projection room probably has his cock out already, stroking it back and forth, watching us.

Brock’s left hand moves over the front of his pants, wrapping itself around his member. He just holds it there, not willing to take it further. His full concentration is on me and this thought makes me so horny, so hot for him that I lean over, trapping his hand between my thighs. I cup a hand to his ear and move my lips until they touch his earlobe. I pause. I breathe. I whisper, “I want your finger inside me.”

I move my head away but do not break eye contact. I see in his eyes, illuminated by the screen, that fire, that youthful burn between us. It’s back.

I spread my legs again. The muscles around my pubic bone strain. I can smell my heat and my opening as it widens to meet him, waiting.

He takes his time. At first his hand stays there, applying light pressure to my pubis, pressing down on the area above my clit, lit green and gold now. Dark blue. Ivy. Red.

Slowly, so slowly, I feel a finger slide down the silk, dropping to the bottom, catching one corner of the damp cloth and drawing it back, exposing me to the world.

He’s delicate, folding the fabric over my labia, leaving my slit exposed, open now an inch, widening to a wet canyon. I press it forward to meet his finger, but he moves the finger away, savoring it.

My hands clench at the armrests, my fingers tight.

Laughter again.

A finger dips forward and downwards, pausing at the ring of my muscle, the very entrance to my body. Moisture gathers around it. It slides in effortlessly, up to the knuckle and I feel it run over the corrugated roof of my cunt, the bumpy indentations there soaked.

In and out he moves it, attempting to press deeper each time, exploring me. When he does the solid underside of his palm presses down against my clit and I grind forward to meet it, careful to restrict my movements. His face remains steady. His eyes face the movie.

He draws his finger out slowly and I can feel how wet it is.

I want to grab his wrist to force it back inside, but I hold firm.

He cups his chin with his hand, two fingers pointed up to his nostrils like a gun. He rests his elbow on the armrest, and to anyone else it would look like a gaze of contemplation, The Thinker in any other circumstance. Yet I know my juices coat the finger that rests under his nose. He inhales my scent with each labored breath. His eyes close. He can’t get enough.

It’s happening. It’s finally happening.

It is some time before they open and glance my way. A smile falls onto his lips. I smile back, enflamed, my legs spread and my pussy still exposed.

I picture one of the ushers coming up the aisle with a torch, catching us in the act, taking in my bare vagina, the lips plump and moist, that fissure of a mouth hungry between them. He’d think of how he could feed it, his cock growing stiff in his pants.

Brock leans over to me. I feel his stubble on my cheek. He’s careful not to make too much sound or exaggerate the movement. He waits until a moment of action on screen, the crowd to cry out or gasp before he whispers, “Take them off.”

Questions roll into my head, hesitation, but I force it all out.

I keep my eyes locked on his.

I raise my bum up, pressing up on my heels until I’m no longer in contact with the seat.

His tongue rolls over his bottom lip as he watches, staring into the dark void between my legs.

A kid screams at some cheap popcorn thrill.

I find the back of my panties with my hands, one each side of my hips, and slowly push them forward over my legs.

There’s a blinding white on screen and it lights up the top of my pussy, the dark triangle there that dives down into my bare lips, now spread and glistening in the light.

When my panties are halfway down my legs, I place my bum back down on the seat, feeling wetness between my ass cheeks, on my anus, staining the seat with it. It’s slick up the side of my inner thighs, my juices everywhere.

Ass on the seat, I lift my feet up, pull my legs together and attempt to pull the panties free over my knees, but as they stretch over my kneecaps they stick to my cleft, stretching thin, the stickiness keeping them attached, a sexual glue. I pull and they spring free, a stained patch clear in the deep recess of the D shape they create swinging between my legs. I let them fall over my legs until they dangle around my ankles.

I loop one out from my heel so that they hang from my left foot. I reach around and sling them off. Scrunched up in my hand, I place them in the space between our seats. I’m completely naked around the waist, my bare ass on the chair, my pussy completely uncovered, my dress pooled around my hips. I spread my legs again, eyes still locked on Brock’s face, his hand moving over his groin.

He’s focused on the ball of panties. I know he wants to snatch them up, to breathe me in, cover his face in my wetness, but he restrains himself.

His eyes flicker up into mine. I stare into their azure abyss, the screen a tiny square in his pupils, fragmented into two.

“Make me cum,” I whisper, as I spread my legs wide, my pussy opening. I can feel the moist cinema air deep in my hole, cooling the fire there such is the level of my excitement.

My heart races. I see Brock’s thudding underneath his blazer.

Duh-dum. Duh-dum. Duh-dum
comes the music. Both cars on screen are hurtling towards a one-way bridge, one of them shooting off into the river.

He moves himself over as far as he can go in his chair, picking his moment.

A desert road looms on screen, a vanishing point little more than a pinprick in the center.

All thought is sexual.

Fingers.

Pussy.

Cum.

Brock’s right hand moves to my genitals again. He cups his hand slightly and reaches under my bum, fingers spread evenly over each cheek. His middle finger presses between them, feeling the resistance and then, thanks to my arousal, slipping between them to rest its length along the rosebud of my anus, clenched tight in anticipation, My mouth falls open as he adds pressure onto the muscle there, almost pushing beyond its barrier, but not quite. I feel the underside of his finger and then the top as it dips just below the muscle, the long phallic length of his longest finger running up into my perineum, that short length of softness separating my anus and vagina, running over its solid surface before plunging deep within me, his knuckle grazing the slack bottom lip of my cunt.

My mouth falls open. I’m drooling.

I rest my head against the back of the chair lest it fall forward.