Stepbrother Commands (His Twisted Game, Book Seven)

STEPBROTHER COMMANDS (His Twisted
Game, Book Seven)

Copyright
2015, Chloe Hawk, all rights reserved. This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to any persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All characters depicted in this book are eighteen years of age or older.

My hands were shaking as I began
unfolding the pages. I knew what I
was doing was a gross invasion of Cole’s privacy. If he’d wanted me to see these papers, he would have shown
them to me. Just the fact that
he’d stolen them from Gordon’s office deemed them important and secretive.

I hesitated. He was my
stepbrother.
He’d been taking care of me. If he didn’t want me to see these
papers, it was probably because he was trying to protect me.

But I was sick of being protected. I wasn’t a child.

Still.

To betray Cole’s trust like that…

Then I thought about that note.

The one I’d found in the bathroom.

Thanks
for letting me come over this afternoon. It was amazing. ~L

Lucy had been here. Lucy, Cole’s ex-fiancé who he’d never
even thought to mention to me. Lucy, who apparently still felt close enough to him to sign letters with
just her initial.

What was it she’d said to me at the photo
shoot?
I’m going to get him back, no matter what
. She was flawless, perfect. It was hard to imagine any world, any
situation where Cole would choose me over her.

But
he’s with you. He could have been
with Lucy if he’d wanted to. She
was here, he could have been with her.

Maybe he had been. Maybe he’d done all the same things
with Lucy that he’d done with me. I remembered his cock in my face, the way he’d come all over my lips, my
cheeks, how he’d snapped a picture of me covered with his cum. I loved the way it had made me feel, to
be taken that way, for him to do such dirty things to me.

Thinking about him doing those same
things with Lucy made my stomach turn.

I opened the papers.

On top was a typed letter.

It was dated seven years ago, and it was
addressed to Cole.

Dear
Cole Buchanan,

Thank
you for your inquiry to The Department of Children and Families. Unfortunately, all records kept by our
agency are sealed at the time cases are closed. We are unable to honor your request for copies of the
documents regarding Case Number NY4555226.

If
you require further assistance, please call the eight hundred number provided
at the bottom of this letter or visit our website.

Sincerely,

Hattie
Winters, LCSW

I frowned. Why would Cole have written to the Department of
Children and Families? And why
would this response letter be in Gordon’s office? Had something happened to us when we were younger that
involved DCF?

I racked my brain, trying to remember. But
all I could come up with was the usual – social workers might show up
once and a while, but as long as we didn’t have any visible bruisers and there
was food in the refrigerator, they didn’t bother with us too much. I didn’t blame the system for letting me
and Cole slip through the cracks – I knew there were kids in far worse
situations than us. And as horrible
as things had been at home, the thought of being placed in a foster home had
filled me with fear. It would have
meant leaving my mom. It would
have meant Cole and I being split up. I hated Gordon, but I loved the rest of
my family.

I took a deep breath and flipped to the
next page in the stack.

This, too, was a letter, written on the
letterhead of the Department of Children and Families. But while the first letter had read almost
like a form letter, this one was much more intimate, more direct.

Dear
Cole Buchanan,

I
have been alerted to a situation involving you and The Department of Children
and Families by my employee, Hattie Winters. I must insist that you cease all communications with the
Department of Children and Families. If you continue your assault on both my agency and Ms. Winters, I will
be forced to take further action. Please consider this your final warning. Do not reply to this letter. If my office or Ms. Winters receive any more correspondence
from you, I will not hesitate to involve the authorities.

Sincerely,

Arthur
Hannigan, Director, Department of Children and Families

My heart rate accelerated. But it wasn’t from panic -- it was more
just a curiosity, a burning need to find out what was going on. Why was Cole so intent on getting
information from DCF? If it had
just been something as simple as a case being opened on us, then why was he so
insistent to find out the details?

We’d lived the details, every day. We knew what it was like growing up in
a house with an alcoholic father who was prone to bouts of verbal and physical
abuse, what it felt like to have a mother who didn’t care.

So what was this case, this thing that
Cole felt so strongly about that it sounded like he’d been harassing the
Department of Children and Families, and this caseworker, Hattie Winters?

I double-checked the dates. The letters had been sent right after
Cole had turned eighteen, and they’d been sent to our house, because that’s
where Cole had been living at the time.

But why did Gordon have them? Had he stolen them?

The possibilities swirled around my mind,
tangling together in a tight knot.

I started to turn the page and read the
next document, but the door to the room opened before I could.

Cole appeared, takeout bags in his
hands. His eyes locked on mine as
he took me standing there by the bed, the papers in my hands.

“What are you doing?” he asked, setting
the bags down on the desk. His
tone and his movements were measured, even, with no sign of anger in his
voice. Something about his control
made me more anxious than if he’d been screaming.

“What are these, Cole?” I asked,
indicating the papers in my hands.

“You mean my personal property that you
apparently decided it was okay to go through?”

“Why were you writing to the Department of
Children and Families?” I asked, deciding to ignore his accusation.

“Avery,” he said, his voice stern. “Leave
it.” He opened the plastic bags that were sitting on the desk and began
unpacking clear containers of fresh-looking food. Salads and sandwiches, bags of sea salt potato chips, and
soft chocolate chip cookies. “Do
you want to watch a movie?” he asked, seemingly dismissing my questions. He crossed the room to the kitchen area and returned with two
copper-colored square plates, which he began loading with food for us.

I hesitated. Part of me was tempted to do as Cole said and just leave it. Whatever those letters were referring
to didn’t have anything to do with what was happing right now. They couldn’t change anything that had happened
in the past. And Cole was right
– I shouldn’t have been snooping through his things.

I thought about how it would feel to curl
up on the couch with him, to eat the food he was fixing for me, to cuddle up
against his warm, strong body as we watched a movie. The night wasn’t ruined. I could diffuse the tension, we could laugh and joke around
and have fun. And didn’t we
deserve that? To have just one
night where the two of us could pretend we were a normal couple without having
to worry about our crazy parents, or Jeffrey, or Lucy?

Lucy.

The situation with DCF and Cole’s private
documents might not have been any of my business. But Lucy being here
was
,
especially after what Cole and I had just done in the hot tub.

“Cole,” I said.

He sighed and closed his eyes for a quick
moment, like I was trying his patience. “Avery. Please. It’s been a long night.”

I set the papers back in his suitcase and
walked over to him, watched as he finished fixing my plate. “Cole, what was Lucy doing here?”

Finally, I got a reaction out of
him. His eyes flinched just a tiny
bit, his jaw twitching. “How did
you know Lucy was here?”

The post-it was still in my hand, and I
held it out to him. “I found
this.”

He took it, read it, then crumpled it up
and tossed it into the wastebasket under the desk. “She was here,” he said like it was nothing. “She came to see me.”

He picked up the two plates and walked
over to the sleek cream-colored leather couch that was pushed up against one
wall. He sat down and then set the
plates on the matching leather ottoman.

He grabbed the remote and turned on the
TV.

I walked across the room and sat down
next to him on the couch.

“What was she doing here?” I asked, not
willing to let it go.

“She wanted to talk.”

“About what?”

“She’s having a hard time with the break-up.” He shrugged, like his ex-fiancé being
in his hotel room without me knowing was no big deal.

“Were you… did you invite her here?”

“Avery, nothing happened.”

“I don’t…” I twisted my hands together in
my lap. I was trying not to sound
like a jealous girlfriend, but part of me felt like I had every right to sound
like a jealous girlfriend. “Did
you invite her here?”

“She asked if we could talk after the
photo shoot. She was upset.”

“Upset about what?”

“I told you, she’s having a hard time with
the break-up.”

“What kind of hard time?”

He sighed and tilted his head back, rolled
his shoulders like he was trying to work out some tension. “She’s sad.”

“And you had to comfort her?”

“She wanted to talk,” he repeated.

“About?”

“About the reasons we broke up.”

“And what are the reasons?” I tried to keep my voice steady, like I
was asking from a place of sincere curiosity, and not trying to interrogate
him. But it didn’t work.

“You’re jealous.”

“I’m not!”

“Then why can’t you just let it go?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Cole, maybe because
she was your fiancé, a fiancé I knew nothing about until yesterday!” My voice was raising, and I could feel
myself losing control of my emotions, my grip on them slipping out of my grasp
little by little.

“Why do we have to get into the past?” He demanded, frustrated.

“Because the past can change everything.”
I was getting choked up and I tried to swallow around the lump in my throat,
but it didn’t work.

“No.” Cole reached for my hand and intertwined his fingers with
mine. His hand was big, strong, safe. “The past means nothing. The only thing that matters is right
now.”

His words were meant to give me comfort,
but they didn’t. What about the
future? If all that mattered was
right now, then how could I ever feel safe with him, feel secure that his
feelings for me were real and not just some fleeting thing?

And besides, the past
did
matter.

“The past does matter, Cole,” I
said. I lifted my chin in the air,
daring him to refute me. “You obviously
still have some kind of relationship with Lucy, and I have a right to know
exactly what’s going on.”

He grinned, and his fingers wandered over
my wrist, making me shiver. “Like
I said, you’re jealous.”

“No.”

“Yes, you are.” His voice was husky, deep, and his eyes got that hooded,
lustful look I was beginning to recognize.

“No.” I shook my head and tried to pull away from him. I didn’t want this to turn into
sex. I wanted answers, wanted to
know why Lucy had been here, what the exact reasons were that they broke
up. The past was the past, but Lucy
was obviously still a part of his present. Otherwise why would she be in his hotel suite with him?

But Cole didn’t let go of my wrist. He held me tighter, then pushed me down
on the couch and laid on top of me, his weight pressing against my body.

I felt the first stirrings of desire
starting in my belly, like tiny little flames licking together, feeding on each
other as they grew. “No,” I
said. “Cole, I want to talk about
this.”

“Why?” He lowered his head and licked my collarbone, smooth and
slow. His lips moved up my skin,
toward my ear, soft and warm and oh my god it felt good. “Because you’re jealous?”

“I’m not jealous.”

“You don’t have to be jealous, baby
girl.” His teeth nipped the bottom
of my ear, sending shock waves through my body. “You are so fucking sexy, Avery. You drive me insane. I cannot keep my hands off you.”

He sat up in one fluid motion so that he
was straddling me, then took his hands and moved them down my body, grabbing at
my breasts through my thin t-shirt.

I knew exactly what he was doing –
trying to distract me by playing with me. And it was working. I was
helpless to resist him. As much as
I wanted to know about him and Lucy, as much as I wanted to press him on her and
what those papers meant, I was at his mercy.

He pulled at my shirt, twisting the
fabric in his hand and sliding it up until my breasts were exposed. He stared down at me for a long moment,
just drinking in the sight of me topless. I felt his cock harden against me, and then he lowered his mouth to my
tits, sucking one, then the other, back and forth until I was dizzy.