Stepbrother OMG! (The Stepbrother Romance Series #2) (6 page)

Mom and Bob had no idea of anything wrong; as soon
as we got to the door, I stopped Jaxon. “There’s nothing between us, remember?”
I said. Jaxon hesitated a moment before nodding.

“Right,” Jaxon said. We went in, all smiles and
friendliness, but nothing more than that. Mom asked us right away how our
riding was.

“Must have been decent conditions on the slopes for
them to be out all day,” Bob pointed out. Our parents were curled up in front
of the fire, and I couldn’t help but note the fact that my mom had gotten newer
clothes as a result of her new-found wealth as a rich man’s wife; she was
clothed head to toe in comfy, casual designer-type clothes that made her look
like a kind of Stepford wife. It was weird, but at the same time I liked seeing
her so happy, seeing her looking more comfortable in her own skin. Jaxon and I
took up positions on separate ends of the den, avoiding looking at each other.
My heart was pounding while I told Mom about the snowboarding, sticking to the
objective facts and pretending
like
I’d barely even
noticed Jaxon’s presence on the slopes.

I heard Jaxon telling his father about his day,
too—and doing the same thing I was. I couldn’t help but shoot him a grin when
both of our parents were distracted by talking about what we should have for
dinner; he grinned back. The moment anyone was paying attention to us, though,
we were just as disinterested in each other as ever. “I’m
gonna
go get a shower,” I said, standing up quickly. “Before dinner, I mean. Don’t
want to get my grubby hands all over the nice, clean table cloth.” Bob laughed.

“Jaxon’s never had a problem with that—he’ll eat
covered in mud if he has to.” I laughed and backed out of the room, smiling as
much as I could.

The shower felt great; plenty of hot water, with
three shower heads at different heights soaking me from head to toe in an
instant. I closed my eyes and sighed happily, relaxing. As uncomfortable as the
situation was at the mansion, I had to admit to myself that there were certain
perks to staying there. As I stood in the hot water, I couldn’t help but think
about Jaxon. How hot he was, how attractive he was. The way he smiled at me. My
thoughts went back to the time we’d had sex together. My hands began to wander
over my body while I thought about the sight of Jaxon naked. It was only too
easy to remember the way that he’d touched me, the way he’d felt me up, rubbing
and stroking me on the couch in the middle of the frat house.

I teased myself a little bit; I couldn’t help it.
The memory of Jaxon inside of me, the feeling of his cock, turned me on too
much. I knew it was stupid; I couldn’t have him, I couldn’t even do anything
about it—but I also couldn’t make myself stop it. I teased my nipples, I
slithered my hands down along my body until I came to my pussy. I tried to
mimic what I could remember of his touch on my clit, closing my eyes in the
steam and water. I tilted my head back, biting my bottom lip as I got more and
more turned on. I could feel my pussy getting wet, drenching my fingers, my
inner muscles tightening in need. It wasn’t quite as good as Jaxon had been,
but it was good.

“Mia! Dinner’s done! Come out to the table and don’t
use up all the hot water!” I was jolted out of my fantasy by the sound of my
mom’s voice on the other side of the bathroom door. Shivering, I leaned against
the tiled wall. I was buzzing all over, every nerve in my body awake. But if I
spent too much longer in the shower trying to get myself off, my mom and new
stepdad would no doubt get suspicious. I took a deep breath and finished up,
washing my hair and turning off the water. I changed into new clothes and got
my hair as dry as possible.

Everyone was already at the table when I left my
room. Mom and Bob
were, as usual, completely involved
in one another, talking about something they wanted to do when it got warmer—a
cruise or something they wanted to take. I glanced at Jaxon; his eyes lit up at
the sight of me, and I realized I’d unconsciously picked out an outfit
that—while it wasn’t exactly sexy—showed off my assets pretty well. I shrugged,
flashing a little smile at him while no one was looking before I took my seat
at the table. Dinner was great: roast beef and mashed potatoes with gravy,
asparagus and garlic bread. After the all-day snowboarding marathon I was more
than hungry enough to dig in. I’d lost my sense of nausea when it came to
Jaxon’s presence; I was feeling too tingly, too fluttery, too interested in him
to be repulsed by his presence.

As I sat there at the table, responding to Mom’s or
Bob’s questions, pretending to mostly ignore Jaxon other than the most basic
polite interest in what he had to say about his classes, I felt my phone
vibrate. Knowing how my mom felt about phones at the table, I slipped it out of
my pocket underneath the table and checked it, expecting it to be from someone
at school, or maybe one of my friends from high school.
You just had to wear that shirt…
the message read. It was from
Jaxon. I felt my cheeks burning with a blush and coughed to cover up my shock.

A
shirt’s a shirt,
I wrote back as quickly as I could, not
wanting to call attention to myself. I realized that it was the same shirt I’d
been wearing the night that Jaxon and I had had sex and my blush deepened. My
phone buzzed again and I took a bite of my roast beef to cover my look at the
screen.

A
shirt’s not just a shirt when all I can think of is getting it off of you.
I tried not to smile. I looked up and responded to something Mom was saying;
some question that she was asking me. I wasn’t even thinking about what she’d
asked—and realized that I’d set myself up for some sort of stupid family game
night activity. Oh well, I thought. It would be easier to avoid temptation if
we were spending the entire night around our parents.

Your
thoughts are your own problem,
I typed as fast as I
could, adding in a smiling emoji.
Not very brotherly to be thinking of taking off my clothes…
I slipped my phone back into my pocket. I didn’t know whether I wanted Jaxon to
make a move on me—and take care of the deep-down tension I felt—or if I wanted
him to go back to ignoring me completely. It had been so nice on the mountain,
laughing and having fun, relaxed, just like it had been before. But we couldn’t
do anything. I knew that—and Jaxon knew it too. My phone vibrated. I waited a
minute or two to check it, knowing without even having to look that the only
person it could be from was Jaxon. The more we both looked at our phones the
better the chance would be that one of our parents would notice it. My phone
vibrated again.

You
always such a tease, Mia?
The first message
read.
I’m not like the guys in Tau Delta.
I snorted as quietly as possible. No, Jaxon was nothing like the guys in Tau
Delta. They hung on my every word, staring at me while they helped me with Bio
homework.

You’re
right,
I wrote back.
The
guys in Tau Delta didn’t just randomly stop helping me in class.
Mom was
going on about what game we should play—if it should be Monopoly or a card
game, something like that. “If we play a card game, I want to partner with you,
Mom,” I said, not glancing at Jaxon. It wouldn’t help either of us if we were
partnered up in whatever game our parents decided to spend the night playing.
It’d come out way too easily that we already knew each other; and then, if that
came out, our parents would want to know why we’d kept it a secret, why we’d lied.
And there was no good reason other than the truth.

We finished dinner and went into the den, where Bob
brought out a bunch of game boards at my mom’s insistence. My phone buzzed
against my leg and I felt my cheeks burning, but I made the excuse of needing
to use the bathroom to answer it without being seen.
The guys in Tau Delta haven’t seen you naked, either.
I rolled my
eyes, smiling in spite of myself. I licked my lips and tried to think of what I
should do. I shouldn’t be encouraging Jaxon, I knew. I should shut him down,
end the whole thing. We were brother and sister now.

Well,
I wrote.
You got to see me naked and then
you got all weird on me, so you’re not going to see me naked again.
I
pressed my lips together.
Besides, I saw
you naked, too, and you don’t see me drooling all over the place.
I added a
few emoji to the message and sent it.

Throughout the night, my phone would buzz and I’d
look to see it was from Jaxon; somehow he’d managed the knack of texting
without being seen—even I didn’t catch him actually writing the texts. We both
pretended to mostly ignore each other as we went from one game to another with
our parents—card games where I partnered up with my mom, board games where I
insisted that we play only as individual players and not as teams. Mom got out
a bottle of wine and poured me a glass right alongside herself, Bob, and Jaxon.
“If you can’t have a little nice wine in your own home on holiday, what has the
world come to?” I was underage, but somehow that didn’t seem to matter. Mom
knew that I drank on campus, though she didn’t know specifically what parties I
went to; she joked with Bob about the first time she had talked to me on the
phone while I had a hangover. “She was so obvious,” Mom said, laughing. “She
hadn’t puked but she had that hung over voice, you know?”

“I don’t get hangovers anymore,” I said, with more
than a little pride. My phone buzzed and I took a long sip of my wine while I
sneaked a peak at the screen.
Never
forget who helped you train not to get hangovers.
It was accompanied by a
winking emoji. I set my glass down.

I
figured it out on my own, thank you very much.
Back and forth, the texts flew between us, little sub-conversations surrounding
what was really going on. Mom and Bob were so wrapped up in each other that
they didn’t notice anything at all amiss between Jaxon and I. Somehow we both
managed to keep up our conversations with our parents, occasionally making
comments to each other, innocent as can be. I was excited and anxious at the
same time; texting with Jaxon, occasionally flashing a smile at him when no one
was looking, it had all the flavor of forbidden fruit; but I knew that there
was nothing I could really do. I knew that if anyone ever noticed just how cozy
we were underneath the pretend-game of not really knowing or caring about each
other, they’d know in an instant there was more going on.

It was lucky for both of us that Bob and Mom were
totally into each other, cheating to benefit each other when we were partnered
up, sharing little inside jokes, touching each other. My stomach gave a lurch
as I realized that it was possible that Mom might get pregnant by Bob. I might
have a half-sibling in common with Jaxon. I prayed to myself—without knowing
who
I was praying to—that it wouldn’t happen. I didn’t think
I could ever deal with that.

The night gradually began to wind down and Bob and
Mom started talking about heading in to bed. After a full day of snowboarding,
I was bone-tired and more than ready to go to sleep. I finished off my wine and
snagged some of the leftover snacks that the housekeeper had brought out. Mom
kissed me on my forehead and Bob patted Jaxon on the shoulder, and then they
were walking away, down the hall and up the stairs to their room.

“I’m
gonna
catch the
highlights of the Jets game and hit the hay,” I said, smiling slightly. Jaxon
shrugged.

“Be my guest.” I went back into my room and turned
on the TV. I plugged my phone in next to my bed and pretended to myself that I
didn’t want to see it light up, hear it buzz with another flirting text
message. I waited up, wondering what Jaxon was doing, wondering what he was
thinking
about
.
Whether he was
thinking about me.
I could feel the low simmer of heat deep down in my
hips. I had been steadily turned on since the shower, for hours, sitting just
far enough away from Jaxon to keep it from blowing up to full-blown need, but
close enough to keep it going.

I felt like I was playing with fire—that excited
feeling of dread that you get when you know you could get really, really hurt,
but it’s so interesting that you can’t quite make yourself stop. I wanted to be
able to keep flirting with Jaxon, but I didn’t want it to lead anywhere. I
wanted to see him naked again, but I couldn’t handle the thought that he
was—technically, by marriage—my brother now. It was so incredibly fucked up,
but so incredibly exciting that I couldn’t make myself stop even when I knew it
was going to crash and burn. I wanted Jaxon to keep texting me, but I knew if
he did it would be too much temptation. Before the holiday was over, we’d end
up one of us in the other’s room, and that could only cause problems.

After an hour of watching highlights and listening
to the same old commentaries on the game, I decided that I should just go to
bed. I was tired and I was clearly not going to hear from Jaxon again at all
that night. I tried not to feel disappointed. After all, I knew for a fact that
nothing could happen between Jaxon and me. And on top of that, after a full day
on the slopes, Jaxon was probably just as tired as I was. I figured we’d play
the same game the next day—keeping our attraction to each other away from our
parents’ notice, pretending like we only had a passing interest in each other
as new step-siblings. Maybe we’d get a chance to get out and play some basketball,
or hit the slopes for a few hours again. Eventually we’d have to deal with what
was going on; but for now, we’d just have to cope as best as we could. I turned
off the TV and curled up in the bed, shaking my head at the stupid coincidences
that came up in my life.