Stepbrother Takes (His Twisted Game, Book Five) (2 page)

I called my mom.

As soon as she answered, I started to
cry.

“Mom,” I said.
 
“Please, I need to come home.”

“Oh, Avery,” she said, sighing.

She paused for a moment, and I knew what
she was doing – thinking it over, trying to figure out the price she’d
have to pay to get Gordon to agree to me coming home.I held my breath.
 
I didn’t know what I was going to do if
she said no.

But after a moment, she let out a long
breath.
 
“Fine,” she said.

I gripped the phone tight in my hand like
it was a lifeline, almost afraid to let go.
 
“Can you wire me some money?”

“Avery!” she said, as if she was shocked
at the idea that I would ask such a thing.
 
I didn’t blame her – I knew better than to ask for
money, because usually no one in my family had any.
 
“What do you need money for?”

“Someone stole my purse,” I said.
 
“I have no way to get a train ticket.
 
I’ll pay you back.”

“How am I supposed to get it to you?”
 
she asked, sounding exasperated.

“Can you Western Union it?”

“Fine.
 
Gordon’s not going to be happy, Avery,” she warned.
 
“He’s very upset with you and your
brother.”

“Stepbrother,” I corrected
automatically.
 

She paused.
 
“I’ll see you soon.”

She hung up the phone.

***

It took four hours for me to get the
money for my ticket home.
 
I wasn’t
sure if my mom and Gordon had done it on purpose, deciding to make me wait for
the money as some kind of punishment, or if it really took that long for it to
go through.

Technically you weren’t supposed to be
able to pick up money without an ID, but since it was such a small amount
– ten dollars – and since I’d been sitting in the lobby of the
Mailboxes, Etc for hours, the man working there took pity on me and gave it to
me anyway.

Once I had my ticket and was on the
train, I breathed a sigh of relief.
 
I was leaving the city, and going back home where I belonged.

***

The house was almost completely dark when
I got there, and for a moment, I wondered if perhaps the electricity had been
shut off, something that wasn’t uncommon when Gordon had decided to drink away
whatever money had been earmarked for bills.

But then I spotted a light shining
through the window all the way in the back, where the kitchen was.
 
It could only mean one thing –
Gordon was passed out somewhere.
 
He liked the house to be dark and quiet when he was sleeping it
off.
 
He claimed it helped his
hangovers to be less severe.

I’d always thought that was a load of
crap, since I wasn’t sure Gordon even really knew what a hangover was in the
first place.
 
On the days he woke up
hung over, he’d just take a shot of whiskey and pour it into his coffee, or
nurse a beer while my mom rushed around the kitchen fixing him scrambled eggs
and turkey sausage, his favorite breakfast after a bad bender.

The front door was locked, and I didn’t
have my key.

So I knocked softly.

My mom appeared in the doorway, her hair
tousled, her eyes tired.

She didn’t say anything, didn’t turn a
light on or ask me what happened.

She just put a finger to her lips as I
passed by, and I nodded my understanding.

The soft light of dusk filtered into the
house, and as my mom moved past me to shut the door, the light illuminated her
face.

I gasped and put my hand to my
mouth.
 
Her lip was completely
split open, swollen and angry with dried blood in the fresh wound.

She offered no explanation, but I didn’t
need one.

The split lip was the price for me coming
home.

And my mom had been the one to pay it.

***

I crept up the stairs, skipping the step
at the top, the one that always squeaked.
 
I hovered outside my room before passing by and heading for Cole’s room.

I opened the door and moved quickly to
his dresser, pawed through it until I found one of his old football
t-shirts.
 
I took it into the
bathroom with me, stripped out of the dress and heels I was wearing and stood
under the spray.
 
The stream was weak
and lukewarm compared to the shower in Cole’s apartment, but it got the job
done, helping me to wash away this horrible day.

When I was done, I pulled on a fresh
thong and Cole’s t-shirt, then slipped into my bed.

The house was eerily silent, and I
realized I’d already gotten used to the sounds of the city filtering in from
outside.
 
I thought there was no
way I’d be able to sleep, but I was out as soon as my head hit the pillow, my
body’s exhaustion overriding its stress.

I awoke a few hours later, the house
still dark and quiet, except for a rustling sound off in the distance.

I sat up in bed, my heart pounding.

I listened, trying to hear over the
whoosh of blood pulsing through my ears.

It was coming from Gordon’s office.

The people who’d lived here before us had
put a wall up in the middle of one of the bedrooms, sectioning it off into two
small rooms.
 
It was actually
against code, and the sellers were supposed to have fixed it before we moved in.

But Gordon told them not to – he
loved the idea of having a room for all his stuff, a room separate from Cole
and I, and upstairs from where he slept with my mom in the master bedroom.

One half of the room that had been split
became mine.

The other half became Gordon’s office.

I sat in bed now, still listening,
wondering if Gordon had come upstairs.
 
I was nervous he was going to come into my room – if he did, there
would be no way for me to escape.

I decided the best thing to do was to go
downstairs and wait him out.
 
That
way, if he decided to mess with me, at least I’d have an exit strategy –
I could head for the front door.
 
And the cordless phone would be in reach in case I needed to call for
help.

The only problem was, in order to get
downstairs, I’d have to pass by the office.

I decided it was worth the risk –
I’d just have to go slowly.

I got out of bed and started making my
way down the hall.

The door to the office was open, and I
sucked in a breath.
 
Usually Gordon
didn’t leave the door to his office open, instead preferring to keep it shut
and locked, making it perfectly clear that no one was welcome inside.
 
I didn’t know what he did in there, and
I didn’t care to find out.

But as I crept past, I couldn’t help but
glance in.

The place looked ransacked – the
drawers to Gordon’s rusted out filing cabinet were open, the files sticking out
every which way.
 
A shadowy figure
was crouched over on one side of the room, by the long folding table Gordon
used as a makeshift desk.

As I looked in, the shadowy figure stood
up.

Our eyes met across the room, and relief
flooded through me.

It wasn’t Gordon.

It was Cole.

He was still wearing his clothes from the
photo shoot, the black t-shirt that hugged his biceps, and the soft leather
jacket.

“What are you doing here?” I
blurted.
 
Happiness and longing overtook
my heart and mind before I realized I was supposed to be mad at him, that I
wasn’t supposed to be talking to him at all, that I was supposed to have left
him.

“Shh,” he hissed, holding a finger to his
lips.

He motioned me into the office and
crossed the room, shutting the door behind me.

“What are you doing here?” I repeated.

“I came for you.”

“Then why are you in Gordon’s office?”

“I had to grab something first.”

“What?”

But he didn’t answer me.
 
Instead, his eyes slid up my body,
taking in the fact that I was wearing his t-shirt.
 
My nipples immediately hardened under his gaze, standing in two
rigid peaks that poked through the thin material.
 

I pulled at the bottom of the shirt,
aware of just how much of my body was exposed.
 
“How did you get in here?” I asked, deciding if he wouldn’t
answer my first question, I would just ask him another one.

“It’s not hard.”
 
He shook his head.
 
“There’s no deadbolt on the front
door.
 
Any idiot with a working
knowledge of locks could pick it.”

And
you know your brother has a criminal record.
 
Isn’t that
what the cop who’d come to Cole’s office that day had said to me?
 
Was that how Cole knew so much about
picking locks?

“You’re wearing my t-shirt,” he said,
reaching out and tweaking the bottom of it.
 
His hand brushed against the top of my thigh, burning me
deep.

“Yeah,” I said, suddenly
self-conscious.
 
“So?”

“So why are you wearing my t-shirt?”

His eyes bore into mine, the lust and emotion
written all over his face.
 

My heart ached for him to wrap me in his
arms.
 
I was so glad he was here,
and standing even just a few inches away from him was torture.
 
“I wanted to feel close to you,” I
whispered.

“Then what are you doing all the way over
there?”
 
He pulled me close to him
so that our bodies were pushed up against each other.
 
My breasts flattened out against his chest, and I reached my
hands inside his jacket, running my hands over his back.

I leaned my head against his chest, and I
could hear his heart beating just as fast as mine.
 
His hands brushed my hair back from my face, and I squeezed
my eyes tight, pretending for just a moment that we were a normal couple, that
he was my boyfriend and we were just embracing the way any other couple would.

“Why did you leave me?” Cole asked.

“I told you,” I said, feeling the tears
welling up in my eyes.
 
“I thought
it was too hard.”

He pulled back and looked at me, wiped
the pad of his thumb across my cheek, like he was checking for tears.
 
“And now?”

I bit my lip.
 
“Now I don’t know.”

“I always want you with me,” he
whispered.
 

I loved when he was like this, loved when
he was being vulnerable with me, when it was just the two of us late at night
and his guard was down.
 
He leaned
down and kissed me on the lips, softly.
 
I closed my eyes and took his kiss.

He pulled back and looked at me.
 
“I was so worried,” he breathed.
 
“I knew you were here, and I couldn’t
get to you.
 
I had to wait until I
was sure it was late enough, sure that everyone would be sleeping.”

“You can’t protect me every second,
Cole,” I said, feeling like a broken record.

“Yes, I can.
 
And I’m going to.”

He kissed me again, slow and searching,
our tongues moving together.
 
His
hands wrapped around me, lifting the back of my shirt and sliding up my ass and
over the small of my back.
  
His hands pulled me closer to him, and I could smell the leather of his
jacket and feel his stubble brushing against my cheeks as we kissed.

He moved his mouth over my neck, starting
near my ear and moving lower.
 

“This is what you were wearing the night
I left,” he murmured.
 
“You were so
beautiful.
 
I knew I had to leave
or I’d have to have you.”

I tilted my head back and moaned softly
as his mouth moved over my skin.
 
I
knew it was a huge risk, having him here like this.
 
If Gordon found out Cole had broken into our house, if he
caught Cole and me together, he would go ballistic.
 
But I didn’t care.
 
In this moment, all that mattered was Cole’s touch, his kiss, these
feelings that flowed through me and drowned out everything else.
 
Nothing else mattered except that he
was here, right in front of me.