Stepbrother Wants (His Twisted Game, Book Eight)

STEPBROTHER WANTS
 
(His Twisted Game, Book Eight)

By Chloe Hawk

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

COLE

It took a second for me to figure out
exactly what it was I was seeing.
 
It
was so far out of the realm of possibility, so far removed from anything I could
ever have imagined that my brain had a difficult time coming to grips with what
was on the screen.

It was Avery, out in the middle of what
looked like a forest.
 
There were
tree branches and leaves in the frame, and everything looked dark and dusty,
untouched, like she’d been dropped in the middle of nowhere.
 
She was wearing a
bikini top and a dark jean skirt, her hair pulled back in a ponytail
,
her cheeks slightly sunburned
.

“Tell me you want it,” Jeffrey’s voice
came though the speakers of my phone.

Avery smiled, but the smile didn’t reach
her eyes.

“I want it,” she said.
 
Her words were slightly slurred and
color rose high on her cheeks.

“Get up against the tree,” Jeffrey
said.
 
His voice sounded giddy,
high, like a child who was about to get away with something.

Avery turned around and put her hands on
the tree, pushing her ass up into the air.

Jeffrey’s hand appeared at the bottom of
the frame, and I watched in sick fascination as his fingers snaked up under
Avery’s skirt and pulled the crotch of her panties over to the side.

The camera or the phone or whatever it
was he was using to record her jostled then, and a second later I realized
why.
 
Jeffrey was pulling his pants
down, getting ready to fuck her, to slide inside of her, to take her right
there in the woods.

Blazing hot rage seared through my veins,
so hot and scorching I was afraid it was going to physically burn me.
 

Time stood still.

Everything came to a halt.

The room was quiet.

No one moved for a long moment.

Then, finally, I snapped out of my trance
and hit the pause button, stopping the video.

My stomach rolled in on itself, and for a
split second, I thought I was going to lose it, thought I was going to throw
up.
 
But my anger swallowed my
nausea, used it as fuel to burn brighter.

I became aware of the fact that Kalia and
Easton were still in the room.

“I need a moment alone with Avery,” I
said.
 
My voice was controlled,
even, no trace of the turmoil that was going on inside me, no sign of the rage
that was boiling so fast and hard I’d never felt anything like it.

Kalia and Easton glanced at each other,
anxious looks on their faces.

They’d heard enough, saw enough, to know
exactly what was on the video.

They would have to understand they needed
to keep this quiet.

But I would deal with them later.
 
Office gossip or my company’s
reputation was the least of my worries right now.

They shuffled out the door, and it shut
behind them with an audible click.

I turned to Avery.

She was standing behind me, her face
pale,
her
hand gripping the side of my desk.

“Do you want to explain?” I said, holding
up my phone.
 
“What the
hell
this is?”

AVERY

The room spun in front of me, fading in
and out.

I felt like I was looking at everything
through a tunnel – Cole’s voice, the sound of the video coming through
his phone, the look on Kalia and Easton’s faces
 
-- all of it seemed like it was happening at the end of dark
corridor.

My vision swam and I gripped the side of
Cole’s desk so tightly that it pressed into my skin hard enough to cause
pain.
 
The pain grounded me in
reality, and I forced myself to push into the wood harder. I imagined the sharp
edge breaking my skin open, imagined myself bleeding to death all over the rug.
 
But when I looked down, there was only
a small indent on my palm, nowhere even close to breaking the skin.

When I glanced back up again, Kalia and
Easton were gone, and Cole was standing there in his office, holding up his
phone.

His blue eyes were icy hot, his jaw set
in a firm line.
 

He was looking at me expectantly, like he
was waiting for me to say something.

But there was a roar in my ears and I
couldn’t focus on what he was saying.

“Avery!” he barked, and the forcefulness
of his voice overwhelmed the whooshing sound in my ears, causing it to retreat
into the background.

“Yes?” I said.

“What the hell is this?”

My first instinct was to lie, to deny it
was
me
.
 
But there was no way I could do that.
 
I was there, on video, for everyone to see.

“It’s a video,” I said quietly.

His chest was heaving, like he’d been out
running instead of just standing here in his office.

“A video of what, Avery?” he said.

I closed my eyes.
 
“A video of me and Jeffrey.”

The admission seemed to confuse him.
 
He looked back up at me, and shook his
head slowly.
 
“No, this is… you
were never with Jeffrey.”

“It was just… it was a mistake,” I said.

“He must have somehow faked this,” he
said, dazed.
 
“It’s photoshop.”

I swallowed, wishing I could tell him it
was, wishing I could tell him the video wasn’t real, that it was just some girl
who looked like me, or some kind of weird CGI thing Jeffrey had been able to
come up with to make it seem like there was a sex tape of us.

But none of those things would be true.

And even though Cole might have been in a
haze of denial right now, eventually he was going to come out of it.

He stood there, the silence between us
pressing down on my shoulders like a weight, suffocating me.

“God damn it, Avery,” he raged, and then
he threw his phone at the wall.
 
The screen shattered and the phone dropped to the floor.
 

He crossed the room to me, grabbed my
arms.
 
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he
demanded.

“I don’t… I don’t know,” I said.
 

“Why.
 
Didn’t.
 
You.
 
Tell.
 
Me.”

“I was embarrassed,” I said, and I could
feel the tears starting, could feel the numb feeling retreating and being
replaced with shame and grief.

“You were
embarrassed?”
Cole asked.
 
He turned and bent over his desk, laying his palms flat on
top of it.
 
His hands curled into
fists.
 
“That motherfucker,” he
said, shaking his head.
 
He stood
back up.
 
“Stay here.
 
Do not leave this office.”

He started heading for the door, but I
stepped in front of him.
 
“Where
are you going?”

“Avery,” he said, his voice calm.
 
A vein throbbed in his neck.
 
“Get out of my way.”

“No.”
 
I shook my head and stood in front of the door, spreading my
arms out over it.
 
“Cole, you
cannot go see Jeffrey.”

“This doesn’t concern you.”

“Stop saying things don’t concern me!” I
said.
 
“You keep saying that.
 
And this
does
concern me, Cole.
 
It has everything to do with me, and
you know it.”

“Avery,” he said again, and his blue eyes
blazed, cold as steel.
 
“Get out of
my way.”

“No!
 
What are you going to do?
 
Go kick his ass?
Really smart, Cole.
 
He’ll just use it as an excuse to come
after me more.”

“Avery – ”

“Stop saying my name!” I said, my hands
balling into fists at my sides.
 
“If you do this, it’s just going to make it worse for me, don’t you
see?
 
This is what he wants.
 
He wants you to go over there and lose
your shit.
 
He’ll call the police,
and won’t that be great for their narrative?
 
Cole Buchanan arrested for assault twice in two days.”

“I don’t give a fuck about that,” he
said.
 
“Stop protecting him.”

“I’m not protecting him!”

“Then why don’t you want me to go over
there?”

“Because it’s going to make it worse,” I
said.
 
“Aren’t you listening?
 
Jeffrey only sent that video to you,
Cole.
 
If you go after him, who
knows what else he’s going to do with it.”

Cole shook his head and took a few steps
toward me, pushing his chest up against mine.
 
He pinned me to the back of the door, put his hand on my
face and traced my cheekbone with his index finger.
 

“Why?” he asked, his voice soft.
 
“Why didn’t you tell me, Avery?”

“I don’t know,” I said.
 
“I just...I didn’t want you to judge
me, I guess.”

Cole’s brought his mouth down on me,
crushing his lips against mine, his tongue pushing past my lips.
 
When he pulled away, his eyes were
crazed, intense.
 
“How many times?”
he demanded.

“What?”

“How many times were you with him?
 
Was it just that once?”

I closed my eyes tight, feeling tears of
shame well up behind my eyelids.
 
“No.”

“How many times?” Cole growled.

I didn’t say anything.

“Avery!
 
How many times!”
 

“I don’t know,” I said meekly.

“You don’t
know?”
he repeated incredulously.

“Maybe five or six.”

“Five or six?”
 
He shook his head.
 
“And you never told me?”
 
He
looked at me.
 
“Jesus, Avery.”

“You never tell me anything, Cole.
 
You didn’t tell me about Lucy, you
won’t tell me about the papers you took from Gordon’s office.
 
You keep secrets all the time.”

“This is different.”

“Why?
 
Because it’s me and not you?”

“No, because I don’t like thinking about
him having his hands on you.”

“It was in the past.”

“I don’t care.”

I shook my head.
 
“This is insane.”

“Is it, Avery?” he said.
 
“Is it?”
 
He took my face in his hands again and came in for another
kiss.
 
Our tongues danced together until
I was breathless, his teeth nipping at my bottom lip when he finally pulled
away.
 
He rested his forehead
against mine, his thumb brushing over my cheekbone.
 
“I don’t want anyone else touching you.”

He skimmed his hand down into the
waistband of my jeans, his fingers skating over my hipbone.
 
His touch sent shivers through my body.
 
“I want my initials on you,” he
said.
 
“Right here.
 
The way I have yours.”

I closed my eyes, thinking about his
tattoo, the one he had of my initials.
 
The thought of getting his initials branded into my skin was
exhilarating.
 
A hot thrill
skittered up my spine. “Okay,” I said.
 
“But Cole, you have to promise me you’re not going to go after Jeffrey.”

Cole had seemed like he was calming him
down, but this seemed to send him right back over the edge.
 
“Stop protecting him.”

“I’m not!”

“Avery,” he said.
 
“I think you should leave.”

“What?”