Uncaged (An MMA Stepbrother Romance) (87 page)

Excerpt:

Unleashed

An MMA Stepbrother Romance

I do care. That’s the truth of it. I care, and I care a lot. She stole my attention the very first time I saw her at the beginning of the school year. I had to repeat because I cut too much class.

She was sitting right at the front, back rigidly erect, her mocha-brown hair neatly parted, so straight like it was ironed. And there I was, uniform shirt untucked, top button undone, and a whole lot of don’t-give-a-fuck in my attitude. It was a fancy school, but fuck uniforms forever.

Except on the girls. Except on Cassie. She made it look good. Everything was so neat, so proper, so tidy. Every blouse had no creases, every skirt worn to knee-length.

God, to get that skirt up her thighs… to tear that blouse open… the thought of it makes me rock hard in an instant.

But all year Cassie barely even looked at me. I can remember it to this day. All the other girls in the classroom did, of course. Even the class teacher would lick her lips at me every morning at attendance, shoot me
anytime-you-want
looks while practically panting, begging for it. Our teacher was young… well, for a teacher. Early thirties, I’d guess. But she wasn’t my type. Truth be told, once I met Cassie, nobody was my type anymore.

And that, there, is something that scares me. It’s a little secret I have, but you’d never fucking know it by looking at me.

I’ve not been with a girl since I saw Cassie that very first day of term.

Her eyes had wiped over me like I wasn’t even something to be acknowledged, and then they had gone right back to her textbook. There might have been a mild look of disgust on her face, like she’d just tasted something foul.

I read the page header as I walked to my customary seat at the back of the class:
A Brief History of Political Science.

I didn’t even fucking know that our school had political science electives.

And now I’m walking with her along Sunset Way, and the sound of the surf is in my ears, and the smell of salt is on the air, and I’m waiting for her to tell me to go, because I will if she does. I don’t know why, exactly, but I will.

But she doesn’t say it. And we just keep walking. She veers onto the beach, and I walk there with her, feeling the soft sand beneath my shoes.

I feel it inside me, as I pull another drag from my cigarette, this growing ball of energy. I feel like I’ve got a fireball inside my gut, and it’s going to burst me at the seams.