Fuck.
I stare at our reflection on the other side of the elevator. At the girl using my forearm as a seat for her impertinent backside, my opposite hand buried in her unruly blonde hair.
Her legs hugging my waist like a lifeline.
Trembling. The way she might after an orgasm.
My cock has been hard since I saw Cate on the tire swing, but it begins to leak now, no longer able to withstand the pressure she creates in my balls. The goddamn dress barely covers her backside and God help me, I lift the hem a few inches, groaning silently at the tight, tanned cheeks of her ass, spread just enough to show me her light pink asshole. I drop the hem quickly before she notices, calling myself a sick bastard for taking advantage of her when she’s obviously terrified. Clinging to me for comfort, trusting me because I’m her stepbrother.
I can’t touch her.
Can’t turn and pin her to the wall of the elevator, hit the emergency stop button and fuck her virginal body, our relation be damned.
How can I even consider it?
There is a camera in this elevator. I’m already going to have to perform damage control from simply holding Cate like this. With her pussy squeezed up against my fly, all hot and sweet, no panties to cover her. She’s so inexperienced, she doesn’t even seem to register my throbbing erection or what it means, even though she certainly feels it.
God. God, how am I going to stand this? Being near her? I should have avoided this temptation at all costs, but when my father suggested she remain in North Carolina, I couldn’t abide that, either. I need her near me. Need to care for her. Protect her.
I turn my head and inhale the wild berry scent of her hair, barely resisting the impulse to open my mouth on her neck, get the taste of her on my tongue.
The elevator dings and she trembles again, whimpering and tightening her hold around my neck. Man, you truly are a bastard. Instead of comforting her, I’m lusting for her young body in ways I’ve never lusted before. Didn’t even know were possible.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” I say gruffly, unfurling my fist from her hair to stroke it gently. And when she relaxes a little, my heartstrings pull taut. “I should have warned you how fast it would go. I forget you haven’t been exposed to a lot of things and I apologize.”
“No, I’m sorry,” she whispers. “You must think I’m so silly.”
“I could never think that.”
The elevator doors open and I step out of the elevator, into the marble corridor. Slowly, I carry her down the hallway lined with paintings and golden sconces, counting the cameras that turn slowly to keep us in view.
On the ride from the airport, I received a text from the realtor with the apartment number, letting me know there would be a key waiting beneath the welcome mat. But I’ll need to set down my stepsister in order to retrieve it. I’m loath to do so, even though we’re being watched, even though it’s fucked up and has already gone too far, but I linger with her in my arms, rocking her side to side, absorbing the innocent heat between her legs.
“I have to set you down now, Cate. So I can get the key. Are you okay?”
She nods into my neck, her legs unhooking from around my hips. With a sniff, she slides down the front of me, her eyes reflecting her curiosity when her softness drags over my erection. Thankfully, she only studies me through her eyelashes, but doesn’t ask questions. What the hell would I say? That in less than five hours, I’ve developed a deep, dark obsession with my stepsister and it’s taking further hold by the second?
Grinding my back teeth, I open the apartment door and gesture for her to precede me inside. She does so with wide blue eyes, her hands coming up to lay flat on her cheeks. “Oh my lord.” Her steps slow. “This can’t be where I’m sleepin’.”
If things were different, she’d be sleeping in my bed.
I’d be fucking her in it.
I’d never let her out.
But things aren’t different. She’s my eighteen-year-old stepsister and a non-platonic relationship with her would tank my career. I’d never hold office again. And maybe I’m idealistic, but this is a job I believe in. I kick my ass every day of the week to make sure I keep my promises to voters. Furthermore, I take pleasure in exposing my colleagues who don’t keep theirs. Since I was young, my dream has been the White House. Several people on my team, including my father, are counting on me to make that happen. I can make a difference there. And dammit, I have more willpower than this, don’t I?
Heart in my mouth, I watch Cate circle the apartment. She inches toward the balcony door like a kitten on a ledge, her fingers crammed against her lips. “I’ve never been up this high,” she whispers shakily.
“I wouldn’t bring you anywhere that isn’t safe.” My voice resonates with that promise. A hunger for her trust. “You know that, don’t you, Cate?
She looks at me and nods solemnly. As if she senses how much her answer means. “I know, Tristan.”
The way she whispers my name like a prayer helps nothing. It’s already tattooed on my brain. I’m going to hear it in my sleep. Replaying in my head every second of the day. “The bellman will bring up your suitcase. And I’ve asked one of my assistants to leave some toiletries in the en suite bathroom. Food in the fridge.” I search the entry table for what I’m looking for, picking it up. “This is a phone with my number programmed inside, as well as your mother’s. If you need anything at all, or there’s something you don’t understand, call me. I will always pick up. Okay?”
Cate blinks. “Are you leaving?”
“I have to leave,” I answer, barely recognizing my ragged voice. “I’m going to have a tutor here to begin your lessons at noon tomorrow.”
She nods, her gaze straying to the twinkling lights of Hartford stretching beyond the balcony. “How long will I have to do the lessons?
Again, I struggle with the prospect of changing a single thing about her. But if she’s going to be a visible member of the family, I want her to be prepared. I wouldn’t be able to stand it if she was caught off guard by a question and ridiculed by the press. “Long enough to make you comfortable.”
I was struck by her astuteness on the drive over, when she asked if her mother missed her or wanted to avoid a scandal. And I’m struck by it again when she asks, “Is it really me you want to make comfortable?” Before I can answer, she’s wandered into the bedroom and I don’t follow her there. I can’t.
I leave the apartment feeling like my chest has been razed.
I yank on my tie in the elevator, loosening it so I can breathe, my instincts imploring me to get back out of the elevator. Return to the apartment. Cate.
No. Do not go back.
Do not go back there.
I manage to remain in place, staring at my reflection in the elevator mirror without really seeing it. Only hearing her voice in my head.
Is it really me you want to make comfortable?
I walk into the lobby with a gut full of bullet holes, rounding the corner to the security office without hesitation. Knocking on the door.
A bald man in a headset answers, his expression smug.
He looks me over, like he knew it all along. Like he knew I wasn’t the altruistic man I portray on television or in the papers. Maybe I’m not. “Hello, Governor Garner.”
Behind him, there is a wall of monitors. Footage feeding through the cameras in the elevators, hallways, common areas. “Erase the footage,” I say through my teeth.
He tosses a chip into his mouth. “How much?”
My jaw strains until it comes close to snapping. And maybe I’m not altruistic at all. Maybe I’m not smart enough to stay away from the one thing that could wreck my chances at the White House. Because against my good judgment, I say, “Here’s a better question. How much to make sure the cameras stay off whenever I’m in the building?”
I’m in a meeting with staffers the following afternoon when my phone rings.
Every moment since I left Cate she has filled my thoughts, so when her tutor’s number flashes across the screen of my cell, I answer immediately, starved for a morsel of information about my stepsister. A hint at her progress. A whisper of her voice in the background. Give me anything.
Phone pressed to my ear, I use my shoulder to push through the conference room door. “How is she do…” My question trails off when I hear a plane flying overhead on the other end of the line. People shouting. Bike bells dinging. And my breath turns to a block of ice in my throat. “Have you brought her outside?”
“I haven’t brought her anywhere! She refuses to listen!” the harried tutor, a former university professor named Justine, complains in my ear. “She got bored with the material, so we took a break. Next thing I know, she’s running into the park barefoot, chasing a rabbit!”
Panic ripples through me. I want her indoors, goddammit. Contained and safe. She is too pure, to magical to be just running around among normal people. They could hurt her. They could try and take her from me. She hasn’t lived with the threats of normal society and doesn’t know how to recognize them. “Get her back in the building. Now.”
“I beg your pardon, Governor. I have not been paid to drag my student around by the hair! Oh Jesus, now she’s climbing a tree. Cate! Get down from there!”
“Christ.” I drag a hand down my face. “You’re in the park behind the building?”
“Yes.”
“Try and keep her in one place. I’m on my way.”
I don’t bother returning to the meeting to let my staff know where I’m going. The less people who know about Cate, the better, until she is ready to be formally introduced as a member of the Garner family. A group of interns watch me curiously as I cut through the carpeted hallways of the governor’s offices and push through the double doors out into the sunshine. My weekday driver is leaned up against the side of his SUV reading the paper, but one look at my face and he’s diving into the vehicle to start the engine.
“Colt Park.” I slam the back door. “Quickly.”
“Yes, sir.”
God, what is this possessiveness burrowed so deeply underneath my skin? I don’t like her running around outside, strangers witnessing her beauty, the way she flits around like a fairy from a story book. How selfish of me wanting Cate for my eyes alone, but I can’t seem to help it. She became mine the moment I saw her in the glen, laughing beneath the stars.
My chest tightens at the memory. So tight that I’m almost winded by the time we pull into the lane beside the park and I jump out, scanning the acres of green fields, past the baseball fields to the thicket of trees…
There.
She’s on the top of a hill surrounded by laughing children, showing them how to harness the wind and properly fly their kite. Bystanders are clustered at the base of the hill, watching the scene play out. Watching my stepsister as if enthralled—and I know the feeling too well. Well enough that I don’t want anyone else to have it, especially the men whose notice she’s drawing. More and more by the second.
The tutor is nowhere to be seen.
Teeth clenched, I rip my wallet out of my back pocket and buy a baseball cap from a vendor, securing it on my head and jogging in Cate’s direction. The crowd has grown since I arrived and it’s no wonder, since Cate looks like something from another time and place. In a flimsy, faded pink dress and no shoes, hair wind-tangled and flying in every direction, she’s too beautiful to be believed. Quite literally stopping people in their tracks. Men.
Of course they’re staring. She’s incredible. Laughing the world’s most honest, enthralling laugh. She’s wild, like no one and nothing else. Most pressing, though, is the fact that she’s wearing no bra and her tits are ready to pop out of her dress, her long, lithe legs flexing with the effort to battle the wind. A breeze lifts the hem of her dress and I see the sun-kissed, bottom curve of her buns, my cock thickening painfully at the sight. And I’m not the only one she’s arousing, just by being herself. I hear the soft groans, notice the male onlookers drawing their overcoats tighter around their bodies, hands vanishing out of sight.
“Cate,” I grit out, trying to keep my face averted as I climb the hill. “Give the kite back. We’re going home.”
“Tristan,” she whispers, looking up at me with sparkling eyes—and my breath is robbed straight out of my lungs. My God, she’s an angel. “You’re here.”
I swallow around the object in my throat. “Yes, I’m here. Now, do as you’re told, please. I’m bringing you back to the apartment.”
She hands the kite over to a child and her shoulders slump, making me feel like a bastard. “But it’s so beautiful outside.”
“Yes, but today was the start of your lessons. They’re meant to be taken seriously.” I take Cate’s arm, keeping my head down and guiding her down the hill. I don’t even risk a look to see if I’ve been recognized. “You ran off on your instructor.”
So low I can barely hear her, she mumbles, “She was mean.”
My stride hitches, anger rearing its head inside of me, sharp and ugly. “She was mean to you? How?”
Cate starts to tell me something, but changes her mind and looks down at her bare toes. “Never mind. I’ll go back and pay good attention.”
“No.” I tip her chin up and herd her closer to my body, knowing damn well I’m playing a dangerous game. We’re blocked from view by the SUV now and my driver is discreet as they come, but anyone could walk past, not to mention her apartment building looms across the street, hundreds of windows facing our direction. “If she was unkind to you, sweetheart, I want to know about it.”
My stepsister shakes her head, mouth in a stubborn line.
“Cate.”
After a moment, she sighs. “She told me I had to get rid of my accent fast. Because I sound like gutter trash.”
Red blooms behind my eyes, my temples pounding.
How dare anyone insult this guileless girl?
How could anyone live with themselves after treading on her spirit?
I hear footsteps behind me on the curb and turn to find the tutor coming in our direction. “There you are.” She laughs nervously and hands Cate a pair of sandals, which my stepsister puts on quickly. And I definitely don’t miss the way the tutor’s eyes harden when she looks at Cate. “After you jumped out of the tree, I couldn’t find you. Shall we resume your lessons now?”
“No. She won’t be resuming anything. Not with you.” I turn my body, so I’m blocking Cate from view. “You’re dismissed. Permanently. But you’re going to apologize to my stepsister first or you can count on me to be your worst reference. I doubt a bad review will be taken lightly coming from the governor.”
Justine’s pinched mouth drops open. “I didn’t…I was only trying to impress on her the importance of—”
“Still waiting on that apology.” I tug Cate up against my side. “Direct it at her, please. Not me. And you better hope she accepts it.”
The tutor bows at the waist, sputtering. “I’m so sorry, Cate. I was terribly out of line.”
“Keep going,” I say coldly.
“No, Tristan,” Cate whispers softly, pulling on my sleeve. “Please, no more. I accept.”
“Lucky for her.” Not wanting Cate reminded of the woman’s insult for another second, I take her soft arm and guide her across the street, back toward her building.
“Are you comin’ up with me?” Cate asks, hopefully, jogging to keep up with my stride.
I slow down to match her pace. “I have to work, sweetheart. I’ve already postponed…”
Her crestfallen expression has me trailing off in the middle of what was saying. Jesus. Disappointing this girl is like a knife carving up my guts. But being alone with her is self-destructive. I’m hard. So fucking hard. Jealous over the male attention she courted in the park. All I want to do is rip that dress off her fresh, supple body and bury my cock between her thighs. Turn off my phone, forget my responsibilities and spend a week riding her in every position. I’d die to ignore the fact that she’s my much younger stepsister. Career suicide in the flesh.
But I can’t do that.
I can’t.
Still, she blinks up at me and the world around us becomes an afterthought.
There’s only her. This sweet firefly fairy from the glen.
“I can come up for a little while,” I say, my voice like gravel.
