I’m sitting on the balcony looking up at the stars, thinking about my fireflies, when my phone rings. It startles me, the trilling high notes shooting me to my feet.
When I see the little device dancing around on my coffee table inside, my shoulders relax. I’m never going to get used to having a cell phone. Mama realized pretty quickly that I was too intimidated to answer the thing, so she usually just shows up at the door. Does that mean it’s Tristan? If he’s calling me this late, is something wrong?
Tomorrow night is the big party. My formal introduction into upper crust Connecticut. After a day of dancing instruction, an etiquette lesson and yet another dress fitting, I’ve been instructed to get some beauty sleep. And I think that’s the problem. There’s too much pressure to fall asleep, so here I am. Thinking. Thinking about a lot of things.
Mainly my stepbrother.
What we did in that hotel room yesterday.
My nipples spike inside my tank top, aching so fiercely I have no choice but to reach up and rub them through the white cotton. I can’t seem to go five minutes without a hot flash of yearning tickling me in all the places he touched. I’ve always been curious about the human body and lovemaking, but I never knew it could be so consuming. That it could turn me into a different person. One who bites and scratches and begs. And likes to be called names.
Slutty little girl.
I make a breathless sound and walk back into the apartment, toward the ringing phone. Tristan’s name is right there on the screen, turning my knees to jelly. His voice is right on the other side. Lord, it’s only been a day since I’ve seen him and I miss that voice. Earlier tonight, he was on television, speaking to a man behind a desk. Hundreds of thousands of people were likely watching—but that’s not the same man who sweated atop me, cramming his thickness in to me over and over again. That wasn’t my Daddy.
I’m the only one who knows that man.
And it makes me feel illicit.
Shameful.
I love that feeling…when it comes to pleasure.
I love it.
When Tristan called me his slutty little girl, it shook the bedrock of my femininity. I loved being so tempting that it almost angered him. I loved being the girl with the tight sex he couldn’t help but rut. Forbidden. Dangerous. Bad. The disgrace that comes along with opening my legs for my stepbrother makes me lustful in a way I barely understand.
Out of bed, though…I worry about a different kind of shame.
Regarding who I am. Where I came from.
While I understand the Garners’ reasons for fitting me into a new wardrobe and giving me speech lessons, I don’t think I was so terrible in the first place. Was I? Hartford is beautiful in its own way, and Lord, Tristan is here. But I looked in the mirror tonight while brushing my teeth and I barely recognized the girl staring back at me. It made me nervous.
Makes me wonder if they would want me at all unless I change.
If Tristan would want me.
The phone quiets. A beat passes and it starts ringing again.
Despite the conflict inside me, I couldn’t keep from answering it if I tried.
Daddy is calling.
Pulse tap dancing, I pick up the device, tapping the green button with my finger and holding it up to my ear. “Hi, Tristan.”
His exhale sends a hot shiver down my back. “Sweetheart. I was getting worried.”
“Sorry.” My voice is breathless. “I hate this thing sometimes.”
“The phone?”
“Yes. It steals me right out of my thoughts.”
His laugh is sensual, raspy in my ear. “And what were you thinking about?”
My inner thighs flex and I press them together, but there’s no way to stem the warm rush of moisture that slicks the flesh in between. “A lot of things. My fireflies. The party tomorrow night.” A melting sensation in my belly has me closing my eyes. “You.”
We both let out a slow breath. The admission is like helium seeping out of a balloon. It’s a dropping of pretense. “I’ve thought of you without cease for weeks, Cate.”
A smile teases my lips. “Even while you were on television?”
“Even then. It why I’m outside right now.”
I whirl back around to face the window, as if I’m going to see him standing there. “You’re here? Now?”
“The back of the building in my car. I can’t fucking stay away.” His breath is harsh, labored. “One day without my stepsister and I’m a madman.”
“I miss you, too,” I whisper, my fingertips sliding up and down my belly, body swaying side to side, my blood heating at the possibility of seeing him soon. Having him touch me. Master me. “Are you going to…come up?”
“I was hoping you’d come down.” The pause is thick. “God help me, I’m already taking risks, but…I need to bring you to my home. I need to fuck you in my bed.”
That welcoming slide of shamefulness, the intimate kind, envelops me. This part of our relationship is vital. Compulsory. It’s separate from the shame I feel over my past. Who I was before they swooped in and made me over.
At least, it’s separate for now.
I’m not sure what I’ll do, or how I’ll feel, if it doesn’t stay that way.
At this very second, though, I can do nothing but dance around in a circle. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
With an incessant fluttering of excitement in my tummy, I strip down to my skin and put on a loose, peach-colored, baby doll dress and a pair of sandals. Run a brush through my hair. I throw a change of clothes and my toothbrush into one of the fancy purses mama insisted on, adding some panties as an afterthought. Grabbing my apartment keys on the way out the door, I fairly run down the hallway to the elevator, taking it down while bouncing on the balls of my feet. I’ve never been out the back entrance of the building before, but it’s easy enough to find, marked with a glowing, red exit sign.
On the way to the door, one of the security guards gives me a speculative look from his room full of monitors and briefly, I worry about the risk Tristan is taking, but he must know what he’s doing, right? After all, he’s the master of the universe.
I slip through the exit door and find Tristan leaning against a low, silver luxury car. For once, he’s not wearing a suit, but jeans and a black sweater, a baseball cap pulled down low to hide his face. I’d recognize that square jawline anywhere, however, so I hurry in the direction of his car, gasping when he catches me in his arms, lifting me off the ground into a hug.
His rocky exhale stirs my hair, his hold tightening around me. “And just like that, I feel human again.” Strong hands rake down my back, fisting in the hem of my dress. “Let’s get you home before I have you against the side of this car,” he breathes in my ear.
I nod, unable to speak.
He carries me to the passenger side, his breath warming my neck, that huge part of him prodding me. Wanting me. I curl my fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck and wrap my legs around his waist, making him growl. Earning me several hard thrusts against the door, both of us moaning, grabbing each other, the car groaning as it rocks behind us.
“You’ve ruined me,” Tristan pants, palming my bottom beneath my dress. “I’m being asked questions on live television and all I can hear is the wet, slapping sound your pussy makes when I fuck it.” He slaps my backside, creating a perfect, resonating sting that travels the entire length of me. “Apologize to Daddy.”
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” I wheeze.
When he drops me to my feet against the vehicle, I’m disoriented, aroused—and then he buckles me in protectively, kissing my forehead, and I switch gears yet again, my heart taking precedent. Pumping wildly. He dotes on me one second, manhandles me another, and I love it. I love the unpredictability of him, because it reminds me of the nature that surrounded me growing up. The power and beauty and honesty of it. The lack of pretense or prettiness that defines the rest of his world. I want to go for his wild ride. Never come down.
A moment later, Tristan climbs into the driver’s side and peels out of the rear lane behind my building. He takes the dark streets expertly, his restless energy reaching out and grabbing me across the car. Making my fingers clutch the edge of the leather seat, forcing me to focus on my breathing so I don’t hyperventilate.
I’m going to die without him inside me.
I’m going to die.
“Is it always like this between a man and a woman?” I manage to ask.
His laughter cracks like lightning. “No, baby. It’s not.”
That makes me tip my head back against the seat, my palms slicking up and down my thighs. “I saw on television…well, don’t you live in the governor’s mansion, Tristan? You can’t be taking me there.”
“I live there during the week. But I have a private home, as well. Not too far from our parents’ house. That’s where we’re going.”
I nod, relieved to hear we’re not far, and five minutes later, we pull through an electronic gate and fly down a cobblestone driveway, braking in front of a place so gorgeous, it could be a painting. A tall, ivy-draped, white brick mansion. Even though it’s so large, there’s a certain rustic charm to it. Lanterns flicker on either side of the entrance, the shutters on the windows are attached with black wrought iron, trees sway in the night breeze on all sides.
I don’t realize how long I’ve been gaping until Tristan opens the passenger door and lifts me out, carrying me up the steps to the front door and kicking it open. I burrow my face into his neck and let him take me wherever we’re going, the urgency to have our bodies joined matching beat for beat. We reach the top of a broad, wooden staircase and take a right, entering a bedroom I instantly know belongs to Tristan.
It’s no-nonsense. Cream and forest greens. Sturdy furniture.
A huge window overlooking the backyard and—
“Wait. What is that?” I wiggle out of his hold, racing to the glass to look out into the trees. And there…there is it. The moonlight is just strong enough that I can make out a tire swing in the backyard. “Is that…oh my gosh!”
“Cate…I was going to show you in the morning…”
I don’t bother listening, racing back down the stairs, ignoring Tristan’s shout to slow down and not break my neck. I’m unfamiliar with the house, so I skid into the kitchen first, reverse directions and find the exit into the backyard through a mud room. Tears spring to my eyes when I see the tire swing dangling from a towering oak tree and I throw my arms around it like a long-lost friend, even though I know it’s not my…
It can’t be my tire swing.
But when I lean back to study it closely, there’s the familiar, worn out brand name. There’s the little red heart I painted with Mama’s old nail polish.
Tristan exits the house and my hand comes up to trap a sob. “How did you do this?”
He watches me closely. Intensely. “I could tell it meant something to you. I hired someone to go collect it, send it to me.”
I breathe his name like a prayer. “Tristan. I can’t believe you did this.”
In that confident way of his, he starts forward, coming off the patio into the tree-covered backyard. “I did replace the rope. It was fraying and unsafe. Kind of like running down the stairs at full speed.” Looking at me hard a moment, he finally softens. “There are fireflies back here in the summertime, baby. Although I did ask if we could bring some here in a jar from North Carolina.”
Bursting at the seams with happiness, I throw myself into his arms, my tears of joy soaking into the shoulder of his sweater. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
His arms come around me slowly, holding tight. And when he speaks, his tone is thoughtful. “You like this a lot more than the apartment, don’t you? The jewelry, the—”
“Yes.”
This swing was always there. No matter who came and left or how I spoke or dressed. It was always right there. I want to say these words out loud to my stepbrother, but I don’t want to ruin the moment. Don’t want to come across unappreciative for what he’s done.
So I kiss him instead. Soundly.
I cinch my thighs around his hips and urge his mouth to open and accept my grateful tongue. And it doesn’t take much work to make him kiss me back. No, he takes control in a snap, his body bowing over mine, our lips frantic, frantic to taste. His hands grapple with my dress, yanking it up to knead the cheeks of my bottom, ride me up and down his lap. The appearance of the tire swing has brought the unruliness back inside me. The way I used to live, full force, in the fields and backwoods of my home. Unrestrained. And I pour all of that into the kiss, tempting Tristan to join me in my breathless freedom.
“Fuck,” he grits out against my mouth. “This is why I didn’t want to show you until morning. Never going to make it to the bed now. You’re always so goddamn hot for it.”
“Be inside me, Daddy,” I mewl against his mouth, rubbing my sex on top of his.
Tristan shudders, dropping to his knees and laying me down in the grass. His chest heaves, fingers uncharacteristically clumsy as he unfastens his jeans, tearing down the zipper. I sit up halfway, long enough to strip the loose dress over my head, baring my naked body to the moonlight, to my stepbrother’s eyes—and at the very same moment, we seem to recall how forbidden this is. That he’s stolen me away under the cover of night, unable to wait, unable to go another hour without having our bodies fused.
“Last time, I was so desperate…I swore someone was going to interrupt us or try and take you away from me.” He rakes a hand down between my breasts, belly, sliding a thumb between the folds of my sex, rubbing the sensitive button at the top. Slowly, sensuously, his face shadowed thanks to the moon at his back. “Can’t leave my stepsister’s little pussy unlicked again. It’s been too good to me.”
The sight of this powerful man, a governor, getting on his belly in the grass between my spread thighs robs me of breath. His broad shoulders bump my legs farther apart, pin them open, his warm breath coasting over my damp flesh.
“So sweet,” he mutters, kissing my mound, dragging his lips lower, lower down my slit and back up, kissing me again. “So precious.” He parts me with the tip of his tongue, gripping my hips roughly. “And yet, it brings me to my fucking knees, doesn’t it, baby?”
My stepbrother eats me alive, right there in the grass.
Turns his mouth sideways and slants French kisses between my parted flesh, tonguing me hungrily and groaning, pumping a long middle finger into my opening, pressing it in and out, summoning forth even more wetness. So much that I’m almost embarrassed and try to close my legs, but he laughs darkly and pries them open, lapping at me greedily, rubbing his lips side to side over my bundle of nerves and finally, finally, licking me in earnest. Laving me firmly with his tongue, directly over that spot, that spot that arches my back and makes me rip grass out of the earth.
“Tristan,” I scream through clenched teeth. “Don’t stop.”
He bears down with that tongue, sawing over that swollen nub, the epicenter of feeling, until I’m straining, bucking, forcing him to pin my hips with a forearm. A scary, wonderful collecting of lust in my center implodes—and then I quite simply fly. I grind up and down on Tristan’s pleasure-giving mouth, inciting my body further, extending the flight up, up, up until I finally come crashing down, tears rolling down my temples, my muscles in a fit.
I’m not sure where I get the strength, but I’m moving before my orgasm is even finished cresting. Pushing my stepbrother down onto his back in the grass and taking his fat organ inside of me, pumping my hips on it eagerly, riding him the way I’ve watched rich people ride horses.
“Oh Jesus,” he rasps, yanking me up and back on his lap with big hands, his eyes devouring my breasts, my face, that place where we connect. Become one. “Jesus Christ, yes. That’s my horny little sister. That’s my wet little plaything.”
He rolls me over onto my back, wrapping a hand around my throat.
His erection pummels me, stretching me with every violent thrust.
We’re animals. Filthy, desperate. Moaning.
I slap him across the face and he bites my neck, his fingers bruising on my thighs, my buttocks, his body driving mine into the dirt and grass.
“This isn’t even fucking,” he growls in my ear. “This is mating, baby. Daddy’s mating you so good.”
“Say it,” I breathe, burying my nails in his pumping backside. “P-please.”
Tristan makes a choke sound. He knows exactly what I’m asking for.
Wants to give it to me. Wants to be that much more depraved with me.
“Slut,” he rasps, bringing his mouth down hard on mine. Kissing me crudely, his tongue deep in my mouth, teeth clashing. “Wild, horny, little wildcat slut.”
Another orgasm slams me down onto the ground, pinning me as I shake, sobbing, sobbing his name. My tummy momentarily cramps, the climax is so intense, my intimate muscles are rippling so hard. And then I’m face down on the grass, butt in the air, Tristan’s palm cracking once, twice across my backside, before his manhood plows into me. With such force that it brings my knees off the ground.
They land again and I scream. Inhale loudly. Scream again.
My hair is wrapped in a tight fist and Tristan must have removed his sweater, because suddenly his chiseled chest is raking up and down my back, his hips slapping that hard, long part of him inside me, his ragged grunts echoing in the trees. “Now you say what I want to hear,” he says, his tongue licking a path up my spine. “Call for me, little girl.”
“Daddy,” I whimper, my cheek sliding up and back in the grass. “Fill me up, Daddy.”
“Ah God. Yes. Here it comes, baby.” Tristan jolts, groans and falls forward on top of me, flattening me on the ground, his arousal flexing and spurting inside of me. I bare my teeth at the night, writhing my hips, desperate to make him hot until the very end. To take every drop he’s giving me. He tries to pin me down and hold me still while he climaxes, but I won’t let him, spreading my thighs and ticking my hips back, riding myself on his draining steel, riding until he bellows my name hoarsely and drops, boneless, beside me.
I’m floating.
I’ve never been so weightless and it’s amazing, but it’s even better when Tristan anchors me, drawing me into his arms tightly, kissing my forehead, my cheeks, my mouth. “Look at me,” he says, voice serious. He doesn’t speak again until I manage to raise my heavy eyelids. “Like I said to you in the car, it’s not like this very often between a man and woman. Maybe it never is. So this…this is new to me, too, in some ways. Losing myself so…completely. When I’m inside you, we get a little crazy, and Jesus, I love that. I need it. Need you. But those things I say to you aren’t part of our reality. You understand? You’re a sweet, beautiful, perfect angel, Cate. I need you to look at me and tell me you understand.”
Until he says those words, I don’t realize how badly I needed to hear them.
There is no safer place than in Tristan’s arms, but he just made that even truer.
I nod, kissing him back. “I understand.”
His exhale carries the weight of relief. But he’s still tense. “Cate, I’m in love with you.”
My eyes fly to his and I see something there. Love, yes. But there’s more.
There’s obsession. The threat of madness.
And I love those things about him, too. I love everything about my stepbrother. So my voice is clear and leaves no doubts behind when I whisper, “I love you, too.”
Breath stuttering out, he can’t speak for a long time.
Long after he carries me inside and makes love to me in his bed until the sun rises.
Everything feels perfect.
But there’s never any telling what the night will bring.
