Dirty Wicked Lust: A Stepbrother Romance Read online

  Amanda Heartley

  Published by Heartley Publishing

  © 2016 Amanda Heartley

  Copyright and Disclaimer

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination and have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 Amanda Heartley

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of the trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Contents

  Dirty Wicked Lust

  Copyright and Disclaimer

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Epilogue

  More from Amanda!

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Coming soon, my next release!

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  Chapter One

  “What, you got a hot date or something?”

  I looked up from my cigarette, wincing at the smoke curling between my eyes until it cleared and I could focus on April’s face instead. Rather than answer, I merely arched one perfect eyebrow until she eventually explained the question instead. “You keep looking at the clock on your phone. You never do that. Ever, so… what’s up?”

  I shrugged casually, as if the day, date, and time hadn’t been weighing on my mind for weeks. “I just don’t want to be late for my stepbrother’s ‘Welcome Home’ party.”

  April scrunched her face, apparently as unexcited about the party as I was, though not quite as concerned. “That’s today?” she asked, no doubt as tired of hearing about it for the last two weeks as I was ranting about it every time we took one of our clandestine smoke breaks out behind the Fine Arts building after our classes were over for the day.

  April Malone was everything I wasn’t: petite, curvy, brave, sexy and a legit tomboy, badass heartbreaker. Though I might have tried to play the part with my dragon tattoo and pack of generic gas station cigarettes tucked away in my backpack purse dotted with Sex Pistols and British flag buttons—I wasn’t the real thing, but somehow, we both knew I never would be.

  For one, I only puffed on the cigarettes for something to do with my internal rage and lackluster bad girl image. I never actually inhaled them or really ever smoked them when no one else was around. Not only were they an expensive habit but… smoking? Gross. Why bother if no one was around to establish my street cred?

  And that dragon tattoo? Pretty as it was, a snaking winged beast of red and green ink that cost me close to a grand in three painstaking installments, it was hidden away beneath my torn and tattered black jeans, the tail beginning just above my left knee, the body crawling up my left thigh and the head, plus twisting tongue, popping up above the spaghetti strap of my favorite black thong to tickle provocatively at my belly button. (Too bad it had been months since any guy actually saw it! And a while since I’d slept with a guy who was sober enough to remember it the next morning!)

  But April? She had it all out there for the world to see: the spiky black hair with the neon green stripe down one side, the rich black mascara, the maroon lip gloss and the curling smoke, ever present above her menacing scowl and perpetually flared nostrils.

  “Skip it,” she said, scowling even now as she lit her second cigarette with her first, like some grizzled cop in an old black and white stakeout movie. We’d just gotten out of our afternoon Modern Lit class and were leaning against the back of the Fine Arts building, as we did every Monday, Wednesday and Friday after classes were out for the day. It was a pretty easy schedule, three classes, three days a week, but the highlight was still smoking with April after they were all over.

  Usually we’d drag on a few smokes until we got bored, then use one of our fake IDs at the local Stop ‘N’ go to grab a six pack or two before heading over to April’s apartment off campus to drink them dry. We might order a pizza afterward and take a swim in her pool, or just binge watch Cannibal Zombie Academy on her couch.

  But not today.

  “I can’t do that,” I insisted, sorely tempted to skip it all the same and just drink beer with April all afternoon, come hell or high water. But secretly, with certainty, I knew I’d never do that. I was already on thin ice with my new stepfather as it was. Skipping his son’s triumphant return home from Afghanistan, where he’d just completed three grueling tours of duty as a United States Marine, might just derail our relationship before it ever got started.

  “I have to go,” I grumbled, as if maybe to myself. “My mom’s been planning it for weeks. You know how sensitive she is about appearances, especially where her new millionaire husband is concerned. Anything that might piss my stepfather off makes her freak out. He’ll be ticked off good and proper if I duck out at the last minute.”

  April exhaled another cloud of acrid smoke while rolling her eyes. “This is the same Mom who moved you all the way from sunny Miami to Chestnut, Tennessee, just to chase some man?”

  I cringed at her summary of the events of the last five months of my life, but couldn’t dispute them all the same. That’s pretty much exactly what my mom had done, which might explain why I wasn’t too eager to meet her husband’s son anytime soon – especially not if he was anything like his indifferent, overbearing, father.

  “Yes,” I groaned, feeling somewhat guilty for giving April only my version of the events that had brought me to Chestnut, Tennessee and the big, sprawling house on Maple Lane. In my heart I knew Mom really loved Jerry Johnson, her new husband, but that didn’t stop me from resenting how my life had changed – damn near overnight – as a result. “But in her defense, she really loves my stepfather, and she wants us all to get along as one big happy family, so I should probably be there to welcome my stepbrother home from Afghanistan.”

  “Shit, for real?” April asked, perking up.

  I nodded, almost as impressed as she was. “Three tours of duty as a Marine,” I explained, almost… proudly, as if I was already brimming with family loyalty. “But now he’s out and coming home, so I guess I’ll have to make sure I wear a towel after the shower from now on, huh?”

 
April snorted gleefully, lighting a third cigarette with her second as I lingered on my first, holding it but not doing much about smoking. “You never know,” she teased, leaning in close so that I could smell her patchouli over the cigarette smoke. “He might be a real hottie you’d want to see you naked, you know?”

  “Please,” I snorted back, puffing on my coffin nail for effect. “With my luck he’ll be one of those clean cut, by-the-book Marines they don’t write about in romance novels.”

  “Or,” April teased, waving her cigarette around for emphasis. “He could be one of those tough, alpha, chiseled, long, lean, tattooed bad ass Marines you see in online porn. Now that’s worth rushing home to every day after school, right?”

  I blushed, none too eager to admit that had been my first thought – quickly dismissed for the ultimate ick factor of screwing someone you’re related to, no matter what he looked like. “Even if he is,” I sighed, tamping out my half-finished cigarette on the brick wall at my back before dropping it at my feet. “What good would it do?”

  “All kinds of good,” April chuckled, doing the same with her third cigarette as we started the long, snaking walk to the student parking lot across the small but tidy campus of Chestnut Community College. I could never figure out how she could smoke so much in such a short time. I could barely cough out one as fast as she smoked two—and sometimes three! “Weren’t you just complaining that you hadn’t been to bed with anybody since you moved here? Well, this could be your chance to sleep with a hot, sexy Marine… and you wouldn’t even have to leave your own house to do it!”

  I snorted playfully. “With my stepbrother? Gross, April.”

  She shrugged. “I dunno,” she murmured, her smoky eyes looking curious and excited at the same time. “Taboo sex is the best sex, I think. Sneaking around, the fear of getting caught, knowing it’s kinda wrong but not really, having this sweet, hot, sexy secret whenever you see bland, boring, vanilla couples holding hands around campus—”

  “What?” I blurted, interrupting her with more genuine curiosity than playfulness at this point. “You’ve slept with… a relative?”

  “Not yet,” she sighed, as it was one more item on her massive fuck-it list she still needed to accomplish. “But I slept with my date’s brother on prom night, which was kinda taboo and hot. As. Hell!”

  “What?” I chuckled, nudging her shoulder as we crossed campus, the preppies, jocks and nerds making way as we strutted past, ninety-nine percent attitude and one percent confidence. “For real? How the hell did something like that happen?”

  “It was his fault,” she insisted, shaking her head reverently. “My date passed out from drinking with his friends all day, and well, when I went to drop him off at home, I needed help to get his drunk ass out of the car and inside. It just so happened that his sexy, cool, aloof older brother was home from college, and as we were hauling my date inside one thing led to another…”

  I nodded reverently, suddenly excited at the prospect despite myself. “Didn’t you feel bad?” I asked, wondering if I could ever live with the guilt of doing something like that to someone I cared about. “Afterward, I mean?”

  She shrugged. “Afterward, sure. But while it was happening, man, it was so hot! Not just because his brother was, you know? I guess it was just… doing something we both knew was wrong made it all dynamite. Right there, across the hall from where my date was passed out, knowing his parents might wake up at any minute and catch us, fumbling around in the dark, pants around our ankles just in case, trying to keep quiet but not really able to. It was, wow…”

  I chuckled, tempted to fan my new BFF off as she looked all flustered and flushed in the wake of her shocking–and admittedly, erotic–confession. “Yeah, well, you’ll never catch my stepbrother and I making sweet, dynamite love anytime soon.”

  “Never say never, Heather,” April teased, hugging me tightly as we stood between our cars–hers, a sleek new Audi paid for by her richer-than-Midas parents and me, the beat-up red pickup truck I’d driven all the way from Miami in. “You never know—you just might like it.”

  “Gross,” I said, wrinkling my nose, waving as April got into her car and sped away, no doubt to a relaxing evening binge watching Game of Thrones and drinking cheap beer in her own apartment while I spent the hour making small talk with my new stepbrother in my stepfather’s too quiet, too big, too perfect house.

  Chapter Two

  “Nice that you could finally make it, Heather.”

  My stepfather, Jerry Johnson, glowered at me from behind the kitchen counter where smoke still curled above the dozen or more candles on my stepbrother’s “Welcome Home” cake.

  Jerry was big, bulky, and hulking, still in his three-piece suit from another day in the office at his wildly successful real estate investment firm, The Titanium Touch. My mother, Carol, stood by his side—her default position—dwarfed by him even as she hung her head in shame at her daughter’s tardiness.

  “I… I’m sorry,” I said, finding little understanding in my stepfather’s judgmental glare, or for that matter, my mother’s refusal to even look up at me. “Class ran late, and I had to stay after to talk to the teacher about my grade and…” I was babbling, we all knew it but rather than risk further embarrassment, I merely let my voice trail off, peering from one face to the next.

  Still standing in the doorway, the afternoon sun streaming in around me and my backpack purse half-on, half-off as I continued entering the house, I froze mid-step. My stepbrother peered at me curiously from above a can of root beer poised halfway to his lips.

  His full, slick, tender lips.

  He was statuesque, nearly as tall as his father, and about a hundred pounds lighter–all of it packed tightly on his willowy six-feet-two frame. He was dressed casually in blue jeans and a faded red T-shirt that showed off his taut, muscular arms, with brown hair cut close to his head and green eyes wrinkling above that wry, curious smile. His face was chiseled and handsome—yet gentle—as if he was a sweet guy trapped in G. I. Joe’s body.

  “Well?” My stepfather was saying, holding out a cake knife and waving it impatiently, as if perhaps he’d called for me more than once. “Since you’re already late, which I knew you would be, the least you can do is cut the cake for Ryan.”

  I inched closer, the massive door swinging shut behind me as I crept from the foyer with its marble floor and fresh flowers through the cavernous living room to approach the stylish kitchen island.

  “R-R-Ryan?” I babbled some more, continuing my walk of shame as I stood, blushing, before them.

  My mother shook her head wearily, nudging her husband in the ribs as if they were in on some inside joke only the two of them understood. “Your stepbrother, dear!” she exclaimed, the three of them giggling as if, indeed, they were all in on it.

  “Oh, gosh, yes, I mean…” I was blushing even harder now. I could feel it all over my face, reaching with a trembling hand to grab the knife from Jerry and using it to slice into the huge dark chocolate iced cake on the marble kitchen countertop.

  “Here,” I said, fumbling with a massive slice as I handed it to him on a paper plate festooned with cartoon balloons under a flowing “Congratulations” banner. “It’s… nice to meet you, finally.”

  He took the plate with big, tan, confident hands, long fingers sliding along either side before removing it from my own. Our eyes met, only briefly, but I felt a not unwelcome heat wave flash through my entire body, the kind April must have felt when she peered at her prom date’s sexy older brother over the passed out body of her escort. It was intoxicating, riveting, panty melting, and frankly, embarrassing. But. So. Damn. Hot! Then it was over, leaving me shaking, confused and wet as fuck.

  To busy my trembling hands and cover up my nervousness, I hastily cut and passed out slices of cake to my mother and stepfather next, shaving off a tiny sliver for myself. Although I loved cake–with dark chocolate icing, in particular–and had a raging sweet tooth, I was too excited to be hungr
y. At least, not for anything mere pastry could provide.

  “For luck,” I said, as if explaining why I was eating it at all. Especially after arriving late to Ryan’s welcome home party.

  “I think that’s for birthday cakes, dear,” said my mother, nibbling chastely on her slice and giving Jerry a quick, conspiratorial wink as if to say, “You were right, honey. My daughter really IS an idiot! How did I never see that before?”

  I shrugged, hating when she did that–mocked me in front of her new husband, as if she was so desperate for his approval she’d throw me under the bus just for show.

  “Well,” I offered, bristling at the perceived betrayal. “It’s kind of like a birthday, isn’t it?”

  “Hardly,” offered Jerry, my stepfather, his voice booming and boastful all at the same time. “Ryan’s birthday isn’t until June.”

  “Not his real birthday,” I explained hurriedly, my eyes flickering toward Ryan as he watched me with those soft, dark green eyes. “But today is kind of like, you know… a rebirth. Starting all over again. Back home after his tours of duty with the Marines. A civilian again, just… you know.”

  They stared at me, slack jawed, lips glossy with dark chocolate frosting until, at last, Ryan snorted–but not unkindly. “She kind of has a point,” he said, looking at me but talking to his parents. My parents. Wait – our parents!

  “She has a name,” I said, putting my plate down unfinished. I clutched my purse strap tightly in one hand, having never even put it down once I’d walked through the door.

  “I know,” Ryan said, putting his plate down as well–empty and scraped clean of its frosting. “Heather. At least I know my stepsister’s name, which is more than I can say for you, little sis.”

  “I knew your name,” I huffed, my face blushing again as I felt all eyes on me once more. “I just… forgot it… temporarily.”

  “No wonder you had to stay after class,” he snorted, rolling those deep green eyes as my face glowed a crimson red. He seemed to be enjoying it, this teasing. I wondered for a moment if he really meant what he was saying or was just getting off on my extreme discomfort.