His stepsister was naked in his bed.
“What are you playing at?” he asked, fury and desire creating a potent cocktail in his veins.
“‘Wherefore art thou, Romeo?’” she asked, that same smile from earlier today playing across her lips.
Whatever she was doing, it was evil. It had nothing to do with wanting him; that was certain.
“Get out of here, you little slut,” he snarled.
“I don’t think that’s what you want,” she said, completely undeterred by his insult.
“Itiswhat I want.”
His heart was racing, his body hard, and the towel that was riding low on his hips was probably doing little to disguise the effect she had on him. But no matter how much he wanted her in that moment, he wanted her out of his room more.
She began to sit up, and in one fluid movement he went over to the bed, grabbed the edge of the blanket and pulled it around to the other side of her quickly, baring her body only for a moment without looking before he swaddled her, then grabbed the corners of the blanket and carried her, trapped inside, out into the hallway.
“Out,” he said, dumping her onto the floor.
She was seething, her eyes shooting sparks from where she was lying, still trapped in the blanket. “Don’t you want to take my virginity? Since you spoiled my attempts the last time?”
“You were drunk,” he said, staring down at her in her glorious state. “And what you do with your virginity is none of my concern. Whatever trap this is, you’re not going to catch me in it.” And then it all became abundantly clear. He had always known what she was, from the beginning. It was only his attraction to her that had clouded things, for just a moment. He began to laugh. “You are trying to trap me, aren’t you? It is not enough that your mother married my father—do you think that you can snare me in the same sort of fashion?”
Her face turned red.
“Howdareyou?”
“How dareyou. But you did. Now there you are naked in the hallway, thwarted. Go to hell, Heather.”
He shut the door violently on her and locked it. And then he went straight back into the shower and stood beneath the cold spray, cursing her name the entire time.
Heather was lost in a spiral of self-loathing. He hadrejectedher.
She had intended him to. Sort of. She pushed her fingers through her hair and pulled hard.
Everything was tangled up. She had gotten a little bit wine drunk and told her new friends in college all about her relationship with her stepbrother, and they had suggested that half the problem was that they wanted to bang each other. She denied it for a while, but then gave up. Because the truth was, he was beautiful. And she had never been immune. She also knew that he wasn’t immune to her.
“You need to screw him,” her roommate had said. “It’s that simple. The two of you are drowning in all your unresolved sexual tension.”
And the more she had thought about it, the more she had thought that perhaps she did. God knew that her attempts at dating were entirely thwarted because every time she kissed a man she remembered Romeo storming in like an avenging angel, and it never got any further because he had destroyed the idea of sex for her. She had gotten it into her head that at the very least she would shock him. That she would get some kind of advantage over him. And if they did have sex…maybe it would defuse everything between them. But he had dumped her out into the hall, and truly, she had realized that she had miscalculated anyway. Because the feelings had been far too intense. They had been so much more than she had anticipated. And now she was humiliated.
At least no one had seen her scrabbling back to her room with his blankets. It really was too bad that he was a billionaire, because her stealing his blankets might have been an inconvenience to him if he were a normal man. But alas, Romeo had everything he could possibly want.
Thankfully, she was heading back to school tomorrow. Thankfully, she probably wasn’t going to have to face him again. They avoided each other well enough in the giant house.
Usually, the only time she had to see him was at family dinner, and as much as it pained her to skip one with her parents, she would just claim that she was tired and avoid tonight.
She would be heading back to school with her tail between her legs to an extent but…
She had certainly affected him.
Her attraction to him had always been so buffered by how much she hated him, and then she had been naked in his bed and he had walked in wearing only a towel, and nothing had been theoretical about that.
She had been so sure that she would have control over everything, because she was a woman and therefore more likely to keep her wits about her during sex.
She had lost her head completely. In that moment when he had walked over there and she had thought that he…
She let out a breath, and walked out of her room, needing lunch, and needing to sneak it back to her room as quickly as possible to minimize her chances of having to deal with Romeo.
