His eyes were like black holes, filled with fire and loathing. “How dare you! How dare you speak to me like this! Of such things, when you came in here with nothing and are leaving with everything all because your mother was a homewrecker.”
“The home was already wrecked, Romeo, be realistic. My mother was not responsible for the state of your parents’ marriage.”
“It is a good thing I am no longer responsible for you.”
“You never were. You’ve never been responsible for me. What you have been is a vengeful, diabolical, seething…” She realized then that she was moving closer to him, and he to her.
“And you are nothing but a brat. The moment that you had access to money and to wealth, what did you become? No better than me, so you cannot claim a high road where we are concerned. You are a grasping, manipulative…”
And then, suddenly they were so close they were sharing the same air.
“I hate you,” she said.
“No more than I hate you.” Then he wrapped his arm around her waist and brought her body up against his. “And we never have to see each other again. Not after today.”
Adrenaline coursed through her, excitement lighting her up. She could feel a pulse beginning to beat between her legs.
It reminded her of that night in the hallway when he had grabbed her throat. Of the night before that when she had climbed into his bed and he had come out of the shower naked.
But this time there would be no consequences. No consequences because they never had to see each other again. There would be no holidays. No family summers, no more dinners.
She would be free of him once and for all. He lifted his hand and traced her cheek with his knuckles. “I can think of no more fitting goodbye,” he said, his voice low.
“Yes,” she said, her body feeling like a stranger’s now. She was driven. A need, and not a lovely, romantic desire, but this toxic, utterly forbidden desire she had always felt for her stepbrother.
Part of being free of him would be to have this.
She knew it. She had always known it. Even though her attempt at seducing him had been half thought out, and all the way stupid all those years ago, it had come from a place of realizing that a powder keg packed this tightly would always be a risk. It had to explode.
It had to.
With them, it might be murder, or it would have to be sex.
She would take the sex.
He reached his hand back, and grabbed a fistful of her hair, drawing her head back, exposing her neck, and then he lowered his head and kissed her.
Right there, where her pulse was beating at the base of her throat.
She let out a raw, completely unhinged cry of pleasure.
She had expected that the first thing he would do was kiss her mouth, but no, he trailed hot, violent kisses up her neck until he reached her lips, and then he consumed her. His mouth bruising, his tongue taking no prisoners as he plunged deep into her mouth. She began to tear at his clothes, his tie, as he began to remove her clothes from her body.
“You will no longer have any power over me,” he panted as he tore her shirt away from her body, then popped her bra open at the front, filling his hands with her breasts before lowering his head and licking her nipples, pressing her breasts together so that he could devote attention to both, then sucking her hard until it hurt. She didn’t feel any sort of hesitation. She didn’t feel any hint of virginal nerves. This was how she knew absolutely and completely that Romeo Accardi had broken her long ago. Because this was what she had always craved. The violence of it. The darkness.
Nothing else had ever been able to compare. Why would she want candlelight and roses when she could have this?
This man who despised her so much, shaking as he rubbed his thumbs over her slick, tight nipples. As he had to inhabit his own despised desire for her. As he surrendered to it. Yes, they were both consumed with the sickness they shared, and that made it something glorious.
She was disgusted with herself. And yet that guilt, the shame only made it hotter.
It only made it that much more intense. And they had been building on this intensity for more than a decade.
Every barb, every cruel comment, every moment where they had undermined one another, every time they had played with one another, it had been leading to this. The most twisted foreplay, and it had brought them here.
She popped the buttons off his shirt and pulled it away from him. Finally she was touching this body. He had taunted her with it for years, and finally it was hers.
It was her turn to lick him, dragging her tongue over his nipples, over his muscles, his chest hair.
