Bernard was waiting next to the car, pulling open the door the moment he spotted me.
“Good night, miss?” he asked, but I didn’t respond as I slid inside.
The door closed, and the quiet that greeted me was heavy. I pressed my forehead against the cool glass and took a few deep breaths, wishing my heart would stop pounding so hard, wishing I could think about anything other than him.
Rowen.
The way he looked at the guy, whose name I’d already forgotten, who dared shoot his shot with me—it wasn’t jealousy. It was violent possession that had no boundaries.
And I wanted all of it.
His hands.
His obsession.
His love.
Someone appeared at the door. I leaned away to see my ‘owner’ looking behind him as he opened the door and slid inside. He looked tense, upset, but when his eyes met mine, it all melted away.
“Avery,” he spoke softly.
“Rowen.” My voice was barely above a whisper.
I looked down and gasped. Rowen’s knuckles were bleeding.
“It’s nothing,” he said, but he still let me pull his hands to my chest so I could hug them better.
“Did you hit him?” I kept staring at him, a part of me aroused at the idea that he’d hurt someone for me.
Instead of answering the question we both already knew, he pulled me into his lap until I was straddling him and grabbed my face with both hands.
“I love you.” He pulled me down to him, crashing our lips together.
My lips were swollen and tingling by the time Bernard dropped us off, but it was hard to peel myself away from her, even just to get her upstairs to our apartment.
She giggled when we stumbled into the elevator, losing her composure when I dropped my keycard.
“How much did you drink, Avery?”
Her movements were slow and overly exaggerated as she held up two fingers—one from each hand. “Only two.”
“Someone doesn’t hold their liquor well,” I teased as we got off on our floor.
“I don’t drink often,” she said while I opened the door. “I’m usually a pretty good girl. I don’t do bad things.” She batted her eyelashes innocently, and my cock strained painfully at the sight.
Fucking hell.
We were barely inside when I wrapped my hand around her throat and used her body to shut the door.
Her kissed-swollen lips parted on a gasp. Her eyes, dazed and wide, locked on mine as if I was the only thing she could see, like everything else had faded away to just this. Justus.
Good.
I grabbed her hair—not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to feel it. My hand on her throat tightened until I could feel her pulse under my thumb.
“I guess I corrupted the good girl, didn’t I? Big, bad stepbrother took advantage of the sweet, innocent little stepsister?”
She nodded, a playful smirk forming.
