Part of me wanted him to spill his load on my face. The other part of me wanted him to fill my throat.
“Where do you want it?” he asked.
For fuck’s sake. Fucking indecisiveness.
“Just come in my mouth,” I said with a huff.
He didn’t notice.
I took him into my mouth again and sucked him until he guided my head deeper and finished at the back of my throat. I wiped my mouth as I stood, and he wrapped his arms around me again and kissed me.
“Do you want me to take care of you?” he asked, flashing his dark eyes at me.
“No, I’m good.” I didn’t want to be asked. I just wanted to be taken care of. Just grab me and do it. Even when we were both pleased, I was still on edge about our sex life. I wanted more. I wanted something different. I wanted everything.
Chapter Five
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Dinner at six for Mom’s birthday next week. I’ve had it on the calendar since you mentioned it last time,” I told my brother Mark as I jotted down the time and place. I was absolutely pitiful at keeping up with events in my real life. Reality and fiction blurred too often, but I wasn’t as “unreliable” as my brother claimed. I was just...lost in my own mind.
Anna wasn’tmymom, but she was an excellent stepmother and deserved that birthday dinner. Mark also wasn’t my biological brother. My mother died and my father remarried a woman with a son.
It always felt weird to call Mark my brother once we became adults and moved from beneath the same roof. The feelings of sibling familiarity drifted further away the longer we were apart, but the moment I saw him whenever we got back together, all the memories of Christmas mornings and all the trouble we got into askids rushed back to me and reminded me that he was my brother regardless of the distance.
That’s why the next book made me anxious. A forbidden stepbrother romance. It hit pretty close to home, but it was a trope I was desperate to try, even if I was certain I wouldn’t like it. I wanted to wrap myself in the blanket of a taboo fantasy. I wanted to feel the tug of doing something wrong when it felt so damn right.
I lifted the book. The young, shirtless, tattooed man on the cover intrigued me. Curiosity outweighed the guilt I felt for reading the story after getting off the phone with my stepbrother, and I couldn’t wait any longer to rip into that fantasy.
I took the book to the couch, cracked open the cover, and began to read. While Michael busied himself with the yardwork he loved, I would disappear into a new, exciting world. The curl in my lip shifted to a tilt of my head and then a rise in my eyebrow. Discomfort became comfortable in ways I never expected—ways that made me feel emotions from every direction. I separated my life from the one on the page and let myself slip into the land of taboo romance.
The doorbell rang and I threw the towel onto the counter with a frustrated breath that forced the hair off my forehead. I’d been volun-told to host Thanksgiving this year, and I was the worst cook. The last thing I needed was for my father and his wife to arrive early and see my disaster,giving my stepmother a reason to take over my kitchen. In retrospect, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if Martha handled it because I sure as fuck didn’t want to. It meant cleaning the house from top to bottom, cooking dishes and sides and desserts until my feet and back hurt, and forcing a smile until the last guest left. Then I’d have to clean all over again.
I ripped the oven mitt from my hand and went to the door. When I saw the peek of wavy blond hair through the window, a long exhale showcased my relief. Theo had arrived to save the day. I tugged open the door and met his big smile with a hug.
“Zoey,” he cooed. He was younger than me—tall and strong—and when my brown eyes met his blue eyes, it reminded me we weren’t biologically related.
“Where’s Allison?” I looked behind him for his fiancé, expecting the blonde pixie cut to pop up at any moment.
Theo pulled out of my grasp and held my arms. “We broke up a little while ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I hoped we’d get back together. Didn’t want to start drama for nothing.”
I sighed. “Her loss.”
It was true. Theo was only twenty, but he ran a successful startup company and already made more money than me. It made me a bit insecure that I was in my twenties and living in a shitty apartment when he could probably pay cash for a house by now, but Theo deserved the world. He’d worked hard, and I didn’t begrudge him his success.
“Are Mom and your dad here yet?” he asked as he looked beyond me.
“Not yet, thank fuck,” I said as I stepped aside and let him in.
Theo hung his jacket and walked into the kitchen. He glanced around with a disappointed look on his face. Yeah, I had colossally failed at Thanksgiving based on his expression.
“I’m fucking trying, Theo,” I snapped before he could say anything.
“You need to chill, Zoey. I think I’ve arrived just in time to help you relax a bit.” He tugged a plastic bag from his pocket.
I cocked my head. “What are those?”
