Bad Boy - A Stepbrother Romance (22 page)

PLAYBOY

A STEPBROTHER ROMANCE

Chapter 1

Anya

“Did you hear me?” my Mom asked, her voice tinged with nervousness. “Earth to Anya…”

Although I was wide awake and sitting upright in my chair at the Italian restaurant Mom had dragged me to for lunch, my mind was somewhere else entirely, focused on the strange dream I’d had last night….or should I say nightmare?

For the first time in several months, I’d dreamed about
him
again
—
Cameron Meyers, the man who’d taken my virginity.
That freaking douchebag player.

The dream itself had been nice, until I’d realized the sexy-as-hell guy with rippling muscles featured in it was Cam. Even in my dream world, his lips had been quirked up with that same smug smirk I so deeply loathed and so clearly remembered, and his eyes had flashed with the same message they’d conveyed when I’d first met him.
I’m the best you’ll ever have.

He wasn’t wrong about that.

Still, I’d rather have terrible sex for the rest of my life than see him ever again, even in my dreams. Most girls didn’t like being treated like options, and that’s what I’d been to him when we’d met
—
nothing but one of many options for the night; a fact which had been made abundantly clear to me only moments after he’d given me my first orgasm.

My first orgasm
ever.

It was strange that he’d suddenly popped into my head again after I’d tried so hard to forget him, but now wasn’t the time to be thinking about that prick. Mom had brought me to this fancy-pants restaurant for a reason, and I was barely concentrating on a thing she was saying.

“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “I didn’t catch what you said.”

She sighed. “It’s okay. I know you’re tired from all your studying. But I need to get this out into the open before you find out some other way. Please don’t kill me, honey.”

“Mom, why would I kill you?” I asked with a giggle. “Did you join a crazy cult or something?”

She waved her hands. “Oh, heavens, no! But I did do something quite…um…impulsive, which you probably won’t be too pleased to hear about...”

I speared a green bean with my fork and rolled it around in some tomato basil butter before holding it up to my mouth. “Spill,” I said before biting down on my food.

“You know how I went to Vegas with Aunt Patty last weekend?”

I nodded as I chewed, and she continued with a sheepish expression on her face.

“Well…that wasn’t exactly what I did. Aunt Patty actually got sick just before we were meant to leave, so she couldn’t come. I had the tickets, so I invited Pierce instead.”

Pierce was the man my Mom had been seeing for six months now. I’d only met him briefly on a couple of occasions, because I was rarely home with Mom whenever she had him over, seeing as I was staying in the dorms at college now.

As her words hit me, I quickly pieced some things together in my mind. Mom plus Pierce plus Vegas….oh god, I knew exactly where this was headed. Even a jellyfish with a learning disorder would have been able to figure out where this was headed.

“Anyway, we both had a little too much fun one night while we were there, and we ended up in one of those silly little Elvis chapels…” she said, confirming my suspicions.

Aha! I knew it.

I nodded, still chewing on my beans.

Most people would be mega-pissed to find out that their Mom had remarried without inviting them, but I wasn’t angry. Sure, I was a little shocked, but I’d been wishing she’d move on from Dad and find someone else for years, so I was just glad that she and Pierce had finally made their relationship official and tied the knot. Even though I’d only met him briefly, he seemed like a decent guy, and she obviously cared about him a great deal.

I would’ve liked to have gone to their wedding, even if it was just a silly Vegas wedding, but all in all, it really wasn’t the biggest deal in the world. As long as my Mom was happy, that was all that mattered. Considering how long she’d put up with my Dad’s cheating and emotionally abusive crap while he was alive, she deserved nothing but pure joy from now on.

“Honestly, I thought he’d want to get it annulled the next day, because we were both a little drunk when we did it, but he didn’t want to,” she continued. “He said it was the best decision he’d made in years, even if we were drunk at the time, and….I agree. I’m happy. But I’m sorry, Anya. We should have waited to take such a big step.”

I shook my head. “Mom, don’t apologize. I’m happy for you.”

“But I didn’t invite my own daughter to my wedding. I’m a monster,” she said, her eyes wide. “I could have called and asked you to come out to Vegas, or….”

Her voice trailed off, and I smiled encouragingly. “It’s okay. I’m nineteen, I can handle it,” I said. “You’re not a monster. You and Pierce got drunk and got married on an impulse, and that’s cool. I was slammed with assignments that weekend, so even if you’d called me and told me to get my ass to Vegas pronto, I wouldn’t have made it in time. Besides, you could throw a party to celebrate it, or even have another ceremony if you wanted—like a vow renewal after the first year, or something like that. I can come to that instead.”

She patted my hand, her eyes crinkling up around the sides as she cast an affectionate gaze at me. “Thanks for being so understanding, honey. You know, Pierce’s son wasn’t upset, either…but apparently, he didn’t even seem to care that his father had remarried at all. Isn’t that sad?”

Huh? This was the first I’d heard about Pierce having a son.

“I didn’t know Pierce had any kids,” I said.

“Oh, well, his son is twenty, so he’s hardly a kid,” Mom said. “You’ll meet him soon, though. Hopefully he’ll have taken some time to consider it, and he’ll be a little more excited for us.”

“Yeah. So I guess I have a new brother,” I teased, sticking my tongue out at her. “And you didn’t even have to suffer through nine months of morning sickness to get this one!”

She rolled her eyes and laughed. “Yes. Anyway, would you be able to join us for dinner tonight?”

“Tonight? Wow, um…sure. Whereabouts?” I asked.

“At Bistro des Artistes. I made the reservation under our last name. It’s on East 20
th
Street, I think.”

“It’s okay, I’ll find it,” I said. “What time?”

“Eight.”

“Cool,” I said, noting down the name of the restaurant in my phone. “Anyway, I’m sorry to do a runner, but I need to get back to my dorm. There’s this take-home exam I’ve been putting off doing for three days now. I was going to do it tonight, but I’ll do it this afternoon instead.”

“Thanks for making the time, sweetie,” Mom replied. “Good luck with the exam!”

As I left and made my way to the nearest subway station, I found myself curiously wondering about my new stepbrother. It’d be nice to have an older brother, and I’d always wished for one as a kid. Granted, he probably wouldn’t feel the desire to get super-close to me in the way younger kids whose parents got married might do, because we were both fully-grown adults, but still, it’d be nice to get to know him.

I racked my brains for a second, trying to remember if Mom had told me his name so I could casually stalk him online before the dinner tonight. Dammit, she hadn’t, and I hadn’t asked. Hmm…maybe Pierce had a Facebook, and I could track his son down from there.

Yes, yes, I knew I had a problem with online stalking…but it was fun! I doubted there was anyone in the world these days who didn’t indulge in a little Facebook or Instagram stalking, given how easy it was to find out things about people with the click of a mouse.

Unfortunately, I was having one of those ‘brain fart’ moments right now. I couldn’t even remember Pierce’s last name. Ugh, why? I’d heard it a million times. I knew it started with M…Morris, maybe?

Yeah, that sounded right.

As I waited for the train, I typed in the name ‘Pierce Morris’ into my Facebook app. A few men with that name popped up on the search results, but none looked like my Mom’s new husband. I guess he didn’t have Facebook, then, and there was no way he’d have Instagram. Instagram seemed to be the domain of people under thirty, and Pierce was about fifty-five.

Oh well. I’d have to wait till tonight to see what my new brother looked like.

Once I’d arrived back at the college dorms, I headed up the stairs and down the hall towards my room. My best friend Kara was standing outside my door, tapping on her watch.

Oh crap.

“Sorry!” I called out to her, breaking into a mad dash. “I forgot we said we’d hang out this afternoon! I got caught up having lunch with my Mom.”

She grinned and flipped her long blonde hair over one of her shoulders as I approached her. “It’s fine. You’re only five minutes late,” she said. “I have some stuff to show you! And then I’ll help you with that exam thing.”

“Cool. Thanks. I have news for you too,” I said, fishing in my purse for my keys. I unlocked the door to my room and let Kara in first before closing the door behind us and plopping down on the purple beanbag chair I had in the corner of my room.

“So what did you have to show me?” I asked.

“Two things,” she declared. “Firstly, you know that guy I met online?”

“The one you met on League of Legends?” I asked.

League of Legends was one of the online games Kara and I played along with World of Warcraft, Diablo and D.O.T.A. Yes, we were kinda nerdy, but so what? Gaming was fun, and I actually made money off it, believe it or not. There was a website called Twitch which allowed gamers to stream themselves live when they played games, and they received money based on how many fans they had watching them play at certain times. I played games under the name Elune, and I had a lot of online fans who logged in to watch me play when I was online.

It was a little bit embarrassing that I made money that way, so I’d never told anyone what I did, apart from Kara. All of our other friends already joked around about how we were massive geeks, and they’d never let us live it down if they knew I was quasi-famous online for gaming. Luckily, no one I knew ever saw me doing it, because they weren’t likely to go on a site like Twitch, so my secret was safe for now.

It wasn’t the only secret I was hiding in regards to the gaming, but no one needed to know the details of that anytime soon…or ever.

“Yeah, that guy,” Kara replied. “He’s gone nuts. I should never have met up with him! Look at these texts.”

She showed me a bunch of crazy texts from the guy she’d gone out on just one date with, and my eyes widened. “Wow, he seems…er…a bit too keen?”

“Insane, you mean.”

“A tad insane, maybe,” I said with a grin. “But who wouldn’t be obsessed with you? You’re hot!”

“Says the super-famous and super-hot Elune, who has a gazillion adoring fans,” she said, poking her tongue out at me.

I grinned and rolled my eyes. I wasn’t ‘super-hot’; at least, I didn’t think I was. I wasn’t tall and skinny like all the models and actresses strutting down the streets here were, and believe me, there were a
lot
of models here, especially during Fashion Week. This was New York, after all.

I was just about average in every way. Average height, average face which could become pretty with the right makeup, average weight…well, maybe a little above average weight. I was pretty curvy, but I didn’t let that get me down like some girls did, and I often rocked fit-and-flare dresses which accentuated those curves.

Still, I wasn’t going to delude myself into thinking I looked like a catwalk model. And you know what? That was fine. I was happy with myself, like everyone should be. Not everyone’s calling in life was to be a beanpole catwalk queen.

“Anyway,” Kara continued. “The other thing I wanted to show you…hold on, let me get this magazine out of my bag.”

She rummaged in her giant tote and pulled out a magazine. “There’s this hairstyle on page twenty on this model. I totally want it. Do you think I can pull it off?”

She flipped to page twenty and handed the magazine to me, and I squinted at the grainy, artistic shot of the blonde model. Her hair had been cut just above the shoulders and had soft curls in it.

“Hmm…I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, it would look great on you, but remember what happened last time you cut your hair short?”

“I went crazy,” she said, grinning as she remembered. “The second my hair was gone, I wanted it back. Okay, you’re right. I’ll leave it for now.”

I closed the magazine, and my heart almost stopped as I saw who the cover model was. Oh god…

Guess who?

It was Cameron Meyers, the object of my sexy yet completely unwelcome dream last night. Yeah, I forgot to mention
—
Cam was famous. He’d been born into a wealthy family, so he’d always had a lot of good connections in life, and he’d grown up to be a tattooed model-slash-race car driver…and did I mention he was also a massive playboy?

I used to enjoy looking at gossip blogs and sites. It had been one of my few guilty pleasures, but not anymore, because now, it seemed that Cam was on all the gossip pages every five seconds, photographed with a different woman on his arm every night.  It was a wonder he was so popular, considering what an arrogant ass he was. I guess all the muscle and good looks blinded everyone to what truly lay underneath. He was notorious for his womanizing, and he’d probably dated every up-and-coming actress, model and socialite in the entire city, not to mention a few in other states too. He even had a tabloid nickname
—
Big. That wasn’t because of the size of his apartment or bank account, either…and I had firsthand knowledge of that, as much as I hated to admit it.