Burned: A Stepbrother Romance (8 page)

I close the toilet lid quietly and stand up on it to get closer to where the sound’s coming from. I find the vent and press my ear against it, wiping away a cobweb in the process.

It’s Brock and Hernandez. I can just make out what they’re saying.

Hernandez is speaking fast. “She’s a fucking cop, brother. We can’t have her kind hanging around, not when we’re trying to talk business.”

“Business?” Brock snaps. “Are you for real?”

“I’m always real. You’re the one who’s trippin’.”

“She’s fine,” Brock continues. “I vouch for her personally.”

I feel a streak of happiness at the way Brock’s standing up for me.

“That may be so,” says Hernandez, his voice dipping lower, “but I don’t want her getting too deep.”

Too late for that.

“What do you think she’s going to do? Call SWAT down here to take us away for a couple of mechanical defects?”

Silence from Hernandez.

Brock sounds annoyed. “I mean, we’ve got nothing to be worried about, do we?”

“Brother, brother,” comes a reassuring Hernandez, “it’s fine. The less you know, the better.”

“I
want
to know nothing is going on here that’s going to get us all fucked again.”

“You have my word.”

And that’s the end of it.

The door swings open and I jump down from the toilet, moving to the washbasin to clean up.

“Oh, shit, sorry. I didn’t know you were in here. There’s no water next door.”

I turn and flick water from my hands in Brock’s face.

“Why you disgusting…” He comes forward and grabs me around the waist, pressing me up against the mirror.

I look into his eyes, the fluoros creating razor-sharp catchlights across the middle of his pupils, those endless pools of indigo.

“I heard you and Hernandez talking,” I confess.

“Oh that.”

“You were sticking up for me.”

“Shouldn’t I? I’m your stepbrother, after all.”

Saying it out loud makes it real. I don’t want it to be. I want us to be more than stepbrother and stepsister. I know he does too.

I reach down and begin to undo his belt. With Birdie away tonight, I’m the only girl here. I can’t imagine anyone is going to stumble in on us.

Brock looks at me curiously. He doesn’t try to stop me, though. “What are you doing?”

I bite my lower lip, flick my eyes up to him in my best come-on expression. “I want you to be more than my stepbrother.”

I pull the belt free and start undoing buttons, my hand fishing inside his jocks. His cock grows hard in my hand as I stroke it up and down.

He presses his lips against my ear. “If that’s really what you want.”

“It is,” I moan.

“You don’t think it’s wrong?”

I roll my fingers around the head of his cock, massaging the pearly pre-cum leaking from his slit into his glans and taking in the musky scent of his sex. “
Is
it wrong?
I
don’t think so.”

“You’re not thinking straight.”

I reach down deep into his pants with my other hand and cup his balls, rolling them between my fingers. “And you are?”

“Not anymore.”

“Let me show you,” I plead.

“How?” comes his voice, hot against my ear. His cock is an iron bar in my hand.

I let go of him and push him away, kneeling on the cold tiles and taking hold of the top of his jeans. I pull them roughly down to his knees, his cock bobbing out red and angry.

I take hold of it again, pleased to be the one in control. In fact, more and more I’m finding that’s precisely where I want to be.

He runs a hand over my forehead, brushes away the hair there as I guide him towards my mouth.

I make sure I don’t break eye contact. I want him to look down into my hazel eyes and know how much I’m enjoying this, the taste of him in my mouth.

I part my lips just enough for the head of his member to slide inside. I let it sit there, pressing at its tip with my tongue and then whisking it around his glans until he’s bucking against me.

“Fuck, Maddy.”

I pull away and continue to jerk him off with my hand. “What? You think I’m such a good girl? You’re wrong.”

I open up my jaw and lower my head over him, taking him as deep as I can go. The action is met with a low moan that reverberates through his abdomen.

His fingers claw into my scalp and he tilts his hips trying to go deeper, spellbound by the sensation of my lips around his cock.

I’m wet below, panties saturated and a need building in my core that’s so strong I’m actually starting to think I might come without even taking off my pants.

Holding him by the root, fingers ringed around his shaft, I concentrate and take him all the way into the back of my throat, struggling with the length and coughing a little as I let him free, spittle joined from my lips to the side of his dick.

He looks down. “That is the god-damn hottest thing I have ever seen.”

I wink. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

I let saliva build in my mouth and take him back inside with more urgency, really sucking and slurping away at his pole, covering every inch with my tongue, milking him with my mouth until he’s shaking and bucking and quietly repeating my name over and over.

I have him just where I want him.

“Mads, I can’t hold on.”

I pay no attention. I just keep sucking, my hand falling from his shaft to his balls. I squeeze them gently, feel the cum building hot and ready.

He holds my head, tries to push me away, but I hold firm. I keep the rhythm going.

“I’m serious, Mads,” he warns.

Seconds later his balls lift in my hand. His entire body stiffens. His mouth locks open and a breathy gasp escapes from it.

I suck and suck and suck, waiting. He gives another gasp, cock twitching in my mouth and then releasing.

I glue my lips around it, let the salty hit of his load impact against the back of my throat. I swallow it down, frantically trying to keep up but finally forced to let him out, the final ribbons shooting out over the floor between us.

Brock looks down at me with his cheeks rosy and a look of such distance in his eyes you’d think I’d just put a needle in his arm.

He smiles, cock continuing to jerk and spasm before me. “
That
was fucking
amazing.”

He reaches down and lifts me up, pulling my jeans and panties down together, the crotch sticking and then pulling away from my tender pussy.

The suddenness takes me by surprise, but Brock wastes no time. He takes me under the thighs and lifts me up, thrusting me against the mirror, my pants bundled up between us, the top of my legs against my breasts and my sex open and needy before him cooling in the air.

He presses his mouth hard against my own. He doesn’t care about tasting himself. His tongue probes rough and deep, taking me without mercy. I hook my arms around his neck and return, both of us heaving and hot together, my back against the glass.

When he enters me, when his still-hard cock fills my body, I bite into his shoulder to stifle the intense euphoria that has just swept through my entire being.

He begins to thrust, hammering up into me, filling me full with powerful strokes, the mirror bending and distorting at my back and my chin bouncing on the butt of his shoulder as he fucks me brutally.

I let him. I let myself be taken. It doesn’t matter where we are. We are together. That is all that matters. We are one. Years and years of sexual tension are finally being released, released in such a powerful way I know immediately there is no other guy I could possibly be with. Brock is the one.

“Maddy,” he whispers into my ear, the wet slapping of our bodies coming together echoing off the walls, the water dripping from the faucet beside us and the earthy smell of our union filling my nostrils.

I shake and quiver, nipples diamond hard against my knees. My feet flap in the air, my body caught between Brock and the mirror, his cock relentless in its need to bring me to completion.

It builds and grows deep inside me, fanning out and the flames rising until I’m all heat, all fire.

I can’t hold out any longer. “I’m going to… ahhhhh.”

The release is so profound and so powerful I blank out momentarily, lost to the void, as my cunt begins to clench and release.

There’s a pained cry in my ear, Brock stiffening and releasing again deep inside me. I feel the heat build there, take comfort in it.

I don’t know how long I’m lost, how long I hang there buffeted by the waves of ecstasy that seem almost an endless ocean. It’s infinite. I don’t want it to stop. I just want it to be us, but as I open my eyes I see movement at the door to the bathrooms. I see gold and I know someone’s been watching us.

Hernandez.

We clean ourselves up as quickly as possible, but I’m conscious of the way a cloud of sex seems to follow us when we step back outside into the warehouse.

It probably would have been wise to come out together, but I think everyone knows what’s really going on here. They’re not blind, especially Jay. He’s got a smile so wide on his face there’s no doubting he knows.

He smiles at Brock. “Took your time.”

“Is that a crime?”

We exchange a guilty look.

Brock glances to the other side of the track. “Where’d Hernandez go?”

Jay shrugs. “Just took off. Hell if I know, moody fucker.”

Moody. That’s one way to put it.

“I’ll be back,” says Brock, that seriousness returning. He vanishes out the side door and leaves me with the boys. I cross my legs, my sex still tender and damp.

“So,” I begin, “who’s up for a race?”

*

Brock was quiet on the way home. I made conversation, but it seemed like a one-way street. Didn’t stop us dirtying up the sheets back home, mind you.

I roll over in the morning to an empty bed, rising instead and working my way up to the main house. Dad’s still asleep, lazy fuck, but Michelle’s up.

Her coffee is marginally better than Dad’s. Usually we just sit here watching whatever morning show is boring the nation today, but today she wants to chat.
Weird.

“How’s everything going, Maddy?”

I’m taken a little by surprise, but pull my wits together enough to reply “fine” instead of ‘I’m sleeping with your son and running an undercover operation on him at the same time.’

“How’s Brock?”

I always thought Michelle could have shown a little more interest in her son. She seemed content just to let him be and blame any issues on his late father. My dad was the one who was trying to guide him into some kind of stability, but Dad never had the car link. He was a poor substitute, a regular working-class kind of guy who knows nothing about the streets or the way the world really works.

I answer as deftly as I can. “He’s good. He’s great, actually.”

“You two were always very close,” Michelle muses, taking a sip, steam clouding her hairline.

Does she know?
“I think he’s changed.”

“What makes you say that?”

I don’t want to have to explain myself, but I feel compelled to defend him. “He’s… stable.”

She laughs. “Stable? Not my Brock. Give him another month and he’ll disappear again.”

“I think it’s different this time. I think he wants to settle down.”

“With one of those car bimbos?”

I picture myself as a ‘car bimbo,’ slathered over my ride in a tight bikini. “Someone… serious, you know? A real girl.”

You’re calling yourself a ‘real girl,’ Maddy?

Michelle takes it in. “I see.”

“Why don’t you talk to him yourself?” I suggest, but it comes across cruel.

Michelle points a finger at herself. “Me? I’m the last person he wants to talk to. He still blames me for his father’s death, you know, even after all these years. And yes, maybe there’s some truth in it. I was unfaithful. I started the ball rolling, but I do not think it’s fair what he’s put me through. A mother deserves to know whether her own child is dead or alive, don’t you think?”

I bite my tongue, nod.

My cell goes off in my pocket. I pull it out, not recognizing the number at first and then working out it’s my old friend Alice from Rosie. She’s free.

“I’ve got to go,” I tell Michelle, downing the coffee, burning the roof of my mouth, but pleased to be out of this eternally awkward conversation.

If you really want to find out what’s going on with him,
I think,
talk to him yourself.

*

I arrange to meet Alice at a little café called the Pin & Whisk off Main, the kind of in haunt kept bustling by pram moms and sporty types, neither of which I can claim to be.

The bell on the door chimes and I recognize her immediately. It’s funny like that. We got up to some real mischief back in the day. It’s eons ago now, but I’m pleased to see she’s looking well.

I shake my head. “Alice Everett. I’ll be damned.”

She takes a seat, smiling. She looks good. “The one and only.”

“What brings you back to the city?”

“I’m catching up with a friend, Dan Winters, transferred here from New York a week or so ago, a big promotion. He’s a cop too. You remember him?”

Rosie seems like a lifetime ago. My parents pulled us out of there when the mill went down nearby. I’d only just started junior high.

“I’m a little fuzzy on who’s who from those days.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter.”

There’s something else. I know. It’s the detective in me coming out.

Alice breaks, a giant smile pulling across her face. She holds her hand up, a gleaming platinum wedding ring in place. “I might be doing a little dress shopping, too.”

“Wow, Alice! Congratulations. Who is he? A city guy?”

She laughs. “No, definitely not a city boy. He’s from back home.”

“Back home. Listen to you. You even sound country.”

“Well, I’m happy, you know. Things are going right for once, not that it’s been an easy road. Let’s just say my partner was something of a bad boy to begin with, a guy I really had the wrong impression about.”

I think of Brock, hands on my hips, the mirror pressing against my back. “I know what you mean.”

“And what about you? Any goss?”

“Well, I guess you could say I’m seeing someone.”
Who I’m totally going to send to jail.
“He’s a bit of a bad apple, too, but I think I can put him on the right path.”
To a life behind bars.
“I just want to take it slow.”
Make sure I gather enough evidence.

Alice nods. “Sounds intriguing. Does he work with you?”

No, he lives with me.
“In a way.”

“Hmm, aren’t you the mysterious one, but first, cronuts.”

*

I’m still buzzed from my encounter with Alice, with the past, as I head home, Champers purring away surprisingly well. Maybe Brock did something to him. He normally splutters away and carries on, whining when I have to drag him up to eighty-five.

Dad and Michelle are out, Brock too. Both the house and flat are empty.

I notice Brock’s car still parked in the garage, hood open.

Now’s your chance.

I find the tracker inside the flat and stand in front of the Camaro, its giant, black, hulking form. It couldn’t be more macho if you smothered it in Tabasco.

It’s hot, the tracker sweaty in my hand. I try to recall what the tech guy said—magnetized, underneath, rail-something. It sounded simple at the time, but the guy had a giant zit right under his nose that was about to erupt like Vesuvius. I couldn’t really concentrate on anything else.

I get down on the concrete and slide under the car as much as I can. It’s even hotter under here. I wonder how any person in a sane frame of mind could possibly enjoy working on cars.

I look for the rail, a good spot to place the tracker. There’s just so much god-darned stuff under here.

I place the tracker up, but it doesn’t stick.
Shit.

I move it like you would a planchette on a Ouija board, shifting it around until finally it snaps away from my hand hard up against the chassis. I check to make sure there are no moving parts around it, but it blends in well. I activate it from the side, a tiny LED telling me it’s good to go. Wherever this car heads to now, the cops are going to know about it.

“Maddy?”

I sit up so fast I smack my head hard into the underside of the car. There’s a hollow ringing that follows not unlike getting socked with a baseball bat.

I slide out, fingers dabbing at a welt already forming right in the center of my head. I squint against the light. “Dad? I thought you were out?”

“Just tidying up the basement. What you doing under there?”

“I, uh, lost something, rolled down the drive.”

“Need a hand?”

I stand, brushing myself off, head ringing. “No, no. You’re supposed to be resting.”

“I can’t be caged up in there all day. Besides, I have to walk twenty minutes a day, doctor’s orders.”

I point to the two strips of jerky poking out of his trouser pocket. “And what about those? Doctor’s orders too, huh?”

He slips them a little deeper inside. “Now, baby, that’s my medicine. No need to inform Michelle.”

I tap the side of my nose. “Our little secret. You see Brock?”

“Yeah, he left with some girl.”

I stiffen. “A girl?”

“Hair like a flamingo.”

“Birdie?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Did he say where they were going?”

“Something about kebabs, unless that’s a kind of euphemism you kids have these days. I’m really not up to date on all this sexting and kicking and whatever it is you do on those phones.”

“Just as well. I’ll see you later.”

I jump back into Champers and head to the meeting spot. Time to get my jump on.