Hitched: A Stepbrother Honeymoon Romance (5 page)

BOOK: Hitched: A Stepbrother Honeymoon Romance
11.22Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

“So…” I say, trying to make some conversation to drown out my thoughts, “Do you get that kind of thing a lot?”

“Girls trying to fuck me?”

There’s a little pulse of heat down between my legs as soon as Travis says the word “fuck.”

“No, not that…” I say, “Contractual obligations.”

Travis shakes his head. “All the time. It comes with the territory, I guess. When you’re as big as I am, everyone wants a piece of you.”

“Monica definitely did.”

Travis laughs. “Trust me, it gets so much worse than that.” As we walk back into the house, Travis starts telling me stories about all the stuff he has to put up with when he’s on tour. It’s surreal, having an actual conversation with someone that used to only live on TV screens and in my teenage fantasies, especially when he starts asking questions about me. My original plan was to shut myself in my room all night and try to forget about Travis, but somehow, we end up on one of the fancy leather couches in the living room, talking about everything from what it’s like to become famous to why I want to go to journalism school as the rain comes down outside.

I’m so caught up in talking to Travis that I don’t even realize that I’ve been moving closer and closer to him on the couch until I’m practically on top of him. When I do realize that I’m touching him, my mind acknowledges it, but I just can’t seem to find the will to move away. He’d do it if I wanted him to. And by
it
, I mean me. That much is obvious by the way his arm is draped around the back of the couch, fingers just barely touching my shoulder. I can tell from the way they press against my skin that they’re ready to do much more if I let them.

“You don’t have to be scared of me, you know. If it’s going to be you and me around here for a while, you might be able to be the one fucking person in my life who isn’t all about business.”

I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.

The Laney that was swearing up and down that Travis was my stepbrother and nothing more is totally gone now, and the starstruck, boy-crazy teenage girl that I’ve been repressing ever since graduation has completely taken over.

“Sounds good to me,” I say, looking up at Travis and leaning into his body like I’m trying to make sure it’s actually real.

Our eyes lock, and suddenly we aren’t talking anymore; we’re just looking at each other.

“Careful, Laney. Keep looking at me like that and a guy might get the wrong idea.”

But I don’t want to be careful. I want to feel his lips on mine.

Travis’ eyes dart down to my chest, and in response, I arch my back and push it out like I’m offering it to him. Like I want him to look at me. “Keep looking at you like what?”

“Like you want me to do this.” My heart does a backflip as Travis brings his hands up to the first button of my top, undoing it and revealing a little triangle of skin beneath my collarbone. Then, he opens up the one below it. Soon, his knuckles brush against my breasts and he reveals my bra. I can feel the tension building up in his hands as he reveals more and more of my body. Any second now, and he’s going to snap, tear the rest of my top off, and make me his. The point of no return.

I press my legs together, bite my lip, and wait for it to happen…but before it can, something changes. All of a sudden, I realize what I’m doing. And who I’m doing it with. And what could happen if anyone walked in on us right now. It’s like the mature, responsible me just broke down the door to my brain after getting locked out by the horny, irresponsible me.

And that means that instead of letting Travis undo any more of my buttons, I jump to the other side of the couch and pull my open top over my chest, breathing hard as I try to collect myself.

“Oh my God, Travis…we almost…” I just know my face is an embarrassing shade of pink right now, and I can see the tension in Travis’ body. He was really, really ready to go all the way, and I think he still is. It takes all the energy I can muster not to look down between his legs and see for myself if that’s true.

“You don’t want to?” He asks, eyebrows raised and eyes blazing.

“I…I mean…we can be friends. Really good friends. But we can’t just…”

“Fuck?” Travis whispers, his voice low, deep, and dangerous. As soon as he says it, an intense heat floods through my body, and my grip loosens on my top. “Why not?”

I bite my lip, and my fingers start to fall loose from my chest, but before things go any further, I snap out of it, jump off the couch, and practically sprint towards my room. Once I’m safely inside, I lean against the door, half expecting him to try and come in so he can finish what he started. If he tried, I’m not sure I wouldn’t let him do it.

Oh, God, I can still feel his fingers opening up my shirt. His eyes devouring my chest. Without even thinking about it, my hand moves down between my legs, searching for the relief that I don’t dare get from Travis.

Touching myself to my own stepbrother…does it get any dirtier than that?

If it does, I don’t know how. But what I do know is that after this, this little lapse in appropriate behavior, this can’t happen again. After this, I’m going to stuff these feelings under my bed with that stupid poster, and Travis and I are going to be friends.

Just friends. We’ll be normal stepsiblings, and that’s all.

Because if we become anything else, it could destroy us both.

Chapter 7: Laney

 

Memories of Travis run down my body like the water coming out of the shower head. The summers we spent living under the same roof, uneasy friends, trying not to acknowledge his secret glances at my body while I tried not to look at his. It had to be that way, after the night he brought that girl over, and then he started undoing the buttons of my shirt…

You know what? Let’s make this a cold shower.

I twist the knob to the right, letting out a long sigh as the water starts to cool down. That’s what I get for repressing my feelings, I guess. Maybe if I’d let him undo a few more of those buttons, I wouldn’t have this ring on my finger now.

Where’d he get this, anyway? It doesn’t belong on my finger, but it’s a nice ring. Did he somehow visit a jewelry store while blackout drunk and buy it? That doesn’t make sense.

I furrow my brow and look into the diamond for answers. I wonder if he bought it off of some married woman on the casino floor…

“Laney!”

I gasp as I see Travis’ huge shadow on the other side of the shower curtain.

“Travis!” I poke my head out from around the curtain, hugging it protectively around the rest of my body. “You can’t just come in while I’m taking a shower!”

“Why? You’re not touching yourself, are you? Totally understandable, after what happened last night.”

“Don’t be disgusting! Get out!”

Travis puts his finger gently up to my lips.

“There’s someone from the casino out there, and they think we’re married.”

“So? Can they take it back?”

“Maybe. But you should probably come out and hear what she has to say.”

I roll my eyes and twist the water off, reaching through the curtain so Travis can hand me a towel.

There’s a heavily made up blonde woman in the bedroom, and she flashes me a knowing smile as I walk in. She looks familiar…I think she was our waitress last night?

“Hey, you two, how was your first night as husband and wife? I hope I’m not interrupting anything…” She looks at my thrown-on clothes and winks at me.

“No, perfect timing. I was just about to join Laney here for a nice, long shower.”

Travis wraps his arm around me, with his hand resting dangerously low on my side. Waitress or no waitress, if that hand gets any closer to my butt I’m going to punch him
hard
in the balls.

“Well, I definitely don’t want to keep her waiting, so I’ll make it quick.”

She pulls out two plane tickets. “I’m
very
happy to announce that you two are one of the ten lucky couples who are going on an all expenses paid honeymoon to the Royal Shores Hotel!”

I gasp as a couple blurry memories of last night come back. That must be why I married Travis! I wanted to win this contest so I could get into the Royal Shores…

“Holy shit, Laney, just like you wanted!”

“Uh…yeah…thanks!”

The waitress hands one ticket to me and one ticket to Travis. Then, she leans in close to me and lowers her voice. “See? I told you nothing’s up to chance here. Now you get to spend two whole weeks with this hottie and get away from work.”

Travis’ hand slides even lower, well into ball-punching territory, and my eyes get huge.

“Thanks!” I squeak, “I can’t wait.”

The waitress looks down at Travis’ hand, and gives me a knowing look. “Well, I’d better leave you to it. Have fun in the shower!”

Travis smirks. I can feel him trying to hold in his laughter as he hugs me to his shirtless body. “Oh, we
definitely
will.”

And just like that, the waitress is gone.

It’s a good thing, too, because Travis cracks up the second she leaves.

“Okay, I remember what happened now. You were talking about how you needed a scoop to get promoted at work. Then, you saw a brochure for a contest where you could win a trip to Royal Shores and you were like ‘Oh my god, Travis, please marry me! Please make me your wife!”

I squirm out of Travis’ grasp. “That’s
not
what happened!”

At least, I hope it wasn’t.

“Whatever you say, sis. But look!” Travis holds up his ticket. “We actually fucking won! Now you can find some celebrities hooking up, write an article about it, and move out of Nina’s with the money!”

It’s all getting clearer now. I didn’t marry Travis because I subconsciously want to fuck him, I married him for these tickets. But is it worth it? Sure, a career-making scoop is pretty much guaranteed at Royal Shores, but to get it, I’ll have to spend two weeks with
Travis
. I’ve spent less than a day with Travis, and he’s already aggressively hit on me about a hundred times, and he told that waitress we were about to fuck in the shower. If we go to Royal Shores, I’ll have to pretend to be in love with him. For two whole weeks.

And if we get caught, well, I don’t even want to think about what would happen. Nina would freak. So would, well, the entire world. Travis Carter marrying his stepsister. It’d probably be on the national news.

And that can’t happen.

I shake my head and take the ticket out of Travis’ hand. “It’s too dangerous, Travis.”

“What? Laney, we got fucking married for this shit.”

“I know, but we were drunk. What am I going to tell my boss about how I got into Royal Shores? She’s a journalist. She’ll check my story, and then I’ll be done for.”

“You’re overreacting. I’ll just schedule some event nearby and you can claim you were tagging along. Come on, it’ll be fun. It’s fucking Hawaii.”

I shake my head. “It’s just too dangerous. We have to get this taken care of as soon as possible, and that means
no
honeymoon.”

I put the tickets down on the nightstand.

“Fine, but I’m holding onto the tickets in case you change your mind. And I’m pretty sure once we get back to LA and you spend five minutes with Nina, you’re going to be begging to go to Hawaii with me.”

I roll my eyes and head back into the bathroom to finish my shower. He might be right, though. I wanted to scream at that cocktail party, and I have a feeling that it’s only going to get worse.

But why did my lucky break have to come with an arrogant, oversexed stepbrother attached? If I say yes, he’s going to take it as some kind of sign to start hitting on me like he did when we first met, only probably even harder, because he’ll have nothing to distract himself with.

He’d be all over me…and he might even try to get me back into his bed. And this time, it’d be for real.

I shake my head and twist the shower knob all the way to the right. My shower’s going to have to be a lot colder to get my mind off of
that
.

Chapter 8: Laney

 

I take a deep breath outside of Anna’s office, holding her coffee in both hands so I don’t spill it. She likes it filled
all
the way up to the top, so it’s easier said than done.

When I enter her office, she’s sitting at her desk, shaking her head. “Oh my God, these are the worst fingernail implants I’ve ever seen.”

Anna looks over at me, and then swivels her computer monitor around so I can see.

“I mean, look at this.”

There’s a blurry, zoomed-in close-up of somebody’s hand on the screen.

“Wow, uh…weird.”

“Seriously. Who does she think she’s fooling?”

Anna Wolfe may strike fear into the hearts of everyone in Hollywood, but whenever I talk to her, I just feel like I’m talking to a mean, gossipy high school girl. As far as I can tell, that’s what she was, and instead of growing out of it, she turned it into a career. She’s good at it, too: she’s like a bloodhound when it comes to gossip, and her ability to sniff out celebrities’ embarrassing secrets is why she’s the boss around here.

BOOK: Hitched: A Stepbrother Honeymoon Romance
11.22Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Holidaze by L. Divine
Never an Empire by James Green
The Witch's Tongue by James D. Doss
City of Women by David R. Gillham
Naughty Nicks by d'Abo, Christine
Pretty Ugly: A Novel by Kirker Butler