Kellan (18 page)

~ PROLOGUE ~

Slade

“Slade, wait… I’m a virgin.”

That’s what Iris said to me two
months ago, when we were in the same position then—only that first time, her
ass wasn’t on the kitchen counter of her parents’ pool house. Our parents’ pool
house.

The first time we’d fucked had been
in her bed, still made up in frilly comforters and pillows and being watched by
the stuffed animals on her shelves. You would’ve never guessed Iris Walker was
eighteen years old. Not by the way she still clung to her innocence like it was
her very own lifeboat.

Maybe that was what lust was to her—a
deep, dark ocean just waiting to swallow her up. Maybe I was the shark circling
her little raft, and she’d been chumming the waters with her creamy thighs, her
raven hair, but most of all, those smoking-hot lips of hers.

Whenever she wrapped ‘em around a
straw and puckered, I damn near saw God. They were so full, so succulent, like
ripe peach flesh just dying for me to take a bite. She’d sweep her tongue
across them every so often, a little pink dart of motion that always drew my
attention, always beckoned me to steal a glance at her big, innocent brown eyes
and sultry pout.

She was sex on two very long legs,
and she didn’t even know it. She was also my stepsister.

And that was exactly why I had to get
inside her.

It took months. Months of teasing.
Months of half-joking innuendos and smoldering glares as I passed her in the
halls of the house we both shared. Ever since my father had married her whore
mother, Iris and I had been trapped together like two animals in the same cage.
Proximity could be dangerous, and I was going to make damn sure Iris felt every
ounce of the danger she was in the longer she shared my cage.

I was leaving soon. I was headed to
Harvard at twenty-one, young, dumb, and full of cum, but also a goddamn genius.
That was what everyone had always called me, anyway. Especially my mom, the
saint of a woman my father had promptly forgotten all about the moment he
caught sight of Ms. Evelyn Walker.

Call me Evie, she’d said the first
time we’d met, when my father brought her to the same house Mom died in and
wanted me to shake this strange woman—this homewrecker’s hand. Call me Evie.
Yeah, right. Like I was ever gonna call her anything other than Evelyn, the
Harpy, Evelyn, the Interloper, Evelyn, the Bitch Who Stuck Her Nose Where It
Didn’t Belong.

How Iris had come out of that was
beyond me. Kellan, too, her little brother—thirteen and all smiles and smart as
a whip—he was a good kid. He was always looking at me, watching what I did. I
liked basketball, so now he’d started to play. I was good at Call of Duty, so
he’d begged his mom to get him the game so he could be just as good as me. I
tried to set a good example for him, praising his good grades and making a big
deal out of how great it was to go to medical school. “Don’t let any assholes
ever tell you A’s are for nerds,” I’d say, and he’d nod, eyes bright as I
helped him with his homework. That kid was going places, and I wanted to make
sure he had someone he could look to for how to get there.

Which was why I kind of felt bad
about leading my stepsister on.

Because what I told her was that it
was love. That I couldn’t get her off my mind in a romantic sort of way. That
ever since I’d lain eyes on my eighteen-year-old stepsister with the body of a
twenty-five-year-old supermodel, I’d been smitten.

And poor Iris, with her stuffed
teddies and her never-been-touched, blushing cheeks—she’d believed me. She’d
bought the fantasy I was selling. Hook, line, and sinker.

But it was for the greater good. I
just couldn’t tell her that.

Not then, when she’d looked at me
with wide eyes and her heart in her throat, telling me she was a virgin and to
take it slow, and we’d fumbled with each other’s clothes and knocked teeth when
we kissed.

And not now, either, with her up on
the kitchen counter, her legs spread, toned thighs quivering, her bikini bottom
on the floor and her tits pulled out of her top.

“Slade, wait… I’m a virgin,” she’d
said two months ago.

Today, all she said was, “Hurry up
and cum for me, Slade, before Mom and Dad get home.”

I pushed up inside her in one long,
pulsating stroke, perfectly content to take my time. Iris was more than just a
hot body now. She’d learned a lot in the past couple months, and I’d learned
that I was a damn good teacher. I’d seen her plump lips wrapped around my tip
more times than I could count, and now when I plunged to fruition inside of
her, she knew how to roll those hips and make me groan.

She was doing that now, urging me to
finish, to leave all evidence of our forbidden lust inside her. Sweet, innocent
Iris was on birth control now—I’d convinced her it was easier for both of us
that way. No condoms to hide. Just my stepsister strutting around with a warm,
creamy center.

That thought alone almost made me
pop. Christ, I had to chill. I had to make it last. Because if everything went
according to plan, then this would be the last time I got to fuck her.

Goddamn, some part of me was gonna
miss this.

“I’m almost there,” I assured her
through gritted teeth, leaning back a little to watch my dick speed in and out
of her. I was covered in her desire. Iris had a hair-trigger, and she’d already
gotten off multiple times, soaking the counter and me in the process. When my
tip left the clinging wetness of her core, it made this popping sound I just
couldn’t resist. Normally I’d have lost it right then and there, but the way my
stepsister was digging her nails into my chest was killing me.

“Watch the tattoos,” I whispered.
They were new and they were sore, and when Iris grasped them, they burned like
hellfire. Which, given what we were doing, was awfully fitting.

“Sorry,” she moaned, leaning her head
back so the damp curtain of her hair tumbled down her shoulders. I kissed the
swan-like curve of her throat and she panted for me, her tits bouncing with the
effort.
Keep it cool, Slade. You can’t finish yet. Still got a few minutes…

“You’re close, Slade. I can feel it.”
I drew back and her gaze met mine, hazy from her most recent orgasm. Her lips
were swollen too, puffy and red, first from sucking my cock, then from my mouth
on hers, stifling her moans and screams. “Cum inside me, baby. Please.
Someone’s gonna catch us…”

Of course they are.
That’s the point, Iris.
But if she’d known
that—if she knew this was all just a way to piss off my dad and put my brand
new stepmom in her place—she never would’ve let me inside her. And that would’ve
been a shame, because then I wouldn’t have known that turning a virgin into a
succubus was a
very
worthwhile pursuit.

I couldn’t tell her the plan.
Instead, I reached down between us and jiggled my thumb against that little bud
I knew would send her over the edge again in no time.

Iris’ eyes widened. Her breath
caught. “Oh, Slade. I can’t take it…” She raked her nails over me again and I
just barely twitched out of range before she drew blood from my tattoo again.
“I’m gonna…”

“Scream,” I told her, pumping in
harder, faster, pushing her limits as well as my own. God, she was tight, and
the way she writhed all over me was making my toes curl. “It’s our last time
together, Iris. At least, for a while. I wanna hear you, baby. C’mon.” I turned
the movement of my thumb into something more urgent, a tapping that made her
wail. “That’s it. Louder, Iris. Scream for big brother.”

Yeah, that was nasty. But isn’t all
sex, at twenty-one? And anyway, it worked. Shamefully, it turned us both on.

Iris began to shriek, spreading her
legs wider to take the pounding I inflicted. She’d forgotten all about our
parents, about what we were doing, about
where
we were doing it. She
forgot how bold we were and how we were damn near out in the open. I could see
it in her eyes when she looked up at me, her teeth embedded so deep into her
lip that she’d broken the skin: all Iris Walker was thinking about, right at
that moment, was cumming on my cock.

Shit, I was thinking about it, too.

Right up until the moment the pool
house door opened.

The sounds that followed are ones
I’ll never forget. The high-pitched cry of Iris helplessly surrendering to her
orgasm, almost drowning out the sharp
click
of the doorknob turning.
Then the little whine of the hinges as the door swung in, flooding the room
with daylight and a single shadow, one that looked an awful lot like my dad’s.

Sweet vindication filled me as I
filled Iris right in front of him. I couldn’t tell which was better: revenge,
or my orgasm.

I expected a whole lot of yelling
next. I thought Iris, for sure, was gonna start to scream. And my dad had
always had a temper, albeit only a verbal one. I could almost taste his bellow
on the back of my throat as I swallowed, turning toward him, following Iris’
horrified gaze.

His face was ashen. There were deep,
dark lines where none had been before. His eyes, cold as ice, made my skin
prickle with pins, needles, and goosebumps. There was anger in him, all right,
but it wasn’t the hot, explosive kind I’d anticipated. This was the silent
kind, with a warning vibration that made the hairs on my nape stand on end.

Iris was the one who spoke first,
only it wasn’t really a word that escaped her lips so much as a strangled sob.
The smirk on my face faltered for a fraction of an instant. I hadn’t been
expecting that, either—that the sound of Iris’ grief would put a little crack
in my stone heart.

“Is this what you texted me for,
Slade?” my father said. Disgust shimmered in his eyes, pulled taut at his lips.
“You wanted me to see this, didn’t you? That’s why you said your mother and I
needed to come home so
urgently.
” He shook his head. “Thank God she’s
still in the main house.”

“You did this?” Iris whispered, lip curled,
brow furrowed tight. There was a note of disbelief in her voice at first, but
the longer she searched my face, the more her denial abated and turned to rage.
Disgust. “You bastard. You… did this. Used me.” Then she lost all expression,
staring blankly at the floor. “Oh, my God. Everything you said was a lie…”

I knew what she meant. I knew she
wasn’t talking about the little stuff. Not about how I’d told her she was
pretty, or that she had the best rack I’d ever seen. She was talking about
those three little words I’d said. The ones I’d lost sleep over, thinking maybe
I’d pushed it too far.

I love you,
I’d told her once, just to get her legs open. Or that’s what I told myself.
Because thinking any other way, entertaining
any
other possibility,
might make me back out. Might change my mind. Might fuck up all my plans to get
even with the man who’d used my mother until she was dead, and then traded in
her memory for a younger model.

My father inspired a rage so strong
in me that sometimes, I couldn’t see straight. Feeling anything for Iris,
anything at all, was a threat to that. Because every time I even
thought
about the
idea
of those feelings, my vision got blurry in an entirely
different way.

And that just wouldn’t do.

“Get out,” my father said. Despite how
low his voice was, it seemed to shake the room. “Get out of here, Slade. And
don’t you dare come back.”

Iris withered as I withdrew, covering
herself with her arms and legs while I pulled up my swim trunks. I risked a
look in her direction and my stomach sank. Those eyes were wide again, but not
with pleasure or sweet naiveté or even shock. They were wide with pain. Wide
with rage.

How could you?
her gaze said to me. I just gave her a shrug and watched her eyes get wet.

It didn’t matter how hurt she was.
The fact of the matter was that Iris was better off without me. I would have
told her as much, if she’d have listened. If my father would’ve let me stay in
the same room with her for one second more. But I knew neither of those things
were going to happen now, so I’d just have to say it to myself:
Come on,
Iris. This is the best thing that could’ve happened to you. Years from now,
you’ll look back and see. Splitting our parents up was something I had to do.
For me. For my mother. And in some ways, for you.

‘Cause being related to
Slade Jarvis? Now that’s a hell I wouldn’t put my worst enemy through.

My father moved to let me pass
without so much of a word. I thought I saw a few gray hairs glinting in the
sun, right around his temples, where there hadn’t been a single one before. I
held his gaze and my cocky grin, savoring my triumph, knowing that I’d done
what I set out to do. That I had
won.

I didn’t let him see it in my eyes or
in my swagger, but at the same time, I wondered to myself: if I’d really beat my
father, once and for all, then why the hell did I feel so shitty?

Why the hell couldn’t I get the look
on Iris Walker’s face out of my head?