PULSE: A Stepbrother Romance (22 page)
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Authors: Sarah Sparrows
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Women's Fiction, #Contemporary Women, #Romance, #Contemporary, #Military, #New Adult & College, #Romantic Comedy, #Contemporary Fiction, #Fantasy, #Psychological, #Sagas
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STEPBROTHER FIXATION
Renowned bestselling author Kat
Jackson is back with another full-length steamy romance novel!
Madison
I can’t be doing this… Not now…
Not with him.
Preston
Harvey is a wealthy asshole. He’s the living symbol of everything I hate in
this world. I wouldn’t sleep with him if he were the last person on Earth.
Except…
I just did.
I
have a sickness… A
fixation
.
Preston
We are so fucked.
Our
parents are engaged for Christ’s sake. Somebody is going to find out we’re
doing this and there will be hell to pay...
When
I gave Madison a job as my personal assistant, this was
not
the position I had in
mind for my
soon-to-be-step
…
And
now I can’t stop. I can’t ever stop…
I
want this…
And a billionaire always gets
what he wants.
Copyright
©
2015 by Kat Jackson
This book is a work of
fiction, any names, places, and situations portrayed within are products of the
author’s imagination.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks
to my husband and my wonderful children for being so patient with me as I
pursue my writing dreams. You have no idea how lucky I am to have you all.
Thanks
to Nora, my tireless editor who never fails to get the job done. Thanks to my
cover artist Ethan and my incredible publicist Devlin Rice.
A
special thanks to my new elliptical machine, for helping me lose my five pounds
of “novel fat”.
And finally I
want to thank you, dear reader. It is your graciousness that allows me the
opportunity to press these words onto paper. I could never live my dreams
without you.
PRESTON
“I can’t do this,” I
told her. “I can’t pretend like last night never happened. I need you, Madison,
and not in the way that a brother needs his stepsister.”
I began lifting up the hem, revealing the
creamy white tops of her thighs inch by inch until finally, I caught a glimpse
of her underwear. I pulled my cock out and nestled it against her crotch. I
felt my balls seize and I snarled in her ear. “I could blow my load right here,
Maddy. I could soak these panties before dinner, and your mother and my father
wouldn’t know a thing. You’d spend the whole night with my cum staining your
panties... That’s what you do to me. You make me want to do the nastiest fucking
things to you.”
Maddy
shivered and looked up at me with hooded eyes. “Preston… Jesus, we can’t. What
we did last night was wrong. I wanted it… We wanted it… But you know it can’t
happen again.”
I pulled her panties open, letting the tip of my dick violate
the space between them and her sweet, soaking wet lips. I thrust, overwhelmed
by the sensation of being so near to her, of feeling my bulging head slip
around in her honeyed nectar. “It has to,” I whispered. “Every time I look at
you, all I want to do is get inside you again.”
I was so close. But Madison gently, yet firmly took me by
the wrist. I could see lust in her eyes, but there was something else too.
Maybe it was self-restraint…
“We can’t,” she repeated, and this time there was no
“maybe” in her tone. I withdrew and she let her fingers brush mine. “I’m sorry,
Preston, but think of what could happen if we got caught…”
I nodded. As frustrated as I was, she made sense. But
dammit, I didn’t want her to make sense! All I wanted was to throw caution to
the wind and bury myself in my darling little stepsister.
She fixed her skirt and helped tuck my cock back inside
my pants, her hand lingering on its straining girth longer than she needed to.
“Let’s hope there’s wine tonight,” I said as her
fingertips left me, her graceful body moving around the car and sliding into
the passenger seat.
“I think I’m going to need it,” Maddy replied, trying to
avoid my gaze as I sat down beside her. We didn’t say another word as her hand
found its way to my thigh, giving me a reassuring squeeze.
A drink was definitely going to be required. Maybe a
little buzz would help me forget, but as we drove, all I could do was try to
ignore the heat radiating from her fingertips. My mind drifted, traveling back
to the day she ran into me on the street with those big beautiful tears in her
eyes… So perfect… So broken…
MADISON
One
month earlier…
“Madison
, lunch was over two minutes ago.”
I looked up from microwavable meal. It
was a small plastic bowl of steamed rice and veggies, but the shitty microwave
in the break room had only heated things up on one side, leaving me with
broccoli stalks with freezer burn still clinging to them.
My gaze fixed on Miguel Herrera, the
general manager of the small rental company I worked for. He reminded me of a
man who had once done greater things, but had since been exiled to the dredges
of monotony that corporate life entailed. Maybe he’d been military, or maybe
he’d once been a little higher up the food chain where commands weren’t
questioned and his iron fist ruled all. Either way, it was painfully clear that
a man like Miguel was never meant for a company like ExecuSpace.
ExecuSpace itself was an interesting
animal. Instead of renting tangible things like cars, homes, or office
buildings, they rented out
virtual
office space. I sat behind a desk answering a multi-line phone system where
each line represented a different suite supposedly housed in the six-story
building I worked in. A prompt would pop up on my computer with each call,
reminding me to answer for “Lindsey’s Lawn Service” or “Jack Vogler, Esquire.”
Then I’d place the caller on hold and transfer them to the client’s voice
mailbox, their cell phone, or even their home phone where they
really
worked.
Basically, ExecuSpace rented nothing at
all—nothing but the illusion that their clients were more important than
they really were. It was brilliantly deceptive, and it worked like a charm.
That meant the phones were busy. That
meant that sometimes I didn’t get to take a lunch break, and when I did,
running sixty seconds past the mark would earn me a visit from Miguel’s dark,
scowling face.
“You left your desk at half past noon,
didn’t you?” he asked, raising one of his charcoal eyebrows. I shuffled the
food in her bowl and nodded, taking another bite.
“I did, but I got stopped in the hall by
Mr. Franklin, who wanted me to run back to my desk and put a parcel into the outgoing
mail. Then when I got back there, Lacy got a phone call from her ex and ran
outside to take it, so I had to wait for her to get back before I could leave
again. After that, Ms. Harris asked for a physical list of the calls she’d
received today, even though they’re all logged on her voicemail, and ten
minutes later I finally got to heat up my lunch and sit down here.
“So,” I continued, glancing up at the
clock over my shoulder, “I’m not two minutes late. I’m actually just sitting
down to eat, so I’ve got about twenty-five minutes left.”
Normally I wouldn’t have spoken to
Miguel—or anyone at ExecuSpace—that way. That was because I
desperately needed this job, or I’d be completely screwed in the way of keeping
a roof over my head. That meant putting up with grueling twelve- to
fourteen-hour shifts, even if I had to clock out at five p.m. like everybody
else, enduring the abuse of my colleagues and the incompetence of my supposed
assistant, and above all else, not stepping away from my desk unless I needed
to use the restroom or had some other emergency.
But today was different. Today, after
four long, arduous years without so much as a pay bump or a pat on the back, I
was not in the mood.
I had bills to pay, and they were
mounting quickly. I’d been hired in at a measly ten dollars an hour and that
hadn’t changed, even though my responsibilities had. I was no longer the
receptionist answering the phones, opening mail, and sending off a few e-mails
every day—not that my job had ever
only
entailed that, despite what they’d told me during my interview. I was the
personal assistant to pretty much everyone on the floor, as well as the office
manager for when nobody else wanted to deal with the bullshit that sauntered up
to the front desk every day. I could—and had—run the entire
operation by myself on many occasions. So why was I still being treated and
paid like Lacy, the girl with no education, no computer skills, no ambition,
and no desire to be here?
Lacy also happened to be my “assistant,”
but she was an awful lot like my burden. She rarely lifted a finger to answer a
call before I got to it and yet she still had her job and half the office
tripping over themselves to take care of things for her. That usually involved
passing her work off to me while she skipped out on some obscure “errand” or
spent an hour in Miguel’s office with the door shut. She was young and pretty
and she knew it, and I supposed that was what got a woman ahead in this place
more than anything else.
Miguel appraised me, putting his hands
on his waist in a way that spread apart his blazer to reveal his paunchy belly.
I made sure to tightly cinch my legs together under the table, though the
violet pencil skirt I was wearing hugged my thighs enough that I was sure he
could use his imagination as to what was between them. I didn’t want him to do
that, of course, but there was no stopping Miguel Herrera when he decided he
wanted something.
When his gaze finally dragged back up to
meet mine, I realized what he wanted was for me to toss away my lunch and go
back to my desk. I held his stare, trying not to let my mouth twitch or my knee
shake, trying not even to blink. I didn’t want to make any move that might be
perceived as a sign of weakness, because today, after a shitty annual review and
yet another thirteen-hour shift the day before, I was taking my goddamn lunch
break.
Eight
hours. That’s what I get paid for,
I reminded myself, a
low heat rising in the pit of my empty stomach.
Lunch is supposed to be an hour. Lacy gets an hour. So do Ross and Ben.
Miguel himself takes as long as he likes. I’m entitled to sit and eat once a
day, thank you.
“Okay. You just sit there, then, while
there’s a crisis up front,” Miguel growled, waving a hand dismissively in my
direction. He looked utterly disgusted with me. “I’m sure the rest of us can
manage your job for you.”
I ignored his tantrum. It wasn’t
easy—I could feel my cheeks beginning to scald and my throat tighten.
“What sort of crisis?” I managed as I took in another deliberate mouthful of
rice. I tried not to wince as my tooth sunk into a shard of carrot.
“One of last month’s interviewees showed
up,” he answered, and I could tell by the tone in his voice exactly which one
it was. “Again.”
I finally looked away, heaving a sigh
through my nose. Last month, Miguel had wanted to hire a few more salespeople
and had put out an open call on Craigslist. We’d received hundreds of
applications, and he and Ross, our staffing manager, had decided on group
interviews being the most efficient way to separate the wheat from the chaff,
as it were. Unfortunately in their enthusiasm, they’d made promises they
couldn’t keep, and some of the prospective hires had to be told they either
weren’t good fits (mostly due to some background check revelations) or that there
simply wasn’t enough room for them on the team.
Except that Ross refused to tell them
that. He just dodged their calls, allowing each and every one to go to his
voicemail and directing me to say he wasn’t in the office. Miguel had declared
the matter was “beneath him” and that Ross would just have to deal with it.
But when Ross didn’t deal with it, it
suddenly became my problem. Suddenly I had to let someone down regarding a
decision I hadn’t even been a part of. Suddenly I had to bear the brunt of their
anger and frustration. Me, the woman who was constantly reminded that she was
“only” an administrative assistant and
not
a manager.
“Isn’t Ross around?” I asked, though I
was sure I already knew the answer.
“He’s at lunch. And you
are
our front desk girl, so this seems
like it falls under your purview.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You know what he’s
here about, don’t you? It’s been a month, and Ross hasn’t returned his calls.
He’s probably furious.”
Miguel shrugged. “Part of your job,
Madison, is to handle customer service issues. If you can’t hack it, well,
then…”
He trailed off as he always did. He
never actually said he’d fired me or that I should look for some other job, but
the threat was always there hanging in the silence. He knew it. I knew it. But
he didn’t have the guts to utter the words out loud. He was
that
type of asshole, the one who did
everything in his power not to do his own dirty work, not to seem like the dick
that he really was. If I went to HR to complain now and said, “He made me feel as
though my job was in jeopardy,” Miguel could come right back and say, “I never
said that.” And it would be true. The bastard sure knew how to wiggle.
“I’m entitled to a lunch break,” I
reminded him, but I knew I was losing the fight. There was no point, really. We
both knew he wasn’t going to make Lacy take care of it. When it came to
reminding people about the nature of their job, I was the sole target.
“Like I said, you’re two minutes over.”
Miguel’s gaze flicked to the clock. “Five, now. You’d better get back to your
desk and take care of this before it becomes a payroll issue.”
I slammed my plastic fork down onto my
tray and stood, making sure to scrape my chair all the way back across the
floor. I tossed the tray hard into the garbage can, maybe too hard, because as
I passed Miguel he stepped directly in my way.
“And stow the attitude,” he said, a
smugness lifting the corners of his lips.
I stared at him for a moment, and in
that time, something just… snapped. I was sure this was a bad idea. I was
almost certain I would lose my job. But in that one exhausted, frustrated,
hungry moment, I lost my temper and brushed past him, thumping my shoulder into
his as I careened down the main hall.
“Hey!” he called after me. I could hear
and feel his footsteps pounding the carpet behind me. “Madison! Don’t you
dare
walk away from me when I’m talking
to you!”
I ignored him, continuing on my path. As
I passed Ross’ office, I could hear the soft sound of his Pandora station and
see a light on from under the door. I tried the handle. It was locked.
“Ross!” I said, banging hard enough for
one of our clients to poke his head out further down the hall. “Ross, you have
Mr. Davies here to see you!”
“I’m not in,” he said. I could
practically taste the cowardice in his tone.
“You’re a manager,” I said, for once
reminding my so-called betters of their positions rather than the other way
around. “And you’ve been ignoring his calls for a month. Just come out and tell
him he hasn’t been hired. It’s not that big a deal!”
Ross didn’t answer, and by now, Miguel
was catching up. I shook my head, snorted, and strode toward the front desk
again. Even in heels, I was quicker than Miguel’s fat ass.
“Maddy,” Lacy said as I came into view
around the corner. She was texting while Mr. Davies sat in one of the reception
area chairs. She brushed a dark lock of hair from her face and tried to pretend
like I hadn’t just caught her slacking off once again at work. “Mr. Davies is
here for…”
“For Mr. Culling,” I finished, smiling
at Mr. Davies. That smile felt wrong and wild, but the momentum of my anger was
thrusting me forward now. I couldn’t stop. “I’m Madison Hearst. We’ve spoken on
the phone.” I extended my hand for his.
Mr. Davies stood up and hesitated a
moment. My eyes fell to his left hand, the one that was shriveled and tucked
against his side. Some kind of accident, I’d been told. But I didn’t need that
one. I only needed his right.
After a time, he grasped my hand in his
good one. “I remember. You helped me with my application before my interview.”
“I did,” I said. One might have thought
our very own staffing specialist would have been able to do that, but alas,
Ross wasn’t terribly familiar with the application process—nor anything
else of particular value, it seemed. “And I apologize that Mr. Culling hasn’t
returned your calls. I assume you’re here about the status of your background
check and interview?”
Mr. Davies nodded. I turned slightly
over my shoulder to see Miguel hanging back by the offices, keeping out of
sight of Mr. Davies. His face was turning redder by the second and he had a
look of unease about him, almost as if he knew what I was going to do.
I’d been lying for Ross and Miguel for
far too long. I was going to tell Mr. Davies the truth, and that was something
Miguel was desperately afraid of.