Defender: A Stepbrother Romance (6 page)

I
couldn’t believe
he kissed me. But in that moment, it felt like the most natural thing in the world. And I needed it. It’d been a horrible day. To end it in the arms of someone I trusted so completely felt like confirmation that there was still good in the world, that people still sometimes got what they wanted.

And I so wanted it. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I wanted it.

I moved closer to him, slid my hand slowly up the length of his chest, the silky feel of his shirt only adding to the physical pleasure that was quickly overloading my exhausted mind. I felt his hand move around my waist, felt him tug me closer to him. His body was tense, his muscles vibrating, his breath already quickening even as he encouraged me to open up to him, as if he was asking permission to come inside. I quickly offered, welcoming him with an enthusiasm I don’t think I ever offered to anyone else. Maybe because there was no one else like Crawford. He was all-consuming the way he dominated my thoughts long before I understood what his touch could feel like and long after he walked out of my life.

His hand drifted over my ass, his fingers working the material of the bathrobe I wore, searching for the bottom hem. The realization that I was nude underneath should have concerned me, but it did the opposite. I couldn’t wait to feel his fingers on my naked flesh, to feel his skin. I pressed my fingers under the buttons of his shirt, ran my fingertips over the fine hair that dotted his chest. He groaned even as he buried himself roughly inside my mouth, pushing me backward so that my ass was pressed against the window. His hand moved down to my thigh, gripping it and pulling it up and around him so that his thigh was pressed hard against my pussy.

I could feel the rough fabric of the robe rubbing against my clit, sending waves of intensity through my body. I moaned against his lips as my hand wandered back down his belly, seeking out the hardness I could feel packed inside his pants.

But in one quick movement he was gone. He backed away, mumbled something I didn’t quite catch, and suddenly, I was alone.

I don’t know what brought him back to his senses. I was still so lost in the things he’d been doing to me that it took a second to realize he’d turned away and slammed his way out of the room. I pressed my fingers to my swollen lips, and my throat tightened as the tears began to surge again.

I wanted to be angry, but I knew I deserved it. After all, I was the one who walked away the first time, wasn’t I?

There in the hotel wasn’t the first time Crawford and I kissed. It’d happened once before, during that ill-fated trip I made to Stanford to spend a weekend with him. We hadn’t seen each other in nearly three years. I think he was a little surprised to discover that the awkward, clumsy, fourteen-year-old me had become a graceful seventeen-year-old. He kept staring at me the first day or two I was there. When I caught him, he laughed it off, suggesting that I was imagining things. He was clearly embarrassed to be so taken with the new, grown-up me.

We went to a party at a frat house there on campus one night. They were playing great music, and I couldn’t help but dance. At first I danced with a group of girls Crawford had introduced me to. But then a couple of guys asked me to dance. Crawford didn’t seem to like that. He was watching from the sidelines—despite the line of girls who so desperately wanted him to dance with them—tension invading every inch of his handsome face until it began to resemble a marble statue. I finally had mercy on him and suggested we go back to the dorm. I was having a great time and would have loved to stay longer, but I didn’t want him to have an aneurysm or anything.

It was kind of nice though, walking across the dark, silent campus next to my tall, handsome stepbrother. I had never felt so safe in all my life. When a group of rowdy guys who were party hopping nearly ran us down, he slid his arm around me and pulled me close to the side of his body. It was like experiencing my first kiss the way that felt. It was a little awkward but it was an awakening. I began to feel things deep inside that I’d never known before.

My experience with boys up to that point was pretty pathetic. While all my girlfriends were making out under the bleachers and a few were having sex in the back seats of cars, I spent most of my Friday and Saturday nights with my Mom and Dad. It wasn’t that boys weren’t asking me out—they were—I just preferred to avoid the drama I witnessed on a daily basis with my girlfriends.

I was almost disappointed when we arrived at the dorm and Crawford pushed me ahead of him through the doors. I quickly missed the feel of his body against mine. Once in his room—Crawford was planning to let me sleep in his bed, and he was sleeping on the floor—I slipped out of my jacket and crawled onto the bed. He joined me for conversation, and we just sat there for a while, side by side, not really talking, not touching. Just sitting.

I know now what they meant in novels when they said the sexual tension was so intense you could cut it with a knife. I didn’t know it then, but that’s exactly what was happening. I think I spoke first, but I don’t quite remember. Somehow the conversation led to something about a movie we’d both seen recently, one that was a little controversial at the time because of a fairly intense sex scene. And that led to him questioning me about my dating experiences which led to him admitting some of his and…one thing just seemed to lead into another. At first, he was acting like a brother, giving me advice and threatening to beat up any boy who broke my heart. But then it became something else. Now that I look back on it, I think that I was jealous. When he admitted that he’d had sex with a couple of girls there on campus—not at the same time, but while he was dating each of them. Something about it just shattered my soul.

Remembering it should have made me laugh at my naive self. But it didn’t. Because the thing was I’d been in love with Crawford since before I understood what that meant. All my girlfriends had a crush on him, some were my friends because of him, and it pissed me off because in the pits of my mind
he was mine
. I had first dibs. Not that I really believed anything could happen between us. Our parents would have a heart attack if they even suspected how I felt. But he was still mine, and the idea of him with anyone else was just painful.

So, to have that honest conversation so close to the moment he began to awaken something inside of me…it was difficult.

My lips still swollen from his kisses, my heart still aching from him walking away, it was hard to remember that night. I had never felt closer to Crawford then I did that night. But that was also the night things changed forever between us. That was the beginning of the distance that had grown between us.

I climbed off the bed after he admitted having sex with those girls—one of whom he’d introduced me to at the party—wanting to escape, but I didn’t have anywhere to go. He followed, grabbing my arm as I reached for the door.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“I need some air.”

“What’s wrong? Did I say something?”

I shook my head, but he knew me well enough to know I was lying. I tried to turn to the door again, but he wouldn’t let me go. Instead, he pushed me against the door, pressing my back against the cold steel, trapping me with his body. He didn’t touch me, except for that hand holding my upper arm so tightly that I would have faint bruises the next morning.

“Tell me the truth.”

I couldn’t look at him. How do you look your stepbrother in the eye and tell him you’re jealous of all the girls that get to be with him when you can’t? I couldn’t do it. But he knew anyway.

He lifted my chin and uttered a little curse before his lips brushed mine. Perhaps the most shocking moment of my life.

When you’re seventeen and you imagine what a kiss will be like, you imagine pleasure beyond your wildest dreams and kindness on behalf of your lover. Crawford’s kiss was that and so much more. He awakened an ache deep inside of me that I had yet to find a way to satisfy. Such a simple, chaste kiss, yet it’s the standard to which I hold up each and every kiss I’ve received since. And none have lived up to it.

We kissed for a long minute, just our lips touching with the perfect level of pressure. And then he pulled back and studied my face. I wanted to tell him it was okay, that I wanted it. But I couldn’t speak.

He could. He whispered something I will never forget against my lips as he moved in to kiss me again.

“I love you.”

I knew Crawford. I knew he had a pretty rough childhood before my Dad married Vera. I knew his father was an abusive ass that no one ever talked about anymore. I knew that emotion is something Crawford didn’t embrace. He buried it deep inside so that he didn’t have to deal with it or with the things that come attached to it. So I knew that it wasn’t easy for him to say what he said. And yet, in a naive, immature, impulsive act, I crushed it all and made him regret he even spoke.

I panicked, I guess.

He kissed me again, his hand moved close to my breast, and my mind just short-circuited. I don’t know why. I’ll never understand it. But an ache shot out in my chest, and an image of my Dad suddenly popped into my head, and I couldn’t. I just…couldn’t.

I pushed him away from me and ran out of the room, leaving him standing there, hurt and confused.

Kind of like how I was feeling standing in the hotel room at that moment.

I moved away from the window and wandered to the bed. It crossed my mind to go after him, but I knew Crawford needed time. He needed to think things through. I need to think things through. What the hell were we doing? I touched my lips again, trying to remind myself that we were stepsiblings, that we grew up in the same house for a time. I tried to think of Dad and Mom, of the disappointment we would cause them if they had any idea what had just happened in the room. But all I could think of was how good his touch felt and how desperately I wanted him to come back and finish what he’d started.

I didn’t have a lot of experience with men. There was a guy in college, but it never went beyond exploration. I learned a lot from him. But that’s all it was–an opportunity to experience sexual things without the complication of attachment. And after going back home, I dated quite a bit. Kissed a few frogs. But nothing more than that. So maybe I was just lonely. Maybe I just wanted Crawford because he was there.

But even as that though crossed my mind, I knew there was no truth to it. I wanted Crawford because I’d always wanted him. And if I hadn’t panicked that night, there’s no telling where we’d be now. It was one regret I was always struggling to live with.

Then again, there was that other thing…

I crawled under the sheets of the bed and sighed. We probably would’ve still have fallen apart after that other thing happened. He could never forgive me for that. But he was the only person I could go to, the only one I knew who might be able to make it happen. And he did. But then he was gone, telling me I was a hurricane who was destroying everyone who loved me. And maybe he was right. Look at where I ended up.

C
rawford slipped back
into the room some hours later. He tried to be quiet, but there was no way to be quiet when closing an old hotel room door. I’d been dozing but not really sleeping. There was too much going on in my head for real sleep to be possible. I watched him move around the room, slipping out of his shoes and loosening the buttons on his shirt before he untucked it. Then he collapsed in the straight back chair with a sigh, his legs stretched out in front of him. He sat still for a minute, then shifted, then shifted again. He clearly wasn’t comfortable.

“We can share the bed,” I muttered. “We could put pillows in the center if you’re afraid I’ll try something.”

He sat up but didn’t answer right away. Then he sighed as he dragged his fingers through his hair. “You should get some sleep.”

“You should, too.”

He hesitated a few minutes longer. Then sighed again as he wearily pushed himself up out of the chair. I pulled the covers back, showing him that I still wore the bathrobe. He took his smartphone from his pocket and settled almost gingerly onto the mattress.

“Only because I’m exhausted,” he said.

It took him a minute. He was clearly reluctant to sleep in the massive bed with me. But then he stretched out, another sigh slipping from his lips as he pressed his head into the pillow. I turned away from him, curling up on my side. I closed my eyes, but every time he moved, every time he took a breath, I was aware of it. It was like my senses were completely tuned into him, and I couldn’t hear or see or feel anything else.

I thought he would go right to sleep. He must have been exhausted after flying in from New York so early and staying up so late. It had to be close to dawn. But he didn’t. He just laid there, so tense I could feel it rolling off of him in waves.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked as I rolled toward him.

“Not really.”

“Then go to sleep. You’re keeping me awake.”

“So sorry, Princess,” he scoffed. “Don’t mean to inconvenience you with my restlessness.”

“Do you always have to be an ass?”

“Do you always have to be a fuck up?”

That hurt. It wasn’t like I’d gotten into that accident on purpose. And I don’t think I’d ever blindly pull myself in such a situation. It was unfair of him to imply that I had.

I rolled away from him again. “It must be quite a weight, carrying around all that self-righteousness.”

“You realize I came here to help you, right?”

“Because Mom asked you to.”

“Then you’d be okay with me just going back to New York?”

“Do what you want, Crawford. I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you by involving you in my problems.”

“Wouldn’t you love that?”

“What?” I rolled over again and propped myself up on my elbow so that I could see his face. “Wouldn’t I love what?”

“Wouldn’t you love it if I just left? Then you could have someone to blame when you go to prison.”