Off Limits: A Stepbrother MMA Romance (4 page)

They wouldn’t know
what to say about Tuck. How I’d thrown myself at him, moaning as
he’d played with my breasts, pressing against him and practically
begging for his touch. Now he was my stepbrother.

Excellent.

The only thing to do
was forget it, pretend it had never happened, avoid him like the
plague and count the minutes until they got divorced. Because they
were going to get divorced. It was only a matter of time.

I’d only met my new
stepfather, Leland, once, at that party, but I wasn’t impressed. He
reminded me of a stuffed pheasant, pampered and glossy, the kind of
man who got facials and mani-pedis. I guessed as a billionaire you
did whatever the hell you wanted. The world spun on his axis, who was
going to say no to him?

Certainly not my
mother, but I could tell you I heard the clock ticking on their
marriage. He wasn’t the type to grow old and gray with. Let me
rephrase that. He wouldn’t grow old and gray with a woman growing
old and gray by his side. He’d trade up, turning in his older model
for the newest, sleekest thing money could buy. Right now, that was
my mom who still had enough va-va-voom in her 30-something tank for
his 50-something engine. But it wouldn’t last.

I was sure Tuck was
exactly like him. I’d played right into his hands at the party,
believing every hackneyed line, feeling sincerity in every practiced
touch. I was sure he’d had a laugh about it afterwards. I’d been
such ripe, low-hanging fruit. He was a player and I’d been played.

I’d just have to
avoid seeing my hotter-than-hell stepbrother until the marriage was
over. And then I’d never have to see him again.

My plan worked until
spring break. One month. It was nice while it lasted.

Late March they
insisted we join them in New York City. They were going to throw a
huge party with anyone who was anyone attending. Of course their two
children had to be there. Scandal if we didn’t show. How about if
we made out in the middle of the dance floor? Would that be scandal
enough?

But, see, thoughts like
that weren’t allowed. They were right out. If there was any way I
was going to make it through the six day ‘family vacation’, I’d
have to avoid Tuck and focus on other things. Like the mountain of
schoolwork I had. Or I could think about depressing things, like the
way Tuck had looked at me at the party after he’d met my mother.

He’d sussed out my
mom quick, sizing her up as she’d draped herself on his father’s
arm. Then when he’d turned back to me it was like he was seeing a
carbon copy of her, just as shallow and money-hungry.

The only person
thinking worse thoughts about myself was me. I hated the girl I’d
become at that party. How had I gotten so caught up? I’d let a
total stranger who turned out not to be such a fucking stranger after
all press me up against a wall and paw my breasts, cup my ass.

I guessed that’s what
I got for letting my guard down. I thought I’d learned my lesson by
watching my mother’s freak show unfold over the years. No,
apparently I had enough of her in me that I could make a total ass of
myself, too. I could be the idiot who went out and let a handsome
stranger sweet-talk me into almost anything.

My mother didn’t talk
about Tuck much. She mentioned him a few times, but it sounded like
the party line, like she was reading from a PR print-out. For all I
knew, she was. I didn’t know how billionaires rolled. Maybe they
had their own marketing teams? I heard about how Tuck was doing well
in school, how he was a varsity athlete in wrestling and majoring in
business, a chip off the old block. Bully for him, chip chip and
tally ho, whatever rich people said. I wanted nothing to do with
either of them. Especially since my cheeks still burned with
embarrassment over how much I’d wanted him, how quickly he’d
melted my panties. I’d been ready to do whatever he’d wanted in
that corner at the party. Had we been given another few minutes, who
knew what would have happened?

I’d managed to avoid
Tuck completely since that disastrous first encounter. Now my luck
had run out.

§

A driver met me at the
airport in New York, whisked me away in a limo and took me to an
Upper East Side penthouse that made all the other penthouses cry in
jealousy. Leland Tucker Helmsworth II had money. MONEY. It wasn’t
as if I’d grown up poor, my mom had made a chunk of change modeling
and then with her movies, but it always seemed to go as quickly as it
came. And she’d always spent it on clothes, treatments, nips and
tucks, trainers, investing in her key commodity—herself.

Our house in L.A. had
been a modest bungalow, near enough to Beverly Hills that she could
say that’s where she lived, plus districted to bad public schools
so the sales price got knocked down $100K. Compared to their
penthouse our home looked like a shack.

The private elevator
opened to a foyer—no entryway or mud-room here, thank you very
much, but the French pronunciation of foyer. I set my bags down and
started tiptoeing around, marveling at the cavernous living room with
the 20-foot ceiling and priceless masterpieces. We’re talking
Rembrandt, people, plus a giant Picasso over the grand piano. The
spectacular gourmet kitchen had two sinks, two stoves, two pantries,
two of everything my mother wouldn’t touch at all. Cooking wasn’t
exactly in her wheelhouse. And I wasn’t one to talk. Food was
something I tended to forget about, then remember at 6 p.m. that I
hadn’t eaten all day and scarf a couple slices of pizza.

I heard some voices.
Investigating, heading down a hallway, I discovered French doors left
partially open leading out to a roof deck. With a hot tub, of course,
didn’t every New Yorker have a private hot tub? One person was
climbing out. Holy hell, it was Tuck. Without a shirt.

All those muscles I’d
felt under his tux at the party? They were as amazing as I’d
imagined, maybe better, his shoulders huge and broad tapering down
with every ridge and ripple of his abs defined. And he had tattoos. I
brought my hand out to the doorframe to steady myself, taking in
every line of his ink, bundled at his shoulder, trailing down around
his bicep, one at his corded wrist. I needed to stop staring before
he caught me.

“Hey, sis!” He gave
a slow wave from the side of the hot tub. He’d caught me. I blushed
furiously. What the fuck was he doing calling me sis? “Want to come
join us?”

A girl looked over at
me from the hot tub, her dark hair slicked back, her full rack
bobbing on the surface of the water. Oh. My. God.

Rushing away so fast I
was surprised I didn’t smack directly into a wall, I bolted away as
quickly as I could. But not before I heard their laughter rising up,
mocking my innocence. It was going to be a long six days.

§

At first, it was easy.
From what I could see, Tuck stayed drunk or hung over pretty much the
whole time. He went out every night all night with friends from prep
school, friends from college. The whole time he was home his phone
would light up like the entire world was texting him, sending him
hilarious pics from the rager the night before and suggesting more
for the night to come.

At least that’s what
it seemed like. I kept to myself. I had a stack of books to get
through so I could get a jump on the rest of the semester. I’d been
selected to be a research assistant for a biology professor 20 hours
a week, an unusual honor for a sophomore. He said he’d also
recommend me for a coveted summer internship at the Marine Mammal
Center in L.A., and while I was excited about the doors this
professor could open in the future, I knew those 20 hours were going
to be hard to find this spring. I needed to plan ahead and get
cracking on the books. Lucky for me, I had absolutely no social life
at all and nothing but time for studying.

We barely even
interacted. He mostly acted like he didn’t even remember we’d
met.

Mid-way through the
week, our parents trapped us into a family dinner. The big wedding
celebration party was Saturday night. I guessed they figured we had
to have at least one dinner together under our belt before we
presented ourselves to the world as one.

Cook had prepared
something for us. I didn’t know what it was, a small flightless
bird. Maybe quail. I pushed around my food, no appetite. I wished I
did want to eat, the deafening silence around the table threatened to
swallow us up in awkwardness.

“How’s school
going, Jewel?” Leland finally asked.

“Fine, thank you.”
I was so grateful I was there on academic scholarship. I didn’t
have to take his money to succeed.

“You’re studying
all the time,” my mother criticized me, right on cue. “We’re in
New York! You should go out at least once!” She thought I was such
a killjoy.

“I have a lot of
things I need to take care of.” I looked down at my plate, not
saying the rest of what was on my mind, telling her how some of us
met our responsibilities. Some of us didn’t look to others to bail
us out, finding a sugar daddy to solve our problems.

I saw Tuck look at me,
then her, and I could see him assessing our relationship. I didn’t
want him doing it. For some reason I felt like he could see too much.

“Are you having a
nice break from school?” my mother turned her attentions on Tuck.
“I’ve seen you going out. How wonderful that you have such a wide
social network.” So subtle with her subtext: jab, jab, Jewel,
you’re a hermit.

He shrugged. “Same
old scene.”

“Not enough fight in
the nightlife here for you?” Leland asked wryly, springing into the
conversation again.

“Is that a clever
reference to fighting?” Tuck asked him. “Like a play on words?”

“I don’t want to
get too sophisticated in my manner of speech with you.”

“No, I have a rock
for a brain,” Tuck agreed.

“You said it, son.
Not me.”

Ooh, Leland was cold. I
didn’t like that. In an instant, I could tell he could be mean as a
snake.

Clearing his throat, he
continued, “I simply think you could be spending your time on
something worthwhile.”

Tuck pushed his food
around, same as me. Only I heard him mumble under his breath, “Some
people think a black belt is worthwhile.”

“What’s that?”
Leland asked, looking up sharply from his dinner. Tuck shook his head
and we all went back to silence.

He had a black belt?
When had that party boy cleaned up his act and focused long and hard
enough to do something like that? Earning a black belt took
persistence, grit, determination. I didn’t know he even had those
words in his vocabulary.

After another minute,
Tuck stood up and left. Leland excused himself for a moment. I
wondered if he was going after his son to smooth things out, but
somehow doubted it.

“He’s very angry at
Tuck,” my mom explained to me under her breath. “He started an
underground fight club at school.”

Why did that send a
surge of heat through me? I’d never been into fighting, never been
into sports at all. The closest I got to athletics was yoga, which I
loved and did almost every day, but that was a far cry from a fight
club. It might be the opposite.

“What kind of a fight
club?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Some
sort of cage fighting. Mixed martial arts.”

“Oh.” I suddenly
got an image: Tuck, shirtless, all that raw power and coiled tension
unleashed against an opponent. I felt a pull, deep in my core. Man,
this guy was dangerous.

“He almost got kicked
out for it,” my mother continued, practically tsking her
disapproval.

“But his daddy bailed
him out,” I concluded.

“Well, he had to. He
can’t have his son kicked out of school.” She shook her head.
“Imagine, underground fighting. It’s not fitting of the
Helmsworth name.”

“Did you seriously
just say that?” What, did she think she was in
Downton
Abbey
? Were we doing a period piece here? Because last I’d
checked she was the same Candice Kidd who’d had photos turn up a
few years ago on a gossip blog showing her snorting coke off of her
rocker boyfriend’s chest. Just saying.

“I am taking this
marriage seriously,” she hissed. “And you’d better, too.”

I smiled at her and
sipped my water, not saying what I was thinking. I’d choose Option
B: blink and miss the whole of it.

§

The next day I was
curled up on a sofa in the den in my comfiest sweatsuit, surrounded
by an armada of highlighters, stickie notes and pens plus my laptop,
laser-focused on the all-consuming quest to extract any and all
knowledge from my texts. Then Tuck waltzed into the room looking like
a porn star, all hard-bound muscle and only wearing fitted boxer
briefs. Of course I got distracted, it was a totally normal reaction
when some giant near-naked man sauntered through the room yawning and
stretching like a lion after a big meal. Only what he’d eaten last
night had probably been women, lots of them, leaving a trail of huge,
screaming orgasms all across the city.

These were the kinds of
thoughts that popped into my head when I saw him. It was exactly why
I needed to avoid him.

“Better stop staring
at me, sis.” He grinned, sleepy and sexy in all the wrong ways.
“Mom and Dad will think something’s up.”

“What!?” My book
and pen fell to the floor.

“Just sayin’.” He
winked at me like we were in on a private joke.

“Nothing is up!” I
scrambled after my belongings, pulling them up back with me to the
couch.

“It’s OK, sis.
It’ll stay our little secret.”

“There is no secret!”
I insisted, though I felt heat sneak and creep its way through my
body. It was impossible not to, the way he looked at me.

“No?” He took a
step closer until he stood before me, looking down at me on the
couch, making me feel tiny. And then he sat down next to me, close.
Too close. Heat practically radiated off of him.