Rock Hard: A Stepbrother Romance (Extreme Sports Alphas)

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H
e’s just down the hall. And I know exactly what he wants.

It’s the same thing he wants every night. I keep thinking about his skin, his tongue and his lips running down along my spine, his callused fingers slipping below my panties, teasing shivers through my body.

I hated him for a while. I wanted him even more than I understood.

Now, our parents can’t know. Nobody can. Not when there is so much at stake, much more than just our reputation.

It’s our lives.

And it’s not just that he’s my stepbrother. There is so much more than that between us, so many people threatening everything we know and love. But he’s always there, his strong hands holding everything above him.

When he comes, the door to my room rattling softly, I’m always wide awake. I can’t sleep when I know he’s so close by. He slips into my room like a shadow, closing and locking the door behind him.

“You’re always breathing so deep,” he whispers into my ear as he presses his warm, muscular body against mine. I suppress a moan as my fingers roll down his defined abs.

His lips press against my neck. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says.

I grip his muscular arm. I can hear the house creak around us. I keep imagining the deep forest, trees and scrub brush jutting up against the windows and straining to get in, trying to swallow us up. It’s half dream and half desire. I want nature to reclaim me, to be wild and free, to let him do whatever he wants with me. His body is soil and musk as he presses me down onto the mattress.

“Did you even want to get away from me? When you heard what I do, did you think that I’m a monster?” The stubble along his cheeks rubs against the nape of my neck. His fingers roam down toward the soaked spot between my legs.

I don’t want him to stop.

All it takes is a door. One open door and everything between us goes spilling out into the open. And we both know we can’t survive in the open.

We live out near the forest. The deep forest. The trees there are bigger than anything I can imagine and ancient like the feeling that drives me to bite his bottom lip. We could disappear into the forest so easily, swallowed up by time and space.

“Some part of you wants to get caught.” His voice is low and throaty, thick with desire.

I arch my back and gasp as his skilled fingers find their mark.

My mind blanks as waves of intense pleasure roll through me.

“Reid,” I say, over and over.

“Morning is a long way away,” he whispers.

I hope it never comes.

I
first saw Reid Conway in third grade. He was the new kid in town, just moved to Ridgewood with his single mom from the big city. I’d lived in town my whole life, and any change in a tiny place like Ridgewood was bound to make a splash.

He was quiet back then. He’d always been serious, but back then he wasn’t popular yet, hadn’t grown to well over six feet tall and hadn’t gotten all that lean muscle all over his fit body. He was just a little kid when we first met.

We didn’t talk until years later, not seriously, at least. I felt bad for him in those first few months and went out of my way to say hello, but that was really it. Still, I noticed him, and wouldn’t stop noticing him as we grew up. I wasn’t the only one, of course. When it became clear how extraordinary Reid was, people flocked to him. He grew out of his shyness as soon as he hit his growth spurt and girls started throwing themselves at him like crazy.

I wasn’t obsessed with Reid or anything. In fact, he was actually already a cocky asshole, even back then. But it was hard not to notice him winning local climbing competitions at only sixteen and breaking local records at seventeen. It was hard not to stare at the guy that everybody wanted to be around.

My life was easy back then, before Reid changed everything. I wasn’t exactly the most popular girl in the world, but I had my close friends and I had my schoolwork. I was going to college and everybody said so, even though I’d be the first person in my family to do it. That expectation kept me busy. Where a lot of girls my age were spending their weekends out by the gorge watching the boys ride their dirt bikes or shopping at the mall, I was in the library for hours, memorizing and studying my ass off.

I was a total geek. There, I admitted it. It wasn’t exactly a secret or anything, but I’m not really proud of my total lack of fashion sense back then and those thick-framed glasses (nerdy before nerdy was cool). But that was me, plain old Rebecca, smart and uptight.

All of that changed eventually, though. My mom died when I was a baby, so I never really got to know her, and it never looked like my dad wanted to remarry. Until one day out of nowhere he announced that he was engaged, and my world shifted dramatically. One conversation and the whole axis of my existence tilted wildly.

It was hard not to notice Reid “Climber” Conway. He was handsome in a boyish way. His grin was heartbreaking and sexy, and he exuded a confidence I didn’t even know people could have. There was something deeper to him, though, something he didn’t show people very often. It was like he expected the world to be exactly the way he wanted it to be, and usually the world made it happen for him. He showed me glimpses of that depth over the years but never really let me all the way in. As far as anyone was concerned, Reid Conway was going places.

He was also my stepbrother.

––––––––

I
’d been away from Ridgewood for way too long.

As I lugged my suitcase down the escalator and out into the rainy afternoon, I breathed deeply the pine-scented air and smiled. Although I had spent most of my time lately in New York attending Dartmouth College, Ridgewood, right along the border of Canada and Washington State in the US, had always been my home.

There was something about it. Small towns had a charm, really managing to suck you in and never let you leave, no matter how far away you got. Even though it practically rained every other day, it was still one of the most beautiful places I knew. We had mountains off to the north and the east and huge swaths of forest all over the place. The main employers were the lumber and paper mills, although even they had begun to downsize over the years.

Still, as I stood there on the curb of the tiny regional airport, it felt like nothing had changed. Getting from New York out to Washington was an arduous and long process, especially considering I had two layovers, one in Chicago and one in Seattle. I hadn’t been able to make the trip too often over the last four years because it was too expensive, and our family was a little hard-up ever since my stepmom had been diagnosed with cancer.

That was the hardest thing, being away from my family while someone was sick. Every time I begged my dad to let me move back home, he kept assuring me that everything was fine, that I should concentrate on school. He was always trying to protect me. Fortunately, a year almost to the date, Cora had gone into remission. It had been a long and difficult fight, but she had won.

And I was home to finally spend some serious time with them. School was over with, I had graduated with honors, and I had a spot in a fully-funded graduate computer science program in Texas for the upcoming fall semester. My time back home was limited, but I was excited anyway.

I craned my neck, looking down the street, watching for my dad’s old beat-up Jeep. I hadn’t been home in almost a year and was anxious to get back.

I checked my watch and frowned. He was fifteen minutes late, which wasn’t like him. I pulled out my phone and checked my messages, but there was nothing.

Frustrated, I sat down on a bench and waited.

As much as I loved being home, there was one major roadblock to really enjoying myself every time I visited. He was arrogant and attractive and loved nothing more than to tease me until I turned red. It was completely inappropriate, and yet I couldn’t help but love it. We had a history, me and him, despite our status as stepsiblings.

Almost as if sensing where my mind was going, I suddenly caught sight of my dad’s car. I stood up, eager to see him.

As it pulled up in front of me, my face fell.

“Hey, Becca. Looking good as always,” Reid said, grinning.

Reid laughed as I frowned. “Where’s Dad?”

“What, not happy to see me?”

The answer to that question was way too complex to even start thinking about. I stared into his pale grey eyes, twinkling with mirth at my surprise and discomfort. His face was chiseled and handsome, and his dirty blond hair was cropped short and as stylish as usual.

My stepbrother. The boy I couldn’t help but notice.

“No, I just . . . expected him.”

He laughed. “Relax, I know. He had to work a double at the mill so he sent me to get you.”

I nodded. That made sense. Even though Cora’s cancer was gone, there were still bills to be paid. My poor father was working himself to the bone.

Although he didn’t entirely need to. From what I understood, a lot of that money was coming from Reid. If I had to say one good thing about him, it was that he was very loyal to family. He would do anything to help his mother, and apparently every dime he won from climbing competitions and working as a guide went straight to her medical bills.

And if my father was telling the truth, that was significant money.

He got out of the car and walked toward me. “Let me get that,” he said, nodding at the bag.

I shrugged. “Chivalry isn’t dead.”

“It is. I just don’t want to listen to you complaining about getting your hair wet.” He smirked at me.

I frowned. “I haven’t been away that long. It’s not like I forgot about the rain.”

“Sorry, college girl. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

I rolled my eyes and climbed into the Jeep with a huff. He laughed as he loaded my suitcase into the back and then climbed back into the driver’s seat.

He glided back out into traffic, zooming toward the house I grew up in. I watched the lush, green forest press in all around as the Jeep moved north. There wasn’t a whole lot around, maybe one movie theater within thirty miles, one grocery store, and one tiny strip mall with a few clothing stores and barber shops packed in. There were some diners and restaurants, but otherwise it was mostly just forest, mountain, and rivers.

“How was school?” Reid asked.

“Fine. You know I graduated, right?”

He glanced at me. “Yeah, Becca, I figured that one out.”

I laughed nervously. “Right, of course. I start grad school in the fall.”

“Texas, right?”

“Yeah, in Austin.”

“I hear that’s a cool town.”

“I’m pretty excited about it.”

He was silent then, and I couldn’t help but reflect on the last time we saw each other.

The rain was coming down like crazy as I picked my way along the path. I could barely make him out up ahead, moving fast between the trees.