Stepbrother Thief (19 page)

Sex.

That's what it is that's getting between us, twisting things, making it hard to figure out which end is up.

“I'll try,” he offers with a slight shrug and a gritting of his teeth when the movement pulls at his injury. “I know I'm more close-lipped than I should be.” He forces a more pleasant expression to his face and raises his brows. “Job hazard?” he offers.

“Apparently,” I say as he holds out a hand and I almost, almost,
almost
decide to take it.

“I know you're probably dying to get out of the house.”

“Are you offering to take me?” I ask as he smiles sadly and drops his hand to his side. We both move towards the door and I watch as he pauses and gestures for me to go first.

“Maybe we could all go out to dinner somewhere tonight? I'll call in some favors and get someone else to watch the house while we're gone. Although we might have to take Aveline.” He grimaces and then pauses as Solène comes skidding around the corner and slams right into him.

“
Excusez-moi,
” she breathes as Gill reaches down and steadies her with a hand on either shoulder. “So sorry, Gilleon, please excuse me.”

The moment is so innocent, so normal, so unremarkable that I almost don't see it happening.

Gill looks down at Solène and smiles—at first. She gazes right back up at him, completely and utterly unaware that anything significant is happening. Her blue eyes, so like his, sparkle, and her mouth quirks at the corners as she contemplates whatever it is that she's up to today. Dark hair escapes her ponytail and falls across her brow, across the paleness of her skin that's a seemingly perfect mixture of mine and Gill's.

When his eyes widen and his mouth falls at the corners, I know.

He's looking.

“Gilleon,” I say, but it's too late.

“When's your birthday, honey?” he asks, trying to keep his voice calm. The muscles in Gill's arms tighten, the tattoos on his skin stark against the taut flesh. Still, he keeps his grip on our daughter gentle.
The truth was only a simple question away.

“
C'est le dix-septième avril,
” Solène says proudly. “April seventeenth. I'll be ten in only half a year.” With one last grin, she excuses herself and takes off towards her bedroom, leaving me a sweaty, shaking mess in the hallway.

“Gilleon,” I begin again, but he's just standing there, staring at the floor, a tornado of emotion swirling across his face. I'm not going to apologize, no, or make excuses, but I do feel like I need a chance to explain.

“April …” he says, his voice a strangled blur as he takes a step back and leans heavily against the railing. I'm almost afraid he's going to topple backwards and fall right down the stairs. When he does lift his eyes to look at me, there's a panic there, the wild fear of a realization come too late.

I'm standing there shaking and having a small panic attack myself, but I don't let it show on my face.

“Solène …” he says her name like a whisper on the wind, his eyes flickering as he mentally pushes the puzzle pieces into place. We don't break eye contact when he says it. “She's my daughter.”

I nod my chin, almost imperceptibly, but that's okay—I'm sure Gill is
really
looking now.

“When you left me, I was pregnant. Actually, funny story, the exact
day
that you left, I was going to tell you. I'd come home from shopping with a whole bag full of fun baby stuff. Was going to leave it on the bed for you to find. Only … I found a note there instead.” I try to keep the bitterness out of my voice, but some creeps in anyway. “And then at the hotel …” I trail off because he knows. Gill knows exactly what I'm talking about.

A door opens behind me, but I don't turn to look.

“Oh? Something happening out here?” Cliff asks cheerfully. He must know that that something is bad, based on his son's body language, but he comes up to stand next to me, planting a loving kiss on my cheek anyway. “You're white as a ghost.”

“You knew about all of this?” Gill asks his father, his voice dropping, the heat of anger creeping into his words. Cliff turns his attention back to Gilleon and raises a graying eyebrow. “My … you've been raising my daughter all this time and you didn't think to fucking tell me?”

“Whoa there, son,” Cliff says, raising his hands palms out. “You need to keep your voice down. Solène doesn't need to hear a bunch of foolish adults hash out their problems, especially when those problems have nothing to do with her.”

“Nothing to … are you fucking losing it, old man?” Gill snarls, his face a wild and unpredictable storm. Holy shit. His gaze flicks back to me, making me take a step back. The strength of feeling in him right now is a dreadfully beautiful sight to behold. I don't know whether I should be glad that he cares so much, or terrified about what he's going to do with this knowledge.

“Our choices weren't her choices,” I tell him, crossing my arms over my chest. “Can we go somewhere else and talk?”

Gill runs his hand over his face.

“I can't even fucking goddamn believe this shit,” he snarls, shaking his head like that'll clear some of the sharp, violent anger from his expression. Without answering me, he turns and starts down the stairs at a jog, taking two at a time in his rage.

“Don't let him intimidate you,” Cliff tells me, reaching down and taking my hand. “He has no right to judge, especially not given the decisions he's made in his life.”

I nod and take a deep breath, steeling myself for a conversation I've been waiting over a decade to have.

“I won't.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” he asks and I shake my head.

“He'll just yell at you if you do. He wants to take his anger out on someone, but for whatever reason, he seems unwilling to send any my way. I'll talk to him.” I give Cliff's hand a squeeze and head down the stairs, past a baffled Aveline and out the back door into the chilly afternoon air. The sun was out earlier, but it seems to have retreated behind some clouds.

Gilleon's on the deck, bent over at the waist, his hands on his knees as he struggles to find his breath.

I watch him cycle through the emotions and thank God that he's not being apathetic about this. If he'd shrugged, acted like it was no big deal, like he didn't give two shits about it, that would hurt. Hell, that might leave a wound that would never stop bleeding.

“Gill, I know I maybe should've had Cliff tell you one of the times you called him or hell, even when we first started talking about doing this job. But I … At first, I couldn't forgive you for leaving and then later, it just never seemed like the right time. I was such a mess that I couldn't give Solène the life she deserved. Cliff … he really stepped in and made things good for her.” I wait for a response from him, but he's still bent over, his dark hair fluttering in the breeze, orange and yellow and red leaves spinning around the deck at his feet. “It seemed so obvious to me. I felt like … all you had to do was look, Gill, just like you look at everything else in your life. I wanted you to figure it out, and you did.”

More silence.

I shift on my feet, the cold gusts of wind slicing through the thin material of my dress. I'm about to turn around, head back inside, when I hear him speak.

The words are not at all what I expected.

“I'm sorry, Regina,” Gill says, standing up, looking me straight in the face. “I am so fucking sorry.”

He moves across the deck towards me, booted feet loud against the wood, as I stumble back and bump into the wall.

Gill's face is a broken, shattered maze of glass, jagged pieces of his soul lying everywhere. The skin on his forehead is tense, his eyes wide, like he's fighting against the urge to drop to his knees and weep. I wouldn't believe it if I'd never seen it before, seen it that night on the hotel balcony. Gill is a man, and he's strong, and he's a motherfucking badass, but he knows when it's okay to cry.

He doesn't now, but he does reach out and rub his thumb along the line of my jaw.

“If you'd have known,” I start, but my throat catches on the words and they get stuck behind my tongue. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, wetting my lips and trying again. “Would you have come back?”

“No,” he whispers, but the answer doesn't make me feel worse—it makes me feel better. I didn't
want
Gill to come back out of a sense of obligation, didn't even want him to come back for our daughter. The only reason I ever wanted Gilleon to come back was for me. I know it sounds selfish, but I think it's okay to think like that. Yes, I love my daughter, but one day, she's going to grow up and fall in love with somebody, start her own family. A partner's supposed to stand there at your side and watch it all unfold, love you more than anything and anyone, give your kid a platform to stand on and a safety net to fall into. “But I would've … made an effort to see her.” His voice is soft, stuffed with secrets. I think he's getting ready to tell me them.

I'm almost scared to hear. What will they change? What will they do to me, as a person? To us. To
us.
If you could really even say there is an
us.

“If I were a better man, I'd walk away right now, find my head, calm down. Then I'd come back and we'd have a rational, adult conversation.” Gill licks his lips. “But I'm not a good man, Regi. I'm a terrible man who's done terrible things. I'm also a man that's still in love with you.”

When Gill leans down and captures my lips with his, I could pull away. I could easily push him back, tell him not to touch me ever again, and be done with this whole thing. But I can't. I can't do anything but kiss him back, let his strong, warm arms encircle me and pull me against him.

I curl the fingers of my left hand in his dark hair while my right slides up the firm muscles of his chest, bumping into the shoulder holster and the gun that's tucked away inside it. It should turn me off, remind me of the issues at hand, the reality of the situation, but it doesn't. Instead, it turns me
on.

There's no waffling on the issue, no panicked thoughts about what might happen after this is over. I don't know about Gilleon, but right now, I'm not in my right mind—my body's in complete control.

When he reaches down and starts unbuckling his belt, I don't stop him, nipping at his bottom lip and tightening my grip on his hair. This isn't about foreplay or fun or even pleasure, this is all about connection.

“Regina,” Gill growls against my mouth, the sound curling my spine as I slide my hips forward and grind against him, against the hard bulge in his jeans. He groans in response, shoving up the lacy fabric of my dress until it's bunched up around my hips, leaving the black satin panties underneath exposed to the chilly autumn air. Even that's not enough to wake me up inside, remind me that this is a
really
bad idea, that Gill has too much focus, too much passion, to be dissuaded once he's got something in mind. If that something is getting me back then … I shouldn't even put myself in the position to deal with that.

But I can't stop.

Gill finishes undoing his pants and lifts me up, slamming my back into the side of the house. With the strength in those arms, that back, his chest, he has absolutely zero problem holding me there while I wrap my legs around him and we tangle tongues, his hard cock pressed tight against the front of my suddenly wet panties.

I run my fingers over his tattoos, over the swirls of black that stand out sharply in the gray gold air of morning. He tenses wherever I touch him, goose bumps rising on his skin, his nipples hard against the tightness of his T-shirt, physical proof of the effect I'm having on him, the same effect that he seems to be having on me.

I reach between us, push my panties aside and guide him to my opening. As soon as I do, Gill's thrusting forward, slamming me into the wall with a growl and a groan that I can't help but echo, biting down on his lower lip to keep my voice down. In the very back of my mind, I'm aware that my daughter, my dad—
our
dad, as creepy as that sounds—and Aveline are inside the house. Not to mention that pesky neighbor across the fence.

Fuck her,
I think as Gill's body fills mine, both familiar and foreign all at once. I lock my ankles together behind his back, thanking the heavens above that I was blessed with long legs, and let my head fall back. Gilleon's lips find my throat, kissing and biting as he thrusts deep, his balls pressing tight against me as we grind together in a moment of senseless passion.

It shouldn't be happening, but it is.

I am so going to regret this later.
My brain gets that one last jab in before I'm a mess of hormones, a sighing, sweating, tangled mess of heartstrings and sighs, of throaty moans and hitched breathing.

Gill … he's like an animal, his eyes dark and his body hard beneath my hands, hot and sweaty and wet where we slide together, our bodies joining in a wild frenzy that I haven't felt in years. I've had other lovers since Gilleon, yes, but they were nothing like this, droplets to his storm, a pond to his ocean. I feel like I've spent a decade being eternally thirsty and now I'm drowning, drowning in him and his smell and the way his mouth always tastes bright and fresh like citrus.

My body begins to pulse, my muscles holding tight to Gill, to the long, firm length of him, while his hands cup my ass in a bruising grip that's still only a fraction of his real strength. He holds me up as easily as if I weigh nothing and yet he's still holding back, keeping himself in check.

I can feel the pleasure curling in the base of my spine, crouching there with the same feline grace that I see in Gilleon's every move. It creeps up on me quick, drawing another gasp from my throat as Gill snarls and lifts one hand up, slamming his palm into the wall while he comes, his entire body stiffening even further as I do the exact opposite and relax, letting the pleasure hit me in waves.

The sensation's so intense that I feel dizzy, my vision blurring as I come down from the burst of adrenaline and hormones that are surging through my body, making it difficult to stand when Gill pulls out and sets me gently on the wet surface of the deck.