Stepbrother With Benefits (2 page)

“Oh come on!” she replied with a derisive snort, retracting through the window so Jack could open the door. “You’re totally brilliant in like every way, and I just know you’re gonna do fantastic like usual!”

If only Jack felt nearly as confident in himself!

Smiling warmly at Ellie, it was only then that he noticed that his sister wasn’t at all dressed for the freezing cold weather – wearing nothing more than a thin T-shirt, a tight pair of sweatpants, and bright summer sneakers.

“Good god, Ellie,” he scolded, “where’s your jacket? Get back inside before you catch your death of cold!” As these words came from his mouth, Jack realized this was the exact sort of thing their mother would’ve said.

Ellie shivered and hugged her arms across her chest. “Yeah, well, if I hadn’t looked out the window and seen your car sitting down here for like forever, then I wouldn’t have bothered to come!”

“Okay, well... I’ll be up in just a minute, all right? I still have some stuff to sort out for tomorrow, and I don’t want you to freeze.”

“Okay, bro – but just a minute, okay? Everyone’s excited and waiting for you! Remember, it’s apartment 312. And you don’t need to buzz, since the damn lock’s broken again.”

Ellie turned and dashed across the frigid parking lot, slipping and sliding in the snow but never once falling, until reaching the safety of the lobby entrance.

Jack shook his head in amazement as he watched his sister disappear though the double doors. Ellie had always been such an independent and precocious young girl: the kind that instinctively knew the difference between right and wrong, but still insisted on testing everything for herself. In her early teens, Ellie had been a real handful to their folks as she explored the outer limits of her boundaries... and it didn’t look as though college life had tempered that free spirit in the least.

Finally shutting off the engine and opening the door, Jack stepped outside and retrieved his luggage, laptop bag, and a selection of long plastic poster tubes from the passenger row. Locking the SUV, he trudged through the parking lot’s accumulated covering of snow, his winter boots making loud crunching sounds as he went.

Jack had always figured his college days were well and truly behind him... so spending four nights with a group of wild teens was either going to bring back a flood of great memories, or drive him stark raving mad!

A
Approaching the
door for apartment 312, Jack hesitated before knocking. He took in the poor condition of the apartment building’s interior: the worn, stained carpeting, the flickering florescent lighting, the battered metal doors that looked like they had twenty coats of paint too many. Loud rock music blared from inside the apartment behind him, and he could hear more than one baby crying from further down the hall.

This certainly wasn’t the Ritz Carlton. Hell, it didn’t even warrant Motel 6!

Dropping his heavy luggage, Jack reached up to knock on the door, when it suddenly flung inwards on its own.

“Jack!” screeched Ellie, grabbing his elevated arm and promptly yanking him inside the apartment. She hugged him close.

Jack’s heart leapt at his sister’s second but equally as warm welcome. “Whoa there, sis! Hold your horses,” he protested halfheartedly. “I’m real happy to see you too, but at least let me bring my things inside!” Jack tried to turn around to grab his bags from the hall, but Ellie refused to let him go.

A female voice came from the side. “For god’s sake, El! Let your brother take his coat off. It’s sweltering in here!”

Finally unlatching from Jack, Ellie stepped back and giggled, still holding her brother’s hand tight. “Oh Jack... I’m just so thrilled you could finally come and see me!”

“And don’t forget about me!” commented the other voice, which belonged to Elizabeth – Ellie’s longtime best friend, and the one who’d convinced his sister to move into this place. Jack didn’t know whether to thank the girl... or throttle her!

Beth – as Elizabeth preferred to be called – was a petite and rather cute nineteen-year-old, probably no more than ninety pounds soaking wet, with the top of her head barely reaching Jack’s shoulders. Her long hair was a naturally shocking shade of red and reached midway down her back, beautifully complementing her porcelain white complexion and the adorable scattering of orange freckles across her cheeks. She was dressed in a baggy and quite faded red college sweatshirt that hung loosely to her upper thighs – and to think, that was probably still a size small – along with skin-tight blue leggings.

“Good evening, Mr. Wilson,” she stated firmly, in an artificially deep voice and with a stern expression. She clasped her hands behind her back and rocked softly on the balls of her feet.

Jack smiled at Beth’s mock formality. He’d known her for nearly as long as his own stepsister, and was well aware that she’d been an especially good friend to Ellie while he’d been... otherwise preoccupied.

“Hi Beth. It’s nice to see you. And for god’s sake, call me Jack or I’ll be forced to call you Ms. Bouchard.”

Beth snorted and held her arms out for a hug. Jack responding by leaning down and opening his arms – but when their faces were perfectly lined up, the girl jerked forwards and gave him a kiss right on the lips!

Jack recoiled, purely out of surprise. “Well then... I see you’ve missed me about as much as Ellie has!”

“Oh, it’s been
way
too long,” she replied with a little giggle. “And you were always my
very favorite
older guy!” Beth rocked back and forth on her feet, flashing him a playful and quirky smile.

“Careful with that ‘older’ shit, Beth. You’re gonna be twenty in under a year, you know.”

Someone behind Jack cleared their throat. “Hey,” came a deep male voice.

It was Mark, a nineteen-year-old with short medium-brown hair. He was dressed in torn blue jeans and a light brown button-up shirt. Jack had first met Mark on move-in day last August, but hadn’t spent nearly enough time with the guy yet to form an opinion. Although Mark was tall – nearly as tall as Jack himself – he still had the gangly musculature of a developing teenager who hadn’t quite grown into his bones.

While Jack was busy greeting the girls, Mark had thoughtfully moved his luggage into the entryway and closed the apartment door. He now held out his right hand in welcome.

Jack grabbed it and pumped up and down, and then with his other hand gripped the teen on his shoulder. “Nice to see you again, Mark. You remember our little talk last summer?”

“Um, uh huh...”

“Then I trust you’ve been a guardian of my little sister’s virtue?”

“Jack!”
shrieked Ellie in embarrassment.

“Ah yes, that... of course,” replied Mark in a somber tone. “Ellie is a beautiful and smart young woman, and I would never let anything happen to her that she didn’t want.”

Tilting his head to the side, Jack analyzed that carefully worded response. It wasn’t quite the blanket statement of total carnal ignorance that he was looking for, but it was probably as good as he could hope to get.

“Okay then,” he finally said, giving Mark’s shoulder a quick squeeze before releasing the teen. Jack’s eyes swept the cramped apartment. Someone was still missing. “So, um, where’s your other roommate, the one I haven’t met, Reb– uh, no... Randy...”

“Rachel,” corrected Ellie with a laugh, as if he’d made some sort of joke. “She’s just on the phone with her sis... which could take hours, so no point waiting.”

“No, wait, here I am!” yelled a voice from down the hall.

Jack turned just as Rachel skidded through one of the bedroom doorways. He’d never met the girl before, but Ellie had mentioned her enough times during their chats to know that she was eighteen, pretty, and a star volleyball player.

That vague description didn’t do the actual girl justice!

Rachel was medium in height and build, similar to Ellie, although certainly fitter and more muscular, with shoulder-length curly brown hair held back in a ponytail. She was wearing low-rise cutoff jean shorts and a tight white cotton T-shirt, the combination simultaneously showing off a bare strip of creamy white midriff, and the entirety of her gorgeously toned legs.

This certainly wasn’t the expected attire for someone living in downtown Chicago in the middle of February, but even more unexpected were Rachel’s breasts – which Ellie had failed to mention altogether. They were impressive: a full D-cup if any letter at all, and somehow keeping in perfect balance with the rest of her curvy, hourglass figure. It was also plainly obvious that Rachel wasn’t wearing a bra, to which the hypnotically bouncing globes beneath her T-shirt could attest.

Jack swallowed hard. Rachel was the exact kind of girl who made the sport of women’s volleyball so appealing to men – and he idly wondered if she had any games scheduled for this week.

Running right up to Jack, Rachel grabbed him in a tight bear hug, the twin mountains of her voluptuous breasts pressing forcefully into his chest. Cautiously, he reciprocated the unusually warm affections by wrapping an arm around her back, inadvertently confirming that there was, in fact, no bra strap or other support beneath her thin shirt.

Rachel lifted her chin and kissed Jack tenderly on the cheek. “Ellie’s told us all so much about you. I feel like I’ve known you for years!”

“I hope she remembered to leave out all my faults,” commented Jack with a twinkle in his eye. Taking in Rachel from up close, he noted that the girl seemed to have an affinity for piercings – with one in her eyebrow, one in the side of her nose, and fleeting glimpses of one in her tongue. He idly wondered if she had any others... or perhaps a few secret tattoos.

“You? Faults? What faults?” countered Ellie with a crooked grin. “Mom keeps telling me how you’re this huge success, Mr. Perfect and everything... the only guy under thirty to ever get a seven-figure bonus in a single year. Imagine that!”

Jack grunted unhappily and looked away from the group. Suddenly being flush with cash was still a new experience for him, and he didn’t like boasting about it in front of total strangers. Or even thinking about it, for that matter, since it only reminded him of how critical Johanna had been in helping him reach that level of success. “Yeah, well, that’ll be the last bonus I ever see if I screw up this week.”

“Oh, you’ll be fine,” offered Ellie with a dismissive wave of her hand. “And don’t forget, I loved ya even before you were a millionaire! Money doesn’t mean anything to friends or family.”

Rachel giggled. “Mmm, and considering how super cute you are, as your new friend I swear I’d be willing to accept ya even if you took a vow of poverty!”

Jack grinned sheepishly and felt his cheeks blush red.

“Okay you two,” chided Ellie, grabbing their arms. “That’s enough mushy shit. Let’s show my brother what we’ve done with the place since he was last here!”

The five went on a brief tour of claustrophobic and rather unimpressive rental apartment. The floor plan was simple but functional, with a small kitchen and dinette, a narrow rectangular living room, and a long skinny hallway that led into three bedrooms and a cramped bathroom. Every wall in the place had been painted in the same putrid shade of beige that reminded Jack of old, nicotine-stained computer equipment.

Back when Nixon was still president, the apartment would’ve listed as a 2-bedroom unit. But, at some point, a landlord capitalized on the area’s booming market for college rentals – and the general disregard of college students for luxuries such as
comfort
or
living space
– by running a wall straight through the middle of the master bedroom, thereby dividing it into two far smaller rooms. The unit couldn’t hold any more tenants than it had before the change, but the additional degree of privacy allowed him to charge more in rent.

As Jack was shown each of the three sparsely furnished bedrooms, he noted with brotherly relief that Ellie and Beth were still sharing what was originally the second bedroom at the end of the hall, while Mark and Rachel each slept alone in a half-master. With an undoubtedly randy teenage boy living in such close proximity to his sister, Jack somehow felt safer knowing that her best friend was sleeping in the same room.

Unless they were... no, better not go there!

As the group returned to where they started, Jack grimly contemplated his future sleeping accommodations.

Compared to the desolate bedrooms, the living room positively overflowed with hand-me-down furniture. Two three-seat cloth couches of different styles sat across from each other, without enough room between for even a skinny coffee table. A large flatscreen television sat on a rickety metal stand in the back right corner, while a wooden desk with a desktop computer occupied most of the outside wall, all but blocking the one and only window.

Jack’s focus returned to the two stained and tattered couches, one of them old and threadbare, the other newer but seemingly harder, with sharp corners and less padding.

Staring blankly at the dismal selection, Jack began to wish that he’d kept on driving to a proper hotel!