Beautiful Brute (Court University 3)

Chapter Twenty-One

Cleo

“So let me get this straight.” Kit’s eyebrows jumped. “You slept with your stepbrother… again?”

Kit’s words were definitely an understatement. I hadn’t just slept with my stepbrother. We’d had over twelve hours of all-consuming, mind-alternating sex, which hadn’t lasted the entire night. Obviously, we had to sleep, but what we did again and again and again this morning made up for those hours.

I’d feel ashamed if I didn’t want to do it so badly again. Jaxen Brett Ambrose was addictive. I’d never made love before him, and needless to say, he was an excellent instructor. He knew how to do things with my body that were just maddening and beyond toe-curling.

I palmed my face, actually in my friend’s face with all this. I’d come by to get coffee at the Bean Brewery mostly to see her and tell her everything that had gone down last night and this morning. I obviously hadn’t gotten to last night. Besides being, erm, um, busy, Kit hadn’t come home since she had two jobs. After her shift at the Brewery, she’d gone to her late night job bartending job. She was back at the Brewery until mid-morning today, which wasn’t uncommon for her since she paid her own way through school. There were many weekends I didn’t see her at all since she tended to do such close shifts on the bar’s busy nights like yesterday. She definitely would be sleeping this afternoon when she got home so I needed to tell her all this stuff now.

Chewing my lip, I nodded, tapping my coffee cup. “I know. Like WTF, right? I don’t know what my problem is.”

I did. My stepbrother was hot as hell, and I had a weakness for him. I still didn’t know why.

“I need to hate you.”

But he didn’t, and I told Kit that too. She’d been floored, but I didn’t think because the statement held truth or not. It was because Jaxen had actually admitted that fact to me. That he wanted to hate me, but didn’t necessarily feel that way. It left a lot of open questions about him, and he hadn’t wanted to talk about them last night.

He was too busy making my toes curl.

Kit was on her break now and had been on break for the past forty-five minutes. She said she’d combine her first break and the time they gave them for breakfast, so she wasn’t too worried. Currently, she was very much not eating her scone and looking at me. She ripped down blond curls. “I don’t know whether to say you’re crazy or just…”

“Crazy is good, yeah,” I said, chuckling. I groaned. “I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know why he did it.”

We were both all kinds of messy and completely screwed up.

I lifted my eyes. “And he’s my stepbrother.”

“Newsflash, chick. Your stepbrother is hot and charming when he wants to be. And oh, yeah. Hot.” She started to laugh, then paused. “But it’s totally not like that now. I mean, I know what happened between him and me, but ugh, no. Not now. Not after you guys and all…”

I knew what she meant so I waved it off, most certainly saving her from her own misery. Her face had shot up like a million degrees in color.

She chuckled. “You got it bad for him, and clearly, he’s got a thing for you as much as it grates him. I mean, he actually said he wanted to hate you?”

I nodded, and Kit tilted her head.

“Dude’s obviously plagued with something. Doesn’t want to be into you even though he is. But it’s like, what are you supposed to do with that?”

I had no answers, silent. “The guy’s a vault. Like literally. I asked, but no dice.”

“Could be about your dad and all that. Like you said.”

I had said, but still, we didn’t know. Jaxen Ambrose was confusing as hell, confusing me.

She pressed her coffee to her lips. “You two need to hash this out.”

I agreed, but my attention shifted at the buzz of a text message.

Jax: This or that?

Jax’s text followed with two pictures of him sporting different blazers. The first was hunter green, dark and complemented his lightly colored eyes. The other was black and sat so smoothly on his hard body it popped every bump and swell of his muscular arms. Each option, though, hugged his stocky frame like sin as both jackets narrowed in tight at his thick waist. I started to text him back, but then my phone buzzed with a call.

It was him.

“Oh my god. He’s calling me.” I mean, did guys even call still anymore? Completely floored, I waved my hands. “What should I do?”

“Well, I know what I’m going to do,” Kit said, picking up her half eaten scone and coffee. “I’m going to get my ass back to work before I’m fired, and you’re going to figure this crap out with your hot-as-fuck, but crazier-than-shit stepbrother. Let me know how it goes.”