“You love to flirt with poverty, don’t you?” I shot back, my muscles tense and vibrating beneath my skin. She was like a live wire sending currents through every part of my body, but I didn’t know of what. Was it anger? Disdain? Or was it something I couldn’t quite explain, something that seemed closer to lust than to fury?
“You had your own apartment, Maddy. Maybe you had to take a bus to work, but you had a job and a roof over your head. You act like your struggle makes you better than people like me, but you haven’t had to deal with half the shit that really poor people do. You get the self-righteousness with none of the suffering, and that gets you off, make you feel special so you can look down on an entire class of people. Grow up.”
She pursed her lips, and her eyes flared. “Is that what happened to you, Preston? You grew up to become your father—a man who would rather stuff more money in his pockets than think twice about the rest of the world trying to just get by out there? You are literally talking about destroying the only place the homeless in this city have to go! It’s evil, and if you don’t see it, then maybe you should ask yourself how long you’ve been staring into the abyss of wealth and business and politics, and whether or not it’s begun staring back into you.”
I closed the distance between us. “Maddy, if you don’t stop…” I lost the will to finish that sentence. I didn’t know what to say. I just kept staring at the woman who would become my sister and thinking how goddamn beautiful she was.
“Then what?” she asked me again. She didn’t move. Not an inch. I could feel blood rush through me, but it wasn’t going to my head. It was going far, far away from it, to places that would be bad for the both of us. “Tell me, Preston. What the hell are you going to do if I don’t stop calling you on your bullshit?”
She was searching me again. I could feel it. The way her eyes bored into mine prickled my skin. It seared my soul. She wanted the truth from me, a different kind of truth from the one I was used to telling. She wanted the kind of truth a man wasn’t likely to give, the kind that made him have to crack his ribs and bare his own heart for scrutiny. Was this how it was supposed to feel? Was this how being with a woman was supposed to be? Was it supposed to hurt like this, in a way that made every ounce of that pain worth it?
No wonder it had never worked with anyone else. If this was how it was supposed to be, and it sure as hell felt like it was, then Madison Hearst was the first woman in my entire life with whom things felt tragically, undeniably right.
I didn’t have an answer for Maddy. Not the way she wanted. Not with words and thoughts. Not with anything but a primal force that took me by surprise as much as it took her.
I grabbed my soon-to-be stepsister, one hand tangled in the sleek waves of her gorgeous brown hair, and I kissed her. God help me, I kissed her with passion and fury. And I loved it...
Oh, fuck.
Those were the only words that came to mind when Preston kissed me, the only words I could possibly form and hold onto long enough to give them meaning and weight. But what did they mean? Was I disgusted with him, my stepbrother for all intents and purposes, for the sweltering sweetness of his mouth on mine? Was I angry that he’d dared to touch me like this, or angry that he hadn’t done it sooner?
I clenched my hands into fists at my sides. I didn’t know what I wanted them to do. Or at least, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to admit it.
Preston’s lips were scorching hot on my own. His breath was like smoke filling my lungs, only it didn’t burn. It warmed me, but in places far below my chest, places that had begun to ache for more of Preston’s illicit touch.
I wanted to fight it. I wanted to fight him and this dark, forbidden desire lurking inside of me, the one that had been there since that first day I’d run into him on the sidewalk. I wanted to forget the cerulean flash of his eyes, his lopsided grin, the golden haze of his tawny hair. I wanted to, but I couldn’t.
Instead, I kissed him back.
I slipped my arms up around his neck, holding onto him tightly as he lifted me against his broad, brawny frame, clutching at my back as if he’d always wanted to do this. My ass was in his hands, and I felt him squeeze and dig in his fingertips all along my thighs, then back up again, roaming my body with his fierce touch. A soft wind blew in through the open balcony doors, carrying away the husky moan from my throat as Preston’s lips crashed against mine again and again, promising retribution for every hateful word I’d said.
I’d been disappointed in him. I’d thought he was different from his father, from the money that had corrupted the rest of our family. Had I been wrong?
I didn’t have time to think about it now—not when my stepbrother was dropping me onto the bed on my back and pulling my casual Friday jeans down my legs.
I whimpered, struggling up onto my hands to watch him as he yanked my ass to the very edge of the bed, then over it. With my legs suspended on his shoulders, he grasped my panties and pulled, ripping them off my hips and exposing my sweet, shaven pussy to feast his eyes on.
“Preston,” I whispered. “This is… wrong. We’re family. We can’t do this…”
I felt like I’d betrayed everything inside of me to say those words, and Preston didn’t even hear them. He was focused. He had seen what he wanted. And now he was going to get it.
He traced his fingers along my nether lips before spreading them wide and revealing the pink petals between. I could feel my clit throbbing in its hood, begging for the attention he’d already paid to my mouth and outer lips. He bent his head forward, delivering one long lick from my chasm to my crest, and I melted beneath him. Any resolve I’d once had to at least question the idea of fucking my stepbrother dissolved with one touch of his tongue, and I moaned for him again as he dove in and began to flick it against my aching button.
I wailed, burying my fingers in Preston’s hair, pulling at it as he lapped hungrily at the nectar flooding from between my thighs. I was feverish, shaking, convulsing, shrieking and rolling my eyes into my skull as he pleased me. I was sick, and Preston was the only cure.
He hauled my hips closer to his face, bringing me tight against his mouth as he sucked gently, his tongue still undulating hard and fast against my throbbing clit. I felt my nipples stiffen against the cups of my bra and pulled my blouse up over my head, letting him see how hard my breasts heaved for him.
“Preston,” I whimpered, “please…”
“That’s right,” he praised me, torturing my nubbin with his thumb. “I’m the one in control here, Maddy. I’m your boss. You do what I say, whether you like it or not. Is that clear?”
I squirmed uncontrollably under his touch. He laved me again, making me arch up off of his bed.
“Is it?” he asked me.
“Yes!” I answered, wriggling once more into his face. “Oh, fuck, Preston! Please don’t stop!”
“No,” he said. “Not until we’re clear on where you stand.” Then he turned me over so my ass was in the air, my knees barely making it onto the bed before he was behind me, panting, ripping his shirt off to reveal all those delicious muscles I’
d secretly been craving for weeks now.
His belt was next, his hands moving so fast they seemed like a blur, and as I looked over my shoulder I saw the slick mast of his manhood jutting out behind me. Its swollen tip was made even angrier by the crimson sky outside, and the veins throbbing along the shaft looked almost purple in that hot, violent hue.
I pushed against him, worried that if I thought about what we were about to do for just a second more, I might lose my nerve. But Preston was a step ahead of me. He’d already decided for us what would happen next, and there was no way he was letting me off easy.
He seized my hips in his hands, digging his fingers in hard enough to leave bruises where he touched, bruises I would gaze at later and recall every detail of our tryst. They would remind me of my stepbrother’s power, of his absolute authority in his house, and they would remind me of my place and what running my mouth would do.
But if this was the punishment, then I would run my mouth at every opportunity. Preston needed someone to challenge him, and I needed him to fuck me in all the ways no man ever had.