My stepbrother grinned at me, the sunlight glinting off his shades. “We ain’t normal, baby. Never have been, never will be. Now, pick a place.”
I shoved the map back into the glove compartment and shook my head, looking over my shoulder and into the backseat of Gunner’s newly-repaired Mustang. “What do you think, Jax? Where should we go?”
Jax stared at me, jaws agape, his big, pink tongue lolling out and splattering drool everywhere. For a guy who loved to boast about the integrity of his classic car, Gunner sure didn’t seem to care a whole lot about dog slobber ruining the leather seats.
“He don’t know nothin’,” my stepbrother said, scratching Jax behind his ears before turning back to me. “But I’m serious, baby. I really wanna know.”
I put my bare feet up on Gunner’s dash and gave the question a moment of thought. We were leaving the city far behind us—at least, for a little while.
Gunner’s vacation time was long gone, but the Captain gave permission to take a leave of absence at the fire station. After what happened with my stalker, the shrink the department kept on hand thought it’d be a damn good idea. Broken firefighters were of no help to anybody. Often, they did more harm than good. You needed a certain kind of mettle to pull people out of burning buildings, and if that was compromised, you ran the risk of a fireman turning more dangerous than the flames themselves.
But when I looked at my stepbrother, I didn’t see dangerous or broken. Not in that way. I saw the man who’d saved my life—multiple times. The guy who’d rescued me in every sense of the word.
My big damn hero.
Not that he didn’t have a few scars to show for it. But damn, didn’t we all? Nobody ever came out unscathed from a fire. Whether that was a metaphor for life or the real damn thing, the outcome was the same.
Those first few nights back at Gunner’s house had been rough on us both. I kept waking up from nightmares of Connor sneaking in and setting us on fire while we slept. Or sometimes he was just this monster made of fire, and he was chasing me down the hall, but the hallway never ended and I would just scream and scream and scream.
Sometimes I even woke up screaming. Sometimes Gunner woke up ready for a fight. Even though our waking minds both knew he was in jail—and that whether he stayed in that cell or they moved him to a psych facility, there was no chance of him ever getting out—that didn’t stop us from suffering through the terror he’d left in his wake as soon as we closed our eyes.
Those were the nights Gunner took me the hardest, trying to fuck away the memories haunting us both.
So knowing that my stepbrother was weighed down by what we’d been through was no surprise to me. We all carried around our own burdens.
Today, though, that load was gonna get a little lighter. We were embarking on an adventure, a road trip through all fifty states. We’d camp out under the stars. We’d stay in pet-friendly hotels. We’d see the sights and all the landmarks. He’d promised me we’d even stay at a few haunted places and try to catch some ghosts.
We were finally going to have that family trip we’d always wanted. Always deserved. Except we were adults now, and the nature of our family had become_._._._
_._._._well, different.
And it was getting larger… My hand swept over my belly, feeling the swelling that had begun to show. There was no way to be sure this early, but I already knew we were going to have a son.
Gunner leaned over to me and swept my hair past my shoulder with his fingers. When I looked at him he cupped my cheek and smiled. “You got two choices, baby. Are we goin’ east, or west?”
I bit my lip and tried to think of an answer, but it was hard to think of anything when my stepbrother was looking at me like that. Of course, he wasn’t really my stepbrother now. Our parents were gone. There were no laws that said we couldn’t get married. Nobody would even know unless we told them.
Nothing was set in stone. We weren’t making any commitments or decisions. This trip was about fun, about living, about getting to know each other as friends and lovers. This was our chance to get the hell away from the consequences for a while and just be us. And I was gonna relish every damn moment of it.
I’d spent too long running from my stepbrother. Now, I was gonna run with him.
I looked up at the sky outside the windshield.
“Las Vegas,” I said with a smile. “That’s the direction I wanna go in.”
Gunner grinned. “Might take us a while to get there, baby, but you got it.” He brushed his thumb past my lips. “Sin City,” he mused. “Something tell me we’ll fit right in.”
“As long as I’m with you, we can go anywhere. Do anything.” I kissed his hand. “Wherever we are, if I wake up next to you, that place is home.”
Gunner pulled me toward him, pressing our foreheads together. “You’re goddamn right.”
We shared a kiss, one of many we’d indulged in these past few months, but one unlike any other I’d known. This was a kiss of unbridled passion, of liberation, of freedom. The first kiss of our new lives together. The start of a journey. The start of something new.
I closed my eyes and let Gunner’s desire engulf me. When he pulled away, I could feel his lips had left mine scorched.
“I love you, Tanya,” he whispered to me. I could tell by the pounding of his pulse that he’d never said those words to anyone. Not like he said them to me.
My heart swelled. I cupped his face in my hands. It felt so good to feel his skin beneath both of them now that I’d gotten my bandages off. “I love you too,” I told him.
We kissed again, harder this time, high on our confessions and the thought of new beginnings. But then Jax barked, reminding us that we were idling on the side of the road that split before us, one side taking us east, the other west across the country.
“Las Vegas,” Gunner chuckled, adjusting his shades. He put the Mustang into gear. “Maybe we should visit one of those drive-thru chapels.”
I laughed at him. “You’re out of your mind.” But really? I wouldn’t have minded it. I had no intention of ever leaving Gunner’s side. Not when we’d finally, truly found each other.
We pulled onto the highway that would lead us to parts unknown, our hands entwined over the gear shift, just a car full of suitcases, the world’s worst guard dog, a baby on the way, and two people madly in love.
Hey to my sexy readers! I hope you enjoyed HOT as much as I enjoyed writing it!!! Turn the page for your next bonus novel, Stepbrother Fixation… And remember, there’s a SUPER SECRET BONUS at the end of the book. You’ll have to scroll to the back to find out what it is! ;)
Thanks so much for being so awesome.
-Nikki xoxoxo
STEPBROTHER FIXATION
Renowned bestselling authors Nikki Wild and Kat Jackson are back with another full-length steamy romance novel!
Madison
I can’t be doing this… Not now… Not with him.
Preston Harvey is a wealthy asshole. He’s the living symbol of everything I hate in this world. I wouldn’t sleep with him if he were the last person on Earth.
Except… I just did.
That’s when everything went very right, and VERY wrong…
Preston
We are so fucked.
Our parents are engaged for Christ’s sake. Somebody is going to find out we’re doing this and there will be hell to pay...
When I gav
e Madison a job as my personal assistant, this was not the position I had in mind for my soon-to-be-step…
And now I can’t stop. I can’t ever stop…
I want this… And a billionaire always gets what he wants.
This is a stand-alone novel with a HEA and does NOT end in a cliffhanger!
Copyright © 2016 by Kat Jackson and Nikki Wild
This book is a work of fiction, any names, places, and situations portrayed within are products of the author’s imagination.
Thank you for supporting an independent author! Just for my naughty readers, my entire catalog is now FREE TO READ to anyone with a Kindle Unlimited subscription!