Owning Beauty (Taking Beauty Trilogy 3)

The passion we’d succumbed to last night had been… intense. And it wasn’t like I hadn’t enjoyed myself. But now, in the broad light of day, I couldn’t help but feel a creeping sense of shame. I was waking up in bed next to my naked, spent stepbrother. Who does that?

Swallowing the conflict for now, I sat up and looked around, trying to find a clock that could tell me the time. I’d have to settle for Preston’s cell phone instead, but that was easier said than done when I had no idea where he’d put it.

I crawled over his sleeping form, reached over the end of the bed, and searched the pants he’d been wearing the night before. As I looked at the crumpled heap, all I could think about was how he’d dropped them in the heat of the moment, what it had felt like to endure his twisting, tantalizing tongue…

I lifted his phone from his pocket. It was seven a.m. The morning light must have woken us. At least we hadn’t slept the whole day.

Just as I was raising back up, Preston asked me, “What are you doing?”

I turned to look at him. He was awake, though he hadn’t yet moved. He was looking at me strangely, probably in the same way I’d looked at him when I’d woken up in his arms. Last night had been incredible, but it had happened under the cover of darkness. Morning was an entirely different animal, and it seemed neither of us knew precisely what to do with it.

I decided to try to avoid it for now. “Your phone,” I told him, holding it up. “I wanted to know what time it was.”

“It’s ringing,” he told me, and I looked at it. Indeed, since I’d picked it up, his phone had received a call.

It wasn’t making any noise, though, and it wasn’t vibrating. I looked over at him. “Do you want me to answer it?”

“No,” he said. He sat up, and I watched his muscles coil under his skin like snakes winding their way through the desert. “I’ll handle it.”

He moved past me down to the foot of the bed, retrieving his Bluetooth earpiece and pushing it in. He plucked his phone out of my hand, but didn’t look at me as he answered the call. “Hello?”

He was quiet for a moment, listening to the other end. I pulled some of the sheets around me, shielding myself from his view, though he didn’t even bother to look over. We had a lot to talk about, that was for sure, but it seemed like neither of us felt like this was the time or the place. Not while he was on the phone, at least.

“What time?” he said, startling me from my thoughts. I tried to look at anything but the planes of his muscles as he added, “Fine. We’ll be there.”

He hung up the call and looked at me, taking his earpiece out again. “We’re having dinner tonight,” he said.

I frowned at him, watching as he got up off the bed and walked to the dresser for a pair of underwear. “And why, pray tell, do you need your personal assistant to come along? Is there a children’s hospital to tear down?”

“Maddy…”

“Or maybe you could turn a city park into a landfill?”

“Maddy!”

“I’m still angry with you Preston.” I said firmly.

“You can stop now. Lets just say I’m having second thoughts about the whole homeless shelter deal,” he replied.

“Because I talked you out of it, or are you saying that because of what happened last night?” I asked, almost wishing he wouldn’t answer.

Preston didn’t answer, the silence biting as he was clearly trying to pick his words carefully.

“Well if it’s not some cutthroat business deal with one of your rotten clients,” I asked, “what are we doing? Who’d want to have dinner with the both of us?”

Preston slipped his boxer briefs over his legs, pulling them up and letting the waistband snap around his hips. When he looked at me, the smile on his face was strained. “Our parents.”

I felt my stomach plummet to my feet. Never had two words devastated me in the way that these had.

Chapter 10

We were so fucked.

My father wasn’t the type of guy who’d just call up his son and his soon-to-be stepdaughter and invite them over for dinner and drinks. Hell, my father wasn’t the type of guy who did that for anyone but his favorite clients, and even that was an awfully short list. If he wanted to see both me and Maddy, that meant that something was wrong, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it had anything to do with what we’d done last night.

But that was crazy. He’d have no way of knowing that I slept with her. We’d been completely alone. It wasn’t like he’d bug my office, or anything. Right?

My father was a resourceful man, but as far as I knew, I’d given him no cause to feel that drastic measure like that were necessary. Yet the fact remained: he wanted something from both of us. If that wasn’t the reason, then what was?

“Maybe it’s my mom,” Maddy said. She was still sitting on my bed, though she’d wrapped herself in the sheets now to cover up. I guessed that in my own way, I was doing the same thing. We were both distancing ourselves and we knew it, but neither of us seemed ready to talk about why. “Maybe they want to go over the wedding or honeymoon plans.”

I felt my insides untwist a little. I nodded slowly. “That’s possible.” But the wedding was months away. What could they possibly want to consult us about at this stage?

Whatever it was, I knew there was no avoiding it. Maddy and I would have to show up, which meant that we were also going to have to discuss what had happened between us last night.

I looked over at her on my bed. God, she was beautiful. She had one of the most incredible bodies I’d ever seen. She was naturally gorgeous, organic in ways I’d not experienced in a woman… well, ever. All the girls I dated were always plastic Barbie dolls shaped by the most skilled surgeons on the planet into the ideal image men desired most. They were like modern art while Maddy was a classic. Even the freckles across the bridge of her nose gave me the shivers.

And yet she was my stepsister, or she would be soon enough. That meant she ought to be off-limits. We’d already been playing the part of siblings… or had we? Had I misread both our emotions all this time? Had my closeness to Maddy been fueled not by familial affection, but by raw, primal, sexual attraction?

I’d never felt this way about a woman before, so it was hard to tell. The only thing I knew for sure was that I wanted her, no matter what. But if our parents got married, that would be impossible, or at the very least something we’d forever have to hide. What if she wanted a family? What if I did? Then where would we be? Could I ask her to give up the future she deserved just to be with me?

I hesitated, rubbing the back of my neck as I stood before her in nothing but my underwear. “You should get dressed,” I told her softly. I didn’t want to come off cruel, but for the time being, I wasn’t sure what else I could say. “We’ve got work to do before we head over there this evening.”

“Sure,” Maddy said, though her voice sounded chilled and hollow. “I’ll get right on it, Mr. Harvey.”

It felt like a slap in the face, but at this point, I wasn’t completely sure that I didn’t deserve it.

The rest of the day passed by in total silence. Maddy busied herself with the tasks that kept her far away from me, and I hid in my office trying to forget the taste of my stepsister’s skin, the warmth of her as I sank in, the way she’d gasped and moaned and writhed beneath my weight. Every time I blinked I saw a flash of the way I’d slid my dick up to the hilt inside of her, and that only made distracting myself from those thoughts a more arduous task than it had been before.

When she’d gone to lunch, I had tried a little self-soothing meditation, and when that’d failed, I spent half an hour running hard on the treadmill in the corner of my office. Nothing worked. All I could think about was her, and that was making it hard to walk around without making that fact exceptionally obvious in my dress slacks.

By the time we had to leave for our family dinner, I was struggling to keep from getting hard every time she walked in front of me. The rhythmic sway of her ass she

athed only in the thin material of the skirt she’d picked up from her apartment had me completely entranced.

I opened the car door for her. When she swept under my arm with a soft, “Thanks,” the scent of her perfume antagonized me. I couldn’t take it anymore.

With a grunt, I grabbed Maddy by the arm and turned her, pinning her between my body and the car. I searched her eyes and found only wanting there. Helplessly I pressed my mouth against hers, ravaging her with my tongue, drawing her against me by the small of her back.

Maddy resisted only a moment. Then she moaned. She fit so perfectly in my arms, and I never wanted to let her go.