Page 12 of Heartless Stepbrother

I left the safety of the path, the carefully laid stone giving way to sand, cool and damp beneath my feet. Grains clung to my skin, a whisper of touch, grounding me in this place. In this moment.

The beach stretched out before me, endless and open. The waves rolled in slow and steady, a rhythmic breath that echoed deep in my bones. The moon hung low and broken, a silver crescent that bled its light across the water, turning the shoreline into a dreamscape of shadows and muted blues.

I walked to where the sea met the land.

Salt stung my lips, and the wind tugged gently at my cardigan. I stepped closer, letting the water reach me. First a tease, then a kiss, foam wrapping around my ankles like silk dipped in ice. I stood there, breath catching, as the ocean sighed its lullaby.

The world felt bigger here.

Wider. Wilder. And I, smaller. But not in the way that made me feel powerless. No. The vastness of it gave me perspective. Space to unravel.

The tension in my chest began to loosen. The tight coil of fear and uncertainty didn’t vanish but it softened. Became something I could hold, instead of something that held me.

I tilted my face to the sky and closed my eyes.

This… this was the kind of silence I craved. Not the hollow, echoing hush of a too-perfect room, but the kind filled with meaning. With life. With presence.

For the first time all day, I let myself breathe.

But even as the ocean welcomed me, some part of me remained on edge. Like I was being watched. Not by eyes, at least not any I could see, but by fate. By whatever cruel twist of it that had led me here.

To this island.

To this resort.

Then I heard it.

Not the ocean, not the wind, not even the rustle of the palms that bowed toward the shoreline like eavesdropping gods.

This was different.

A soft giggle, high, breathy, laced with something that made my skin prickle. A heartbeat later, a low murmur answered, deep and slurred with the sticky rhythm of lust. The kind of sound that didn’t belong out here. Not in the hush of the beach’s sacred solitude. Not in the dreamscape of sand and tides and moonlight.

I stopped walking.

My breath caught as my ears strained. More laughter. Intimate now, drawn tight like a thread pulled between bodies. Then a sigh. No, not a sigh. A moan. Feminine. Breathless. Shuddering. I felt it like a ripple across my skin.

They were close.

Too close.

I froze, half-shadowed by a small copse of palm trees swaying in the breeze like they knew something I didn’t. My heart thudded hard beneath my ribs. Not from fear, exactly. Something else. Something unnamable and sharp-edged. My eyes adjusted to the darkness as I scanned the beach ahead, past the manicured stretch where lanterns faded into black. There, nestled in a pocket of natural stone, a crescent-shaped alcove formed by large, moss-draped rocks, sheltered from view unless you were standing exactly where I was.

Which meant they hadn’t expected anyone to be here.

Which meant they didn’t know.

Not yet.

I should’ve turned around. Should’ve walked the other way and never looked back. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

Suddenly I wasn’t just a girl on a midnight stroll.

I was an intruder. A voyeur. A reluctant witness to something raw and real and utterly… unfiltered.

The figures moved, silhouettes wrapped around each other in a way that blurred where one ended and the other began. A body arched. A hand gripped a thigh. A low grunt broke the silence.And then, as the moon shifted from behind a cloud, the light caught the smooth line of a bare shoulder, the flash of a spine curving in ecstasy, the glossy fall of dark hair clinging to damp skin.

My cheeks flamed.