Page 19 of Heartless Stepbrother

I was…shaken.

As if something had been stirred in me, something I didn’t recognize. Not attraction. Not exactly. It was darker than that. More primitive. It wasn’t about wanting him.

It was about the way he made me feel…seen. Inconveniently, obscenely seen. And then discarded just as fast. As if my emotions were a toy he could pick up, examine, then toss back onto the sand.

I hated that he’d gotten under my skin.

I hated that I still wanted to know who he was.

And worse, I hated that I had a feeling I’d be seeing him again.

Because nothing about that boy screamedone-time encounter.

He was a warning dressed up like a promise.

I scrambled to my feet and crept out onto the lanai.

The night swallowed me whole.

Thick, humid air clung to my skin like regret. The wooden boards beneath my bare feet were still warm from the sun, creaking softly as I moved. Beyond the railing, the ocean stretched out into oblivion, a black, endless maw where sky and sea became one. The waves murmured low and steady in the distance, a rhythmic hush that should’ve comforted me.

But it didn’t.

Because I didn’t see the stars.

I didn’t see the ocean.

I sawhim.

His face, carved from moonlight and shadow. That arrogant tilt of his jaw. The way he’d smirked like he knew something I didn’t, something I’d never be allowed to know. And thoseeyes... dark, inscrutable, heavy with some secret language only he spoke. They haunted me.

I leaned on the railing, the wood rough against my palms, the night clinging to me like wet silk. My breath came uneven. Slow, then sharp. He’d gotten under my skin, like a sliver of glass, invisible until I moved, and then all I could feel was the ache.

Who the hell was he?

Just some guy?

No. Notjustanything.

He had that look, boy still on the edge of becoming man, shoulders built from sports or fighting or both, the kind of physical ease that came with being worshipped or feared. He spoke with every word soaked in cocky indifference. He wore confidence like a second skin, wrinkled and dangerous. It wasn’t the kind you earned. It was the kind you inherited, like blood money or privilege. The kind of guy who’d never been told no and wouldn’t have listened if he had.

I hated guys like that.

I also couldn’t stop thinking about him.

A hot prickle rose up my neck. Embarrassment. Mortification. But under it, coiled and unwelcome, was fascination. I didn’t want it. I didn’t invite it. But it stirred, anyway.

The way he’d looked at me. Not just at my face. Not just at my body.

Atme.

Like he saw something. Something I didn’t even know I was showing. Like I was a puzzle he’d already solved.

And that voice...

Rough velvet. A sin dressed in silk. He’d called meprincesswith that mocking grin, and somehow it had landed like a kiss and a slap at the same time. And when he said my name it had dripped from his lips like a secret he’d stolen.

I gripped the railing harder, knuckles whitening. My mind was a cyclone of questions I didn’t want answers to.