Page 49 of Heartless Stepbrother

I followed his gaze because my body betrayed me. Because part of me wanted to see whatever he was seeing, even if I knew I shouldn’t.

The infinity edge blurred into the ocean, the waves rising and sinking with a solemn patience older than both of us combined. The sky was a velvet sprawl, jeweled with points of light.

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” he murmured. “How water can hold secrets better than people. You can drown anything in it. Fear. Memory. Desire.” His shoulder brushed mine, the contact light, intentional, and so casual it was almost obscene. “If you’re brave enough to go under.”

My heart kicked hard, a warning that tasted like surrender.

“Is this another one of your mind games?” My voice felt thin, stretched too tight. “Because I’m not falling for the philosophical version of you.”

He laughed softly. Darkly. A sound that sent a trail of heat down my spine.

“Philosophical? Princess, if I wanted to play with your mind tonight, you’d know. I’m just talking.” He drifted a little closer, not enough to touch me, but enough to make me feel the imprint of his body in the space between us. “Besides,” he added, eyes glinting, “you only think I’m dangerous when I talk. You should see what I can do when I stop.”

The air thickened. I hated myself for feeling it. For letting it coil inside me like a slow-burning fuse.

The laughter from the other side of the pool faded into meaningless noise. It didn’t drift away gradually. It was just gone, eaten by the silence between us. The night folded inward, reducing the world to warm water, distant stars, and the boy whose presence rewired the rhythm of everything around him.

He angled his body toward mine, close enough now that I could feel the heat of him through the water. “Look again,” he whispered, nodding toward the sea. A freighter crept across thedark horizon, a handful of lights trembling against the black. “She’s been there for hours. The crew lives in a world with no land, no noise, no escape.” His lips curved, slow and sinful. “Isolation does interesting things to a person.”

His voice wasn’t built for stories like that. It was built for wickedness. For promises that weren’t really promises at all.

And he knew it.

I tried to look away from the freighter, from him, from the slow, deliberate way he was dismantling my balance. But my eyes caught on his instead.

That was when it happened.

A flicker. A spark. A flash of something real and ravenous cutting through the smooth veneer of his perfect face. It was gone in the next second, buried beneath the smirk he used like armor. But the damage was done.

I had seen it.

Hunger.

Want.

Possession sharpened into something almost feral.

The mask had cracked.

And the night seemed to shift, the air dipping colder, the water warmer, the danger tightening around me like an invisible hand.

Whatever game he was playing, we were no longer circling the edges.

He was drawing me into the center.

And for the first time, I realized how easy it would be to let him.

He did not lunge. He did not crowd. That would have been too obvious, too predictable, too easily resisted.

Instead, Riley simply shifted his weight, a subtle glide through the warm, dark water. Not a hunter closing in on prey, but a boy inviting a girl into his gravity… without asking, without speaking, without so much as lifting a hand.

Yet somehow, he pulled me.

“Relax,” he murmured, the word not a command but a coaxing drawl that slid along my nerves. “The water’s warm. You should enjoy it.”

“I am enjoying it,” I lied.

He smirked, eyes narrowing as if tasting the truth and finding the aftertaste intoxicating. “You’re wound so tight you might snap.”