Page 51 of Heartless Stepbrother

Water curled around us, warm and dark, the surface shimmering like a sheet of molten glass. My heartbeat pulsed in my throat, in my fingertips, in the soft space between my thighs.

He wasn’t touching me.

But he didn’t need to.

His voice slipped into the space between us like a secret not meant for daylight. “Careful, princess. The island has a way of changing people.” His gaze swept down my neck, my shoulders, all the way to where the water swallowed my body. “And the night has a way of revealing things you’re not ready to admit.”

I didn’t realize I had moved until I felt the faint brush of his leg against mine beneath the surface.

Barely there.

Barely anything.

But enough to ignite everything.

His smile deepened, slow and mercilessly knowing.

“There she is,” he breathed.

As if I had stepped willingly into his arms.

As if the dangerous part hadn’t even begun.

He held my gaze for a long, suspended moment. The kind that made it impossible to remember what the world had felt like before his eyes were on me.

Then the change came.

Not dramatic.

Not sudden.

Just a subtle tightening around his mouth. A shift in the angle of his jaw. A gleam sliding into his eyes like the sharpening of a blade.

The charm remained, but it twisted.

Darkened.

Reclaimed its rightful shape.

I felt it before he moved.

The danger returning.

He drifted back half a step, the water folding around him, hiding his hands beneath its dark surface. His expression became unreadable. Too calm. Too casual.

It was the calm I had learned to fear.

“What are you doing?” I asked, voice low.

“Me?” His smile was a slow, wicked curl. “Absolutely nothing.”

Lie.

Before I could react, before I could even register the shift of water against my torso, Riley’s hand shot out beneath the surface with a single, precise movement.

A soft snap echoed through the quiet.

I gasped.