Page 69 of Heartless Stepbrother

He crouched down slowly, deliberately, his movements unhurried, as if savoring the careful build of my horror. He didn’t even need to touch me to violate me; he simply invaded the space around the remnants of my privacy until my breath refused to behave.

He reached out and picked up the smallest, most damning piece.

Black lace.

Barely there.

The pair I had bought two weeks ago on a foolish whim, wanting to feel pretty in my new life.

He held them up between two fingers, lifting them into the sunlight like a rare artifact he was appraising. The garment swung lightly in the breeze, fluttering like a wounded wing.

A deep flush climbed my skin.

His smirk widened, blooming slow and feral, so confident it felt like a hand around my throat. It was playful on its surface, flirtatious in a way meant to torment, but beneath that veneer flowed something far darker: a reminder of his power, a reminder of exactly how easily he could take apart everything I tried to hide.

“Black lace, Luna?” His voice dropped into a velvet tone, rich and sinful. “I would have bet money on white cotton. Sweet, simple, predictable.” He tilted his head, eyes sliding up to mine with a flash of wicked hunger. “But this…” His fingers tightened slightly around the lace. “This is a delightful surprise. Were you packing ideas for the next two weeks? Or were you planning on hiding these from me?”

Heat burst beneath my skin, a painful storm of humiliation and rage. My mouth opened, but nothing emerged for a long, breathless second. I could barely swallow. I could barely breathe. Every polite instinct drilled into me by years of beingthe good, accommodating daughter was at war with the feral part of me that wanted to claw the smirk straight off his face.

“Put that down,” I said, my voice a shredded whisper, a gasp dragged from the rubble of my dignity.

He didn’t.

He didn’t even pretend to consider it.

Instead, he kept holding them, letting the moment stretch until it felt like he was peeling layers off me with his eyes alone. He let me stand there in my mortification, frozen in place while he held the most intimate piece of my life between his fingers.

Only after the silence burned through me did he lower his gaze again, then very deliberately fold the lace once. Neat. Intentional.

Then, with a lazy confidence that made my stomach drop, he slipped the panties into the front pocket of his jeans.

A theft.

A claim.

A message.

I felt the shock like a slap, breath punched from my lungs, the world tilting again. This wasn’t teasing. This wasn’t playful humiliation. This was a line crossed, then erased entirely. He had taken something private, something meant for no one, and pocketed it like a trophy.

Like a promise.

“There,” he said finally, rising with liquid ease, brushing non-existent dust from his palms as if he hadn’t just disassembled my sanity in a sunlit driveway. “Now I have a little something of yours… a reminder of everything we’ve shared so far. A souvenir.”

My heart hammered painfully against my ribs.

A souvenir.

He was smiling faintly, his expression relaxed, casual, almost charming to anyone who didn’t know him. To anyone watching, this could be mistaken for joking banter between step-siblings.

But I knew better.

The look in his eyes told me exactly what he meant:

I take what I want.

I take what is yours.

And for the next two weeks, you are entirely within my reach.