Page 30 of Jealous Stepbrother (Jealous & Possessive #4)

FOREVER brANDED

Scarlett

O ne year later

“What are you thinking?”

“About how to fashion the story of how their parents got married for our babies.”

Asher grins, wicked and beautiful. “And how will it start?”

I stare down at the huge diamond glittering on my finger.

“Something along the PG version of you screwing me into a coma, then sliding on the ring while I was out like a light. Then when I woke up and asked if you were going to ask me properly, you said…” I arch a brow at him, daring him to deny it.

His smirk widens, and he glances down at the twin bundles draped over his thick, inked forearms, milk-drunk and drowsing like two blissed-out koalas.

Our miracles. Our sins made flesh.

“I said, no. You’ve been mine since you were sixteen. I was always going to marry you. I just simply needed to wait for you to catch up .”

I sigh in bliss as he lowers himself onto the sofa beside me.

Shirtless, of course. He swears it’s because he craves skin-to-skin with the babies, but I know better.

My husband takes every chance he can to drive me out of my mind, to keep me drowning in this rabid, ruinous love.

And really—what better sight exists than watching him cradle our babies? The same babies he planted in me, then tracked until he knew with smug and terrifying certainty that his seed had taken root.

My helpless gaze rakes over him, stopping where old ink and new ink blur together across skin I know better than my own.

He twists his arm so I can see. “Tell me,” I murmur softly, loving our own story etched into his skin.

“This one?” His voice is low, intimate. “It’s the date you walked into my father’s house for the first time. I carved it into my skin so I’d never forget the day I met my angel.”

My pulse spikes. “And this one?” I drift my fingers over numbers and dots etched into his left inner arm.

A slow smile. Dangerous. “The coordinates of Montauk. Where you crawled into my bed. Where everything changed.”

Asher

Her eyes linger on my tattoos, on the diamonds on her finger, on the children I created in her body and now cradle against my chest.

And I swear to God, I’ve never felt more powerful. More complete.

She thinks she knows how deep this obsession runs, but she only sees the surface.

She doesn’t see how I still keep a record of every laugh, every moan, every time she whispers brother when she comes undone around me.

Scarlett was always going to be my greatest masterpiece. House of M? The empire? It means nothing without her. Every stitch of fabric, every dollar earned, every brutal decision, I made them with her in mind.

To keep her here. To keep her mine.

And now I look at her and our babies, and I know it’s not enough.

It will never be enough. Because no matter how many times I claim her, no matter how many ways I brand her, I’ll never stop wanting more.

I lean in, pressing my mouth to her ear, tasting the shiver I know will ripple through her. “You want the truth, Scarlett? I didn’t just marry you. I forged you into my destiny. These babies, this ring, this life… it’s not chance. It’s inevitability. You are my wife, my obsession, my forever.”

Her soft gasp is all the vow I need.

And as our children sigh against my chest, as my wife trembles with that helpless, delicious love that always answers mine, I know this is the end of one story and the beginning of another.

Because every mark on my skin, every scream in her throat, every child in her arms, it all proves the same truth.

Scarlett was written into me long before she ever said yes.

And I’ll spend forever making sure she never says no.