Page 6 of Jealous Stepbrother (Jealous & Possessive #4)

UNRAVEL ME…MAYBE

Scarlett

S omewhere between yesterday and today, I hit my head. I must be concussed… hallucinating because?—

“W-what?”

“You heard me. Do as your big brother says. Take. Your. Fucking. Clothes. Off.”

“But… wh-why?” I look over his shoulder, check the room to make sure I’m not dreaming. Has he forgotten where we are?

“So I can erase the image of other guys checking out what’s mine.” His hand slams into the wall beside me when I try to move. “Uh-uh-uh, you stay right fucking here. And before you call me insane again, remember you don’t want to hurt my feelings.”

I’ve tripped and fallen into an acid trip. I’m one hundred percent convinced. “Ash—Asher, we’re in your studio. In your office! Anyone can walk in.”

“Wrong. No one will dare come in here without my explicit permission.”

“That still doesn’t mean…” I look from his face to the glass doors, now frosted—when did they go frosty?

—to the very clear floor-to-ceiling glass windows blazing summer sunlight into the room.

Sure, we’re insanely high up but still, this is New York City.

All anyone needs is a powerful pair of binoculars and… and…

My chin is grabbed in a firm hold and my attention is wrenched back to his. He looks… God, he looks like he’s on the absolute edge of his endurance. All because his staff stared at me for two seconds too long?

I swallow. And whatever he sees on my face must deliver a layer of appeasement because he exhales. But his eyes don’t move a millimeter from mine.

“I’m waiting, Scarlett. Strip or I walk out there and fire every fucking one of them.”

“No—”

“Yes.”

Holy shit. I’ve been in this building less than fifteen minutes. How is this happening?

Asher Fucking Masterson. That’s how.

Hands shaking, I reach for the buttons on my shirt and slowly undo each one, pulling the tails free of my pencil skirt. The same skirt and shirt I found laid out on my bed when I came out of the shower this morning.

Because apparently my stepbrother means to control everything in my life, including what I wear.

I shrug off the shirt, lower the zipper of the skirt. I wriggle free of it and barely feel both items pool at my feet.

His eyes follow my every move with the rabid focus of a wolf scenting blood in fresh snow.

And when I’m left standing in the moss-green lace underwear—which he also picked out—his lips part and his breathing turns choppy.

“Everything, Scarlett.”

My head feels heavy as an anvil when I shake it. “Asher, please. I can’t… you can’t…”

His hand slowly drops from the wall beside my head. He takes one step back, his nostrils flaring as his eyes sear over me from head to toe. Then another step back.

Two more and I realize his intention.

He’s heading out.

To fire people.

I stumble after him, almost face-planting when my heels get caught in my discarded clothes. “Asher! Wait!”

He keeps walking.

I reach him just as he grabs the door handle.

My hand closes over his. Skin to skin, his muscles flex under mine.

For an eternity, he stares down at our hands.

And… my breath stuttering harder than a fault line mid-earthquake, I reach behind me and unhook my bra. It falls from my nerveless fingers.

His hand stays on the door, a silent threat.

Heat and helpless rage and an emotion I’m desperately loathe to label anything but arousal flare through me. His grip tightens.

I hook my fingers into my panties and drag them off, stepping out of my shoes as they drop to my ankles.

And just like that, I’m naked in my stepbrother’s office, my mind spinning as my body reacts to the deranged look in his eyes.

His hand drops from the door and, in one lethal, unhesitating lunge, he snakes an arm around my waist, hauling me clean off my feet in a display of unbridled, domineering possession.

“Good girl,” he breathes in my ear. “Now we can begin our day properly.”

I’m plastered to his side as he marches to the far end of the studio.

I didn’t see it before, too distracted by the man himself, but beneath the largest sun-flooded window in the room sits a sprawling work table wide enough to command the space like a king’s throne.

It’s pure Asher, with clean black steel legs, a matte walnut top worn smooth in places from years of relentless creation.

One corner is stacked with sketchbooks, edges softened by constant use. Another holds a neat army of mechanical pencils, fountain pens, and fine-tipped markers, arranged with precision only he would demand.

Draped across the middle is an expanse of crisp white paper, unrolled like a battlefield awaiting its first strike. A dress form stands beside it, pinned with half-finished muslin in sharp, asymmetric cuts, the silhouette already promising something both dangerous and beautiful.

The summer sun pouring in illuminates silks in pale gold and bone white, chiffon in shades of champagne and blush. His current work leans toward a sensual kind of minimalism with fluid lines, barely-there draping, cuts that tease the skin while leaving the imagination strung tight.

But there’s always an edge with Asher, a flash of metallic thread, an unexpected slash at the hip, a deep plunge that borders on scandalous.

Without releasing me, he drags a high-backed stool to the table, sits back in his chair with his legs splayed, and places me in his lap. Then he rests both hands on the table, bracketing me in his shadow.

“You’ll start here,” he says, the command cool and absolute.

“You’ll observe, take notes, pull fabric, cut swatches, draft rough outlines when I tell you.

I want your instincts on color pairings, your eye on proportion.

And”—his gaze dips, slow and deliberate—“you’ll learn the discipline of stripping away what’s unnecessary until only the strongest, most striking thing remains.

Same principle applies to people, sweetheart. ”

I swallow the scream building at the back of my throat, the banshee-like wail that wants to demand if he’s totally lost his mind. I manage to keep it inside because the truth is the wildest thing to comprehend.

I’m naked from hair to heel, perched in my fully clothed stepbrother’s lap while he instructs me on fabrics and composition as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. As if he doesn’t have a care in the world.

Well… no. There’s a care .

A very blatant, masculine, virile care in the form of the thick cock pressing against my ass every time he leans in to correct my stance, adjust the tilt of my wrist, or reach for a pencil beside my hand.

His cologne, sharp cedar and something darker, curls into my lungs, muddling my thoughts as much as the low drag of his voice.

His fingertips graze the slope of my spine when he shows me how to smooth a fabric swatch without creases, linger at my elbow when guiding me toward the mannequins.

Every brush of skin is deliberate, like he’s sketching his claim on me with invisible ink.

When I shift away to put breathing room between us, he only follows, closing that space until my bare hip grazes the edge of his thigh, until his mouth is close enough to murmur something about the “importance of clean lines” while his breath slides hot over my shoulder.

I last barely ten seconds away from him before he drags me back to the stool. Into his lap. With the cage of his body and his arms.

My pulse is a trapped bird in my throat, manically searching for escape. I tell myself I’m unaffected, that this is just another one of Asher’s power plays, but the way my skin prickles where his lips whisper over the curve between my neck and shoulder makes a liar out of me.

“You smell incredible. And your skin. Fuck, it still feels as silky as I remember.”

I shiver, and my nipples pucker hard enough to make me gasp. “Asher… why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

I shake my head. Squirm when he traces a finger down each vertebra.

“Finish the sketch, sweetheart,” he murmurs. “Then I can feed you lunch, hmm? You must be hungry.”

What I am is sliding out of my mind when he casually reaches for his phone and taps away at it with one hand, the other skimming my waist before settling on my hip, his heat branding my bare skin.

And oh, Jesus. It feels savagely good. So good, my head drops as I watch his fingers splayed right there on my skin in blatant ownership.

His anger from earlier storms back into my mind. “You’re angry with me. Not just now. From before, when you came into my room this morning. Why?” I barely murmur the words, but I know he hears me.

His fingers turn bruising on my hip, and his phone clatters onto the table.

Then he surges even closer, until he’s completely surrounding me.

He nudges that place on my shoulder again, but this time with his chin, his jaw. The abrasion of his stubble makes me gasp and jump and squirm.

His hands span my waist, keep me planted harder in his lap.

And then my stepbrother starts speaking in low, rough, darkly ferocious tones.

“The Almighty in His infinite wisdom chose to drop a magnificent bombshell into my life six years ago filled with every deadly sin known to man. Then He ignored my very reasonable request to keep you out of my way. Between you and Him, you connived to tempt the fuck out of me, to drive me crazy every second of every day. Until I couldn’t eat, couldn’t think straight, fuck sleep or sanity.

As much as it was a relief to escape every now and then, I felt like a fucking limb had been cut off every damn second. ”

His hands release their deathly grip, only to trail up my side, over my ribs. My breath catches fire, but he doesn’t cup my breasts. Instead, he clamps his hands on my upper arms, almost as if he’s about to shake me in his quiet, icy fury.

I’m as still as a rabbit caught in the sights of a wolf. The only thing I can hear is my thundering heartbeat, the only smell is the leather and ice and fury of him, the only feel is the thick rod growing, growing, growing between my splayed legs.