Page 7 of Jealous Stepbrother (Jealous & Possessive #4)
“Then that night four years ago, you crawled into my bed,” he continues, and his middle fingers finally move. The tips glide around my heavy breasts to brush, ever so lightly, against my beaded nipples.
I jolt and cry out.
Attempt to squirm away from the sizzling sensation and the shameful slick building hot and eagerly in my pussy, but he doesn’t relent.
My eyes are riveted on the obscene movement—as if he’s flipping me two birds—as he teases my hardened nubs and growls, “You plastered these gorgeous, mouthwatering tits to my back and hummed happy birthday like you were Marilyn Fucking Monroe until I didn’t have a choice but to snap, did I?
So yeah, I fucking snapped. And guess what, darling sis? ”
Mouth parted to drag in woefully inadequate air, I turn, blink up at him, not sure whether to breathe in this pillar of fire and brimstone or simply exsanguinate to death. “W-what?”
“Now neither you nor He get to dictate how this goes anymore. He served you up to me on a platter. I took the fucking platter. I own the fucking platter. So you’re mine.
Four years ago. Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.
I’m never letting you go. Even in death you’ll remain mine.
Do you hear me?” he demands in his Grim Reaper voice.
I can’t look away from his face, his eyes. It’s like he’s hypnotized me. Like what happens to deer caught in headlights, I can’t move.
Is that your excuse?
I push the voice away. “Asher… I… please.”
Something that looks like sympathy flashes across his face but it hardens in the next second. And his fingers never stop thrumming back and forth, back and forth over my nipples, dragging more shudders out of me.
“You’re a little overwhelmed. I get it. So I won’t even ask you to nod, or say, yes, Asher . Doesn’t change the fact that every word I’ve said stands. Now pick up that pencil, finish that sketch.”
My head is swimming when I turn to the table. When I try to reach out and can’t move more than an inch. “I… I can’t. You’re holding me.”
His nostrils flare like an enraged bull about to charge.
For several seconds, he holds my gaze, then that gaze drops to my mouth and oh God, my pussy clenches with a hunger I can’t deny.
A hunger I know he sees because one corner of his mouth quirks in wicked satisfaction, and his dick jumps against my heated slit, as if he’s taunting me with how empty and ravenous, and utterly ashamed I feel.
After a handful of seconds, he slowly unclamps his hands off my arms. But instead of letting me go or returning them to my waist, he slides them under my arms and finally cups both breasts.
Kneading.
Plumping.
Tip-teasing.
I moan. Loud and helpless and Jesus, I need it. My stepbrother’s cock. Inside me so badly! And he’s the absolute devil for doing this to me.
I hate him.
I hate him.
I—
“Love these. God, you’re so beautiful, Scarlett,” he breathes in my ear, shuddering against my back while plucking at my nipples before he squeezes the mounds.
“But that sketch won’t fucking draw itself.
So don’t make me spank this juicy ass you’re still wriggling on my dick to get you moving. Sketch. Now.”
Every atom trembling, I pick up the pencil.
He doesn’t let up.
For hours, I’m a machine under his direction—fetching fabric samples, pinning swathes of silk onto mannequins, measuring seams, sketching silhouettes he immediately critiques with ruthless precision.
And even as he corrects my work or sketches his own, his fingers trail over me. A grip of my waist. A caress at the top of my ass or along my collarbone. Tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. But he never goes near my pussy, my mouth, or even my breasts after I pick up the pencil.
I’m near delirious with a savage hunger, aching and fury.
What my stepbrother is doing to me is borderline inhumane, and I’m certain crosses every line in every HR handbook in the world. But Asher Masterson has always lived by his own rules. It’s what’s made him a maverick in the fashion world.
But even as I insist to myself that I hate every second of it, the moment I stop resisting and start throwing my own ideas onto paper, something shifts.
Lines flow easier, fabrics in my hands start whispering possibilities.
I catch myself looking at the way his hand moves across a page—sure and fluid and visionary—and I hate that my chest feels tight with something almost like… admiration.
By late afternoon, my brain’s fried and my hands ache. But my ideas are sharper than they’ve been in months.
Then I hit the wall.
His cell rings, and unlike all the times he’s let it go to voicemail before, surprisingly, he takes this one. With one arm around my waist he sets me on my feet, smirking when he glances down at the wet patch I’ve left on his crotch.
Flames devour my face and the second he strolls to the window to answer the call, I duck into the adjoining bathroom that opens directly from his studio.
I lock the door and the quiet presses in, and before I know it, I’m sitting on the cool marble edge of the toilet with my head in my hands.
The tears come fast—half frustration, half exhaustion, and something deeper I don’t want to name.
The knock is soft but insistent. Then his voice rumbles through the solid wood. “Scarlett.”
I swipe at my cheeks, trying to sound normal. “I’m fine?—”
The lock clicks from the outside, and he’s suddenly there, filling the doorway, those searing eyes zeroing in on me, taking in my slightly blotched cheeks, my puffy eyes.
I stiffen. “Do you ever respect privacy?”
“No.” He steps inside, closing the door behind him. “Especially not yours.”
Two strides and his hands are on me, pulling me up, tucking me against his chest. I want to push him away, but the moment I feel the steady rise and fall of his breathing, the fight drains out of me.
One hand glides from nape to waist and back up again but this time he’s soothing, not torturing, and damn it, I shouldn’t but I melt deeper into him.
“Talk to me, princess,” he croons.
“Why do you hate me?” I whisper.
He laughs, but the sound is brittle, almost disbelieving. His eyes flare as if I’ve just insulted the foundations of his being. “Hate you? I don’t fucking hate you. If I resent anyone, it’s Victor.”
“Your dad? Why?”
His jaw clenches, a muscle ticking hard for several seconds.
“Because, as irrational as it is, he met you first. He claimed your mother, and by society’s fucked-up extension, he claimed you.
Immediately putting you out of my reach.
And all because I refused to go to some boring as shit gala with him.
If I’d gone…” He inhales, long and sharp through his nose, fury and regret braided in every breath.
“We’d be together already. I wouldn’t have had to wait four fucking years to do this. ”
Serendipity at its finest. Because if I hadn’t encouraged Mom to attend that gala—my bid to get her out of mourning my dad after he passed the year before—and offered myself as her plus one, neither of us would’ve been there at all.
We both sit with that for a moment, then he lifts my chin with is fingers. “Any more burning questions you want answers to?” he asks but I see his fierce gaze searching, probing beneath my skin.
I want to ask him what ‘this’ entails, but I don’t have the energy.
So I shake my head. “I don’t think I can take anymore…revelations. This day was… insane,” I choke out, balling my fist against his chest. “ You’re insane. This whole place—” My voice cracks, and a laugh gets tangled in the sob. “I can’t decide if I want to quit or kill you or… keep going.”
His lips brush my hair. “Good. That means I’m doing it right.”
When my tears dry, he disappears for a moment and returns with my blouse and skirt, freshly pressed from God knows where. He helps me dress like I’m fragile and precious—two things I’ve never been to him.
When I’m buttoned up, his gaze lingers. “You look fucking sexy.”
My throat tightens for an entirely different reason. “Did I… do good?” I’m not even sure what I’m asking about and I want to kick myself for the weakness, but I hold my breath for an answer all the same.
The pause is deliberate. Calculated. “You did okay. But there’s more in you, Scarlett. Vastly more. And I’m going to mine every last drop of it until you shine brighter than a fucking diamond.”