A Little Too Far (3 page)

“Hmm . . .” With my cheek pressed against his muscled chest, I feel Trent’s hmm more than I hear it. “Let me guess: He’s sorry and he wants you back.”

“He still has the ring.”

He combs his fingers gently through my hair, and goose bumps prickle my scalp. “And you’re thinking about it.”

“Does that make me totally sick?”

“Yes. I think it does.”

I shove away from him but then see the smile in his eyes. “I miss being with him . . . the feeling like we belong together. I miss being that close to someone.”

“You still have me,” he says with a wink.

I narrow my eyes at him. “And I miss the sex.”

His eyebrows go up. “He was that good?”

I shrug. “I don’t have anything to compare him with, but when we were together, I knew he loved me. I guess that’s what I miss.”

He pulls me back into his strong arms. “Love pretty much blows, but, for what it’s worth, I think you’ll regret it if you take him back.”

“What if it was just a mistake? He says he won’t do it again.” Part of me is desperate to believe it, but as I say it, I realize I don’t.

“Can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

I pull away and look at him. “Have you ever cheated on anyone?”

He contemplates that for a second. “I’m not going to say I haven’t pissed a lot of girls off, but I prefer to do it honorably. If it’s just a hookup, I make sure they know that before anything happens, and if I’m with someone and I want to hook up with someone new, I break up with the one I’m with first.”

I roll my eyes. “So chivalrous.”

“Say what you will, but I’ve never been anything less than straight up with any girl I’ve ever been with. I’ve never lied or gone behind anyone’s back. Ever.”

As much as it sounds like it would suck to be one of his many hookups or dumpees, it’s hard to argue his point.

He pulls away from me, and I shiver, suddenly cold. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.” He stands and moves to the door, then gives me his signature lazy smile before disappearing into the hall.

I grab a tissue from the box on my nightstand, blotting my eyes and smearing off my ruined mascara, and a few minutes later Trent is back with two tumblers, each with about an inch of dark amber liquid in it.

“Drowning sorrows this big calls for a double shot of Randy’s scotch,” he says, handing me a glass. “Good thing your dad springs for the good stuff.”

We both knock it back, and my face pinches involuntarily. But once I’m past the initial burn, I feel my insides start to warm.

“Warcraft?” he asks with a nod at my TV.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Nothing like a good troll slaughter to help you forget all your shit.” He gets the game all queued up, and, by the time he hands me my remote, I’m starting to feel all warm and gooey inside from the scotch. I slide back and lean into the stack of pillows on the headboard.

Our first quest involves more blood than usual. My avatar, Galidrod the elf, powers through a troll barrage easily. I imagine Rick’s face on each one as I shoot them, and they explode in a shower of purple guts. It’s totally therapeutic. But then Trent’s avatar, who he for some reason made human and named Jethro, is wounded as he takes out the last orc, and Galidrod, who, through my unparalleled Warcraft prowess, has accumulated massive healing powers, has to save him.

“So, what should I do?” I ask once Jethro is up to full strength again.

“Run like hell.”

“But I miss him.”

Trent shakes his head and pauses the game. “You don’t miss him. You miss the
idea
of him.”

I set my remote on the nightstand and turn on my hip, facing him. “What does that even mean?”

He lifts my legs and loops them over his, rubbing his palm against the grain of the three-day stubble on my calf. “You were together for a long time. You thought you’d be together forever. It was what you knew, and now you’re out of your comfort zone. It’s easy to want to go back to the safety net.”

He just so totally hit it on the head. I want the safety net. But the problem is, the safety net has a huge freaking hole in it now. It’ll dump me on my head if I trust it.

But it still hurts.

“You’re right. I miss the idea of him.”

“It sucks,” he says with a small nod.

I sigh and shift deeper into the pillows. “But what if he was supposed to be The One?”

“He wasn’t.”

“How do you know?”

His hand pauses on my leg, midstroke. “Because he never deserved you.”

“What if I never find anyone else?”

He stares into my eyes for what has to be a full minute before saying, “You will.”

An electric tingle zings through my insides, and the next thing I know, his lips are pressing against mine. I don’t even know who made the move.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Kissing Trent is like sticking my toe in the ocean and suddenly being in over my head. I’m drowning in him. I don’t know whether it’s him or the scotch, but as his tongue edges my mouth and slips through my lips, desperation like I’ve never felt before swells inside me. Years of suppressed desire rear up, and, suddenly, I’m starving for him. The only thing I know for sure is, if I don’t have him right now, I’ll die.

My heart gallops in my chest as I slide down on the bed and pull him down with me.

“Shit, Lexie,” he breathes between kisses. “What are we doing?”

I grab fistfuls of his thick brown curls and pull him to me, smothering the question on his lips with another kiss.

He doesn’t resist when I pull off his shirt, then mine. He doesn’t try to stop me when I wiggle out of my shorts and thong and kick them to the floor. He moans deep in his throat as my fingers trail over his cut abs and pop the button of his jeans. And when my hand slides in under his waistband and finds his erection, he stops breathing altogether.

Never during any of it, even once we’re both naked on my bed, does any part of me feel like we shouldn’t be doing this. All of a sudden, he isn’t my stepbrother. He’s everything I’ve ever needed.

Chapter Three

H
IS TOUCH IS
gentle, but I can feel the same desperation in it as fills me. I’ve never wanted anything so much.

And he wants me too.

My fingers trace the lines of his defined biceps and pecs, down his abs, and through the tuft of dark hair to his erection. He moans my name again when I squeeze hard and rub, and his hand trails slowly across my hip to the inside of my thigh. I gasp, and all the muscles in my groin tighten around his fingers as they slip inside me. He withdraws a wet fingertip and strokes my clit, and when he presses, fireworks explode inside, and I moan. I have just a second to think that he’s way more experienced than me before I can’t think at all. His finger flicks, and I let out another gasp and arch up as he takes my left breast into his mouth. He rolls his tongue over my nipple, and goose bumps skitter over my entire body. His hot breath scorches my skin as his mouth and tongue explore, turning my whole body into one throbbing nerve ending.

His tongue finds my belly button on his way lower, and he brushes his fingertips up the inside of my thigh. They slide inside me again as he trails his lips and tongue along the sensitive skin there, then his mouth is on me. His tongue swirls over my clit and sends a series of pulsing shock waves through me. I hear my moan as it escalates into a mewl, but there’s nothing I can do to stop it. When he twists his fingers deep inside me and sucks my clit, my head spins, and I think for sure that I must be dying.

“Oh, God,” I gasp when he sucks again, harder. All I can feel is Trent and the magic he works with his fingers and mouth, bringing me higher and higher. The sounds rolling out of the deepest part of me don’t even sound human anymore as I hit the peak of this excruciating ecstasy somewhere around Jupiter. I’m panting for breath, and stars flash in my eyes from lack of oxygen. He gives one last suck, and I scream as I’m plummeted off the precipice and free-fall back to Earth.

I have a few condoms in the drawer of my nightstand, and I have just enough presence of mind to pull one out and tear it open.

“Here,” I breathe, as he kisses his way back to my mouth.

Heat pulses through me with the rhythm of the throbbing ache between my legs. The lights are on, and I can see every detail as he rolls the condom on, including how much bigger he is than Rick. I never realized until this second that men’s packages came in such different sizes. When he’s ready, he rolls on top of me and looks down at me with a question in his eyes. I feel his firmness pressing against the inside of my thigh and align my hips with his. His moan when my fingers sweep down his back and pull him tighter against me sends fire through my veins. The very tip of his thickness enters me, and I’m so ready for the rest of him that I let out a whimper when he stops. For a second, he doesn’t move, every muscle in his body taut as he fights with himself. His tortured gaze holds mine. “God, Lexie,” he says, but it’s strangled. “God,” he breathes again, squeezing his eyes shut.

Before he can change his mind, I rock my hips against his, taking him all the way into me. His face pinches as he sucks in a sharp breath, then lets out an agonized groan.

He fills me completely, stretching me in a way that heightens every sensation, so when he finally gives in and grasps my hips, thrusting himself deep inside me, I cry out in the most sublime pain I’ve ever experienced. I rock against him as he pumps, at first excruciatingly slowly, but then harder and faster. His muscles ripple under smooth skin with the motion, and my hands glide over them, memorizing every detail. Pressure in my groin builds like a brewing volcano with each thrust until I feel sure I’m going to erupt.

I flip us so I’m on top and sit up, straddling him. I trace a finger along the lines of the tattoo over his heart—the kanji symbol for knowledge—as he grasps my thighs and rolls his hips underneath me. I helped him pick out the pattern for his ink when he turned eighteen. I got a matching one seven months later, when I turned eighteen.

His hips roll under mine, and his pecs flex under my fingers as his hands slide up to my hips, pulling me harder against him. I trail my fingers down his chest to his cut abs. He was buff in high school, but I remember his saying when he started college that scholarship athletes spend more time training and in the gym than they do in class. The results are spectacular.

As I ride him, his thumb finds my clit and rubs circles. He’s soft and slow at first, but he rubs harder and faster as my moans escalate to actual gasps of,
Oh, God!

I’m making a lot of noise. I might even have screamed at him to fuck me harder. All I know is that he does until everything inside me explodes in a burst of pure bliss. At the same instant that he lets out an animal growl, I go limp on top of him, breathing hard. We lie here for a long time as we catch our collective breath.

As strange as it should feel to be here with Trent like this, it doesn’t. I’m not totally immune to his charms, and since we first met, there’s been an underlying current of sexual tension between us. Now that we’ve done it, released the beast, I feel more content than I remember ever feeling before. It feels right, like we fit perfectly, his body and mine—like this is where we’ve always belonged, in each other’s arms.

Finally, he opens his eyes and looks at me. “Are you okay? I was a little . . . rough.”

“I’m amazing,” I say, pressing a kiss to his lips.

His tongue circles my lips, and I open wide, swirling my tongue with his and kissing him like my life depends on it. He moans softly, and when I pull back, a lazy smile creeps across his perfect lips. “So, what happens now?”

And that’s when I come crashing back to Earth—and reality.

I just had totally mind-blowing sex with my stepbrother.

And I’m leaving for Rome in two days.

Which is a good thing because I just had totally mind-blowing sex with my stepbrother.

He’s still inside me, and all I can think is,
Oh God
.
What did I do?

I’m just about to open my mouth to say . . . I have no idea what, when his eyes widen and he dumps me on the bed and leaps off it. He’s out the door in less time than it takes my racing heart to beat.

Does he know what I was thinking—that what we just did is a hot mess? But then I hear it. The garage door.

Dad and Julie.

I get up and kick Trent’s clothes under my bed. The scotch glasses clank together as I toss them under too, and I’m fairly certain at least one of them breaks. I grab my clothes off the floor and yank them on, but I get my tanks on backward.

“Lexie!” Julie yells up the stairs.

“Coming!” I holler back as I spin my shirts and stick my arms through.

I cringe in the mirror over my dresser, smoothing my yes-I-just-had-mind-blowing-sex hair and unsmudging the mascara under my eyes, then rip open the door.

Julie looks up at me from the bottom of the stairs, and suddenly I go all paranoid. Can she tell? Does she know her son just fucked my brains out? But she doesn’t look alarmed, or horrified, or disgusted, or any of the things I know she would if she’d heard us.

Tall and slender, she’s a classic beauty. I’ve seen pictures of my mom, and they have some things in common—like a narrow face and long, wavy, blond hair, which Julie usually wears twisted onto the back of her head in a messy bun, as it is now. But where Julie has some of the warmest brown eyes I’ve ever seen (something Trent got from her), Mom had green eyes—which I inherited, along with her dirty blond hair, a-little-too-full lips, and fair skin. Even at forty-five, Julie could be a model. She’s that stunning. As beautiful as both she and Trent are, though, it’s obvious from Trent’s strong jaw, thick brown hair, and skin that bronzes if he just thinks about the sun, that the deep end of his gene pool came from his father, whom I’ve only seen in pictures.

“I got you some things for Rome!” she announces. “Have you started packing?”

“Not yet,” I answer with a glance back at Trent’s closed door before trudging down the stairs to where she stands. “What did you get?”

“All the tour books say American food is hard to come by and very expensive there.”

“Which is why I was planning on eating Italian food,” I say warily.

“I just picked up a few of your favorites . . .” She waves a hand at the kitchen, where I hear Dad crashing around, unpacking groceries. “Nonperishable things that are easy to pack. Come on,” she says, turning for the kitchen.

I chew the inside of my cheek with worry as I follow her into the kitchen, and she sends me back to my room a few minutes later with a grocery bag full of pretzels, Skittles, Pringles, Saltines, and a small jar of peanut butter. “Dinner will be ready in half an hour,” she calls to me as I make my way up the stairs.

My stomach tightens at the thought of food . . . and at the thought of eating it at a table with Trent. I stop and turn around. “I ate a super late lunch with Sam and Katie. I think I’m just going to pack and go to bed.”

Her forehead scrunches as she takes a few steps toward me. “You’re not getting sick, are you?”

“No, Julie. I’m just not hungry.”

She purses her lips like she wants to argue, but finally says, “Fine. But let Trent know we’re eating soon.”

I nod and climb the last few stairs.

Trent is picking at his acoustic guitar in a way that I know means he’s writing something new. I love to watch his creative process—how it starts with a simple melody that blooms into a rich harmony, then he adds lyrics, and it’s a whole, hauntingly beautiful song. I used to sit on the floor in his room with my homework or my sketchpad or whatever for hours, just listening. There is this one song he wrote when we were sixteen that he titled “Someone, Somehow.” It’s the tune he always hums to me when I’m sad. He says it’s about how fate sent him the one person on this planet who truly understands him.

That person is me.

The chorus is what always gets to me.

You fill the hollow places life has left behind.

And now your soul is tangled into mine.

When I needed an angel you were there,

you, to all my secrets I bare.

I needed you then,

and I need you now.

Someone, somehow.

I’ll never forget the first time he sat on the edge of my bed and played it for me. I cried like a baby, and he held me. We woke up curled together in a ball under my sheets the next morning, and he kissed my cheek and told me he loved me.

That was probably the best night of my life.

I yearn to go listen—to see what this melody will bloom into. But I don’t. I don’t knock on his door. I don’t even go near it. Instead, I stand in mine and call down the hall, “Dinner’s on in thirty,” then close my door in case he opens his.

I toss and turn all night as I lie here listening for any sound from the room next door, torn between wanting to hear Trent tiptoeing toward my door and dreading hearing him tiptoeing toward my door. I can’t explain why, but I get up in the middle of the night and fish his T-shirt out from under the bed. I tug it on, then climb back into bed. As I lie here wrapped in his scent—something warm and a little spicy that’s just Trent—I fantasize about going to him.

I don’t. I can’t.

I wake up early, and the first thing I do is listen for him. When I don’t hear anything, I crawl out of bed, hugging his T-shirt around me, and grab my iPad. I bring it back to bed with me and type,
Is it illegal to have sex with your stepbrother
into the search window.

The consensus on wiki.answers.com and answers.yahoo.com is that it’s disgusting but not illegal, so at least that’s something. But I can’t stop thinking about it. So much so that Rick has barely crossed my mind since it happened—and then only to realize how much more Trent made me feel in twenty minutes than Rick ever did.

I pull my sketchpad off my nightstand and flip to my work in progress to settle my frazzled nerves. It has always fascinated me how much a single expression can say, and my sketchbook is full of people with expressions I could never describe in words. This one’s a pregnant woman sitting on a park bench. I saw her there a few days ago when I was bored and had taken my sketchpad to the park. Her eyes were on a little boy on the jungle gym, but she was talking in hushed tones to her baby bump. She wasn’t smiling, but there was something about her expression that struck me. I can’t quite capture it.

I erase some of the shading around her face and start again as I listen intently through my wall for any sign of Trent. Finally, around eleven, I hear him rustling around in his room. His door clicks open a few minutes later, and I hear him stride past my door on his way to the stairs.

“Mom!” he calls, “I’m going to the gym!” Then the front door opens, and my window rattles as it slams closed.

I bunch his T-shirt up to my nose and watch out my window as he straps his duffel onto the back of his bike. He swings a leg over the seat, tugs on his helmet, then flicks the engine to life. I duck behind my window frame when his head turns in my direction, but a second later, he hits the throttle and rockets off, leaving another skid mark in the driveway. I move back to the window and listen until I can’t hear the roar of his engine anymore. When he’s gone, I drop onto my bed with my arm over my eyes and just lie here, remembering. I remember the feel of his hungry mouth moving on mine; the way his fingers knew my body—played it perfectly, just like it was his guitar; how he filled me to overflowing, both physically and emotionally.

Why do I feel like I’m suffocating? Is it because of what happened? Or because it can’t happen again?

I jump and sit up when Julie knocks on my door. The hinges creak as she opens it and pokes her head through. “Your father and I were wondering if you want anything special for your last dinner in the US of A. We could go out or whatever you want.”

I cross my arms over my chest so she hopefully won’t recognize Trent’s Loyola Wrestling T-shirt. “Olive Garden,” I say, then crack a shaky smile.