NEVER KISS A STRANGER (A Stepbrother Romance) Read online

  I tried changing the subject. “Where’s our server? I’m starving.”

  A tall drink of water with straight black hair sauntered past our table, immediately bringing up an image of my ex, Nicola “Nikki” DeSoto. Nikki was a half-Dutch, half-Spanish model-slash-actress with bee stung lips and a smile that hardened my cock in mere seconds. She was also bat-shit crazy and had ruined all future relationships for me. I’d never been so sprung for a girl before I met her. I’d have moved heaven and earth, crossed oceans, and climbed mountains for her. She’d made me feel like a million bucks. I was fully convinced that I was going to marry her someday.

  And then I found out she was nothing but a fucking liar. Addicted to sex and fame, she’d been sleeping her way to the top for the entirety of our relationship, all in the name of getting ahead. Never mind that she was lying in my arms at night and whispering in my ear about all the ways she loved me. She’d painted a beautiful portrait of the life we were going to live.

  Together.

  Forever.

  She promised.

  It turned out all of it was a lie. It’d been years, and I still couldn’t figure out how something that felt so real could actually be nothing more than a desert mirage.

  And then my mom died. The only woman who’d ever truly loved me decided her life wasn’t worth living anymore and took it upon herself to end her suffering. She’d battled depression before, even moving to the sunniest parts of the country to get hefty doses of Vitamin D, as if that were all she needed. But even doped up on Zoloft and sunshine, it wasn’t enough to dull the pain. All the colors in the world weren’t sufficient to cover up the gray in her life. If you asked me, though, she died of a broken heart. She never really got over my dad leaving her.

  In the end, she left me a multi-million dollar life insurance policy, as if that would make up for it.

  “What’s her name?” my aunt asked. “That girl you were talking to.”

  “Addison,” I said. My eyes searched the room for our server. I didn’t want to talk about the piece of ass I was trying to bang as if she were some nice girl I was courting.

  “What does she do for a living?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But she’s your friend. You don’t know?”

  “She’s a new friend.”

  My aunt was relentless. Then again, she didn’t have any kids and I didn’t have a mother anymore. I supposed everyone needed someone like her in their lives. She made no bones about disliking the fact that I was a multi-millionaire in his twenties living in one of the most exciting cities in the world. She was quite certain that someone would swindle away my hard-earned cash or that I’d meet a gold digger who’d clean me out.

  I supposed she didn’t know me as well as she thought she did. If she did, she’d know that would never happen in a million years.

  “What is she like?” Aunt Laura pried.

  “I’m still figuring her out,” I said. “Anyway, how’s work?”

  “Oh, same old,” she said with an eye roll as she proceeded to ramble on about her maniacal boss and the latest with her archrival, Kathy. As she went off on a tangent, I focused my gaze on the blonde beauty sitting across the room. “Wilder. Wilder, are you listening? Did you hear what I said? Your dad is getting married again. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  I jerked my attention back toward my aunt. “Must have slipped my mind.”

  “When will it end? He’s becoming a joke to the family,” she huffed. My dad was her younger brother, and they got along like oil and water. She kept tabs on him from afar, though, which I was certain meant she still cared about him. “Just met some woman in Kentucky. I hear they might run off to Vegas and do one of those God-awful drive-thru weddings.”

  “That’s Vince for you,” I laughed. He’d called me a couple weeks before to share the news, and I feigned excitement for him. But it was his fifth wife in fifteen years. It got old a couple wives ago. At this point, he was just making a mockery out of the whole marriage thing.

  “What’s her name?” my aunt asked. “Tammy Sue? Tammy Rae?”

  “Tammy Lynn,” I said. “As I recall.”

  “Where’s he living now? Kentucky? How’d he end up there?”

  “He says the real estate market’s good there.” I shrugged and grabbed a slice of warm focaccia bread from the basket between us. I’d spent my summers working in his real estate office and learning a thing or two about the business, which was how I knew exactly what to do with the millions of dollars I’d inherited from my mother when she passed. I threw it all into real estate investments.

  The rest was history.

  I drummed my fingers on the marble counter of my kitchen island. Seven o’clock on Friday and not a peep from Wilder all day. I expected something. Anything but radio silence.

  I’d kept my night clear on the off chance I decided to take him up on his offer.

  Oh, he was good. He knew exactly what he was doing.

  I undocked myself from the island and paced my apartment. My thoughts raced, changing direction with each step. My career-oriented mind and my sexually-depraved body were at odds, and a war was being waged.

  I closed my eyes as I tried to remember what he felt like inside me. How good it felt to have pure, uncomplicated sex with a man and walk away feeling satisfied. I was in independent woman. There was no shame in going out and getting laid like a man would. I just had to make sure my heart knew the difference.

  “What’s one night a week?” my body asked.

  “You know one night will turn into two and two into three, and before you know it, you’ll be spending every waking hour with him. And when you’re not with him, you’ll wish you were. And when he decides he’s done with you, it’ll hurt worse than anything you’ve ever felt before all because you let yourself get attached,” my brain fired back.

  Fuck. Those two could go at it all night, and I needed my beauty rest. I grabbed a notebook from my meticulously organized junk drawer and a black ink pen and drew a “T” across the paper.

  A pros and cons list. That ought to solve it, right? Ugh. What am I doing?

  I tore the paper from the pad and crumpled it up and reached for my phone, firing off a text.

  YOU WIN.

  Three minutes later, he called me. “I hate texting. You forget that, lovely?”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “I win?”

  “You win,” I sighed. “But on my terms. So really, I win too.”

  “Your terms are?”

  “No strings. No emotions. I don’t even want to know your last name. I don’t want to know where you’re from or where you went to school. I don’t want to know what your favorite color is or if you secretly love superhero movies. I don’t want to know what you do for a living. Don’t ask me to run out and get pancakes with you after we fuck. Don’t call me at work. And don’t kiss me like you love me.”

  “Jesus, lovely.” I heard him breathe into the phone. “What the fuck did he do to you?”

  “Who?”

  “The last guy.”

  I ignored his question. It was none of his business, and we weren’t supposed to get to know each other. “You’re nothing more than a hard cock attached to a ridiculously attractive man, and I’m nothing more than an exquisite pussy for you to please one night a week. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

  His silence scared me.

  “Meet me in an hour,” he said at last. “Same place.”

  * * *

  The door to the hotel suite flew open, and seconds later Wilder pulled me inside. Slamming the door, he pressed me up against it, leaning into me as his lips covered mine. His hands searched my hair, gripping hold of me by the back of my neck as he kissed me hard.

  “I knew you’d come around,” he growled as he breathed me in. He stepped back and unbuttoned my coat and slipped it off my shoulders. “What are you waiting for, lovely? I want you naked and on that bed. Now. Or else.”

  “Or else what?” I sas
sed.

  He scooped me up in his arms the way a groom might carry his bride and tossed me on the bed, climbing on top of me. I rolled to my stomach, pulling my hair over my shoulder. His full lips pressed into my nape as his hands slid beneath my body, gliding down to my hips where he tugged on my leggings until my thong-covered ass was exposed.

  The way he worshipped my body with ease.

  How natural it felt to be in bed with him.

  How easy it was to hop in a cab and go to him simply because he wanted me to.

  It was happening already. I could feel it. My resolve and intentions were melting away like cotton candy on my tongue.

  My body demanded that my head to go on auto-pilot as Wilder had his way with me that night. It forced me to push away every thought that floated into it and just feel. I focused on the way the sheets felt as I clung to them. I concentrated on the intense fusion of pain and pleasure that seared through me as he slid himself in and out. I absorbed the sensation of his fingers raking my scalp as he gathered my hair into his hand and pulled it taut.

  When it was all over, Wilder flung himself on the bed, arms spread wide as his chest heaved up and down under the pale glow of the moon. Soft beads of spring rain hit the windows, providing a relaxing soundtrack to lull us down from our euphoric heights.

  And I scrambled out of the tangled covers, searching for my clothes in the dark before I had to look at him.

  The light clicked on behind me. “You’re leaving already?”

  “I have a commitment at nine o’clock tomorrow. Some errands to run before that. Laundry…” I rambled on, giving a hundred reasons why I couldn’t stay, none of which included the fact that I immensely enjoyed our time together and it scared the hell out of me.

  Wilder slipped a muscled leg out of bed and raked his hand through his chocolate hair. “God, it must be exhausting being you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Do you ever just loosen up? Enjoy yourself a little?”

  I tugged my pants on. “Isn’t that what we just did?”

  “What we did,” he said with a smirk, “was the equivalent of lifting weights and then slamming an entire chocolate cake.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “You can’t lose yourself in these sheets with me for an hour and then flip a switch and go right back to having a stick up your ass. Completely defeats the purpose.”

  “I’m not going to stay and cuddle with you.”

  He laughed. “Nor do I want you to. I’m not your boyfriend.”

  “Okay, so what’s wrong with me leaving?” I shrugged. “Besides, the longer I stay, the more things I might let slip about me, and we can’t have you getting to know me. I’d really hate to break your heart someday.”

  I threw him a wink and stepped away to grab my coat from the back of a chair. He didn’t hang it up that time, but at least he’d had the decency to keep it off the hotel carpet.

  Wilder shuffled across the room naked as the day he was born, like it was his preferred state, and stood before me.

  “I promise you, I’m incapable of falling in love with anyone,” he said, a hint of sadness flickering in his eyes. “You have nothing to worry about.”

  “What a relief,” I said, forcing a smile and hating the fact that I wanted to know more. I wanted to know who had hurt him as bad as Kyle had hurt me.

  “Let’s just be who we are,” he said. “You don’t have to be so guarded. We’re on the same page, you and me. Cut from the same cloth.”

  He reached for the curled ends of my silken hair, twisting a strand around his fingers before letting it fall.

  “Just don’t feel like you need to rush out every time I fuck you,” he said. “You can stay for a minute. Take your time getting dressed. Tell me how shitty your day was until you came to see me.”

  I hung my head. He had a point.

  “You kind of make me feel cheap,” he teased. “I’m insulted.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve never been in my shoes before,” I said.

  He ran his fingers across his lips as if to zip them and twisted them at the corner, locking the secret away.

  “I’ll never tell,” he said. “Believe it or not, I’m not as big of a man whore as you think I am.”

  I fished around in my purse and pulled out my phone. “I better call for a cab now. I really need to get going.”

  “See you next Friday, lovely.”

  She was perfect. Abso-fucking-lutely perfect. Her ripe ass. Her perky breasts. The way she didn’t expect me to send her flowers after an amazing night of sex. The way she didn’t turn into an emotional ball of mush after I fucked her. She didn’t need to cuddle or be reassured that everything was cool with us. She didn’t cry or get weird or all sentimental.

  She let me dominate her naked, beautiful body, giving herself to me as we both enjoyed the hell out of ourselves.

  I’d been looking for someone like her for years. No muss, no fuss. No commitment. No expectations. No reverse psychology mindfuck bullshit.

  I was supposed to be able to fuck her sideways and not think about her again until the next week. I was supposed to go about my days like a man who got laid on a regular basis and didn’t give a fuck about where his next lay was going to come from because he already knew.

  But it didn’t happen like that. I couldn’t get her out of my mind. The taste of her cherry lips. The scent of her rose perfume. The way her alabaster skin felt under my palms.

  I sat in my office chair Monday morning, my body aching with a restlessness that stemmed from the fact that my thoughts didn’t make sense. I picked up my phone and called her.

  “You’re not supposed to call me when I’m working,” she answered. “Did I leave something at the hotel?”

  “Meet me again,” I said. “Lunch. I can get another hotel room.”

  “Can’t. I’m meeting my sister for lunch.”

  “Cancel.”

  “She’d kill me. I never cancel on her.”

  “Tonight,” I said. “After work.”

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked with a hint of amusement in her tone. “You’re not supposed to do this. We talked about this, remember? Once a week. One hour.”

  “I may have agreed to those terms and conditions, but my cock didn’t sign off on it,” I argued. “And I don’t know if that exquisite pussy of yours did, either.”

  “Wilder,” she shushed me. “I’m. At. Work.”

  “So tonight, then?”

  “I have a to-do list a mile long,” she countered. “I don’t have time to run up to Midtown and—”

  “Then I’ll come to you.”

  “Maybe I don’t want you knowing where I live.”

  “Then you come to me.”

  “You’re not giving up, are you?”

  “Never.”

  “I really do have things to do tonight.” Her voice trailed as her defense faded. I could only hope she was thinking about my cock and the things it could do. “You can come over. One hour. Eight o’clock. You have to be gone by nine.”

  She rattled off her address and hung up.

  Funny. We both lived in SoHo all this time.

  * * *

  That night, I knocked on a pristine, white door with APT 3B in gold lettering above the peephole.

  “You’re early,” she said as soon as she answered.

  I glanced at my watch. “Maybe ten minutes.”

  She stood between the door and the frame, looking me up and down. I got the feeling she didn’t have a lot of people over. Shit. She probably didn’t let a lot of people into her world.

  “If I let you in,” she said, her blue eyes softening with a thin veil of vulnerability, “just please don’t break anything, okay?”

  I got the feeling she wasn’t talking about things. Not entirely, anyway. I stepped past her.

  “Is this Heaven?” Everything was white or cream or some variation thereof. I was quite certain I was standing in the middle of the m
ost immaculately unspoiled apartment in all of lower Manhattan.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Does anyone even live here?” There wasn’t a speck of dust to be found. I slipped my shoes off. “This looks like a model unit. You can’t possibly live here.”

  “It’s not a model.” She rolled her eyes and took my jacket, hanging it in a closet filled with a vast array of coats and jackets in shades of creams, grays, and blacks. “I live here.”

  I’d been too distracted to notice she’d been standing there in a peach silk robe the entire time, her hair piled high on top of her head. Full face of makeup, though. Of course. She couldn’t let her guard down to save her life.

  She shot me a sexy side smirk as I came into her space, tugging on the sash around her waist until her robe fell open.

  “Oh, God,” I moaned, biting my lip. Nothing underneath. “I love a girl who shows up ready to go.”

  I scooped her up, grabbing her lush ass as she wrapped her thighs around my hips.

  She pointed. “Down the hall.” I buried my head in the inviting space of her soft cleavage as I followed her directions.

  “I’ve been waiting for this all day,” I whispered as I laid her down softly on the bed. Her knees clenched together, though she probably didn’t realize she was doing it. I placed a hand on her left knee, then slid down between her thighs and parted her until she was in full bloom. As I lowered myself to taste her arousal she melted herself into the thick blankets, giving herself to me once more.

  * * *

  A couple hours later, I lay awake in my own bed just blocks from Addison’s place. I’d left the moment we were finished, not wanting to overstay my welcome. It was maybe eleven, and I couldn’t sleep. My mind kept replaying my hour with her. I’d filled the entire hour, too. I didn’t want to waste a single moment with that luxurious pussy of hers.

  My phone buzzed on my nightstand. A text from Addison asking if I was still awake.

  I waited a moment before calling her back. “You know I don’t text.”