Stepbrother HOT! (The Stepbrother Romance Series - Book #3) Read online

  STEPBROTHER HOT!

  The Stepbrother Romance Series Book #3

  BAD BOY FRAT

  By Claire Adams

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 Claire Adams

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  Chapter One

  For a long moment, it felt as though my heart had stopped in my chest—my mom was frozen in place, I was frozen, and Jaxon was frozen. It was as if everything had just completely stopped. This had to be an awful dream; I had to still be asleep. I’d wake up in a second and it would just be me in bed with Jaxon, with plenty of time for him to run back to his room.

  But before I could say anything, before I could wake up from the nightmare, Mom closed her half-open mouth and blinked twice, slowly, before closing the door. I heard her steps moving away quickly. Next to me, Jaxon sat up, wide-awake. I was still in shock as I watched him snatch his boxers up off of the floor and pull them on, hurrying to my door. He opened it and then it closed behind him before I could even get myself enough out of shock to say something—anything. It seemed as if it had all taken place in a matter of maybe two seconds; one moment my mom was there, and Jaxon was there, the next instant I was all alone, naked in my bed.

  I sat in my bed, staring at nothing at all, numb all over. My heart was pounding, instead of being stopped in my chest. My brain started to slowly unfreeze. Shit. My mom had just walked into my room and seen me and my new step-brother in bed together naked. There was absolutely no way that she wouldn’t know what we had done. After days of trying to hide that we knew each other, that we were attracted to each other, it had all come tumbling down around my head. Mom had seen me naked with her step-son. “Shit. Shit shit shit shit.” I launched myself out of the bed and searched all over the floor, scrambling to find the pajamas I’d been wearing the night before when Jaxon came into my room. It was still early—crazy early, the time of morning when only my mom and I woke up. I could get to the kitchen; get her to understand what had happened.

  I managed to get my clothes on, not even bothering to try and find my panties—I didn’t have time to figure out where they were. I didn’t even look in the mirror. I just got out of my room as quickly as I could and made a beeline for the kitchen. I didn’t even know for sure that my mom was there; she might have gone back to Bob, to tell him what she had seen. She had to be in the kitchen. She had to be willing to listen to me.

  I turned the corner and stepped through the open doorway and there she was, still in her robe, loading up the coffee maker to brew a pot. “Mom!” I tried to keep my voice low but I was so relieved that she was actually there and that I’d get a chance to talk to her. Mom looked up and glanced at me, her cheeks red and the skin around her eyes tense. She went back to setting up the coffee pot as if she hadn’t even heard me.

  “Good morning, Mia,” she said. “Want some coffee?” I walked around the kitchen island.

  “Yeah, sure,” I said. My heart was still pounding in my chest. There was no way that my mom could have possibly missed the significance of me being naked in a bed with Jaxon; she was not naïve. She had to know what we had been doing. She couldn’t just pretend like she hadn’t been at my door just a few minutes before. “Mom, we need to talk.”

  Mom turned away from me, turning on the coffee grinder and shaking it. “I think we’re going to need a lot of coffee,” she said, still not looking in my direction, speaking over the buzzing, shattering sounds of the grinder. “Bob isn’t really and early riser and today’s going to be a long day with Thanksgiving and all.”

  When she finally finished grinding the coffee I tried again. “We need to talk, Mom. Look at me. Please.” Instead, Mom turned away from me again, going into the fridge. She rummaged around, as if she was searching—in spite of the fact that the milk was front and center. I took a deep breath and exhaled. “Mom.”

  “What do you want for breakfast?” I groaned and leaned against the counter.

  “Mom, we have to talk about what just happened.” Finally, Mom turned and looked at me, for just a second—before beginning to pull things out of the fridge—eggs, bacon, fruit.

  “No, we do not have to talk about what just happened,” she said, still not looking at me.

  “We do! Mom, I—I shouldn’t have lied to you, I know that, but I knew Jaxon from school, and—and I was attracted to him before we even knew you and Bob were dating—I wouldn’t just…” I tried to explain, tried to come up with the words to tell her what had happened between Jaxon and me—but they tumbled out in pieces, all over the place, making no sense. Mom kept moving, kept her back turned to me. “Are you even listening to me Mom?” I wanted to grab her—I wanted to scream at her until she couldn’t help but hear me, but I was frozen in place.

  Mom turned around and took a deep breath. “Mia, we’re not going to talk about it at all.” She pressed her lips together and I could see how upset she was—how overwhelmed by it all. “I am going to pretend like I didn’t see anything, and we are going to get through the rest of this vacation as if it never happened.” I sighed. At least for now, it was easy to tell that there was absolutely no getting through to her.

  “Fine,” I said. “Okay.” Mom twisted her lips into something like a smile, took another deep breath, and turned back to what she was doing on the stove.

  “Scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast, and a big Thanksgiving feast later. I’m going to need your help pulling it all together.” I closed my eyes.

  “I’m definitely going to need some coffee then.”

  ***

  With Thanksgiving dinner to get on the table, and the crushing amounts of guilt I felt from Mom having stumbled on me and Jaxon together, there was nothing else for me to do but help. It was weird; Mom and I had a tradition of putting together Thanksgiving dinner by ourselves, splitting up the chores, getting everything done. It had just been the two of us for so long. We didn’t want the pity-party of having to go to someone else’s house for the big day, being the charity invites to someone else’s family meal, so we just started our own traditions. It had never been weird or awkward or strained until that morning.

  But Mom was obviously determined to pretend like nothing had changed. In spite of the fact that Bob had plenty of people around the house that could have made Thanksgiving dinner all on their own, she insisted that our tradition of managing it ourselves should continue. I didn’t see the point in it, especially since things had gotten so complicated; but I didn’t really have a choice but to go along with it. I ate my breakfast even though my stomach was churning, sitting at the breakfast bar in the kitchen instead of going to the dining room. Mom took eggs and bacon and toast out to Bob and Jaxon; I couldn’t face either of them anyway, not with my mom knowing what was going on with me and Jaxon.

  After breakf
ast, I washed dishes while Mom started all of the prep work. She was planning on an enormous feast; even when it had been just the two of us, she had always made way more food than we could eat for a week. As she pulled things out of the pantry, the fridge, the freezer, it was obvious to me that she was planning on the same level of extravagance—but on an even bigger scale, just because there were two more people eating the meal.

  So while Jaxon and Bob were off doing something—I had no idea what—I was stuck in the kitchen with Mom; I peeled potatoes, I shucked corn, I trimmed green beans and cut them up for casserole. I chopped and scraped and scrubbed and washed. Mom played music like she always did—but it wasn’t like it always had been. She didn’t talk to me, didn’t sing or dance the way she normally did, or twirl me around the kitchen. We were just working together, barely exchanging any words all morning while we put together the feast. Mom worked as if she was possessed, stirring the cranberry sauce, mixing the stuffing with way too much enthusiasm, mashing the potatoes as if she wanted to pound them into glue. She sent me to the dining room to work on the decorations she had assembled before I got there and I found myself gluing, tying, wishing I could talk to her about what had happened, wishing I knew where Jaxon was or what he was doing, that I could talk to him about what had happened. Instead I just focused on whatever task Mom gave me, hoping that I would manage to get through it with some kind of dignity intact.

  I kept seeing her face when she opened the door to my bedroom: the blank shock, the way she had gone pale and just stared, her mouth half-open for a few seconds. The way she had blinked twice and then turned away and closed the door, the sound of her running away. I saw Jaxon in my mind, pulling his boxers on, barely even looking at me, rushing through the room and out of the door in a matter of seconds. It had been so fast that when it happened I hadn’t even been able to process it, but the monotonous decorations-making and prep-work gave my stupid brain way too much time to run through it over and over and over again until I wasn’t sure I’d actually be able to eat any of the feast I was working so hard to help prepare. What I really wanted to do was get in my car and go back to campus, to bury myself in my bed in the dorms and not leave until classes started again. I’d starve; no one stayed around on holidays. But the thought of spending the rest of the week with Mom, with Bob, with Jaxon, was more mortifying than anything else I had ever been through—even worse than when I’d sprained my ankle botching a stupidly easy trick on the slopes when I was 15.

  I kept wanting to make Mom stop, to make her take a minute and talk to me about the situation. I thought that if she would just listen, if she would just give me the simple consideration of hearing my side of the story, it might be different. It might fix things. But then I thought that it had to be horrific for her: seeing her daughter in bed with her step-son, after being so intent on a big happy family. She had been so happy about finally giving me a brother—she hadn’t known anything. I had totally ruined her idea of having a big, family Thanksgiving, everyone getting to know each other, everything perfect the way she had always wanted it to be for me. I had to just accept the fact that I’d ruined it for her, that she was going to have a miserable Thanksgiving dwelling on the fact that her daughter was a freak who’d screwed her step-brother.

  Chapter Two

  In spite of the fact that I’d spent all morning wondering where Jaxon and Bob where and what they were doing, by the time Thanksgiving dinner was actually on the table and I went to change into “appropriate clothes,” as my mom put it, the last thing I wanted was to have to spend an hour pretending that Jaxon and I barely knew each other, that we hadn’t seen each other naked twice now. It would have been bad enough if Mom didn’t know the truth—it was worse feeling her eyes on me constantly, hearing the strain in her voice while she tried to keep up the conversation with Bob. It might have been remotely okay if Bob wasn’t totally oblivious to everything.

  Bob had no idea what had happened. Mom hadn’t told him, and apparently Jaxon had kept quiet on the subject as well, so as far as he was concerned, we were all still a happy family, getting to know each other. He was laughing, teasing my mom about how many calories were in the mashed potatoes, joking about turkey comas. “We’re all going to be totally useless after a meal like this,” he said. “Just crash out on the couches watching the Dog Show.”

  “Oh, you don’t watch football?” Mom asked. “Weird how I didn’t know that about you.” Bob laughed.

  “I watch football sometimes; but the Westminster Kennel Club Show is only on Thanksgiving—I can catch a game any time during the season.” I glanced at Jaxon. He loved sports; suddenly I remembered that the first time we’d had sex was during a football game. I remembered it all in a flash that sent a jolt of heat through my body; all at once I remembered the feeling of his hands on my body, the way he’d looked, the way his cock had felt thrusting into me. I definitely was not interested in watching another game—not with Jaxon only feet away from me, not with my mom watching us. Just sitting at the same table with her made me feel dirty for what I had done.

  Whenever Mom wasn’t watching me, she was talking to Bob, chattering on like usual—but her voice was too high-pitched, she was talking too fast. Bob apparently didn’t notice the difference; when I wasn’t full of misery over how I had ruined the whole thing for her, I thought bitterly to myself that Bob’s complete obviousness was a sign that he totally wasn’t right for Mom. If he didn’t even know that Mom was acting like a freak, completely out of her mind and stressed out, how was he ever going to last in a marriage with her? But that was just because I was bitter enough to want her relationship to fail, so it wouldn’t be that bad that I’d slept with my step-brother. If they got divorced in a few months, it wouldn’t even be a big deal. Maybe I could even start seeing Jaxon again, once things stopped being weird. If they ever stopped being weird.

  Somehow I managed to put food in my mouth, chew it, and swallow it. Bob tried to get me to talk, and when my mom scowled at me without him seeing, I felt like I had to; I blathered on, trying to just say something—anything—without saying what was on the top of my mind. I tried to pretend like everything was just fine, but my heart was pounding in my chest. I was miserable. I wanted nothing more than to just go back to my room and hole up there for the next twenty-four hours until Mom had gotten over the whole mess. Assuming she got over it in that time. “One good thing,” Bob was saying. “Neither of you have to worry about putting away leftovers.”

  “Oh, we’ll clear the table,” Mom said with a tight little smile at me. Normally clearing up after Thanksgiving dinner was fun—Mom put her music on again and we’d dance around, doing the dishes together, taking our time and getting things done while we fooled around. I knew it wasn’t going to be anything like that. It was going to be more awkwardness, more strain and stress. But I would have to deal with it. I’d made the choice to sleep with Jaxon. I’d overslept and Mom had barged in on my room instead of waiting for me to tell her to come in—but there would have been nothing for her to walk in on if I hadn’t decided to sleep with Jaxon.

  “You know,” Bob said as we finally finished the last several bites of our meal; Jaxon was mopping up gravy with one of the heat-and-eat rolls Mom had made. “Now that we have Thanksgiving out of the way, I think the next two days of your guys’ holiday should be family days.” I looked at Mom; this was a terrible, terrible idea.

  “Family days?” Mom asked, a little too brightly, her voice chirpy.

  “Yeah! We’ll all hang out together instead of doing our own thing; really get to know each other as one, big family.” Mom said she thought it was a great idea, and I felt my food turning over in my stomach at the thought. Looking across the table at Jaxon, for a second it was pretty obvious that he felt the same way I did. He’d managed to spend the entire meal shoveling food into his mouth to avoid having to talk—I’d wished that I’d been able to do that too, but it would have been suspicious; not to mention Mom would have gone on and on about my b
ad table manners. It was easy to see Jaxon was regretting his second and third helpings of turkey and cranberries.

  “That sounds—great,” I managed to say, even as my food threatened to come up the way it had gone down. “Great. Really!” I looked at my mom, silently begging her to put the kibosh on the stupid idea; but I could tell as mad at me as she was, she liked having me and Jaxon both right out in front of her, where we couldn’t possibly repeat our mistake of the night before.

  After Mom and I cleared the table and put covers on everything for the household staff to put away and clean, Bob made us all go into the living room together and turned on the dog show. “We should get some board games out,” he suggested. I wanted to roll my eyes. Mr. Oblivious was making everything about this ridiculous situation worse—I almost wanted to shout at him that I’d fucked his son before I even knew he was going to be my step-dad and that I’d fucked him again even after I’d known, that the whole thing was a ridiculous mess and all I wanted to do was go back to the dorms. But of course I couldn’t do that; it would make what Mom was going through even worse. I had to play along with the whole “big happy family” premise no matter how nauseated the idea of Jaxon as my brother made me.

  “What have you got?” Mom and Bob dug through the living room closet and pulled out a bunch of games. I wanted to cry when they decided on Monopoly—a game that would last forever. But I couldn’t fight it; it would bring everything out into the open, and Mom had already decided that we weren’t going to talk about it and that she wasn’t even going to think about what she had seen. So the Monopoly board was set up and I just let everyone pick their pieces before me, taking the stupid wheelbarrow token because Jaxon wanted the dog, Mom wanted the hat, and Bob wanted the race car. It might have actually been a little bit fun—but Bob had brought the wine from the table with him and we were all drinking it, pretending to watch the dog show and pretending to care about the stupid game; who knows—maybe Bob actually did care about the game.