My Stepbrother Ruins Everything novel · Chapter 2 of 4

Chapter 2: Hands, Nothing Else

After closing her bedroom door, Mira lets Callum touch her face and then her body over and under her clothes, and she touches him back, until his hand stills at the waistband of her jeans and he asks if she wants him to stop.

The click of the latch was still echoing in her ears.

She had closed the door. She had actually closed the door, and now there was nothing between her and Callum except the few inches of air that felt like it might catch fire.

He was so close. She could see the individual drops of melted snow in his dark hair, the way his chest rose and fell under the dark henley, the muscle in his jaw working like he was chewing on something he wanted to say.

His hand was still braced on the door beside her head. His knuckles were white against the wood.

'Mira,' he said again.

Her name in his mouth sounded different now. Not like a question. Like an answer.

She should have moved. She should have ducked under his arm and put the bed between them, or laughed, or made some joke about the storm and the house and the two of them standing there like idiots. That was what she did. That was the move. Deflect, laugh, run.

She didn't do any of it.

'I know,' she said, and she didn't know what she was saying, except that she did. She knew everything. She knew why he was here, why he had come, why he had stood in the hallway and let her yell at him and why he was still standing here now with his hand on the door and his eyes on her mouth.

He knew too. He had always known.

That was the worst part. The humiliation of it. Six years of pretending she didn't want him, and he had seen through every single day of it.

'You know what I came here for,' he said. His voice was low, rough at the edges, like he had been holding it in for a long time and it had worn itself down against the inside of his chest.

'Yes.'

'Then tell me to leave.'

She opened her mouth. The words were right there, the easy out, the door she could still open. She could tell him to go. She could watch him walk out and close the door again and spend the rest of the storm pretending none of this had happened.

But her body had already decided. Her back was still pressed against the door, and her hands were flat against the wood on either side of her hips, and she could feel the heat of him through the air, and she was not moving.

'I can't,' she whispered.

The words came out before she could stop them. They hung in the space between them, and she watched them land on him, watched the way his whole body went still and then, slowly, very slowly, the way his other hand came up.

He touched her face.

Just his fingertips, at first. The lightest brush along her jaw, like he was afraid she would shatter, or bolt, or both. His fingers were warm, warmer than she expected, and rough at the tips from all the woodworking in the garage at night.

She had thought about his hands before. She had thought about them more times than she could count, and she had always told herself she was being stupid, that it was just a crush, just a phase, just the stupidest possible thing to want.

His fingers traced the line of her jaw, slowly, all the way to her chin, and then he tilted her face up.

'Look at me,' he said.

She did. She lifted her eyes to his, and what she saw there made her breath catch in her chest.

He was not calm. The careful, measured Callum, the one who answered questions with a beat of silence and never raised his voice, was gone. In his place was a man who looked like he was holding himself together with his teeth.

'I have been waiting for you to look at me like that for six years,' he said. 'Do you understand that? Six years of watching you pretend I don't exist, and now you're looking at me like that, and I am trying very hard not to lose my mind.'

She understood. God, she understood.

Her whole body was shaking. Not from cold, though the storm was still pressing against the windows and the house was never quite warm enough in the deep winter. From want. From the sheer, terrifying relief of finally, finally being caught.

'Then don't,' she said. 'Don't try.'

Something in his face broke. Not the way a person breaks, all at once and loud. The way a dam breaks, when the water has been pushing against it for years and years and it finally gives.

He kissed her.

It was not gentle. It was not the careful, restrained thing she might have expected from a man who moved with such deliberate stillness. It was hungry, and desperate, and his mouth was hot against hers, and one of his hands was in her hair and the other was still braced on the door, and she could feel the whole length of him pressing her back against the wood.

She kissed him back. She didn't even think about it. Her hands came up off the door and fisted in the front of his henley, and she pulled him closer, and she made a sound against his mouth that she would have been mortified by if she had any room left in her head for shame.

There was no room. There was only him.

The taste of him. The weight of him. The way his tongue slid against hers and the way his breath came rough and uneven through his nose. The way his hand tightened in her hair, not hard enough to hurt, just hard enough to hold her exactly where he wanted her.

He pulled back just far enough to speak, his lips still brushing hers, his voice a raw scrape against her skin.

'Tell me you want this.'

'You know I do.'

'Say it.'

'I want this.' The words came out broken, breathless, nothing like the quick, witty Mira she had spent years building. 'I want you. I have always wanted you. Are you happy now? Is that what you needed to hear?'

'No,' he said, and his hand came out of her hair and slid down, over her shoulder, over the thick knit of her sweater, and settled at her waist. 'I needed to hear you admit it. I needed to know that when I touch you, you won't pretend it didn't happen.'

'I won't.'

'You will,' he said, and there was something almost tender in the way he said it, and something almost cruel. 'You'll wake up tomorrow and you'll hide from me again. You'll make some joke. You'll pretend you don't remember.'

She wanted to argue. She wanted to tell him he was wrong, that she would never, that this was different.

But he wasn't wrong. She knew herself too well.

'Then make me remember,' she said. 'Make it so I can't pretend.'

His eyes went dark. Not the cliché of it, not some romance-novel darkening, but a real change, a narrowing, a focus, like she had just said the one thing he had been waiting to hear.

'Careful,' he said. 'You don't know what you're asking for.'

'Then show me.'

He kissed her again, harder this time, and his hand at her waist tightened, and then it was moving, sliding up under the hem of her sweater, and his palm was hot against the bare skin of her stomach.

She gasped into his mouth. The sound was swallowed up by the kiss, by the storm, by the blood rushing in her ears.

His hand moved higher. His fingers spread wide across her ribs, rough and warm, and she could feel every callus, every line of his palm, every inch of skin he was touching like he was learning it.

'You're shaking,' he murmured against her lips.

'So are you.'

It was true. His hand was steady, but she could feel the fine tremor running through him, the barely-controlled thing that lived under all that stillness.

'Because I have wanted this for six years,' he said. 'Because I have imagined touching you a thousand times, and none of it was ever like this.'

His hand reached the edge of her bra. He stopped there, his fingers resting just under the wire, and he looked at her, and she knew he was waiting.

She didn't tell him to stop. She arched her back, just slightly, just enough to press herself into his palm.

He made a sound. Low, rough, torn out of him like it hurt.

And then his hand was moving again, over the lace, over the soft curve of her breast, and his thumb found her nipple through the fabric and pressed.

Her head fell back against the door. Her eyes closed. She could feel every nerve in her body lighting up, waking up, pointing toward him like he was the only source of heat in the whole frozen world.

'Look at me,' he said again.

She opened her eyes.

He was watching her face, watching every tiny reaction, like he was memorizing it. His thumb moved again, slow, deliberate, and she bit her lip to keep from crying out.

'Don't,' he said. 'Don't hide from me. Not here. Not now.'

'Callum.'

His name was a broken thing in her mouth. She had said it a thousand times over the years, in a thousand different tones, and it had never sounded like this.

'I know,' he said. 'I know, Mira.'

His other hand came off the door. It found the hem of her sweater, and then he was pushing it up, up, baring her stomach and her ribs and the plain black bra she had put on that morning without any idea that this was where the day would end.

The cold air hit her skin and she shivered, but then his mouth was on her collarbone, and then lower, and then his tongue was tracing the edge of the lace, and she forgot about the cold entirely.

Her hands were still fisted in his shirt. She pulled at it, tugging the fabric up, needing to feel his skin the way he was feeling hers.

He understood. He straightened, just long enough to pull the henley over his head, and then it was gone, dropped somewhere on the floor, and she was looking at him.

She had seen him without a shirt before. Summers at the lake, the occasional glimpse through a doorway. But she had never seen him like this, never let herself look.

Now she looked. The lean muscle of his chest, the dark hair that traced a line down his stomach, the way his shoulders moved as he breathed. He was beautiful, and she had always known it, and now she was allowed to know it.

She reached out and touched him.

Her palm flat against his chest, over his heart. She could feel it beating, fast and hard, and the knowledge that she had done that, that she had made the calm, controlled Callum Thorne's heart race, sent a thrill through her that was almost as good as the touching itself.

'You have no idea,' he said, his voice rough, 'what you do to me.'

'Show me.'

He took her hand. He lifted it from his chest and pressed it against the front of his jeans, and she felt him, hard and hot through the denim, and her breath stopped.

He was hard. Because of her.

'This is what you do to me,' he said. 'This is what six years of waiting looks like. Do you feel that?'

She couldn't speak. She nodded, her hand still pressed against him, and she watched his jaw tighten, watched the way his eyes fluttered closed for just a second before he opened them again.

'Your turn,' she whispered.

He let go of her hand, and she didn't move it. She curled her fingers around him through the denim, feeling the shape of him, the heat of him, and he groaned, low and deep, and his hips moved, just once, pressing into her palm.

'God, Mira.'

She had never heard him say her name like that. Like a prayer. Like a curse. Like the only word he knew.

His hands found her waist again, and then they were at the button of her jeans, and she went very still.

She knew what came next. She knew what he was asking, even without words. She could feel the question in the way his fingers hovered there, not moving, waiting.

Waiting for her to decide.

His hand stilled at the waistband of her jeans, and he asked, barely a whisper, 'Do you want me to stop?'

She couldn't answer. Her body was screaming no, no, don't stop, don't ever stop, and her mouth was open and nothing was coming out, because she didn't want him to stop, and that was the most terrifying thing of all.

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