The Hidden Heiress: Married to My Ex's Brother novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Eleven Stitches

After a night with Rem, Etta wakes to a note and a black card, snaps the card, blocks Lance, and gets a text from Rem: his emergency was his brother's head.

The door slammed behind us.

Rem turned and pinned me against it before the lock had finished clicking.

The suite was dark except for the city through the window.

Cranes on the port. The ferry lights crawling across the black bay.

One of those boats was mine on Monday.

I didn't want to think about Monday.

I didn't want to think at all.

"You're shaking," he said.

"I'm angry."

"You're both."

He pressed his thumb to my lower lip until I opened my mouth for it.

"Tell me you want it and I'll give it to you."

"I want it. Give it to me."

"Good," he said. "Because I've been thinking about that lap for ten minutes."

His thumb left my lip and his hand slid into my hair.

He didn't kiss me.

He just stood there, chest against mine, watching my face while his fingers tightened at the back of my head.

"Say it."

"Say what?"

"What you want."

I lifted my chin.

"I want you to stop making me wait."

Something moved in his jaw.

"That," I said, "you liked that."

He pulled my head back and kissed me.

Not like the elevator.

This one was slow, and sure, and it ended with his teeth on my lower lip, tugging until I made a sound.

His other hand found the zipper at my back.

The dress came open before I'd decided to let it.

He pushed it off my shoulders and let it drop.

I stepped out of it in nothing but black underwear.

"Look at you," he said, low.

"Stop looking and do something."

He smiled.

"You first."

His jacket hit a chair.

I got his shirt open, buttons slipping through my fingers too slow, and he let me struggle while his hands moved over my ribs, my waist, the damp line of my underwear.

I got the shirt off and he pulled me against him.

Skin, hot, the hard wall of his chest, and lower, the shape of him pressing into my stomach.

I let out a breath I hadn't meant to.

"Five years," I said, without meaning to.

His hands stopped.

Then one hand slid down, flat over my belly, and stopped just above the edge of my underwear.

"Five years since what?"

"Since I got what I wanted."

His fingers moved under the fabric.

I sucked in air.

"Then tonight," he said, "you take what you want."

He pushed my underwear down and I stepped out of them.

Then he walked me backward to the bed and laid me down on the white sheets.

He stood over me, undoing his belt.

I watched his hands, the dark trail of hair below his navel, the muscles moving in his forearms.

"I've been with men before," I said, because I wanted him to know I wasn't shy. "Just so we're clear."

"Good." His pants dropped. "Then you know what you're asking for."

His cock was hard, thick, curving up against his stomach.

I wanted it in my mouth.

I wanted him to know I wasn't the careful girl anymore.

"Come here," I said.

He knelt over me and I sat up, put my hands on his hips, and took him in my mouth.

He made a sound, a low rough grunt, and his hand came to the back of my head, not pushing, just there.

I took him deeper.

"Fuck," he said.

I looked up.

His eyes were on me, dark, his lips parted.

I pulled off, slow, and licked the head.

"Who's in charge now?"

His hand tightened in my hair.

"You tell me, sister-in-law."

I bit the inside of his hip.

Hard enough to make him jerk.

"Don't call me that."

"Then give me a better name."

I pushed him onto his back and climbed over him.

He looked up at me, surprised and so hard I could see his pulse in the vein along his cock.

"I don't need a name for what I'm going to do to you," I said.

I straddled him, took his cock in my hand, and rubbed the head along my slit, coating him in how wet I was.

He groaned.

"I've been waiting five years," I said. "And you're going to feel every second of it."

I sank down.

The stretch of him made my head fall back.

I'd forgotten how much it took, the burn and then the give, the way your body has to open around a man.

He was thick, and I took all of him, until my thighs met his.

"God," I said.

"Look at me."

I opened my eyes.

His jaw was clenched, his hands gripping my thighs.

"Ride me."

I moved.

Slow at first, because I wanted to feel every inch, the drag of him inside me.

He watched me with his mouth open, his abs tight, his fingers digging into my hips.

"You feel better than anything I've had in years," he said.

"Good."

I leaned forward, planted my hands on his chest, and fucked him harder.

His hips started meeting mine, and the sound of it filled the dark room, skin on skin, the wet slide of my cunt taking him again and again.

"I thought about you in that elevator," he said, voice rough. "Thought about how you'd feel, wet and tight, how you'd take my cock."

"Like this?"

"Exactly like this."

I rode him until my thighs burned, until my clit was grinding against his pubic bone, until I was past thinking.

He watched me come apart above him, his hands roaming, my breasts, my waist, the dip of my back.

"That's it," he said. "Come for me. Take what you waited for."

The orgasm hit me like a wave breaking.

I cried out, short and sharp, my fingers curling into his chest, my pussy pulsing around him.

He flipped me onto my back while I was still shaking.

Before I could catch my breath he was between my legs, his cock pushing back inside me, and I gasped.

"Still want it?" he asked.

"More."

He fucked me with long, deep strokes, his face above mine, his eyes on my mouth.

"More," he repeated, like he was testing the word.

"Harder."

He braced one hand by my head and drove into me.

I wrapped my legs around his waist and pulled him deeper, nails raking down his back.

"Say it again," he said.

"Fuck me harder."

He did.

The bed hit the wall.

I didn't care if the whole club heard.

Let them.

Let Lance hear it from the street.

"You're mine tonight," Rem said against my mouth.

"I bet you say that to all the girls who sit in your lap."

He stopped, buried deep, and looked at me.

"Just the ones who break bottles over my brother's head."

I laughed.

It turned into a moan as he moved again, slower now, teasing, his cock dragging over that spot inside me until I was whimpering.

"I'm close," I said.

"Not yet."

He pulled out and flipped me onto my stomach.

I pushed up onto my knees without being told, and he entered me from behind, one hand on my hip, the other sliding down to my clit.

"Now," he said. "Come on my cock."

Two strokes and I did.

I cried out into the sheets, my body locking up, my cunt squeezing him so hard he groaned.

"Fuck," he said. "Fuck, yes."

He drove deep and stilled, his hips jerking as he came, hot and thick inside me.

He said my name.

No.

He said a name.

Not mine.

"Etta."

I went cold and hot at the same time.

He didn't know.

He couldn't know.

The word had just come out of him, from the photo, from everything his father had made him look at.

He sighed and pulled out, and I lay still, my face turned away, my heart pounding.

"Don't move," he said, and went to the bathroom.

I didn't move.

I couldn't.

He thought he was fucking someone else.

And I had just let him.

When he came back he pulled me against his chest and dragged the sheet over us.

His hand moved slow on my back.

Neither of us spoke.

Through the window, the ferry lights crawled across the black bay.

One of those boats was mine on Monday.

I closed my eyes and listened to his heart slow under my ear.

I'd wanted a man who wanted me for nothing.

I had him.

He just thought he wanted Etta Lane.

And I had no idea what happened when he found out he'd just fucked the woman he'd been trying to avoid for five years.

I woke up alone.

Gray light. Rain on the window. White sheets that smelled like him.

I sat up too fast and every muscle in my body complained.

I'd lost a fight with something. I'd also won.

His side of the bed was cold.

On the nightstand sat a note in heavy black handwriting.

Sorry. Emergency. Had to go.

Under it lay a black bank card.

I stared at the card.

Then I laughed out loud, alone in a room that cost more per night than my rent.

He'd left me money.

Like I was a service.

I picked it up, bent it in half until it snapped, and dropped both pieces in the trash.

"Dream on, big brother," I told the empty room.

By the door stood a shopping bag from a store I'd never walked into.

Jeans. A soft gray sweater. A bra and underwear, black, in my exact size.

My face went hot.

"Creepy," I said. "And efficient."

I got dressed anyway. My black dress was on the floor with a strap torn.

I remembered how it got torn, and had to sit down on the bed for a second.

Then I remembered something else.

Around two in the morning, his phone on the nightstand. Me grabbing it, laughing.

Typing my number in, and saving it under Sister-in-law.

"Now you'll have to see it every time I call," I'd said.

He'd taken the phone out of my hand and put me on my back again.

I shut my eyes. "Oh, no."

My own phone was at four percent and buzzing itself off the dresser.

Sixty-one notifications.

The first one was a headline.

AFTER THREE YEARS OF LOVE, LANCE BECKFORD AND LIZA BREWSTER FINALLY TIE THE KNOT.

Under it was a photo of them on the courthouse steps.

Liza in white. Lance in the blue tie I'd bought him for Christmas.

Three years of love.

I'd been in five of them.

What did that make me? A blooper reel?

I scrolled.

A public celebration in two months, the article said. The reception would be held on the historic Salt Pier.

I read that line twice.

The Salt Pier was where my boat docked.

My father had proposed to my mother on the end of it.

They were going to cut cake on it.

The texts came next. Lance, eleven of them, all sent between three and six in the morning.

Etta, the marriage was my family's idea. I had no choice.

I still love you. I never stopped.

Give me time. I'll fix this. Don't talk to anyone.

You hit me with a bottle. I needed STITCHES. We're even, okay?

I read the last one twice.

Then I blocked him.

Liza had sent one, at seven.

I'm so sorry you found out like that. I hope we can still be friends someday. xx

Three years of lunches.

She'd held my hair at my twenty-fifth birthday.

She'd asked me, a hundred times, what Lance liked.

I blocked her too.

Dina had sent nine messages, each one in more capital letters than the last.

LANDING TOMORROW NIGHT. DO NOT FORGIVE ANYONE.

Then: Wait. Who did you leave with? Somebody posted that you sat on a man in the bar.

Then: ETTA. IS THAT REM BECKFORD.

I put the phone face down on the bed.

The trash can was right there, with his card in two pieces.

I didn't regret it.

For five years a man had told me wanting things made me cheap.

Last night a man had made me say every one of them out loud.

The phone buzzed again.

Unknown number.

I turned it over.

This is Rem. My emergency was my brother's head. Eleven stitches.

Another buzz.

You owe me a name.

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend