More Than Just a Dream

Melody

I came with his name in my mouth.

A broken sound dragged out of me as Luca drove deep. His hand stayed at my throat, his thumb on the hopeless beat under my jaw like he needed proof I still belonged to the moment.

His other hand pinned both of mine above my head. He fucked me like the need offended him and he still couldn’t stop. Every thrust punched a wet sound out of me. His mouth was at my ear. His voice came out low and ruined.

“Take it… You walked in on it. Now you get all of it.”

I clenched around him and shattered. The orgasm ripped through me so hard my vision went pale and…

I woke up with a sharp gasp, sheets twisted around my thighs, my pulse hammering between my legs.

“Fuck!”

The word came out raw.

I clapped a hand over my mouth and stared at the ceiling of my bedroom. Heat flooded my face so fast it pricked.

The Morning light cut thin lines through the blinds of the mansion. Somewhere down the hall, a pipe knocked once, and for a stupid second I thought it was his footsteps again.

I was alone in my own bed, and soaked from a dream about my stepbrother’s cock.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

“Get it together, Melody. You’re disgusting.”

But the dream didn’t dissolve the way normal dreams did. It stuck. Because it wasn’t just a dream.

Three days earlier, our parents were gone for the weekend. The house was too quiet.

I had only wanted toothpaste.

I padded down the hall in a T-shirt and sleep shorts, my hair in a messy knot, still half-asleep.

The bathroom door at the end of the corridor hadn’t been fully closed. A soft, rhythmic sound leaked through the gap.

Skin. Breath. Something low and strained that made me pause with my fingers on the wood.

I should have turned around.

I pushed the door open instead.

Luca stood at the sink, stark naked, fist wrapped around his cock. Hard. Thick. The head slick where his thumb dragged over it on every upstroke. Water ran unused in the basin. His abs flexed with each rough pull. His head tipped forward, dark hair falling into his eyes, jaw locked like he was angry at his own body for needing this.

And then I heard it.

My name.

Soft. Filthy. Dragged out between his teeth like it hurt.

“Melody—”

The floorboard under my heel gave a tiny sound.

His head snapped up.

Our eyes locked.

He didn't scramble to cover himself. No shame. Just those darkened eyes pinning me in the doorway while his hand stayed exactly where it was, still wrapped around himself, still moving once, slowly, like he wanted me to watch the full stroke.

I forgot how legs worked.

Heat slammed through me so fast I went dizzy. I saw everything—veins along the shaft, the wet shine at the tip, the way his stomach hollowed when he breathed, the faint flush high on his cheekbones.

Twenty-eight years old, six-foot-something of cold control I had only ever known as cruelty, and he was hard, saying my name.

“I—” my voice cracked. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

I turned to run.

He moved faster.

One second I was turning toward the hall, the next his hand caught my wrist, yanked me inside, and the door shut hard enough to rattle the frame. He spun me around and pinned my back to the wall.

Both of my wrists were trapped in one of his hands above my head. His body caged mine without quite touching—except where his cock, still bare and slick, brushed the soft cotton over my stomach.

My breath left me in a single useless rush.

Up close, he smelled like soap and sleep and sex. His eyes were almost black. A muscle jumped in his cheek.

“You just walk into closed rooms now?” His voice was low, rough from what I had interrupted.

“Or were you hoping to see something, clumsy girl?”

“The door was open—”

“Was it?”

He leaned in until his mouth nearly touched my temple. Not a kiss. A threat.

“You stood there and stared. Don’t lie.”

I swallowed. My pulse was everywhere—throat, wrists, between my legs.

His free hand dropped to the waistband of my shorts. Two fingers hooked the elastic, pulled it out half an inch, and held. Cool air touched my skin that was already burning.

He didn’t look down. He watched my face while his knuckles rested just above the place that had gone shamefully wet the second he’d said my name in that broken voice.

“Christ.” A short, mean laugh.

“You’re soaked.”

“I’m not—”

“Don’t.” His grip on my wrists tightened.

“I can feel the heat coming off you. Little stepsister walks in on me stroking it to her and gets wet. What does that make you?”

I couldn’t answer. My thighs pressed together on instinct. The movement only made it worse.

He noticed. Of course he did.

“Answer me.” His mouth brushed the surface of my ear. “You want me to finish what you interrupted? You want me to put you on your knees on this tile and fuck that sweet shocked look off your face? Use you like the little slut who’s dripping for her stepbrother’s cock?”

The words hit like hands. My stomach clenched. My panties were ruined.

A helpless sound escaped my throat before I could lock it down.

Luca went still.

Then he smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes.

“There it is.”

His fingers flexed once against my lower belly, a fraction lower, almost—almost—where I needed pressure and hated myself for needing it.

“Say yes, and I’ll give it to you right now. Hard. Quiet. While Mommy and Daddy are gone and there’s no one to hear their perfect new family fall apart over my dick.”

Seconds stretched.

My whole body screamed one answer, but my lips formed the other.

“No.”

It came out barely a sound. But clear.

Something flickered through his expression—hunger, fury, something almost like relief—then it shuttered. He released my wrists like they’d burned him and stepped back. Tucked himself away with sharp, angry movement.

The absence of his heat made me shiver.

“Get out.”

His voice had gone flat. Cold.

“You don’t look at me. You don’t speak to me unless someone else is in the room. You sure as hell don’t open doors that aren’t yours. Understand?

I nodded with my throat tight.

“Words, Melody.”

“I understand.”

“Good. Appear in front of me again like this, and I won’t ask next time.”

He opened the door. He didn’t look at me as I slipped past, my legs unsteady, my shorts clinging.

“And if you ever breathe a word of this—”

“I won’t.”

“Smart girl.”

A pause stretches for a second. Then, quieter, almost to himself: “Stay away from me, Melody.”

I had tried to stay away.

I lay in bed with the dream still pulsing between my thighs and the real memory layered under it, and I didn’t know which was worse, that he had wanted me for those few minutes, or that some treacherous part of me had wanted him to ignore my no.