02. I Think You Like It.

RAINE’S POV.

First, time is frozen and then just as I’m about to snap at him, Cyril threw his head back and laughed.

The sound is beautiful and entrancing and it reminds me of a scene in his first movie. I replayed that movie more than ten times when I was fifteen.

“I’m gay?” His words held back a scoff, but the amusement in those eyes was glaring back at me.

I rolled my eyes and wrapped my arms around myself. “Don’t think I don’t notice things.”

“From when you and my mother got married, you have slept in separate bedrooms until she went missing and since then, there’s not been one lady in this house apart from me. Besides…” I paused, not sure if I wanted to let him know how much I knew.

Cyril didn’t give me the chance to continue as he took two steps forward, and his lips parted open.

“Not everyone is a teenager with raging hormones that they can’t keep under control, Raine. But I’m sure G****e can give you a breakdown of my past relationships.”

I don’t bother to hide my scoff. “Oh, G****e? I’m sure they would mention that you are currently married to Indie, but surely they don’t know that she’s been away from this house for four years, right?”

Since my mother married Cyril, not only was their marriage sudden, but three months after making him my legal guardian, I came back from school to find my mom gone.

No message, no calls. Just a note telling me she would be back once she’s changed, and Cyril would take care of me.

I was sixteen then, and in the last four years, my mom was on a mission to beat Jimmy Hoffer’s record.

“You won’t go to college, you won’t take internships, and now you come up with conspiracy theories?”

I chuckled. Aside from spending two years in a boarding school, I have spent the last two years arguing with Cyril, and I knew he wasn’t going to win this time.

“Last I checked, you don’t need a degree to be a millionaire. You just need to have this…” I made a dramatic show of waving my hand around his face.

With sharp green eyes and a perfectly chiseled face, Cyril made history even before he was twenty-five. He had also stayed on the top list of the most handsome men for more than ten years.

Yet, when he was 27, Cyril married my mother, who was ten years older than him. Ten fucking years.

Did they think the whole world was blind?

“Besides..” I started and then gave him a cheesy grin. If he found me funny, his face didn’t give it away, but I like that I have his attention.

I loved having his attention.

“My mom isn’t into women, Cyril. There’s no way you both got married for some silly love story.”

His hands were still in his pockets as he closed the gap between us. Standing before me, I can feel those familiar shivers rushing through my body.

God, I hated the control this man had on me.

Then, without any warning, he uses his right finger to hold my chin up so that I have no choice but to stare into his eyes.

“That’s all you could come up with, huh? That I’m gay?”

I swallowed.

He’s too close. Closer than all his TikTok edits that I always watched before going to bed. Closer than the distance my brain could handle, but I still managed to reply.

“Yes. There’s no need to hide it from me.”

Okay, fine. My mom wasn’t even into women. But that was the only explanation that made sense. Since I was smart enough to tell right from wrong, I knew that men with power liked to take. They liked to take what girls like me didn’t want to give.

Cyril was not like that.

That in itself was hard to believe. But staying celibate for four years was even more impossible.

My stepfather was gay, and I was going to use this knowledge to my advantage.

“Did your ‘little boyfriend’ even make you cum?”

It took me a second to process his words, and when I did, I pushed back at him and shot him a sharp glare.

“That’s none of your business,” I snapped back at him.

“Unless you are interested in him, of course.”

Cyril chuckled, and the sound sent shivers down my spine. I can still feel some of the heat from before, and with the way he’s staring at me, I can’t help but squirm a little.

“That’s a no, then.” He declared. “Thirty minutes and the puppy couldn’t get you to orgasm?” 

Embarrassment settled deep in my chest. He’d been watching. And the thought that he must have been watching before he entered the greenhouse made me even hotter.

“I—”

“Pathetic.” Cyril scoffed, stepping even closer until his hard chest brushed against mine. “I’d have you screaming in half the time.”

I gasped, and my body shivered as his fingers trailed up to my jaw, grazing it so lightly that I sucked in a sharp breath.

“This is what you wanted, right?” His voice was different from the one on-screen now. Now, it was dark and controlled. “Parading around my house in these bikinis?”

I shivered, heat spreading through me. I should have said something. But the way he was looking at me made my throat clamp up. 

My body felt too hot, my skin too tight. I wanted to move. I wanted to tell him to stop.

But I couldn’t. A part of me had secretly hoped this would happen for so many years. Now that it was happening. Now that I had pushed Cyril enough, I couldn’t stop him. 

“I think you like it,” He mumbled, his breath hot against my ear.

“Knowing I’m watching. Knowing exactly what you do to me.”