CRAVING MY FORBIDDEN STEPBROTHER

LAYLA

The red lingerie cost me three shifts at the diner.

I stand in front of the full-length mirror in Jace’s hallway and run my hands down my sides, feeling the lace catch against my palms. It’s delicate. Expensive. The kind of thing I’d never buy for myself except I did, because tonight is supposed to mean something.

Valentine’s Day. Six months of dating. Six months of Jace being patient while I kept saying “not yet.” Tonight, I was finally going to say yes.

He texted me this morning. Can’t wait for tonight. Just us. I read it four times, screenshotted it, and sent it to Zara with three heart emojis like I was sixteen instead of eighteen. She sent back omg finally and a string of fire emojis and I laughed at my phone in the break room at the diner with my apron still on.

That was this morning. It already feels like a different life.

The bra has thin straps that crisscross my back, and the underwear, god, it’s barely there. Just lace and a prayer. I adjust the garter on my thigh one more time and take a breath. You can do this.

Noise drifts down from upstairs, music and voices that shouldn’t be there. I frown. Jace said his parents were out of town and it would just be us tonight. Maybe it’s the neighbors? I shrug my long black coat off my shoulders and drape it over the banister. The air is cold against my bare skin. I turn back to the mirror and check my hair, my makeup, the red lipstick I spent twenty minutes perfecting.

I look good. I feel ready.

“Well, well.”

My heart stops.

I spin around. Cain Russo steps out of the shadows near the living room doorway. My stomach drops. Of all the people in the world, it has to be him.

He stands with his arms crossed, leaning against the wall like he owns the fucking place, wearing a black t-shirt and dark jeans, his hair slightly messy and falling into those dark eyes that are currently dragging down my body in a way that makes heat crawl up the back of my neck. I don’t know if it’s humiliation or fury. Probably both.

The edge of his snake tattoo peeks out from his collar, black ink curving along the side of his throat before disappearing into the fabric. I know it doesn’t stop there. I’ve seen it at school, in the hallways when his shirt rides up, at his boxing matches when he’s shirtless and bleeding and I can’t make myself look away. The tattoo dips down his chest, spreads across his ribs, wraps around one bicep in intricate scales so detailed they must have taken hours. Probably hurt like hell.

I hate that tattoo. I don’t know exactly why it bothers me so much. It just always has. And I hate that seeing him here, now, of all nights, makes my stomach drop in a way I don’t have a name for.

For three seconds I’m frozen as his eyes meet mine, dark and burning with something I refuse to name. Then reality crashes in. I lunge for my coat.

“Don’t.” His voice is low and commanding, the kind that makes you want to obey even when you know you shouldn’t. I grab it anyway, yanking it back on and clutching it closed across my chest.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

He doesn’t answer right away, just keeps staring at me with those eyes that have haunted me for three years. The ones that looked at me differently once, soft and curious and hungry, right before he kissed me behind the gym freshman year. Right before he ruined me.

“I could ask you the same thing,” he says finally, pushing off the wall. Something about the way he moves makes me want to step back, but I hold my ground. “But I think I already know.”

He takes a step closer. My pulse kicks up.

“It’s none of your business.”

“True.” He takes another step, hands sliding into the pockets of his jeans. “But if I were you, I wouldn’t go upstairs.”

His jaw is sharp enough to cut glass, strong and defined, and I look away from it.

“Why not?”

“Because Jace isn’t expecting you.”

I narrow my eyes. “He told me to come over.”

“Did he?” Cain tilts his head, and there it is, that smirk that makes me want to punch him square in the face. “Or did you decide to surprise him?”

Silence. He knows. Of course he knows.

“Get out of my way.”

“Layla—”

“I said move.” I try to step past him, but he shifts and blocks me. We’re close now, too close, close enough that I can smell him, cedar and something warmer that makes me angry for reasons I can’t explain. Close enough that I could count the scales on his tattoo if I let myself look that long.

“Move, Cain.”

“Not until you listen to me.”

“I don’t take orders from you.”

“You should.” His voice drops, gets serious in a way that’s wrong, because Cain Russo doesn’t do serious. He does cocky and sarcastic and cruel. “Don’t go up there.”

Something in his tone makes me pause.

“Why not?”

He doesn’t answer, just looks at me with an expression I can’t read. And standing this close to him, I can see things I usually try to ignore: the way his throat moves when he swallows, the slight scar above his left eyebrow from a fight sophomore year, the perfect bow of his lips that I remember tasting once, three years ago, before everything went to hell.

His eyes drop to my mouth and stay there. My breath catches.

“Layla.” He says my name like a warning. “I’m serious. Don’t—”

“Stop telling me what to do.” I shove past him. His hand shoots out and catches my wrist, and the touch sends something through me that I immediately, furiously, decide is anger.

“Let go of me.”

“Not until you—”

I yank my arm free. “I don’t need your protection, Cain. I don’t need anything from you.”

Something flashes across his face, anger maybe, or something close to hurt, but then it’s gone, replaced by that familiar cold mask.

“Fine.” He steps back and raises his hands. “Go ahead. See for yourself.”

I don’t look at him as I head for the stairs, but I feel his eyes on me the entire way up, burning into my back, making my skin prickle under this coat that suddenly feels too thin.

I climb the stairs. Jace is waiting.

* * *

The noise gets louder as I reach the landing, music and laughter and the bass from some song I don’t recognize thumping through the walls. The hallway is packed with people from school. My chest tightens. What the hell is going on?

I scan the crowd looking for Jace, but instead I find Sienna Hart, standing in the center of it all with a red cup in her hand, wearing a tight black dress that probably costs more than my rent. Her blonde hair falls in perfect waves over her shoulders, and when she sees me, her face lights up with something that isn’t surprise at all. It’s delight.

“Layla!” She practically squeals it, loud enough that half the hallway turns to look. “Oh my god, hi! I didn’t know you were coming tonight!”

Every instinct I have screams at me to turn around and leave, but I can’t. Jace’s door is right there at the end of the hall. And I came here for a reason.

“Where’s Jace?” I ask, keeping my voice steady.

Sienna’s smile gets wider. Sharper. “Oh, sweetie.” She steps closer, tilting her head with fake concern that makes my skin crawl. “You probably shouldn’t go in there.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s busy right now.” She lowers her voice, but not enough that the people around us can’t hear. “With Zara.”

The floor tilts.

“What?”

“Your best friend?” Sienna’s eyes sparkle with something cruel. “They’ve been hooking up for weeks. I thought you knew.”

I almost laugh, because it’s Zara, my best friend since seventh grade, the girl who held my hair back sophomore year and cried with me at my dad’s funeral and texted me you deserve the world on my birthday every single year without fail. Zara wouldn’t do this.

“You’re lying.”

“Am I?” She gestures toward the door with her cup. “Go ahead and check. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

My hand is shaking as I reach for the door handle. Don’t open it. Don’t open it. Don’t—

I open it. And for the rest of my life, I will wish I hadn’t.

Jace is on his bed with Zara on top of him, her shirt on the floor and his hands on her hips, and when the door swings open they both freeze, her with her hands braced on his chest and him with his head thrown back against the pillow. For one horrible second, nobody moves. My brain refuses to make sense of what I’m seeing, running the image over and over like a corrupted file that won’t load, and then Jace sees me. His eyes widen, then narrow, and his face twists into something I’ve never seen on him before. Something contemptuous.

“Layla.” He doesn’t even sound surprised. Just annoyed. “What are you doing here?”

“What am I—” My voice cracks. “You told me to come over.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did! You texted me—”

“I said I’d be home.” He shoves Zara off him, she yelps and scrambles for her shirt, and he stands up yanking his jeans back on. “I didn’t say come fuck me, Layla. Jesus.”

The room tilts.

“You’ve been— how long—”

“Does it matter?”

Zara is crying now, pulling her shirt over her head. “Layla, I’m so sorry. You weren’t supposed to find out like this—”

“Find out?” I’m shaking. “How long, Zara?”

“A month,” she whispers.

A month. An entire month while I was working extra shifts for that lingerie, convincing myself I was ready, planning tonight like it actually meant something.

“You should go,” Jace says.

I stare at him. “Go?”

“Yeah.” He crosses his arms. “This is awkward for everyone.”

“Awkward?” My voice rises. “You’ve been fucking my best friend for a month and you think this is awkward?"

“Ex-best friend,” Zara mutters.

Something snaps inside me. “Fuck you.” I’m crying now, actually crying. “Fuck both of you.”

“Layla—” Jace takes a step toward me, and I see it then, the pity and the contempt sitting side by side on his face. “Come on. You had to know this wasn’t going to work out.”

“What?”

“Six months and you wouldn’t even let me touch you?” He laughs, actually laughs. “What was I supposed to do? Wait forever while you worked through your issues?”

“My issues—”

“I have needs, Layla. And Zara—” He glances back at her. “Zara actually knows what she’s doing.”

“Get out,” I whisper.

“This is my house.”

“I said get out!” I’m screaming now and I don’t care who hears. “Both of you, get the fuck away from me—”

But Zara is already pushing past me, still crying. Jace just stands there looking at me like I’m something he stepped in.

“You know what your problem is?” he says quietly. “You’re so scared of everything that you can’t even let yourself feel good. Maybe if you weren’t such a frigid little—”

I turn and run before he finishes. I heard it anyway. Every word.

* * *

Sienna is in the hallway, and as I push past her she sticks her foot out. I don’t see it coming. The floor rushes up and I hit it hard, my bag flying from my hands and skidding across the hardwood, the zipper bursting open on impact. Condoms spill out everywhere, five of them, a whole box, scattering across the floor like evidence of every stupid naive thing I thought tonight was going to be.

The hallway goes quiet. Then someone laughs, and then everyone is laughing.

I’m on my hands and knees scrambling to pick them up, shoving them back into my bag, but my hands are shaking so hard I keep dropping them, and the coat has fallen open, and oh god, they can see everything. The red lace. The garter. Three shifts at the diner, all of it on display on the floor of Jace’s hallway while people laugh and someone holds up a phone.

“Aw, Layla.” Sienna crouches down next to me, her voice dripping with sympathy that fools no one. “Did you really think he wanted you?”

I don’t answer. My fingers close around the last condom and I stay there on the floor a moment longer than I should, staring at the hardwood because I am not ready to look up at all of them.

When I finally do, I find him.

Cain, standing at the top of the stairs like he’s been there the whole time, because he has. He saw everything: the coat falling open, the condoms, Sienna crouching over me like I’m roadkill she’s inspecting. He saw me on my knees in the lingerie I bought for someone who was never worth it, while everyone around me laughed. His face is completely still, eyes dark and unreadable, locked on mine with an expression I can’t name and have no interest in naming.

Over the years I’ve wanted a lot of things from Cain Russo. His attention. His cruelty. A fight I could win. Never this. Never to be witnessed at my worst by the last person on earth I’d choose.

You knew, I think. You fucking knew and you let me walk into it anyway.

I hold his gaze for one breath. Then I get up.

I push through the hallway with my eyes down and my jaw locked. They shift to let me pass, watching, some still smiling, their bodies smelling like beer and cheap perfume. Someone says something as I go by. I don’t stop. I hit the front door hard enough that it slams back against the wall, and then I’m outside and the rain comes down all at once, soaking through my coat before I make it two steps.

I walk fast, head down, needing nothing except distance from that house and those people and the sound of their laughter still ringing in my ears.

“Layla!”

my heart leaped into my throat at the sound of that voice.