HOME FOR BREAK (1)

Five months ago Jace Holden caught me with my hand in my underwear in a wine cellar at our parents’ engagement party.

He watched me finish. Talked me through it. Called me stepsister while I came.

I went back to college and touched myself to the memory of his voice every night for five months.

Now it’s winter break. Our parents left an hour ago. I’m standing in his kitchen pretending I’m not shaking.

He walks in behind me while I’m pouring water. His chest hits my back and his hands land on the counter on either side of me, caging me in. I go rigid.

“Missed you, princess.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“You’re trembling.” His mouth touches the back of my neck. Not a kiss. Just his lips resting there. Warm. “You’ve been trembling since you walked in.”

“Get off me, Jace.”

His hand slides down my stomach. Under the waistband of my shorts. Past my underwear.

His fingers find me and I jerk forward into the counter. A sound comes out of me I’ve never made in front of another person.

He groans against my neck. “Soaked. You’re soaked through your underwear and you haven’t been here an hour.”

He groans against my neck. “Soaked. You’re soaked through your underwear and you haven’t been here an hour.”

His fingers are thick. Rougher than mine. He moves them like he already knows my body better than I do, and the worst part is he’s right.

“Stop.” I grab his wrist with both hands. Pull. He doesn’t budge. His arm is concrete. “Jace, stop, we can’t, you’re my stepbrother.”

“Say that again.” His middle finger pushes inside me and my knees buckle. He catches me with his other arm around my waist. “Say stepbrother again while you’re clenching around my finger.”

I bite my lip so hard I taste copper. Two fingers now. Curling. Finding the spot that makes my vision swim.

I shove backward with my hips, trying to throw him off.

All it does is grind my ass against him. He’s hard. So hard I can trace the shape of him through his sweats against my lower back.

“Feel that?” He pushes his hips forward and the pressure makes my stomach drop.

“That’s what your voice did to me in that cellar. Five months of this. Five months of jerking off to the sound of my stepsister cumming.”

“You’re sick.”

“And you’re riding my hand.”

I am. My hips are moving on their own. Rocking into his fingers while I try to pull his wrist away.

Failing at both. My body and my brain are in two different wars and my body is winning.

His thumb finds my clit and presses hard. Circles. Not gentle. Not exploring. He knows exactly where it is and he’s grinding it.

“Jace, please.” My voice cracks. I don’t know if I’m begging him to stop or keep going and that scares me more than his fingers do.

He adds a third finger. The stretch burns and I gasp and my forehead drops to the cold counter and my hips push back for more and I hate myself for it.

“That’s it.” His breath is hot on my ear. “Stop pretending. Stop fighting. You came to this house because you wanted my hands on you again.”

“I came because my mom asked me to.”

“You came because you’ve been fucking yourself to my voice for five months and your own fingers stopped being enough.”

I want to deny it. I want to turn around and slap him and drive back to campus. But his fingers curl and his thumb grinds and my whole body locks up.

“Cum for me.” He bites the side of my neck. Hard. Not a love bite. Teeth sinking in. “Cum on your stepbrother’s hand in the kitchen like a desperate little slut.”

I cum so hard the glass of water flies off the counter. My body convulses against him, my thighs trapping his hand, a sound tearing out of me that’s animal and broken.

He works me through it. Every pulse. Every clench. His fingers don’t slow down, don’t soften. He milks the orgasm out of me until I’m twitching and whimpering and my legs have stopped working.

Before the last wave finishes he pulls his fingers out. I gasp at the loss.

He spins me around and I see his face up close for the first time. His pupils are blown so wide his gray eyes look black.

He holds his hand up. Three fingers. Shining wet.

“Open your mouth.”

“No.”

He hooks his thumb on my chin. Pulls my jaw down. Slides his fingers into my mouth. I taste myself on him. Salt and musk and something shameful.

“Suck,” he says.

I suck. I don’t decide to. My mouth closes around his fingers and my tongue curls.

I’m looking up at him while I clean myself off his hand. His expression is so dark it makes my stomach flip.

He pulls his fingers out. Spits in my mouth. Slow. His eyes locked on mine.

“Swallow.”

I swallow and something in my chest caves in. Some wall I built five months ago that was never as strong as I pretended.

I swallow.

He picks me up. One arm under my knees, one behind my back.

I weigh nothing to him. The ease of it is humiliating. I shove against his chest and kick and he doesn’t react at all. Like my resistance is a mild inconvenience.

He carries me down the hall toward his bedroom. I know where he’s going. I know what’s coming.

My fist connects with the side of his head. He doesn’t flinch. His hand squeezes my thigh hard enough to bruise.

He drops me on his bed.

The mattress bounces. I bounce with it. The air rushes out of my lungs.

Before I can scramble he’s standing at the foot of the bed, unbuckling his belt. Not to use as a restraint. To get it out of the way.

The look on his face is focused. Locked in. A decision already made