CHAPTER 1: I CAUGHT MY STEPDAD CHEATING AND HE MADE ME PAY FOR WATCHING

I hear her before I see anything.

Some woman, not my mother, moaning like she’s being split open in the guest room at the end of the hall. It’s one in the morning and I came down for water and now I’m standing barefoot on the hardwood in my sleep shorts and tank top, hand frozen on the banister, listening to the unmistakable sound of a woman getting fucked properly.

Every sensible part of me knows to turn around, go back to bed, and let whatever is behind that door stay there.

Instead I move closer.

The door is open. Just an inch. Just enough.

And there he is.

Dominic. My mother’s husband of one month. My stepfather, if the word even applies to a man I met thirty days ago at a courthouse wedding that felt more like a business transaction than a love story. He’s standing at the edge of the guest bed, shirtless, his slacks open and shoved down his thighs, and there’s a blonde woman on her hands and knees in front of him gripping the sheets while he drives into her from behind with long, brutal strokes that make the headboard knock the wall.

He’s, god. He’s big. Not just tall, not just broad-shouldered, though he’s both of those things. He’s thick and hard and I can see him pulling out almost all the way, glistening, before shoving back in so deep the blonde’s arms buckle.

“Take it,” he mutters, one hand fisted in her hair, the other gripping her hip hard enough to bruise. “That’s it. Fucking take it.”

Disgust would be the honest response. Marching to my mother’s bedroom, waking her up, torching this man’s life — all of that would make sense. But my mother is a cold, manipulative woman who married Dominic for his money and made my childhood a masterclass in emotional neglect, and the truth, the sick and twisted one, is that I understand exactly why he’s in here with someone else on a Tuesday night.

The other truth, the one making my thighs press together in this dark hallway, is that I’ve been dreaming about Dominic since the day I met him.

Wet, filthy, wake-up-gasping dreams. Dreams where those hands are on me. Where that voice is in my ear. Where he’s the one making me claw at the sheets. I hate him, hate his arrogance, his smirks, the way he looks at me across the dinner table like he’s dissecting me, but my subconscious doesn’t care about hate. Every night for a month, my subconscious has put me on my knees for my stepfather, and every morning I’ve woken up soaked and ashamed and aching.

Now I’m watching him fuck someone and I can’t breathe.

He changes angles, grabs both her hips, pulls her back onto him— and the sound she makes is guttural, wrecked. I watch the muscles in his back flex, watch sweat roll down his spine, watch his cock disappear into her over and over, and my clit is throbbing so hard it hurts.

I press my back against the hallway wall and slide my hand into my shorts.

I’m drenched. Embarrassingly, pathetically drenched, my pussy swollen and slick, and the first brush of my fingers against my clit makes me bite down on my lip so hard I taste copper. I rub in tight circles, watching through the crack in the door, matching my rhythm to his thrusts.

This is so fucked up. He’s your stepfather. He’s inside another woman. Your mother is asleep down the hall.

I rub faster.

The blonde comes, loud, shaking, collapsing forward, and Dominic pulls out of her and I catch a full glimpse of him, hard and thick and wet with her, and my legs nearly give out. He’s stroking himself slowly, looking down at her like she barely satisfied him, like he could go three more rounds and she’s already done.

I’m so close. My fingers are slippery and frantic and I’m biting my wrist to stay quiet and—

The door swings open.

Dominic is standing in the doorframe, slacks pulled up but unbuttoned, shirtless, chest heaving. The blonde is gone, I hear the back door click shut somewhere downstairs. He must have sent her out fast.

And he’s staring directly at me.

My hand is still in my shorts.

Time stops. The hallway is dark but the light from the guest room spills across both of us and there is nowhere to hide. My fingers are wet. My face is on fire. And Dominic is looking at my hand between my legs with an expression that is somewhere between fury and hunger.

“How long,” he says, low and lethal, “have you been standing there?”

I yank my hand out of my shorts. My heart is hammering so hard I can feel it in my throat.

“Long enough,” I manage. My voice is steadier than I expected. Spite does that, gives you a backbone when your body is betraying you. “Long enough to know you’re cheating on my mother.”

His jaw flexes. He takes a step toward me and I take a step back, and my shoulder blades hit the wall. He doesn’t stop until he’s close, too close, his forearm bracing against the wall above my head, his body a wall of heat and sweat and the smell of sex that makes my head swim.