Chapter 9; Mine

RHYS

The kitchen was quiet for once.

No Theo moving around with that careful calm. No Tristan filling the silence with easy bullshit. No Cade brooding in a corner like the world had personally offended him. Just me, a half-finished cup of black coffee, and the low hum of the refrigerator.

A week.

Seven days since the girl I fucked senseless in a private room at the club walked into my father’s house and became the one person I was supposed to keep my hands off. Seven days of watching her try to avoid me and failing. Seven days of walking around half-hard every time she entered a room.

The door swung open.

Emma walked in like I wasn’t even there. Tiny black shorts that barely covered the curve of her ass. A thin white crop top that rode up every time she reached for something, showing a strip of soft skin I had already marked once. Hair in a messy knot. No bra. I could tell from the way the fabric moved.

She didn’t look at me. Didn’t acknowledge me. Just moved around the kitchen pulling out bread, a cutting board, a knife, acting like the air between us wasn’t already thick enough to choke on.

My cock hardened so fast it almost hurt. I stayed where I was, leaning against the counter, and watched her. Every shift of her hips. Every time she stretched and the crop top lifted higher. She had no idea what she was doing to me. Or maybe she did and that was worse.

My mind dragged me backward whether I wanted it or not.

The club. Low light. The way she had walked up to my table with that forced confidence, still smelling like nerves and expensive perfume. The way she laughed when I asked for a safe word and then gave me red anyway. How pretty she looked on her knees. How she sounded when I finally let her come. Best sex of my life and I didn’t even know her name. Then the next morning she was standing in my father’s foyer being introduced as my new stepsister and the universe decided to laugh in my face.

Every time I saw her now the same thought hit me: mine. Even when I told her to forget it. Even when I edged her until she cried and then sent her away. The word still sat under my skin like a brand.

The night I had her in my room, fingers and tongue and that little vibrator keeping her right on the edge, my father had called me downstairs the second Cade knocked. The conversation was still burned into my head.

“You need to stop.”

My dad had been standing by the window in his study, back to me, voice cold.

“The clubs. The women. The reckless shit. You’re not a child anymore, Rhys. You’re my son. Act like it. There is a future already arranged for you. A merger. A marriage that protects everything this family has built. I will not let you burn it down because you can’t keep your dick in your pants.”

I had laughed once, sharp and ugly. Off course how could I forget that cursed marriage that I didn't even ask for. 

“You mean the future where I’m sold off like livestock to some rival family’s daughter I’ve met twice?”

“I mean the future that keeps this empire standing. You will fall in line. You will stop drawing attention. And you will stay away from anything that could give them leverage. Including the girl currently living under this roof. I've been watching you, I see how you look at her. Don't test me.”

“Her name is Emma.” I said through clenched teeth.

“I don’t care what her name is. She is temporary. Infact, she is your sister. This arrangement on the other hand is not. Do I make myself clear?”

We had gone back and forth until my jaw ached from holding back everything I wanted to say. When I finally left the study the others were already in the living room with a bottle of whiskey. I dropped into a chair and drank straight from it.

Theo had been the one to break the silence.

“So are we all just going to keep pretending we don’t notice how fucking hot she is?”

Tristan laughed. “If anyone’s pretending, it’s Cade. Man looks at her like he’s deciding whether to eat her or kill her.”

Cade didn’t even deny it. Just took a long drink and stayed silent.

Tristan turned to me, eyes bright with curiosity. “How’d you even meet her, anyway? Because the way you two look at each other is not ‘new stepsiblings who just met’ energy.”

I told them. The club. The night. The fact that I had been inside her twelve hours before she walked into this house. None of them looked surprised. Theo just nodded slowly. Tristan whistled low. Cade’s jaw flexed once.

They kept talking about her legs, her mouth, the way she had told Cade to fuck off at breakfast like she had a death wish. I sat there listening and felt something ugly and possessive rise in my chest. The thought of anyone else touching her made my hands curl into fists. I wanted to keep her to myself. Lock her in my room and remind her exactly who she submitted to that first night until she forgot every other name.

But these men were my brothers. They had pulled me out of darker places than I would ever admit. And I had seen them at their worst too.

Tristan after the accident that took his sister. Theo after the mess with his own family. Cade after the kind of loss that turns people into weapons. If Emma was the thing that pulled the four of us even tighter together, then I would share. I didn’t like it. But I would do it.

A sharp hiss of pain cut through the memory.

I blinked and the kitchen came back into focus. Emma stood at the counter, staring down at her hand. Bright red welling across the tip of one finger where the knife had slipped.

I was moving before I decided to.

I crossed the space in three strides, took her wrist, and brought her finger to my mouth without thinking. The copper taste of her blood hit my tongue. I closed my lips around the cut and sucked, slow and deliberate. Her eyes snapped up to mine first wide with surprise, then darker, the pain shifting into something hotter. I sucked harder. A tiny, helpless moan slipped out of her.

That sound broke whatever restraint I had left.

I bent, hooked an arm under her ass, and lifted her clean off the floor. She made a startled noise and grabbed my shoulders. I carried her out of the kitchen, down the short hall to the nearest locked room which happened to be one of the small studies no one used and kicked the door shut behind us. The lock clicked.

I pinned her against the wall hard enough that the breath left her lungs in a rush.

“Rhys”

“Quiet.” I yanked the tiny shorts down her legs and off, then shoved the crop top up so her bare tits spilled free. No bra. Just soft skin and tight nipples I had already tasted once. “You walk around this house dressed like that, ignoring me like I didn’t have you crying on my tongue a week ago, and you think I’m going to keep playing nice?”

I freed my cock, already leaking, and rubbed the head through the wetness between her legs. She was soaked. Of course she was.

“What do you want?” I asked against her mouth.

Her voice came out shaky. “You.”

“Who do you belong to?”

A beat. Then, quieter, “You.”

“Say it properly.”

“I belong to you.”

I thrust up into her in one hard stroke, burying myself to the hilt. She cried out, head tipping back against the wall. I didn’t give her time to adjust. I fucked her like I had been thinking about it for seven straight days. It was deep, punishing strokes that made her tits bounce and her nails dig into my shoulders. The wet sound of it filled the small room.

“That’s it,” I growled against her neck. “Take it. This cunt was made for me. I filled it once and I’m going to fill it again. Every fucking day if I want. You feel that? How deep I am? I’m going to pump you so full of me it’ll be dripping down your thighs when you walk back out there.”

She moaned, legs wrapping tighter around my waist. I gripped her ass harder and angled her so every thrust dragged against the spot that made her shake.

“You going to come on your stepbrother’s cock, Emma? Right here against the wall like the dirty little thing you are?”

“Yes fuck Rhys..”

“Then do it. Come for me. And remember who owns this orgasm while you do.”

She broke with a broken cry, walls clamping down around me so tight I almost followed her over. I held back, fucking her through it, chasing my own release with hard, deep strokes until I buried myself one last time and came hard, flooding her while the thought of breeding her marking her from the inside made the climax hit even harder.

I stayed buried for a long moment, breathing against her neck, feeling the way she trembled around me.

Then Tristan’s voice rang out from downstairs, loud and unmistakable.

“We’re back! Anyone home or did you all die of boredom?”

I pulled out slowly, watching the mess of my cum start to slip down her inner thigh. I set her on her feet, steadying her when her legs wobbled.

“Go upstairs,” I said, voice still rough. “Clean up. I’ll finish whatever you were making for lunch.”

She looked at me like she wanted to say something and couldn’t find the words. I didn’t give her the chance. I cupped the back of her neck, pulled her in, and kissed her deep and possessive with tongue and teeth and the clear message that this was not a one-time slip. When I finally let her go her lips were swollen and her eyes were glassy.

“Go.”

She went.

I fixed my clothes, ran a hand through my hair, and walked back down to the kitchen. Tristan, Theo, and Cade were already there, dropping bags and arguing about whose turn it was to cook later.

Tristan looked up first and grinned. “There he is. Miss us?”

I opened the fridge like nothing had happened, like I couldn’t still taste her blood and her cunt on my tongue, and said, “You’re late.”