Stepdad’s Pet, His Son’s Plaything

EMMA’S POV The first thing I heard wasn't the rain against the window or the settling of the old house. It was the smack. A sharp, wet sound of palm meeting skin that echoed through the vents and straight into my bedroom.I sat bolt upright in bed, my heart thudding a frantic rhythm against my ribs. For a split second, I thought someone was being hurt. Then came the moan—low, guttural, and unmistakable.My mother, Ruth, was screaming. Not in pain, but in a state of absolute, shattering undoing. And the man making her sound like that was Jordan. My "perfect" stepdad.I stared at the wall separating our rooms, my breath coming in shallow hitches. I was twenty-one now, back from university for the holidays, but in this house, I was still the "smartest girl in the world" to him. Jordan had married my mom six years ago, stepping into the void my biological father left with a grace that was almost saintly. He was the man who had tied my shoes, the man who drove me to every dance, the man

EMMA’S POVThe sound of my mother’s heels on the hardwood was the countdown to a firing squad.Click. Clack. Click.In a blurred explosion of frantic movement, the living room transformed from a den of sin back into a family sanctuary. Jordan shoved me off him with a strength that nearly sent me sprawling onto the rug. He was a whirlwind of panicked precision—zipping, buckling, and tucking his shirt back into his slacks with trembling hands.I scrambled to my feet, my heart hammering so hard against my ribs I was sure it would bruise. I smoothed the silk of my dress, my hands shaking as I tried to erase the evidence of his grip from my hips. My face felt like it was on fire, my cheeks swollen and tingling from the friction of him."Emma?" my mother’s voice called out again, right outside the archway.Jordan sank back into the armchair, his face pale, his chest still heaving as he tried to force his breathing into a normal rhythm. He grabbed a stray newspaper from the side table and sp

EMMA’S POVThe hallway felt like it was shrinking, the walls closing in as my mother’s footsteps drew nearer. I could feel the heat radiating off Reign—a sharp, restless energy that told me he wasn't buying my "secret girl stuff" excuse for a second."I haven't seen him," I repeated, my voice sounding thin and reedy to my own ears. I forced myself to look my mother in the eye, praying the dim lighting of the hallway hid the frantic pulse jumping in my throat. "Maybe he went to the study? You know how he gets when he’s prepping for a call.""I checked the study, Emma," mom said, her brow furrowing as she reached the threshold of my room. She looked past me, her gaze sweeping over my unmade bed—the bed where Reign had claimed me three nights ago—and settled on the closed bathroom door. "Jordan? Are you in there?"Silence. A silence so heavy it felt like it had its own heartbeat.Behind that door, I knew Jordan was standing frozen, his back against the cold tiles, his breath held until h

JORDAN’S POVThe dinner table was a battlefield, and I was losing. Every clink of silver against porcelain felt like a gunshot. I sat at the head of the table, the patriarch, the provider, the "saint," while my world turned to ash. Across from me, Reign was staring with a gaze so sharp it felt like he was flaying the skin from my bones. To my right, Emma—the girl who had tasted like forbidden nectar only hours ago—was picking at her risotto as if it were poison.I looked at Ruth, seeing the woman I had promised to cherish. She was beautiful, kind, and completely oblivious. I’d never cheated on her or had anything to do with any other woman before now. And then my gaze drifted—traitorously, inevitably—to Emma. I remembered the way her hair felt as I gripped it in the bathroom. I remembered the desperate, muffled sounds she made against the marble counter.The guilt was a physical weight, a cold stone in my gut, but it was being suffocated by a much darker, much more powerful hunger

REIGN’S POVThe house was suffocatingly quiet the morning after the terrace explosion. It was that heavy, artificial silence that follows a storm, where every floorboard creak sounds like a confession. I stood in the kitchen, leaning against the cold marble of the island, my knuckles white as I gripped a mug of coffee I had no intention of drinking.The liquid was bitter, mirroring the taste in the back of my throat. My mind was a jagged mess of the night before—the salt of Emma’s tears, the frantic way she’d pulled me into her, and the haunting, rhythmic thudding of my father in the next room. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the two of them: the "Saint" and the "Daddy’s Girl," playing their roles while the foundation of this family turned to dust.Then, Ruth walked in.I had never really looked at her before. For seven years, she had been a background character in my life—"the wife," the soft-spoken woman who curated my father’s perfect image and kept the domestic gears grinding