Chapter 4 - Terms

(Lorei's POV)

Elias is twenty minutes late to dinner, and nobody acts surprised except me.

He slides into his seat like the rest of us have been waiting on him for the privilege, not the other way around, unbuttoning his cuffs without a word of apology. Richard doesn't even comment. My mom shoots me a look that says this is normal, just go with it.

Okay. So this is just... how he is.

Dinner's this excruciating performance of politeness. Richard asking my mom about her day, my mom asking Elias about work, Elias answering in single words while looking at his phone under the table like none of us are worth his full attention. I catch him glancing at me twice. Both times he looks away like he was never looking at all.

What’s up with this weirdo?

"Elias," Richard says, over dessert, "why don't you show Lorei around properly after dinner? Give her the real tour, not the ten-second version from this morning."

Elias's jaw tightens, just barely. "I have work."

"It can wait an hour." Richard's tone goes firm in that stern, fatherly way. "She's family now. Make the effort."

Please don't make him do this. Please, I'm begging you, do not make this man show me around.

But Elias just leans back, that flat, unreadable look sliding over his face again. "Fine." He stands, buttoning his jacket, and glances at me. "Follow me."

I don't have a choice, apparently, so I follow him out of the dining room and down a hallway lined with weird looking artworks. Ughh.. rich people and their weird tastes.  The second we're out of earshot, something in him just… changes. His shoulders suddenly become looser, that bored mask sliding off completely, replaced with something sharper. What the fuck?

"You know…" he says,  not bothering to look at me, "you've got a talent for showing up in places you shouldn't."

"Excuse me?"

"You have a peculiar knack for just appearing weirdly." He stops outside his study door, pushing it open with a mocking flourish. "After you."

He stops outside a set of double doors, his study, I'm guessing, and pushes them open with a mocking flourish. “After you.”

I hesitate, my eyes darting to the cameras lining the hallway. Swallowing my pride, I step inside, the door clicking shut behind us. I cross my arms, doing my best impression of a person who isn't the tiniest bit intimidated.  "What's your problem with me, huh? You've been  rude since the second I walked in here. Why? You don’t want a stepsister? Well. I’m not exactly interested in having an asshole of a stepbrother too. I’m just here fro my mum. I’m getting out of here as soon as I can."

"Rude, huh?" He scoffs, circling the desk to lean against it, arms crossed, an annoyingly mischievous grin plastered on his face.  "That's an interesting word for it." He picks up a folder off his desk and tosses it onto the low table between us without breaking eye contact.

"Open it."

I really do not like where this is going. Are all rich people this weird?

I open it slowly, and I meet the shocker of my life. Photos of me and him, naked, in a place that looks like a hotel room, laughing at something off-camera. His hand is on my waist, my head tipped back against his shoulder. Another one, closer, worse, my hands in his hair, his mouth on my neck. 

My whole face goes hot, then cold, then hot again.

"Where did you…" My voice comes out strangled. "How do you have these?"

"Because I was there, Lorei." He says it soft, almost gentle, which is somehow worse than if he'd shouted it. "You climbed onto a stranger at a bar, told him he deserved a raise, and then spent the entire night proving exactly how grateful you were." His eyes drop slowly to my waistline, and back up, and my skin lights up everywhere his gaze touches like he's already got his hands on me. "You don't remember any of it, do you. That's almost a shame. You were... memorable,’ he says, grinning from ear to ear.

Oh my god. Oh my god, it was him. It was HIM.

"You…" I can't get a full sentence out. "You're… you’re my stepbrother."

" Well… I wasn't your stepbrother that night." He pushes off the desk and steps closer, close enough that I have to tip my head back to keep looking at him. His smell launches me back to that night and the memories start coming back to me bit by bit. And for fuck’s sake, my traitor body remembers. And butterflies are already pooling in my tummy, goosebumps all over my arms. "Funny how fast things change."

"What do you want?" My voice shakes. 

"I want you to understand your situation." He reaches out and tucks a piece of hair behind my ear slowly, almost tender, and it makes my skin crawl and light up at exactly the same time. "Those photos leave this room the second I decide they should. Your mother's brand-new shiny marriage will be over, before the ink's even dry on the prenup. Your reputation, if you have one, will be gone, hers too. Everyone in this city will know exactly what her daughter did with her new stepson." His thumb drags along my jaw. "Or…. you keep me happy privately, just like you did that night. You’ll be my little plaything. And in public, we play the doting, harmonious little family everyone already thinks we are."

"You're insane." I breathe, stepping back. He lets me, his eyes gleaming with amusement. "I'm not doing that. I'll tell your father. I'll tell my mom…"

"Tell them what?" He tilts his head, and something dangerous flashes behind his eyes. "That you don't actually remember what happened that night? That you can't prove anything except what's sitting right there in that folder?" He steps into my space again, and this time I let him, frozen, furious, and horribly, humiliatingly aware of how close his mouth is to mine. "Careful who you threaten, Lorei. I know things about a lot of people in this city. Things that would make your little father situation look a lot less like an accident, if I ever decided to go digging."

Everything in me goes very, very still.

"What did you just say?"

"Nothing." The mask slides back over his face fast. "Just an observation."

"That's not an observation, that's…" My heart's pounding for a completely different reason now. "Do you know something about my dad?"

"Oh darling, I know a lot of things." He straightens his cuffs, unbothered, like he didn't just detonate a bomb in the middle of the room. "The question is what you're willing to do to find out which ones matter."

I stare at him, furious, terrified, and, underneath all of it, humiliatingly, unmistakably, still aware of exactly how close he's standing, and my eyes won’t stop falling to his lips, his luscious-looking lips.

"Fine," I say, and the word tastes like ash coming out of my mouth. "I'll…. I'll play along. In public. That's it. Nothing else."

His mouth curves, slow, satisfied, like he already knew exactly how this would end before I walked into the room.

"We'll see," he says, "how long 'that's it' actually lasts."

As I storm out of the room, I can't shake the feeling that I've just made a deal with the devil. And worse still, that my body is already craving more of him.