All Chapters of Ruin me, Stepbrother: Chapter 231 - Chapter 240

His laptop was closed on the coffee table. I didn't notice when that happened.The afternoon had shifted. The light coming through the living room windows was doing that specific golden thing it does around five, low and warm, the kind of light that makes everything look a little more important than it is. Or maybe exactly as important as it is. I could never decide which.His thumb was moving slowly against my shoulder.I wasn't sure he knew he was doing it. I was very sure that I knew.My phone was in my lap but I'd stopped actually looking at it a while ago. I was just here. Present in a way I'm not usually present, with no part of my brain running its usual background noise. Just this couch, this room, his arm, the light.I thought about the last few months. The versions of myself I'd been. The girl who lost weight she didn't need to lose and stared at ceilings at two in the morning and felt like she was genuinely coming undone at every single seam.And now a Wednesday evening on

I pulled back just enough to look at his face.His hands were still on my waist. My forehead had been against his, and now there was just enough space between us to see him properly. I looked, and the expression on his face was the one I didn't have the right word for yet. Warm and dark and certain. Something underneath it was too large to look at directly, so I looked at the edges of it instead.I reached for the hem of his shirt, and he let me.I pulled it over his head slowly and dropped it somewhere, not watching where it landed because I was busy looking at him. His chest. His shoulders. The line of his stomach. I put my hands on him and took my time because I had spent a very long time wanting this, and I was not going to rush it now that I had it. I had earned the not rushing.He watched my hands on him with that expression. It was dark and patient. Like he had all night and intended to give me every minute of it.I filed that away too. He is always giving me the time.My finge

Something changed.I felt it before I understood it. His hands on my hips shifting. The quality of his grip was different. Less deliberate patience and more something else. Something underneath the patience that had been there the whole time and was now closer to the surface.The slowness was gone.I felt it in the way he moved, the rhythm changing, and something in me rose to meet it immediately and completely. This was different from before. Before he had been careful and controlled and working through something with intention. Now he was just present, just urgent, and I was right there with him."Jax." His name felt like a permission, like a request. As yes, I'm here, I'm with you, don't stop.He made a low sound, and his forehead dropped to mine for one second. Then he picked me up off the counter.I gasped at the movement, the shift of angle, the sudden feeling of being lifted while he was still inside me. My legs locked aro

His side of the bed was already cool when I woke up.Not gone long. I lay there and listened and heard the shower running.Yesterday I woke up first and watched him sleep and had the quiet luxury of that. Today he was already moving.I could have gotten up, gone to my room, and started my morning in my own space.I didn't move.I lay in his sheets and listened to the water and looked at his hoodie still on the chair where I'd left it last night and thought about going to shower in my own bathroom. I thought about it seriously.I stayed exactly where I was until I heard the water stop.He came out with a towel and damp hair and looked at me still in his bed like he had expected to find me there."You're still here.""It's my bed now apparently."He smiled and said nothing, went to his dresser and got dressed while I watched from the bed. I watched him the way I used to watch him from across the dinner table and pretend I wasn't. Except I wasn't pretending anymore and he knew it.He cau

His hand moved first.The one around my shoulder. It moved slowly up my arm, to my jaw. The place he always comes back to, like he is drawn there, like it is his. His thumb rubbed against my jaw tilting my face up slightly.I let him. I looked up at him in the dark room."Hi," I said. The same word we kept using, and it kept meaning more every time.He looked at me for a long moment. The be "Hi,' he said back.Then he kissed me. It was slow and calm, like the whole afternoon had been. His mouth was on mine first. It was soft at first.I kissed him back immediately. There was no hesitation. I was completely done with hesitation.His hand stayed on my jaw, and mine found his chest and I felt his heartbeat under my palm. It was steady, even steadier than I expected.It deepened gradually. It was not like a rush toward somewhere, just gradually deepening.I shifted, and turned toward him more fully. His arm was still around me, pulling me in, and I ended up with my knees on the couch fac