All Chapters of My Stepbrother's Secret Obsession : Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

✦ POV: JULIAN HART The kiss deepened tasting of salt, desperation and a long-overdue surrender.Every barrier I had painstakingly erected over the past months—every cold night spent staring at my dorm ceiling, every forced smile in the library, every attempt to convince myself that Marcus and a normal college routine could wash Xavier out of my blood—turned to ash under the pressure of his lips.Xavier’s hands slid from my waist up my back, his fingers tangling into the fabric of my jacket before pressing firmly against my spine, molding me so completely into his frame that I couldn't tell where my heartbeat ended and his began. He kissed me with a fierce, punishing hunger, as if trying to reclaim every single second we had lost across an ocean of distance and war.A low involuntary gasp slipped past my lips and Xavier took advantage of it instantly, his tongue sweeping into my mouth with an absolute, dizzying authority that made my knees completely give out.If his arms hadn't been

POV: JULIAN HART The word hung in the quiet, sunlit space between us, light as a feather and heavy as an anchor.Okay.For a second, Xavier didn't move. He just stared down at me, his dark eyes wide with a sudden, stunned vulnerability that I rarely ever saw beneath his polished untouchable exterior. Then, a slow, breathtaking smile broke across his face—not the sharp cynical smirk he wore outside but a real unguarded smile that reached all the way to his eyes."Say it again," he murmured, his hands tightening possessively around my waist as if he was afraid I might wake up and take it back."I'll stay," I repeated, a soft, breathless laugh escaping my lips as I wrapped my arms tighter around his neck. "Though you're going to have to help me carry all my accounting ledgers over here because I am not failing cost analysis just because I ran away with my stepbrother.""Done," Xavier whispered, his voice thick with a raw, overwhelming relief. "I'll buy the entire business school if it

CHAPTER 65: THE WEIGHT OF SURRENDERPOV: JULIAN HART The cool plaster of the wall vanished beneath the sudden, overwhelming heat of his skin.When Xavier’s mouth tracked back up from my throat, his lips grazing the sensitive curve of my jaw before capturing mine again, every coherent thought in my head shattered. His kiss wasn't gentle; it was heavy with weeks of starvation, a fierce, demanding reclamation that stole the very air from my lungs.My fingers knotted tightly into his dark hair, pulling him closer, anchoring myself to him as his hands slid down my back, gripping my thighs and lifting me higher against his frame. I locked my legs around his waist, whimpering softly into his mouth as his touch turned impossibly possessive."Julian..." he groaned against my lips, his voice a raw, broken rasp that vibrated straight through my core.He didn't wait. Carrying me effortlessly across the dark, amber-lit room, he didn't stop until the back of my knees hit the edge of the mattress.

POV: JULIAN HART The morning sunlight cut across the floor of the apartment in thick, golden bars, warming the air and casting long, quiet shadows against the wall.I sat at the wooden dining table, a heavy accounting ledger open in front of me, though my pen hadn't touched the paper in twenty minutes. My eyes traced the neat columns of numbers without absorbing a single digit. My mind kept drifting backward, pulling at the tangled, painful threads of the past that had finally brought us into this quiet room together.We hadn't started as a scandal. We hadn't started as two stepbrothers hiding in the shadows of a gilded estate.Before the rules before Richard, before the heavy silence of that mansion—we were just two kids who used to share everything. Xavier and I had been childhood friends back in the old neighborhood spending endless summer afternoons sitting on back porches, making promises about a future we knew nothing about. And then, without a single word of warning, his fathe

POV: JULIAN HART By two o'clock, the lecture hall had emptied out, leaving only the quiet hum of the air conditioning and the squeak of my sneakers against the floor.I packed my laptop and ledgers into my bag, pulling the zipper shut with a heavy sigh of relief. Cost analysis had been a nightmare, but for once, my brain wasn't totally fried by the numbers. My mind kept drifting back to three o'clock, to the sleek dark car that would be waiting for me outside the steps.As I walked out into the main lobby of the business building, a familiar voice called out from the lounge chairs near the glass doors."Look who survived Professor Vance's firing squad."I turned to see Leo pushing himself up from a couch, a half-eaten pretzel in one hand and his phone in the other. He walked over with a wide, easy grin, shaking his head."I was about to send a search party," Leo said, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe. "You look way too calm for someone who just spent two hours calculating a