My stepbrother and his friends want me 의 모든 챕터: 챕터 11 - 챕터 20

EMMAThe silence after Rhys’s words stretched thin and electric.I was still on my knees, pressed close to him, with the three of them framed in the doorway like something out of a fever dream. Tristan’s usual easy charm had burned off, replaced by an intensity I had never seen him make any effort to hide. Theo looked steady but strained, his hands flexing at his sides. Cade hadn’t moved an inch.He just stood there, dark eyes locked on me with an intensity that made my skin feel too tight.My voice came out quieter than I expected.“You can come in.” I swallowed. “But… don’t touch me. Not yet. I want it to just be Rhys right now.”Theo nodded once, already stepping forward. Tristan’s mouth curved into something softer, almost respectful, as he followed.They moved into the room without crowding us and settled into the two chairs near the window, their attention fixed on me.Cade stayed exactly where he was, shoulder against the doorframe, arms crossed as though he were holding himself

RHYSI was halfway through a quarterly report I had no real interest in reading when the study door slammed open hard enough to rattle the framed maps on the wall.My father didn’t knock. He never did when he was in this mood.“You have a meeting with Victoria at two,” he said, voice clipped. “The restaurant her family prefers. You will be there on time, you will be civil, and you will not give her another reason to call me complaining. Miss it and there will be consequences. Clear?”I kept my eyes on the screen and clenched my jaw until the muscle jumped. A dozen replies burned on my tongue and none of them was useful. I gave a short nod instead. He waited a beat longer, as if daring me to push back, then turned and left as abruptly as he had arrived. The door clicked shut with finality.I shut the laptop harder than necessary and went upstairs to change.Dark shirt. Dark trousers. The kind of understated expensive that Victoria’s people expected. I moved through the motions without t

The bedroom felt larger with her standing in the center of it.Rhys leaned against the wall nearest the door, arms loosely crossed, and watched the way Emma’s pulse fluttered at the base of her throat. He had known this moment was coming from the night he first put his hands on her in that club way before he knew her name, before she walked into his father’s house and turned everything sideways.He thought of the arrangement with Victoria, the constant pressure from his father, the careful distance he had tried and failed to maintain all of it had led here. To a signed document on the living-room table and four men who had already decided they would share the only woman any of them had wanted this badly in years.He wanted her to strip slowly. He wanted to watch every inch of skin appear and know that the others were seeing it too. The possessive part of him still snarled at the idea of their eyes on her, but the deeper, older bond with these three men overrode it. They had survived t

EMMAI think I like Rhys.Not just like him, but like like him.The thought had been circling for days before I finally let myself say it out loud in the quiet of my own head. It had been a few months since the night I signed that document in the penthouse living room and stopped pretending this was only physical. The time since then had been good no it was better than good. Mornings that started with Tristan’s laugh from the kitchen. Afternoons where Theo would find me reading and sit close enough that our shoulders touched without asking for more. Nights when Cade’s silence felt like its own kind of claim. And Rhys… Rhys had been the center of so much of it. The way he looked at me across a room. The low voice against my ear. The possessive edge that used to make my stomach flip.Lately that edge had gone missing.It started small. A night he came to bed after I was already asleep. A morning he left before anyone else woke up. Conversations that used to last an hour now ended after

EMMAThe grand hall was larger than I had imagined any room in the estate could be.I hadn’t even known it existed until the staff directed me downstairs that evening. Crystal chandeliers threw warm light across polished marble and long tables already set with more silverware than I knew what to do with. The air smelled of expensive perfume, fresh flowers, and the faint metallic edge of too many people in one place. Voices layered over one another in polished, careful tones. Laughter that never got too loud. The soft clink of glasses.My mother stood near the entrance on Richard’s arm, smiling the way she had learned to smile in this world warm, gracious, slightly distant. She greeted people whose names I didn’t know and whose faces I only half-recognized from business articles and society pages. I stayed back, pressed into a corner near one of the tall windows, and tried to take up as little space as possible.The dress was not something I would have chosen. Deep emerald, fitted thro