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My gut twists as flashbacks of that night haunt me, dancing on the periphery of my mind, so real I could reach out and touch them, so cloud-like and intangible that I can’t.
The moment I thrust into her, taking her hard because I’d been waiting for her sweetness for as long as I could remember… How many of my teenage fantasies had featured my stepsister in the lead role? It was fucking wrong how I lusted for her, but I had never been able to help myself.
Besides, they were only dreams. Dreams that I could pretend weren’t happening; dreams that didn’t mean anything.
Lies I told myself again and again.
I craved her, all right. I craved her when she came to live with me in New York for a year, parading around my apartment in my own goddamned T-shirts, so when I went to pull them on they smelled like her.
I craved her for all those years until, at twenty-one, she invited me to her place for dinner and I was weak. I was weaker than I should have been.
Even then I knew the tension had been building between us for months—years. Sweet, hot, demanding, captivating, suffocating need. But I’d fought it so fucking hard, with every fibre of my being. Then I went to her place and she answered the door in just a floaty dress and a huge smile. Our eyes met and everything inside me broke down with the utter certainty that we would be together.
I took her hard, just like I’d wanted to for so long, and I broke through the barrier of her inexperience, that testament to her sweetness, and I made her mine.
I remember the way she tasted, her innocence, her beautiful flesh. Her nipples were dark against her skin, aroused tight buds that I lashed with my tongue until she almost cried from the pleasure. Fuck. My dick is hard now, just remembering the way she whimpered beneath me, arching her back, begging me for more, asking me for all of myself.
She is all mine.
Or she was, at least.
Now she is the world’s. The darling of the classical music scene.
How many men have wanted her? How many men have watched her, their dicks hard, seeing her beauty and wanting her to wrap herself around them, to take them deep like she did me?
Fuck.
I stare at my phone, half-willing myself to dial her number, half-willing myself to throw the damned thing out of the window.
I imagine what might happen if I call her. If I dial her and say, ‘I want you. Now.’ Would she come over? Or be angry? A bit of both, I suspect. She has every right to be pissed with me for the way I ghosted out of her life, and yet surely she understands why?
My reasons for leaving still stand… I can’t forget that. Astra is forbidden. I must remember that.
I need a drink. It’s going to be a long night, knowing Astra is in town and that I can’t have her. It’s the only way to cope with this—I must stay away. If I see her again I am lost, and the promises I have made myself and the duty I owe my father will all cease to matter. They’ll become the background noise to far greater needs. Astra will be my all when I see her, so I can’t.
I’m halfway to the bar when the doorbell sounds. I change course, unbuttoning the top button of my shirt as I go and pushing the sleeves up to my elbows.
I don’t bother to look through the glass circle. My building is the most secure in Paris; no one can get in without passing several security checks. It’s the home of actresses, models, porn stars and politicians. And people like me, billionaire media scions who fantasise about their little stepsister.
And there she is.
Astra James—but not as she is in my memory. Not innocent and sweet.
She is hot as fuck, and, fuck, I want her…
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_ec1363ab-97c9-5a52-b10b-c9607c68f2b0)
‘ASTRA? WHAT ARE YOU doing here?’
He frowns, almost as if he’s forgotten my name, as if he’s forgotten me. Bastard. No such luck here. I stare at him as a starving man would a buffet. I stare at him like he’s my salvation, when really he is my pain, my problem. My past.
I straighten my back, determination renewed.
‘I’ll give you one guess.’
The words are purred, and before he can answer I step forward, my hand on his chest pushing him out of the way so that I can move past him, into the elegant hallway of his penthouse.
He’s been here almost a year, but the place still looks like a hotel suite. The same generic, fashionable, expensive décor that all our homes boast. Luxurious, tasteful, impersonal. There is no mark of Manning’s possession here. No sign of his tastes and proclivities, no indication of what he’s interested in.
The door clicks shut behind me and I turn around slowly. Manning stands with his hands on his hips, his sleeves rolled to his elbows so it’s very easy to admire the golden tan of his skin, the beauty of his forearms. Arms that have been wrapped around my body tight, like a prison. Arms that I have traced lines over with my tongue, tasting his salty flesh. He wears the gold Rolex that was a gift for his seventeenth birthday.
I’d known him only three months then. I was already in love.
His shirt is unbuttoned at the collar. I stare at his throat and my mouth goes dry. I fantasise about running my tongue from his lips to his chin and lower, to the cleft at the base of his jaw.
I have been planning this since my agent booked this gig, since I knew I would be in the same city as him. I have planned this night and yet now that I’m here, faced with him, a kaleidoscope of butterflies dance in my belly and my knees are trembling.
‘Astra.’
It’s a heavy sigh. His frown seems locked to his face. His handsome face. All huge eyes, so dark they are almost black, framed by thick lashes, a nose that is straight and prominent, cheekbones and a jaw that are carved as if from stone, and a mouth that has been designed to pleasure and to please. His jaw is covered in stubble. Not a fashionable stubble, carefully cultivated to suit an image. This is distraction. Laziness. A five o’clock shadow on speed.
‘Well, stepbrother,’ I murmur, my voice just a husk in this huge apartment. The Eiffel Tower sparkles beyond the balcony. ‘Aren’t you going to kiss me hello?’
His eyes blink closed and I know then that I’ve got him. That he is fighting me again like he has done for years—with the exception of that one night in New York.
Victory dances along my spine. This is going to happen. And I’m going to enjoy it.
‘Is that what you want?’
He opens his eyes, spearing me, and the heat in his gaze unfurls like a whip.
No way. He doesn’t get to flip this around. He’s not asking the questions; I am.
I glide towards him, lifting a hand under the strap of my dress as I go, dropping it down my shoulder just enough to make him look there. To make him look at my skin, remember how I taste and feel.
‘You’re so fucking soft,’ he had groaned as he nuzzled my flesh, tasting every inch of me. ‘Just how I dreamed you’d be.’
And then he left. After making my body writhe with ecstasy, birthing in me a belief in heaven and God and angels and the ever-after because his possession of me had been so perfect. He’d left.
Well, tonight I’m repaying that favour. I’m going to make him feel better than he’s ever felt and then I’ll leave him.
‘Tonight’s about what you want, Manning.’
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_7e3b3cec-2d8d-565f-ab9d-9b9fcb5890c7)
IF HER STRAP DROPS another inch I’ll see the top of her breast, and suddenly I need to see it more than I can say.
I have to ask her to leave. To throw her out on that perfect arse of hers.
Proximity is danger; but do I care?
‘Is it?’ The question is gravelled and gruff, my words showing my frustration. But it’s not frustration with her so much as how wrong this is and how incapable I seem of avoiding it.
She nods slowly, the simple movement a sensual promise, her hooded eyes latched to mine. ‘Tell me what you want.’
I want her to go; I need her to stay.
I want her to not be my fucking stepsister—my dad’s adopted daughter.
I want to not think of her with the full backlog of my knowledge.
I want to see her as just this: a woman who wants to fuck me.
I wish I could separate this Astra from the Astra I know intimately in every way. The Astra I saw grow up, the Astra I adored when she was a child and came to lust after when she was a teenager and burgeoning into a young adult. The Astra I can’t get out of my head.
‘And whatever I want you’ll do it?’ I prompt, surprised that I can sound so commanding and calm when my cock is hard and my pulse is thready.
‘I’ll do anything.’ She nods, her expression determined despite the soft tone of her words.
She closes the distance between us, her fingers toying with that strap, and I hold my breath, silently willing her to push it lower.
‘You want to see me,’ she declares, her eyes challenging me to admit it.
‘I’m seeing you now.’ I shrug, as if I’m not gagging to feast my eyes on her beautiful flesh.
‘And that’s enough?’
She pouts, her lower lip jutting out, begging me to drag it between my teeth. Fuck.
‘You shouldn’t be here.’ I make one last-ditch effort towards sanity.
Her smile shows she knows it. ‘I’ll go if you ask me to.’
There. It’s easy. Just tell her to leave. Just tell her she’s your stepsister and you meant what you said in Manhattan—that it shouldn’t have happened. Tell her to put a fucking coat on or something, so no one else can see what you do: those beautiful pert breasts straining at the silky fabric of her dress.
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