“Kieran?” Jordy’s muffled voice seeped through the barrier. The slight rasp in it instantly made me remember the perfect pitch of his moans, and my dick gave an excited twitch. Hell was too good for me. When my prolonged silence gave him the hint that I wasn’t answering, he knocked again. “Kieran, can weplease talk? I… I know you’re probably mad but I don’t think it’s fair for you to shut me out.”
Mad? I’d spied on him, jerked off to his naked body without his consent, and he thoughtIwas the one who’d be mad? How in the hell could he possibly think that? I knew that he knew I’d been watching him. I’d been too loud, and then I’d slammed my door right after.
My eyes widened and my breath caught in my throat as an insane idea suddenly occurred to me. Had he set me up for that? Left his door open on purpose to be sure that I would see him?
The way he’d clung to me at the party, looking up at me like I was his fucking knight in shining armor, like he’d wanted me to hitch his thighs up around my waist and fuck him against the wall. And the way he’d been with me since then, so… cute and playful and flirty. I’d kept telling myself I was imagining it, that being so close to him all the time was actually starting to make me delusional. But I hadn’t fucking imagined it.
My stepbrother was actually trying to fucking seduce me.
I knew I was fucked up and deserved some kind of divine punishment for the way I felt about him, but this was beyond any form of fair and just karma. Did he think it was funny, torturing me like this? Was this some kind of cruel payback for something I didn’t even know I’d done?
Pulling my blankets over my head, I drowned him out, hoping I would suffocate sometime during the night.
THE NEXT MORNING, I got up and showered before the sun was up. I knew even Jordy wouldn’t be up that early. Peering into the mirror as I brushed my teeth, it was obvious that I’d barely slept. My eyes were ringed with dark circles and I didn’t have time to shave. Whatever. The people coming in for tattoos weren’t going to care about my looks.
Slipping out of the bathroom as silently as I could, I passed by his open bedroom door. Even though I didn’t want to, I couldn’t help but glance in. He was definitely fast asleep, to my intense relief. On his side, burrowed in layers of blankets, he was facing me.
How the hell was my brain supposed to come to terms with the fact that this angelic looking person who I’d known for so long, who looked up to me and trusted that he was safe with me, was the same person who suddenly seemed to be desperate to get my dick inside him? It was almost laughable, if it hadn’t been so fucking painful.
I couldn’t see it, but I knew he’d be clutching that stuffed fish he’d slept with for as long as I’d known him. It was childish, too childish for someone like Jordy, but I happened to know the reason why he was so attached to it. That was the other problem. We knew each other too well. I knew too many of his embarrassing little secrets and he knew too many of mine.
I rushed out of the house, loading up into my truck and grabbing breakfast from a fast food place. Parking in the lot of the tattoo shop, it was still barely light out. We wouldn’t open for a few more hours. After wolfing down a sandwich and hashbrowns, I tilted the seat of my truck back so I could get into a comfortable laying position. I’d barely shifted onto my side before my eyes were closed and I was snoring.
“Hey!”
The sound of knuckles rapping against the window next to my head jolted me awake, my elbow laying into the horn and blaring it out for a few seconds while my brain tried to comprehend where I was and what was going on.
“Did you sleep here last night?” Barbie asked me through my rolled up window, giving me an incredulous look.
“No,” I said. “I just got here early.”
“You know, we don’t have an employee of the month program,” she said, cocking an eyebrow. “You don’t get any brownie points for that.”
“Sorry. Just didn’t have anything else to do,” I responded, wrenching open the door and sliding out.
“You sure everything’s alright at home?” She asked, once we’d walked over to the building and she’d unlocked it.
“I’m sure.”
“You on drugs or something?”
“Are you serious?”
“Well, I don’t know what the kids are doing these days,” she sighed, giving me what I think was supposed to be a stern look. “So you’re not doing drugs?”
“No. I told you before, I’m fine.”
“You having omega troubles?”
“I-” I stopped, shaking my head. “I told you I’m not dating anyone, okay?”
“Well, maybe that’s your problem. You need some sugar or something?”
I grimaced, completely horrified by the thought of having that kind of conversation with her. And the fact that she’d used the wordsugarhit just a little too close to the truth. “Please stop. I’m begging you.”
“Sooner or later I’m going to figure out what’s going on with you.”
I seriously, seriously doubted it. Mainly because she didn’t even know Jordy existed, or really anything about my home life except that I lived with my mom and stepdad and that they were pretty decent.
