Page 2 of All for Love

“You know damn well that I’m thirty. Twenty-one is a perfectly acceptable age for a hookup.”

She sniffed and shook her head again. “It’s definitely not. Think about it this way. When she was in the first grade, you were a junior in high school. She was crying for her mommy with two ponytails in her hair and you’d probably already lost your virginity.”

My lips twisted. I’d never admit it to her, but revulsion rolled through me. “Thanks for ruining it.”

She laughed and gave me an innocent smile. “You’re welcome. Now stay away from my family members, okay?”

With that, she turned her back on me and went to join her younger cousin’s circle on the dance floor, effectively blocking me out. I stayed right where I was and just stared at her for another beat. That fucking woman drives me nuts.

I couldn’t believe she was family now, and since Dad wanted us all to act like one big, happy family, that meant I was going to be seeing a lot more of her than I wanted to. I didn’t want to see her at all, and yet here she was, at the wedding of my father and her mother, telling me who I could and couldn’t hook up with.

Who does she think she is? I mean sure, she had a point with the whole age-gap thing, but some women think older men are sexy. Like her mother, for example.My dad was decades older than her, and Mercedes had let them get married but I couldn’t make a move on the cousin who was only nine years younger than me.

On the other hand, now that she’s said it, there’s no way I can unhear it. Or unsee the mental image of the crying seven-year-old with two ponytails in her hair. Probably even clutching a doll. Crap. Now my head’s gone and put a doll in that picture. That’s just fucking perfect.

I sighed but spun around to snickering from Kaden and Brooke, who were sitting and watching my dismal failure from our table. I narrowed my eyes at them, but Kaden mimicked my earlier move with the smoothing down of the eyebrows before he pumped them at me.

I laughed. “Yeah, okay. That went badly.”

He winked like he’d heard what I said even from the other side of the dance floor, and the corners of my lips pressed in as I shook my head and turned back to the crowd of writhing bodies. There had to be another viable option out there somewhere, right?

There were over a hundred people here, and while at least half of them were older, Dad’s friends and business associates, there was a fair amount of younger people too. Even accounting for those who were married or taken, that had to leave me with more than just the chick who’d stood me up and the cousin.

As I scanned the dance floor, my gaze kept snagging on my infuriating new stepsister. I didn’t want to check her out. Couldn’t she have been uglier? Like, hag-level ugly?

Because I wanted her to be. But she wasn’t.

In fact, when we’d first met—before I’d found out how irritating she was—I’d thought she was pretty hot. Beautiful, even. In a parallel universe, she might’ve even been my next target.

At twenty-five, she wasn’t that much older than the cousin she’d just put me off of, but there was only a five-year age difference between us. No way she could complain about that.

She had her back to me, but that only meant that I had an unimpeded view of her ass. It was full and a little heart shaped, perfectly outlined by her shimmery dress. Not gonna lie, she’s got a good ass.

Purely of their own accord and completely against my will, my eyes moved up from that ass to take in her curvy hips and the way they tapered into a slightly narrower waist. Her hair hung in a neat, fancy-looking braid between her shoulders, and since she wasn’t looking at me, her face was animated with joy as she smiled at whoever was dancing beside her.

It’s a good smile, too. A real pretty one.

Mercedes was an uptight, super type-A bitch most of the time, but right now, out on this dance floor with her family, she seemed to be making the most of the break she was taking from her duties to dance. Her head dropped back, her eyes closed, and her hands stretched into the air as she swayed to the rhythm of the music, trailing her fingers down the length of one arm in a way that made me itch to do the exact same thing.

To her, though. Not to myself. I’d look ridiculous dancing like that.

It was the first time I was seeing her like this, and I suddenly realized I needed a drink. My mouth had gone dry and the crotch of my pants was just a little bit tighter than before. Yeah, that’s it. I need a drink. And to stop ogling her.

Obviously, the lack of other eligible women here was making me stupid. Half-tempted to smack myself in the face, I strode across the dance floor away from the sexy show my stepsister was putting on—whether she was doing it intentionally or not—and headed to the bar.

As soon as I broke free from the writhing bodies, it was like the fog in my brain lifted and I could think clearly again. A moment of insanity. That’s all it was. Just one moment, and it’s over now.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

Kaden had been right before. We’d both promised our father we’d be on our best behavior tonight, and maybe it was time I actually tried doing it.