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The music is still playing, surely, and Austin moves along with a beat, but the sounds are lost on me. All I can hear is the rush of blood through my ears and his breath so close to my ear. His hands are like shackles and I’m trapped. And the fucked-up thing? I don’t hate it as much as I should.
When I try to leave again, he doesn’t let me go. The struggle is so small, anyone watching wouldn’t notice, but I feel the tightening of his hand on mine. The pads of his fingers dig into the flesh just above my ass. It’s not painful. It’s fucking divine.
“Dance with your stepbrother, Quinn,” he teases.
“You’re buzzed.”
“Mmm. Maybe.”
“We should stop.”
“Why? Because I called you a good girl?”
My clit pulses. Is he doing this on purpose? “Uh, no, it’s just, you’re drunk and?—”
“Drunk and dancing with the prettiest girl in the room.”
I struggle to take a breath. “Don’t say that.”
“Why?”
“Because,” I growl.
“Do people not tell you that?”
I’ve heard it before, but it’s different coming from him. He’s one of my scent matches, and his compliments mean more. “Just, don’t.”
He does a maneuver, and I’m spinning away from him, controlled by the hand grasping mine. When he tugs, instinct takes over, and I twirl back into his arms. He catches me and, this time, there’s enough space between us that I wish he’d move closer.
“Something you might find interesting about me and my brothers is that we don’t like to be told what to do.”
My eyebrows rise. “That isveryobvious to me.”
His smile is a little crooked and those fucking dimples appear. “Good. Thanks for the dance, pretty girl.”
And with that, he leaves me dumbfounded as the music ends.Come back, I want to say, but then I’d need a reason for calling out to him. My reasons can never be voiced out loud.
I manage to pick my jaw off the floor before anyone notices and escape the ballroom, hiding away for the rest of the night and trying to erase the way his voice sounded when he called me a good girl.
Being their stepsister is going to be torture.
Three
PRESENT DAY
QUINN
Sitting in Madison’s office with her staring at me through her cat-eye glasses, lips pursed, like she doesn’t like what she sees, is nearly as tense as every time I run into my stepbrothers. Pressure that grows and grows until I’m left waiting for the moment when things explode.
“You’re fired.”
And there it is. A knife to my gut. My chest seizes and I suck in a breath. Fired? “I’m sorry. I don’t think I heard you right. Did you say?—”
“Yes, Quinn.” Madison pushes her glasses up her nose and shuffles the papers on her desk. “You’re fired. Mr. Mosley...”
“Mr. Mosley?” I pinch my eyes shut and wish I’d never gone to that stupid dinner. Mr. Mosley had asked me to come celebrate the CPA firm nabbing a client from our competition, and I went, happy to be part of the team. What I thought was a work dinner turned out to be a date with his geriatric pack.
I tried to pretend like I wasn’t shocked, tried to hide the undercurrent of fear. I indulged them in conversation and tried to make the best of it, but they were so forward that, by the timedessert came around, I went to the bathroom and never came back.
