Every inch of her.
I pull up the group chat with a few of the guys from the team and type out a message.
Kai
So I’ve got to head into Oakland to get my stepsister. She’s at a bachelorette party at Continental. Anyone want to come with?
Gael
I’m down
Andres
For sure.
Jackson
Well, if Dre is going, I guess I am too.
Kai
I’ll be downstairs in ten.
Isla, I’m coming for you and you better be ready for me.
An hour later,we’re parking my SUV in a lot a block away from the club. We get to the doors, pay the cover, and head inside. I scan the dance floor for Isla and lo and behold, she’s sandwiched between two pricks who have their hands all over her. So much for this being a “guy-free party.” I feel a set of hands grip my shoulders, holding me back.
“You do not want to make a scene, Kai.” Jackson shouts over my shoulder. “I know you feel some type of way about her, but… You’ve got to use your head, man.”
He means the one with a brain that’s telling me that she can do what she wants because she is a grown woman. Not the one in my pants telling me she looks fucking delicious and I need to have her under my tongue immediately.
Part of me wants to run over there and bash their stupid fucking faces in for touching what’s mine.Because Isla is mine,always has been mine.The other part of me wants her to realize she’s fucked up, to see me watching her. Then take her down the dark back hallway and take it out on her pussy or her pretty little mouth as punishment.
“Just have a good time, bro. Find a chick, or, fuck, find a dude to hook up with and let it go.”
Negative. If it’s not Isla, I don’t want them.
I head towards the bar, purposefully crossing her path and as I push past the bodies grinding against each other on the floor, my eyes find hers. Even drunk, it only takes her half a second to recognize me. Her eyes trail down my body and slowly back up to my eyes.
That’s right, princess. I’m here for you and only you.
I give her a once-over, then look at the men she’s between and sneer, shaking my head I turn and make my way towards the bar to get a drink. My skin prickles on the back of my neck and I know Isla’s following me.
“Kai, what are you doing here?”
2
ISLA
“Kai, what are you doing here?”
Why is my stepbrother here? My stupidly hot, overprotective stepbrother, who I’ve been in love with since the moment our parents decided it was a great idea for all of us to live together. I was fourteen years old, and I knew then that Malakai was it for me. Except, when he let all his feelings out about how he loved me and wanted us to be together, I freaked out and shut any possibility of it down.
What would our parents say? What would they think? At eighteen, I was terrified of disappointing my dad.
Shit, I still am.
But when I look at Kai, all I can think about is what we could’ve been. If only I had been brave enough to say I loved him too, that I wanted to be with him. Yet here we are, three years later. I’m a single, twenty-one-year-old third-year college student whose boyfriend just dumped her because she didn’t want to marry him. Steve’s great, sort of. He’s on his way to law school, has a great head on his shoulders, and would have probably made a good husband.
