He steps in close, reaching for the crate in my hands, and his fingers brush against mine. It’s barely a touch—nothing more than skin grazing skin—but it’s enough to send a bolt of electricity straight to my nipples.
Yes, nipples.
Those traitorous bastards.
They’re sensitive enough that sometimes, I’m pretty sure my orgasms start there before anything else even happens.
I follow Christian up from the cellar, one step behind on the stairs, close enough to catch the clean scent of pine and woodsmoke clinging to his shirt.
When we enter the main bar area, Travis’s beer bottle freezes halfway to his lips. His eyes track our movement as we make our way across the room, settling on the narrow space between us like he’s searching for something he can’t see but feels anyway.
“You should’ve said if you needed help.” Travis’s voice drips with a possessiveness he definitely hasn’t earned.
“Sometimes a lady shouldn’t have to ask, little nephew,” Callan fires back. “It’s called taking charge and being a gentleman.”
When your own family—the people who are supposed to love you unconditionally—can barely tolerate you, that’s when you know something’s really wrong.
I’ve put up with a lot of Travis’s crap these last six months. His complete lack of effort in literally everything that matters, from showing basic human decency to remembering what’s important to the people around him.
For a while, I wondered if I was just being overly sensitive. Maybe I was expecting too much and setting the bar impossibly high. But the truth is he’s genuinely difficult to love, and the worst part is that these men clearly want to love him. They try, but Travis makes it damn near impossible with his complete inability to meet anyone halfway.
A few hours later, I’m finally back home and freshly showered, my hair still damp against my neck while exhaustion clings to my bones. I pad across the floor in my bare feet, my oversized sleep shirt hanging loose around my thighs, and step into the bedroom hoping to find Travis already asleep or at least winding down. Instead, I take one look at his face… and of course, he’s in a fucking mood.
“What’s up?” I ask, slipping beneath the sheets.
“This is why I hate going to the bar,” he mutters. “My dad and Callan get on my ass about everything…” Then, like the baby he is, he raises his voice into a full-blown yell. “NOT TO MENTION YOUR SISTER.”
“What do you expect when you act like that?”
“Great, now I gotta have you jumping on my ass too.”
“Let’s just go to sleep. Nothing good is going to come of this.”
“You’re shitting me, right? I came all the way down here. The least you can do is suck me off or something.” The request hangs in the air, so ridiculous and entitled that something inside me just… breaks.
I laugh, and it’s not a sexy or cute laugh—it’s the kind of laugh that says absolutely the fuck not in ten different languages.
“Oh my god, you’re actually serious.” I fluff my pillow with a little more force than necessary, turn my back to him, and switch off the light. “Go to sleep, Travis. Or help yourself to the shower. There’s plenty of lotion and soap. I’m sure you can figure out the rest.”
Chapter 4
Christian
I can seePiper’s jet-black hair falling like silk down her back, long enough to brush the curves of an ass I’ve been fighting myself not to stare at for over half a year. But fuck if I haven’t imagined sliding my cock between those soft, round cheeks until she’s begging to be filled. I already know how perfectly she’d take me. How warm and wet her cunt would be, and how every tight clench of her body around mine would be a reminder that this was always meant to happen, no matter how wrong it might be.
My cock throbs as I stroke myself, a nightly ritual that started the day Piper walked into my life.
Piper, with a smile that could bring a man to his knees.
Who’s eighteen years younger than me.
Who I’m pretty damn sure I fell in love with the day my brother employed her to work at his bar.
Who’s now my son’s girlfriend.
Yeah, I’m a special kind of fucked-up. I know it. Hell, I live with it every day.
I know it makes me the biggest piece of shit in all of Rosewood Falls, and if you think I asked for this or wanted it, you’d be dead wrong.
