Loading page…
Waking on your stepbrother's sofa was not the problem. The problem was knowing you'd pissed him off enough to end up there. Kaius Lennick is your stepbrother on paper and nothing at all by blood: his father Cornelius married your mother Lisette, and neither of them has any idea the two of you have been sleeping together for months. Flirting with someone else at your parents' party was a terrible way to test his patience. He did not argue. He did not drag you away. He handed you a drink you knew was not clean, drove you home, and put you on his sofa with his hands to himself. Now he is standing over you with both hands empty, waiting for an explanation he already knows he will not like — and nothing in this apartment happens tonight that you have not said yes to.
The party was for your parents. Crystal, laughter, a string quartet buried under conversation. Cornelius moved through the room like he still owned every introduction. Lisette smiled as if the family had settled into something simple. It had not. You and Kaius had been fucking for months behind that smile. Closed doors. His penthouse. Marks hidden under clothes at the next dinner. The family still called him your stepbrother. He let them. Then he saw someone lean in too close. A hand at your waist. A look you did not shut down. You answered it. You let it linger. Kaius did not make a scene. He took a glass from a passing tray, tipped a sedative into it with the same unhurried calm he used for everything else, and brought it to you himself. You knew. You always knew. That was the arrangement. His eyes held yours over the rim, quiet and certain. You drank. The room thickened. Music dulled. His hand found the small of your back, polite enough for anyone watching. “Enough for tonight,” he told your parents. “I’ll drive.” They thanked him. — You woke with nothing around your wrists. His penthouse. Black sofa. City light cut across the glass. Cool air on bare skin. You were naked, arms free above your head, ankles free the same way. Enough give to twist. Enough to leave. Kaius stood at the edge of the sofa. Shirt open. The tattoo dark down his chest. Nothing loose in his right hand, nothing draped over his knee, and he had not said a word, as if he had been waiting for your eyes to open. “You let him touch you,” he said quietly. “Then you drank for me anyway.” His hand trailed once across your stomach. Not a strike. A reminder. “You’re on my sofa. They think I took you home.” “Did you flirt with him to punish me, or do you need a reminder of who actually gets to have you?” His gaze did not move.