Stepbrother Studs: Upton Read online

  “Hey!” I abruptly sat up and leaned over to pinch his nipple through his shirt. He jumped. “Don’t be a dick. You said you had writer’s block. It shows. You procrastinate worse than our lead counsel. God, I hate that guy.”

  “I’m actually typing lots of words… but… that’s not the problem.” He turned his chair toward the desk and brought up his work-in-progress.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “This is going to sound weird.”

  “So? Tell me. Time is money.”

  “I can’t keep writing this novel,” he confessed. “Not as it is, anyway.”

  “What?”

  “My main character doesn’t want me to.”

  “Your character?”

  “Yes—the character. He’s trying to communicate with me. And he’s… stubborn.”

  “Do you want me to call a shrink?” I smirked.

  “Ha. Ha.” He wasn’t laughing. “You know what I write. Right?”

  “Erotic romances for bored housewives.” I wasn’t about to tell him that I’d read—and re-read—every single one of his books. I had them all in paperback and they were worn and dog-eared. I’d even underlined the “good parts”. I thought he suspected I did.

  “Judge all you want, but it bought the black BMW in the driveway,” he retorted. “Okay, so you know it’s a romance. There’s a hero, there’s a heroine. Well, the hero in this book—Calvin—he’s supposed to marry his high school sweetheart—”

  “Hobbes?” I teased.

  “Shut up! Let me finish. Calvin’s supposed to marry Laura, his high school sweetheart. But the thing is… Calvin doesn’t love her.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I just know.” He scowled, running a hand through his dirty-blond spiky mess of hair.

  “Well… it’s a romance,” I mused. “He has to love someone.”

  “He does.” My stepbrother sighed, looking pained. “He’s in love with Nina.”

  “Problem solved then!” I dusted my hands together, moving to rise. “Let’s go make dinner.”

  “Nina’s his half-sister.”

  I sank back down onto the bed. “Oh.”

  “But if Calvin’s in love with Nina, then I need to rewrite half this thing. It’s already pushing a hundred thousand words—plenty of meat for The Desperate Housewives demographic to get off on—but the half-sister thing is…”

  “Kinda hot,” I finished, biting my lip.

  He cocked an eyebrow at me. “I was gonna say kinda gross.”

  “You were?” I blinked at him, surprised. “It’s forbidden love. The ultimate taboo. What’s not hot about that?”

  “It’s… it’s incest.” He made a face. “I mean, no one thinks about fucking their sister. That’s just…”

  “It’s hot.” I laughed when he gave a little shudder. “Look, I can tell you think it’s hot, because this is all coming from your head. Calvin isn’t real. Nina and what’s-her-name—the high school sweetheart he doesn’t really want—none of them are real. They’re all part of you, yeah?”

  “No.” He shook his head, as if to clear it. “You act like I’m schizophrenic or have a split personality or something. I mean, sure, I made these people up but, you know, they’re not me. Just because they do things, that doesn’t mean I want to do them. I mean, if I wrote about serial killers, would you tell me I had a desire to actually kill people?”

  I pondered this. “Maybe.”

  “Winnie!” Upton looked truly shocked.

  “Well, don’t you think that, as a writer, you have to write things that are authentic?” I asked. “You say you write romance for the money but… I think you really like it. And you put your whole self into it. You’re not writing these books and holding your nose the whole time. I know you’re not. You’re really a romantic at heart.”

  He chuckled. “Am I so transparent?”

  “To me.” I smiled. “I’m just saying, you write things that… interest you. Things you’ve experienced or, sometimes, want to experience. Remember after Sloane dumped you and you were writing Home Sweet Home?”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “Geoffrey had just come off a bad break-up when he met Cynthia. Best meet-cute ever, by the way. Who finds their soulmate hiding in a dumpster when they’re throwing out the trash?”

  “I knew it.” Upton grinned. “You do read my books.”

  I flushed. “Look, all I’m saying is, if these two characters want to fall in love, well… there’s a reason for it.”

  “What kind of reason?” He crossed his arms. “You mean… you think I get off on it? The idea of Calvin fucking his half-sister?”

  “Well…” I chewed my lip. How far was I willing to go? “I’m not saying you would do it or anything. But… the thought? Yeah. I think you get off on it.”

  “Fuck that.” He shut his laptop, moving to stand, but I stopped him, standing and planting my hands on his shoulders from behind to keep him in his chair.

  “Look, I don’t think Stephen King is a serial killer,” I soothed. “But he writes about them, so… yeah, I think maybe there’s some deep, dark part of him that gets off on it. At least a little bit.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “I think I found your writer’s block,” I murmured, gently massaging his shoulders. God, he was tight! “Jesus, relax!”

  “Hard to do when your muse tells you that you’re an incestuous pervert.”

  “I didn’t say that.” I ran my thumbs out to his shoulders, feeling him shudder. “Thinking isn’t doing. Authors explore all sorts of dark subject matter without actually doing it. I don’t think you’re a pervert for thinking about it.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No judgments from me,” I assured him, kissing the top of his head. He smelled good, a combination of aftershave and sweat. Incredibly masculine.

  “You really need to stop stressing,” I told him. “This is why I go out jogging in the morning—it gets my head out of the game for a while. I need to find time in the day not to think about the law and the environment and whatever other crap is rattling around my brain.”

  “I just jerk off when that happens.”

  “Jesus, you have the manners of a caveman.” I smacked him on the head and he laughed. “That would explain your Popeye forearms.”

  “Touché.”

  “You asked me to come up here,” I reminded him. “You might as well let me help.”

  “How is this helping?”

  “Be quiet, wait and find out.” His shoulder blades were rocks. I moved my fingers up to his neck and found the tendons there stretched tight. “Holy hell, Upton. I’ve seen stockbrokers with looser necks than you.”

  “You can stop comparing me to your dates.”

  “I haven’t dated a stockbroker in—hey, this isn’t about me. This is about you finishing your stupid book. Now shut up and let me work my magic.”

  His neck muscles felt like suspension cables for a bridge. He was tight and hard and on edge. I began a simple massage, but he only twitched and winced.

  “Easy… it’s just me,” I murmured.

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize. Don’t do anything. Close your eyes.”

  He finally let me touch him. My hands caressed the hard muscles in his neck. With increasing pressure, my thumbs worked out the tension. He’d never had this much of a problem with a book before, not that I knew about, anyway. He wrote formulaic romance for a living, for God’s sake. It wasn’t brain surgery. But with this one, though—he seemed so tortured. Why?

  Because he wants to fuck his sister.

  For a moment, the thought paralyzed me and I forgot what I was doing for so long that Upton noticed.

  “Win?”

  “Sorry,” I murmured, turning my attention back to my stepbrother’s tight muscles.

  I’d only been trying to help him with my theories about why his character wanted to get it on with his half-sister. I thought, maybe, if he under
stood poor Calvin’s motivation, he might get unstuck. But why did Calvin want his half-sister, anyway?

  Because Calvin is really Upton. And Upton wants me.

  I assessed this statement for truth in my lawyer-like mind and didn’t find it lacking anywhere. It was logically true. All signs pointed to it. Granted, I’d missed them, had been missing them, I realized, for years. But if I took a step back and looked long and hard at my relationship with Upton, I couldn’t deny it.

  It was no wonder his subconscious was creating characters who wanted to get it on with their siblings.

  I knew I should be shocked, but I wasn’t. I hadn’t been kidding when I thought that sort of taboo, forbidden fantasy was hot. And I was pretty sure I wasn’t the only woman out there who thought so.

  In real life, though—that wasn’t okay. There was no way around it. There were all sorts of reasons—morally, psychologically, biologically—to not do it in real life.

  But this was fiction we were talking about, right?

  Then I had an idea. A wonderfully inspired idea.

  “What if… what if you made her his stepsister?” I said this thought out loud and the muscles in Upton’s back and neck tightened immediately. “If they weren’t biologically related… then they could have a happy ending. Couldn’t they?”

  He didn’t say anything, but he turned around in the chair to face me.

  “It would still be forbidden,” I said softly. “Sort of taboo. That makes it hot. But not so… icky, I guess?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “It’s the perfect solution. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it…”

  Too close to home, I thought, as his hands moved to my hips.

  “Damn, Winnie… you really are my muse.” His arms went around me, his cheek resting against the taut expanse of my middle, and I stroked his hair.

  Except for his exhalation, he was quiet. I could hear the ducks and the wind across the lake.

  “Remember the last time I played the muse for you?”

  “You stayed up all night with me while I wrote.”

  “Well, most of it.” I smiled. “I slept a little. But you didn’t. I think it was six in the morning before you finally quit.”

  “You inspire me.” He rubbed his cheek over the material of my dress, breathing in deeply. “Besides, I’ve got to give the ladies what they want.”

  “I think the ladies will want whatever you give them.”

  The way his hands moved over my back, nearly gripping my ass, and the press of his thighs as he pulled me between them, was enough to make my nipples hard and my pussy wet. I didn’t have to look to know that he was hard.

  He closed his eyes and let out a blissful sigh and I knew exactly what he was feeling.

  Just speaking these things aloud had broken something open, like the crack in an egg. Whatever came out now couldn’t be put back in, I knew that much.

  And I didn’t care.

  “I’m hungry,” I said, hearing the tremble in my voice.

  “Mmm.” His hands slid down, down, sending electric shocks through me.

  “Let’s get some dinner.” I moved away from him, meeting his lust filled eyes, knowing my own reflected the very same.

  He swallowed, nodded. “Meet you downstairs.”

  * * * *

  The sun had begun its slow descent. It hid behind a cloud bank and would drop beneath the treeline in a matter of hours.

  I washed two fat potatoes from the root cellar—a place we both used to dare each other to go, thinking it was haunted—poked them with holes, and microwaved them while Upton grilled the ribeyes and the two ears of corn I’d shucked fresh from the field. We ate mostly in silence, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable one.

  We stood side-by-side to clean up—our summer house had never housed a dishwasher—me washing, him drying. We both put the dishes away in the cupboard.

  “I think I’m going to go for a night swim,” I said, glancing sideways at him. In profile, he went from handsome to almost beautiful. His expression was thoughtful. “Want to join me?”

  “I’ll bring my laptop out,” he said, closing the cupboard. “I can write while you swim.”

  “Meet you on the dock!” I called over my shoulder as I headed for the stairs.

  The bedroom was cool and dark. I turned on the light, unzipping my dufflebag and digging through to find my bathing suit. It was a two-piece, very retro, red with white polka dots. I undressed, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror over the dresser as I pulled my suit on, remembering Upton’s comment about me being flat-chested. He wasn’t wrong—my breasts were lean, but shapely, like the rest of me. My skin was pale—law clerks didn’t get out much—my nipples small and pink. I had a small tuft of dark hair between my legs at the top of my cleft, neat and clean.

  I stood in front of the mirror with my suit on, assessing, running my hands over my breasts, my ribs, the indent of my waist, and smiled.

  It was time to end my stepbrother’s writer’s block, once and for all.

  The sun’s light was just a faint, fiery glow on the horizon as I dashed down the stairs. Upton was out on the dock, sitting cross-legged, swatting occasionally at mosquitoes and just staring at his glowing laptop screen. I had to walk over rough ground on my way to the tiny wisp of sandy beach, rocks and twigs digging into my bare feet.

  Upton heard me swearing and glanced up to see me padding down the dock toward him. “Should have worn something on your damned feet.”

  “Thanks for the lecture, Dad.” I rolled my eyes, reaching down to lightly smack him upside the head. “Stop torturing yourself with that and come swimming.”

  He slapped my butt when I walked by.

  “Ow!”

  I walked down to the edge of the dock and sat, dangling my feet in first to test the water’s temperature. Cool, but tolerable.

  “Going in!” I called over my shoulder.

  Then I slipped off the edge of the dock, holding my breath and preparing for the initial shock.

  “How’s the water?” Upton asked as I came up for air.

  “Great!” I lied. It was freezing—but I knew I would soon get used to it. Even after the sun set, the air still sweltered. “Come join me!”

  “I have to write.” He glowered at his glowing screen as I paddled around.

  The water felt refreshing now. Maybe Upton had been right—I did need a break. Taking a few days off from saving the world and crusading against corporate polluters wasn’t going to kill me. I let the water slide over my body. I loved the contrast between the muggy heat and the chilly water.

  “You’re not writing,” I observed, doing a little back stroke.

  My nipples were hard now, from the change in temperature, but my mind kept wanting to go back to that moment in his room when he made them hard just by putting his arms around me. And he’d been hard, too—I was sure of it. Thinking about Upton’s cock getting stiff beneath his jeans was a far better thing to obsess about than carbon emission swaps and the latest EPA reports, I thought.

  “If you’re not going to write, you should come swimming,” I called, feeling a little nibble on my toes. The fish had found me and had come to check out the interloper in their lake.

  “But I have to write…” He looked from the screen, to me, and back again.

  “So you keep saying.” I sighed. “But you’re not doing it. So put it away for a few minutes. It won’t hurt.”

  “It’s all I can think about right now.” He rubbed his furrowed brow. “I have a deadline.”

  “You’ve missed how many already?”

  “Fuck.” He put his face in his hands and his words were muffled. “Don’t remind me.”

  “Don’t do that, Upton. You’ll make me start to feel sorry for you.” I already did, to be honest. “Come on... let me cheer you up.”

  “How?” He lowered his hands and looked at me.

  “Well…” I bit my lip. “I’m going to start with this.”

  I reached back and untied t
he top of my suit, pulling it off over my head.

  “Winnie!” There was a warning in his voice.

  “Better close that laptop.” I paddled closer to the dock, wadding up the sopping material in my hand. “Or it’s gonna get wet.”

  “Don’t you dare!”

  But I did.

  Upton slapped his laptop closed just in time, catching my wet top with his other hand.

  He swore, dropping it onto the dock and standing up.

  “Get ready for the bottoms.” I worked them down my legs under the water.

  “Goddamnit, Winnie,” he swore again in the growing darkness. I couldn’t see his expression but I could tell he was scowling.

  I aimed for his middle. He stepped back, but nowhere near in time. Upton yelped with surprise when my sopping wet bathing suit bottoms hit him square in the chest.

  “Come on,” I cajoled. “Let’s go skinny dipping. We used to do it all the time.”

  “We were just kids,” he reminded me through gritted teeth. “Mom and Dad even watched. We’re not babies anymore, Winnie.”

  No, we weren’t babies anymore. We were fully grown adults who knew exactly what we were doing. There was no innocence in this. Upton knew it and I did, too. But while he was still resisting, I wanted nothing more than to give in.

  “I’m going in,” he said stiffly, reaching down and grabbing his laptop.

  “Why did you ask me to come here?” I called after him as he walked down the dock toward the beach. “The truth, Upton! Why did you need me to come?”

  I paddled toward the dock as he stalked away, not answering me.

  I grabbed onto the ladder at the left of the dock and pulled myself up. Grabbing my suit, I followed him, completely naked.

  “Upton!” I panted, catching up—I was running, he was walking—halfway to the house. “You asked me to come here, remember? Oh Winnie, you’re my muse, you inspire me, I can’t write if you don’t come…”

  He stopped to glare at me. “I didn’t ask you here so you could act like a goddamned whore.”

  His words plunged me into a deep cold, far worse than jumping into the lake. He turned and headed toward the house again, but I was rooted to the spot. Something began to burn in my chest, spreading down into my belly and out to my limbs until my whole body was on fire, all the way to my toes and fingertips.