Possessive Cherry Obsessed Stepbrothers (Stepbrothers' Forbidden Fantasies #8)

1. Ivy

IVY

"Dad, you can't lock me up. I'm going on a vacation with my friends!"

The word vacation splinters in my throat, cracking on the last syllable.

Heat floods my face the moment I hear it—that wobble, that hitch that makes me sound twelve instead of twenty-one.

Makes me sound like Daddy's little girl stamping her foot instead of a woman who's old enough to vote, to sign contracts, to make her own damn choices about where she spends her summer.

I want to rewind ten seconds. Start over. Say it again with steel in my voice instead of whatever pathetic plea just escaped.

Dad doesn't even glance up from his phone. He's planted in the center of the foyer like a statue, his leather carry-on waiting by the door, his chief of staff Marcus Webb orbiting somewhere to his left with that ever-present tablet clutched against his chest.

Marcus wears neutrality the way other people wear cologne—heavy, deliberate, impossible to ignore. His expression hasn't changed since he walked through the door twenty minutes ago, and I'm starting to suspect his face might actually be frozen that way.

"Ivy." When Dad finally speaks, it's in that tone. The one that turns committee rooms quiet. The one that makes reporters stop talking and start scribbling. Measured. Immovable. Final as a gavel strike. "This isn't a negotiation."

The words land like concrete.

"Then what is it?" My hands curl into fists at my sides, nails biting crescents into my palms. The pain grounds me, keeps my voice from shaking again. "Because from where I'm standing, it sounds a hell of a lot like house arrest."

That gets his attention.

His head lifts. Our eyes meet. And for just a heartbeat—maybe two—I see something crack through the senatorial armor.

Something raw and human. Fear, maybe. Or bone-deep exhaustion that no amount of expensive coffee and strategic lighting can hide.

But then it's gone, smoothed over with the same practiced ease he uses for campaign stops and Sunday morning news shows.

"It's for your protection."

"Protection from what?"

The question comes out sharper than I intended, edged with something that might be panic. My pulse is hammering now, a drum beat against my ribs.

Dad's gaze cuts sideways to Marcus. Marcus performs his signature move—the one where he somehow manages to look even more neutral, which I've learned over the years is code for something's very wrong and we're about to tell you about it.

"I received another note yesterday." Dad's words come slowly, carefully, like he's placing each one on thin ice. "This one was... more specific."

The floor tilts.

"Another note?" My voice sounds distant, hollow. "What do you mean, another? How many have there been?"

"Several. Over the past two months." He pauses. Drags a hand down his face, and suddenly he looks every one of his fifty-five years. "Threats. Vague at first—the usual political extremist rhetoric. But this last one?—"

He stops. The silence stretches.

"What did it say?" I force the words out.

"It mentioned 'taking what I hold dear.' Those were the exact words."

The room tilts harder. My fingers find the back of the nearest chair—some overpriced antique my new stepmother Claire picked out when she redecorated—and I grip it hard enough that my knuckles go white. The carved wood digs into my palms.

Taking what I hold dear.

That means me.

Someone out there wants to hurt me to get to him.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I didn't want you to worry. And because we thought we had it handled."

"But you don't."

"We will." His voice firms up again. "But not until we know you're safe. I can't be in Europe for a month knowing you're unprotected. Roman, Knox, and West run one of the best security firms in the country. I trust them. You'll stay here with them until Claire and I return."

A month. Four weeks. Thirty days.

Thirty days in this house with them.

My pulse kicks up, and it's not just fear. It's something worse. Something I've been fighting since the wedding three months ago when I met the Hale brothers for the first time and realized my body was capable of betraying me in ways I didn't know were possible.

I met them at the reception. Claire's sons. My new stepbrothers—except that word doesn't fit, doesn't come close to describing what they are to me. We don't share blood. We didn't grow up together. We have no history, no childhood memories, no family stories that bind us.

They're just three men who happen to be related to the woman my father married. Three men I've spent three months carefully avoiding because being in the same room with any of them makes my skin feel too tight.

Roman is the worst. Or maybe the best. I can't decide.

He's thirty years old, six-four, built like he could break things without trying.

Short black hair, gray eyes that track movement, a full sleeve of ink on his right arm that I've caught myself staring at more times than I'm willing to admit.

He walks into a room and everyone else rearranges themselves around him without realizing they're doing it. Including me. Especially me.

Knox is thirty-three and somehow even bigger—six-seven, shoulders that barely fit through doorways, stubble that never quite becomes a beard, tattoos crawling up his neck and down his right arm.

He grins like everything is easy, like life is a joke he's already heard the punchline to.

He called me "sweetheart" at the wedding, and I felt it in places I didn't know could feel things from a single word.

West is thirty-one. Dark brown hair, blue eyes, tattoos everywhere I can see and probably places I can't. He's the quiet one.

Doesn't talk much, but when he does, it lands hard.

He watches without staring, notices things no one else does.

At the wedding, he told me I'd changed my earrings between the ceremony and the reception.

I had. No one else noticed. I still don't know why that made my hands shake.

They make me feel like I'm standing too close to a fire. Like my nerve endings are on the outside of my skin.

The guys at school call me frigid. I heard it last semester, whispered in the library by a group of sophomores who didn't realize I was in the next aisle over. Ivy Calloway. Total ice queen. Wouldn't know what to do with a guy if he came with instructions.

They're not wrong. I've never dated. Never hooked up. Never even kissed anyone I actually wanted to kiss. The few times I tried, it felt like going through the motions of someone else's life. I thought maybe something was wrong with me. Maybe I was broken in some fundamental, unfixable way.

Then I met Roman, Knox, and West, and my body woke up like it had been waiting for a starting gun.

Which is exactly why I can't stay here. Not for a month. Not trapped in this house with the three of them and no buffer and nowhere to run.

"Dad." I try to keep my voice steady. "I'm twenty-one. I can take care of myself."

"You're my daughter." He steps closer, and now I see it clearly—the fear he's been trying to hide. "And I will not lose you. Do you understand me?"

Behind him, I catch movement. Roman, leaning against the doorway to the living room. Arms crossed. Gray eyes fixed on me.

My mouth goes dry.

"The car is ready, sir." Marcus's voice cuts through the silence.

Dad nods. He pulls me into a hug, and I let him because he's scared and I'm scared and maybe this is all overblown, maybe it's nothing, maybe I'll laugh about it in a month.

"Be good," he murmurs into my hair.

I don't answer.

Claire appears from somewhere upstairs, her carry-on in hand. She hugs me too, warmer than my father, her hand smoothing over my hair like I'm still small enough to need soothing.

"They'll take care of you," she says quietly. "I promise."

The door clicks shut with a finality that makes my stomach clench. Through the frosted glass panels, I watch the black SUV glide down the curved driveway, taillights winking red between the cypress trees before vanishing completely. The engine's purr fades into nothing.

Silence rushes in to fill the vacuum they left behind. Not peaceful silence—the heavy kind that presses against your eardrums until you can hear your own pulse throbbing.

When I turn around, the air shifts.

Roman hasn't moved from the doorway. Still leaning there like he's been carved into the frame, one shoulder propped against the dark wood.

Knox has somehow appeared to my right without me hearing a single footstep, slouched against the wall near the staircase like he materialized from thin air.

And West—West stands at the window with his hands buried deep in his pockets, his profile sharp against the light as he watches the empty driveway where the car disappeared.

The three of them form a triangle around me. Not threatening, exactly. Just... there. Present in a way that makes the enormous foyer feel suddenly cramped.

My heartbeat kicks up, loud enough that I'm certain they can hear it echoing off the marble floors.

Roman's mouth curves upward. Not quite a smile—more like the promise of one. Something that makes my spine straighten on instinct.

"Well." His voice drops low and unhurried, each word deliberate. A simple observation delivered like a verdict. "Looks like you're stuck with us, little stepsister."

Heat floods my neck before I can stop it, creeping up toward my cheeks in a wave I absolutely cannot control.

My throat tightens. I hate this—hate that my body betrays me like this, hate that he's close enough to probably see the flush spreading across my skin, hate the way that word sounds in his mouth.

Stepsister. Wrong and right simultaneously, like it doesn't quite fit the shape of what we actually are to each other.

"This is ridiculous." The words come out harder than I planned, but good—sharp edges are infinitely better than the breathless alternative threatening to escape. My chin lifts automatically.