Chapter 19 Stone
Stone
I’m greeted in the morning with overcast skies. I’ve been given the day off because I’ll work Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I work them every year since my coworkers all have families to celebrate with. I preferred to stay busy, but now I feel a little bad because that means Hanlon will have to—
Ohmygod.
Hanlon.
Last night comes rushing back into my mind.
His flavor, his scent, his deep fucking voice, the feel of his cock brushing against mine.
Even through our boxers, it was incredible.
The euphoric memories fade into feelings of shame so great that I wish I could melt into this bed and never have to face him.
What am I supposed to say? Last night felt fucking amazing, and I’d really like to do more? Wanna skip coffee and just get naked? Maybe we could never look each other in the eye every again?
Too bad my dick only seems to be interested in the person I SHARE PARENTS WITH.
What a clusterfuck.
Deciding it’s better just to get it over with, I climb out of bed, brush my teeth, and pull fresh boxers on along with a new pair of sweats.
As soon as I open my bedroom door, I immediately jump back, my hand flying to my heart.
Hanlon is standing on the threshold, holding a cup of coffee.
“Jesus! Are you trying to make me burn myself?” he yells, hot coffee dripping down his fingers.
“I didn’t fucking know you were there. You gave me a heart attack.”
“It’s almost ten. I figured you were contemplating climbing out of your bedroom window in an effort to avoid me, and thought I’d rip the Band-Aid off for you. Coffee?” he tacks on at the end, holding the cup out for me.
“I’m not avoiding you,” I grumble, taking the mug and refusing to look at him. “I just needed a minute to wrap my head around…stuff. Thanks for this,” I say, taking a swig of the piping hot black liquid.
“You promised you wouldn’t—”
“And I’m not,” I say, cutting him off. “It’s just complicated, Han. Jesus, I’m your brother.”
Hanlon leans his shoulder against my doorframe and crosses his arms over his chest. “Oh, so now you want to play the brother card?”
Finally, I cut my eyes at him.
“I’m supposed to take care of you, Hanlon. That’s the way it’s always been, and that’s what’s expected of me now, as evidenced by the daily fucking check-in texts I get from our parents.”
Hanlon smirks. “I would argue that you did take care of me.”
“Be serious,” I groan. I try to glare at him, but it’s hard when he looks good enough to eat, and those slutty fucking glasses of his keep taunting me.
“I am serious,” he says, taking a step inside my room.
My bedroom.
Where my bed is.
And Hanlon and I now are.
And no one else.
“Why do you think I asked you those questions last night? This is what I wanted to avoid,” he says, stepping closer.
“I fucking came on you, Hanlon. We couldn’t avoid that even if we tried,” I snap, backing up.
He waves me off as though my spilling my release on his dick is no big deal.
“Technically, you came on yourself. We were wearing boxers, remember?”
“How are you so fucking calm about this?” I ask. And why is he still moving closer?
Hanlon lifts one shoulder in a shrug.
“When I was growing up, I learned one lesson repeatedly…if it’s something I really want, then I can’t give up. Mom taught it to me with piano. Dad taught it to me with calculus. And you taught it to me on the side of a mountain, with tight, frozen limbs.”
“What are you saying?” I ask, my voice threatening to give out at any moment because now I’m the tachycardic one, and my heart is about to beat right out of my chest.
Hanlon’s hands find their way to my naked waist backing me toward the head of my bed.
“I want to try this. With you.”
I’m pretty sure this is the part where I adamantly tell him no, where I push him out of my bedroom and slam the door in his face for even suggesting such a thing, where I get so disgusted that my two sips of coffee come right back up.
But I stay still and silent as he takes the coffee mug from my hands and places it on my nightstand. Bringing his mouth to my ear, his lips hover, but never touch as he whispers, “Please?”
No part of him is touching any part of me right now.
And it’s fucking torture.
I’m so turned on, my dick is thickening in my sweatpants, and he’s zeroed in on it, watching it come to life with unfiltered lust in his eyes.
“Fuck, Han,” I breathe. “You can’t ever look at me like this when we’re around other people.”
“What about when we’re alone?”
I move to scrub a hand down my face, but Hanlon catches my wrist and doesn’t let me complete the gesture. The pressure from his hand forces my cock to stand at full attention a millisecond later.
“Answer me,” he demands.
He’s not asking if he can touch me. He’s asking if I’m going to cross this line of insanity with him.
Sure, thinking about sneaking around sounds super hot, but the reality of it is a lot different.
If Dad and Lana were to find out, this would tear our family apart.
Or what if Hanlon and I have a huge argument, which is a high probability?
It wouldn’t be a clean breakup. We can avoid each other a lot, but not indefinitely.
I’m convinced he means to kill me when he leans in and runs his nose through my beard, along my jawline, stopping just below my ear as his tongue darts out to lick the skin there.
“What’s it going to be, Stone?”
It hits me at this exact moment that I’m really good at protecting Hanlon from everything except myself. For all the times I’ve protected him over the years, I’ve hurt him twice as much. Something tells me this won’t be any different.
“Okay.” I breathe my consent into the ether and close my eyes, waiting to be engulfed by flames or struck by lightning as Hanlon scrapes his teeth across my throat.
As if Fate senses that we’ll both be naked in the next two minutes if she doesn’t intervene, my phone rings, and my dad’s face fills the screen.
Hanlon looks at me with a wicked glint in his eyes.
“Whatever you’re thinking, stop,” I say immediately.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that. The idea’s already taken hold.” He nods toward my phone. “You should answer that.”
I’m not exactly sure how to respond to this version of him.
The confident one, unafraid to call the shots with me.
It’s such a reversal of our roles, and fuck if it doesn’t turn me on.
It’s no secret that I have no fucking clue what I’m doing when it comes to the physical stuff, but I was in no way prepared for Hanlon to have all the answers.
And I definitely wasn’t prepared to want them from him.
But if he’s issuing commands, my only option is to follow them.
I swipe my phone screen to answer the call as he instructed, placing a hand on Hanlon’s chest, creating some much-needed space between our bodies.
“Uh, hey, Dad.”
My dad dives in, catching up, telling me about work, apologizing again that he and Lana can’t make it out for Christmas, etc. …and while he’s talking, Hanlon drops to his knees.
Looking down, I mouth, ‘Are you fucking KIDDING me right now?’
Cockiness looks delicious on my stepbrother’s face as he smiles, looking up at me through those black frames, and shakes his head no.
Hooking his fingers in the waistband of my sweatpants, he begins dragging them over my hip bones. I hum along in response to my dad’s dialogue, letting him know I’m paying attention—mostly—as I catch Hanlon’s wrist.
Unfortunately, it only halts his progress on one side, so I back up another step. The backs of my thighs hit my bed, and I fall onto it. Thinking he’ll take pity on me and allow me to finish this conversation so that he and I can finish ours, I scoot back onto the bed.
But he follows, crawling up my body until he’s straddling my thighs.
At least he abandoned my cock while our father is on the phone. Except when Hanlon sits down, the stiff appendage gets nestled in his ass crack, which is currently covered by only a thin pair of athletic joggers.
I exhale harshly as my hips involuntarily push into him.
Hanlon grips my right shoulder and uses my left biceps to steady himself as he grinds back and forth.
Finally, I blurt, “Hey, Dad? Can I call you back? There’s something I need to take care of real quick.”
As soon as he agrees, I end the call and chuck my phone toward the end of the bed.
I mean to sit up and push Hanlon off me so we can establish boundaries…you know, like not trying to blow me while I’m on the phone with our father.
Instead, Hanlon drives his fingers into my hair as he rolls his hips repeatedly, making my cock slide back and forth between his ass cheeks.
“Get this off,” he pleads as he tugs on my shirt with his free hand.
As soon as it lands on the floor next to the bed, Hanlon lavishes me with praise.
It feels nice, but so fucking foreign. “Goddamn, you’re sexy.
” He uses his thumbs to flick my nipples, and the sensation travels straight to my cock.
His hands roam over my broad chest. I’m bulkier than Hanlon, but I don’t eat enough to sustain the amount of mass I could have.
His hands dip down to my stomach. Hanlon is actually more defined than I am here, and I’ve been working hard to play catch-up in the gym.
“So fucking perfect,” he mumbles as his hands trail lower still, fingers running along the inside of the waistband on my sweatpants.
He’s still sitting on my lap, so he can’t get my pants off, which is actually okay.
I’m going to need a little more time to process all of this before we go much further, but telling Hanlon no has never really been a strength of mine.
“This okay?” Hanlon asks, clearly reading the uncertainty on my face.
“Yeah,” I nod my head. It’s impossible not to love the way he feels grinding against me.
“What are you thinking?” he asks.
“I’m trying not to,” I admit with a tight smile.
Hanlon uses his hands to cup both sides of my face. “Hey, I thought about this a lot last night. We’re not doing anything wrong, Stone. We’re not actually related.”
“Somehow that statement makes me feel worse, not better.” Whether I like it or not, Hanlon’s been mine since he came into my life sixteen years ago.
“I just mean, if our parents got divorced tomorrow, would you still feel as weird about this?”
Interesting thought.
“I guess not. But we grew up together. I changed your sheets when you wet the bed, for crying out loud.”
He narrows his eyes at me and stops moving. Instinctively, my hands fly to his hips, silently begging him to keep rocking.
“That was one time. And you’re the asshole who let me drink an entire gallon of apple cider right before bed.”
I can’t help but laugh.
“I’d forgotten about that. You have to admit, this is still weird, though.”
“I’m going with unconventional over weird. Is it weird when best friends become lovers?” he asks.
“No, but we were never best friends. Hell, most of the time we were enemies,” I remind him.
“You’ve never been my enemy, Stone. I know you resented me for the differences in how our parents treated us.
I know I was an unfair burden placed on your life.
And I understand why you left, but it only hurt so fucking much because you were always the one person I could count on to protect me without smothering me.
You could have ignored me, defied our parents, and left me alone.
You could have been an utter asshole to me when I was forced into your presence.
But instead, you taught me, encouraged me, challenged me, and made me believe I could do anything anyone else could, despite having a body that doesn’t cooperate all the time.
” He grinds his ass down on me and smirks.
“And just so you know, it’s perfectly capable of all the really important stuff. ”
I’m unsure if I want to laugh or cry, but as I look up at Hanlon, the one question I’m dying to know the real answer to spills from my mouth.
“Of all the jobs in the world, why an avalanche forecaster, Han?”
“I thought it’d be obvious after that declaration,” he says without breaking eye contact.
“Spell it out for me,” I beg, needing to hear him say it.
“Okay, but I need to straighten my legs out for a minute,” he says, stalling.
He slides off my lap, but I catch his waist and pull him back down on the bed.
“You can straighten your legs out while lying right here,” I point out, needing him close for this confession.
He curls two fingers into the thin chain at my neck, rubbing back and forth, his knuckles trailing along my collarbone.
“Hanlon, why avalanches?” I ask again.
“Because I wanted the chance to protect you for once,” he says simply, not bothering to explain exactly how he planned on doing that.
But the admission does something to me anyway.
I fucking abandoned him, totally cutting us off from each other, and he still chose to pursue a career adjacent to mine to help keep me safe?
I bite the inside of my cheek to stop the tears from welling in my eyes.
Propping myself up on an elbow, I turn his face toward mine and bring my lips to his, hoping this kiss tells him everything I can’t articulate verbally. He kisses me back freely, making it clear he’s made up his mind about this.
Of course, he has. Hanlon doesn’t allow others to make his choices for him.
Before the moment is gone, I have a confession I need to purge if we’re actually going to do this insane thing. I pull back, breaking the kiss, missing the connection instantly.
“I used to mock you for loving science and weather patterns so much, until I moved out here and could literally watch storms roll across the land, bringing all their power with them. The most incredible thing, though, was the sky. I wanted to count every star, and sometimes, when I looked through the telescope, I’d imagine you were looking at the same one.
I’m sorry I left, Hanlon. I hope you know it had to do with my insecurities and wasn’t your fault. ”
He blinks at me a couple of times and rubs his thumb across my slick bottom lip.
“I didn’t know that, but I do now. That’s what matters.”