Chapter 7 – Leslie
So far, I’d only been at Tabb University for an hour, and I’d already gotten lost three times. This was slightly embarrassing—I was a city girl and never got lost in New York, no matter where I was, yet the small ivy-covered campus felt like a labyrinth.
Fortunately, everyone had been really nice and helpful as they directed me back to my dorm room for the third time. I dragged the last of my stuff upstairs from the furthest away parking lot since I hadn’t been able to get a closer spot. I had a single, which I was excited about. Even though I did want to make friends with the rest of the people in my co-ed dorm, a roommate meant someone who would get annoyed when I woke up early in the morning to stretch and practice…and who might keep me up late at night with their partying.
I was carrying a laundry basket filled with clean clothes when I bumped into a huge, breathing wall and the laundry basket and all my clothes went flying. I also almost went flying, too, except an arm reached out from the wall I’d bumped into and grabbed me.
“Careful there, butterfly,” said an amused voice. “You almost lost one of your wings.”
I froze, every part of my body screaming no. I looked up—and up, and up. Had he gotten taller?
“Why are you here?” I breathed, unable to gather enough energy to give a real sound to the words. The last time I’d seen him was on the most humiliating day of my life.
“Starting college, same as you. What, am I not allowed to learn?”
“But you’re supposed to be at Harvard!”
He shrugged, his hand still on my arm, sending tingles through my body—tingles I did my best to ignore. Like I always had.
“Eh, not anymore. Now, where is all this clothing going to? Seems like you need a hand.” He glared at me as I bent over to pick up my clothes and tried to ignore him as I moderated my breathing and considered how to best handle this situation.
“Why are your shorts so short, Leslie? Don’t you know we’re in public? Anyone can see your ass,” he hissed.
“Funny, you didn’t seem to care that people could see my ass in the past,” I spat at him. “Fuck off, Mace.”
Gathering up the last of my no longer clean clothes, I dumped them back in the laundry basket.
He scooped it up before I could stop him.
“Don’t call me that, butterfly,” he said harshly. “Lead me to your dorm so we can drop this stuff off and you can put on something more appropriate.”
“Great, so now you’re slut shaming me? On top of everything else?”
He paused for a moment, considering my words. Sighing, he said, “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to slut shame you. If you didn’t have me, you could wear whatever you wanted, and anyone who said shit could eat shit. But you do have me, and I don’t want anyone looking at your ass. Or your legs. Not then, not now. These fuckers don’t deserve to see them.”
He started walking, leaving me standing there, shocked.
Had he just apologized to me?
“Which room, Leslie?” he called back to me, pulling me from my momentary paralysis. I rushed to catch up with him, sure that even though I was leading him to my dorm room, he was leading me straight to hell.
Things were awkwardwhen we got to my dorm room. Being in my dorm room with him reminded me of the night I’d woken up to him in my bedroom this past summer, and that hot, nervous feeling came back. His presence took up so much space, overwhelming, overpowering, and I had to fight my body to keep from swaying toward him. There was barely room to breathe.
He surveyed the room, taking in the photos I’d put up immediately of me and my mom. He ran a finger over one of them, taken at our parents’ wedding.
“Some night, huh?” he mused.
“What do you mean?”
He shook his head but changed the subject. “Do you have anything more appropriate to wear?”
“What is it with you and this new obsession with my wardrobe?”
“It’s not new,” he muttered, then started rifling through my clothes. He held up a dress.
“Why is this so short? Why are all your clothes so tiny? They weren’t like this back in Westchester.”
How dare he put his hands all over my clothes, or try to control how I dressed? He had no right. None.
And I had no reason to get tingly over how irrationally bossy he was being.
Stepbrother, I reminded myself. And also: I’m a feminist. I don’t like this caveman bullshit.
That done, I focused my attention on the stepbrother in question.
“I’m turning over a new leaf.” I’d decided after this summer to embrace my sexuality instead of hiding it. “Mason, stop it!”
I reached over and tried to rip the dress out of his hands. He just lifted it higher up, and since he was at least a foot taller than me at 6’3”, it was pretty easy for him to. I jumped, and he caught me, wrestling me backwards until my back was against his chest, his arms wrapped around my waist. I could feel how hard he was. Shock blew through me and my core warmed. I felt myself grow loathesomely wet.
“Well,” he murmured, nipping at my ear, “Guess we keep finding ourselves in the same position. What are we going to do about it, butterfly?”
“Nothing!” I tried to shove him away, but all I managed to do was shove my ass against his hardening cock. God, how was he so huge? It was like there was an elephant’s trunk back there.
A knock came at the door and then it opened.
“Leslie, do you need help hanging any—oh.”
Chris, the slightly creepy RA in my hall—and one of the first people to provide me with directions when I got lost—stood in the doorway, staring at us.
“Who’s this?” Chris asked, eyeing us warily.
I tried to pull away from Mason, whose hand just tightened on my waist, almost painfully. He shouldn’t be touching me like this, not when someone else could see.
He shouldn’t be touching me at all.
“Chris, this is my stepbrother, Mason.”
“Stepbrother?” Chris relaxed slightly, then looked confused, his eyes on where Mason still gripped me.
I tugged away and after a moment, he released me, stepping forward to cross his arms and block Chris from entering the room.
“Chris, huh? Why are you here messing with my stepsister?”
Chris puffed up his chest. “I’m not messing with anyone. I’m your sister’s RA, and I’m offering to help her nail her stuff to the wall.”
Mason glared, ice-blue eyes promising pain. I suddenly found myself worrying for Chris’ safety. “You won’t be nailing anything of hers,” he said, his voice filled with warning. “She has me.”
With that, he backed Chris out of the room and slammed the door shut before advancing on me.
Oh god, we were alone again. The realization made me breathless. My body was tense, tight, like it was waiting for something.
I focused on what he’d done. “That was rude!”
“He wants to fuck you.”
I spluttered, taken aback. He’d lost it. “He does not. And besides, what business is it of yours?”
“Anything that has to do with you is my business. Don’t you get that by now?”
I stared at him. I was right; he had lost it. Unconcerned with my thoughts regarding his mental state, Mason backed me up further, until I was leaning back against my bed and about to tilt over on it.
And with one solid push to my chest with his big hand, he made sure I did.
I landed on the bed, the breath knocked out of my chest, and Mason climbed up.
Shocked, I just lay there as he prowled over me. “God, you don’t, do you? Why do you think I tormented you over the summer?”
“Tortured,” I said, voice weak.
“Tortured,” he agreed. “Tormented, tortured, did my best to make your life a living hell. It was only fair, you were making my life one, simply by breathing.”
I gasped. That hurt. I hadn’t done anything to him, and he hated me so much. I hated him too, even if part of me wondered what it would be like if our truce had lasted.
“What did I do to make you hate me? Get off me.”
He ignored my words, holding his body up in a one-handed push up, so that he hovered over me. Heat spread everywhere from his body to mine, completing the short distance between my skin and his. With his free hand, he started making small, light circles on my inner thighs.
I jerked underneath him, his touch pulsing in my core.
“If I made your life a living hell, why are you here?”
He shook his head, seeming frustrated. “You still don’t get it, butterfly. You made my life hell because I couldn’t have you. Not when we were both under our parents’ roof. But I’m done with that. I’m taking what’s mine.”
Still shocked and confused—and overcome with more tingles—I started to speak, but he caught my protest with his lips. He bit my bottom lip sharply until I opened my mouth, and then, once he had me where he wanted me, he sank his tongue inside.
Oh god, my stepbrother was kissing me.
And it was the best kiss I’d ever had.
He started to fuck me with his kiss. I don’t know how else to describe it. He consumed me with his lips, and his tongue made my whole body spark with need. It was so wrong, I knew that, but everything about it felt exactly right. As if every kiss before this one had been off somehow, and this one made all those other ones meaningless.
But that couldn’t be right. This was my stepbrother. My bully.
His hand was still making those devastating little circles on my inner thigh, but it started traveling upward?—
“Mason!” My protest was weak. I felt weak and loose, pliant and submissive.
He growled. “That’s not what you’re going to call me in bed, butterfly. Soon enough, you’ll know what I really am to you.”
Before I could ask what he meant, he descended back on my mouth and his fingers slid underneath my shorts and panties, until they were touching my bare pussy.
I jerked. No one’s hand had ever been there before but my waxer’s. It was the best and worst thing I’d ever felt in my life, lighting me on fire.
Mason reared back.
I got it waxed because I liked the feeling of having a naughty little secret, but from the look on his face, he didn’t agree.
“Who the hell did you get this done for, Leslie?” he asked, his voice dangerously low. The last time he’d sounded like that, he’d just discovered I’d donated his skates.
“I—I,” I stuttered, not sure how to explain.
“I swear to god, butterfly, if you let another man touch my pussy, there will be hell to pay. For both you—and him.”
His pussy?
His?
More tingles. Fuck my life.
“No one touched me,” I squeaked.
“Not even that boyfriend?”
I shook my head. “We broke up.”
For good.
He didn’t look like he believed me. “Then why did you get your pussy waxed?”
“I like how it feels. I’m a virgin.”
Wait a second. This was none of his business, so why was I defending myself like I’d done something wrong? I didn’t know why he had this power over me, but I loathed it.
His growl sounded satisfied. “Yeah you are, good girl, but not for long.”
He started to kiss me again, and although I wanted to give in, I couldn’t. Evil. Stepbrother. Bully. So I swatted at him until he stopped.
“Mason, tell me what’s going on. We hate each other, and suddenly you want to what, hook up? Is this your newest attempt to mess with my head? Are you recording this? Are people waiting to pop into the bedroom and make fun of me? Is there pig’s blood somewhere? None of this makes any sense.”
It didn’t. Not the way he was talking to me, not the way he was touching me—and not the way I liked it.
His muscles tensed, like he was at war with himself. Then, with a “Fuck!” he rolled off me. My body ached, missing his solid heat, the weight of him on top of me.
“I think you need to leave,” I told him, fixing my shorts and ignoring the way that my hand brushed over where his had been, shooting off sparks everywhere.
“I’m not leaving until I fix this,” he threatened.
“Leave, or I call your dad and tell him you’re trying to fuck me,” I threatened right back, finally finding my strength. I didn’t know the details of Mason’s relationship with Paul, but the tension between them was obvious. Learning his son was trying to sleep with his stepdaughter certainly wouldn’t make things easier between them.
“You wouldn’t,” he said.
“I would.”
We glared at each other, and then with one more snarl, he left, slamming the door behind him. I flopped back down on the bed, confused as hell and turned on as hell.
I didn’t understand what had just happened, but I did understand one thing: I wanted it to happen again, even if it made me disgusting.
I was so, so, completely, utterly fucked.