Three
ESSIE
I n the elevator, Alec drums his fingertips on his thighs while he releases a guttural but languid exhalation. He tosses his floppy blond hair and looks over my head at Dalton, who’s standing close enough for me to feel his arm muscles tense when Alec moves. “So,” he comments, “where’s your parents’ wedding happening?”
Wrong question.
Dalton’s expression tightens, and he fires a Kevlar-melting look in Alec’s direction. “Why the fuck would I tell you about my mother’s wedding? I don’t even know you.”
“Dalton,” I chide, but he’s already turning toward Alec.
“Let me be clear,” he begins, leveling him with a glare. “I don’t know what you two just did, but I don’t approve…unless you were curing cancer. That’s fine.”
“Dalton,” I murmur again.
“But seeing as you’re wearing skinny jeans,” he continues, looking down at Alec’s pants, “which…I’ll be straight: They’re not working for you.” He holds up both hands. “Just my opinion.”
“Okay…” Alec’s brow is tight.
“But seeing as you’re wearing skinny jeans,” Dalton goes on, “I’m assuming you’re not a cancer doctor.”
“An oncologist,” I mumble.
“An oncologist—thank you, babe.” Dalton pets my arm before he looks back at Alec. “I’m assuming you’re not an oncologist, so if you ever hurt her—if you so much as ponder the idea—I will scatter your parts across every quadrant in the District of Columbia.”
My stomach immediately flips and tingles. I should be nauseated—or even irritated. I should put a stop to this. I’m better than this. I know I’m better than this.
I’m lying. I’m not better than this. Watching Dalton get riled up is distressingly hot.
Ding! The elevator doors open in the lobby to reveal the Halcyon’s sleek marble floors and warm white lights, but nobody moves. Alec’s jaw dropped sometime after Dalton threatened to make an Easter egg hunt out of him, and stays open until he manages to say, “Are you insane?”
Dalton smirks. “Probably,” he says, prompting Alec to abandon the elevator.
I roll my eyes. “You’re a massive dick, Dalton,” I say before following Alec.
“I thought you loved big dicks,” is his loud, unabashed response as I go.
When I catch Alec at the entrance to the Halcyon, his phone is inches from his nose. He glances up when he notices me in his periphery and hisses, “Your brother is unhinged.”
“Stepbrother,” I correct. “And he’s just…” Unpredictable. Overprotective. Not my boyfriend. “…Dalton. Don’t let him get to you. He’s seriously the nicest guy.”
Alec blinks silently before he says, “He licked his own blood while he stared at me, Essie.”
Valid.
“I bet you’d like him under different circumstances. He can talk to anyone, and not just small talk. He asks genuine, insightful questions—and he listens. I bet he’d find you so interesting.” I force a flirty smile. “I know I do.”
Alec doesn’t buy my shit. He swallows forcefully enough for me to hear it and glances at his phone where he’s tracking an Uber.
Shit . He might not come back.
“Alec, I advertised this stream,” I remind him, dropping all pretense. “If I don’t deliver, I’m going to have hundreds of furious subscribers.” I take another step forward—and right then, a cough echoes across the lobby. By the familiar sound of it, I suspect I know who just miraculously contracted consumption.
“Screw it. I’ll walk,” Alec decides, giving me one last no-pussy-is-worth-death look. “See you.”
“See you tomorrow,” I reply brightly, trying to drill the plan—and his commitment—into his brain. Alec doesn’t even wave goodbye though.
When I return to the elevator, Dalton is leaning against the marble wall next to the doors. In honor of Halloween tomorrow, someone taped construction paper cutouts of bats sporting coiled, frayed wings with steep points scalloping the edges. They surround Dalton as he waits with his hands in his pockets and his legs crossed at the ankles.
It’s disgusting how handsome he is—truly abhorrent—because my god , this guy could get away with murder.
Even surrounded by bats, there’s an angelic quality to Dalton Cavendish. His short, light brown hair has a gentle curl, which he tames every morning as part of his daily routine of waking up and reminding the world that he’s dripping with money. Typically, his immaculate styling falls into an easy disarray over the course of the day, but his daily unraveling does nothing to diminish his timeless good looks.
The Halcyon’s overhead lights work wonders on him, but I suspect he could stand beneath a flickering highway motel sign and still look hot enough to start a cult. He peruses me, equal parts unhurried and fascinated, tracing the lines of my face with his light brown eyes. Flecks of amber lie scattered across his irises, subtle usually, but practically radiant tonight. I watch him watch me.
He readjusts his arms, letting his muscles enjoy the good lighting for a moment, and my eyes fall to his shirt’s undone top button. I get the barest glimpse of his rock-hard chest, a mere teaser of the most godlike body I’ve ever seen. I stare and he lets me. He knows people stare; he likes it.
But when we met two years ago, and I took in the entire six-foot-five package—including the chiseled features and the huge personality—his smile did me in. Dalton has, without peer, the most captivating smile I’ve ever seen. Equal parts wry and amused, his smug, shit-eating grin never really leaves his face, even when he’s being atypically controlling. Right now, it’s in full force.
Damn it. I’m so weak sometimes.
“I’m not talking to you,” I declare before I tap the button to call the elevator.
“Why not?” he replies, tilting his head. “What’d I do?”
I roll my eyes. “You can play dumb with everyone else, but it won’t work on me. What’s your problem?”
The elevator opens and he follows me in. “I don’t have a problem,” he lies as he takes the spot next to the button panel and hits the number ten to take us to our friends’ condos.
“Stop bullshitting,” I snap from the other side of the elevator. I’m intentionally standing as far away as I can, which is difficult due to the sheer amount of space his big body takes up. “Stalking me all night was bad enough.”
His expression falls. “You don’t want me around anymore?”
“Not really,” I reply, forcing myself to ignore the crestfallen look on his face. “Not when you threaten to dismember my friends.”
He snickers before muttering, “You love it.”
I hate that he’s right.
“Don’t you have more important things to do?”
“Nope.”
“Your annual salary is literally half a million dollars. You absolutely have more important things to do than lurk around the Halcyon.”
“I don’t,” he enunciates, “have anything more important to do than this .” He tips his head in the direction of the elevator doors. “Are you going to fuck that guy?”
“None of your business.”
“It is.”
“How?”
“Because you’re my…” His eyes drift to the side, and I know he’s running down the long list of things we are to each other, most of which prohibit us from being… more . He shakes his head before focusing back on me. “Tell me. Are you going to fuck him?”
“And if I am?”
Dalton’s shoulders tighten into his body. His chest rises with an inhalation, and his chiseled jaw squares when he clenches his teeth. “No.”
Bullshit. He doesn’t get to do this.
For the first year of our friendship, hooking up seemed like a given, but one of us (not naming names) dragged their size fifteen feet. Hint: It wasn’t me.
Ultimately, we waited too long. When our parents announced their engagement, it all…stopped. The late-night calls. Texting me pictures of his breakfast. Sending me coffee money on days when I had a paper due. These microdoses of Dalton I’d enjoyed for over a year disappeared eleven months ago.
We became regular friends. Platonic.
As my platonic friend, he doesn’t get to tell me who to fuck.
I step forward. “Why do you care who I sleep with?”
“You’re one of my best friends,” is his response, and the disdain is thick in his voice.
“Right. I’m your friend,” I repeat. “And your sister .”
“Stepsister,” he emphasizes as the elevator reaches the tenth floor with a Ding!
Frustrated, I turn to exit, but Dalton catches my arm and hits the button for the lobby.
“What are you doing?” I question, halfheartedly shaking my wrist free despite my fascination with how huge his hand looks wrapped around it.
“We’re not done talking,” he insists. “Look, I would really, really prefer if you didn’t fuck that guy.”
“Because I’m your friend? Because I’m your stepsister?”
He pauses before he bobs his chin. “Yes.”
Yes . He doesn’t mention how on my twenty-first birthday, he pulled me aside, gave me a pair of emerald stud earrings, and told me, One day, I’m going to fuck you down while you wear nothing but the jewelry I buy you.
“That’s it?” I try to keep my tone even. “Those are the only reasons you don’t want me with Alec—because I’m your friend and your stepsister? There’s no other reason?”
Dalton doesn’t respond, which is rare for him. The guy has a less effective filter than a decade-old Brita pitcher in a frat house mini-fridge.
Finally, I let my shoulders drop. “Be honest. Do you not want me anymore?”
His lips part. “Essie…”
I rarely let my emotions get the best of me, but my entire body feels uneasy with the worst kind of tingles. “You told me you wanted me. You told me for an entire year,” I remind him, taking a step closer. “You told me I had to wait, and I did. I did. First you told me to let your parents’ divorce finalize. I did. Then you told me to wait until I got a banking internship. I did. There was always something—like you were looking for reasons not to be with me. Do you know how many times our friends asked why I wouldn’t sleep with you? Do you know how many times I lied?”
“I know,” he admits, dropping his head and letting out a long exhalation. “ I know . I know I screwed up, but you have to understand—”
“If you wanted me, why didn’t you do something about it?”
He lifts his chin, and I know that expression. I raised three younger brothers; I know a guilty face.
I breathe through my nostrils, steadying myself. I’m completely fine . Dalton and I have never fought before, but I’m completely fine. I’m completely, entirely fine. I force a softer expression. “I get it. Admitting you didn’t actually want me would have been awkward, you know—since our friends are coupled off and constantly sucking each other’s faces like the world is ending or they have a quota to meet, but—”
“No,” he interjects, tightening his features into a frown. “Don’t ever think I didn’t want you. Do you remember what I said the night we met?”
Of course I do. If Dalton knew how much I’ve thought about his words, he would have never asked such an inane question.
“Say it,” I request, taking another step forward and putting myself too close for this to stay platonic.
Dalton hesitates. He even tilts back a fraction of an inch, giving himself more space to take me in. I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing I am: What the hell am I doing?
I’m not sure.
Tentative, I put my hands on his pectorals—as high as I can reach. With only a thin button-down separating our skin, Dalton inhales slowly. “This isn’t going to do us any good—”
“Tell me what you said,” I urge, curling my fingers and indenting his muscles. “If you won’t, I’ll remind you.”
Slowly, his hand rises and covers one of mine. “I said,” he begins, “I’d never seen a more beautiful woman in my life, and I would do monstrous things to fuck your sweet little pussy deeply, thoroughly, like it deserves to be fucked.”
Two years later, the words still send the most marvelous chills down my arms. I’ll always remember the night when I first looked up at Dalton Cavendish in a bar, convinced I had encountered the closest thing to a god among mortals.
I was going to fuck him that night.
Ding! The elevator arrives in the lobby once more, and without taking his eyes off me, Dalton slams the heel of his palm against the ten button again.
The intensity of his focus coats my body with need, transfusing urgency into my bloodstream and submerging me in the radiant energy emanating from Dalton. The charisma, the fearlessness, the way he can flip from entirely unserious to commanding on a hairpin turn—it’s energy , pure and simple.
“What are you still waiting for?” I ask, breaking the silence.
“We can’t.”
“We can. Just once.” I stretch my arm higher to reach the back of his neck. “I’ve been waiting two years for it. Our parents are getting married in four weeks, so let’s do it while we still have a chance. We can…” I shrug. “…get it out of our systems.”
His eyes widen. “Did we body switch? There’s no way you’re the one suggesting something this reckless.”
Ding! Tenth floor. He presses the lobby button again and faces me.
“Dalton—”
“Essie, sweetheart…” His gaze is pleading. “I know you’re pushing this because you’re aware I have, like, zero impulse control, but—”
“I’m offering it to you,” I continue, conjuring all the seduction techniques I’ve honed since I started camming four years ago—practically the minute I turned eighteen. The situation feels unprecedentedly dire. If I can’t have Dalton once, I’m literally going to combust. “My body. Use it however you want. Pick a hole. ”
“Jesus,” he grits, pulling his head back and detaching my grip from his neck. “ Who the hell are you? ”
I let out a slow breath. “I’m sorry,” I murmur. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
“I’m not,” he grunts before he looks away. “I’m—”
“You’re what?”
“I’m just—”
“This is legitimately the least you’ve ever spoken in the span of a minute—”
Ding!
“I’m really hard,” he blurts out right as the elevator door opens on the sixth floor to a woman with her phone against her ear. Her eyebrows are in the stratosphere, and she takes in Dalton and me before she says, “No, honey, that wasn’t me. It was this very large man in the elevator.” She covers the microphone with her palm. “I’ll take the stairs,” she whispers before turning on her heels.
The doors close again.
I want to tell him more. I want to tell him I’d let him pick me up and bounce me on his dick for six hours straight if he wanted. Instead, I put my hands back on his neck. “You obviously want this too.”
“I can’t,” he murmurs. “I can’t . But goddamn, you make it difficult. I’m human. You have to have mercy on me.”
“But you can,” I insist. “You are human. Do you know what humans do? They fuck. So why the hell won’t you—”
Ding!
“—just fuck me?” I finish right as the door opens on the third floor now, revealing a middle-aged man holding what is unmistakably a full bag from a cat litter genie.
The man’s jaw lowers. “I was trying to…” He raises the bag of litter clumps. “I don’t feel comfortable putting it in my kitchen trashcan—”
“Thanks, boss, I’ll handle it,” Dalton says, nodding for the man to leave the gigantic bag on the elevator floor.
His eyebrows rise. “Really?”
“Yeah, no worries. In the trash room, right?” Dalton asks, acting as if I’m not dangling off him like garland on a Christmas tree. He winks at the man. “Have a great evening.”
“You too,” he says, and his look of confusion lingers until the doors close.
Dalton faces me again and his expression immediately shifts back from pleasant to agonized. “Ess, we can’t. Our parents—”
“Aren’t married yet.”
“We work together—”
“I’m just an intern.”
“You’re still in college—”
“I’m graduating in June.”
“And I’m a train wreck,” he finishes.
Ding! Lobby. Dalton presses the ten button again.
The words have caught me off guard, but his expression gets me. Seeing the look of resignation on his face—the flat line of his mouth, his tucked lips, his tight cheeks—I’m at a loss. Not correcting him immediately is the biggest mistake I’ve made all night.
“That’s not true,” I finally manage—and I mean it. The words are too late though. Dalton is already releasing his tentative hold on my waist and putting space between us.
“And what about my mom?” he finishes.
There it is. Alyssa Cavendish deserves the world—and to her, my father is the world, apparently.
We stare at each other in tense silence for the next few floors until, Ding! Tenth floor.
“Come with me.” I cock my head toward the elevator’s open doors. “We can talk.”
“I’m already hanging by a thread,” he responds, shoving his fingers through his hair. He releases a low breath. “No. You should go.”
My arms fall to my sides. “So that’s it? Our story is this ? A year of mutual pining, a year of avoiding each other, and then we become step-siblings?”
“As opposed to screwing once and spending the rest of our lives thinking about what could have been?” He drops his hands too. “Because to me, that sounds like torture. Do you think there’s even a minuscule chance I could ever touch your soft skin, kiss your perfect lips, or put myself into your gorgeous pussy and never leave? Do you actually believe I wouldn’t follow you around like a shadow for the rest of your life? Think about it. Do you seriously believe that’s possible?” He shakes his head. “Be so for real. I can’t even sleep if there’s a half-finished burrito in my refrigerator.”
My eyebrow skyrockets. “You did not just compare me to a burrito.”
“I didn’t. Because if you were a burrito, I would have eaten you by now—with multiple salsas. Guac. Pico. Salsa verde. Mole. …Shit. You’re half-Mexican. This is offensive, isn’t it? Jesus, I’m such a fucking loser,” he murmurs, extending his hand to stop the elevator door from closing. “I’m sorry. I’m rambling. I just…I can’t have you once. I can’t. I know I can’t.”
The strain in his voice gives me pause. He’s right; he probably can’t. Dalton may be chaos embodied but he’s not oblivious.
“We’re so different,” I admit with a sigh. “You couldn’t bear it, but I would do anything to have you just once.”
Finally, I step out of the elevator and Dalton doesn’t follow me.
For a moment, I stand on the landing and take in the pained look on his face. A flicker of disdain sparks in the pit of my stomach, born of the natural protectiveness I have for a guy like Dalton. I want to know who made him believe he was a train wreck.
I want to show them how wrong they were.
“I’m sorry,” he says for the third or fourth time tonight.
“You know where to find me,” is my response and the last thing I say before the doors close, separating me from Dalton once again.