Stepbrother's Irish Cream (Stepbrother Short Reads #9)

1. Ciara

CIARA

The car door hasn’t even slammed shut behind me before a strong hand locks around my wrist and yanks me hard into a solid wall of bare, tattooed chest, still damp with sweat and radiating heat like he’s just come off a run. My breath catches.

“There you are, darlin’.” His voice is low and rough, that accent doing something dangerous to the word. “Thought you’d chicken out.”

I don’t get a single word out before his mouth crashes down on mine.

The kiss is fierce and demanding, stealing the air from my lungs.

He tastes like whiskey and salt air, dark and addictive.

His tongue pushes deeper, hot and filthy, and for one suspended second my brain just stops working.

His hand slides under the half-zipped edge of my jacket before I can react, palm closing hot and sure over my breast, and I gasp against his lips, the sound swallowed by his mouth.

God, my tits are so full and heavy I should have pumped hours ago.

Three days of ignoring the pressure and now they’re leaking, swollen, throbbing under the padded bra I hoped would hide it all on this drive.

His fingers find exactly the right spot on my oversensitive nipple, and pleasure and panic hit me at the same time.

He catches me like he already knew I’d fold, one thick thigh shoving between mine. Heat explodes low in my belly, a deep pulse that makes my clit throb, and the friction rips a raw, broken sound out of me I’ve never made in my life.

“Easy,” he murmurs against my jaw, amused, arrogant, completely certain of who I am. “I’ve got you.”

He doesn’t have me. Not even close. He has no idea what his hot palm is actually cupping. My swollen, leaking tit, one wrong squeeze away from soaking through every layer between us.

I finally get a palm flat against his chest and shove. Not hard enough. He barely rocks back.

“Wait.” I manage, already doing the math on how many layers of gauze pad are between his palm and disaster. “You have the wrong…”

“Wrong girl?” His breath is warm against my ear, still amused, still certain. “Not a chance. I’ve been waiting for you.”

He clearly thinks I’m someone else. Someone he expected. Someone he’s been waiting for on this driveway.

“Cillian!”

The voice cracks across the gravel like a whip, delighted and oblivious. It takes me a full second to place it as my mother’s.

He steps back so fast the cold ocean air rushes into the space between us like an accusation.

I grab the edges of my jacket and yank them shut over my chest, heart slamming.

The first coherent thought through the fog isn’t about the kiss, or the way I’m still pulsing between my legs.

It’s: Did anything show through? The same question that’s lived under every other thought for three weeks now, ever since my breasts swelled full and constant and the pads started going damp faster than I could change them.

“Ciara, darling!” My mother comes down the front steps in a cream dress that costs more than my old apartment’s rent, glowing, three months married and still acting like a woman who won a raffle.

Declan follows a step behind, silver-haired, expensive, beaming the specific beam of a man who’s never once in his life been told no.

“You made it! Oh, and I see you’ve already met Cillian. ”

Met. That’s one word for it.

Behind her, the house rises against the gray afternoon sky, turrets and ivy-covered stone, windows catching the last weak light.

Kinsale stretches out below, the wild Atlantic churning against the cliffs of County Cork.

Three months ago I was signing a lease renewal in a cramped Boston apartment.

Now I’m supposed to spend the summer in this castle, clutching my jacket shut over a secret currently soaking through a nursing pad, feet from my mother and her new husband.

Cillian’s gone very still beside me. His jaw is tight, pale gray eyes fixed on me with something dark and calculating that makes my stomach flip.

Up close he’s devastating, older than me, broad-shouldered, powerfully built, exactly the kind of rough good looks I’ve spent years telling myself not to want.

Wet dark hair falls across his forehead, a short beard shadows a sharp jaw, tattoos cover the corded muscle of his arms and chest. He looks like trouble wrapped in expensive control.

“Cillian,” Declan says, clapping a hand on his shoulder with the easy weight of a father, “this is Ciara. My Marguerite’s daughter.” A pause, warm, delighted, without mercy. “Your new stepsister.”

I watch the word land on him.

Stepsister.

His face doesn’t crumple or flush. It just shuts down, smooth and unreadable, the corner of his mouth curving into something faint and dangerous.

“Stepsister,” he repeats, voice flattening, like the word tastes bitter on his tongue.

“Ciara’s twenty-two years old so you’re eight years apart. He’ll be like a big brother to you in no time,” my mother says brightly, already fussing over my bags, completely unaware of the line she just drew. The one both of us aren’t supposed to cross. “You two will get along well.”

“I’m sure we will,” Cillian says, pleasant on the surface, some dark current running underneath it that makes my pulse stutter.

When Declan steers him toward the house, already talking distillery numbers, Cillian throws one look back at me over his shoulder.

Not apologetic. Not embarrassed. Pure, unfiltered assessment, like I’m a problem he intends to solve later, slowly, thoroughly, and in private.

Something tells me getting along isn’t the right word for what’s coming.

I make it to my room before I fall apart, which I consider a personal victory.

In the bathroom mirror, hands shaking, I check the damage like I’m defusing a bomb.

Nothing soaked through to the outside. Small mercy.

But the pad’s ruined. I peel it away, press a cool towel to my aching breasts, and stare at the woman in the mirror I barely recognize.

Flushed, lips swollen, too full, too sensitive, completely out of place in a house where everyone looks camera-ready for a magazine spread.

Three weeks ago a doctor in Boston confirmed a hormonal imbalance and elevated prolactin.

It wasn’t dangerous, just an inconvenient condition that left my body producing milk and my cycles completely unpredictable.

There was no need for urgent treatment, only medication to keep things under control.

So now my life revolves around loose clothes, extra padding, locked doors, and the constant fear of leaking at the worst possible moment. Mostly, though, it revolves around one desperate hope: that nobody, especially this brand-new family I’ve known for all of four hours, ever finds out.

If Cillian ever learns what his hand actually landed on out there, I don’t think I survive it.

I’ve spent my whole life being the perfect, polished daughter.

Right clothes, right grades, right smile, always performing for somebody’s approval.

This house is full of people who belong on magazine covers, and this stupid condition makes me feel like a mess I have to hide before anyone sees the real thing underneath.

So nobody finds out. That’s the whole plan.

I unpack on autopilot, hyperaware of every sound in the hallway. I’m elbow-deep in my suitcase, digging for the zippered bag where I keep the pads and the half-labeled bottle of medication, when the door opens without a knock.

“Ciara?” My mother steps in, glancing around the room just as I’m crouched over the suitcase with the box of nursing pads sitting plain as day on my folded shirts.

I slap the lid down so fast I catch my own fingers. “Sorry. Jet lag brain. Everything’s a mess.”

She doesn’t look twice. “I just wanted to check on you, darling. I’m so excited to have my girl here with us.” Then she breezes back out, already talking about dinner seating, her voice fading down the hall.

I sit very still until the door clicks shut, heart pounding like I’ve run a mile. Only then do I shove the suitcase into the closet and lock it. My own mother, and here I am hiding a box of pads from her like contraband.

My hands finally stop shaking once the bedroom door is locked, a fresh pad in place, knees pulled to my chest against the headboard.

Everything catches up at once. The unfamiliar house.

My mother’s new husband. A whole family of strangers I’m supposed to fold myself into for the summer.

Dinner’s in an hour. That’s how long I’ve got to figure out how to sit across a table from them and act normal, like a man’s mouth wasn’t on mine an hour ago.

Cillian. My stepbrother. I say it to myself, hoping it’ll settle the unsteady beat of my heart at the sound of his own name.

By evening I’ve found the one place in this enormous house where I can actually breathe, a window seat at the end of the east wing, looking straight down the cliff to the water.

I bring my journal, though I never write anything, just watch the gulls fight the wind and try not to think about his mouth on mine, his hands sliding under my jacket like my body had been waiting its whole life for exactly that kind of touch.

I feel him before I hear him, a shift in the air, a prickle at the back of my neck.

“You’ve found a good spot.”

My whole body goes taut.

Cillian leans in the doorframe, hair dry now, a soft gray sweater replacing the bare chest from the driveway, and it shouldn’t look this good on him.

His eyes catch the last of the window light, pale gray gone almost silver, unreadable in a way that stumbles my pulse.

Nothing arrogant in his face now. Just something quieter. More watchful.

“This was always my spot growing up,” he says, glancing out at the sea. “Easiest place in the house to breathe.”

“Lucky guess, I guess.” I pull my journal tighter against my chest, an instinct I don’t stop to examine.