9. Callum #2
She grins. "Good."
We take the elevator up in silence, standing close, my hand at the small of her back. She's warm through the fabric. There's that familiar weight in her expression—the one where she's thinking three things at once and has decided not to say any of them yet.
The restaurant is exactly what it should be—dark, low-lit, every table separated from the next by enough space to be private. The candlelight is not decorative; it's functional. The menu is the kind you put down after thirty seconds and simply tell the server what you're in the mood for.
She orders immediately. She always knows what she wants—it's one of the first things I learned about her.
We talk. We talk more freely here than anywhere, even more than in the apartment, because there's something about dressing up and being seen that strips off the remaining self-consciousness.
She tells me about her skincare concept and I ask questions that make her talk faster.
She asks about my deal flow and I explain the parts that interest her, which, I'm finding, is most of it.
The candle between us burns low.
At some point she's looking at me over the rim of her wine glass with an expression I recognize—she's searching for a question she doesn't know how to frame.
"Say it," I tell her.
"I wasn't?—"
"Clara."
She sets the glass down. "Do you think about how—the way this started—" A pause. "Doesn't it seem insane to you? That we're—here? Like this?"
"No," I say simply.
"It should."
"Probably." I hold her eyes. "I stopped caring about should a long time ago." I reach across the table and cover her hand with mine. "I love you, Clara."
The table goes very still.
She stares at me. Her lips part slightly. The candlelight catches the sudden brightness in her eyes and she blinks—once, twice—and then her jaw sets with the effort of holding it together, and she loses that effort almost immediately.
"I've—" Her voice comes out unsteady. "I've been feeling that for weeks and I was so afraid to—because what if you?—"
"Now you know," I say.
A single tear escapes her, quick, and she wipes it off with two fingers like she's annoyed at herself for it. Then she straightens and meets my eyes directly with all that particular steadiness she has underneath everything.
"I love you too," she says. "My stepbrother, who I am apparently completely gone on, and I love you."
My thumb moves over her knuckles.
"There she is," I say quietly.
She finds the terrace—her eyes go wide as she takes it in, clearly awed by the space.
It's off a side corridor past the restrooms—an unmarked door propped open with a rubber wedge, a narrow outdoor space with a railing and the city below and a single dim sconce above the door.
No tables, no service, no cameras that I can see.
The ambient noise of the restaurant is a wall of sound behind the door.
She pulls me out there by the hand and then turns and looks up at me with an expression that is the opposite of innocent.
"We're going to get caught," I say.
"By who? You said you don't recognize anyone here."
"I said probably."
She reaches up and unknots my tie about two inches, just enough. "Your stepsister," she says deliberately, "doesn't care."
I walk her back against the railing.
She pushes me into the single chair and I don't resist. Her dress rides up as she straddles my lap, and beneath it she has nothing on—a discovery that hits me like a physical force.
"Clara."
"I planned ahead," she says, and then she sinks down onto me and the breath goes out of both of us simultaneously.
She moves carefully at first—we are fourteen floors up and the railing is decorative and the door is ten feet away—but the city is dark and loud and completely indifferent, and the careful evaporates quickly.
Her hands grip my shoulders and she rides me slow and deep, her dress hiked to her waist, and the fullness in her breasts presses through the fabric against my chest. I work the neckline down carefully and free one breast—warm, heavy, already tender from the milk—and she inhales sharply as the cool night air hits her exposed skin.
"Callum—" A breathless, urgent whisper. "Someone could see?—"
"No one's coming," I murmur against her skin, my lips brushing the curve of her breast. I take her nipple into my mouth and her milk releases instantly—sweet and warm, flooding my tongue—and she bites down on her lip hard to keep the sound in.
I pull back just enough to look up at her, my voice low and deliberate. "Where's all that bravery from earlier? The girl who dragged me out here didn't seem worried about getting caught."
Her eyes flash even in the dim light, defiant despite the flush in her cheeks and the way her breath hitches. "I'm not worried," she says, voice tight but steady. She rolls her hips deliberately and I feel every inch of her tight heat clenching around my cock, as if to prove a point.
"That so?"
"Yeah." She leans down, her mouth close to my ear. "That's so."
She picks up the pace after that, her thighs working against mine, driving herself down harder, deeper, chasing it with single-minded focus.
I grip her waist with both hands and let her take what she needs, let her set the rhythm and the depth while I watch her face in the scattered light from the city below.
"Fuck," she breathes, barely sound, just a whisper of air between us. "I'm riding my stepbrother on a—oh—restaurant balcony?—"
"Keep going," I say against her breast, my tongue circling her nipple again before I suck hard enough to draw more milk. "Take what you want."
"I'm—Callum, I'm close?—"
She comes apart above the city, shaking, teeth dug into my shoulder through my jacket to hold the sound in, her pussy clenching in long, rolling pulses that grip my cock so tight I can barely move.
I follow her over the edge a moment later with my hands clamped hard on her hips and her name silent in my throat, my cum spilling deep inside her as she trembles and gasps and finally goes still.
For a long moment we sit there in the dark above the city, her forehead against mine, both of us breathing hard.
"We should go back in," she whispers.
"In a minute."
She straightens and fixes her dress, deliberate and unhurried, and then smooths my lapels with both palms and looks at me with those dark, steady eyes.
I think: I'm going to marry her.
Not tonight. Not for a while yet. But the fact of it sits in my chest with the same quality as every other absolute in my life—not a wish, not a plan, a certainty I've already accounted for.
Back in the apartment, she brushes her teeth and falls into bed and is asleep within minutes, curled onto her side, her dark hair spread across the pillow in the dim light coming off the city.
I sit at the edge of the mattress for a moment and look at her.
Mine. My stepsister. My future. My certainty.
I lie down beside her and close my eyes.