I must have waited for an eternity. And then… nothing. I didn’t feel his lips on me. I realized I didn’t feel any part of my body touching his. Then I heard him say, “Midnight snack?”
Slowly, I opened my eyes.
He was staring down at me with an amused expression on his face.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“I said, I’m hungry. I would like you to cook midnight snack for us,” he replied.
I blinked back at him.
“Tha-that’s all?”
He took a step back and blinked back at me. The look on his face was innocent and amused at the same time. And suddenly, I felt confused.
“Yes. That’s all. Your friends said you can cook. And suddenly, I’m starving. What do you say? Cook for your big brother?”
Shit! Is he fucking kidding me?
I took a moment to compose myself. Then I smiled back at him. “Sure. What do you want to eat?”
He shrugged. “Something with soup would be perfect for the weather.” He pointed at the kitchen. “Knock yourself out.”
I nodded and walked toward the kitchen.
Suddenly, I felt stupid. It must have been all over my face that I was expecting him to kiss me, ravish me even! For the second time, I would have handed him my V-card on a silver platter! And for the second time, he didn’t take it!
If you want your big brother back, then okay… that’s what I’m going to be…
Shit! What the hell was I thinking?
***
Zach.
The smell coming from the kitchen was amazing, starving me even more. If what she was cooking tasted as good as it smelled, then I was in real trouble. I stole a glance in her direction. Blaire was dicing and slicing while waiting for the soup to simmer. Her long hair cascaded over her shoulder. Even from a distance, I could make out her long lashes, and her dimple constantly appeared at the slight movements of her cheek.
She was divine. She was beautiful. She was everything I wanted in a woman. Sadly, she was also my sister, and I couldn’t have her.
She asked me to be her big brother. Just her big brother. She could have asked me to jump off a cliff and I would have welcomed that more. It would have been a hundred times easier.
I turned on my PlayStation and decided to play a round of Tekken. I needed to channel the heat, the anger into something else. Otherwise, I didn’t think I could survive the night. I would break my promise to her, and I knew she would let me.
When I touched her ever so slightly a while ago, I could feel the heat emanating from her skin. I saw her strong pulse at the base of her neck, and I scented her arousal. It took all I could not to reach forward once again, to suck at the skin at the base of her neck, to mark her again, make her mine.
When I saw her at the concert, I had to admit, I was attracted to her. I didn’t believe in love at first sight, but that’s what I felt like when I came back home from Charleston. I called her as soon as I landed back home, but her phone was off. I was planning to fly to wherever she was the following weekend. I couldn’t wait to see her again. I meant it when I said she was mine. When I promised I would be her first, I wasn’t making that promise to her. I was making it to myself. I wanted to take her and make her mine.
I already loved her to begin with. She was my sister. I loved her from the moment she was born. I promised to protect her with my life, for the rest of our lives. I thought that we would stay together forever. But we found out about our twisted lives. Finding out I was adopted was not even half as excruciating as knowing I was going to be separated from my family, especially from my sister, forever. While I got used to my father, and I had accepted the fact that the parents I had known weren’t really my own, I didn’t think I got over the fact that I was leaving her behind in a home where I knew she would be miserable, neglected, and unloved.
I thought about her every second of every day. I vowed to myself that once I saved up enough money, once I made it through college, I would come back for her. Her parents were well-off, so I was pretty sure she was financially taken care of. But I wasn’t so sure about her general well-being.
The Stewarts only wanted one child. That was me when they adopted me. They couldn’t have children of their own. They weren’t planning for her. Blaire was an accident. When I was a kid, I didn’t understand why they didn’t love her. But growing up and having a talent for hacking into personal emails and encroaching on people’s privacy in the cyber world, I finally found out why.
When her dad found me bartending at a bar in Charleston, he convinced me to come home. I didn’t want to. He was not my father, and he had no obligation to pay for my post-graduate classes. But he was persistent. He frequented the bar over the year, always getting wasted. He told me their marriage was crumbling and he was on the verge of filing for a divorce. When he did, he would leave my sister for my mother to take care of. He had no desire to keep her or support Blaire. And she was barely in college. Her father was filthy rich. He had a prenup that said his wife would only get paid whatever she worked for and two million dollars. And Blaire’s mom had no affection for her as well. I doubt she would use the money to send her to college. Blaire would be left all alone by herself. Not that she wouldn’t survive, but she would have a hard life.
Her father pleaded me to come home. After all these years, I was still their son. He told me that when he lost me, he lost the reason to live and be with a family. If I came home, then things might be different. They could have a reason to stay together. Blaire wouldn’t need to suffer the consequences.
That was my condition to him. I would come home if she did. Now that I was home, she’d be safe. I would look after her. And she never had to feel unloved ever again.
I had a few years of post-grad left. I was a smart man, and I was working doubly hard, maybe I’d graduate earlier. I agreed for Dad to take care of my tuition fees. But I had to work part time in his company to pay him back. At the end of the day, I was not his flesh and blood. And I asked for Blaire to come home too.
That was the deal.
Our parents were ecstatic. They went overboard, as usual. Their boy was coming home. So that’s the story of the Aston Martin sports car. They bought it a week before I was scheduled to come home. I also had a wardrobe full of designer clothes.
I didn’t care for the material stuff to be honest. I lived and breathed hard labor after I left the family. From high school, I was earning my own money and taking care of my biological father. I worked for one straight year to save up for my college education.
Don’t get me wrong. I loved my parents—her parents too. They were Mom and Dad up until I was ten years old. And even if the courts took them away, and even if my biological father barred any contact with them, I still loved them.
And I never stopped loving her—my sister, my baby girl.
I was feeling positive. Excited. For my twenty-fourth birthday, our father asked me what I wanted. I had to tell him something or he was going to come up with something expensive again. So, I chose something simple. A trip back to Charleston for the weekend to see Kenzo. Hang around, have some fun.
I wasn’t expecting to meet this wildly beautiful girl who was smart, funny, and unaffected by a guy’s efforts to flirt with her. She wasn’t my usual type. Colored hair, dark eyes. I usually preferred blond girls with big brown eyes. But there was something about her that drew me in. She felt familiar. Like I’d known her for a long time. When she showed signs of hypoglycemia, she felt more familiar, felt closer to my heart. I didn’t realize it, but I was drawn to her because she was so much like my sister. And her—I could have. Or so I thought, until she showed up in our parents’ living room.
Without the colored hair and the dark-colored contact lenses, she was not just close to the girl of my dreams. She was exactly… it.
And I was confronted with the biggest problem of my life! Because when I saw her again, my emotions went haywire. I only felt strong affections twice in my life—and both times for the same girl.
I stole another glance from her again. She was tasting the soup she cooked. She looked so adorable and sexy at the same time. As I watched her come down the stairs wearing my sweater and my boxer shorts, it took all I had not to snatch her into my arms and carry her back upstairs where I could fulfill every single promise I made her that night.
She’s your sister!
Unfortunately, that brilliant mind of hers already decided I was only going to be her brother. I hated that. It took me months to accept that. The months I stayed away from her, I was struggling to get her out of my system. Most nights I wished I’d just taken her that night. At least, I would know how it felt like, and maybe I would have better chances of getting her out of my system.
Maybe that was it. The promise of sex still hung over my head, loomed over the shadows. I still dreamed about her almost every night. I dreamed of making her scream my name over and over as both of us came. I dreamed of sucking her breasts, her neck, all of her inch by inch, leaving love marks all over her body so she remembered who she belonged to whenever she looked at herself in the mirror.
Yeah, I was possessive that way.
And it was killing me that the girl I wanted to have the most was unfortunately the girl I could not have.