Kai’s POV
I knew I was lost the moment she walked into that classroom.
One second I was buried inside Ms. Dotson, her voice pitched low to avoid discovery. The next second my entire nervous system rewired itself toward the door, toward the figure standing there with fury written across her face.
Skye Fraser, my new stepsister.
I would have gladly let her take Ms. Dotson's place. Or maybe, I wonder now, I was imagining her there all along. Maybe every woman I've touched before has been practice for the one I truly can't have.
Romantic. Deeply disturbing, but romantic.
At Friday dinner, her stillness captivated me—the way she held herself like a woman expecting a blow that hadn't landed yet. Shoulders squared, chin lifted, eyes scanning the room for exits.
She'd shaken my hand with the grip of someone who'd learned to make herself unshakeable, and I'd wanted instantly to shatter that composure into a thousand pieces just to see what she looked like inside.
I've always preferred older women. The ones who pretend they're ice queens, untouchable and unmoved.
There's nothing more satisfying than ruining them, peeling back the frost layer by layer until they're crying my name and forgetting every reason they had to resist.
Ms. Dotson was easy—lonely, grateful, uncomplicated. Skye is something else entirely. Skye makes me work for every reaction, and the effort might just become its own addiction.
Might. As if there's any doubt left.
I am easily obsessed. I know this about myself. My mother used to say I had the focus of a hunting dog and the judgment of a fruit fly, and she wasn't wrong.
When I was twelve, I spent six months learning every species of moth in our county because a girl I liked mentioned she liked butterflies.
When I was fifteen, I memorized the complete works of Byron because someone said romantic poets got laid more often.
The obsessions burn hot and brief, usually, consuming their fuel and leaving me bored and searching for the next distraction.
This feels different. This has the weight of something that might actually damage me.
I woke up hard this morning, her name already forming on my lips before consciousness fully arrived. Skye. The single syllable sits strange in my mouth—too close to sky, too close to something vast and untouchable.
How very on the nose, universe. Subtle as always.
I lay in the dark with my hand wrapped around myself and tried to think of anything else—Petra, Ms. Dotson, the redhead from the coffee shop with the laugh like breaking glass.
But my mind kept returning to the same image: Skye in that classroom, the moment before she slapped me, her eyes dark with something that looked almost like recognition.
I skipped my run. There's no point pretending exercise will solve this particular problem. What I need is release, mechanical and efficient, before I do something stupid like knock on her doors.
Because jerking off to thoughts of your stepsister is the picture of restraint.
Under the hot water, I let the fantasy unspool.
In my imagination, Skye does not slap me. She does not run. Instead she turns around slowly, holds my gaze, and bends over the desk with invitation.
I imagine crossing to her in three strides, fisting her hair, pulling her head back until her throat is exposed. Asking her if this is what she wanted when she walked in on me.
If she stood there watching longer than she admitted. If she went home and touched herself thinking about what she saw.
The answer, in my fantasy, is always yes.
Convenient, that.
The fantasy turns brutal as I remember her words from our confrontation—the ones that cut deeper than she knows.
You're a spoiled little brat who has never worked for anything in his life.
My hand moves faster.
Your father looked at his son—his heir, his legacy—and decided the only way to salvage you was to hire outside help.
The memory should kill my arousal. Yet, it feeds the heat building at the base of my spine.
She called me pathetic. Said my father deserved a better son. She took every fear I've ever swallowed and served it back to me garnished with contempt.
And I want her more for it. What does that say about me? Nothing good, I assume.
So in my mind I punish her for every wound she landed. I take her rough against that desk, her voice breaking as I demand she admit she wanted this from the first moment.
She loves it in the fantasy. Begs for it. Comes exactly the way I imagined she would when I first saw her standing in my father's foyer.
The release comes so fast it surprises me. I brace one hand against the tile and catch my breath, water pounding my shoulders, equal parts satisfied and disgusted with myself.
This is not how a man should think about his stepsister. This is not the behavior of someone who has any intention of keeping his hands to himself.
But I have never been good at keeping my hands to myself. And Skye Fraser, with her sharp tongue and her sharper eyes and her body that responded to mine even as she pretended to hate every second—she is not making it easy.
I turn off the water and step out, grabbing a towel. The mirror is fogged, my reflection a blur, and I am grateful not to see my own face right now.
That is when I hear movement downstairs. Someone in the kitchen is opening cabinets with hesitation like they don't know where things live.
I know instantly that it's Skye.
My father and Diane left yesterday for some charity gala in the city. Mrs. Aldén has Sundays off. The house is empty except for the two of us, and Skye Fraser is downstairs making breakfast like she has not been avoiding me for two days straight.
I could stay up here. I could let her have her peace, maintain the distance she has clearly chosen, wait for Monday when we will be forced to interact in our tutoring session.
But there is another reason I want to see her this morning. Something beyond the wanting that's become a constant hum beneath my skin.
I learned things about her recently. Things she clearly hoped to keep buried.
Dylan Cooley. The name surfaced in my father's files—files he keeps in a safe with a code that has been my birthday since I was twelve.
Sentimental of him. Stupid, too.
I do not know the details yet. Only that there was a student, a scandal, and a resignation that ended her teaching career before it truly began.
Only that whatever happened was bad enough to make her unemployable at every school she applied to afterward.
Only that my father, who has never lifted a finger to help me with anything, arranged a job and a bedroom for a woman he barely knows because of whatever guilt or obligation Diane leveraged against him.
I want to know what she did. What she is capable of. What secrets live behind those careful eyes. And most importantly—how can I use it?
I pull on sweatpants and nothing else, run a hand through my wet hair, and head downstairs to find out exactly what kind of woman Skye Fraser really is.
________________