BASTARD: A Stepbrother Romance (These Wicked Games Book 1) Read Online Free

let me go.
    To not leave me. Again.

Chapter 7
    We ride the elevator silently down to the parking garage.
    It’s only as the doors open and I see all the vehicles that I realize he didn’t bring even one helmet.
    “Don’t we need helmets?” I ask, breaking the silence.
    “We’re driving,” he says without looking at me.
    Opposite us, there’s a wall of what look like small, one-car garages, or possibly storage units.
    He heads to these, and I follow. He slides his keycard across a panel to the side of one of them and it opens slowly, eventually revealing a Mercedes SUV.
    “Thought you didn’t drive a Mercedes.”
    He finally looks at me for the first time since we left his hotel room. He frowns, then smiles. “Oh. No, it’s a rental. I don’t pay attention to those things.”
    The doors unlock when he pulls on the handle. He glances at me. “Are you planning to sit on my—” He stops himself, and looks away.
    I realize I’m at the driver’s side, and find myself saying, “I’m sitting in the back.”
    He looks at me again. Again, he frowns. “Want to see what having a chauffeur is like?”
    I shrug and raise an eyebrow.
    So does he, and it makes me remember that it’s a habit I picked up from him when we were kids.
    In the car, I sit directly behind him so he can’t look at me in the mirror.
    We drive out in silence, leaving the garage open.
    I stare out the window as we drive, but keep finding my gaze drawn to him. Leaning my head against the cool, darkly-tinted glass, I can see the left side of his face, and it hurts. Because he’s going to drop me off at my house, and then I’m never going to see him again.
    And after the kiss… I should have known never to get my hopes up. I was right that he couldn’t like someone like me. Love me as a sister… Maybe. But not in any other way. Certainly not find me attractive.
    But the kiss. It seemed so— I force myself to look away. It’s pointless to think about. It doesn’t matter. It’s over. It never even started.
    I feel the heat of his tongue in my mouth, the heat of his cock against me.
    “Why don’t you know?” I blurt out to distract myself.
    “Know what?”
    “Those things?”
    “Mags?”
    “The car.”
    I see him nod slightly. “My assistants handle all the small details. This is the first time I’ve even seen this.”
    “What about your motorcycle?”
    “The bike is mine. There’s a builder near here. I picked that up from him myself.”
    “So you’re driving back on your motorcycle?”
    He laughs. “Hell no. It’s electric, and has a range of less than two hundred miles. I could probably use Tesla’s chargers, but I can’t spare the time right now. No, I’m having it shipped. It’s probably on its way there now. Or maybe that’s tomorrow. It will be there by Monday.”
    We fall silent again.
    I begin to regret my decision to sit in the back. Though it wasn’t really a decision, just something that happened.
    Like almost everything else in my life. No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, things just go the way they go, ignoring my desires and intentions. Saying “Fuck you!” to any plans I make, before stomping them into oblivion.
    Like that night. The night. I had planned to ask him to move away now that he was eighteen. To take me with him. Well, he moved away. He just forgot me.
    But Cade hasn’t forgotten how to get to our house—well, not his anymore. We pull up in front, and he leans over the passenger seat to look at his once-home through the passenger window. “It’s the same,” he says to himself.
    If I had been sitting there, I think, his head would have been deliciously close to my lap.
    I open the door. “Thanks for the ride,” I say quickly, then get out.
    “Hey!” he calls. He gets out too, and I’m already on the lawn. He catches up and grabs my arm, spinning me toward him.
    I glare. “What?!”
    “You’re just… going?”
    “Doesn’t feel too good, does it?”
    His grip loosens.