Stepbrother Bastard 1: A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Disclaimer

  Title

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

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  Stepbrother Bastard

  A Stepbrother Romance

  by Lily Bisou

  Copyright © 2015 Lily Bisou.

  All Rights Reserved.

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  *

  First Edition

  This is a work of pure fiction. Any and all characters depicted are not real people, of legal ages eighteen or older, consenting adults, and of no blood relation.

  This is a saucy romance series with cliffhangers containing mature content. It is recommended for readers eighteen and older.

  Stepbrother Bastard

  A Stepbrother Romance

  Grace

  I

  ONE NIGHT STANDS are supposed to be empowering for single women; Empowering in the sense that you get one unconditional night with a hottie for pure, unadulterated and (hopefully) hot sex then — poof — that’s it…

  It’s over.

  Well, it’s supposed to be over.

  I thought that Saturday night after my best friend’s wedding that I would never have to lay my eyes on the asshole who is Ryan Caulter ever again.

  Ryan Caulter doesn’t make love. He fucks hard and passionately like it’s his one true talent in life. Though I hate to admit it now, I loved every minute of our shallow yet explosive chemistry together. We shared this primal connection most marriages are pining for and as I lay in his arms, I wondered if I’d ever feel so fulfilled again. But Ryan Caulter is one guy you do not go on that second date with.

  Why? Well, the tabloids and me share this one opinion on this man:

  He’s a fucking bastard.

  Oh! And he also happens to be my new stepbrother.

  II

  My bags are in a pile outside of the taxi as I stare up at our new, obnoxiously large house.

  “You like?” my mom says with a gesture and a mimosa in hand. She’s standing beside the front door with my new stepdad, Walter, smiling like an utter goof behind her.

  “It’s great.”

  “The curtains still aren’t up yet but they’re coming to do them tomorrow.” She gives me a kiss on my cheek and Walter helps me with my other bags.

  “Oh? Thanks for…letting me know, Mom,” I reply as we walk inside.

  “We’re so happy you’re back, sweetie. We missed you at the wedding.”

  “Yeah, well, duty calls, you know?”

  I force a smile. I didn’t want to cut my Europe tour short for my mom’s impromptu wedding with this Hollywood big wig. I’m still not entirely sure of Walter’s career but I know he’s one of those old men in suits who create Summer blockbuster garbage. In fact, I didn’t pry at all into the man who seemed another of my mother’s bad decisions in the opposite sex. She’d only known the guy two months before deciding to elope while I was overseas trying to “find myself”. The text message arrived as I was in a bar in Spain. I took another shot and didn’t reply until the following morning with a nonchalant ‘Congratulations xo’.

  This house is huge and comes Hollywood Hills post code plus a view worth a good few million dollars extra on the price tag. This is my new home for the next year as I work on building my design business from the ground up. I suppose there’s worse places I could be stuck than in a house with a marbled foyer.

  “Your room is in here,” Walter says gesturing into a capacious lower floor bedroom full of a few duffle bags and musical equipment.

  “We’ll have Ryan move his stuff out when he gets in too,” Walter says, inspecting his Rolex. “He shouldn’t be too far away now.”

  The name is familiar but I have yet to meet this stranger who I’m now legally related to. Ryan is Walter’s son and supposedly a little older than my age of twenty-two. That is as far as my knowledge of him extends. The minimalist interior of the house leaves little flexibility for family photos on the walls so that I may see this new brother of mine— Not that I care all that much to learn about him. Keeping my distance from this family will make the day my mom divorces Walter’s ass all that much simpler.

  “So, sweetie, you freshen up. We’re having Chef prepare a lovely barbecue meal for us by the pool in an hour or so if that suits you. We’re so happy to have you back.”

  III

  After stepping out of my ensuite’s luxurious rainfall shower that’s about the size of my old bedrooms, I look into the mirror to my pale face that has been lacking the California sun. “You can do this. Just one year,” I whisper.

  Anybody else would surely be happy to move into such a luxurious abode but not me— Not when I know this is just another mistake of my mom’s that will result in her third messy divorce and her bunking us up in another dreary studio apartment.

  The bathroom door clicks open before I even have a towel wrapped around me.

  “Oh, shit,” I say as my heart falls out my ass and I throw my arms quickly around my naked, quivering body.

  Standing there in the doorway is a six-foot-four shirtless hunk with muscular arms covered in tattoos and disheveled dark hair. I catch him smile before he shields his face from my naked form with both his hands…Though he doesn’t leave.

  “Excuse me? Dude, get the hell out!”

  “There’s a lock for a reason, Sweetheart.”

  He closes the door again and I do a full body blush. “What the fuck?” I whisper and promptly wrap a towel around my body.

  I couldn’t get a good enough look at his face to see if this man who peeped on my bared any resemblance to Walter. If he did, surely this was Ryan. But then again, this guy was buff enough to perhaps be my mom’s personal trainer or resident hottie pool boy. Regardless, how am I supposed to go out there now if he’s still hanging around?

  I’m able to tiptoe back to my room without seeing anybody including tall, dark, and fucking sexy-looking strangers.

  My room, that I forget lacks curtains, looks out onto the pool area to the left. Out there, I’m able to make out four people: My mom who seems a little too tipsy for this time of day, Walter, a chef, and him. I squint, trying to make out his face a little more with my terrible eyesight. This must be my new stepbrother.

  Uh-oh.

  IV

  Perhaps it’s immature of me to remain locked in my room, dressed in a slinky summer dress with a full face of makeup until someone comes to fetch me. Why do I feel a need to impress this hunk so badly? I still haven’t decided how I face him when he’s already seen me as naked as the day I was born. And if he really isn’t the pool boy, that only makes this all that much more awkward.

  I reconsider my decision to look my Sunday best and pull a face wipe from my bag. In the mirror, I begin dragging the wet towelette over my eyes leaving a mess of mascara and eyeliner stain along my temples and under-eyes.

  Knock-Knock-Knock!

  My procrastination on socializing comes to an abrupt but expected end. “J—Just a minute,” I say as I frantically try remove the caked on bluish-black stain from my face.

  Knock-Knock-Knock!

  “Ugh, just…Just one more second, please!”

  Knock-Knock-Knock-Knock-Knock!

  I grunt, knowing it’ll be my mom’s tipsy incessancy and open the door to be faced with the las
t person I thought would come fetch me:

  “Ryan,” he says offering me his hand to shake as I stand there like an open-mouthed guppy, avoiding looking up at his face at all costs lest he catches me in my full face of panda makeup.

  I fold my arms and furrow my brow, unable to make eye contact in case he sees the mess I just made of my face. “Grace.”

  There’s silence for a moment until suddenly I’m pushed back into the room and see Ryan close the door behind him and lock it. He belly laughs and I feel rough fingers gently lift my chin so I look up at him. “Holy. Fuckin’. Shit,” his deep voice rumbles.

  I finally look up to properly see my new stepbrother’s face…

  Holy. Fuckin’. Shit. is right.

  V

  “You!” I say with a clenched jaw and a shove into Ryan Caulter’s chest. My fingertips rub aggressively at the skin of my face and I storm back over to the mirror to clean myself off and find my breath again.

  ‘It’s him. It’s fucking him,’ my brain ticks over and over. ‘Asshole. Asshole. Asshole.’

  “Hey, sweetheart. I ain’t the one to get mad at. Our parents are the ones that bunked up.”

  “You knew about me?”

  “Ha! Only since about two seconds ago. This is priceless.”

  “Y—You’re Walter’s son?”

  “Nice investigation work, Sherlock. What gave it away?”

  When I watch that way that he half-smiles like that, I want to both punch him and have him hold me in his arms again like he did that night. I remember how sexy he made me feel after Gabby’s wedding— The way he lured me into his trap, offered me the best sex of my life, made me feel this weird rolling-boil sensation in my stomach, then kicked me out when another, albeit far-prettier, girl arrived at his apartment door.

  “You understand that I have no reason to be nice to you right now? You’re a jerk, you know that right?”

  “So I’ve been told far too many times to count,” he seems to enjoy this fact and flashes me a wide grin.

  “What do we do? Do I tell the truth and explain how I hate you and actually can’t stand to be around you?”

  “Well, you seem to be pretty dressed up for a person you hate, Sis.”

  “Ew, don’t you dare call me that again. Look, I thought you were a stranger who just saw me naked! I wanted to make a much more demure impression, if that’s alright by you.”

  “Still got that same sass I see?”

  “Oh my God, get out. Tell my mom I’ve completely lost my appetite.”

  “I’m not your slave, Sweetheart. You’ve got those sexy legs that function so how ‘bout you go tell her?”

  He re-opens the door and gestures out. I can’t stop myself from biting at my lip as I try to figure out my next move. “Ryan Fucking Caulter,” I say under my breath as I move on by him and out the door. “Oh, if you don’t mind clearing your shit out of my room too. Thanks.”

  I hear him laugh as he catches my hand. I’m sounding childish right now, I know that. I’m bickering with him like real siblings do. That thought alone leaves me on the verge of gagging. “Mum’s the word,” he says. I snatch my hand back only to find him wink at me as I escape outside into the fresh air.

  VI

  “There you are. You have a little nap?” my mom says from a lounger beside the pool.

  “Something like that,” I say and take a pre-poured champagne from the silver tray beside me.

  Outside, the air is warm, the sun is setting into hues of pastel lilacs and yellows so that the view of Downtown Los Angeles looks like a cartoon kingdom, some jazz music is drifting through the air from hidden speakers, and still all I can do is turn my eyes to peek at Ryan. Like the cool kid he truly believes he is, he’s reclined against the barbecue sipping a beer and pretending to be looking at the view too. It only takes me watching him three seconds until his gaze flits over to me. He notices me staring back and immediately shifts his eyes somewhere else.

  “Well, there’s plenty of food to go around,” Mom says as I join her in an adjacent lounger so we’re out of Ryan’s earshot. “Did he introduce himself to you?”

  “Ryan? Oh, he sure did.”

  “Good. Isn’t he a handsome thing? Pity you guys didn’t meet before me and Walter. I think you’d both make an amazing couple, really. As wrong as that is of me to say at this point.”

  “I think Star Magazine would suggest otherwise, Mom. I don’t think that’d be responsible parenting on your part.”

  “Oh, come on, Sweetie.” She clicks her tongue at me and removes her sunnies to let me know she’s serious. “You know all those stories the media write about him are drivel. Don’t you go believing anything of what you’ve read because from what I’ve seen, Ryan is nothing but a gentleman.”

  I bite my tongue, impulsively wanting to bring up the fact he kicked me to the curb post-coitus because the next girl in line for the Ryan Express had arrived at his door.

  Instead, I say, “His last name’s Caulter.”

  “It is indeed,” Walter interjects as he joins our side of the pool. All our eyes are aimed at Ryan. I’m sure he just loves the fact that all attention is on him but he pretends to be in deep conversation on his cell phone. “It’s my late ex-wife’s name, Grace. Ry wanted to take it out of honor for his mother and, naturally, I happily obliged.”

  I’m brought back to reality. Something about close deaths humanize a person for me. It’s proof that Ryan has felt deep pain, vulnerability, and heavy loss in his life and that offers me at least some repose toward his usual character.

  “My condolences,” I say.

  “Oh, I do appreciate that, Grace. But myself and Hattie had been estranged for a while when she was diagnosed.” Walter’s voice drops a few decibels, I assume out of respect for his son. “Ryan was the one that had to deal with it the most. He went to every chemo treatment with her and every checkup. He definitely made me a proud father throughout that time, I’ll put it that way. But then you get the tabloids getting shots of him clubbing occasionally as a release from the stress and suddenly he’s demonized.”

  Ryan joins us and takes a seat adjacent me. His presence stops the conversation that’s perhaps a little too heavy to be having with him so early in our strange relationship to each other.

  “You doing anything tonight, son?”

  “We’ve got a gig in Hollywood later,” he says with his face on his phone. “Gonna head down there soon and set up.”

  The real reason Ryan became famous in the first place before he became tabloid fodder is thanks to his band, Golden Ribs, who found success after a one-hit wonder allowed them to sign with a pretty big label.

  As he discusses his further plans for the evening, my eyes fall on his hands and the calluses on them from his guitar playing. I bite my lip. It’s the little things I find myself attracted to in a person that suggest character traits that may not otherwise be obvious. His mother’s close death suggests there may be a bone beneath those muscles that can actually care while the calluses suggest commitment and dedication— Positive traits I had otherwise believed this shell of a man to be void of. Has it only taken five extra minutes for me to actually soften up to him a little bit? I deny it to myself for now. In fact, all it takes it remembering those feelings of disgust and shame in myself when that girl appeared at the door for me to hate him all over again.

  “Maybe you can take Grace with you, Ry?” my Mom decides to add. “She loves going to see live bands, don’t you, Grace? She went to Europe recently and went to all of those music festivals they have on. To be young again!”

  “Oh, I know how much Grace loves bands,” Ryan says. A blush blooms on my face and I thank God that I hadn’t had time to wipe off my thick layer of foundation that disguises it.

  “Go on. It’ll be good for you both to get to know each other better.”

  It’s obvious I have no say in this matter. Regardless, it gives me an excuse to get out of the house and find some sanctuary in some old LA friends. �
�Yeah, fine,” I reply as quietly and unenthused as I could muster.

  “Fine?” Ryan says. “Okay, wow, cool.”

  “What?”

  “I meant just please calm down the excitement, Sweetheart. It’s getting a bit much.” He reveals those dimpled cheeks again and I sip back my entire champagne flute. “Another please?” I ask him, tilting my head and smirking.

  He obliges in picking up another champagne from the tray and placing it between my fingers. Our hands brush briefly and we look to one another.

  “I, uh, I’m going for a swim,” Ryan stutters.

  VII

  The Uber driver drops us and Ryan’s gear outside Feauvers Nightclub on Hollywood and Vine. I look around me to the filth, smells, sights, and noises that make Hollywood the divey and alluring suburb that it is. I decided to change out of my slinky dress into tight leather jeans, a t-shirt and boots, that Ryan seems to enjoy far more according to how much more he’s looking at me— Or rather, my body.

  “Help me out?” he says, nodding his head toward his guitar. He collects the amp from the ground and I suppose I have no choice but to assist.

  I take the guitar and follow him up an alleyway through the back door into the club. “Caulter, what’s happenin’ buddy?” says the security guard at the door.

  “Yo, man. This is my sister, Grace.”

  “Oh, no. I’m not—“

  “—Sister?” The bouncer interrupts me. “No shit. It’s nice to meet you, babe. You kids have a good night, alright?”

  We walk further down the corridor as I try to digest this man I’d once fucked calling me his sister. “Can you not do that again?” I decide to say.

  “What, call you sis?”

  “Yeah, I really hate it.”

  “Well, I like it. Makes what we did that much more dirty and hot, badder.”

  “Is that all you ever think about when saying ‘yes’ to things? How bad they make you seem to everyone else? Because, FYI, Ryan Caulter, that kind of thing doesn’t make you seem bad, it makes you seem desperate and lost.”