Claim Me, Alpha StepBrothers

You’re Not My Father

~Olive ~

What the f**k.

I snap my head up, eyes narrow, mouth already curled in a sharp, vicious little smirk that feels like a blade. Eighteen or not, I’ve had years sharpening this tongue on worse than pretty rich boys who think they can talk filthy and win.

“You can’t f*****g handle me,” I bite out, voice low and cutting, every word dripping with bratty venom. “You talk about making my p***y wet like it’s some big f*****g achievement, Crew? Please. I’ve had bigger threats from boys who actually knew what the f**k they were doing. Keep running that mouth and I’ll have you on your knees begging before you even get close enough to smell how wet I’m not.”

Crew’s grin turns feral, eyes flashing with delight at the challenge. He doesn’t pull back — if anything he leans in closer, breath hot against my ear again.

“Feisty little thing. I like that. Makes me wonder how sharp that mouth stays once I’ve got two fingers buried in that tight p***y, making it drip down my hand while you try to keep talking shit.”

Cas makes a sound. It’s small. It’s a breath, really.

“Crew,” he warns, like he’s holding himself back by a thread.

Crew ignores him, still crowding me, voice dropping lower, filthier. “Go ahead, baby sister. Keep pretending that cold little cunt isn’t already aching. I bet you’re soaked right now just from hearing me say it. By the time I’m done, you’ll be creaming all over my tongue and still trying to act like you hate it.”

I look at Cas.

He looks at me.

And here is what I see in Cassius Hayes’s face, in the half-second before he locks it down and looks away:

I see guilt.

I see guilt and I see hunger and I see something else, something I do not have a name for yet but that I am going to learn the name of in roughly forty days, and the something else is the most dangerous of the three.

He looks away first.

I have won.

I have won and I do not know what I have won and I do not care.

“Tour’s over, boys.” I pick up the small overnight bag at my feet. I sling it over my shoulder. “I can find my own room.”

I walk past them.

I walk past them and I make sure to brush — just barely, just the smallest thing, the kind of thing you could be imagining — past Crew’s shoulder on my way to the staircase.

He turns his head as I pass.

He turns his head and I feel it — feel it, like a hand on my back — and his voice drops to a place I do not like and he says, low, just for me:

“Olive.”

I don’t stop.

I don’t turn.

“Yes, Crew?”

“You’re going to be very fun.” His tone is pure sin now, lazy and promising. “And when you finally stop pretending you don’t want us looking… I’ll make sure you’re dripping before I even touch you.”

I keep walking.

I keep walking up that ridiculous Gothic staircase, in my red dress, with my heart doing something I am refusing to look at, and behind me — behind me, in the foyer — I hear Cassius Hayes say in a voice so quiet I almost miss it:

“Crew. Don’t.”

And his brother, soft, not even looking up, already lighting a cigarette he is not allowed to smoke in his father’s house —

“Don’t what, brother?”

I do not hear Cas’s answer.

I am already at the second floor.

I find my room by guessing — third door on the left, biggest one, of course it is, of course they put me at the end of the hall like a princess in a tower — and I let myself in, and I close the door, and I lock it.

I lock it.

Then I unlock it.

Then I lock it again.

Then I sit down, with my back against the door, on the floor of a guest room the size of my entire apartment in Connecticut, in a house owned by the man who ordered the death of my father, three doors down from twin alpha boys who have not presented to me yet but already make every nerve in my body sit up and beg —

— and I take out my phone.

I open my notes app.

I create a new note.

I title it: PLAN.

I stare at the blank screen.

I type.

1. Don’t fall in love with either of them. Especially not the cold one.
I stare at it.
I delete Especially not the cold one.
I retype it.
I delete it again.
I close the notes app.
I drop the phone on the floor.
I press both hands over my face.

2. Do not let Crew’s dirty talk get to you. No matter how much he whispers about making your p***y wet or burying his fingers in you until you drip, do not get wet for him. Do not clench. Do not imagine it. He’s just a rich asshole with a big mouth and zero follow-through.

I bite my lip, feeling that bratty heat still buzzing under my skin, and add another one before I can stop myself.

3. If either of them tries anything, ruin them first. Make Crew beg on his knees while you laugh in his face. Make Cas watch while you break his brother, then walk away like they’re nothing. They think they can play with me? I’ll play harder.

My fingers fly across the screen now, the rules pouring out nastier and naughtier because f**k them for making my body react like that in the foyer.

4. Never let them see you squirm. Even if your p***y throbs when Crew leans in and talks about melting your ice-queen cunt, keep your face bored and your mouth vicious. Tell him he couldn’t handle one finger, let alone making you wet. Laugh while you do it.

I pause, cheeks hot, then smirk at the screen and type the last one, voice in my head pure venom and wicked glee.

5. And if you ever slip and get wet for them — especially the cold one — make sure you come so hard on your own fingers that you forget their names. Then delete this note and pretend it never happened. You are here to burn this house down, not ride the heirs.

I stare at the list. My thighs press together once, involuntarily, before I force them apart. The room feels too warm. My red dress suddenly feels too tight.

“f**k,” I whisper into my palms, pressing both hands over my face, into the dark, into the locked guest room of Hayes House on the night before my mother’s wedding, into the great big hollow space behind my ribs where my father used to live, “f**k, f**k, fuck.”

Downstairs, somewhere very far away, I hear a laugh.

I cannot tell which twin it belongs to.

Fuck. I’m dead.

~~

The dining room of Hayes House could fit my entire apartment in Connecticut, twice, with room left over for a small graveyard.

I am not exaggerating.

I am standing in the doorway in a black dress my mother told me to change into — something a little less red, baby, just for tonight — and I am counting the chandeliers. There are three. Three chandeliers, in one room, for five people.

“Olive, sweetheart.” Richard’s voice from the head of the table. Warm. So warm. The kind of warm that should make a girl trust him. “Come sit. We’ve been waiting for you.”

I sat.

Of course Crew is in the seat next to mine.

I sit down.

Crew’s leg is already touching mine under the table.

I do not move my leg.

I do not move my leg because moving my leg is exactly what he wants, and I am not — I am not — going to give Crew Hayes a single thing he wants for the next four months. He wants my leg moved? He’s going to die wanting it.

His mouth twitches.

He noticed.

Fuck.

“So.” Richard lifts his wine glass. “A toast. To my beautiful Diane. To Olive. And to my boys, who I hope will make their new sister feel — at home.”

Cheers.” My mother, glowing. “To family.”

“To family.” Crew, beside me. He clinks his glass against mine. “Sis.”

I am going to kill him.

I am going to kill him before dessert.

I lift my glass. I clink it against his. I clink it against my mother’s. I clink it against Richard’s. I do not lift it toward Cas because Cas has not lifted his.

Olive’s at Ashford too.” My mother, brightly, to Richard. “She’s pre-law.”

“Is she.” Richard, smiling at me. “Following in her father’s footsteps?”

I look up.

I look up slowly, with my spoon halfway to my mouth, and I look across the table at the man who killed my father, and I make my face very still and I say:

“My father wasn’t a lawyer.”

A beat. A small beat.

“Oh.” Richard’s smile does not change. His smile is trained. His smile does not move when his eyes do, and his eyes did, just barely, just for a half second.

“Forgive me. Diane mentioned — pack and government work, was it?”

“Mm.” I put the spoon in my mouth. The soup is, I will admit, very good.

“What branch?”

“I don’t know.” I smile sweetly. I smile with my whole mouth. I smile the way my mother smiles at the postman. “He served his pack.”

“He did indeed.” Richard lifts his glass to me. “A toast to your father, Olive.”

I lift mine.

“To my father.”

I clink my glass against the murderer’s glass and I drink and I do not break his eyes.

He does not break mine.

“Olive’s a firecracker, Richard.” My mother, oblivious, eating her soup. “Always has been. My father used to say — “

“Mom.” I put my hand over hers. “Just shut up and eat your soup.”

Richard’s fork pauses halfway to his mouth.

“Don’t talk to your mother like that, Olive.”

I turn my head slowly and look straight at him, eyes flat, mouth already curling into that same sharp, vicious little smirk I wore in the foyer.

“You’re not my f*****g dad so shut the f**k up old man”