Claim Me, Alpha StepBrothers

Sweet Dreams, Kitten

~Olive~

“Try me, Olive.”

He says it the way you’d say pass the salt.

“Let me tell you what’s going to happen now, Olive. You’re going to walk into that bedroom. You’re going to close that door. You are going to sit on the bed and you are going to think very, very carefully about what you said to my father tonight.

“And then in the morning, when you come downstairs for breakfast, you’re going to apologize to him. You’re going to apologize to him in front of your mother, in front of me, in front of my brother, in front of the staff, and you are going to mean it.

“And after you apologize, you are going to spend the rest of your time in this house, sweetheart, learning what kind of voice you use at my father’s table and what kind of voice you don’t.”

I am not turning around. I am not turning around because if I turn around I am going to do something stupid like cry or swing on him, and I cannot afford either of those at this exact moment.

I keep my hand on the doorknob. I keep my voice flat.

“And what if I don’t apologize, Cassius.”

“You will.”

“And what if I don’t.”

He goes quiet. He goes quiet for a long, long second, and then and I want you to picture this, reader, I want you to visualize — he takes a step closer, so close that I can feel the heat of him through the back of my dress, so close that his breath stirs the small wisp of hair at the back of my neck that came loose during dinner, so close that if I leaned back even a quarter of an inch my shoulder blades would hit his chest, and his voice when it comes back is right at my ear and it has dropped into a register that is, I am going to be honest with you, evil.

“Then I will make you, Olive.”

I do not breathe.

“I will make you, sweetheart, and I will not have to raise my voice once while I do it. I will not have to touch you. I will not have to threaten you. I will simply make every single thing in this house that you take for granted very, very difficult, starting with the staff that brings you breakfast and ending with the car that takes you to campus on Monday morning, and I will keep making it difficult until you walk down those stairs in something appropriate and apologize to my father with your whole entire chest, the way you cursed him out tonight with your whole entire chest. Do you understand me, Olive?”

I cannot move.

I am not breathing. I am one hundred percent not breathing. I am in fact going to pass out on this doorknob in approximately fifteen seconds.

“I asked you a question, sweetheart.”

“…yes, Cassius.”

“Yes what.”

I close my eyes.

Oh my god. Olive. Oh my GOD. Oh my god. He is not doing this. He is not making me say what I think he is making me say.

“Yes, I understand you.”

“Good girl.”

Excuse me. EXCUSE ME. WHAT.

Reader. Reader. That is the second time tonight a Hayes man has called me good girl in this house and I am, no exaggeration, going to combust on this doorknob.

He steps back, and the cold air rushes into the place he was, and I open my eyes, and I am — I am — about to walk into that bedroom and lock that door and lie on the floor and never, ever, ever recover from this evening, when a second pair of footsteps comes up the staircase behind us.

I freeze.

Of course.

Of course it is now, and of course it is him, because the universe has decided I do not get one single moment of mercy tonight. Crew Hayes is coming up the stairs behind us, one hand in his pocket, the other one carrying an unlit cigarette he was about to take outside, and he is walking down this hallway at his normal lazy six-foot-three pace, and Cas — Cas — does not turn around to look at him because of course Cas already knew he was there, they are twins, they can probably feel each other’s hangnails from a different zip code, of course he knew.

Crew stops about a foot behind Cas.

I can see the smile.

Oh, the smile.

Crew Hayes is smiling like a man who has just walked in on the back half of a movie and figured out the plot in three seconds flat and is, on a scale of one to ten, delighted.

“Brother.”

“Sis. Did I miss the speech?”

“You missed it, Crew.” Cas, flat. “Go to bed.”

“Mm. I don’t think I will, actually. I think I want to say good night to our new sister.”

“Crew.”

“Hush, brother.”

Crew steps around Cas. He steps around him the way you step around a piece of furniture you have known your entire life, easy and casual, and now he is standing in front of me. In front of me.

Between me and my bedroom door, one shoulder leaned against the frame and one hand still in his pocket and the cigarette tucked behind his ear, and he is looking down at me from his ridiculous height with an expression I am not equipped to deal with at ten o’clock at night after the dinner I just had.

I lift my chin. I am not going to give him my eyes if I can help it.

“Move, Crew.”

“In a minute, kitten.”

I..I’m sorry.

I am sorry, did this man just call me kitten, in the voice you would use to tell a small predator she is being cute and bad. Kitten.

The small i***t horny part of my brain that I am trying very hard to keep in a jar — that part of my brain has stood up and put its hand on its hip and gone oh, we love that. We love that. Do that again.

Olive. OLIVE. Get a grip.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Mm.” He tilts his head. His eyes are doing the lazy drag-down thing they did in the foyer this afternoon, the thing where he looks at me like I am a menu, and his mouth lifts. “Why? Did it land somewhere?”

“It landed in the trash, Crew.”

“Mm. It landed in your thighs, kitten, which I can see from here, so let’s not lie to each other in our own house.”

I am going to die.

Behind him, Cas exhales.

“Crew. Move.”

“One sentence, brother. One. Then I’m gone.”

Cas does not respond, and whatever silent twin thing passes between them in that beat, Cas takes one step back. Not far. Just enough that Crew now has the floor.

And reader..reader.. Crew Hayes turns the full force of his attention on me, and he leans down. He leans down a lot.

He leans down so far that his mouth is approximately three inches from mine and his breath smells like wine and mint and his hand..the one that was in his pocket..comes up and braces flat against the doorframe right next to my head, caging me in, the way men in every romance novel I have ever pretended not to read cage women in.

“Listen to me, kitten. Cas gave you the behave speech. I’m going to give you the or else speech. You want to mouth off at our father at his own dinner table? Bold of you. Truly. Magnificent of you. I haven’t enjoyed a dinner that much in years. But here’s the thing, baby — the or else in this house isn’t me telling Dad on you. The or else in this house is me sliding into your bedroom one of these nights when you’ve earned it, kitten, and reminding you what kind of family you just married into. And before you do the brat thing and tell me you’d never let me — sweetheart, listen — I would not need your permission. I would not take it either, because I’m not that kind of man, but I would not need it.”

He leans in another inch.

His mouth is two inches from mine. Two.

“Because by the time I was done talking to you, kitten — and I would just be talking, I want to be clear, I would not have to put my hands on you once — you would be the one asking. You would be the one crawling. You would be the one looking up at me with those pretty eyes and that mouth that has been running s**t all night and you would be the one saying please, baby, and I would let you say it, because I think — I really do think — that the sound of Olive saying please, Crew is going to be one of the great pleasures of my entire life, and I am willing to be patient about it. I have forever, kitten.”

I cannot breathe.

I cannot breathe and I am, very specifically,

throbbing. I am pulsing like a small angry star. My n*****s are so hard they hurt against the bodice of my dress, and I am wet, reader, I am wet.

His eyes drop to my mouth.

His pupils blow.

He smiles.

He smiles slow, the way a wolf smiles, and he says..quieter, lower, just barely loud enough for me to hear, the way a man says a secret.

“And kitten? When you finally do say it? Cas is going to be there too.”

The hallway tilts.

I do not move. I do not breathe. I cannot.

I look at him. I look up. I have not given him my eyes all night and I give them to him now because I cannot help it, and his eyes are black, and his mouth is right there, and one inch — one inch — would close this whole thing down forever, and the small soft voice at the base of my spine that has been humming since the foyer is singing now, and I..

Olive, twenty-one, focus.

“You’re not going to make me beg, Crew.”

“Oh, kitten. Yes I will. I’m just not going to do it tonight. I’m going to do it slow. I’m going to do it over weeks. I’m going to do it while you sit across from me at every dinner and pretend you don’t think about it. I’m going to do it while you tutor my brother in the library and I’m watching you through the door.

“I’m going to do it while you walk past my room at night to brush your teeth, kitten, and you’ll know I’m awake on the other side of the wall, and you’ll know I can hear you, and you’ll know that all you have to do is knock, baby, and the second you knock, the second..I will open the door, and I will not say no to you, and we will finish what we started in this hallway.”

He pushes off the doorframe.

He steps back. He straightens to his full ridiculous height. He takes the cigarette out from behind his ear and puts it between his lips.

He looks at me with those black eyes that are still on my mouth, and he says, very quietly, very softly.

“Sweet dreams, kitten.”

Fuck that was hot y’all.