Free Secret: A Military Stepbrother Romance by Aubrey Irons

and she quickly darts a glance towards the divider separating us from the driver.
     
    “Relax, he can’t hear us.”
     
    Her face sours into a sharp glare. “ First ,” she hisses out. “That’s never happening again, ever . And secondly, I’d never ask you nicely for it , you dick.”
     
    “Sorry, you’re right.” 
     
    She rolls her eyes and makes a face at me as she starts to turn back towards the window. 
     
    “You’d ask dirty. .”
     
    She whirls back to me, her eyes wide and her mouth open in this shocked look. “That is never going to-” She stops, pursing her lips and sneering at me. “Having fun?”
     
    I grin. “With?”
     
    “With trying to get a rise out of me.”
     
    I laugh. “Well that depends, is it working?”
     
    “Nope.”
     
    “Clearly.” She sticks her tongue out at me and I raise a brow, “That an invitation?”
     
    “Dream on.”
     
    “Way ahead of you.”
     
    Her cheeks flush pink as she tries to hide the grin on her face by turning back towards the city flashing by the tinted windows of the Escalade.
     
    “But honestly, once I’m off the Service, I probably won’t be able to arrange field trips like this, so enjoy it.”
     
    “Well thanks,” she says, rolling her eyes at me. “And for being so humble and gentlemanly about it.”
     
    “Any time, doll.”
     
    We sit in silence for another block before I find myself opening up my damn mouth again. “You know, your mom is going to be good for my dad, as — uh — complicated it might make things.”
     
    She’s blushing again, but she nods. “Yeah, Dexter was telling me a little bit about your mom.”
     
    I raise my brow again. “He was?” Dexter never talks about mom, not even when I try to wheedle it out of him. 
     
    “Yeah.” She sighs. “Okay, honestly, your dad is gonna be great for my mom too.” Her lips curl in the hint of a smile. “Complications aside.”
     
    Part of me — the normal, familiar part of me —  wants to hit myself in the side of the head. I mean what the fuck am I doing? Why the hell am I talking about our Goddamn parents with this girl? Let’s be fucking real, ‘Hey, let’s  talk about how we’re going to be legally step-siblings soon’ isn’t exactly the smoothest route into her panties again.
     
    Of course, that said, I know damn well I shouldn’t be trying to get into her fucking panties. The correct thing to do here is to back the hell away from this girl, for all the reasons you could possibly think of. When the whole wedding announcement goes down and I get taken off the force, we can figure out our fucked up brother-sister with a dash of reckless sexual attraction relationship then. For now though, I should just do my fucking job and just concentrate on watching and protecting the person I’m paid to protect. 
     
    And yet here I am calculating what I’m saying to her; like I’m trying to say the right things as if getting into her panties is an option here. 
     
    Which is why I sit there in silence for the rest of the car ride, clenching my jaw and trying to ignore the way her scoop-neck t-shirt drapes across the tops of her breasts, or the way her hair falls in soft waves around her face, or the way her lashes frame the wild green of her eyes.
     
    Yeah, see what I’m fucking up against?
     
    Somehow, we manage to get the last four blocks to the Smithsonian and pull around back by the service entrance without my cock bursting out of my suit or me just outright tearing her clothes off. They need to award service medals for shit like this.
     
    *****
     
    “You know, I’m still having a hard time believing you were in the Army.”
     
    We’re alone as we walk through the empty hallways of the closed wing. Okay, we’re not alone- alone, what with the security detail at the end of the hallway, the other teams guarding every exit and entrance and the back-up team waiting out back for the slightest hint of a threat. But for the moment, in the