Free Dirty Wicked Lust: A Stepbrother Romance by Amanda Heartley Page B

half-lidded eyes incredulously. “It was half-open, you dork,” I said, eyeing the smoldering joint in the ashtray by his bed almost as longingly as I’d been eyeing him.
    He seemed to consider me for a moment, literally scratching his head as his eyes gradually focused. He nodded, sinking back onto the piles of pillows behind his head.
    Ryan’s room was a mess, the walls covered with a mix of Bob Marley and Marine posters, shelves littered with overturned books and old, tarnished trophies. A striped blue comforter lay on the floor and matching sheets sweaty and twisted beneath his lean, tempting frame. A girly girl before I’d left Miami and only recently adopting a tomboy attitude, I’d never spent much time in boys’ rooms growing up, but now Ryan’s lured me with an appeal that was hard to resist.
    Like him, it was a mystery wrapped in a messy enigma. I could see where, like Ryan, his room had started out neat—trophies on the shelves, books all in a row, a desk and chair set squared away in one corner. Then like the rest of him, it had gradually come… unhinged. Had he already been kind of a mess before his return home? I wondered, watching the smoke curl lazily from the joint in the ashtray by his bed. Or had coming back to the States been a harder adjustment than he’d at first imagined?
    I inched deeper into the room, desperate for a hit—and not just off Ryan’s joint. He stopped me with a powerful glare, wagging his fingers as he shook his head. “Get out, Heather,” he grumbled, reaching with his free, non-wagging hand to take another hit as I stood, half-in, half-out of his room.
    “Why?” I whined, half-naked and horny beneath my bathrobe. “I mean, doesn’t last night count for anything?”
    “Please,” he said, rolling his eyes as a fat cloud of smoke swirled around his head and his eyes swam in and out of focus. The hit was almost enough to get me high from halfway across the room! “You were drunk, remember?”
    I snorted. “Yeah, but not drunk enough to forget that you were stone cold sober when you jumped in that pool, Ryan.”
    His nostrils flared slightly before he shrugged, either playing it casual or simply not caring – both hurt my feelings more than they should have. “My point exactly, Heather,” he said in a sudden burst of stoner logic. “You were drunk, and I was temporarily insane, which cancels out both of our actions.”
    Suddenly it was my turn for flared nostrils. “So that’s it?” I grumbled, throwing my hands up in the air as my frustration at our situation boiled over at last. “We’re just going to forget that hot, wet kiss we shared last night? That hard-on in your boxer shorts or my hard nipples?”
    Ryan winced a little, then sneered a lot. “Yes, Heather, we are. Despite your rather… vivid … description, that case is officially closed.”
    “Who gets to decide that?” I huffed, pacing slightly as I still lingered just inside his room. “You?”
    He chuckled, another hit down and smoke curling lazily around his thick, luscious lips as he said, “Well, I am the older sibling, Heather.”
    “You haven’t been acting like one, Ryan,” I growled.
    “Who saved your ass last night?” he countered, wagging a fatherly finger. “Who needed saving from her big, bad brother?”
    “Maybe I didn’t want to be saved,” I countered, so overcome by emotion that I blurted it out before I could help myself. “Maybe… maybe I just wanted you to notice me.”
    His eyes focused for just a moment, the smoky haze seeming to clear as he nodded, gently, before shaking his head. “I noticed you, Heather. I wanted you. I… want… you. I just can’t have you, okay?”
    I glanced around the room—dirty laundry in a heap, crushed beer cans on top of the desk in the corner, wilting sunlight streaming through half-open slats. “Fine,” I huffed, hating the shrill tone of my voice. “We can’t have each other. Great. Super. Got it. Understood. So what are