Free Stepbrother Gigolo (A Stepbrother Romance Book 1) by Clare Cole

Prologue
     
    Ethan
     
    I have one simple, ironclad rule when it comes to this business – never, ever fall in love.
    Why would I need to? I have an incredible life. I'm 28 years old and living the dream, quite literally, in Las Vegas and with no shortage of beautiful, rich women begging me to spend time with them – and have sex with them – each and every night. The reality is, I don't – I pick my times to work carefully, maybe two or if I'm feeling into it, three nights a week. That's it. I could work 24 – 7 if I had to, but I don't. I need to keep an air of mystery about me, keep the demand high.
    When you're in demand and repeatedly unavailable, women want you even more.
    Who are my clients? You can take your pick from pretty much any sector of society. Some women are young, others are older. There's skinny girls and curvy girls, rich women and people who saved up just for one night with me. Many are single. Most are married.
    No matter who it is, I give women what they want. Sometimes that’s companionship and just somebody to talk to. Most of the time, its sex. Hard, unbridled, passionate sex – the sort they can't get from their husbands or boyfriends. The sort they can't get from men they meet in bars because those idiots are too tanked up on beer to perform. When I make love to a woman, she damn well knows about it.
    I'm very, very good at what I do. Scratch that, I'm being unnecessarily modest. I'm the best at what I do. I never, ever disappoint.
    So, yeah, where was I? Oh, that's it. My rule – never, ever fall in love. It's a no-brainer, really. This is a lonely life I lead, quite a selfish one at times, but the pickings are rich and the rewards even richer. I don't have time for candlelit dinners and baths full of Kara petals. I don't have time for accommodating someone else's feelings. I have to be laser focused on being the absolute best that I can be and not letting anyone – or anything – ever get in the way of that. So, it's just common sense. Relationships are out. A complete no-no. Off-limits.
    Yeah, well, I royally screwed that one up, didn't I? The second I set eyes on Kara again for the first time in three years I knew I was in trouble – trouble in a good way, of course. I started having those stupid little feelings for her that I swore I wouldn't get, feelings I’d spent a hell of a long time pushing to the back of my mind. I started thinking of her as more than just my stepsister. How crazy was I? She would threaten everything – my reputation, my business, my income, my life.
    But, boy, was she worth it.
     

Chapter 1
     
    Kara
     
    You know in the movies how someone's having a bad dream, like a nightmare, and they wake up, bolt upright suddenly? They're always tossing and turning from side to side, their body and the bedsheets soaked in sweat. At least, I hope its sweat. That would be bad enough, but anything else would just be full-on disgusting. Anyway, you get the picture.
    Well, apparently that doesn't happen. Scientists reckon that when you fall deeply asleep and start dreaming, your body is kind of paralyzed. You start having rapid eye movements and all that stuff – I don't know the ins and outs, I'm not a doctor. But, hey, that's the long and the short of it. All that tossing and turning you see in movies isn't real. It's just for effect, to make it look like someone's all anguished and so stressed out, that they're sweating like Lance Armstrong in doping control.
    Yeah, well, someone explain to me then how I woke up exactly that way – bolt upright with my hair matted to my head like someone had just thrown a bucket of water over it.
    Figure that one out, smarty-pants scientists.
    I had been dreaming, too, so if we believe the eggheads I should have been paralyzed in deep-sleep, snoring my little head off. Instead, my sheets looked like they’d just been taken out of a tumble dryer and thrown straight onto the mattress. My bed looked like it belonged to a college