Deadly Surrender: Famiglia 3.5 Read online

  Gem helped me keep Bri calm while I worked out a way to get them both free. To this day I’m surprised neither one of them came clean to our parents about it. I, on the other hand, had to make some bullshit excuse as to why there was a huge gap in the new railing. I spent the entire summer after that working so that I could pay back my dad every penny it had cost for him to repair it. I didn’t care though. Gem and Bri were happy and safe.

  Of course, that had all been before life had gone to shit and Gem and I were forced into foster care. Before Lukas De Luca had found me pick pocketing a bunch of thugs and tried bringing me into the fold. I was a stubborn teenager though, and was determined to not have to rely on another adult to take care of me and my little sister. I was going to take care of her on my own.

  Until one bad decision led to another and that’s how Lukas found me again. Pushed up against a brick wall in some dark alley in the middle of winter, with my jeans shoved down to my ankles. Every time I think of that night, I have to swallow down the bile that threatens its way up and then I usually end the night with a bottle of cheap whiskey hoping that I’ll just pass out and the memories wouldn’t find their way back.

  If he hadn’t found me in the alley, close to being raped, before having the life beat out of me, I would’ve died on that cold night and left Gem behind without someone to take care of her. I agreed to go with Lukas on one condition and that was Gem would come with us, but he’d leave her out of whatever sick fantasy he had planned for me. He’d slapped me upside the head and told me to get into the car, and not once in all the years we lived with the De Luca’s did he ever come collecting, at least not in that way. He came collecting in other ways, though, like pulling me into their family business since I was a De Luca now.

  I still remember the day Brielle came over to tell Gemma that her family was moving west to B.C. My body had been responding to her back then already, but I refused to acknowledge it. She was sixteen! And I was too god damn old for her. Eleven years too old. Gem was devasted when she realized she’d no longer have Bri by her side when they graduated high school. Aside from myself, Bri was the only constant in Gem’s life.

  I made it my mission in life to see to it that she got to go visit Bri and her family in B.C. every summer, even if I had to pay for it myself. Luckily, Lukas agreed that it was best for Gemma if she got to go visit her best friend, so he offered to buy her a ticket once a year. It also helped get her out of the house and easier for us to conduct business.

  But, God, she still looked so fucking good. Time had been good to her that’s for damn sure. Her curves had filled out some making her look more like the woman she is than the sixteen-year-old girl I remember.

  I slap my hand down on the bar top, making a few of the guests jump at the sudden noise but I don’t give a fuck. One of the waiters doesn’t waste a minute sliding a new glass of bourbon in front of me. I need something to keep me down here, so I won’t go charging back up those stairs and reclaim what’s mine. And make no mistake, she is mine. Hell, she was practically mine back then, but I was just too much of a dumbass to do something about it.

  Just then my cell vibrates in my front pocket, the vibrations causing my dick to twitch. I groan, pulling it from my pocket and then slam back my drink when I see the name of the caller.

  “I swear to Christ, Gem, if you’re out drinking and not tucked away in that dorm of yours studying-”

  Her laugh cuts me off. “Relax, big bro. I’m happy to report that I’m sober as a nun. No thanks to you.” She sighs. “You really didn’t need to go around threatening the guys at the local pub.”

  “You seem to forget what you were like in high school.”

  She groans. “Yeah, yeah. No need to remind me. You know I wasn’t the only teenager who showed up to those house parties.”

  I chuckle. “No, but you were the only one who had Braxton, Alessandro, and I dragging your ass out.”

  She growls but it comes out sounding like a kitten. It’s cute she thinks she can still try to intimidate me with that sound. “Anyway.” She clears her throat. “I’m calling to say that I’ll be coming home this weekend. Bri is coming to town and I promised her I’d be there to spend the weekend with her.”

  I straighten up from my position of elbows leaning on the bar at the sound of Brielle’s name. My other hand clenching into a fist at my body’s reaction to just hearing her name.

  “… I told her she could stay with us like old times.” My sister continues on, but I’ve already tuned her out as my gaze roams and locks on to a pair of long legs descending the stairs from the private rooms.

  “Stefan! Are you even listening to me?” Gem yells in my ear.

  I swallow hard, but keep my eyes locked on Brielle as she navigates her way through the crowd. “Yeah, I heard you, little sis.”

  “I’m so excited! It’s been too long since we’ve seen each other. I can’t wait to have a regular girls’ night in again-” She continues on, but I tune her out again as Brielle comes to stop a couple inches in front of me. Her breath visibly hitching as her eyes rake up my chest before coming to land on my face. I wasn’t aware I had moved into her path until her dark eyes connected with mine.

  “When will you be home?” I grunt into the phone.

  “Huh? Oh, um, Friday evening after my last class.”

  I mentally do a calendar check and realize today’s only Monday.

  “Text me when you get on the road,” I say, then add an I love you on the end before hanging up. I mentally cringe at the sudden way I ended that call. Gem’s smart, she’ll know somethings up and will want to talk about it when she gets home. I always make time for her when she calls. Always. No business is more important than her and she knows it. The sudden ending will definitely warrant twenty-one questions from her. Fucking perfect.

  I tuck the phone back in my pocket, still not having moved out of Brielle’s way and I can tell she’s uncomfortable with the sudden face-to-face meeting we’ve got going on here as she shuffles her weight from foot to foot. Fuck this shit. I bend, hooking my shoulder into her middle and lift her up in a fireman’s carry.

  “What the fuck, Stefan!” She shrieks, balling her fists into the fabric at my back. “Put me down, you big baboon!”

  I slap her ass, but keep moving towards the back door of the club where I’m parked. As well as Braxton, Alessandro, and Mason. Fucking hell, did the whole gang decide to come get their freak on tonight? Wolf whistles follow us over to my truck. I shoot them the finger over my other shoulder then unlock the door and deposit Bri onto the passenger seat. I try not to linger too long on the creamy skin being revealed to me as her skirt rides up and shut the door.

  Fuck me. What the hell was I doing? I make my way around to the driver’s side and jump into the truck.

  She huffs, pushing strawberry strands of hair that had fallen over her face back. “Was that really necessary?”

  “What are you doing here, Brielle?” I bite out, reversing out of the parking stall like a bat out of hell and swinging the truck around to the street.

  She snorts. “Isn’t it too late for pleasantries? I mean, shouldn’t you have asked that before you fucked me… twice!”

  “Dammit!” I slam my palm down on the steering wheel a little too hard then curse when she visibly flinches, crowding against the door and putting extra inches between us. “You should still be at school on the west coast. Not here in some sex club.”

  “Don’t you co-own said sex club?” She asks, arms crossed under her chest and Christ, does it push her already generous tits up further.

  “Why are you here, Brielle?” I ask again.

  Out of the corner my eye I see her turn to face the window and the passing scenery, her teeth biting into her bottom lip. I’m not sure how much time has passed since I asked the question but I’m beginning to think she may not reply. When she eventually does answer, her voice sounds so small in the cab of the truck.

  “I needed a change.”

 
I have no idea what the fuck that means, but I won’t force her to tell me… yet. I had a strange feeling that if I pushed, she would close up on me for good. I couldn’t have that. For years, I had been able to deny whatever this pull was to her, but I don’t have the strength nor the will to ignore it any longer. A realization I had come to when I saw her descend those stairs back at the club. After the first time she came to the club and I had recognized who she was, I thought I could keep it casual. I could just be her Dom and she could just be another Sub. When I saw her kneeling there tonight, though, I knew that was utter bullshit. I still wanted her as much now as I did back when she was sixteen.

  God, I was such a perv. What twenty-six-year-old male lusted after a sixteen-year-old girl?

  “Where are we going?”

  I glance at her quickly before forcing my eyes back to the highway. “My place.”

  Silence descends again until I flip the right turn signal and enter the exit that’ll take us to the house I just purchased a couple months ago. It had been a long time coming too. I knew Braxton and Klara wouldn’t have minded if I continued living in the house Braxton had grown up in, but them starting to pop out kids, I couldn’t handle the constant bombardment of noise. It was about time I got my own place too. I was thirty-three years old.

  “You’re not going to tell Gem, are you?” She asks as soon as I pull into the driveway and park.

  “No, Brielle. I’m not going to tell Gemma.”

  God knows my sister will have my ass if I told her what had happened over the last six months.

  3

  Brielle

  I was able to breathe a little easier when Stefan said he wouldn’t tell Gemma what had happened between us. I was still trying to come up with a way to tell her that I was moving back. That things back home just weren’t working out. I swallowed back the warm rush of tears threatening to fall. I would not break down in front of my best friend’s older brother. I would not break down period.

  Stefan leads us through the front door and into a huge living room. The house didn’t look all that big from the street, but then none of the houses in this city look that big from the outside until you step inside.

  It’s a lot less modern than I would’ve expected from the brick house of a man. As I take in the living room and kitchen, I’m surprised to see that it’s decorated more traditionally, and it actually feels lived in. There are pictures of Gemma by herself at her high school graduation and prom, Stefan and Gemma together the day she moved to Ottawa for school, and then a couple of them when they were younger with their parents decorating the half wall that separates the living room and kitchen. The far wall with the TV and entertainment stand is painted a forest green colour while the rest of the house is painted in more neutral tones. I didn’t expect such a dark colour to work in a house like this, but it does somehow.

  “Beer?” His rough voice draws me out of my exploration of the space. I nod and take a seat on the edge of the couch, not really sure what I’m doing here. My mind flashes back to the way he ducked and flipped me over his shoulder before carrying me out of the club like some animal. Warmth spreads across my cheeks as I remember the shocked faces of the patrons as Stefan stomped through the crowd not giving a shit what we must have looked like. If I was being really honest with myself, it was hot as hell. Even more so because I got a face full of round, taut ass in my face. I had to try so hard not to reach out and smack it like he had smacked mine when I had protested the move. I quieted down real quick when I realized I had an up close view of the ass I had dreamed about for years.

  Stefan’s sock covered feet pad across the polished wood floor, and I force myself back to the present and away from thoughts of his ass.

  “Thank you,” I croak when he hands me a cold one.

  He lifts his bottle up in a toast and then takes up a seat on the other side of the couch, resting his feet on the edge of the coffee table in front of us.

  “The guest room’s all yours,” he says, settling back into the couch and flipping through the sports channels until he settles on a Blue Jays game.

  I cough and splutter on the mouthful of beer. Tears swim in my eyes from it going down the wrong pipe. I must have heard him wrong, there’s no way…

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “You can stay in the guest room,” he repeats again like it’s no big deal.

  “Stefan, I can’t. I don’t have any of my stuff and I rented a hotel room. I can’t stay here.”

  He shrugs, his eyes never leaving the game. What the fuck was so interesting about baseball anyway?

  “We’ll go get your stuff after the game. You can stay here.”

  “What the fuck?! No. No way! I’m not a child anymore, Stefan! You don’t get to tell me what to do,” I yell, jumping up from the couch and placing my beer on the table before heading towards the door to slip on my shoes.

  I hated that it was customary in Canada for you to take off your shoes when entering a house. It made storming out seem so much less dramatic when you had to stop at the door and keep up the charade while trying to stuff your feet back into your shoes. It sucked even more in winter when everyone wore big winter boots you couldn’t just shove on.

  As soon as I had my Keds back on and was reaching for the door handle, Stefan was there with a hand wrapped around my bicep, spinning me to face him while backing me into the front door.

  “Believe me, babe, I know you’re not a kid anymore.” He licks his lips, while trailing those dark eyes down my body. The lustful perusal sends a shiver down my body, I clench my thighs together and swallow back a whimper.

  Stefan crowds me against the door, his palms resting on either side of my head, his lips so close to my own. I freeze when he fingers the bottom of my short jean skirt, his fingers lightly brushing against my inner thigh as he moves the skirt higher, then relax and part my legs a little more. My head drops back against the door and I’m panting through my parted lips as he moves higher. I want to grip his hand and move it to where I need his touch, but I hold back. We may not be in the club, but I was no fool. I knew he liked the control away from the club as well. Don’t ask me how I knew, it was just a feeling I got, but I would bet the rest of my measly savings that I was right.

  “You already wet for me again, little pet?” He nips at my bottom lip and let out a whimper of protest when he moves back, but then his tongue is tracing a line up my jaw to the spot below my ear. He gently presses his lips there and I moan, moving my head to grant him better access. “I want to hear you scream my name again, pet. Want to hear you beg for me again.” He nips and sucks down my neck, and I want to give him all of that and more but something’s holding me back.

  “Bri,” I say between panted breaths.

  Stefan’s head pops up at my word, his eyes narrowing down at me before the creases across his forehead disappear and he nods, going back to his exploration of my neck. His fingers inch up higher until they brush against my bare pussy.

  He pauses, sucking in a sharp breath at the realization.

  “You’re not wearing any underwear.” It’s not a question.

  I bite my lip and shake my head. The lace thong I had worn to the club earlier that day was wet from my anticipation of the scene we would play in that upstairs room. After I cleaned myself up when he left, I couldn’t bring myself to put the wet material on again. Plus, the skirt I was wearing may have been short, but it was still long enough where nobody would notice if I was wearing panties or not.

  “You’re telling me you walked through a BDSM club not wearing any underwear.”

  Again, it’s not a question but I can see the need in his eyes for me to confirm what he already knows, but beneath that I can see the raw possession, the need to claim me. I shiver.

  “N-No.”

  “God damn!” he spits out and for a second, I think he’s going to stomp away from me and demand that he take me back to my hotel. But when he bends over and throws me over his shoulder for the second time to
day, I know he’s not going to send me away.

  You’d think he was still wearing his shit-kicker boots with the sound he makes bounding up the stairs. For a moment, I’m afraid he may miss a step and send me cascading to the floor, but I should’ve known that he’d never let anything happen to me when he enters what I’m assuming is the master bedroom and kicks the door closed behind us. Even when we were younger, Stefan always looked out for Gem and I, even at the detriment to himself. He still thinks we don’t know the lengths he went through to make sure Gem had everything she needed, but we weren’t stupid. Gemma noticed when he came home with bruises and cuts along his body, and it became obvious to me too when he refused to take off his shirt when we went swimming. They weren’t the bruises he’d get if got beat up either, they were finger shaped, and they were on his stomach, like whoever had made them had been behind Stefan. Gem and I held each other as we sobbed into the early hours of the morning. He may have been her brother by blood, but he was mine too.

  I mentally shake myself out of the past when Stefan deposits me onto the bed and I bounce a couple times. I stopped seeing him as a brother pretty much as soon as puberty hit and him and Gem had come over for a hot tub night. Gem and I were fourteen and Stefan had just turned twenty-five. I remember my jaw dropping and a blush creeping across my face when he had whipped off his shirt so he could get into the warm water. He wasn’t as big back then, but he was lean, and I could see the beginnings of a six-pack forming. He wore his hair a little shaggier back then to, I remember a time when I was sixteen just before my parents up and moved us across the country. Stefan was working in their foster parents’ backyard and his hair had fallen into his face. I remember the way my fingers itched to brush the strands back. Now, though, he tended to keep his hair clipped short to the scalp. I had to try and not pout when I first saw him and how short his hair was cut. For years I dreamt of him licking down my body, my fingers curled into the hair atop of his head as he made his way further down where his tongue flicked across my clit. I would moan and grip his hair tighter as my back arched.