Stiff: A Stepbrother Romance (Includes bonus novel Cocked!)

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 B. B. Hamel.

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  Keep reading for the full text of Cocked, included at the end!

  Prologue

  I was stuck in the dark.

  He was so far away and his touch was like a distant memory. I could just barely feel the soft slip of his lips against my skin. I wanted that feeling again, needed it badly, but I couldn’t reach him. I wanted his muscles, his skin, his lips, his leg-shaking grin. He made me squirm with sweet agony. He was the light, the opposite of where I was.

  The darker one was just down the hall.

  I could hear the water drip down the walls of my cage, my body contorted to fit comfortably while my hands were locked up above my head.

  He hadn’t touched me. Not yet, at least.

  But his whispered words were almost worst: I’m going to kill him slowly, and I’m going to make you watch.

  He was always just a shadow, just a small motion in the corner of my eyes. I never thought I’d be taken, never thought I’d be held somewhere against my will.

  I also never thought I’d be begging for my life in the den of a serial killer.

  Still, Easton was out there. It was him that I needed, his strength that kept me from screaming out. I remembered the way his arms grabbed me against his body, the way his tattoos snaked in and out of his sleeves, and that wicked, teasing grin.

  I thought of him over and over, locked in that cage.

  I’m going to cut his throat for you, Laney. I’m going to make you watch.

  Shivers ran down my spine.

  Open your mouth, Laney. Scream for me.

  Quiet as a mouse.

  Still as the dead.

  I wouldn’t give him what he wanted.

  Chapter One: Laney

  I hadn’t been home in almost three years.

  Once I got out of Mishawaka, I thought I was gone for good. I never wanted to go back to my small, backwoods town in the middle of Indiana.

  But, unfortunately, it was hard not to come home when your dad just got married without telling you about it.

  Mishawaka. Town of a few thousand people, and a few thousand more lies. It was every single small-town stereotype all rolled into one very real place. I loved it back when I was a little kid. My mom was alive back then, and Mishawaka felt like a real home. Things changed after she passed away and I began to realize that small-town life wasn’t what I thought it was.

  College was my way out. When I got my scholarship to study criminal justice at the University of Chicago, my whole world changed. Suddenly it wasn’t just the same three places and the same old people, but it was an entire city. I was both surrounded and alone, and it was totally amazing. Nobody knew me and I knew nobody, and I liked it like that.

  Of course, I made friends. College was just like that. You had to really hate people if you wanted to make absolutely no friends. I fell into a comfortable life in the city, working a decent job during summers to afford my apartment and going to school.

  Up until I got the call, at least.

  Summer had just started and the city was coming alive after a particularly brutal winter. It was early and I had just finished my finals. I was looking forward to finally taking it easy and not working while going to classes every single day.

  But that was a pipe dream, of course.

  My cell phone rang, but I didn’t recognize the number. I considered not answering, and in retrospect I wish I hadn’t. That one phone call would lead to everything, to working side by side with the most frustrating man I’d ever met, to helping people in ways I never realized I could, to getting locked in a cage.

  But that wasn’t for another few weeks.

  “Hello?” I said, picking up the phone.

  “Sweetie, it’s Dad.”

  I paused, surprised. I hadn’t heard from him in a few months. “How’s it going, Dad?”

  “I’m fine.” There was another awkward pause. Why had things gotten so strained between the two of us?

  I knew the answer to that question. I moved away from Mishawaka and never looked back, and in a lot of ways Dad felt like that was like turning my back on our family. He had lived in town his whole life and so had my mom, and he never really understood me moving all the way to the city to get away from town.

  I should have kept in better touch with him, even went home a few times to visit, but it was so easy for time to get away from you. One day I hadn’t been home once during freshman year, and the next day it’d been three years, all in the blink of an eye.

  “I have to tell you something, kiddo,” he said.

  “Okay. What happened?” I felt nervous, like I had somehow done something wrong.

  “I got married.”

  My eyes went wide and I took a short breath. “Are you serious?” I asked.

  “Yes, dear, very serious. Do you remember Mrs. Wright?”

  “Sure, I remember her.” She was blond, tall, and infamous. Her husband had died years before I was born, but she’d kept his name. She was a popular lawyer in town and sat on the council, the only woman with a recurring seat. In a lot of ways, Susan Wright was the most powerful woman in town.

  “Well,” Dad continued, “her and I have been getting very close over the past couple of years. Last weekend, we decided to finally make it official.”

  I shook my head. “This is pretty hard to believe.”

  “Listen, sweetie, I know we haven’t seen much of each other lately, but I’d love it if you could come home and spend some time with us this summer.”

  I bit my lip. “I don’t know, Dad.”

  “Please? It’d mean a lot to both of us.”

  “I have a lot of work to do here. I have a job. I can’t just leave, you know?”

  “Actually, about jobs,” Dad said quickly. “Susan heard you were a criminal justice major, and she pulled some strings. If you want, there’s an important internship with a detective that would be perfect for you.”

  “An internship with a detective?”

  “Sure. It’s part of a new program at the sheriff’s.”

  I was completely blown away and speechless. I had barely spoken to my dad in the last three years, and suddenly he was dropping bombshells on me one after the other.

  “Let’s slow down,” I said.

  “Hold on, honey,” he replied. I heard some sounds on the other end of the line. “I’m sorry. I have to run. I’m at a job site right now.”

  I sighed. “Okay, sure.” Dad was one of the most famous and influential property developers in our area, and he was pretty much always working.

  “Please think about it.”

  “Okay. I will.”

  “Good to hear from you.” He hung up the phone.

  I leaned back in my chair, tossing my phone onto the couch. I barely understood what I was feeling as I took a few deep breaths.

  My dad had remarried. He hadn’t even told me about his relationship before that point. Not that I could blame him; I was pretty much estranged from him. But suddenly he wanted me home and had even found a job for me?

  I sighed, looking out the window. It had been a long time since I was home. Things had to have changed. At least, I had certainly changed. There were friends back home that I hadn’t seen in a while.

  Plus, if Susan Wright had gotten me a job, it was probably pretty serious. I was working as a waitress at a local upscale bar, and while the money was
good, it wasn’t exactly helping my career at all.

  My long-time goal was to go into the FBI. I didn’t necessarily want to be a field agent, but instead I wanted to work as an analyst or something like that. Ideally, I’d work as support for agents, providing intelligent analysis on field reports and cases, essentially acting as an extra brain for stuck agents.

  Unfortunately, splitting the bill thirty ways on thirty different credit cards for drunk assholes didn’t exactly give me the skills I needed.

  It was a tough decision. I had left Mishawaka for a lot of reasons, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to go back. Then again, I had changed. That town didn’t have control over me anymore.

  It was a tough decision either way.

  I stood up and stretched. I decided that there was only one way to figure things out: I needed to order a pizza.

  Two weeks later, I climbed out of the cab and looked up at my Dad’s house.

  I paid and tipped the cabbie and watched as he drove off, leaving me standing there regretting every decision I had made leading up to that moment.

  The pizza hadn’t worked, unfortunately, and I had still been without any clue about what to do when I’d got another call I didn’t recognize.

  It was Susan herself, as it turned out.

  And she was very lovely. We had a long chat about her and my father, and she even gave me more details about the internship. Apparently, it was with a private detective that used to be a prominent FBI member, which seemed pretty much too good to be true.

  After that conversation, and after another frustrating shift at the bar, I pretty much made up my mind. I gave my notice the next day, and I was headed home not too long after that.

  It was a crazy decision. My friends all thought I was nuts for just up and going home for the summer, and especially for giving up my job.

  But as soon as I heard that I would be working with an FBI agent, even if he had left the bureau, I knew I had to go. I knew I couldn’t turn down an opportunity like that.

  Plus, I wanted to see my dad, of course. I felt bad that the job was what really changed my mind, but I couldn’t deny it. I planned on making it up to Dad by spending plenty of time with him, or at least as much as he wanted.

  I took another steadying breath and trudged up the stairs, ringing the doorbell. It felt weird to be ringing my dad’s bell, but it wasn’t the same house I had grown up in. So much had changed, and yet nothing ever really does.

  I waited a few minutes before ringing again. Eventually, I heard someone yell from inside, and slowly the door pushed open.

  “Hey—” I started to say, expecting my dad, but stopped mid-sentence.

  The guy looking back at me with a small smirk on his face was tall. His green eyes pierced into mine, and I took a small, unconscious step back away from him. I was surprised at the way my heart suddenly began to hammer in my chest as my eyes looked up along his muscular body and lingered on the hints of tattoos at the edges of his long-sleeve dress shirt.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “Uh, yeah. Hi. I’m Laney.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Hi, Laney. I’m Easton.”

  The name suddenly clicked, and I took a sharp breath. “You’re Susan’s kid. Easton Wright.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m Alan’s daughter.”

  Recognition bloomed across his face as he stepped out of the door and onto the stoop next to me.

  “Well, Laney, I guess this makes you and me stepsiblings.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Good to meet you. I was just leaving.” He glanced back inside. “Susan is just inside, in the kitchen.”

  “Okay—” I started to say, but he was already walking off. “Nice to meet you,” I called after him.

  He raised his hand in a small wave but kept walking. It was a little rude the way he just walked off like that. He had stared at me like I was a total idiot for a second. Maybe Susan hadn’t told him about me.

  I barely remembered Easton from high school. He was a few years older than me, probably three or four, and I only knew him as a legend. He was an athlete, though not the star of anything, and pretty popular. But he was best known as being the king of the debate team.

  In our town, you weren’t popular, athletic, and on the debate team. It just simply wasn’t done. The fact that Easton somehow managed to do all of those things was impressive in itself. There were also other stories about him, mythical kind of things, mostly stuff that was probably made up.

  But I had to admit, after seeing him up close, I began to understand his reputation. He was known as a player, or at least he had been back in the day. Suddenly I knew why someone like him was able to get as many girls as he did.

  “Laney?”

  The voice pulled me out of my thoughts and I looked inside the house. Standing there with her arms crossed was Susan Wright, smiling slightly.

  “Hi, Susan,” I said, coming inside.

  She gave me a quick hug and offered to take my bags, but I declined. She led me into the kitchen, chatting amiably the whole time.

  “Your father is late as usual,” she said. “I’m so sorry we couldn’t pick you up at the train station.”

  I shook my head. “It’s totally fine.”

  “Did you see Easton on your way out?” she asked.

  “Oh, yeah, I did.”

  She frowned. “Sorry about him. He can be very rude sometimes.”

  “It’s okay. I thought he was fine.”

  Her expression shifted back into a smile. “Good. I’m glad. You’ll be working with him, so I hope he was nice.”

  My eyes widened a bit, and I felt my heart rate jump. “He works for the FBI agent too?”

  Susan cocked her head. “Oh, I didn’t tell you? Easton is the FBI agent. Well, ex-agent at least.”

  I opened my mouth and then shut it. I’d be working for my stepbrother, the most notorious player in all of Mishawaka? I didn’t know what to say. “He’s so young,” I blurted out.

  She nodded. “Yes, he is. Too young to be an ex-agent, but, ah, personal things happened.”

  I wanted very badly to ask her more, but I decided against it. The look on her face suggested that it wasn’t the best topic in the world.

  Just then, the front door opened up and my father swept into the room.

  I stood up and smiled. “Hey, Dad.”

  Alan Mason was a broad man. Not particularly tall, and not exactly overweight, but still thick set. He was always smiling and always busy. His hair had gone a bit grayer since the last time I’d seen him, but otherwise he was the same person I remembered.

  “Laney, it’s so good to see you,” he said, wrapping me up in his usual hug.

  “You too, Dad.”

  “I’ll let you two catch up,” Susan said, and disappeared.

  “Your new house is really nice,” I said, looking around. So far, from what I had seen, the place was absolutely huge and very, very modern. I had to admit, it beat the hell out of my dinky apartment back in Chicago.

  “I’ll give you a tour. Come on.”

  I followed up through the halls. He showed me the living room, the game room, and the dining room. Out back, there was a large deck and a nice pool. Upstairs, there were several bedrooms, including their master bedroom. I was staying on the third floor so that I’d have more privacy.

  “Best room in the house,” he said with a wink.

  The bed was enormous, a four-poster thing, like something from a fairy tale. I had my own desk and dresser and walk-in closet, plus a little TV.

  “I can get a computer in here too, if you want,” he said.

  “No, no thanks. This is already too much.”

  He laughed. “I’m just happy you’re back home. Anything you want, just ask.”

  We walked past two more empty rooms and he showed me the bathroom. Marble floors, huge tub, huge shower. It was absolutely unreal.

  “When did you get this place?” I asked him as I walked th
rough the bathroom, gaping at everything.

  “Just two months ago, actually. Susan picked it out.”

  “It’s incredible.”

  “I know. It was hard to sell the house on Beaker, though.”

  I nodded. Beaker Street was where we’d lived with my mom, all those years ago. I thought of that house as my childhood home.

  But this new house would do just fine.

  “Why don’t you get unpacked and then come downstairs. We’ll have something to eat.”

  “Sounds good, Dad.”

  He paused outside my door. “Thanks again for coming home.”

  “Thanks for doing all this for me. I’m glad I’m here.”

  He smiled and then left.

  I collapsed onto my bed, my mind spinning in tight circles. The house, my father, Susan, and Easton were all incredible. It was almost too good to be true.

  Except the part about working for Easton. That made me nervous, in all honesty. I had no clue what he was like, and, plus, he was so young. How could I really learn anything from him? He probably barely knew anything himself.

  And why had he left the FBI? Susan’s comment about it made it seem very mysterious. Maybe I could ask Easton himself, though he hadn’t exactly seemed super friendly when I’d run into him earlier that day.

  As I unpacked my stuff, I could feel my heart racing. I didn’t know what would happen, but I knew I was in for an interesting summer. All reservations and hesitations about Mishawaka were forgotten for the time being.

  I had a job and a decent place to stay. What else could I possibly want?

  Chapter Two: Easton

  Coming home was not what I wanted to do on my twenty-fifth birthday. But after you’re honorably discharged from the FBI, or “let go” as they like to say, there’s not much else to do.

  So I packed my things and drove across the country. It passed by like a blur, one long string of shitty fast food place after the next.

  Finally, like magic, I found myself back in Mishawaka. The place was full of memories. And the last thing I wanted was memory.