Tool (A Step-Brother Romance #2)

"Well, now, as I live and breathe." Gaige's voice reverberates through the room. I've spent four years trying to get that sound out of my head. His voice is low and gravely, with a hint of a drawl, the product of spending his formative years at a boarding school in South Carolina -- the boarding school was prestigious and pretentious, but Gaige is anything but.

"Gaige O'Neal." The words leave my mouth in one breath, heavy like an exhale. For a split second, seeing him there is almost enough to make everything else in here fade to black, as if I'm looking at him with tunnel vision. It's the same Gaige I used to know, with that arrogant smile that made me so angry and a body made for sin. Even back when we were teenagers.

Now, though…hell, I don't know that I've ever seen anyone that looks as holy-shit-hot as Gaige does with his shirt off. When I last saw him, he had one tattoo on his shoulder, but now they snake around his forearms and biceps and cover his chest.

His very broad, very defined chest.

Gaige used to be hot, but he's transformed into something else entirely. I've made a concerted effort to forget Gaige O'Neal over the past four years, which is honestly pretty difficult when your stepbrother is a media darling, a sports figure the tabloids love. It involves going to extreme lengths: no looking at photo spreads in the sports magazines, shutting off the television interviews, ignoring the tabloid articles about Gaige and whoever his girl-of-the-moment is, shrugging and changing the subject when friends want to know what Gaige is like.

What Gaige is like…The memory of my last night alone with him sticks in my head. It never leaves me. I've revisited it God knows how many times over the last few years, replaying it like some kind of movie.

Gaige's lips are so close to mine that if I move even a millimeter, we'll be touching. And there's nothing more that I want on this green earth than to feel Gaige's lips against mine. I want him more than anything…and that is exactly why I can't have him.

"Say it, Delaney."

"We can't."

"We can do whatever we want. Tell me you're mine."

Returning to Dallas is not supposed to mean coming back to Gaige. Gaige is the last person I wanted to ever see again. Out of sight, out of mind, right? But now, standing here…it feels like no time at all has passed between us.

"Delaney Marlowe." He stands up and walks over to me. Limps over to me, to be more accurate. He has a boot on his foot, one of those things you wear after you've had surgery. I wonder what the hell happened. Knowing Gaige, it'll be because he did something reckless on that motorcycle he races. He never was able to just race that thing, even when he was a teenager – it was always stunts, crazy shit, chasing the next adrenaline rush. And to Gaige, a rush wasn’t a rush unless it was death-defying.

I'm distracted from asking what happened by the fact that, aside from the boot, he's wearing not much else. Boxer briefs made of some kind of material that hugs his ass and his whole package, like it's a second skin. I force my eyes upward toward his face. It's hard not to look at…it. What he's packing. His Tool. That's what people call it. I used to call him the same thing, but for a different reason – because he frequently acted like such a dick.

His Tool is apparently legendary. I never got the chance to see it. The night I was supposed to meet him – the night it was supposed to happen between us – never happened. What can I say? Things were complicated between us from the first moment we met.

When Gaige gets to me, he pauses, standing so close I can hear his breath, and reaches out to push a tendril of wet hair away from my forehead.

Oh my God. My hair. My clothes.

My face flushes warm, and I know it must be bright red. For a split second, I'd forgotten I was standing here looking the way I look in the middle of this.

And now Gaige is standing in front of me, looking the way he does – with a perfect body, being photographed next to equally perfect-looking models.

I want to sink into the ground, melt into a puddle of humiliation.

"You're wet," he says. His voice is low and deep and honeyed. The way the words roll off his tongue, long and languid, make them sound more sexual than if he'd told me to take off my panties right now. Electricity courses through my body, down to my fingertips, as the pad of his finger grazes my skin.

I can't tear my eyes away from his. I swear I'd forgotten what his eyes looked like. They're this deep chocolate brown, flecked with gold and framed with lashes so thick they would make any woman envious. His lids are hooded, giving him this perpetually seductive look, like he wants nothing more than to lounge around in bed all day.

He looks deeply into my eyes, and for a second I think we're the only two people in the room. For a moment, this is like a scene in a movie, the kind where the hero scoops up the heroine, bedraggled and soaking wet from the rainstorm, and kisses her in slow motion.