“Why not?” Kiegan asked, calmly eating another piece of pork.
“Because… well… it just can’t. You’re Kiegan Hunt. You’re my brother. You’re a dick, a guy I think of as Hunt the Cunt in my head.”
I hadn’t meant to admit that, and it just came out in the fluster of crazy that my brain had become, but Kiegan just burst out laughing.
“That’s great. I can’t believe no one’s called me that before.”
“Not to your face, anyway. But no. This can’t happen. No. Absolutely not.”
“Why not?”
“You’re my brother.”
“That didn’t stop you in Miami.”
“And I told you, that was a mistake.”
“Oh, so you’re not attracted to me at all then?” he asked, a single eyebrow lifting.
“I… well… even if I was, which I’m not admitting by the way, it wouldn’t matter. It’s so wrong. So taboo. You’re my brother. You’re like my complete opposite, and we’re practically related. There’s literally no way this can happen.”
“It can, you just have to let it happen,” Kiegan replied, leaning forward across the desk towards me.
“What will people say?” My voice was barely a whisper.
“Do you care?”
I didn’t know what to answer. Of course I didn’t want people to think that about me. And I knew people would. I had seen firsthand how crazy people went over my brother. What if we were together? Him and I. We could hold hands, go out on dates, have some fun conversations and then even more fun later on… No, stop it. Stop it, stop it, stop it. There was my brain, the voice of reason, doing its thing again.
“Why me?” I asked. I had to ask it. Kiegan could have his pick of supermodels. Hell, I’d seen proof that he had had his pick of supermodels. I wasn’t even close to being in that league. I was an average height, slightly-above-average-weight girl with an ok face and great boobs, but not much else. Surely there wasn’t anything he could see in me.
“Because the day I saw you in science class I knew I had to have you, but I also knew you weren’t the type to just open your legs to any guy.”
The blush crawled up my face, but Kiegan continued. “Because I don’t know any other woman who would leave the life my family leads to work a shit job in Seattle. And because even though you don’t think you’re brave, I know there’s something under there, something that took courage, and I want to get to know the woman with the heart of a lion that she doesn’t know she has.”
His voice was barely more than a low murmur, but I was hooked on every word. I looked into those pale blue irises, the perfect pools of beauty that ran so deep I didn’t know where the rabbit hole ended. But was I going to jump? Could I let myself jump, after everything that had happened?
Chapter Fifteen
Against every single instinct in my body, going against everything my brain was screaming at me, I agreed to spend Christmas with Kiegan. We decided to spend the time at his island home in Hawaii.
To call the place a home was a bit of an understatement. Six bedrooms, one of which was made up into a home office and another into a gym, an infinity pool that looked over the Caribbean Sea, a private beach, outdoor shower on top of the luxury ensuite and a patio that was at least five times the size of my old apartment made the place he kept for vacations a pure paradise.
I spent the first ten minutes pretending I was a Hawaiian princess. When the Gulfstream landed the pilots gave us each a Lei, and guided us to the waiting Ferrari, where Kiegan immediately jumped into the driver’s seat, as happy as a kid on Christmas.
Now, half an hour later, we were here. It was absolutely gorgeous. We were just twenty minutes from the hustle and bustle of Waikiki, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do first. Luckily for me, Kiegan had an idea.
“You still work for me while we’re here, by the way,” he told me with a wink.
“Even when we’re on holiday?” I protested, knowing he wasn’t about to send me on some kind of dumb errand.
“Especially when we’re on holiday. Now go up to the bedroom and sit on the bed, I’ll meet you there in a little bit.”
I wasn’t really sure if Kiegan was serious, but a second later he spanked my ass, hard. I flushed out of both embarrassment and at the pain that coursed through me for an instant, but couldn’t help but notice that my panties were already getting wet.
“I said now, Tina.”
Without a word in reply I scurried off to the bedroom and sat on the amazing king sized bed, looking out at the pool outside and wondering what Kiegan had planned. The more he made me wait, the more I wanted him.