Stepbrother Dearest

Chapter 16

"How about this one?" I lifted a canary yellow chiffon mini-dress off the rack.

"You'll look like a banana."

I chose another one. "This?"

Elec shook his head. "No."

He picked up a burgundy satin and sequin number that draped over the tattoos on his arm as he showed it to me. "This is hot. This is it."

At first, I thought it was too much but agreed to try it on.

Out of the three dresses I'd taken into the fitting room, the one he picked fit my body the best. It actually made me look like I had boobs, and the short style accentuated my legs. I had to give him credit. The sequins were a little loud, but then again, we were dressing for da club.

The dress fit me so well, in fact, that it didn't want to come off. The zipper was stuck, and I couldn't pull the dress over my head. I was starting to sweat because I couldn't reach it to diagnose the problem.

"You alright in there?" Elec asked.

"Uh...can you see if there's a salesperson that can help me?"

"What's the problem?"

"I can't get the dress off."

"Well, you did finish off my steak and yours at dinner..."

"The zipper is stuck!"

He laughed. "I can help you."

"No! I'd just be more comfortable if—"

The curtain slid open suddenly, and he stepped inside. "Come here."

The warmth of his body was tangible in the small confines of the space. He slid all of my hair to the front and pulled at the material that was stuck. My breathing quickened with every second that his hands worked the zipper at the top of my back.

The image in my head of him ripping the dress off and wrapping my legs around him wasn't helping.

"You weren't kidding," he said as he fiddled with it." After about a minute, I heard him say, "Got it."

"Thank you."

He slowly lowered it a few inches then stopped. "All set." But his hands lingered on my shoulders. I'd been looking down, and when I looked up, he was staring into my eyes from behind me in the mirror.

I turned around abruptly. Our faces were close, and his eyes dropped to my mouth and stayed there. This time he didn't try to hide the fact that he seemed mesmerized by my lips.

He closed his eyes briefly as if to fend off the urge to kiss me. It troubled me that if he had tried, I knew without a doubt that I couldn't have resisted. I would have kissed him with everything in me. That lack of self-control scared me.

It was impossible to see anything beyond him at that moment, not Chelsea, not the consequences. The memory of his mouth all over me, of him deep inside my body was overwhelming me.

My mind could be talked down, but my body knew better. It knew that it had within its grasp, the one thing it craved every day for the past seven years.

No one had ever been able to measure up or replace him.

Elec had wrecked me.

He may have been Chelsea's now, but my body still believed that it belonged to him whether he knew it or not, whether that was right or wrong.