Chapter One
Brett
When I was ten years old, my mother and I moved to Chicago with nothing but the clothes on our backs and a fistful of bills that one of her friends in Indiana had stuffed in her hand before we left. We’d left in the middle of night because we were late on rent. I wasn’t supposed to know why we left, but I did. It wasn’t the first time it had happened, but as luck would have it, it was the last.
Mom had to work three jobs to make sure that it never happened again, but she never once complained.
On my first day at my new school, some of the kids picked on me for my ratty sweater and holey jeans. I’d been about to put my fist into one of their faces when an almighty scream rang out behind me. I spun around to see a little girl with the bluest eyes I’d ever seen, wailing and pointing at the guy who’d been making fun of me.
Another boy came running, and his fist collided into the bully’s cheekbone with a loud crack. After a brief tussle, a teacher had broken up the fight and sent us all off with a warning. The boy who’d punched the guy in my defense looked over at me, his dark hair pointing in every direction and a trickle of blood running from his nose. He grunted, “We’re gonna miss lunch if we don’t hurry. Come on.”
Nineteen years later, that same boy was sitting beside me in the booth of an upscale bar on Logan Square, celebrating my latest deal.
Mark Love. My best goddamned friend in the world. He smacked me on the back with a thump of his fist. I couldn’t hear it over the music that was blaring from large speakers lining the walls, and he grinned like the madman he was.
“Congratulations, brother,” he said. “I’m really fucking proud of you.” He hailed a passing waitress. “Three shots of Patron and three beers, please.”
“Sure thing, coming right up.” The waitress winked and flashed him a smile, but Mark’s eyes were already out on the dance floor.
“Actually, better make that four of everything,” he told her, sighing as he slumped back in his seat. “Sophia’s gonna be parched when she comes off the floor.”
Shawn, another one of our friends, followed Mark’s eyes, and he let out a low whistle. “She’s looking pretty damn good tonight, isn’t she?”
Mark and I both turned to glower at him. Mark because he was super overprotective of his little sister, and me because I generally just didn’t like the idea of Shawn staring at Sophia. He threw his hands up in mock surrender, his lips twitching into a cocky smile.
“Stand down, Not-her-dad One and Not-her-dad Two. Just stating the facts, is all. She looks good. Can either of you deny it?”
“Yes,” Mark snapped. “Keep your eyes off my sister, asshole.”
Shawn’s bright green eyes darted to mine. “Come on, back me up here, Brett. Sophia’s legit hot. I know she’s like a little sister to you, too, but you know she’s not actually related to you, right? That means you can back me up without it being creepy.”
“I know she’s not related to me.” I glanced at Mark, who was waiting for me to continue with a scowl and a challenge in his dark blue eyes. “But she might as well have been. So nope. Not hot.”
It was a total lie, of course.
But it was one I would keep telling until my dying fucking day.
As it turned out, the blue-eyed girl whose shriek had summoned Mark on that fateful day was his sister, Sophia Love. Three years younger than us, Sophia had had some trouble with same bullies over the summer, but she hadn’t known who they were.
Ever the protector, Mark had told her to scream if she saw them at school so that he could, in his in juvenile words, teach them a lesson.
And scream she did.
Every once in a while, Mark and I joked that it was the scream that could be heard around the world. That scream had changed my life when it catapulted the man who would become like a brother to me into it.
Only Sophia wasn’t a seven-year-old girl anymore, and it was getting harder and harder not to notice that fact, despite what I’d just told Shawn. She’d always been pretty. Even as a kid, I remembered that I used to think that she looked like one of the porcelain dolls my mom collected.
In high school, as her body filled out and morphed into that of a woman, she was beautiful. Not that I’d ever actually noticed it back then, not in any other way than agreeing with the whispers in the locker room. Okay, and once when I’d been fall-down drunk, and I’d thought that she looked like a dark, fallen angel when her face had loomed over my semi-passed out self. The next morning, I pretended that I couldn’t remember that I’d told her I thought she was “the most beautiful girl in the world.”
Somewhere around college, though, I had to admit that she was hot, even if it was only to myself. Now at twenty-six, Sophia wasn’t just hot anymore. She was fucking devastating.
And I knew it, along with any other man and probably half the women in the club. But I would never, ever admit it out loud.
Mark smirked beside me, raising his fist for me to bump. “Good man. You see, Shawn? That’s what real friends do. They don’t check out each other’s sisters.”
Shawn rolled his eyes, draining the last bit of beer from the bottle in front of him. “Whatever. Just being honest.”
The waitress arrived with our drinks, grabbing Mark’s attention as she started flirting with him. It afforded me the opportunity to check out the potential talent on the dance floor. Not Sophia, of course. The other talent.
My company had hit a huge milestone that afternoon. The deal was worth billions, and my personal net worth now exceeded one billion dollars. Not bad for a guy who came from nothing and nowhere.
I was out to celebrate with Mark, Sophia, and Shawn, but I also fully intended on finding a celebratory fuck.
The last few months, I’d been burning the midnight oil to get this deal done, and I hadn’t wanted any distractions, so I’d kept my dick in my pants. But the deal was done, which meant that my self-imposed celibacy was over, and I couldn’t wait to get back in the game.
My eyes roamed over the crowded dancefloor, but they kept coming back to the petite brunette right at the very center of it. Her mahogany-colored hair shone under the flashing strobe lights, sailing around her beautiful face as she moved to the rhythm of the music. It was cut to fall right above her shoulders, and it framed her face so perfectly that it was almost like she’d been drawn by a cartoon artist and brought to life.
Slender curves that just wouldn’t quit were encased in a black leather skirt that showed off miles of toned legs, and a tight white tank top revealed the perfect swell of her breasts. Her tiny feet were wearing heels that had been designed to kill me.
And I didn’t even have a foot fetish. It was just easy to imagine fucking her wearing only those goddamn heels.
She was the only girl on the dance floor that made my dick rock hard, and images of all the dirty, filthy things that I wanted to do to her swam around my head on repeat. But she was also the only girl out there I couldn’t have.
Because she was Sophia. Which meant that my dick needed to chill the fuck out and find someone else that interested it.
“Dude, who are you salivating over?” Mark asked, his beer bottle raised in front of his lips as he squinted out at the dance floor. The waitress was gone, and I hadn’t even noticed.
I shrugged, pointing out a random blonde near where Sophia was dancing. “That chick looks like she could be fun.”
He nodded enthusiastically, elbowing me in the ribs. Unfortunately, because I was an idiot, I’d told Mark about my period of abstinence. The night I’d found out that I had a shot at closing the deal, we celebrated the end of my voluntary dry spell by drinking a shitload of Scotch.
“Do try to last long enough to make the poor girl come at least once,” Mark said, laughing.
I glared at him so hard that I thought my eyes were going to pop. No matter how much I willed it to happen, his head didn’t explode. Rolling my eyes, I raised the shot of Patron that the waitress had delivered, and I smirked. “I’ll get her to call in the morning to tell you that she came so hard that she couldn’t see for a full minute. Now drink up.”
“Who’s coming for a full minute?” Sophia asked behind me suddenly, her voice slightly slurred, but her curiosity was definitely piqued.
When I turned to face her, she blinked and looked around the booth, her eyes moving a little shower than usual. You wouldn’t be able to see it if you didn’t know her well, but I did. She’d excused herself earlier to go dance, claiming the tequila we’d been pounding all night was going to her head and that she needed to sweat it out.
It clearly hadn’t worked itself out of her system yet.
“Jesus,” Mark said. “I’m not having this conversation with you.” He stood up from the booth, brushed the creases from his jeans, and glanced at me pointedly. “I’m going to piss. Shawn’s going… somewhere, because he isn’t hearing this, either. Fix it.”
Shawn looked between the two of us, shrugged, and moved his towering frame to the dance floor, where a bunch of girls wearing tiaras and one with a sash that read “Bachelorette” descended on him. He wouldn’t be back anytime soon, which left me alone with Sophia, who was still looking at me expectantly.
She slid into the booth beside me, not stopping until she was pressed to my side. God, she must’ve been drunker than I thought.
Her gaze fell the shot of Patron that was still waiting for her, and she slammed it back. Her tiny pink tongue darted out of her mouth to lick her lips quickly. “Yum.”
My eyes fell to that tongue for just a split second, but she caught me. Our gazes met and locked. Her lips parted as she sucked in a breath.
“Congratulations on your deal,” she said finally, her voice a touch breathier than usual. “And you never answered my question. Who’s coming for a full minute?”
Damn. I was hoping she’d forgotten about that. “No one. And thanks, but you already congratulated me earlier.”
“I know,” she said with a wave of her hand. “But you deserved to hear it again.”
Sophia leaned in closer, like she wanted to whisper in my ear. I bent my head slightly, but it snapped back as soon as I heard what she had to say.
“You know, I wouldn’t mind being the one that you make come for a full minute.”
My cock sprang to attention, straining against my zipper. I shoved a hand into my hair, sliding over on the bench to put a good few inches between us. Like things should be. “Why the fuck would you say that to me?” I asked.
Sophia shrugged, her blue eyes wide and her pupils dilated when they met mine. “Why not? It’s true. I happen to think you’re fucking hot.”
“Jesus,” I said. “You must be drunker that I realized.”
I broke eye contact to relieve the intense sexual tension that was building between us, crackling in the air like someone had lit a match.
“I’m not—” Sophia started to protest, but Mark was back and sliding into the booth beside her.
“I hope you’ve moved on from Brett’s idiotic comment.” His gaze alternated between the two of us. “What feels weird here?”
“Nothing’s weird,” Sophia said, going to thump his shoulder but missing by a mile. “You’re weird.”
Her eyes were all glassy, and her speech was definitely slurred now. It seemed that last shot of tequila had been the cactus that broke the camel’s back.
Mark must’ve noticed the same thing I did, because he tipped back his beer and saluted me, gently pulling Sophia to her feet with him. “I’d better get her home. She’s pretty wasted.”
“Yeah, I guess she is,” I agreed, lifting my chin in farewell to Mark. “Bye Soph. Feel better.”
Sophia’s full lips curled into a lopsided smile, and she teetered slightly on her heels. “Bye, Brett. See you soon.”
When she met my gaze for the last time, her eyes shone with something that looked a lot like an offer I wished I could take her up on, but never would.