THE CONCERT WILL BE over by now. I imagine Astra in her beautiful dress, chatting to the other musicians backstage, and my gut clenches. I stare out of the window towards the Maison de la Radio, straining to see what I can.
There is a thick fog, the distant passage of headlights and the glowing Tour Eiffel.
Where is she staying tonight? In what bed and with whom?
One year. Almost, not quite. But it might as well be ten.
Fucking my stepsister was a dick move—but not just because she’s younger than me and I’ve known her since she was eleven.
My father would kill me. Kill her. He’d be beyond livid. Yet, his anger I can wear. I don’t like to upset him, but I would. For Astra I’d do just about anything. It’s not his anger I seek to avoid but his distress. He’d be devastated. He’d feel betrayed—by me. And, having seen Carter weather two bad heart attacks in the last three years, no way am I going to risk inflaming him further.
‘I’ve adopted her, Manning. She’s part of the family now. Not a stepdaughter, not your stepsister. She’s my daughter. Your sister. She’s ours. Your job is to look after her, you hear me?’
I looked after her, all right. I made her come again and again. My ‘sister’.
I remember Astra the way she was that night, tangled in bedsheets, her long, tanned legs with those brightly painted toes making me ache for her anew. I dressed silently, watching her the whole time, half willing her to wake up, wanting her to see me, wanting her to ask me why I was leaving. Wanting her to look at me with those huge caramel eyes of hers, to smile at me, to tell me she understood.
She didn’t wake. Why would she?
She was exhausted.
Despite her innocence and inexperience I’d taken her again and again, pleasuring her until she was shaking and moaning, her face pink, her breath rushed. I’d taken her in the kitchen, in the lounge, on my bed. Her eyes had grown heavy at some point and I’d watched her fall asleep.
I’d still wanted her.
My gut twists as flashbacks of that night haunt me, dancing on the periphery of my mind, so real I could reach out and touch them, so cloud-like and intangible that I can’t.
The moment I thrust into her, taking her hard because I’d been waiting for her sweetness for as long as I could remember… How many of my teenage fantasies had featured my stepsister in the lead role? It was fucking wrong how I lusted for her, but I had never been able to help myself.
Besides, they were only dreams. Dreams that I could pretend weren’t happening; dreams that didn’t mean anything.
Lies I told myself again and again.
I craved her, all right. I craved her when she came to live with me in New York for a year, parading around my apartment in my own goddamned T-shirts, so when I went to pull them on they smelled like her.
I craved her for all those years until, at twenty-one, she invited me to her place for dinner and I was weak. I was weaker than I should have been.
Even then I knew the tension had been building between us for months—years. Sweet, hot, demanding, captivating, suffocating need. But I’d fought it so fucking hard, with every fibre of my being. Then I went to her place and she answered the door in just a floaty dress and a huge smile. Our eyes met and everything inside me broke down with the utter certainty that we would be together.
I took her hard, just like I’d wanted to for so long, and I broke through the barrier of her inexperience, that testament to her sweetness, and I made her mine.
I remember the way she tasted, her innocence, her beautiful flesh. Her nipples were dark against her skin, aroused tight buds that I lashed with my tongue until she almost cried from the pleasure. Fuck. My dick is hard now, just remembering the way she whimpered beneath me, arching her back, begging me for more, asking me for all of myself.
She is all mine.
Or she was, at least.
Now she is the world’s. The darling of the classical music scene.
How many men have wanted her? How many men have watched her, their dicks hard, seeing her beauty and wanting her to wrap herself around them, to take them deep like she did me?
Fuck.
I stare at my phone, half-willing myself to dial her number, half-willing myself to throw the damned thing out of the window.
I imagine what might happen if I call her. If I dial her and say, ‘I want you. Now.’ Would she come over? Or be angry? A bit of both, I suspect. She has every right to be pissed with me for the way I ghosted out of her life, and yet surely she understands why?
My reasons for leaving still stand… I can’t forget that. Astra is forbidden. I must remember that.
I need a drink. It’s going to be a long night, knowing Astra is in town and that I can’t have her. It’s the only way to cope with this—I must stay away. If I see her again I am lost, and the promises I have made myself and the duty I owe my father will all cease to matter. They’ll become the background noise to far greater needs. Astra will be my all when I see her, so I can’t.
I’m halfway to the bar when the doorbell sounds. I change course, unbuttoning the top button of my shirt as I go and pushing the sleeves up to my elbows.
I don’t bother to look through the glass circle. My building is the most secure in Paris; no one can get in without passing several security checks. It’s the home of actresses, models, porn stars and politicians. And people like me, billionaire media scions who fantasise about their little stepsister.
And there she is.
Astra James—but not as she is in my memory. Not innocent and sweet.
She is hot as fuck, and, fuck, I want her…