My stepbrothers seduction

The guilt

Her bed was still unmade from the night before. Her pillow still bore the imprint of where she'd curled up, fingers tangled in her sheets, breath uneven and hot, trying — failing — not to think about him.
Nathan.
Her stepbrother. The one who annoyed her for sport. Who had a new girl every week. Who smirked when she was angry and rolled his eyes when she talked.

And yet.
Something about hearing him like that — raw, real, lost in someone else's body — had awakened something in her she couldn’t suppress last night.

Adria sank onto the edge of her bed, running a hand through her damp hair. Her thighs pressed tightly together without thinking as she remembered what she did. Her stomach twisted.
This wasn’t normal.
This wasn’t okay.
But she was still burning from the inside out just at the thought of it.
Was she that s*x-starved? People lived without s*x and they did just fine.

A knock on her door startled her.
Her heart leapt into her throat. “Yeah?”

It was her stepmother. “Sweetheart, breakfast is ready.”
“Coming,” she managed to say, voice tight.

She took a breath and stood, dragging on an oversized hoodie that fell to mid-thigh and the first pair of leggings she could grab.
She didn’t dare look in the mirror again. She didn’t need to see the heat in her eyes or the guilt in the curve of her mouth.

Downstairs, the kitchen smelled like toast and eggs and too many unsaid things.
Nathan was already at the table. She had thought wrong. She had thought that he would be too embarrassed to show his face.

Had the girl gone? Or was he hiding her in his room still?

Did his mom see the girl leave?

Did her dad?

She looked at him again. No shame

It seemed nothing could make that boy second-guess his confidence.

But what annoyed her was that—
Her breath caught the second she saw him.

His hair was still damp, pushed back carelessly like he’d only half-dried it.
A hoodie hung loosely on his frame, sleeves pushed up to his elbows. He looked up casually when she entered, but his gaze flicked over her — once, slow — before landing back on his plate.

“Morning,” he said. That was new.
His voice was perfectly normal. No hint of last night. No shame. No anything.

Adria sat across from him and muttered, “Morning.” She replied with almost a roll of her eyes.
Exactly. Now she remembered why she hated his guts.

He was just too overbearing and egotistical. All she had to do was fully convince herself that it could have been anyone she walked in on — she would have been turned on.
That’s that.

Their parents were fussing at the stove, talking about some weekend plans, completely oblivious to the suffocating silence between the two of them.
She picked up a fork but didn’t eat.
Nathan stretched, one arm hooked lazily behind his chair, his eyes unreadable.

And just like that, she was back in her room again — sweating under the covers, her hand between her thighs, biting down on her own wrist to stay quiet as the image of him played over and over in her mind like a song she couldn’t stop.

Her stomach turned.
The f**k?
What the hell was wrong with her mind?

She pushed her plate away.
She needed out.
She needed space.

But their parents were watching them, always watching, waiting to see if the two of them could play nice, could coexist like a proper blended family.

That’s when the idea struck her.
Fake it.
Lie through her teeth if she had to.
Get their trust back, and then get the hell out of this house.

She forced a smile — or something like it — and looked across the table at Nathan.
“Can you pass the butter?”

His brows lifted just a little, like the simple request was suspicious.
But he slid the dish toward her without a word.
That was new.
He usually had something rude to say. He was always in the mood to annoy her.

Adria tried not to glance at him again, but she felt him like static.

Like the space between them was charged, humming in some frequency no one else could hear.
She focused on her plate.
Toast. Scrambled eggs. A smear of jam bleeding across white china.
Ordinary things.
Normal things.
But her hand still trembled faintly when she lifted the fork. Her skin was overly aware of the way her hoodie slid down her shoulder, exposing more than she meant to — and for a second, she imagined him noticing.

Except… he didn’t.
He was chewing casually, listening to their parents with that usual detached calm, like he had nothing to prove.
She hated that.
She hated how untouched he looked. Like he hadn’t broken someone open in the room down the hall less than twelve hours ago.
Like he hadn’t made sounds that had twisted her stomach and pulled heat from parts of her she hadn’t known were so desperate.

She reached for her glass of juice and drank too fast, her throat tight, her pulse too loud.
Her stepmother noticed.
“Did you sleep okay?” she asked gently.
Adria froze.
She was suddenly hyper-aware of Nathan’s fork pausing on his plate.
She nodded. “Yeah. Fine.”
“You went straight to your room last night. We figured you were tired from the practice.”
“Long day,” she said, trying to keep her tone even.

Nathan didn’t look up, but she saw his jaw move — a small clench, barely there.
Then he stood to rinse his plate.
Her eyes followed him.
She didn’t mean to.
It just… happened.

He moved with that same careless grace he always had — effortless, unbothered, like nothing ever really got under his skin. She used to think it was arrogance.
Now she didn’t know what to think. It seemed like something worse.
When he turned to reach for a towel, his hoodie lifted slightly.
The cut of his back, the line of skin, and small cuts of his tattoo showing above his waistband.

She looked away so fast her neck ached.
Her stepmother was still talking about weekend plans.
Her father chimed in about yard work. The noise of their voices layered over everything — soft, oblivious, normal.
But Adria’s world didn’t feel normal anymore.
She felt hollowed out.
Stretched thin.

And the worst part? It wasn’t just about what she’d heard.
It was about what it had done to her.
How her body had reacted.
How she’d ended up face-down in her pillow, shivering and breathless, fingers working between her thighs like something possessed. And how the only image her mind had fed her — relentlessly — was Nathan. No, not Nathan. Nathan having sex.
Not his face, exactly. Just the shape of him. The sound of his voice.

She’d cried after.
Not sobbing — just a single sharp ache in her chest she couldn’t explain.
Guilt, maybe.
Or shame.
Or confusion.

She pushed back from the table, unable to sit any longer.
“I’m gonna go for a walk.”
Before either parent could ask questions, she slipped out the back door.

The air outside was cooler than she expected, the early sun casting long slants of gold across the lawn. Birds chattered in the hedges. Somewhere a neighbor’s dog barked. It should’ve been peaceful.
It was just a noise. Just s*x. People had it. It didn’t mean anything.
That’s what she told herself.

And she also told herself to get some.
Celibacy was doing more harm to her than good.
How else could she explain her sudden lust for her brother?
Someone that she disliked so much.

There were two solutions to the problem.
Finally end the suspicion that she was into girls and start seeing boys.
Two, convince their parents they were finally getting along so they would both leave anytime they wanted to.

She didn’t exactly live permanently away from home.
But she could go to her aunt’s house at any time since it was closer to school.
Now she couldn’t.

Without another thought, Adria turned on her phone and searched for that unsaved number in her call history and typed a message.
We need to talk.
Before she could rethink, she pressed send.