TEASE ( A Stepbrother Romance ) By Caitlin Daire

2

Chapter 2

Jace

Shit.

It was daytime already?

I woke up as the warm morning light streamed through the curtains, causing my hungover head to throb like hell, and I sat up in the ridiculously oversized four-poster bed, wondering what the fuck I was doing there by myself. I was far more accustomed to waking up after a party with some random chick beside me, so waking up alone was just weird.

Had I finally lost my touch with the ladies? I fucking well hoped not.

I'd returned to London from Scotland a week ago, and I'd been staying here at my buddy Tom Ballanger's place for two reasons. Firstly, Tom always threw kickass parties when his parents were away on business trips, and they were away quite frequently. Secondly, I couldn't face going home to meet my father's new fiancée just yet-the fourth damn fiancée in nine years-so it had been a good excuse to avoid it for just a little bit longer. With Dad, there was always some woman, always some crazy bullshit situation that ended it, and then it was onto the next. I hated it. It was a terrible vicious cycle that drove me insane, and I was fucking sick of being a part of any of it. In fact, if I hadn't been forced to leave Edinburgh, I would've never come back, and I would've avoided this new fiancée forever.

And probably the next one too.

The face of the girl who'd run away from me the night before suddenly flashed in my mind, and I groaned as I realized I had no way of finding her. In my aroused state, it hadn't occurred for me to ask her name....I'd just wanted to have her then and there. Names could come later.

Of course, that wasn't the way it had all worked out.

Goddamn, she'd been beautiful. Even thought she'd been wearing a flimsy little mask, I could still see her sparkling hazel eyes and perfect button nose, and her plump lips drove me insane. The very first second I'd seen her, all I could imagine was those lips wrapped around my cock. On top of that, there was that shimmery dress, those sexy curves, and that amazing hair that I wanted to thread my fingers through. But it hadn't just been her appearance that I'd been attracted to. There were good-looking girls everywhere, but this girl-there was just something special about her. Something I couldn't quite put my finger on; something that I'd never experienced before...and I wanted more of it.

Despite the mask, her eyes had given her away. She'd wanted it as much as I did, and I'd known that by the end of the night, I'd have her on her knees. I was Jace Wilde, and I could have any woman I wanted.

Until I couldn't.

Just as I'd gotten her knickers off, she'd done a runner, and I'd been left high and dry, wondering where the hell it all went so wrong. Was I that fucking unappealing to her once the mask had come off? Surely not. It had to be something else. Either way, she'd immediately gone from hot to cold and left me here in this very room with a boner the size of Wales and the most severe case of blue balls ever known to man. All I'd been able to do was return to the party and smash back another few drinks until I finally stumbled upstairs in an exhausted, drunken haze, but even the resulting case of whiskey dick wasn't enough to stop me from wondering why my mystery girl had left.

What the hell was it about me that caused such an extreme reaction in her? She was American and she'd apparently only just arrived in London, so it wasn't as if she could know anything about my reputation here. I hadn't even told her my name, for fuck's sake, so even if she'd heard things about me from the person who'd invited her to Tom's party, she wouldn't have realized that I was the Jace she'd heard about. It just wasn't possible that she knew a single damn thing about me.