Total pages in book: 23
Estimated words: 22967 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 115(@200wpm)___ 92(@250wpm)___ 77(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 22967 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 115(@200wpm)___ 92(@250wpm)___ 77(@300wpm)
It feels like we’re about to play a dangerous game.
A game that can ruin Christmas.
Or, make it the best one yet…
Chapter Three
August
“I want to hear more about this trip to Australia,” Dad says as he sits at the table with my new stepmother, Megan. We’re all drinking coffee and decorating the Christmas-shaped gingerbread cookies. The fire is burning in the fireplace while Bing Crosby sings about a winter wonderland over the speakers.
It looks so wholesome on the surface.
It could be our family Christmas card.
But with the way I’m feeling about my hot new stepsister, it’s anything but wholesome.
I want her. She’s the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen.
I can’t get over it. I can’t stop staring at her, imagining what’s under those clothes, imagining what she feels like, what she tastes like.
She’s incredible. She’s one of a kind.
I want to keep her. I want her all to myself.
“Did you make it to the Whitsundays?” Dad asks.
I study Harmony’s face as she smiles at him. Those plump pink lips are killing me. It hurts to stare at them without tasting them, but it’s even more painful to look away.
“It was definitely on my list of things to see,” Harmony says in her soft angelic voice. “But I didn’t get around to it. It was a bit too expensive for me.”
“What are the Whitsundays?” Megan asks as she looks at my dad with hearts in her eyes.
“They’re stunning,” Dad says dramatically. “Seventy-five islands with white sand beaches off the coast of Queensland.”
He goes on, talking all about it, but my attention quickly shifts back to Harmony.
She’s decorating a gingerbread cookie in the shape of an angel while she listens, occasionally looking up and nodding at my dad.
If angels exist, they must look like her.
This is surreal. No girl has ever had such a strong effect on me before. I’ve had my fair share of beautiful women and pretty girls throwing themselves at me over the years, trying to make me theirs, but I was never interested.
Not one of them ever got my engine roaring like Harmony is doing right now. And she’s not even trying.
I take a sip of coffee as I let my eyes roam over her face. She has beautiful blonde hair the color of sunshine that makes her stunning blue eyes pop out of her head.
Whenever she bats those long dark lashes, I fall a little deeper in love. I can feel my obsession with her forming, strengthening, taking over.
It’s rooted in deep and I know it won’t ever go away.
Stepsister or not, this is the girl for me.
I shouldn’t come on too strong, but I’m not good at holding back when I want something. Never have been. I go after what I want with everything I got.
And I want her.
“Did you meet any new friends when you were in Australia?” Megan asks.
My chest tightens.
It suddenly hits me that this precious angel was on another continent without anyone looking out for her. She was all by herself.
That thought makes me crazy. It makes me nauseous.
If I knew her back then, I would have flown to Australia and hiked across the entire Outback to find her. I would have wrestled crocodiles and fought my way through hundreds of poisonous snakes and spiders to be by her side and make sure she was safe.
“I made some friends,” she says with a shy smile. “I traveled with a Canadian girl for a while.”
“What about boyfriends?” I ask. It just comes out of me. I have to know.
“August,” Dad says, looking at me in disbelief. “I don’t think Harmony might be comfortable sharing that kind of—”
“No,” she says, shaking her head as she looks at me with a firm conviction. “There wasn’t anybody like that.”
I nod as gratitude fills me to the brim.
I’m glad I know. I would have had to miss Christmas to go hunt down some motherfucker through Australia who thought he could take what was mine.
“Well, it’s nice to have you home,” Megan says, smiling warmly at her daughter. “Especially for the holidays.”
“Thanks, Mom,” Harmony says with a shy little smile. I love watching her smile. Her nose crinkles up and it makes the light freckles on the bridge of her nose and upper cheeks look so damn adorable.
She’s got the girl next door kind of vibe. I can tell she’s a good girl. An innocent little virgin.
She won’t be so innocent after this holiday season is finished with all I have planned. I’m going to claim every delicious inch of her.
She’ll be all mine by New Years.
“So, August,” Harmony says, looking at me with those big angelic eyes. “Are you going to be staying here throughout the holidays?”
“August will be at his mother’s for Christmas,” Dad says, answering for me.
“No, I won’t,” I answer back. “I’ll be here with my beautiful new family.”