Stepbrother's Return | CH. 7
Paternity tests, obsidian desks and bare chests...
Previously: CH. 1 | CH. 2 | CH. 3 | CH. 4 | CH. 5 | CH. 6
CHAPTER SEVEN
My phone felt like a live bomb in my trembling hand. The DNA report on the screen glared back at me: 0% probability of paternal relationship. A strange blow to a decade of guilt, shame, and twisted desire.
I’d been holed up in the executive floor bathroom for nearly half an hour, the sterile tang of bleach and high-end hand soap burning my nostrils. My mind was a glitching machine, looping over the same corrupted data. Ten years. Ten years of carrying a leaden weight in my chest, viewing Herald through a warped lens of inherited sin. Ten years of seeing Victor—our tyrant, our god with a belt in one hand and judgment in the other—as the biological tie that made my hunger for Herald and him together a grotesque deformity.
And it was all a damn lie.
I didn’t bother knocking. Civility with Herald Loilold was a relic, buried beneath the tattered remains of my self-respect. I stormed into his executive suite, slamming the door so hard the glass windows shuddered.
His office was a shrine to his ego, a tech monarch’s throne room. Obsidian desk, floor-to-ceiling windows framing a San Francisco skyline full of buildings he probably could’ve bought on a whim.
We stood in a heavy silence that felt like it could crush bone.
Herald sat behind that desk, a god in a tailored suit, cradling a glass of amber liquid worth more than my rent in one hand and a fountain pen in the other, likely signing away someone’s soul.
“Did you know?” My voice cracked, raw with rage and…a relief I refused to acknowledge at the moment.
I stalked across the plush carpet and slapped the phone onto the desk.
The screen blazed, the DNA results screaming their accusation.
“Did you know Victor wasn’t your father?” I asked.
Herald didn’t glance at the phone. He didn’t need to.
His eyes locked on mine, cool and surgical, picking me apart like a specimen.
He took a slow sip of his drink, his throat rolling with the swallow, before easing back in his chair.
The leather creaked.
“Of course I knew, Charlie,” he said, his baritone sliding into me like a blade, smooth but lethal, resonating deep in my gut, maybe a little lower... “I’ve always known.”
The nonchalance hit harder than a fist. My lungs emptied, rage giving way to a nauseating vertigo. I gripped the desk edge to keep from crumpling.
I hissed, the words bitter ash on my tongue. “For ten years, you let me drown in guilt? Let me think I was a monster every time I looked at you two, every time I let you touch me together? I thought I was breaking the ultimate taboo, Herald. I thought I was fucked up every time we kissed, every time I begged for more in that basement. I thought it made it…wrong.”
Herald rose in a slow, predatory unfurling of power. He rounded the desk, his height filling the room, closing the gap until I could smell him—sandalwood, bourbon, and that raw, masculine scent that was pure Herald. My knees trembled under the weight of his presence.
I was undeniably hard.
“You weren’t a monster, Charlie,” he said, stopping so close I had to crane my neck to meet his gaze. He didn’t touch me, not yet, but it was enough to arouse me in an instant. “You were just a man aching to be broken. I gave you the story to make it easier.”
“You manipulated me,” I snapped, clawing for anger, but it slipped through my fingers with him this close.
I stumbled back, heels sinking into the carpet, until my legs hit a leather armchair.
“You knew I saw it as a sin—different from being gay, I could get over that—but this. You knew I thought it was the line no one could cross. You let me stew in that shame.”
Herald paused.
Then he reached out, tracing my jaw with a single, cool fingertip.
The contact was feather-light, but it shot ice down my spine, cooler than the office’s frigid AC.
“I didn’t manipulate you into wanting me, you did that part all on your own,” he said, eyes darkening to storm clouds. “I know you better than you know yourself, Charlie. I know what you want. What you need. You needed the taboo. Needed to feel like you were shattering something sacred, or you couldn’t feel at all. Just like Victor and me. The shame didn’t stop you—it fueled you.”
“I hated the taboo.” My erect dick knew I was lying; my voice was flimsy, and my heart was pounding so loud I swore he could hear it.
“Did you?” His thumb pressed against my lower lip, dragging it down just enough to expose the wet heat inside. “Then why did you scream loudest when both of us were inside you? Why did your eyes burn with that desperate, filthy need every time I called myself your brother? Why did you moan ‘yes daddy’ whenever Victor asked if you liked it? You didn’t want something safe like Leroy. You craved sin. You wanted to be Victor’s dirty secret. You wanted the forbidden, and you wanted me to shove it down your throat.”
His hand slid from my face, down my chest, popping the top button of my shirt, then the next.
Slow, making me ache with every inch of exposed skin.
I should’ve pushed him away.
Should’ve stormed out, quit this cursed job, gone home to Leroy and our simple, clean life.
But my hands were traitorously heavy.
Instead of resisting, they fisted his silk tie, pulling him closer.
I was a liar, a hypocrite, a mess.
“Look at you,” he growled, his hand settling at my waistband, then lower, one finger pressed into the head of my blood-filled cock. “You’re standing here, calling me disgusting...but you’re hard as fuck, Charlie.”
He palmed my dickhead in a slow, torturous circle. I bit back a moan.
“Just like in the basement. Just like when you thought Victor would skin us alive if we said a word about what he was doing to his sons.”
He leaned in, lips grazing my ear, breath hot. His palm trailed down my shaft, making my whole being ache with arousal, then he cupped my balls, hand hot even though we were separated by the fabric of my black slacks.
“Admit it. The real reason you’re upset.”
“What do you mean?” I breathed, barely able to speak.
“You’re pissed that the DNA test stole your sin. You’re mad it wasn’t as taboo as you thought. Because it kept you up at night, not in anguish, but in all-consuming sexual desire. So you can touch yourself and give yourself a real orgasm the way Leroy never could.”
“It’s not...that’s not it,” I stammered, voice cracking, because it was mostly true.
I had jerked off, spitting in my hand and sliding it up and down my dick while Leroy was next to me sleeping, picturing the moment when Victor and Herald, as father and son, entered me at the same time, cumming spurt after spurt all over my stomach, always a bigger load than when I thought of anything else.
Then I would shower.
And shame-spiral until the morning.
“It’s…trauma. A fucked-up response to stress.”
Herald’s laugh was low, dangerous. “I’m not judging you, Charlie. I know you.” His grip around my member tightened. “I know how to give you exactly what you want. Just how you like it.”
And I kissed him.
Goddamnit. I kissed him.
Like I had never kissed him before.
I was letting myself take what I desired deep down without holding back…
He slipped his tongue into my mouth, and I opened for him. It was thick, strong, and tasted like whiskey. It went so far down my throat I almost gagged. Then his right hand was around my throat, grip firm enough to feel owned but not cause damage.
“Open your mouth,” he ordered.
I obeyed.
And he spit in my mouth, used his other hand to deliver a slap to my left cheek, and dove into another kiss, tongue first.
It was dirty.
Animalistic.
And I loved every second.
He pulled back with a victorious smile and sank to his knees.
