Cruel : Stepbrother Billionaire Romance by K C Payne

He was in the center of the noise at the big lunch table with a couple of his sketchy buddies. As always, a whole cloud of girls bobbed, chattered, pointed, squabbled and giggled all around him. His strawberry blond curls bobbed above the throng like a Michelangelo rising out of a scene in some twisted horror version of Glee .

    Chairs scraped and rattled, and he looked over to the corner where I sat, peeling the saran wrap from the little sandwiches that Mom made for me.

    “Hey, Sis!” As I looked up, I felt the eyes of everyone in the whole lunchroom turn on me.

    It was status, a thing of pride, if kids from the higher grades even deigned to acknowledge your existence. It just wasn’t that common. Didn’t even matter if they were relatives. And he wasn’t. Not really.

    “In a minute,” I called back to him. It was part of our ritual.

    The fact that it was him calling me should have made it extra cool for me. Everybody went crazy around him. The boys all looked up to him, and all the girls, well, most of them, elbowed each other out of the way to fall under his wheels at one time or another.

    “C’mere, Sis,” he called, “Come look at this skank for me.”

    I knew that they were all looking at me like they always did, thinking, ‘how can he have that frump for a sister?’ Except they’d say something a whole lot worse than ‘frump.’

    I always wanted to be at the center of his attention though, so I kept him waiting while I finished my sandwich, as our ritual required. Then I padded over to the edge of the cluster around the table.

    All the girls, all older than me with their on-trend hair and makeup, they all squinted down their noses and took an extra second or two to get out of the way. Making a point. The point being, ‘I wouldn’t make way for this dumpy brat, I’m only doing it to show respect to you .’

    They were pathetic, and they made me sick.

    When I got near enough to the table to see, he stood behind Alix Mayburn, one of the fashion-plate cheerleaders. Teased and pampered peroxide-blonde hair and butterscotch skin, she had way more jewelry and makeup than the rules allowed.

    A thin golden rope chain rose and fell on the tops of her breasts. Her shirt was open to the bottom of her cleavage.

    “See those thick red lips?” he said, “I thought I might fuck her, Sis.” He never called me by my name when anyone could hear, just like he didn’t want me using his real name ‘in public,’ as he called it.

    He took hold of the girl’s chin and turned it side to side. “She’s got good enough tits, look…” his hand slid down along her throat, then into her shirt and she sighed. Her face and body folded as he squeezed her breast, “and her ass is suh-weet,” he took his hand up her skirt and her mouth drooped.

    Her eyes pleaded up at him. He wasn’t looking, because his focus was still on me. “Only, I want her to suck my cock first, and I need her to get it right down her throat. She says she can do it, but look at those lips.” He lifted an eyebrow, “You think she can do it?” My panties were soaked so bad by this point, I’d have given anything just to get them off.

    “Hey, I think your sis might want in on the action, too.” Gutbucket raised his nose to make a show of sniffing the air. Then he craned his neck down to sniff at me.

    He pulled a face and grinned as he said, “Eeew, gross!” and they all laughed. Gutbucket said, “I’ll fuck her for you. Just to do you the solid, y’know?”

    All the fun drained out of his face, and his eyes popped as my stepbrother’s arm whipped out and his hand clamped on Gutbucket’s throat.

    “You don’t so much as look at her,” he hissed, loud enough for everyone to hear. “You don’t get within breathing distance of her, get me?”

    I had seen his eyes blaze like that before, the tremble of rage in his voice. He spoke in a low snarl through his clenched teeth. My throat was tight and my heart thumped.

    I