Page 66 of Beautiful Sin
“Here.” Jaxson shrugged off his outer shirt, leaving him in a thin white t-shirt that clung to his chest like a second skin, revealing every sculpted muscle. My mouth went dry at the sight. “Put this on.”
“I’m fine. I don’t need?—”
“Lan.” My name was a warning and a plea all at once, his eyes dark with something I recognized now—desire, barely contained.
I took the shirt, if only to stop him looking at me like that—like he was one frayed thread away from dragging me back to the car and finishing what we’d started last night.
The shirt smelled like him, warm and familiar and dangerous to my ability to think straight. It wrapped me in his scent, his presence, like an embrace. That strange connection between us seemed to strengthen as I put on his shirt, like another invisible thread binding us together.
“Better?” I asked, trying for sarcasm but landing somewhere closer to breathless.
“No,” three voices muttered in unison.
“Hey.” Nico looked between all of us, finally noticing the tension crackling through the air like lightning. “Did I miss something? Because this feels like one of those cutscenes where there’s all this dramatic background music and everyone’s staring at each other and?—”
“Nico,” Colt said.
“Right, right. Shutting up now.”
Nineteen
LAN
If I thought the car ride was a test of my sanity, entering the mall with my unfairly attractive stepbrothers was like volunteering for psychological torture with a side of public humiliation. The moment we stepped through the automatic doors, every head in a fifty-foot radius swiveled toward us like we were celebrities—or more accurately, like my brothers were celebrities and I was their weird pet gremlin they’d decided to take shopping.
“Is it just me, or is everyone staring?” I muttered, fighting the childish urge to hide behind Jaxson’s broad back like I used to when I was eleven and terrified of strangers.
“Not at you,” Colt replied with his signature blend of brutal honesty and casual cruelty. “Though that shirt situation isn’t helping your case.”
He wasn’t wrong, which only made me want to elbow him in the ribs. Every female within eyesight—and quite a few males—were eyeballing my brothers like they were the last chocolate desserts at an all-you-can-eat buffet. A cluster of teenage girls weren’t even pretending to be subtle, giggling and taking stealth photos that were about as “stealth” as a marching band in a library. One particularly thirsty twenty-something was openlygawking at Jaxson, her lips pursed in what I assume she thought was seductive but made her look like she’d just sucked on a lemon.
I felt a weird cocktail of annoyance and pride swirling in my stomach. Annoyance because—seriously? Could they be any more obvious? And pride because… okay, fine, my stepbrothers were ridiculously hot, and on some bizarre level, that reflected well on me. By association. Or something. Like having a designer handbag, except they were people. Very attractive people who happened to share my living space and bathroom. God, that was a terrible analogy. My brain needed coffee.
“Ooh, the new Monster Hunter expansion is out!” Nico’s attention span proved once again to have the durability of wet tissue paper. He was already bouncing on his heels, eyes fixed on the gaming store across the atrium like it was giving away free consoles. “I’m gonna check it out. Meet you guys at the food court for lunch?”
“Don’t spend all your—” Jaxson started, but Nico was already halfway across the mall, weaving through shoppers with the practiced agility of someone who’s spent thousands of hours navigating digital obstacle courses while avoiding actual human interaction.
“And then there were four,” Xander remarked, his hand landing on my shoulder with casual possessiveness that sent a tingle down my spine. His fingers squeezed slightly, like he was testing the firmness of a peach at the supermarket. “I know just the place to start our little makeover project.”
“Makeover project?” I repeated, alarm bells clanging in my head like we were under nuclear attack. “I thought we were just getting pajamas. You know, those things normal people sleep in? That don’t cost a fortune?”
Xander’s laugh vibrated through his chest, the sound rich and warm and way too close to my ear. “Lan, if you thinkwe’re letting you continue your fashion crimes against humanity without intervention, you haven’t been paying attention to how this family operates.”
“My fashion isn’t criminal,” I protested, even as I looked down at Jaxson’s oversized shirt hanging off me like a deflated parachute. “It’s… economical.”
“It’s tragic,” Colt corrected, falling into step beside us. “And that’s coming from someone who color-codes his sock drawer.”
The strange warmth I’d felt in the car flickered to life again as Colt moved closer, like electricity crackling just beneath my skin.
“You color-code your sock drawer because you’re a control freak with spreadsheets for your spreadsheets,” I shot back. “Not because you have fashion sense.”
“I have both,” Colt replied with such absolute conviction that arguing seemed as pointless as trying to teach calculus to a goldfish. “And you have neither.”
“Children, play nice.” Jaxson’s voice carried that amused authority that always made my stomach do a little flip, like I’d just missed a step on the stairs. He placed his hand on the small of my back, guiding me through a group of shoppers. The warmth of his palm seeped through the fabric of his borrowed shirt, sending tingles racing up my spine and short-circuiting what was left of my brain cells. That strange golden connection between us pulsed stronger, like an invisible thread pulling taut. “Let’s focus on the task at hand.”
The “task at hand” apparently meant dragging me into H&M, which wasn’t as bad as I’d feared but still way fancier than my usual thrift store haunts. At least here the price tags didn’t make me want to curl up in a fetal position and cry about my student loans.
“This place has decent basics that won’t fall apart after two washes,” Colt explained, already scanning the displays with thetactical precision of a general planning a military campaign. “And they won’t bankrupt us.”
