Steele (Army Brothers Book 1) Read online

  Steele

  Savannah May

  BeeYoo LLC

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Bolt

  Also by Savannah May

  1

  Scheherazade

  Coming home can be a return to everything warm and cozy. Back to a time when you felt securely taken care of and welcome just for being you. Or it can be a misery to be endured until you can make a final escape. You can guess which option I was dealing with in coming home to visit for the first time in five years.

  And this isn't even my home, although I have walked up these stairs many times. It's his home – was his home. Steele's.

  Back then.

  Now? Nobody's exactly sure.

  Steele's been gone almost as long as I have and hasn't been heard from since he left the house. The pain of that worms deeper into my core as I climb the staircase.

  I was his second best friend from the first day of school (first best if you only count two-legged animals). Steele and I were instantly acquainted when our eyes locked in humiliation across a sea of desks and snickers. When Scheherazade Granger was followed by Harden Greengross the Third during roll-call, you can bet we bonded for life. Or so it seemed at the time. That is until life came in and bit us both on the backsides.

  “How did you end up with a name like Scheherazade?” Steele asked me as he plunked down beside me at a table, where we ended up sharing our lunches.

  “My mother fancies herself as exotic, I guess.” I bit out, more harshly than I intended.

  I'd never been super close to my Mom but recently, things had really gone sour. Steele looked at me from beneath impossibly lush lashes and my heart shivered for the first time in my life. Then the talk turned from 'Aladdin' and the 'Thousand and One Nights' stories that inspired my name, until somehow I found myself telling Steele all about it.

  “It's like she wants nothing to do with me or my sister and especially my dad. As though all three of us have become an irritating nest of vermin she'd like to be rid of.”

  Steele munched on his rather haphazardly made sandwich and nodded, letting me know he was listening closely.

  “At least she's stopped standing over us every time Bella or I leave the house, saying we look like mini sluts or we need to lose weight. Now she's gone to the other extreme. Barely knows we exist. It's like we don't even have a mother. Can you imagine what that's like?”

  Steele nodded again with a humph and stuffed the remainder of the curly ham and bread into his mouth.

  “Can you? Really? I'd just be glad if she'd stop shooting her disgusted looks at dad every time he opens his mouth. Sorry, I''ll stop ranting. You probably get along great with your parents.”

  “Parent. Single.” Steele said as he swallowed the last of his mouthful. I quickly latch on to the idea that he's a boy of few words. “My Mom died this summer.”

  My mouth couldn't have dropped further open without actually hitting the floor. My cheeks filled with a rush of heat that I had no control over. All I could do was stammer and wish I could take back everything I'd been raving about.

  “I'm, oh God, I'm so sorry. I would never have gone on and on like that if I'd known.”

  “It's okay. I mean it's not okay, but my dad and I talked about it a lot, then we went to a grief specialist who suggested to Dad I get a dog. Rod's been a brick through this.”

  I recall how I laughed a little at his ironic attempt to make things light, grateful that he was making the effort to alleviate the guilt at my thoughtlessness.

  One thing that taught me as I grew older was to watch what I say before I go spouting off about my own problems. You never know what someone else could be going through. I owe that valuable insight to Steele.

  So now I ought to be excited about coming back to town, the home of my best friend in all the world. So why am I filled with dread?

  “I'll come if I can stay in the attic, I told my mother when she called to tell me Gran was ill and not likely to last long.

  “Don't be ridiculous,” she snapped back with her usual domineering tone. “It's the end of summer, you'll roast up there. You'll take the blue guest room beside us.”

  “Sorry, those are my terms. I need privacy to be able to do this.”

  “Whatever. Have it your own way. But you'll wish you'd listened to me.”

  Yeah. Like always.

  I didn't tell my mother what my real fears were and now, as I tentatively walk up the stairs behind her to the first floor, I'm glad I risked her wrath with my insistence. Even moving along the hallway I passed along so many times through my teenage years brings technicolor movie-like memories rushing into my mind.

  All the times I came here to study with Steele in his room. All the times Rod padded along behind me as though he had my back. Oh god, I wish Rod were here now. Who would have thought I'd miss a dog that didn't even belong to me so much?

  “I swear it's like he knows what anyone's thinking,” Steele had told me, when we were talking about his Mom, stretched across his bed on our backs, staring at the ceiling and eating pop tarts Steele had brought up from the kitchen.

  I was crying about my upcoming move. Saddened, not that I was going to leave the home I grew up in, my school and friends, only that Steele wouldn't be there too. I couldn't even tell him, hardly found the words. But Rod got up off the floor where he was lying on Steele's side of the bed and padded around the bed. He put his chin on the mattress and nudged at my leg. Then lifted his paw and put it on my hand bringing tears immediately shoving at the backs of my eyes.

  “The way he looks at me, those huge compassionate eyes, how does he do that?” I asked Steele, who'd propped up on one elbow to look at his two closest friends.

  “He just gets it. He's a superior being, too good for this world.”

  Sometimes I had the same thought about Steele. How he dealt with his feelings and put me before himself, always a good listener. He'd also grown into a freakishly sexy hunk that girls at school trailed with their eyes. I made a lot of new friends when Steele suddenly turned from skinny kid to strapping god. Girls that sidled up to me and asked whether Steele and I were a thing.

  “No we're best friends is all,” I said.

  “Do you think you can put in a word for me?”

  “A word?” I repeated dumbly. Never imagining they thought I'd want to lose my best bud in the world to some hair-flicking teen bimboid.

  I stroked Rod's head, feeling the reassuring warmth of his smooth coat. And the moment I turned back to smile at Steele, my whole world changed.

  His full lips came down onto mine, so out of the blue, I lay frozen solid, rigid and unable to move. Someone else had their mouth pressed onto mine. And someone I knew as a friend, not the other thing. A boy I crushed on.

  Then the instant of shock reared up into a delicious swell of something else. A throb pushed itself between my thighs and my heart began leaping and racing like an Olympic sprinter. In all the years since then, my desire for Steele has ne
ver been bested by any other man I've met.

  2

  Steele

  When your name's Harden Greengross the Third, you have a tendency to soon be anointed with a more user-friendly nickname. The logical handle for me would have been 'Hard' and I kinda remember my mother calling me that once or twice. When she wanted to impart some important fact I had to remember, like not drinking milk from the container.

  Or when she tousled my hair in her palm and looked down on me with a ton of love filling her soft hazel eyes. But then even she began using the name all the kids in the neighborhood starting calling me instead of Harden.

  Steele.

  Now I'm grown, the name brings a little bite of humiliation, because of the size of me. I'm a good bit larger than most guys and even when flaccid, the bastard looks rock hard. But back then we were mostly innocent. For a short while at least.

  They called me Steele because I rarely smiled and always had a stick in my hand that gave me a menacing aura. I carried the weapon everywhere to throw for my bud. A big ol' black lab with droopy loving eyes called, wait for it, Rod.

  They said Steele and Rod were as inseparable as bread and butter. And so that also contributed to my nickname. Rod never failed to retrieve his stick and bring it right back, wearing a dog-grin of 'job well done'.

  As I walk up the steps onto the porch, I lose the thread of what the fuck I'm doing here. This is no longer my home. It stopped being a hearth for me soon after my father remarried.

  “You have to give your mother a chance,” my father had insisted for the thousandth time.

  “She isn't my mother,” I said. “I've given her a million chances, but I'll do it over if you just stop calling her that.”

  “You need to clear that resentment out of you,” he replied.

  It seemed to me that Lyndsey came to the house with war in mind. Her middle name was divisive and she determined to insert herself between my father and I in a way that could only cause problems for everyone.

  But perhaps I was looking at it all wrong, with my selfish teenage eyes. Lyndsey and I got into a blow up about nothing and my Dad, thinking he had to support her, threw me out of the house. Not having my dad to talk to, about all the things I've seen in the years since I left, has been hard.

  But the biggest loss was her.

  Scherri.

  Can you love a girl and not even know it? Can you be in love with a girl before you even know quite what love is?

  Scherri and I were bonded in everything. We could talk about anything, shared our deepest fears and hopes, hiked through the woods to go swimming with Rod. We were teased about being best friends at first but our bond was too strong for even the stupid smears thrown at us. Soon enough the kids at school gave up and accepted that Scherri and I were always together.

  If I harbored resentment it wasn't at Lyndsey moving in, but at Scherri moving away. People leave, I get that but she didn't have to. She could've made a different choice.

  “I can't stay,” she told me, reaching for my hand.

  I snatched it away from her small fingers. Feeling her skin on mine sent a rocket through me and I wasn't prepared for how much more of her I wanted. My cock was now, all of a sudden, constantly pounding at my pants with a burning insatiable need. And all that longing was only for Scherri. Having her touch even my hand was way too fucking much.

  “You can. You choose not to,” I gritted out, mad at her for making me want her so fucking hard when I couldn't do a thing about it.

  Maybe with time I could ease us out of the friend zone, but I had to take it slow. No way I'd lose my best friend over my burning desire to posses her. To own her completely. I had to be a thousand per cent certain she wanted that too. If she was leaving, just like that, she obviously didn't feel the same. I was all out of time.

  “We'll still be friends.”

  Friends.

  “We'll keep in touch. Facebook will keep us friends forever.”

  “Great. Yeah. FaceBook.”

  I didn't want some stupid networking, I wanted her. And without me there she'd soon start dating other guys. Someone else would kiss those lips and slowly peel off her clothes to reveal her soft pink skin. Someone else would part her thighs and slide inside her tight wet channel. I couldn't take it.

  I walked away from her. I turned my back and strode back up the porch steps and into the house, leaving her pleading my name.

  That's all that fills my head as I walk up those same four steps now. How I treated her the last time I saw her. Allowing my disappointment to get the better of me for the first time in my life. The loss of her was the toughest thing I ever had to bear. But she didn't deserve my wrath.

  For some stupid reason, lost in the past I guess, I tap on one of the glass panels in the front door instead of reaching for the bell. A figure immediately appears, as though they'd been passing through the living room right when I knocked. A woman – I fix my face, determined to put on a mask of politeness to Lyndsey. No way I wanna start this visit off with tension.

  The door is thrown back and a rock lands in my stomach. A stunningly gorgeous girl, make that woman, with long dark hair flowing across her shoulders. So shiny she must be brushing it a thousand times a night. Her eyes are so blue I can see the sky reflected in them and the sun that fills them.

  My eyes travel down her body without my permission, taking in the perfect swell of her uplifted breasts. Her curves and her long legs. I take in every last inch of her all the way down to her bare feet, the silver ring in the shape of a daisy on her middle toe.

  “Steele?” her voice as melodious as ever, with a hint of rasp now. Sexy as hell.

  My eyes bat back up to her beautiful, so beautiful, face.

  “My god, can it really be you?”

  She flies into my arms. Well, she crashes into my chest while I stand there like Godzilla, my arms awkward at my side. Desperately wanting to crush her into me but terrified that she's going to feel the rock fucking solid bulge in my combats.

  Her tits against my pecs are at the perfect height as she stands on the step on her tippy toes. Her arms around my neck are the only homecoming a guy ever needed. My arms want to come around her and pull her closer. To hold her right there and never let her go. Ever.

  “Harden? What are you doing here? Does your father know you're coming?”

  Scherri unwinds herself from me at the sound of Lyndsey's – her mother's – voice. She flashes me a look and I know what she's trying to say. Nothing's changed between Scherri and her mom.

  “Good lord, here you are,” Lyndsey says. “Get off him Scheherazade, let him come inside.”

  Scherri grabs my arm and pulls me across the step. I'm so stunned by the sight of her I almost leave my backpack, everything I own in the world, sitting on the porch. I scoop it up as she pulls me, half drags me, across the threshold of my old home.

  3

  Scherri

  I'm all giddy. So euphoric I don't know how my feet are still glued to the ground, because the rest of me is up there doing whirligigs across the ceiling, like a bat flown in through the window.

  Steele is here.

  We're standing together in the same spacious kitchen. Although it looks very different since my mother married Steele's dad. As does Steele.

  My mother just got through telling me how he left just a couple weeks after she and his dad got married. Their secret affair had been the cause of her snippy attitude to her family all along. The thing that broke us so my Dad moved away. Not that she owned to any of that, but the timeline makes sense to me now.

  I get it. This big house is everything she ever wanted for herself and nothing that my dad could provide on his fireman's salary. Daddy worked so hard and faced such danger with courage every day he left the house, there was no way I could let him move across the State alone. He'd done nothing wrong and didn't deserve to lose his family because his wife happened to be a -

  “You haven't told us what you're doing here.”

  I
'm jolted out of the memory of all the tough times behind us by the rudeness of my mother's tone.

  “Mom, this is Steele's family home. He doesn't need a reason to visit.”

  “No. I guess he doesn't. I just mean I haven't made up the bed in the guest room.”

  “He doesn't need to use the guest room either. He has his own room.”

  “His old room was made into a guest room,” she says and I don't like the hint of victory in her voice.

  “That's perfect,” Steele says.

  I feel his eyes burning into my face while I stare at my mother on the other side of the breakfast bar in shock. Even having all the luxury she ever desired, living in this house with the man she must have wanted more than she wanted her own family, she still hasn't changed one iota.

  “It's perfect,” he says to me his eyes brimming with meaning.

  I can hardly bear to meet his gaze, it's so intense. I'd feel stripped down and naked if it wasn't Steele doing the staring.

  Oh god oh god, I should not have had that thought. The hot surge in my cheeks means I must be redder than a corny box of Valentines candy. Oh crap, why am I conjugating the day of romance and my childhood friend?

  I must be living in a girlish fantasy. It sure seems unreal to be standing here staring at him half dumb in the same kitchen we used to make peanut butter sandwiches and pop tarts for dinner in his room. Of course, it's not the same room since my mother had the idea to do a complete makeover.