Dare: A Stepbrother Romance by Caitlin Daire Read Free Book Online

my ear. “So that’s your new stepbrother over there? The one with the tattoos? Please tell me he’s gay.”
    I giggled. “Sorry. He’s straight.”
    He wrinkled his nose. “You sure he’s not at least bi?”
    “Definitely not.”
    He pouted. “Damn. And are you interested in him?”
    “Also definitely not,” I declared, maybe a tad excessively. “He’s my stepbrother. ”
    “Well, in that case, I have someone for you to meet,” he said with a grin. “Cerie and I met him a few weeks ago, and I thought he seemed nice. Ah, there he is now.”
    He waved across the room at a tall brown-haired guy and beckoned him over.
    “Dan, this is Sophie, the girl I told you about. She’s going to the same college as you in the fall,” he said before glancing back at me. “You are going to Caltech, right?”
    “Yep,” I said with a smile.
    Dan smiled and shook my hand. “Andreas has told me a lot about you. What are you going to be studying?”
    Andreas interjected with a not-so-subtle excuse to leave before I could answer. “Oops, I forgot to put the ice out. Dan, make sure you take care of her.”
    With that, he disappeared, and I was left alone with his friend.
    “I’m going to be studying engineering,” I said. “What about you?”
    “Same,” he said with a grin. “Maybe we can be study buddies.”
    The look he was giving me suggested he wanted to be a lot more than study buddies, and to tell the truth, I was thrilled with the attention. Aside from Drew, it was the first male attention I’d had in…well, forever. I saw Drew narrow his eyes at me from across the room, and I ignored him and turned my attention back to Dan. I was allowed to talk to guys. It was none of Drew’s business.
    We kept chatting, and after a while it felt like it was only the two of us in the room. Dan was a really interesting guy. He was smart, accomplished and pretty damn cute to boot, and I could see why Andreas wanted to set me up with him. I deserved a nice guy, didn’t I? All women did. We’d just exchanged numbers, and he’d promised to call me tomorrow to organize a hangout. That’s what people our age did these days, apparently. There was never any ‘dating’. It was just ‘hanging out’.
    He was in the middle of telling me about the volunteer work he did at a local animal shelter when we were disturbed by Cerie and Lana.
    “Hey guys!” Cerie said. “You’ll never believe what just happened to Lana.”
    “What happened?” I asked.
    Lana rolled her eyes. “Worst pickup attempt ever. See the guy over there in the grey hoodie?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “I was talking to him, and he asked my name. I said it was Lana, and he leaned close and said, ‘you know, that’s ‘anal’ backwards,’ before winking at me.”
    I stifled a laugh, and Dan grinned. “Sounds like a solid guy. I hope you gave him your number.”
    “Oh, definitely,” Lana replied sarcastically before clapping her hands together. “Anyway, we had an idea.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Well, we figured that this is probably one of the last parties we’ll have before we all head off into the real world. So we may as well have one last high-school hurrah!”
    “Go on,” I said.
    She winked at me. “You know what that means. It’s time for Spin-a-Dare!”
    I laughed and shook my head. “No way. Remember what happened the last time I got dared to do something?”
    I shot a pointed look at Drew, and Lana giggled. “Aw, come on. Do it for me. Please?”
    She affected a puppy-dog gaze, and I caved. “All right. Let’s do it.”
    Five minutes later, a whole bunch of us were sitting cross-legged on the floor in a big circle, and Cerie grabbed an empty beer bottle.
    “Okay, you all know the rules,” she said. “Whoever the bottle lands on has to complete a dare.”
    “Er…I’ve actually never played this before,” Dan said from next to me. “Who decides what the dare is?”
    “The person who spins the bottle. I’m going first,” she