Chapter 1: The Moan Through the Floorboards
The deadbolt clicked behind her, and Syren let out a breath that felt like it had been trapped in her chest since the third hour of her shift. The house was still. Quiet. The kind of quiet that settled into the walls after ten years of the same routines, the same dinners, the same conversations about nothing.
Phil was at his conference in Denver until Thursday. She'd known that. Had been looking forward to the solitude, honestly. Two nights of takeout she didn't have to share and the good bottle of wine she'd been hiding behind the vegetables in the fridge.
She kicked off her heels by the door, the soft thud of leather against hardwood the only sound. Her feet ached. Her back ached. Everything ached in that particular way it did when you'd spent sixteen years on your feet, first as a nurse and now as a charge nurse, and your body was starting to file formal complaints.
The stairs creaked under her weight as she climbed, hand trailing the banister. The hallway was dim, lit only by the small lamp on the console table that Phil had bought at a flea market in Vermont. She'd hated it at first. Now she couldn't imagine the hall without its soft amber glow.
She was halfway to her bedroom when she heard it.
A low sound. Guttural. Wrenching its way out of a throat that sounded like it was being pushed to its absolute limit.
Syren stopped cold, one foot hovering over the next step.
Her first thought was something was wrong. Someone was hurt. Kyle was supposed to be at his friend Marcus's house, but maybe he'd come back early. Maybe something had happened.
Then she heard it again. Longer this time. A moan that curled through the hallway like smoke, soft and drawn out and unmistakably, undeniably sexual.
Her heart slammed against her ribs.
Kyle's door stood at the end of the hall, slightly ajar. The warped frame had never quite fit properly, not since they'd moved in when he was ten and he had immediately started slamming it every time he got angry. Now it hung open just enough to let a sliver of light spill into the hallway. Just enough to let sound escape.
She should walk away. That was the right thing. That was the only thing. He was eighteen, technically an adult, and whatever he was doing in his room was his business.
But her feet carried her forward anyway, step by silent step, until her shoulder brushed against the wall beside his door.
She shouldn't look.
She looked.
Through the narrow gap, she could see the corner of his bed. The rumpled sheets. The pale curve of a girl's thigh, bent and trembling. And Kyle, broad-shouldered and golden in the low light from his nightstand lamp, his back arched, his hips moving in a slow, hypnotic rhythm that made the bedframe creak.
"—fucking perfect," he murmured, his voice lower and rougher than she'd ever heard it. "You feel that? You feel how deep I am?"
The girl beneath him whimpered something unintelligible.
"Yeah," Kyle breathed. "That's it. Take it. Take all of it."
Syren's hand flattened against the wall. Her thighs clenched, a rush of heat pooling low in her belly that she immediately, violently, rejected. This was wrong. This was her son. Her stepson, but her son in every way that mattered. She'd raised him. She'd bandaged his knees and helped him with his science fair projects and sat through three years of his terrible garage band practices.
She should be disgusted.
She was not disgusted.
Kyle shifted, and she caught a better angle—his ass flexing with each thrust, the muscles in his back rippling under smooth skin. He was built like his father had been twenty years ago, before the desk job and the beer gut. But better. Fuller. God, he was so much fuller.
"Look at me," Kyle said, and there was something commanding in his tone that made Syren's breath catch. "I want you to look at me when you come."
The girl's response was a broken gasp.
He leaned down, his lips brushing her ear, and even from the hallway Syren could hear the words he whispered next. "Come for me, baby. Let me feel it. Let me feel you squeeze my dick."
The girl cried out, a sharp, high sound that was muffled by Kyle's mouth covering hers. His rhythm stuttered, then deepened, and Syren watched his hips jerk with a grunt that seemed to come from somewhere deep in his chest.
She should leave.
She needed to leave.
But her body wouldn't move. Her eyes wouldn't look away. She watched the way his shoulders heaved as he caught his breath, the way he pressed his forehead to the girl's and laughed softly, the way he pulled out and rolled onto his back, pulling the girl with him so she was draped across his chest.
"Stay the night," he said. "My mom won't be home till late."
Syren's stomach dropped.
"I can't," the girl murmured. "My parents will freak."
"Text them. Say you're at Jessica's."
"Sneaky."
"You love it."
The girl laughed, soft and sleepy. "I do. I really do."
Something hot and ugly twisted in Syren's chest. Jealousy? No. Absolutely not. She wasn't jealous of a teenage girl. That was absurd. That was—
She stepped back, and the floorboard beneath her foot let out a groan that seemed to echo through the entire house.
Kyle's head snapped toward the door.
Syren didn't wait. She turned and walked—not ran, she would not run—back down the hallway, down the stairs, her bare feet silent on the wood but her heart pounding so loud she was sure he could hear it.
She grabbed her heels by the front door and slipped out onto the porch, closing the door softly behind her.
The night air hit her face, cool and sharp. She stood there in the dark, breathing, trying to remember how to be a normal person. A normal stepmother. A woman who had just accidentally witnessed her son having sex and felt absolutely nothing inappropriate about it.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket.
She pulled it out, her hands shaking slightly.
Kyle: Everything okay? Thought I heard the door.
She stared at the screen for a long moment. Then she typed back.
Syren: Just got home. Didn't want to interrupt. I'll be in my room.
She hit send before she could think better of it. Before she could craft something more casual. More normal.
His response came less than a minute later.
Kyle: K. See you in the morning, Mom.
Mom.
She closed her eyes and pressed the phone to her forehead, trying to breathe through the ache that had settled between her legs and refused to leave.
This was going to be a very long week.