His Calculated Surrender

I drugged my stepbrother's drink. I’d been secretly, ruinously obsessed with Caspian for years.

The woman he took as his date to that elite charity gala… they looked sickeningly perfect together.

The jealousy was a physical ache, a mouthful of ash that I choked down until it made me manic. I had the math worked out in my head.

Once the drug kicked in and we crossed the point of no return tonight, he would have no choice but to marry me. Even if he didn't love me, he'd be mine forever.

Everything went flawlessly. But right at the final precipice, reality slammed into me. A sharp spike of panic tightened my throat. My breathing shattered.

While his eyes were still heavy and closed, I scrambled backward, desperate to climb off his body and run. My knee barely hit the mattress.

A massive, scorching hand shot out in the shadows. Long fingers clamped down hard around my bare ankle like a steel trap.

The grip was absolute, his thumb pressing directly into the racing pulse under my skin.

His chest rumbled with a slow, raspy drag of breath. "Quitting halfway isn't exactly a good habit, don't you think?" The deep timbre of his voice was thick with a dark, suffocating heat. "Sister." Chapter 1 At ten o'clock, Caspian drank the glass of water I poured for him.

By midnight, I pushed open his bedroom door. My bare feet sank into the plush wool rug, absorbing every sound. Caspian was already in a deep sleep.

I clicked on the bedside lamp—a practiced, effortless motion.

Bathed in the warm, dim glow, my fingertips hovered over his face, tracing the sharp lines of his brow and the dark sweep of his lashes.

A faint crease appeared between his eyebrows, like he could feel the phantom tickle. My hand froze, but my pulse stayed perfectly steady.

I had slipped sleeping pills into his drinks too many times. I had the dosage calculated down to the milligram. He would not open his eyes before six in the morning.

Sure enough, the crease smoothed out, and the slow, even rhythm of his chest returned. I reached over, snapping the lamp off.

Kicking my slippers aside, I lifted the heavy duvet and slid into his bed. Caspian always slept flat on his back.

I nestled perfectly into the space beside him, resting my head on his solid bicep. Slipping an arm around his waist, I buried my face deep into his chest.

Sometimes I wished the sun would just burn out. If the world was trapped in eternal night, Caspian would belong to nobody but me.

Too bad that was just a pathetic, delusional fantasy. At 5:00 AM sharp, the smart watch on my wrist buzzed against my bone. I snapped awake instantly and silenced the alarm.

The room was still swallowed in pitch black. Moving with agonizing caution, I peeled myself away from his heat.

I let my fingers brush through his dark hair one last time before slipping out of bed and ghosting back to my own room. Dawn was already bleeding through the sky.

The adrenaline had chased away any lingering exhaustion, so I went straight to the bathroom to wash up. A pale face stared back at me in the harsh vanity lights.

It wasn't until I leaned in closer that I noticed my lips. They were swollen, flushed a deep, bruised red. I pressed two fingers to my bottom lip, wincing at the sharp, raw sting.

Weird. My brows pulled together. Did I have an allergic reaction to something last night? As the Christmas holidays approached, classes on campus were wrapping up.

I packed up early, hauled my stuff out of the dorms, and moved back into the house. Caspian was drowning in work lately, pulling late hours at the office.

But he still strictly honored the ridiculous rule I had badgered him into making when I was a kid: he was always home before 10:30 PM.

That night, I was curled up on the living room sofa, typing away at a final term paper. The front door clicked open, and Caspian walked in.

The sharp scent of whiskey and cold night air clung to his clothes—he’d obviously been at a business dinner.

His movements, usually so sharp and calculated, were sluggish as he leaned against the wall to kick off his dress shoes. My gaze locked onto him. I couldn't tear my eyes away.

The alcohol had stripped away his usual icy armor, making him look dangerously attractive.

While his head hung low, my eyes greedily devoured every detail—the harsh, arrogant slope of his brow bone, the faint flush painting the corners of his eyes, and the damp, flushed curve of his lips.

When I was little, I wrote an essay calling Caspian the most beautiful person I knew. He had sat me down, deadpan, and corrected me, saying "beautiful" was a word for girls.

I didn't care. I stubbornly believed the word was made for him. My mind was running wild with inappropriate thoughts when Caspian suddenly straightened up and stumbled.

I shoved my laptop off my lap and sprinted over, catching his arm to steady him.

Dragging his dead weight, I guided him to the sofa and practically pushed him down onto the cushions. His pristine dress shirt was already ruined.

The silk tie hung loose around his neck, the hem pulled free from his tailored slacks.

The angle of his slouched body caused the fabric to ride up, exposing a sliver of his hard, lean stomach. My throat went dry.

I swallowed hard. "Sutton." His deep, gravelly voice shattered my trance.

I snapped my eyes up. "Yeah?" "Can you grab me some aspirin?" he muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Oh.

Yeah!" I sprinted to the kitchen cabinet, digging through the shelves. When I came back, he was out cold. The heat must have gotten to him.

His tie was ripped off entirely, and he had popped the top buttons of his shirt open, baring a wide expanse of sculpted chest. My brain shortcircuited.

Every rational thought evaporated, leaving nothing but blistering heat in my skull. I stood there, paralyzed for a long moment.

Slowly, I pulled my phone from my pocket and snapped a photo. Chapter 2 Caspian suddenly shifted. My heart leaped into my throat.

I shoved my phone deep into my pocket like a thief caught in the act. "Caspian?" I called out, my voice embarrassingly tight. "Hmm?" His eyes cracked open, his dark gaze slowly dragging itself into focus.

He muttered a gravelly thanks and snatched the pills from my palm. After dryswallowing them, he stumbled toward the master bathroom, his footsteps heavy and uneven.

I collapsed back onto the sofa, my eyes glued to the glowing screen of my phone. Zoom in. Zoom out. Zoom in. Zoom out.

The frantic drumming of my heartbeat filled the dead silence of the living room. Suddenly, a violent crash slammed from the bathroom, followed instantly by a sharp hiss of pain.

I shot off the cushions and sprinted to the door. "Caspian? What happened?" I pounded my fist against the frosted glass. Dead silence. Panic spiked in my veins.

Gripping the cold metal handle, I twisted it hard and barged right in. He was sprawled on the wet tiles, his jaw locked tight in a wince.

The second I burst in, he scrambled to pull the thick terrycloth bathrobe closed over his soaked body. But the alcohol had hijacked his coordination.

His long fingers fumbled numbly with the belt, totally useless against the heavy fabric. "Let me." I stepped into the steamy air.

Reaching down, I grabbed his heavy arms to haul him up.

I forced my expression into a mask of total indifference, but underneath, my hands were vibrating uncontrollably against his burning skin.

Once I made sure he hadn't cracked his skull open, I wrapped his arm over my shoulders, bearing his heavy weight as we staggered out and slowly climbed the stairs.

The humid, intoxicating scent of cedarwood and wet skin rolled off him in waves. Tucked under his shoulder, I took a slow, greedy drag of oxygen.

We used the exact same body wash, but on Caspian, it mutated into something dark, rich, and fiercely masculine.

A single drop of icy water slipped from his damp hair and splattered against my bare knuckle. It was freezing, but it burned like battery acid. My entire body locked up.

It took me three agonizing seconds before I could subtly rub the wetness away with my thumb.

Caspian took aspirin tonight, so slipping other pills into his system was strictly off the table. It didn't matter. The alcohol dragged him under the second his head hit the pillow.

I stood frozen in the pitchblack room, my eyes tracking the steady rise and fall of his chest for a long, long time before I finally ghosted out the door.

That weekend, my best friend dragged me out to the city. She was the only person on earth who knew every sick, twisted detail of my obsession.

The second she saw me, her lips curled into a wicked smirk. "Damn, look at those designer bags under your eyes, Sutton.

You creeping into your brother's room in the dead of night again?" I kept my mouth shut. She took the silence as a solid yes.

Chuckling like a maniac, she bumped her shoulder hard against mine. "So? Did you finally—" "No." I cut her off instantly.

She clicked her tongue, thoroughly disappointed, and patted my shoulder. "You're a freaking anomaly, you know that?" she groaned. "You sneak into his bed every night like a GradeA stalker.

Total stagefive clinger behavior. But then you literally do nothing.

You drug the guy half the week just so you can cuddle like a toddler." I stared down at my shoes. "If I actually did something, there'd be evidence.

Knowing him, he'd snap if he found out." The words tasted like ash. "If I cross that line, I lose him forever. I wouldn't even get to keep playing the little sister." "True.

Caspian is built like a walking red flag, but his morals are aggressively pristine." She propped her chin on her hand, giving me a pitying look. "You've been living with his family for years.

To him, you are his blood sister.

If he knew what was actually going on inside your head, he'd be mortified." "Yeah." A suffocating wave of defeat crashed over me, turning my chest into a lead weight.

My lungs suddenly forgot how to pull in air. She caught the shift in my mood and threw an arm around my neck, yanking me into a tight hug. "Look, I'm just saying, drop the guy.

Loving one man is pure torture.

If you date ten at the same time, you'll be too busy swiping credit cards to feel any pain." Releasing me, she leaned in close, a conspiratorial gleam flashing in her eyes.

She promised she had a surprise gift lined up for me tonight—something guaranteed to blow my mind.

Chapter 3 Half an hour later, inside a private booth at the most exclusive VIP club downtown. I stared at the "gift" my best friend had been hyping up.

It was a male stripper… who shared a sickening sixty or seventy percent resemblance to Caspian.

She shoved him onto the leather sofa right next to me, ordering him to show me a good time. The guy draped a heavy, muscular arm loosely over my bare shoulder.

I’ll admit, for a few dangerous seconds, the illusion worked. My breath caught. But then he opened his mouth.

The desperate, sycophantic praise spilling from his lips instantly killed the vibe. Caspian would never, ever speak to me like that.

He was a master of the polite, untouchable facade—always appearing warm and approachable, while keeping every single person in his life at a calculated, clinical distance.

He lived behind a sheet of bulletproof glass.

Even after all these years of living under his roof, I still couldn't crack the code inside his head. "Hey, babe?" The knockoff Caspian waved a massive hand in front of my face, catching me zoning out.

I blinked the haze away. Pointing to the far end of the booth, I told him to back off and leave me alone. I sank into the velvet cushions, pulling out my phone.

That was when the notification from the hidden GPS tracking app on my phone popped up. I tapped the screen. My blood went cold.

Caspian’s coordinates were perfectly overlapping with mine. I refreshed the map three times. It wasn't a glitch. I bolted out of the booth. Why the hell was he here?

Wasn't he buried in paperwork at the office? My heels clicked frantically against the marble floor as I crept past door after door. The distance on the screen dropped. Lower. Lower.

Until it hit zero. I peeked through the narrow crack of a heavy, oakpaneled door. I saw Caspian. He wasn't alone.

He was surrounded by a polished circle of men and women around his age, sipping highend liquor over the soft thrum of acoustic music, laughing casually.

I pressed my ear flush against the cold wood, straining to catch their voices over the bass. It took me several agonizing minutes to piece the conversation together.

They were setting him up on a date—the kind that reeked of a calculated, highsociety business alliance! My gaze dragged upward, locking onto the only other woman in the room.

Her features were striking, exuding that effortless, oldmoney elegance. I tasted blood.

It made me physically sick to admit it, but she looked like she belonged exactly where she was—right by his side. A violent cramp seized my chest.

My fingers blindly gripped the heavy brass doorknob. Click. The sharp scrape of my acrylic nail against the metal pierced the hallway.

Caspian’s head snapped toward the door, his dark eyes narrowing. My adrenaline spiked. I dropped to a dead crouch, the air tearing from my lungs.

Before he could pull the door open, I scrambled down the corridor, fleeing back to my booth like a hunted animal.

Back in the dim lighting, the stripper had peeled a pile of oranges for me. I ignored him entirely. My eyes were glued to the GPS coordinates, burning a hole through the screen.

Thirty minutes later, the blue dot blinked and started to move. I grabbed my designer bag and chased after it.

Down in the grand lobby, the group was exchanging their polished goodbyes. Caspian personally hailed a black car, holding the door open to guide the woman inside.

A deep, flustered flush coated her cheeks. I read her lips. See you next time. Caspian gave a single, curt nod.

He stood on the curb, watching her taillights disappear before slipping into his own vehicle.

By the time I made it back to the house, Caspian was already lounging on the living room sofa, flipping through a hardcover book.

The second I stepped into his personal space, it hit me. A cloying, expensive burst of women's perfume. My nails dug so hard into my palms the skin nearly broke.

Forcing a sickeningly innocent smile, I played dumb. "Where were you tonight? You're drenched in perfume." Caspian paused. He brought his cuff to his nose and took a brief sniff.

A rare, almost embarrassed tightness flickered across his jaw. "Friends set me up on a date.

We must have been sitting too close." "You're looking to get married?" I stared at him, unblinking. Caspian nodded, his tone maddeningly pragmatic. "Yeah.

At my age, it's about time I start thinking about settling down." Chapter 4 "At your age?

You're still practically in your prime!" The words ripped out of my throat before I could stop them. Caspian pinched the bridge of his nose.

After a long beat, he let out a heavy sigh. "Sutton, my biggest priority was making sure you got a fullride scholarship to an Ivy League school. All my energy went into you.

I didn't have the luxury of thinking about myself. But you're a junior in college now.

Isn't it time I got a life of my own?" "But…" "But what?" Caspian tilted his head up to look at me.

The movement pulled the skin of his throat taut, exposing a sharp, vulnerable line.

The ambient light slid across the dark depths of his eyes, mapping the hard angle of his jaw, before pooling in the V of his unbuttoned collar where his collarbone cast a deep shadow.

He was so… painfully beautiful. I was losing my mind. Or maybe I was already gone.

My teeth ached with the sudden, violent urge to bite him, to lock him in a room where he could never leave and never flash that polite smile at another living soul.

My heart hammered wildly against my ribs. I dug my nails deep into my palms, forcing my ragged breathing to even out so the madness wouldn't bleed onto my face.

But Caspian was too observant. He stood up, closing the distance between us with a frown. "Sutton, what's wrong?" I immediately dropped my gaze to the floor.

It took me a solid minute to force the words past the suffocating lump in my throat. "I just don't want to lose you.

You get married, you start a family… and slowly, I just become an afterthought." "That's not going to happen." He reached out, his heavy hand ruffling the top of my hair. "It will," I pushed back stubbornly. "Ever since I left for college, you've already started pulling away." "That's because you grew up.

I have to set boundaries now." There it was. I squeezed my eyes shut. If growing up meant losing him, I’d rather rot in childhood forever.

A sharp, burning sting flared at the back of my eyes. Caspian stroked my hair again. "Finding the right person and starting a family is just a normal part of life.

One day, you'll put on a wedding dress and walk down the aisle to your own groom, Sutton." Over my dead body, my brain screamed.

That night, I slipped the pills into his drink again. At midnight, I drifted into his bedroom like a ghost.

Gripping his heavy, unconscious hand, I pressed his thumb against his phone screen. It unlocked instantly. I pulled up his texts with that woman, my eyes devouring the screen.

They had just met today, and they’d already traded a sickeningly long thread of messages! They even wished each other goodnight.

Didn't they realize goodnight was an intimately loaded word? He even sent her a stupid, cute emoji. He never, ever used emojis with me.

The jealousy was a physical acid burning a hole through my stomach. It was blinding. I threw the phone onto the mattress and clamped both my hands around Caspian’s throat.

My fingers slowly tightened over his pulse point—then violently yanked back. No bruises. Caspian was too sharp. He would notice.

I sat there in the dead silence, staring down at his face.

Finally, I lifted the heavy duvet and crawled flush against his side, burying my face in his chest. "What am I supposed to do?" I whispered to the steady drum of his heartbeat. "I want to marry you too.

But you'd think I'm a monster, wouldn't you?" The dark room offered no answers. Curled up tightly in his arms, I let sleep pull me under.

For some reason, I slept like the dead that night. My smartwatch vibrated against my wrist for five straight minutes before I snapped awake in a blind panic.

Thankfully, Caspian was still completely out. I carefully peeled myself off his chest and stood up. My knees instantly buckled, nearly sending me crashing right back onto his body.

So weird. I didn't touch a drop of alcohol yesterday, so why did my entire body ache with the heavy, bruised soreness of a massive hangover? …Whatever.

I was too dead on my feet to care. I dragged myself back to my room, collapsed facefirst onto my own mattress, and let sleep take me again.

Chapter 5 From that day on, I added another sick routine to my secret life. I started snooping through Caspian’s text thread with his date.

They were actually heading toward marriage. The topics kept getting deeper, more intimate.

Acid churned in my stomach, and panic clawed at my throat, but I had absolutely zero right to stop it. Just like that, another month vanished. Today was Valentine's Day.

I had bought a designer tie weeks ago. I planned to play dumb, pretend I didn't know what day it was, and give it to Caspian. But I waited.

Tenthirty came and went, and the front door stayed shut. My chest tightened so hard I couldn't pull in a full breath. He promised me. He always came home before 10:30 PM!

Where the hell was he? On a date? Even if he was, shouldn't he have texted me if he was going to break our rule?

Or did he finally decide that our childhood promise was too old, too pathetic to honor anymore? I gnawed on the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper.

With every tick of the clock, my stomach sank deeper into a black hole. An eternity later, the lock finally clicked. I shot off the couch and rushed to the foyer.

Caspian looked surprised. "You're still up, Sutton?" He didn't even mention that he was late. My heart plummeted.

I trailed behind his broad shoulders like a shadow, my face completely blank as we walked into the living room. That was when I saw it.

Right on the back of his crisp white collar—a smeared, crimson lip print. Caspian was tall. A woman would have to stand on her tiptoes to leave a mark right there.

A suffocating wave of jealousy slammed into the back of my skull.

My brain immediately conjured the image: that gorgeous, elegant woman wrapping her arms around his waist from behind, whispering a confession into his ear.

Were they moving that fast? The next time I saw her, would she be moving her things into this house?

Or would I be forced to watch her walk down the aisle toward him? "Sutton." Caspian suddenly turned around. I whipped my gaze to the floor.

My nails dug brutally into the soft meat of my palms, using the sharp physical sting to ground the hysteria threatening to swallow me alive. "It's late.

Go up to bed." With that, he walked straight into the downstairs bathroom to shower. He had no idea that I followed him.

I stood frozen right outside the door, listening to the heavy spray of water. The polished chrome of the handle reflected my face—pale, hollow, and utterly unhinged.

Caspian is mine, the ghost in the reflection whispered. "Caspian is mine," I mouthed back into the quiet hallway. I didn't wait until midnight tonight.

I slipped into his bedroom the second I knew he was under. He had drained the water I poured for him, dead to the world. Oh, Caspian.

I dragged a trembling finger down the hard line of his jaw. How do you have zero survival instincts? But then again, why would he?

Who puts their guard up against their innocent little sister? Who could possibly guess that their sister was this sick and twisted?

In the suffocating darkness, my gaze crawled over his features, heavy and possessive. Without a single ounce of hesitation, my hand reached down.

My fingers hooked the edge of his shirt, popping the first button open. I had spent the last month desperately trying to convince myself.

I told myself it didn't matter if he got married. As long as I stayed single and clung to this house like a parasite, I could still see him every single day.

But tonight broke that delusion. It was useless. My obsession ran too deep. I would physically combust if I had to watch him marry another woman.

Just the thought of him letting someone else touch him was enough to rot my sanity from the inside out. I made my decision.

I was going to sleep with him right now and cement our relationship once and for all. Knowing Caspian's ruthless moral code, he would take full responsibility.

Chapter 6 "Caspian…" I murmured to the empty room. "When you wake up tomorrow, you're going to hate me, aren't you? But this is your fault.

Why did you have to be so good to me?" "You warmed a viper against your chest, and now it's going to bite…" My fingers moved frantically, popping the buttons.

The heavy fabric was shoved aside. I leaned down and pressed my mouth to his. It was our first kiss. Tangled with the salt of my tears, it wasn't sweet at all.

I didn't want Caspian to hate me