🔥 Six Months Later 🔥

An Exclusive Bonus Scene from The Fake Stepsister

Six Months Later

This scene takes place six months after the epilogue.

The text came at 7:47 PM, just as I was finishing the last of the unpacking boxes.

Roxy: Come to the studio. Door’s unlocked. Don’t knock.

I stared at my phone, a familiar flutter starting low in my belly. We’d been living together for three months now—me in Roxy’s craftsman house in Portland, our lives slowly weaving together in ways I’d never imagined possible. But she still found ways to surprise me.

Chloe: Everything okay?

Roxy: Better than okay. Just come.

I grabbed my jacket and was out the door in under a minute.

Iron & Ink was dark from the outside, the neon sign switched off, the blinds drawn. But when I pushed open the door, soft light spilled from the back room—Roxy’s private studio space, where she did her best work.

“Lock it behind you,” her voice called out. “And come back here.”

My heart was already racing as I turned the deadbolt. The studio smelled like her—sandalwood and clean linen and something sharper underneath. Anticipation, maybe. Or intent.

I walked through the darkened front room, past the display cases of jewelry and the portfolios of her work, toward the warm glow at the back.

And stopped in the doorway.

Roxy was leaning against her tattoo chair—the big hydraulic one that could recline almost flat. She’d changed out of her usual work clothes into something I’d never seen before: black silk that hugged her body, leaving her tattooed arms bare. Her dark hair was loose around her shoulders. And the look in her eyes…

“Hi, Princess.” Her voice was low. Rough. “Close your mouth. You’re drooling.”

I snapped my jaw shut, but I couldn’t look away. “What is this?”

“Six months.” She pushed off the chair and walked toward me, each step deliberate. “Six months since you moved in. Six months of waking up next to you. Six months of watching you make this place feel like home.”

“I didn’t know we were celebrating—”

“We are.” She stopped inches from me, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off her skin. “I wanted to do something special. Something just for us.”

Her hand came up to cup my jaw, tilting my face toward hers. The kiss was soft at first—almost tender. But I felt the hunger underneath, the coiled tension in her body, and my knees went weak.

“I have a present for you,” she murmured against my lips.

“The kiss wasn’t the present?”

“The kiss was the preview.” Her smile turned wicked. “The present requires the chair.”

I glanced at the tattoo chair, my pulse spiking. “Are you going to ink me?”

“Not tonight.” Her smile turned wicked. “Tonight I’m going to make you scream.”

She undressed me slowly, piece by piece, until I was standing in nothing but my underwear and the goosebumps rising on my skin. The studio was warm enough, but I was shivering anyway—anticipation humming through every nerve.

“On the chair,” she said. Not a request.

I climbed up, the leather cool against my bare thighs. Roxy adjusted the hydraulics, reclining me back until I was nearly horizontal, my head elevated just enough to watch what she was doing.

Which was, apparently, retrieving a small bag from beneath her workstation.

“What’s in there?”

“Patience.” She set the bag on the counter and pulled out something dark and soft. Silk, I realized, as she held it up. Restraints. Two of them, attached to longer straps.

My breath caught. “Roxy…”

“We’ve talked about this.” Her voice was steady, but I could hear the edge of uncertainty underneath. “You said you wanted to try. But if you’ve changed your mind—”

“I haven’t.” The words came out too fast, too eager. I made myself slow down. “I want this. I want you.”

Something flickered in her eyes—relief, maybe, or hunger. She moved to the head of the chair and took my wrist, pressing a kiss to my pulse point before wrapping the silk around it.

“Tell me if it’s too tight.”

“It’s perfect.”

She secured the strap to something I couldn’t see—part of the chair’s framework, I assumed—and repeated the process with my other wrist. When she was done, my arms were stretched above my head, spread just wide enough to make me feel exposed.

Vulnerable.

Hers.

“Color?” she asked.

“Green.” My voice was already shaking. “So green.”

Roxy smiled—that slow, devastating smile that still made my heart stutter after all these months. “Good girl.”

And then her mouth was on my throat, and I stopped thinking altogether.

She took her time.

That was the thing about Roxy—she’d spent years building walls, keeping people at arm’s length, never letting anyone close enough to hurt her. But once she let you in, once she decided you were hers, she gave you everything. Every ounce of attention. Every bit of focus.

It was overwhelming in the best possible way.

Her lips traced down my collarbone, her teeth grazing sensitive skin, while her hands mapped territory she already knew by heart. Every scar, every curve, every spot that made me gasp. She’d memorized me, and now she was using that knowledge like a weapon.

“Please,” I heard myself say.

“Please what?”

“Touch me.”

“I am touching you.” Her fingers skimmed down my ribs, feather-light. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

I pulled against the restraints without thinking, the silk holding firm. The helplessness should have scared me. Instead, it was the hottest thing I’d ever experienced.

“Lower,” I gasped. “Please, Roxy, I need—”

“I know what you need.” She pressed a kiss between my breasts. “I’ve got you, Princess. I’m going to give you everything you need. But first…”

Her hand slid down my stomach, bypassing where I wanted her most, settling on my inner thigh instead. I made a sound that was embarrassingly close to a whimper.

“First, I want you to feel this.” Her breath was warm against my skin. “Feel how much I love you. How much I want you. How there’s nothing—nothing—I wouldn’t do to make you happy.”

Tears pricked at my eyes. Even now, even after everything, she could still break me open with a few simple words.

“I love you too,” I whispered.

“I know.” She kissed my hip bone. “Now let me show you.”

The first orgasm hit me like a wave, sudden and devastating, Roxy’s mouth between my legs and her fingers curled inside me, working that spot she knew so well. I cried out, my back arching off the chair, the restraints the only thing keeping me from flying apart entirely.

She didn’t stop.

She worked me through it, then past it, building me back up before I’d even come down. Her tongue swirled and pressed and retreated, driving me to the edge and holding me there, trembling.

“Roxy—fuck—I can’t—”

“You can.” Her voice was rough, wrecked, like she was barely holding herself together. “One more. Give me one more.”

She added another finger, stretching me, filling me, and I shattered.

The second orgasm was deeper than the first—slower to build but infinitely more intense. I felt it in my bones, in my blood, in the spaces between heartbeats. I pulled against the restraints hard enough that I’d probably have marks tomorrow.

I didn’t care.

When I finally came down, gasping and shaking, Roxy was there. Undoing the silk around my wrists. Pulling me into her arms. Holding me while the aftershocks rippled through my body.

“I’ve got you,” she murmured. “I’ve got you, Princess. You did so good.”

“I want—” My voice cracked. “I want to touch you.”

“Soon.”

“Now.” I grabbed the front of her silk shirt, pulling her closer. “I need to feel you.”

Something shifted in her expression. That vulnerability she only showed me—the soft center underneath all those sharp edges. She let me tug the shirt over her head, let me unhook her bra, let me pull her down onto the narrow chair until we were pressed together skin to skin.

“I love you,” I said again, because it was the only thing that mattered.

“I love you too.” She kissed me, and I tasted myself on her lips. “Now show me.”

We made love on the tattoo chair—slower this time, gentler, my hands finally free to roam. I learned the sounds she made when I touched her just right. I learned the way her breath hitched when I whispered her name. I learned that even the strongest walls eventually come down, if you love someone enough to wait.

When we finally tumbled over the edge together, our fingers intertwined and our foreheads pressed close, I felt something click into place.

This was home.

Not the house. Not the city. Not even the family we’d somehow built from awkward beginnings and fake relationships and stolen moments on a bearskin rug.

Her.

She was my home. And I was never letting go.

Later—much later—we lay tangled together on a blanket Roxy had apparently stashed behind the supply cabinet. The chair wasn’t really designed for cuddling, but we made it work. We always made it work.

“So,” I said, tracing patterns on her shoulder. “This was my six-month present?”

“Part of it.”

“There’s more?”

She reached over to the counter and grabbed the small bag, pulling out something I hadn’t noticed before: a jewelry box.

My heart stopped.

“Relax,” she said, laughing at my expression. “It’s not that kind of box. Not yet.”

Not yet. I filed that away for later.

She opened the lid to reveal a delicate silver bracelet—a thin chain with a small charm dangling from it. A key.

“It’s for the studio,” she said. “I want you to have one. So you can come here whenever you want. So you know this space is yours too.”

I stared at the bracelet, then at her, then back at the bracelet. My eyes were definitely not watering. Not even a little.

“Roxy…”

“You don’t have to get all mushy about it.” But she was smiling—that soft, real smile that I was pretty sure no one else ever got to see. “It’s just a key.”

“It’s not just a key.” I took the bracelet from the box and held it up. “It’s you letting me in. All the way in.”

“Yeah, well.” She cleared her throat. “You’ve already got the key to everything else. Might as well make it official.”

I kissed her, and she kissed me back, and we didn’t leave the studio until well past midnight.

And when we finally made it home—to our home, the one we’d built together—I fell asleep with the bracelet on my wrist and her arms around me and the absolute certainty that this was exactly where I was supposed to be.

Forever.

💜 THE END 💜