First Time With My Stepbrother Boxed Set: A Stepbrother Romance Bundle (First Time With My Stepbrother Boxed Sets Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

worldly stepbrother, who she discovers is more than willing to plow her fallow, fertile ground and give her everything she’s been dreaming of for years.
     
    Together, they know they can’t recapture the innocence of Eden, but they just may find a heaven right here on Earth…
     

     
    The bus stopped on the corner and a blast of air brushed my face as I took the last step off. Or maybe it was my first step, I thought, looking around at the indifference of the city. There were millions of people here, doing only God knew what, and no one here paid any attention to a young nun stepping off a Greyhound bus. I was just part of the landscape amidst the skyscrapers and luxury high-rises stabbing upward into the clouds.
     
    Car horns and the bustle of people everywhere created a wall of sound, enveloping me. The summer heat seeped onto my black habit and my wimple fluttered in the breeze. The humidity was suffocating, and considering I was covered head to toe in a black habit, I knew I would be in danger of heat stroke. I needed to find my brother's loft apartment.
     
    Well, I guess I’m really not in Kansas anymore.
     
    Crowds bustled around me while I stood like a stone in the path of the never-ending rush of human bodies. I looked down at my notecard where I had written the address and rudimentary directions to my stepbrother's loft, trying to discern my own handwriting. My hands were shaking, so that didn’t help.
     
    Someone bumped my shoulder and I glanced up, surprised.
     
    “Excuse me, Sister,” the voice said when he saw my habit—at least there was some remnant of chivalry left in the world—and I looked up at the middle-aged man in a rather disheveled business suit. He actually stopped to make sure I was unhurt, instead of hustling onward.
     
    “Quite all right.” I smiled. “I wondered if you could point me toward East Ohio Street?”
     
    He pointed, literally, behind him. “Two blocks down and take a left.”
     
    “Thank you.”
     
    “My pleasure, Sister,” he said.
     
    “God be with you,” I murmured, although even saying those words made me feel like a hypocrite.
     
    Because deep inside, I was unsettled. Conflicted.
     
    Unlike the sisters at the convent, I was restless. Sometimes I felt as if I had a slow leak. Instead of prayer filling my up, something was continually draining slowly out of me. I prayed, I fasted, I served—but every day felt as if I was wearing a mask. Playing a role.
     
    I was a hypocrite.
     
    I felt unworthy to wear the habit of the Order of Mary, Mother of Perpetual Peace. While nuns like Sister Clara and Sister Dominique went into seclusion when doubt reared its serpent head, I chose to do something far more dangerous.
     
    I’d decided to re-enter the world.
     
    Miles.
     
    My stepbrother was out here, in the world, a part of it all. It was Miles I was going to see.
     
    Walking just those few blocks from the bus stop to Miles’s apartment gave me an education about everything I had been missing. People of every skin color and sexual orientation passed me by, and I looked at them all. No one seemed to even notice me, even in my out-of-place habit, because everyone was so different. We all seemed to blend.
     
    Mother Superior had warned me about going to the city—the danger, the crime, the moral decay. I listened to her counsel. I nodded and understood. But I knew I had to go. Other sisters might balk at the prospect, but not me. Some secret part of me was excited about it, to be honest, although I wouldn’t admit that, not out loud.
     
    Besides, sometimes seclusion harbored its own vices.
     
    I wasn’t seeking the big city to convert lost souls or accomplish social justice. I went because it was where I could find Miles. It was his counsel I needed the most. He was, in his own way, both the cause and the solution to my crisis of faith.
     
    I held out the notecard, double-checking the address. The decrepit apartment building didn't match my