Romance: TOXIC (Forbidden, Pregnancy, Taboo Romance, Stepbrother Romance, New Adult Short Stories) Read Online Free PDF

twice at; there were even a couple I’d ended up at sweaty, passionate third base in the restrooms of pubs with. But I’d been brought up in a conservative, homophobic family, so I had dated women when I was too pressured to have a love life. Mostly, I had just kept quiet on the topic.
    Once I started working, no one paid much attention to my love life or lack thereof, but that was fine by me. It’s probably why I spent so much time at the station; it was far easier to fill my time with the day-to-day work of a suburban cop than it was to spend some time actually thinking about myself and what I wanted. I had managed to keep those desires at bay for most of my 32 years, until I opened the door on a quiet September night, and saw him there. Little did I realize that the floodgates, so to speak, had been opened.
     
    He was shorter than me, though only by a few inches, but slender: his broad shoulders tapered into a slim waist, his limbs long and languid. He was the opposite of brown-eyed, brown-haired, stocky old me, and I felt conspicuously big in front of him. Those eyes, flecked with green and glowing, bored into mine, and his sculpted lips slightly parted as he let out short, sharp gasps into the wintery air. His olive skin was clear and bright, and I wanted to reach out and feel it under my fingertips.
    “Can I help you?” I barked.
    “I-I’m sorry, I just came from the border, and the policia , the police, they’re following me.” he blurted, his tone urgent. It didn’t take the accent for me to figure out where he was from.
    “If you’re looking for a place to hide, I’m afraid this isn’t it,” I replied, closing the door on him.
    I had moved to the town fairly recently, but I’d been warned that part of the country was often the first port of call for illegal Mexican immigrants. I guess some of the hostility the town had towards them had rubbed off on me, for I only felt the smallest twinge of guilt over turning him away.
    But his foot got in the way of my shutting the door properly, and he used his hands to open the door wider. I couldn’t help but notice how long and elegant his fingers were, and how strong he was for someone so slender otherwise. If not for the door, he would’ve been in my personal space, and I felt the tiniest shiver at the thought.
    “Please, you’ve got to help me!”
    The desperation in his voice made me pause, and I peeked from the crack.
    “Why the hell should I let you in?”
    “Because it wouldn’t make a difference to you, but it would mean life or death for me!”
    I looked at him, raising an eyebrow. “Oh, so you really think I won’t get into any trouble for harbouring an illegal immigrant?”
    He grabbed my arm, and if I had shivered at the thought of being close to him, it had been nothing compared to the electricity I felt now.
    “If you let me in now, you’d get rid of me in a day, two days, at the most. If the cops come, you could say ‘No, I haven’t seen anyone,’ and they’ll believe you because you’re a nice upstanding white man and no one would suspect you of doing something like this.”
    He was right. I hated to admit it, but he was right. If I let him in and then denied it when my colleagues showed up, they would believe me. They knew that I was the last person who’d let an illegal immigrant into my house, judging by the vitriol I spat about them whenever we had to collect them from the side of the road somewhere. Hell, they probably wouldn’t even bother to ask me.
    I looked at the man in front of me again, read the desperation in his face, felt the pressure of his fingers digging into my arms. I could just open the door, and that would be that.
    So I did.
    I didn’t say a word as I pulled the door back, allowing him over the threshold. He released my arm and practically jumped into the house, a grin breaking over his face. He laughed with relief, and spun around to face me, his dark curls whipping against his face as he did so. I