My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 250

Chapter 250

He took my notebook, the one filled with my messy, embarrassed scribbles. He didn’t mock the shaky handwriting or the flipped letters. Instead, he flipped to a fresh page. He began to draw.

I watched his hand. His fingers were long, the tattoos on his knuckles shifting as he moved the pen with a grace I could only dream of. He drew a perfect diagram of the architecture I was struggling with. Every line was straight. Every node was precise.

“The math doesn’t care if you see the letters backward, Gianna,” he said, his voice dropping an octave. He looked at me, his eyes dark and intense behind his glasses, “The math only cares about the pattern. You see the pattern better than anyone I’ve ever hired. Stop fighting the words. Start feeling the flow of the numbers.”

He leaned even closer to point at a specific line of code. I could feel his breath on my neck, a warm puff of air that sent a jolt of electricity straight down my spine. I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, trying to remind myself that I was a student and he was… well, he was a problem.

A big, beautiful, dangerous problem.

“Type this,” he said softly.

I reached for the keyboard, my heart hammering against my ribs. Because I was nervous, my fingers slipped. I hit the wrong key, and a string of gibberish appeared on the screen. I let out a frustrated sound, my eyes stinging. “I can’t. My brain is doing the thing where it just… stops.”

Raphael moved his chair even closer, “Deep breath,” he murmured. He reached over, his hand making contact with mine. He didn’t grab it; he just laid his palm over the back of my hand, pinning it gently to the desk. His skin was warm and slightly rough. “Slow down. I’ve got you. Focus on my voice, not the screen.”

What he didn’t understand was that I couldn’t focus on anything but him. My body felt like it was melting into the chair. I could feel the pulse in his wrist against the back of my hand.

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