by Sam Mariano
His jaw locks, his dark eyes glistening with anger. “If I were you, Rafe, I wouldn’t be so quick to forget who helped you rise to power. You’re not established yet. There’s no rule that says you stay in power—in fact, there are rules that say just the opposite. Vince may not be cut out for this shit, but you know what? I bet with a capable second-in-command to lead him in the right direction, he’d do all right.”
Fury shoots down my spine and I turn slowly to face him. This motherfucker has some intestinal fucking fortitude saying a thing like that to me. “You sure that’s something you want to have said, Sin?”
“It’s already done,” he replies, without a hint of remorse. “Don’t jerk my fucking chain, Rafe. I’m loyal, but I am not your whipping boy. It’s my job to protect you and look after your interests, not to swallow every load of shit you feel like dishing out. I didn’t put up with blind tyranny during Ben’s reign, and I’m sure as fuck not going to tolerate it during yours. You give me the respect I’m owed if you want it back. That’s how this works. That’s the only way this works, and our personal squabbles don’t have a goddamn thing to do with it.”
I can’t help shaking my head at his dismissive wording, like he’s barely stepping on my toes at all. “Personal squabbles? Is that what you call fucking a woman who may be the mother of my child?”
“Hey, you had your chance, and you blew it,” he states. “If you’re waiting around on me to feel bad for you, you’re gonna be waiting a long time.”
I watch him for a moment, trying to read him. Sin is well-guarded on a normal day. Right now, with all this Laurel shit between us, he’s a fortress. “Why are you doing this?” I ask him. “You haven’t dated a single woman since Paula, and you decide for your comeback to snatch up the one who claims to be pregnant with my kid? That’s an awfully random choice, isn’t it?”
“Do I need a reason? She’s attractive, funny, smart, thoughtful—is it so hard to fathom I might like her? Laurel showed up here looking for guidance from you, and you turned her away like an asshole. You act like I took her from you; I didn’t take shit from you. You were done with her before you ever even had a chance to get started. You dismissed her for no reason, went from nearly fucking her in the backseat while I drove you around to coldly telling her to essentially fuck off—all in the blink of an eye, just because she told you a truth you didn’t want to deal with. You were an asshole, plain and simple, and she didn’t like it. You chased her off. Therefore, she was a free fucking agent. I even tried to warn you. I told you to do the right thing, but you resisted. So, yeah, I scooped her up and took her for myself. If you have something to say about it, here’s what I have to say: too fucking bad.”
Instead of waiting for Juanita to come back with the towels or taking the money to my safe like I just told him to, Sin tosses the dirty envelope on my gleaming mahogany end table and turns around, heading back toward the foyer.
“Where do you think you’re going?” I ask, following him.
“Home,” he states. Then, turning to give me a mean-ass smile, he adds, “But not before I stop at the grocery store. Laurel wants to make me dinner tonight. She likes serving me. She likes it a lot.”
My body tenses, my hands curling into fists at my sides. Memories of Laurel serving me flash to mind and I want to plant my fist right in Sin’s smug face.
I can’t, so I plant one in his gut instead.
“Dinner, huh? How adorable. You always did like the domestic shit, didn’t you? Is that what this is, Sin? Trying to skip past all the get-to-know you bullshit and fast forward to starting a new family with my leftovers? Sure, she has another man’s baby in her, but I guess that’s never mattered to you, has it?”
Sin might be well-guarded, but I know precisely where the chinks in his armor are. His face loses a couple shades of color, and for a split second, I wonder if I took it too far.
For a seemingly unending moment, Sin doesn’t move. Just stares at me until I feel the first tinges of concern. Sin has exactly one weak spot, and I just drove my fist right into it. I don’t think he’d turn on me or I wouldn’t employ him in the first place, but this is definitely the rockiest our relationship has ever been, personally or professionally. Not that I would ever show so much as a glimpse of uncertainty in the face of it, but Sin is a dangerous man. On my side, that’s a good thing. If the tides turned, it sure wouldn’t be.
“Yeah,” he finally says, nodding slightly. “I do like the domestic shit. You might, too, if you gave it a chance. But don’t worry, Rafe, I’ll enjoy it in your place. I’ll think of you tonight when Laurel’s cooking me dinner. Hell, maybe I’ll even spare you a thought afterward, when I’m eating her pussy for dessert.”
The mental image of Sin’s face buried between Laurel’s spread thighs makes my stomach sink, sends possessive fury shooting through my veins. I want to storm over there and rip his head off his shoulders. I want to pull out my gun and shoot him in the fucking spine—whatever it takes to keep him from going back to his house and making that visual a reality.
I’m simmering with anger and homicidal thoughts, but by the time he rips open my front door, I have enough command over myself to speak. “I want a paternity test.”
Sin slows to a stop, but keeps his back to me. Brave, considering the violent things I want to do to him right now.
“And just so you know, if that test comes back saying I am the father of Laurel’s baby, you’re done. You’ll never fucking touch her again.”
He stands there long enough for my words to land, but he storms out of the house without so much as a backward glance.
My head hasn’t been on straight for a few days, but now I’m starting to feel like myself again. Shifting the bottle of wine in the crook of my arm, I lift my other hand and bang on the front door.
It’s been a lot of years since I’ve been at this house for dinner, but I’ve been invited before. Of course, I was not invited tonight, but I don’t care. Since he walked out of my house today, all I’ve been able to think about is Sin eating Laurel out. I remember what she looks like in that position. I remember the way her head tips back, the way her hair falls around her beautiful bare breasts and shoulders. I remember the unabashed pleasure on her pretty face and the desperate sounds that slip out of her. I remember the way her legs shake when you’re doing good work, the way her cries rise in pitch as she approaches her climax, and I definitely remember the way she nuzzles into you for a cuddle afterward while she’s coming down.
That’s mine. All of it. Doesn’t matter if I was a dick, Sin had no right to intervene and take it for himself. He had no stake in any of this. It was between me and Laurel. It’s been three days, for fuck’s sake. If a girl I never thought I’d see again turns up pregnant, I should be allotted a few days to process that information. She could’ve waited in a hotel room, or tucked away in Connecticut where I could have simply retrieved her once I came around—not at Sin’s house. Not in Sin’s bed.
Fuck Sin. I’m crashing his dinner. He’s not going to eat her out when I’m here, even if he is pissed off. I realize I can’t feasibly be here to cockblock him until the results of the test are back in and I know for sure, but I know what I can do.
I can stop being a dick. I can apologize to Laurel. I can be nice to her again and remind her why she liked me in the first place.
The door opens and Sin is predictably on the other side, dead-eyed and expressionless. “What do you want?”
I hold out the wine as an offering. “I’m here for dinner.”
“You weren’t invited,” Sin states, but he takes the bottle from me anyway.
I glance beyond him and see Laurel hovering at the top of the stairs. Damn, she’s wearing a thin cami top with no bra underneath and a pair of snug shorts. Given his words earlier, my gaze goes straight to her pussy. Those shorts are thin, too, reminding me of when I had her naked body spread out on the bed for me to feast on. I hear her soft sighs in my memory as she watches me cautiously from insi
de Sin’s house.
I offer her a smile, addressing her instead of him. “I come in peace.”
Crossing her arms, she narrows her eyes at me skeptically.
“Honest,” I tell her, raising my hands in mock surrender.
Sin regards me warily, but takes a step back to let me inside. “You start kicking up shit, I kick your ass out,” he warns me as he pushes the door shut and heads up the stairs.
I follow him, noting that as soon as he reaches the top of the stairs, he rests a possessive hand on Laurel’s hip and leans in to murmur something in her ear. Amusement tugs at the corners of my mouth—if I had a dollar for every time I’ve seen a man do that in my presence, I could buy myself another casino.
Sin drops his hand and heads into the kitchen without so much as a glance back. I know it’s intentional. He wants to illustrate that he’s not threatened by me, that he doesn’t care if I’m alone in this narrow space with Laurel because he’s that confident in his hold over her. If she were mine, I’d do the same thing.
Laurel shifts uncomfortably, glancing back the way Sin disappeared, but she remains where she is. I wonder what he said to her?
Shoving my hands into my pockets and ducking my head to strike Laurel as more vulnerable, I move a little closer. “How are you feeling?”
Her eyebrows rise, like my question catches her off guard. “About what?”
I nod toward her stomach. “Aren’t pregnant women sick all the time?”
Now she shrugs, glancing down at her stomach. “I actually haven’t really had any morning sickness. Lucky, I guess.”
“Good, I’m glad to hear it.”
I suppose it’s not unwarranted that she eyes me even more warily after my friendly response. “What are you doing here, Rafe?”
“Having dinner.” She raises an eyebrow like she’s unimpressed, so I offer a charmingly detrimental smile and add, “Plus, I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to apologize for being such an asshole.”
Her arms are crossed, her tone still heavily skeptical. “You did?”
“Yes. I’ve been thinking about you a lot—not because someone else is playing with my discarded toy,” I say, remembering her words from the restaurant. “I just don’t like the way things are between us right now. I was so happy to see you when you showed up on my doorstep like the cutest, most welcome stalker in the world.”
Her cheeks flush and her gaze drops to the gray carpet beneath our feet.
“The kid thing… it scares me,” I admit. “I reacted poorly and I’m sorry about that. I’d like a chance to do better. I’d like to order a DNA test to make sure—”
Irritation flares up in her blue eyes and she interrupts. “You still don’t believe me.”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” I assure her, reaching out to touch her arm. She eyes me cagily, but I keep a firm hand on her and she doesn’t pull away. “It’s just that we used protection so I want to be positive that there were no mistakes with anyone else. I do not mean this as an insult. Something could have happened to the condom with someone else and you may not have even necessarily known. Through absolutely no fault of your own—”
“I am not pregnant with anyone else’s baby, Rafe. There hasn’t been anyone else. I have only had sex with you in the past year.” Indicating her still-flat stomach, she says, “The only person who had the opportunity to put a baby in here was you.”
Does she go to school at a fucking convent? “Just me? In a whole year?”
“That’s right,” she says, placing a hand on her hip and tipping her chin up, daring me to call her a liar.
Thing is, it doesn’t seem like she’s lying. It seems like she means it. Obviously she isn’t accounting for Sin because he came after the pregnancy, but still, two men in one year? “You don’t get out much, do you?”
Laurel rolls her eyes at me. “I don’t bang every guy I go out with. Some of them are boring. Some of them are rude. Some of them are on their phone the whole time we’re out. Not every date is a home run. In fact, I’m starting to think that unless a man is capable of murder and mayhem, I’m not even interested. I’m not sure what’s wrong with me.”
I can’t help grinning at that. “You like men who play by their own rules; nothing wrong with that. You’ve certainly come to the right place, kitten.”
She used to derive pleasure from that little nickname, but now it makes her solemn. “Coming here was a mistake. I don’t even know why I did it.”
“Sure you do,” I tell her, taking a step closer. She retreats a step in response, but only succeeds in backing herself up against the wall. I hear her swallow and she looks down and away, determined not to look at me. I go on anyway. “You came here because you liked me, because maybe you kinda missed me, and then this happened.” Now I reach forward, placing the palm of my hand over her abdomen. “Then you had the perfect reason to come see me again. If I hadn’t been happy to see you just for a visit, you had a cover story, to preserve your pride.”
“I came here because I met a handsome prince at an enchanted castle, but it turns out he was just a frog in a nice suit,” she informs me, sliding along the wall until there’s nothing but the empty space of the hallway behind her. Then she sidles away like she has to keep an eye on me so I don’t pounce and backs toward the kitchen. “I’m going to check on dinner.”
“Just flies for me, right?”
A reluctant smile claims her lips and she shakes her head at me before disappearing into the kitchen.
22
Laurel
Sin’s back is to me when I find him in the kitchen. He doesn’t even look like he’s doing anything, just standing at the counter, drumming his fingers on the granite surface. I attempt to sneak up behind him, sliding my hands around his waist and pressing myself against his back.
He glances back at me, his mouth tugged up in a faint smirk. “What are you doing?”
“Feeling you up,” I state, running my hands down the soft fabric of his black t-shirt, pressing my fingers against the grooves of his chiseled abdomen. “What are you doing? Hiding in the kitchen?”
His fingers close around my wrist, moving my hands so he can turn. At least he puts them back once he’s facing me, so he must not mind me feeling him up. “What would I be hiding from?”
“I don’t know. You left me alone with him.”
I hear the words as soon as they’re out of my mouth and I want to call them back. Sin’s gaze drops and he offers a smile that doesn’t quite ring true. “Do you need a babysitter around Rafe?”
Logically, I would like to point out that the last time I didn’t have one, he got me pregnant. On an emotional level though, all I want to do is wipe whatever that look is off Sin’s face, so I shake my head, more blasé than I probably have reason to be. “Of course not. But I made this dinner for you, not him. You shouldn’t be hiding in the kitchen. If you don’t want him here, tell him to leave.”
“Nah, he’d like that,” Sin tells me.
Sighing, I shake my head at him. “You guys with all your mental thrust and parry.”
A more authentic smile steals across Sin’s face and he rests his hands on my hips, tugging me closer. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Thrust and parry. Like in fencing. One thrusts their weapon; their opponent blocks the blade or changes direction.”
“This may shock you to your very core, but I don’t know the first thing about fencing.”
“Well, now you do,” I tell him. “Anyway, my point was, you guys are being competitive with one another.”
“Rafe likes competition.”
“Do you?”
He glances past me—not noticeably, just a flicker of his attention that I only detect because his hold on my hips shifts. His eyes never actually leave the general vicinity of my face, but now he leans forward and gives me a kiss on the forehead. “No,” he murmurs.
Given the shift in him, I’m not surprised when I sense movement behind me.
&nb
sp; “Whatever you’re cooking smells delicious,” Rafe announces.
I turn to face Rafe, but Sin keeps his hands on my hips and pulls me back against him. Rafe’s gaze floats past me to Sin, but when I speak, his attention returns to me. I remember those few days not so long ago when his attention felt like basking in sunlight, but that was when I thought he was nice—to me, at least. I knew he wasn’t nice to the world in general, but as long as he was nice to me, then I could enjoy him.
Now I’m more attuned to the way Sin’s fingers dig into my skin like he’s tense, and I don’t want him to be tense. If Rafe being here makes him feel that way, I want Rafe to leave.
I suppose it would be nicest if we all got along and had a nice dinner, though. I’ll try at diplomacy. Rafe is Sin’s boss, after all.
“I’m baking chicken. It’s really good. Then for dessert, I’m making brookies.”
“Brookies?” Amusement flashes across Rafe’s face. “I heard talk of a different dessert menu.”
“That menu is only for me,” Sin states.
“Is it?” Rafe asks, cocking his head. “I certainly tasted it first.”
Since I’m not in the loop and it feels like they’re thrusting and parrying again, I interject, “Yes, well, we’re having brookies. Have you had a brookie before?”
Shaking his head, Rafe says, “I don’t eat many sweets.” Flashing a brief smile, he adds, “I’ll eat yours, though.”
“They’ll change your life,” I promise him.
“They already have,” he mutters dryly.
Since they’re clearly engaging in double-talk, I throw out some of my own, “Are we going to go all night? Or should we maybe exercise friendliness through dinner?”
“I’m being friendly,” Rafe insists.
“You’re being you,” I correct.
“Well, you used to think I was pretty friendly,” he reminds me.
