by Mia Malone
Gibson started laughing again, and Lee’s head whipped around so she could glare at him.
“Maybe I do,” she said sourly.
Gibson got up quickly, leaned down to pick her off the ground and place her over his shoulder. Then he started walking toward the dock. Lee began squirming when she got what he would do, but he just kept walking.
“Joke! Wanna give me a hand here?” he called out.
Joke grinned and followed them. Lee squealed out something which sounded like a protest, although she had started laughing too, and then Joke calmly slapped her on the butt. As we watched in stunned silence, Gib twisted her around and threw her into the cold water. Then he turned to say something to Joke. They both grinned and jumped in after her.
“Earbud time,” Day sighed.
“Are they going to –”
Mac cut himself off and looked at me for some reason.
“I don’t want to know,” I said primly.
When Paddy joined me in our tent, he was laughing. There was apparently a pile of wet clothes on the dock and three more or less naked individuals still in the lake.
“I really wish she hadn’t picked my brother for their kink,” I muttered. “I would have enjoyed the visuals a whole lot more then.”
“Yeah?” Paddy said as he stripped off his clothes.
I recognized how his voice had deepened and become a little hoarse and when he pulled off his briefs his hard cock told me what I already knew.
“I want to take you into my mouth,” I murmured, still looking at his crotch.
“Not gonna say no to that, babe,” he murmured and crawled up to lie down next to me.
I moved down between his legs and took hold of him with one hand, pumping slowly. He widened his legs with a soft groan, and I let my other hand slide up his thigh, pushing him to raise his legs a little more and plant his feet on the ground. He hissed softly when I slid my tongue over the slit at the tip and started to move. At first, I used my hand as well as my mouth, but after a while, I was so turned on I had to move it down to between my legs.
“That’s right, Jenny. Make yourself come while you suck me. I wanna feel your moans on my cock while you take me.”
We'd left a small lamp on, and the light was warm and soft. The night was quiet, and the only thing I heard was his low rhythmic grunts as I bobbed my head up and down. He guided my pace, so I let my hand slowly slide in between his legs to cup his balls, caressing them gently.
“Jenny,” he ground out, but he widened his legs just a little bit more.
I was so turned on I couldn't hold my low throaty moans back, and my fingers slid through the wetness between my legs, gliding over my swollen clit. Paddy tilted his head back, the grunts he made every time I sucked him into me got louder, and he started rocking his hips. I knew he was close to coming when he tried to pull me up toward him, so I let go of his cock and whispered, “Come in my mouth, Padraig.”
“Oh, God,” he rasped out but stayed up on his elbows and didn’t try to move me.
I took him all the way down my throat, and his hips started bucking again when I increased the pace and sucked him harder. I still had one hand on his balls and moved my fingers over my clit, and then it was happening. I came in long, hot gushes of warmth, moaning loudly around him. He was watching me and through the blurry waves, our eyes locked.
“Love you, Jenny,” he ground out.
I moaned again, and he tilted his head back. Every pull I made on his cock made him groan loudly but we were both too far gone to care.
Then he came and if the others hadn’t heard him before they did then. His hips bucked jerkily, and I felt hot spurts shoot down my throat. Watching his face go hard and then completely slack as I swallowed was so hot that I felt another wave of heat wash over me. I moved my hand, and as he came down, I orgasmed again, moaning and grunting around him.
Too sated to move, I just stayed where I was, resting my head on his thigh until he knifed up and put his hands under my armpits to pull me up over him.
“God, Jenny,” he murmured. “Each time it's the best I've ever had, and each time it's getting better. You're gonna kill me eventually.”
“But what a way to go,” I chuckled.
He started laughing and reached up to turn off the light. Then he shifted us around, settled into my back and nuzzled my neck.
“I love you, Padraig,” I murmured into the darkness.
“Love you too, Jenny,” he answered sleepily.
I fell asleep smiling.
***
Padraig
He woke up with his hard cock pressed against Jenny’s behind, and lay there in silence for a while, inhaling her scent and feeling the tug of happiness he felt every morning he woke up with her.
Perhaps he should have made a move all those years ago. Perhaps she should have. Perhaps the time hadn’t been right back then, but it was now. She was with him, and the ring he’d bought would be on her finger the second they reached Wilhelmine that evening. The pale green emerald would look good on her.
Jenny moved a little, pressing her behind against him in a way that told him what she wanted even if she wasn't fully awake yet, so he moved her leg up and slid inside. The feeling of her around him was heaven, and he wondered if he'd ever get enough of her.
“Padraig,” she murmured sleepily, and he knew that even when he was too old to do what they did right then, he’d still want to hear her saying his name, just like that.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” he mumbled and started moving slowly.
He moved his hand over her, and when they came, it was soft and so full of love he had to close his eyes.
“Did you put a condom on?” she asked.
“No.”
“We’re in a tent. How am I going to clean up?”
He started grinning and slid out of her.
“I’ll go start breakfast,” he said and dug around for his clothes.
She looked at him disgruntledly, and his grin widened into a smile. Then he knew the time to ask her was just right then and there.
“Will you marry me, Jenny?” he murmured.
“Yes,” she said instantly.
He crawled back and kissed her and felt her smiling into the kiss.
“I didn’t bring the ring up here,” he said against her lips. “You’ll get it tonight.”
“Okay.”
“I love you.”
“Oh, Padraig,” she said in a way that made his heart skip a beat. “I love you so much.”
Chapter Seventeen
Padraig
He walked over to where they'd been sitting the evening before and saw they'd missed quite a few of the pieces of papers they'd written on. It wouldn't do to leave them lying around, so he started picking them up. Gibson had apparently had a thing for a big-breasted cheerleader a few years their senior. He'd remind him of that the next time they went to the UPS delivery center where the woman who now was a chubby, polyester-wearing grandmother worked. Paddy grinned when he saw his name on Jenny's note. She hadn't even been ten when he started getting himself off, so her name wasn't on his paper, and he sure wasn't telling anyone he’d had the same name as Joke on it. She’d been hot in those black spandex things, though.
“I’ll wake the others up,” Jenny said behind him.
She walked over and looked in Joke’s tent and turned to him with brows raised.
“Maybe he got up early to make coffee?”
“When did Joke ever go up early?”
This was true. Paddy wasn’t big on rolling out of bead at the crack of dawn, but Joke was even worse. Before they could have an argument on who should go and wake Lee and Gibson, and possibly Joke, up, the man himself came strolling.
“You’re up already?” Jenny asked with a smirk.
“Yup,” Joke said and stretched.
Lee and Gibson came walking along the lake, and Mac poked his head out through the opening in his tent.
“Who’s making coffee?” he
muttered.
“We’re on it,” Jenny said and twitched her head toward her brother.
Paddy looked at Gibson as they walked up to him. He recognized the lazy, sated look in his friend’s eyes, mostly because he probably had the same in his own. And Joke had had it too, he realized.
“Fuck it,” he grunted. “I gotta ask. You’re seriously doing a threesome?”
“Technically, we don’t,” Gibson said calmly.
“Technically you don’t.”
What in the hell did that mean? He held Gibson's eyes and they slowly filled with humor.
“There might have been some hands involved.”
What did that even – he cut his own thoughts off and shook his head.
“Changed my mind, I don’t wanna know.”
“Good, cause I’m not talking.”
“Pad,” Lee cut in softly. “Joke’s a good man. He’s gorgeous… and lonely. When he meets someone, we’ll stop. Unless –”
“Jesus,” Paddy interrupted. “Now I seriously don’t wanna know. Fuck, you’re getting kinky in your old age.”
Their laughter echoed behind him as he walked away to wash his face in the lake. The water was frigid, and he couldn’t help thinking that it was a fucking miracle either of the men had managed to get anything up after swimming in it.
His phone suddenly buzzed in his pocket, and he answered because Doug’s name was showing on the screen. The Wolves MC had apparently cleaned house, and in addition to the man who they'd caught betraying his brethren, another one had been involved. He had not participated, but he’d known what was going on and not told Doug about it, so the inner circle of the Wolf-brethren had voted, and his ass was unanimously tossed to the curb. The huge wolf they all had inked into their backs would hurt like hell to blacken out, Paddy thought.
“You’re good?” Doug asked. “Jenny okay?”
“Yeah,” Paddy sighed. “We’re both good. Jenny’s doing fine. Better than me in many ways.”
“She’s a strong woman.”
Yeah,” Paddy agreed. “She moved in with me,” he added, just in case Doug still had any ideas about Jenny.
“Great fucking news,” Doug said. “You don’t owe me a marker for that one, Paddy.”
The way he said it caught Paddy’s attention and he suddenly realized what Doug had done. He still had to ask.
“You never wanted her?”
“Wouldn’t have minded at all, but no, I didn’t. One of my men said she mumbled your name in her sleep. Figured someone needed to kick your ass into gear.”
“You played me,” Paddy stated, not entirely sure if what he'd just heard was a good thing or an insult.
“Big time.”
“What would you have done if I hadn’t gone after her like I did?”
“As I said, wouldn’t have minded, but a woman like her? I knew that once you got your hands on her, you’d never let her slip away.”
Paddy looked out over the lake and grinned. Jesus, the man was one crazy bastard, but he owed him hugely for what he’d done.
“You’re right about that, Doug,” he said. “And now that I have her, I’ll never let her go.”
A reminder –
If you enjoyed Padraig’s story, please, please, please remember to support the series.
Put a short review of it wherever you can (The store you got it from, Goodreads, etc), tell your friends about this book, and pre-order Book #3…
Thank you heaps and bunches for your support!
XOXO/Mia
Now I’ll let you flip the page to read the first part of Joke…
The Brothers, Book 3 - JOKE
Reaching for the stars
“I made it!”
Tears were running down my cheeks as I jumped off the lift and started skating toward my mom and dad. They turned, and I was too far away for them to hear what I said but they saw my face, and they knew.
I’d made the national team.
“Baby,” Mom whispered into my neck. “We’re so happy for you.”
“I’m happy for me too,” I squealed. “I’ll be here for two more weeks and then…”
I blabbered on about training camps and fittings for clothes and how a few of the other girls on the team had already texted me their congratulations. My parents smiled and through my gloriously exuberant eighteen-year-old joy I saw theirs, quieter and calmer but running just as deep.
This was what I’d lived for the past eight years. I’d pushed myself until I threw up, literally and disgustingly, and just kept going, because of my love for what I did and the desire to see how far my talent would take me.
And I made it.
I was going to the Olympics.
“Let’s go down for a long lunch,” Dad said. “Celebrate.”
“I just want to go for a quick run first,” I said, laughed again and added, “A victory run.”
“You deserve one,” Mom said. “We’ll go get a table and call the others.”
They waved when they started to turn toward the easy way down to the base, and I waved back at them as I kicked off and started making my way down the slope. The season was in full swing, but I had skied this mountain my whole life and there were places only I knew about. Just at a corner where the slope narrowed, and most skiers stopped to look at the magnificent view, I turned off the groomed areas and into the trees.
I was singing as made my way down through an area I’d skied the first time at the age of five. I knew the path well, so as I moved my skis to the rhythm of our national anthem, I saw myself bending down to let an elderly man hang a gold medal around my throat. I was going to the Olympics, representing my country, and myself, and life was perfect right then, so I laughed through the words as I belted them out.
I didn’t hear him.
Didn’t see him.
The steel pipe hit my right knee hard enough to throw me to the side and I screamed from a sharp pain which had started in my leg but radiated through my whole being.
“You shouldn’t have said no,” he whispered behind the balaclava.
Then he raised the pipe again.
“No,” I screamed. “Not my leg!” I tried feebly to put my hands over the already destroyed knee in a pathetic attempt at protecting it. “Not my leg. Please. Please…”
It took me four hours to crawl down the mountain, and then I reached the slope.
Everything was blurry after that, but they told me later, all I did was scream.
“Not my leg!”
Living with it
“Okay, mommy,” Cady said quietly.
I looked at my daughter’s face and felt like crying. I’d just upended our plans to go to her beloved grandparents for the summer, and that was all she said. She was six years old and had already learnt that our lives were partly controlled by that man. My husband hadn’t wanted to tell her about him, but he’d made threats and I had argued that she had to know. We couldn’t just tell her to never talk to strangers like other parents did.
She had to know, because not knowing what he could do had already taken too much away from me.
“Oh, honey,” I murmured soothingly. “Mommy will figure something out. Promise.”
“Okay,” she repeated.
“Love you, Lady-Cady,” I whispered, and she giggled at the nickname, like I’d known she would. “Goodnight, sweetie,” I added and left the room before I started crying.
My husband walked through the door with his phone at his ear and a bunch of papers in his hand just as I closed the door to our two-year-old daughter’s room. He was talking to someone and it sounded like business, so I went into the kitchen to get his dinner out of the fridge and into the oven.
He was still on the phone when I put the plate in front of him on the dinner table and he smiled up at me, mouthing, “Thank you.”
I watched the garden until I heard him put the phone down.
“Rough day?” he asked.
I pressed my lips together for a second and then I turned.
/>
“He was released this morning.”
“I thought he’d be in there until November.”
Dante’s face had hardened.
“Good behavior. His mother was there, apparently, crying about how she needed him. He got out early.”
Dante swore under his breath, and I watched him calmly, wishing I’d not agreed to stay away from the parole hearing.”
“Right,” he said. “I guess you and the girls aren’t going to your parents for the summer?”
“No.”
“You could still go, Louisa.”
“No.”
We couldn’t go home. Not when that man was there. He’d threatened to harm my girls the last time I saw him, so we couldn’t.
“You’ll stay here?”
He looked unhappy, and I knew he wanted to avoid the madness following me into our lives, haunting us until something happened. Something which usually was unpleasant but put the man back in prison so we could breathe freely for a little while.
“If it’s okay with you…” I trailed off, wishing he’d agree but still hoping he wouldn’t.
“What?”
“I was thinking that the girls and I could go to my grandparents. Mom and Dad could come too.”
“Norway?”
“Yeah. Except, you –”
“I’ll be fine. I can’t get away more than a week, maybe two. I’ll just go sailing with Brad and Dominique instead, they asked about it the other day.”
Brad and Dominique had asked him to go sailing with them? They knew we were going to my parents for the summer and he’d travel back and forth to see us.
“Okay,” I said because what else was there to say?
The invite had clearly not been for our children, and as a consequence, not for me.
“Okay,” he echoed. “I’ll text them,” he added and picked up his phone.
The fact that Norway wasn’t the end of the world so travelling there wasn’t exactly impossible didn’t seem to register with him, although I knew he’d prefer going on the yacht with our friends and whoever they brought along. Spending time in another country where he didn’t speak the language, the food was strange, and the main attraction was walking up and down a mountain wasn’t his thing at all.
