by Drew Elyse
Whatever the fuck that other shit was.
Leaning down, I captured one of her nipples between my lips. Her body jerked, pulling her torso down, but I chased my prize. After the shock, her hand threaded into my hair, holding on while I gave each nipple the attention they deserved.
Reaching down, I ran my fingers along her stomach and buried them in her pussy. She was already wet for me, just from that bit of attention. Still, I rubbed her clit until her hips churned against my hand.
“Please, Daz,” she moaned.
Like I could deny that.
On my knees, I moved between her spread thighs and reached for the nightstand where I’d unloaded the condoms the night before while I covered her and took her mouth. Blindly feeling around the wood surface, I came up empty.
Then, I remembered ripping open the last one while Avery knelt there with her ass in the air, waiting for me to get behind her and fuck her good.
“Shit,” I muttered against her mouth.
“What?”
“Out of condoms.”
I leaned up, bringing my hand back to her pussy and filling her with two fingers. We’d just have to get creative.
“You’re clean?”
I froze, my fingers stopping their ministrations.
Was she going there?
“Yeah, babe.”
“You’re sure?” she pressed.
“Wrap up every time. Get tested. I’m clean.”
“Then we’re good.”
Holy shit.
“You sure, babe? We don’t have to. I can eat you ’til you come on my face.”
Her eyes fixed on mine. There was a haze of the desire I was building up in her, but not too much for me to see she knew the weight of what we were discussing.
“I’m sure.”
Fuck. My dick was already fixing to burst at the thought of going ungloved.
I hadn’t done that since I was a reckless teenager. One pregnancy scare senior year was all it took to solidify my attachment to condoms.
“But if this is going to be a thing, you’re only with me for as long as this lasts,” she stated unequivocally.
That statement should have shut me down and sent me packing. It didn’t. Having Avery in bed only two nights already made it clear there wasn’t another woman who was going to do until what we had ran its course. She burned too hot, was too fucking sweet, for me to be satisfied with anything else.
“Done.”
She studied me for a long time, looking for some sign I was bullshitting her. I wasn’t. We’d play it out, fuck each other senseless until the fire burned out. If she was going to let me do that feeling all of her, giving up mere distractions that weren’t going to begin to slake my thirst was easy enough.
“Okay,” she surrendered.
Unable to contain myself any longer, I wrapped both her legs around me and buried my cock inside her.
Christ, she was hot. So hot and wet and unlike anything I’d ever felt.
I could hardly tell whether I wanted to blow on the first thrust or keep myself right for the rest of my natural life.
Avery’s arms lifted above her head again, this time to press against the headboard and grind down against me. It wasn’t subtle, and I was more than happy to give her what she wanted. Grabbing onto her hips, I started moving hard and fast, grinding her down on my cock to drive in as deep as possible.
“Yes,” she sighed.
Yes. Fuck yes.
I gave her my all, letting loose and fucking her hard enough that she’d feel me even after I was gone. All the while, her pussy gripped me tight enough that I knew I’d be aching for more all damn day.
It didn’t take either of us long. When I felt her tightening, ready to go and taking me close enough I had to bite down on my tongue to keep from blowing, I moved my hand between us and strummed her clit until it happened.
The first pulse of her around my cock set me off. The release was blinding. There was no sight or sound, just her tight fucking pussy milking me for everything I had, wringing me dry.
I’d never come so hard in my life.
As we laid there, her limbs wrapped around me and my cock still snug inside her, my only thought was fuck yeah, I can definitely live with just this.
“Not a good idea, babe,” I told Ember over the phone.
I looked over to Kate in the passenger seat. She was facing straight ahead, her expression completely vacant. Yeah, a “welcome home" party was anything but a good fucking idea.
It was good getting some amount of response from Kate yesterday, but asking more of her today was too much. Today, she was moving into a home that wasn’t the one she and her husband had made. She might have left yesterday, but only to stay in a hotel. There was no permanence to that. Unpacking at the farmhouse was real in a way she wasn’t going to be able to avoid, and she knew it.
“We just want them to know they're welcome,” Ember explained.
I knew that. It’d been said more than once since I’d started sharing the news that I’d be bringing them back with me, it’d been repeated the night before at the clubhouse, but, most importantly, it had been made really fucking clear with the way they had set up rooms so Kate and Owen could settle right in.
Kate would get that when I explained, which was something I might have been waiting on until she was in a better frame of mind to hear it. Owen would feel that fact whenever he first got to be around the whole crew, particularly when the women started fawning over him. A party would just put Kate on the spot and stress her out.
“Get that, and they will too,” I assured Ember, “but now isn’t a good time.”
She caught what I was trying to avoid saying outright with Kate right fucking there.
“She’s not doing well,” she surmised.
“Would you be?”
“I know I wouldn’t,” Ember said in a haunted voice, and I felt like the lowest motherfucker. I hadn’t meant to be a dick. It didn’t even come to my mind that she—and all of us—had come way too fucking close to losing Jager.
“Shit. I’m sorry.”
“I know you didn’t mean anything by it,” she replied, her voice significantly lighter, but not quite back to normal. “Even I forget about it sometimes. Things are so good, it’s easy to put it in the past.”
Christ, I hoped like fuck Kate could find her way to something even close to that.
I hoped I could too.
My mind strayed back to being in bed with Avery that morning—waking with the fucking sun and going back to sleep curled around her like I wasn’t in the midst of the worst time of my life.
Hold on to that one, fucker.
I nearly slammed on the fucking brakes in the middle of the highway. That was Joel’s voice, plain as fucking day. Like his ass was in the seat beside me handing me shit.
Fuck, now I was losing it.
“Daz, you okay?” Ember called through the phone.
No. I was anything but fucking okay. But even if I wanted to tell Ember about that shit, I couldn’t with Kate sitting there.
“Yeah, fine. Sorry.”
“I promise, I’m good. Don’t go beating yourself up, you big fucking softy,” she teased.
She had no idea.
“I’ll show you soft.”
Ember laughed. “Goodbye, Razzle Dazzle.” Then, she hung up.
I tossed my phone in the cup holder, all too aware of the fact that we were in one of the cars the guys loaned out at the shop when someone’s ride was getting repaired. I fucking hated being in cars. It caught me a lot of flack come winter every year, but I didn’t even have one. There was something about being confined to that tiny fucking space that did my head in. Goddamn cages on wheels.
Being trapped with my widowed sister-in-law, nephew, and the knowledge that I was losing my fucking mind and hearing my dead brother’s voice in my head?
That shit was unbearable.
I was so in my head, I could only guess about ten minutes had passed based on how far we traveled b
efore Kate spoke, surprising the hell out of me.
“Who was that on the phone?”
I didn’t want to talk, seriously wasn’t in the head space, but I had to suck it up and be encouraging when she made an effort.
“Ember. One of the brother’s women. You remember Roadrunner?” I watched from the corner of my eye as she nodded. “She’s also his daughter.”
No reaction to that, but I pushed myself to see if I could keep her talking.
“She and the other women—with some help from the guys—they redid two of the rooms for you and Owen.”
“They…” she just trailed off, and I thought she’d checked back out. Looking her way, I saw I was wrong. She had tears moving slowly down her face.
Fuck.
“Katie,” I tried to calm her down, “it’s not a big deal.”
“They did that for us,” she whispered.
I couldn’t make heads or tails of her tone, so I just confirmed, “Yeah, they did.”
“Why?”
Why? Why wouldn’t they? They knew what Kate and Owen lost. What I lost. They knew the last thing the three of us needed was to deal with decorating rooms in a place that was a constant reminder they weren’t at home anymore.
I didn’t say any of that, but I said fucking all of it when I responded. “Because they’re family.”
“Most of them have never met us,” she pointed out.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“But—”
“They know you’re my family,” I cut in. “That makes you theirs. Simple as that.”
“That doesn’t sound simple at all.”
She wasn’t wrong.
Giving all that to people they hadn’t met—my family or not—was anything but small and insignificant. It was also just the way of our world.
In time, she’d come to understand that.
“Dis ma room?” Owen asked, wandering in.
Kate froze in the doorway behind me, her hands coming up to cover her mouth as her eyes watered.
I hadn’t made it back to the farmhouse the night before, so it was my first time seeing the room they’d put together. I should’ve known they’d go way over the top.
Fuck, I’d helped do the same when Ash and Emmy moved in.
“Yeah, little man, this is your room.”
He ran off to explore right away, heading for the bed first. Beside it, he turned around to me, pointed at it, and squealed, “Paw ‘trol!”
What he meant—I’d learned after trying to figure out what toy he’d been talking about—was Paw Patrol. According to Sketch, it was a show where these dogs run around being first responders or something like that. It was also hot shit among the ankle-biter crowd.
The blanket on his new bed was a giant picture of some of the dogs all geared up to save people—or other dogs? I had no fucking clue. All I knew was Owen’s reaction to a blanket made it pretty clear he was excited.
He was also three, so he was distracted by the cube shaped shelves on one wall that were meant for toys. This kept his attention longer since there were actually a few new toys shelved there for him. They hadn’t just put together a room with kid friendly furniture and decorations, and painted over the pink walls with a light blue, they’d also gotten those things for him to make sure he’d be thrilled about the new space.
I looked back to Kate to find her eyes fixed on one of the walls. There, in a frame, was a picture of Owen with Joel.
Kate took a few slow steps backwards out of the doorway, then turned to bolt. Hoping Owen was going to be fine in there on his own, I chased after her. Luckily, I was faster and got ahold of her arm before she got very far.
Without saying anything, for fear of setting her off, I pulled her into her own room next door. She hadn’t been inside yet. I'd just pointed to the door as we walked past it to go to Owen’s. As soon as we stepped in, I noticed the frame on the dresser.
Fuck. I should have come here before bringing them. What the fuck had they been thinking putting out pictures of Joel like that?
Where the fuck had they even gotten them? Kate posted a lot of shit, but Joel made sure it was all locked just for friends to see.
Jager. That fucker could hack into anything. He probably could have gotten the files right off their computers, let alone gotten into my accounts to see what Kate had posted. And it probably only took the motherfucker minutes to pull it off.
After closing the door, I moved away from Kate to grab the frame and take it down before it upset her too. The one they’d chosen was of Joel asleep on the couch with a newborn Owen knocked out on his chest. I started to lay the frame flat so the picture wasn’t on display when Kate spoke.
“No. Don’t take it.”
Wait. What?
She came over, taking the picture from my hand to look at it. Her fingers moved across the glass over the image reverently.
“We were so tired when we first brought Owen home from the hospital, but he never got cranky,” she whispered. “He was just so happy we had our little boy.”
Holy shit. She was actually talking about him.
I didn’t speak, didn't move, I barely fucking took a breath for fear of spooking her out of whatever place she’d gone to in her mind.
“Owen would wake up crying in the middle of the night, and he’d get out of bed with a smile on his face to check on him.” She gave a sound that was as much a sob as it was a chuckle. “It was crazy. He was crazy. I was barely holding it together, and he was smiling even though our baby was wailing after only getting an hour worth of sleep. Who does that?”
Joel. Joel did that. Because she was right. He’d never been happier than when they had Owen. He’d ridden that high from the day Kate told him she was pregnant. Him and the wife he fucking adored were growing their family. It was his dream come true, and he made no qualms about letting everyone know that.
“He spent so much time talking about all the things we were going to do with Owen. All the places he wanted to take him. Fun things like Disneyworld and shit we never got to do as kids. He was going to be the best father.”
She took a shaky breath as her tears came faster. “But now, he won’t get to do any of it. Not with Owen, not with any of the other kids he wanted to have that will never be.” She looked up at me, her face a mask of devastation I recognized. It lived inside me too. “How is that fair?”
“It’s not. It’s not fuckin’ fair at all.”
She pulled that picture close to her chest, hugging that bit of Joel she could hold onto and dissolved into sobs. I moved in and hugged her, giving her time to let it all out.
This was what she needed. Any thoughts of being pissed left. I wouldn’t have thought it was the right call, but someone else knew. I was guessing it was Ash, who knew exactly what this grief felt like after losing her dad.
I fucking owed her.
“Don’t take him away,” Kate finally said when her tears slowed. “I thought we needed to take him away, but I was wrong. I need him.”
“I swear, Katie. I won’t take him away from you.”
Her whole body seemed to give out, barely allowing me the chance to catch her before she hit the ground. Lifting her up, I carried her to the bed and lay her there. I sat with her another minute, keeping an ear open in case Owen needed anything.
While I did, Kate fell asleep, that picture still held tight in her arms.
“I’ll scope some out from our suppliers and get back to you with items and prices,” Roy said, scratching out a seemingly illegible note to himself.
He and Daz were discussing ordering new glassware for ladies’ nights. We’d never needed things like martini glasses much in the past, or tube-shaped shot glasses, but adjusting to the change of a female clientele was making certain upgrades necessary to keep the hype up.
We were having an impromptu meeting now that Daz was back. I was surprised by how well behaved Daz was being in front of Roy given he’d never bothered before. When he was still trying to get in my pa
nts, there was no filter at all. Now that the deed had been done—repeatedly—he actually found some sense of propriety.
Too little too late since Roy had been the one to call me in the night before when Daz was drunk—something I hadn’t confirmed, but I was guessing was because Daz offered up my name—and no doubt was aware the boss left with me. If anything, him playing it cool now only made it more obvious.
Of course, Roy was giving nothing away either, so what he knew—or thought he knew—was his secret.
“Good. Anything else?” Daz, all business, asked us both. Neither of us spoke up. “All right. What’s going on with the asshole who kept calling?”
“Stopped,” Roy responded. That, I hadn’t known. “Had everyone on the bar keeping a log. Last one that came in unless one of the dancers answered the line after we told them to stay off was when Avery picked up and told him off.”
Daz looked my way. There wasn’t any menace to his look or voice, just curiosity when he asked, “You did what?”
“I just told him to stop. That he could come see the show or call a sex line, but harassing our girls was just going to get him in trouble.”
Daz started laughing, and I had no idea why until he muttered, “A sex line.”
Oh shit. That was the same thing I had said to him the first night he called.
Roy, not getting that part, tacked on, “She failed to mention that she got all mafioso on him. I thought she was gearing up to threaten he’d be sleeping with the fishes.”
That made Daz laugh harder.
“Yes, yes. It was hilarious.” The sarcasm was strong with those words. “Are we done here?”
Daz, the mirth still on his face, declared, “We’re done.”
Roy got to his feet, reaching into the box I’d set on the table to grab another cupcake before he got back to work. “I need to get in touch with your source about a cake for Sheila’s birthday next month.”
That set Daz back to laughing. “Yeah, I know all about her fuckin' source now. Thanks for your help on that, by the way.”
“Damn. What am I going to hold over his head now?” Roy asked me.
“Looks. Brains. A personality that doesn’t make everyone around you homicidal?” I suggested.
