“You’re not helping,” she sniped. Her face screamed irritation.
What the hell? In what universe did a simple compliment earn such a stern reaction? Beast sat down and scratched his head in confusion. Bewildered, he managed an inarticulate, ‘Uhh...’ And that was it.
She wrenched her hands from beneath his and started off on an emotional rant with all kinds of arm waving and lip biting. He was transfixed by the sight of his normally cool, calm and collected wife having a hissy fit.
“Goddammit, Alex! Why do you have to be so…you? I mean, come on! I’m only human and there’s just so much a hormonal mess like me can take.”
He blinked but that was all he had.
“Why the hell do you have to be so damn sexy all the time? So, I don’t know,” she grated out with a dismissive wave. “Fuckable? Is that the right word?”
Er, uh…what? Even beast had nothing.
“You’re driving me crazy,” she spat. “I’m horny all the damn time. Well, I’m always horny but this is different and I can’t take it anymore.”
He’d never seen her talk with her hands before. She said making a point with words was a teacher trait. So watching her arms wave and her hands waggle as she spouted off was somewhere between amusing and hot. He liked her passion. It excited him.
Beast snickered and wandered off for the time being, leaving him to it.
“I mean, shit! It starts the second my eyes open. Where’s Alex? I feel like an oversexed heat seeking missile.”
Well, hello! “So being morning-horny is the problem? Is this why I wake up and find you massaging my dick?”
“No,” she bit out. “It’s because I’m bored and have nothing better to do.”
Note to self—don’t try to be funny when she’s on a roll.
“Alex!”
Yep, yep, yep. There was that snotty teacher tone. The one that acted like a Pavlovian command on his dick.
“Don’t you find it odd that I’m sexting you in the middle of every day?”
Actually, he found it incredibly cute. “I still don’t understand. Don’t I drop everything and make love to you?”
“Yes!” she screeched. “See? That’s what I’m talking about.”
Okay. Come on. This was getting ridiculous. Does she hear herself when she talks?
“I don’t always want you to make love to me.”
Hold up. “Sorry?”
She wrapped her hands jokingly around his neck and started playfully shaking him. “Oh my God! Don’t you get it? Alex, baby! Sometimes I just want you to fuck me. And not in a polite way. I need you to do that thing you do, husband. Stop with all the polite shit. The way we are can’t suddenly stop because you put a baby inside me. Don’t you see that? I don’t know which way is up if you start changing things.”
Her words were like a blast of cool, clean air that cut through some of the cloudy concerns and doubts littering his mind.
“I’m so lucky,” she said with a perplexing sigh. “Blessed doesn’t even cover it. We talk about this, me and the girls.” Her head nodded and her face displayed the seriousness of the subject. “I mean, shit. The family center idea is the direct result of knowing how easy we all have it.”
The passion in her eyes told him a lot about her true character. He was married to the real deal.
“We never worry about a ton of practical stuff that consumes the lives of the people we’re trying to help. Honey,” she ground out in a droll but serious tone. “I don’t do the grocery shopping. Someone does our laundry and makes the bed. The girls never worry about babysitters. Don’t feel like driving? No problem! Ben is always happy to play chauffeur. And thank god for Ria and Carmen because without them you’d be a food poisoning victim and eating a lot of unpalatable crap.”
His grin showed that he got her point. Especially the last one. His beauty couldn’t cook from scratch worth a damn.
“So all that’s nice and everything but it leaves me feeling like there’s nothing for me to do. I want to be the one seeing to all your needs.”
Oh. They’d talked about this before. He saw all those things as a bonus—for him. Meant that her time was spent on him and he was one hundred percent fine with that.
She shot him an adorable smirk. “Which, I believe, is what the handbook calls a natural submissive’s number one quality.”
A booming spontaneous laugh—his—shook the car. She frowned at him the way wives do. To him, what she said was funny as shit.
“Oh,” he drawled with a ton of smirk. “Admitting to having the handbook? Cool. Means we’re making progress. Soon I’ll have a little tiny lower case ‘s’ added to your sexy tattoo. Thanks for using the words, baby.”
She smacked him playfully on the arm and screeched, “I’m being serious.”
“So am I,” he chuckled. “Meghan, shit. I don’t want you to struggle about this. If you need to do a few loads of laundry, I’m cool with that.”
He totally got it and couldn’t believe how stupid he was. She had enough on her plate just being pregnant. Any altering to the unique dynamic was going to throw her. She didn’t need less from him. She needed more.
“And I don’t like it when you take my shit,” she pouted with a cute harrumph. “It’s unsettling.”
The challenge he faced got whittled down into one manageable piece. The circumstances may be altered but the dynamic remained and hearing his wife say she needed it was incredibly humbling.
What required adjustment was how he went about caring for his devoted paramour and partner. She didn’t want things to change. At all. He was okay with that. More than okay. Relieved.
But she was pregnant and that basic fact required serious focus and attention. On his part. In the roles they’d carved out he was given the responsibility of not just protecting her but guiding her, guiding them both, on this extraordinary journey of emotion and the senses that they were on.
He breathed her in. Tasted the essence of his amazing Irish Goddess. Looking her over with eyes seeking clues to her inevitable seduction, he found her staring back at him with stark longing in her expression.
His growl rumbled low and deep. Her eyes immediately snapped to his. Practically drowning in the desire he felt rolling from her in huge, turbulent waves, he bared his teeth and dropped his eyelids like a predator finding its target.
She didn’t want things to change? Great. Then let’s start with some bold words and see how she reacts.
“So you want me to call you on your shit and put a halt to the incessant attempts at topping.”
Her eyes widened and then all suggestion of tears vanished to be replaced by an impish smirk.
“And you would prefer being bound up in the tack room to dinner, dancing and a cuddle. Have I got that right?”
The curls of her hairstyle bounced in silent agreement when she enthusiastically nodded her head. “Whatever pleases you,” she chortled with a sly smile.
Oh, she was so playing with fire and the playful twinkle in her eyes told him he had quite a lot of leeway if he wanted to push a little and test her limits.
“Would you like this evening to end with playtime? Maybe a sexy scene to set your mind to ease?”
“A long time ago you promised me rough, wild and dirty. That can’t stop just because we made a baby. Same for you being you. Without the power exchange, I get a little crazy.”
A little crazy? Well, that was one way of putting it.
Getting them back on the road, he noticed right away how lightened her mood was. Such a strange creature his wife.
He just wished finding his balance with everything else going on could be so easy.
14
If she didn’t find a way to stop giggling, people were going to talk. It should be easy. Just think of something awful and wipe the foolish grin from her face. Great plan, but it only worked for maybe thirty seconds and then she either caught sight of Parker or something reminded her of the risqué costume she was sporting and the cackling starte
d up again.
“Nice braid Princess,” a smirky voice bellowed.
Argh. Finn. Overnight he’d gone from persona non grata and all around fuck-up to wonder-boy complete with some pretty thumbs-up worthy snarkasms. Even Tori had to admit that the Major Zorro spiel with its implied but insincere contempt made her chuckle. And since it got under Alex’s skin that made it even more delightful.
“Is that how we speak to Alderan royalty?”
When she spun around to level the Irishman with her patented Marquez glare, she knew immediately why Parker had been so pissed off about her outfit. The expressions on Finn O’Brien’s face when he got an up close look at her Princess Leia slave girl costume bordered between shock and awe. It would be funny if not for the fact that she knew damn well her man was going to eke some sort of retribution from her for insisting it was perfectly okay to prance about in nothing but a faux-brass bra and matching G-string covered by flimsy red silk veils attached at the front and back. The only practical thing she wore was a scrumptious pair of soft suede boots similar to Leia’s movie footwear.
“Jesus, Angie,” he muttered irritably. “Are you trying to ensure every guy here gets his eyes put out by your muscle-bound boyfriend?”
Intuition made her snippily correct him. “Mr. Sullivan is my fiancé. Boyfriend describes hairless dick-whackers like you, Beantown.”
Finn clutched at his chest as if wounded. “You cut me to the quick,” he chuckled.
“Nicely done,” a steely voice whispered in her ear. She relaxed as Parker’s arm went around her shoulders. “Mind your fucking manners around the Princess, boy,” he growled at Finn. “I don’t care how good you are with a guitar. You won’t like it if you make me mad.”
“Gonna use that blaster on me Han?”
It was her turn to growl. “That’s Mr Solo to you.”
Wrapping her arm solidly around Parker’s waist she stifled the giggle-swoon running around inside her when she looked at him. He made quite a dashing Han Solo in his sexy long sleeve V-neck shirt and black vest. What she now knew were called blood red stripe pants molded his studly thighs, and the way his replica Han Solo belt and blaster holster hung around his waist and strapped to his leg made her giddy. The black boots? He was lucky she wasn’t straddling him right now.
Finn wasn’t one to back off without hurling a few zingers of his own and she winced when his first pitch was a home run.
“Still don’t see a ring on her finger,” he sneered at Parker. “Word around the bar when the Justice crew stops by is that Major Zorro is thinking about having you neutered for playing house with his baby sister.”
She had to restrain Parker from going after him and quickly changed the subject before one of them drew blood. And these guys were going to be in a band together? I don’t know, she thought. Seems like a guaranteed recipe for chaos and mayhem.
“Creative disguise with your face. Parker told me you started a fight club in the parking lot.” She casually eyed his boxing get-up.
Finn laughed with a self-deprecating grin. “Just establishing my primacy with the local lads.”
“And a damn fine job you did too,” She hooted. “Saw Barry’s YouTube video. Explains the prize fighter get-up.”
“Yo,” Finn drawled in a spot-on Philly accent. “Not just any prize fighter. Rocky Balboa.”
Parker remained mute at her side. Angie was taking his silence as a win. She was congratulating herself on having artfully dismantled a looming confrontation when Han Sullivan, or Parker Solo, one of those two, spoke up.
“Too ginger-adjacent to be the Italian Stallion.” He sneered and gave Finn one of his scariest lawyer glares. “More like Lucky the Leprechaun.”
They had a second or two of eyeball combat before Meghan’s little brother had the good sense to back down. She appreciated a man who chose his battles.
“Looks like your crew is beginning to arrive,” he said with a nod of his head. Oh Jesus,” he snarled. “Check out Calder and Stephanie. I think that’s called type casting.”
Finn wandered away as she and Parker turned toward the racket coming from the front door. Parker laughed first but she quickly joined in.
This is too delicious for words,” she teased her rebel star-pilot. “And here I thought we were a shoe-in for best costumes.”
“Angie! Oh dear lord, shugah,” Stephanie hooted as she and Calder joined them. Gleefully ribbing Parker, she playfully covered Calder’s eyes and did a full on southern belle twang. “Shugah bear, you losing your mind letting your angel out of the house mostly naked?”
“She doesn’t listen to me,” Parker groused with a hello peck on Stephanie’s cheek. “Not since she was old enough to talk back. Been all downhill ever since.”
“That’s my girl!” Calder exclaimed. “Just like her mom. She was an audacious smart ass in her younger days too.”
Angie gave her uncle a warm hug. “She’d drop kick your butt for talking like she’s an old lady past her prime.”
Calder leaned close and whispered, “You’re a brave one Ms. Marquez. This display of willful disregard for your man’s jealous tendencies is going to cost you.”
“What was I supposed to do?” she whispered back as Stephanie and Parker exchanged one-liners and jokes. “All the other Leia outfits were like wearing the bed sheets.”
“Someday, my headstrong angel niece, you are going to push him too far. I hope you’ve got a plan for what happens then.”
They separated and joined in the ribald debate over who was the more outrageous. Calder with his blonde hair and brightly patterned Hawaiian board shorts, puka shell necklace and reef sandals? Or Stephanie in her skin tight, stretchy fuchsia pink sequined dress, Miss Bendover sash and beauty queen crown. The sexy, apropos get-up was made a thousand times better by the fact that the stretchy dress conformed to her obviously pregnant figure.
A pregnant beauty queen. Get it? Angie loved the woman’s droll sense of humor.
Out of the blue she felt a zing of sadness. Sophie would love this kind of party. Nobody but Angie really knew this but her restrained, reclusive sister had a serious hard-on for any kind of cosplay with the Renaissance Faire being her favorite. She sewed like a boss and could whip up a costume from pretty much any era or fantasy world.
A twinge of regret and worry chipped away at her smile. She wanted Sophie to come back to the States and since her folks were well along in transitioning at the vineyard from operating managers to being semi-retired, now was the perfect time for her to also make some life changes. Staying on at the winery after their parents handed off the day-to-day stuff would put her in a weird position.
And besides, Soph was turning thirty-five this year. It was high time she lived her life instead of hiding away across the planet.
“What’s turned my angel’s sapphire eyes a troubled grey?”
His softly asked question brought her back in time to see Calder and Stephanie being led away by a part of the crew from Brody’s canine program. They all wore red ties and white t-shirts covered with random black spots like the pups in 101 Dalmatians.
“I miss Sophie.” She tried to smile but failed.
His face lit up. Running his hands possessively up and down her bare arms, he effortlessly drew her in. Unable to resist the big man with the big hands, she turned her hungry expression on him. She was counting on him to make her feel better.
“I know a sure way to get her here.”
“I’ve tried talking to her but she’s being ridiculously closed off.”
“Have you asked her to be your maid-of-honor? She’d fly across the Atlantic on a shooting star to do the honor.”
She instantly clammed up. The box she stupidly drew around herself on this issue was proving difficult to break out of.
“I’ve made an appointment for us with a jeweler in Sedona. It’s time.”
“Okay.”
He looked a little startled. “Okay? Okay? After all your foot-dragging nonsense it’s just…okay?�
��
She ran her hands down his muscular chest and slid her fingers behind the sturdy costume belt, enjoying the feeling of his stomach on the backs of her fingers. Shrugging, she had to look away when she confessed, “Actually counselor, you’re going too easy on me. I know I’m being a brat.”
He snickered. She knew that particular sound well and glanced into his eyes.
His words were deceptively simple and muttered in an even, calm tone, but she heard the steamy undercurrent. “Did you imagine this was going to be easy?”
Her core tingled and inside the structured costume bra, she felt her nipples harden and rub against the stiff, unyielding covering.
Running a finger along the side of her face, he toyed with her ear and gave Angie a wicked leer.
“On hindsight,” he drawled with mocking emphasis, “I miscalculated. Giving you time to adjust to our new circumstance was a foolish concession. An unnecessary one.”
She bit her lip, staring into the intensity of his gaze, unable to look away.
His hand moved to the back of her neck and took possession. She swayed unsteadily, seeing the ferocious way his eyes devoured her.
“You’ve been running the show baby girl, and we’ve gotten nowhere. Now it’s my turn. And you know what that means.”
Fighting back the real possibility that over excitement would cause her to hyperventilate, she stopped panting and focused on breathing steadily.
“We start tonight. You knew damn well there’d be a price to pay for that getup. Angelina the sexy slave girl. I think we’ll test out how earnestly you can play the part.”
Holy shitballs. Slave girl. She swallowed hard. Parker played like he did everything else. Hard. And with a mastery that usually left her begging for more.
“I know it’s out of line for me to ask this, but do we have time to sneak away?”
His look was one of immense satisfaction. He knew what she was thinking.
The big warm hand around her neck tightened. “Let’s go find a place where the princess can get on her knees. My cock needs your mouth, angel.”
“You read my mind,” she chuckled.
Unforgettable (Family Justice Book 5) Page 16
