Her Protectors: A Reverse Harem Romance

by Victoria Belle

  “Seriously?” she said, though she was smiling.

  “Oh, the things that go on,” Kingston said, and she laughed.

  “Where in Queens are you exactly?” I asked, as I merged onto the Grand Central Parkway.

  “You can just drop me off at the corner of 164th and 73rd,” she said. “It’s a short walk to my place from there.”

  “What – live in some sketchy abandoned place you don’t want us to see?” Kingston said.

  “You don’t want to know,” she said.

  Everyone was silent. We had about ten minutes to go and I had no idea how I was going to swing getting her number. No way could I let this go. I wanted that throaty voice of hers to purr my name, see those pouty lips of hers wrapped around my dick. I wanted to taste her tattoo, discover the hidden ones she doubtless had.

  “Any others?” I asked lightly. “Tattoos,” I explained to her questioning look.

  “A few,” she said, leaving it at that.

  In the backseat, her eyes met mine. My dick twinged to life. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who was feeling something.

  But already, too soon, we were getting off the parkway, headed to 73rd.

  Pulling over, I peered down 73rd and wondered which box house she lived in.

  “Thanks again,” she said to all of us, though her eyes were on me.

  “Just doing our job,” Bradley said sourly.

  He shot me a warning look – Don’t even try.

  But no way could I just leave it at that.

  “Hey Britt,” I said once she was out of the back seat and standing on the sidewalk.

  “Have a good one!” Bradley cut me off, while slamming the door shut.

  She waved, turned away.

  “Drive,” Bradley said. “I mean it, Wyatt, drive or I’ll tell the Big Chief about that sorority chick.”

  Scowling, I did a wheeled-around U, then barreled down the street.

  “You wouldn’t.”

  The sorority chick had been a one-time mistake – and it had been her idea. Having sex in a back room of the station was probably the stupidest thing I’d done. That, or being swindled into buying ten boxes of stale girl guide cookies from my older sister’s daughter. Damn nieces.

  “You’re right, I wouldn’t,” Bradley admitted. “But damn it, Wyatt, are you asking for a suspension? After Sarah-”

  “When I told her I was a cop, how was I supposed to know she was batshit enough to go to almost every station in town trying to track me down? Chief just has it in for me.”

  “Because you screwed his daughter and never called her back.”

  “After we got matched on Tinder and I unknowingly went to her place and got caught by the Chief and booted the hell out of there.”

  “Listen,” Bradley said gruffly. “I don’t care about the reasoning or whether it’s fair. Fact still remains that it’s your head on the chopping block, and if you have one more breach…”

  “Ok, ok, you’re right,” I said.

  “Yeah, Wyatt’s got no wiggle room,” Kingston said. “Me, though, I mean, I could’ve maybe-”

  “Bad idea,” Bradley said abruptly.

  Kingston scowled. “Never said it was a good one, just that, in my situation, it’d be more doable.”

  For a few seconds, Bradley didn’t even deign to comment. “You guys are bastards. You do know that, right?”

  “Oh come on, you love us,” Kingston said, nestling an old-fashioned donut at his cheek.

  “Yeah, no,” Bradley said.

  Although he held out from the donut only a few more seconds before he sunk his teeth in it.

  We drove a few minutes more in silence, then Kingston said, “I think we may have a problem.”

  He held up a wallet with cat ears. “Hey Wyatt - this yours?”

  “Totally,” I said sarcastically. “Give me that,” Bradley said, grabbing it. Going through it, he sighed.

  “Yep, it’s hers alright. . I’ll run her name to get a number and return it to her tomorrow.”

  I nodded my head, my brain already on fire trying to figure out how to get the wallet from Bradley and do it myself.

  No way was I giving up on Britt that easily.

  3

  Britt

  Dave your wallet, can drop by after 6 – Bradley.

  Seeing the text, I almost collapsed onto the bar stool in relief.

  “What is it?” Simone asked, craning over to read. “Those sexy cops from last night?”

  “Shh about that,” I said, checking to see that Velma the cook/major gossip wasn’t in hearing range. “But yeah, one of them has my wallet.”

  “Which one – the quiet glasses one, that upstanding tall one, or the bald jokey one?”

  “The upstanding one,” I said, typing away.

  My shift ends at 5. I could come to you?

  I rested my hip against the stool, covering a yawn. I couldn’t have gotten more than three hours of sleep max.

  Not with how my mind was racing with all that had happened.

  How Walter had actually agreed to have a look at my art.

  How I’d narrowly missed being mugged.

  How, in the span on an hour, I’d met not one, not two – but three incredibly hot cops.

  I licked my lips at the memory of Kingston, the last one.

  With his shaved head and dark expressive brows and light eyes, the way his gaze had rested on me in a yeah, I’m looking at you way had shot excited adrenaline up from my toes. And that last rear-view mirror look with Wyatt, whoa.

  “You going for table twelve, or am I?” Simone asked, indicating a mass of elderly tourists.

  “I got this,” I told her.

  No point in standing around and mooning over what happened all day. Although I did check my phone one last time.

  Sure. Swing by Whitestone Lanes, anytime 6-9 pm.

  Ok, I texted back before tucking the phone in my apron. Then, to the table of tourists I went. Once I’d taken all their orders, and had given them to Velma in the kitchen, I took a sip from my water.

  “Still can’t believe you got mugged,” Simone said, looking as shocked as if I’d sprouted a green, sucker-covered tentacle. Then, switching topics as easily as flipping a pancake, she said, “Who’s your favorite?”

  I scanned the three tables I was serving – table one, with its couple that looked like they were one wrong word from stabbing their whale-emblazoned forks in each other’s eyeballs. Table five, with its picture-perfect family of gingers that looked like Anne of Green Gables descendants. Table three, with its pack of glaring sullen teens, with matching jet-black hair. “I don’t know, table five seems nice.”

  “Not tables, you silly,” she said, giggling. “The boys.”

  “Men,” I corrected her. There’d been nothing boyish about the men with the Greek god bodies I’d encountered last night. “Let’s drop it for the afternoon.”

  Simone pouted. “You do have a favorite, though, no?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Not like anything’s going to happen with any of them.”

  “Why not?”

  As Simone’s sea-green eyes rested on me insistently, a fly hovered by, eavesdropping.

  I swatted away the fly and turned away from Simone, starting to pack up napkins of cutlery. “You know why.”

  “Your boy break,” Simone said derisively. A glance to the side found her scooping up a cookie from behind the counter, biting into it, and waving it as she talked. “It’s been how long now?”

  Thankfully, we had walked our way to the sink in the corner, so that the entire customer base of the Whale couldn’t hear about my love life – or lack thereof.

  “A few months,” I said dismissively.

  Try a few months times two – it had been six months since my ex and I had been broken up and that was the last time I’d done anything more than kiss a guy.

  “More like taking a break from your life,” Simone declared.

  I snatched the cookie out of
her hand and took a bite myself. “Not everyone deals with breakups by becoming a Tinder Queen.”

  “Speaking of…” Simone got out her phone, then held it my way. “Check that out.”

  Her May calendar was basically a grid of black times and multicolored names. Although the times only spanned weekdays, the names crammed nearly every square there was, many with two or even three per.

  “How?” was all I could say.

  “Careful planning, girlfriend,” Simone said.

  I smirked.

  “Can’t see how you even have time to pee, with a schedule that insane.”

  “Oh, I can pee,” Simone said matter-of-factly, grabbing the cookie back and taking another bite.

  “But still…”

  “I do end up canceling on a few,” Simone admitted with a reflective smile.

  I looked away, shaking my head. “Yeah, still way too much. Besides, these men-less past six months have been good for me. I got this new job-”

  “Met me,” Simone agreed, suddenly darting up on tiptoes. “Table three needs you.”

  No sooner had I turned to go than did she grab my arm. “Hang on just one hot minute.”

  Scanning my face with a concentrated frown, she brushed at my chin, then nodded expertly.

  “Got the crumb - you’re good now.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re whale-come.”

  I paused, glaring at her. “Don’t even.”

  She pointed behind me with an evil grin. “Table three whaley needs you.”

  “Whale, thanks for that,” I said, rolling my eyes and hurrying off.

  Table three just needed ketchup, as it turned out, while I was way overdue for a break. Walter’s policy was: don’t bother, unless you’re about to pee your pants or keel over from hunger. But after seven hours on my feet and barely any sleep, I was going to give my legs a break.

  Simone managed to slip in the back as I sat there. “Still so bummed my shift ends at seven. Otherwise I could go join your hot cop date.”

  “It’s not a date,” I said. “And I can wait.”

  She shook her head. “Whitestone Lanes is all the way in Flushing. No way I could get there in time.””

  At my raised brows, she said huffily, “Of course I Googled it.”

  “Don’t you have like, seven Tinder dates then anyway?”

  “Now that you mention it,” Simone checked her phone, nodded. “I do have two.”

  “And you look thrilled about it.”

  Simone shrugged. “I’ve been to Wildair four times by now. The waiters all know me by name.”

  “Everyone knows you by name.”

  “Yes, yes,” Simon said dismissively, as if it made no difference in the world that she was such a chatterbox that she’d befriended everyone on the floor of her apartment, all the cashiers at the grocery store, and a bunch of our regulars.

  As if on cue, someone knocked on the glass and Simone brightened, waving.

  Once they were gone, though, she joined my scowl. “Damn Walter.”

  He was the one who’d actually had windows installed in the break room, so that employees could never feel at ease, never knowing when he might saunter by, grinning in that used-car salesman way of his.

  “So you have to tell me everything that goes down tonight,” Simone continued, somehow another cookie in hand, taking a bite out of it.

  “You mean the thrilling tale of how he hands over my wallet, I say thanks and leave?”

  “I mean, whether you make up your mind when you see all three of them there and what happens when you figure out you need to get laid.”

  “Yeah, sure, will do.”

  Although really her words were buzzing around in my head. Although it wasn’t like I hadn’t seen good-looking guys in the past six months, it felt like I was awakening from a hibernation. Like the attraction I had for them was on a different plane from normal, one that moved directly from mind to body, took over both.

  I scowled. Whatever. It didn’t matter. This year, I’d promised myself, was for my career. No more wasting time. Although Simone was right, I hadn’t been honest about why nothing could happen with them.

  4

  Kingston

  Dying is a valuable cop skill.

  Always thought they ought to test for that, at least train for it. I mean, how important is that, when facing down with some Al Pacino, for him to believe you when you say whatever BS it takes for him to lay down his gun?

  But if your right eye is twitching when you say, Sure, my man will stand down?

  “Gotta take a piss,” Bradley had said, all faux-innocuously, his right eye twitching.

  Wyatt had shrugged, slung himself onto the plastic seat, eyeing the bowling ball in his hands like it’d be a subject for his next art piece.

  “Gonna go get some gum,” I had said, heading toward the gumball machines that I was almost certain were there when I came here as a kid.

  And now, there I was, a few paces behind Bradley, seeing her.

  “Well, look who showed up,” I said, striding up beside Bradley as he handed over her wallet.

  As she accepted it, tucking it in her pocket, I drank her in, nice and long. She went down smooth as a vanilla coke: wearing the same nondescript uniform which didn’t quite obscure her curves. Although this time she had two pigtails and lips a deep red that would definitely stain my sheets. Not that I’d mind.

  “Just here to get my wallet,” she said like an alibi.

  “Sure,” I said. “But you’re welcome to stay and l play with us.”

  “She’s probably busy,” Bradley said mechanically, his right eye still twitching.

  “Why not one game?” I said to her.

  Wyatt would probably lose his shit when he saw her, then I’d be sure to win tonight. No beer-buying for me.

  “I have plans,” she said in a way that was either genuinely truthfully or skillfully lying.

  “Suit yourself,” I said with a shrug. “We already have an extra guy pencilled in and everything.”

  Ben, surprise, surprise, hadn’t showed.

  Britt’s kiss-me-now red lips betrayed uncertainly, and I continued, “I mean, you’re probably not as good as he is, but you’d do.”

  Another glare from Bradley. Whatever. I was right. If my brother had done to me what his had done to him, I’d put my fist through his jaw, not grudgingly forgive the bastard after a few months.

  “Fine,” Britt said.

  “So,” I said. “This is our Wednesday night tradition, ever since we’ve been on the force.”

  Crack!

  “Smooth.” I nodded to Wyatt.

  At our approach and seeing her, Wyatt had actually dropped the bowling ball. As Bradley scooped up the ball and went over to bowl, Wyatt rearranged his features into ‘nonchalant cool’.

  “Hey.”

  “You’re taking pictures?” Her gaze was on his camera taking up its own seat.

  “Oh yeah, there’s nothing Wyatt loves more than holding up the game to get a shot of a particularly good bowling shoe or wood scratch,” I said.

  She grinned, but Wyatt shook his head. “I don’t take many pictures anymore, we come here so often. Just a habit, more than anything. Whenever I’m not on duty, I take it with me almost anywhere. It’s my thing, I guess.”

  “He’s damn good at it, too,” Bradley said as he walked up and handed Wyatt the ball.

  Wyatt wasn’t looking at him though. He had his head cocked as though Britt was the subject of his latest photo. “You’re an artist, aren’t you?”

  “I’m a waitress,” she said, although she was losing the fight to keep her smile down. “Though I do draw.”

  “I bet you’re good.”

  “Thanks, but I” –her face darkened – “You don’t even know me.”

  He frowned. “Forget it.”

  As he grabbed the bowling ball and stalked off to make his play, I sat down beside her and leaned in. “Don’t take it personally. Wyatt is a sen
sitive artiste.” I nodded to his camera, which got its own seat. “He’s a damn good photographer too. Could probably get a bunch of stellar shots of you.”

  “I don’t like having my picture taken,” she said flatly.

  I studied her as she rose for her turn. Huh. Most girls’ panties just about dropped at the sound of ‘camera’ and ‘you’ in the same sentence.

  “This was a bad idea,” Bradley said to me in a low voice.

  “Cool your jets, Miss Manners,” I said. “We’re off duty. It’s a free country.”

  “Still, after his warning, Wyatt needs to lay low.”

  My gaze went to Wyatt, who was watching her intently as she bowled.

  “Who said Wyatt’s gonna be the one to get her?”

  We watched as Britt’s ball barrelled straight into the gutter. I glanced at the box TV electronic scoreboard.

  “Nice of you to continue Ben’s winning streak.”

  “Going for zero was ambitious, but I’m glad I managed to pull it off,” she quipped.

  “Seriously though,” I said, rising for my turn. “You want pointers, next time I could help.”

  “Oh yeah? You saying just because every time my ball went straight for the gutter that I might not be good?”

  I liked this girl.

  “I mean, I wouldn’t want to mess with perfection”

  Her genuine smile caught me off guard as I went up for my turn.

  But my head wasn’t in it. I was completely caught up in the blue of her eyes.

  My ball didn’t make it anywhere close to my usual strike, only nipping out of the sides. My other turn was much the same – an attempt at concentration that tried and failed, upping my score by mere five points.

  “You’ve been rubbing off on me,” I told her, although I thought: And I’d like to rub off on you.

  “Yeah, blame me,” she said.

  I sat back down next to her, our knees close to touching.

  She was clearly hyper-aware of our legs’ proximity. Wondering if she should let hers relax, touch mine.

  She scratched at her neck, and something fell out of her pocket. Wyatt got to it before me.

  “Looks like work isn’t a total bust,” he said neutrally as he handed back the sketch.