by Abby Blake
She was lying on her back, in the middle of the bed, her breasts still locked in the nipple clamps, when he returned.
Viper gave him a grateful look. “These hurt more coming off,” he said, obviously for Brick’s benefit, “but a hot mouth helps.”
Uncertain what he meant, Brick slid onto the bed and watched as Viper removed one nipple clamp and quickly lowered his head to Bianca’s breast. She sighed as he laved his tongue over the swollen bud. Brick quickly did the same, wincing at the brief moment of pain he sensed from Bianca, but nearly smiling when she placed a hand in his hair and held him closer.
Eventually they all relaxed against the pillows, Bianca in the middle. Brick knew he should leave. He’d spent last night with Bianca in his arms. It was only fair to let Viper do the same this time, but he couldn’t really find the inclination.
He fell asleep with Bianca’s head on his shoulder, Viper behind her, his arm wrapped possessively around her middle, and somehow it didn’t seem weird at all.
Chapter Thirteen
“Are you coming with us to the club tonight?” Viper asked as Brick headed out the door to go to his own apartment. For the past three months Brick had been exploring the boundaries of his relationship with Bianca. Viper, and maybe even Brick himself, had been surprised by how much he enjoyed the Dom-sub style of play he and Bianca had adopted in the bedroom. It wasn’t high protocol like Viper and Bianca had, but for a guy who’d lived a vanilla life Brick had adapted very quickly.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” he said, glancing at the bedroom where Bianca still slept. It was clear to Viper that the man didn’t want to leave. He knew the feeling well. The difference being that these days Viper didn’t have anywhere to go.
Unless he wanted to go home.
He almost laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation. Between them they still had three places of residence. He’d moved into his new apartment five days ago, but he’d spent almost every moment she wasn’t at work here with Bianca. Brick had been here most of that time as well.
Over the past three months Viper had suggested alternate living arrangements. Both times he’d raised the idea of the three of them moving into the same apartment, Bianca had seemed nervous yet willing to consider it but it had been Brick who had flat-out refused. At first Viper had thought Brick declined out of a misguided sense of protecting Bianca, but as caring as Brick was of their woman and her right to an independent life, it seemed the problem ran far deeper.
“Brick,” Viper said, halting the man before he could leave through the front door, “is it the location?”
“What?” Brick asked as he turned with a confused look on his face.
Viper shook his head at his lack of communication skills these days. Now that the club was no longer his, he’d barely slept. Having no direction in his life was getting very frustrating.
“Sorry, I was just wondering if it was the location of the apartment that’s keeping you from moving in with me and Bianca.”
Brick seemed distracted, but Viper knew him well enough now to know that it was a carefully feigned attempt for the man to avoid the conversation. Viper watched as Brick pulled his cell phone from his pocket and checked the time.
“Can we talk about this later?” he asked, already heading toward the door again. “I’ve got some things to do before my shift starts.”
“It’s just a simple yes or no,” Viper said, trying to sound reasonable, but fairly certain he was failing.
Brick looked annoyed, but shook his head. “No, it’s not the location.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s nothing, Viper. Just drop it.”
“I can’t just drop it,” he said as the now-familiar annoyance swelled through him. “Look, I know an arrangement like this has to seem weird sometimes, but we practically cohabitate now. What’s the harm in all living under the one roof?”
Brick dropped his head forward and stared at the floor for a moment. He glanced at his cell phone again.
“Viper, I can barely support myself. My mom’s nursing home expenses make it impossible for me to…” His words trailed away and he made a sound of frustration. “We’ve had this conversation before. Nothing has changed.”
“It’s not like we’re asking you to pay rent.” In the past three months, despite their very different personalities, they’d somehow become friends. It bugged the hell out of him that Brick wouldn’t accept his help in a financial sense. The apartment was already paid for. He didn’t have a mortgage to cover. “How is living rent-free with me and Bianca any different to living rent-free with your brother?”
Brick rubbed a hand across his eyes, but it was his laugh that caught Viper by surprise.
“It’s not different,” Brick finally conceded. “It’s just pride.”
“I get that,” Viper said sincerely, “but how long are you going to put your life on hold? Your mom’s how old? Seventy? You could be paying nursing home bills for the next twenty or thirty years.”
“Viper, it’s not your problem.”
“Damn it, Brick,” he said angrily, taking them both by surprise with his reaction. “Don’t do this to Bianca.”
“Do what?” he asked, sounding nearly as angry as Viper. “Refuse to take advantage of her? Refuse to be a burden because I can’t pay my own way?”
“No,” Viper said, again trying to sound reasonable. “Don’t make her put her life on hold the way I did.”
* * * *
The anger drained from Brick as fast as it had come. He’d been taking one day at a time for so long that he hadn’t given the future much thought. Without the expenses for his mother’s care he would have been thinking of marriage and children with Bianca. In his mind, it was the normal course of things.
He glanced at the oversized, tattoo-covered ex-Navy SEAL sitting at the breakfast bench and conceded that very little was normal about his relationship with Bianca.
“She wants children,” Viper said, hammering yet another worry into Brick’s conscience. “It’s why she left me in the first place. She wanted to know she was capable of taking care of a child. She wanted her independence so that she could move forward with her life.”
Brick nodded. She hadn’t said it out loud, but he’d watched her with Viper’s young nephews, and he’d seen the longing on her face as she cuddled Emma’s young daughter and watched Maya’s belly grow huge with her first pregnancy. Bianca was ready to start a family. She was already thirty. It was unfair to ask her to wait for him to be in a better financial situation.
He glanced at his cell phone, not really seeing the time. “I have to go,” he said, tilting his head toward the front door, “but I’ll give it some thought.”
Almost surprised to escape without Viper following him into the hallway, Brick stopped for a moment to blink away the blur in his vision. Viper was right. He couldn’t ask Bianca to give up her chance for a family, but was he strong enough to swallow his pride and accept Viper’s charity?
* * * *
Bianca silently closed the bedroom door and tried to process everything that had just happened.
A part of her wanted to celebrate. Viper was finally seeing her as a woman capable of being a parent. No longer did he see the emotionally and financially dependent submissive she’d been for so long. Ironically, his words bolstered her confidence even more.
But it was Brick’s dilemma that broke her heart.
He was such a good man. He deserved to be happy, to build a family and have a bright future, but he shouldn’t have to sacrifice his pride to do it. But what was the alternative? He wouldn’t stop paying his half of his mother’s nursing home bill, and she would never ask him to. Even on the darkest days of her dementia it was obvious that Enid Darnell loved both of her boys dearly. Brick and Corey were always in her words, even if she didn’t physically recognize them some days. Brick’s determination to pay his share was truly admirable, and it made Bianca love him even more.
She was still trying to find
a solution when the door opened and Viper stepped into the bedroom.
“You heard?” he asked softly, reaching over to wipe away the tears trailing down her face. She nodded, a little frightened to try and talk. Viper was finally seeing her as an independent woman. The last thing she wanted to do was revert to her former needy behavior.
Viper reached for her hand and together they walked into the kitchen. Perhaps sensing her need not to be treated like a sub he handed her two coffee cups and then opened the fridge. “I was going to have an omelet for breakfast. Would you like one?”
“Thanks,” she said quietly. She made coffee for both of them, grabbed a couple of plates for their omelets and then sat at the kitchen bench and watched him cook. She’d done most of the cooking in their time together, so it had been quite an awakening to realize Viper was actually a pretty good cook himself. She watched him silently as worries for Brick swirled through her mind.
“We’ll find a solution that suits all three of us,” Viper said as he placed a delicious-smelling omelet in front of her.
“I hope so,” she said, “but I can’t imagine what that might be.” She picked up her fork and began eating, the light and fluffy omelet a direct contrast to her dark and complicated worries. “I want him to be happy.”
“I know the feeling,” Viper said, reaching over to touch her face lovingly. “I find myself wanting to protect him the way I was never able to do for my brother.”
“I don’t think Brick would be thrilled to hear that,” Bianca said with a sad smile to soften the words. She understood why Viper felt that, but Brick wouldn’t be happy to think Viper saw him as some sort of junior partner in this relationship. It wasn’t actually true, yet Brick would likely see it that way.
Bianca knew, thanks to their more open and honest communication over the past three months, that not being able to protect his younger brother when they’d been thrown into the foster care system weighed heavily on Viper’s conscience. It had taken years to finally track Kevin down. Fortunately, he’d found a loving family and had lived a happier and more stable life than Viper had in foster care. Kevin even still had a close and loving relationship with his foster parents. Bianca didn’t want to think about how much guilt Viper would have carried if his younger brother hadn’t been so lucky.
The need to be in charge and protect all of those around him was a direct result of the volatile instability of Viper’s childhood. Understanding that had lessened the guilt she’d felt at having depended on him for so long. As he’d said many months ago, they’d fulfilled each other’s needs.
“Do you think he’ll leave?” Bianca asked, unable to keep her biggest fear to herself.
Viper watched her, again seeming to fight against his instinctive need to protect. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “I hope not, but only Brick can make that choice.”
“I’m starting to understand how hard it must have been for you to let me go. I really want to cling to Brick and beg him to swallow his pride.” She closed her eyes and breathed out a shaky breath. “But it would be the wrong thing to do.”
Viper nodded, pulled her into his embrace, holding her close the way he’d often done when she’d been his full-time submissive. It was only now that she was beginning to realize that the embrace was for him as much as it was for her.
* * * *
Brick let himself into his brother’s apartment and nearly tripped over the boxes stacked in the hallway.
“What the hell?”
“Sorry,” Corey said with a grin that wasn’t exactly repentant. “I wasn’t sure you still lived here.”
“Asshole,” Brick said affectionately. It was true that they didn’t cross paths very often but all of Brick’s stuff was still in the apartment. “What’s all this?”
“Gym equipment.” Corey got up from the table where he’d been using his computer and wandered into the kitchen. “Coffee?”
“Uh, sure,” Brick said as he picked his way through the stacks of boxes. “When did you decide to put in a gym?”
“Right about the time I decided to stop traveling. I’m going to be my own boss and work from home.”
Brick almost laughed at the irony. Part of why he’d been able to live under his brother’s roof was his absence. Without that illusion of living alone Brick had to face the fact that he was mooching off his younger brother.
“I guess you’ll be needing more space,” Brick said as Corey shoved several electronic gizmos aside to make room for Brick’s coffee.
Corey gave him a curious look. “I figured you’d be moving in with Bianca any day now. You spend way more time there than you do here anyway.”
Hell, this was the last conversation Brick wanted to have, yet despite the sun only having risen a few minutes ago, it was the second time in one day.
“I’m not sure that’s going to happen.”
“Why not?” Corey asked with a frown. “It’s obvious that you love her.”
“I do love her,” he said as his annoyance grew, “but I have nothing to offer her.”
As soon as he saw the worry on his brother’s face, he regretted his hasty words. Damn, he needed to get more sleep. Exhaustion was making him tactless.
Corey ran a hand down his eyes and then sat back on the chair at his computer. It was obvious that he was trying to choose his words more carefully than Brick had done.
“I had a really interesting conversation with Mom the other day.”
Brick raised an eyebrow and waited for Corey to explain how that related to the current topic.
“She was stuck about a decade in the past and she was telling me about her eldest son and how hard he was working to get his younger brother through college.” He raised an eyebrow and waited for Brick’s reaction.
He shrugged.
“When Dad died, you took a second job to put me through college.”
“Not exactly,” Brick said as he remembered those dark days. His father’s death had been a difficult time for them all. He’d only just been married, the honeymoon phase of the relationship quickly wearing off when he’d taken a second job to help pay the medical bills that his mother had been left with. Brick’s ex-wife had been supportive for a little while, but she’d been alone and lonely and had turned to other men for company. Brick knew the second job hadn’t actually caused the failure of his marriage—things had already been falling apart—but it had been a big factor in how quickly things had happened.
“Then explain exactly what it was,” Corey said in a belligerent tone, “because from where I’m sitting it seems that Mom could have paid the medical bills if she hadn’t been paying for my education. You took a second job so I could finish college.”
“It wasn’t a big deal,” Brick said, not really sure why his brother seemed upset.
“To me it was…it is a big deal.”
Brick shook his head again, obviously missing the point his brother was trying to make. Corey made a sound of annoyance.
“My last Christmas bonus was more than your yearly income.”
Brick ground his teeth together and managed to nod. He didn’t need to be reminded that his income as a cop totally sucked.
“Damn it,” Corey said, looking angry enough to hit him. “You’ve insisted on paying half of Mom’s nursing home expenses, knowing full well that I can cover them, but you’re the reason I can earn that sort of money in the first place.”
“I don’t mind,” Brick said. They’d had similar discussions before about who paid what. Corey knowing that he’d helped their mom after their father’s death was no big deal. “I was happy to help out when you and Mom needed it.”
Corey still looked angry enough to punch him. He took a deep breath, dragged a hand down his face, and shook his head in what appeared to be complete exasperation.
“Brick, you helped me when I needed it. Let me help you now.”
“I don’t need help,” he denied, mainly out of habit. Considering the poorly thought out exclamation that had s
tarted this conversation, it was kind of obvious that he was struggling. Apparently Corey wasn’t buying his denial either.
“I’ve been trying to figure out how to approach you about this for a couple of days now.” Corey smiled, a sure sign that he intended to convince Brick with pure logic. “But maybe the answer is really simple. I’m paying Mom’s expenses. End of story.”
Brick laughed at his brother’s audacity. “You can’t be serious.”
“Actually, I’ve never been more serious in my life.”
“But what about your new business venture? Didn’t you just say you’ve decided to work for yourself?”
“My new business is fully funded and there is still plenty of money left to pay the nursing home. Brick, let me do this.”
It was that plea in his tone that made Brick hesitate. “Why?”
“Because you have a chance to be truly happy. You love Bianca. Marry the woman, make beautiful babies.” He swallowed heavily, just a hint of vulnerability showing through his usual smart-ass demeanor. “Go live the life Mom always wanted for you.”
“But—”
Corey cut him off before he could even finish the thought.
“No buts. If you won’t do it for me, then do it for Bianca.”
Brick laughed softly as they both seemed to realize that Corey had stumbled onto the one reason that might make Brick reconsider his stubborn resistance. He’d do anything for Bianca. He’d make any sacrifice needed to ensure her happiness.
He shook his head, laughed softly, and then nodded.
“I’ll think about it.”
Chapter Fourteen
Nervous butterflies danced in Bianca’s belly. This was officially the final night that Viper actually owned Viper’s Dungeon, and there was a sense of deep loss from all of the members who’d dropped by to wish him well. It was true that the new owner didn’t plan to change the name, but without Viper in charge, the club would be different.
