Quantum Series Boxed Set: Books 1-7

by Force, Marie

  “Whatever it is, just tell me. I’d never tell Flynn.”

  God, I want to tell someone. I need to tell someone before I do something stupid that gets me in trouble at work. “I want to lick Emmett.”

  Natalie bursts into laughter. She laughs so hard that tears fill her eyes, and her face turns red. “You have such a way with words,” she says when she’s recovered enough to speak.

  “I’m serious, Nat. I look at him, and all I can think about is licking him, among other things.”

  “He is a rather sexy specimen.”

  The thought of other women, even my very married friend, finding him sexy makes me murderous, which is also a first for me. I’ve never cared enough about any guy to be murderous on his behalf. “You’ve got your own sexy specimen.”

  “Doesn’t mean I can’t spot another when I see one, and Emmett definitely qualifies.” She crosses her arms over the gentle swell of her abdomen and leans back against the massive island in her state-of-the-art kitchen. “How long has this licking situation been going on?”

  I hesitate for a second, not sure how much I should say, but then I figure what the hell. This is Nat, and I desperately need a friend to talk me down on this topic. “Since the day I started at Quantum?”

  “Leah! That was months ago!”

  “Um, yes, thank you. I’m aware of that and so is my rabbit. He’s been getting one hell of a workout.”

  Natalie covers her ears. “TMI.”

  “Oh please. You’re the queen of TMI with the way you and your husband carry on.”

  “We do not carry on.”

  “Yes, you do. You eye-fuck each other like a couple of bunnies.”

  She loses it laughing again, bending at the waist until she recovers. “Oh my God, I love you so much, and I’m so glad you live here with us now. No one makes me laugh the way you do.”

  “Flynn does.”

  “He makes me laugh in different ways. You are in a class all your own, my friend.”

  “I do what I can for you.”

  She gives me a calculating look. “Whatever shall we do about this massive thing you have for Emmett?”

  “I bet he has a massive thing. Can you even imagine? With all those muscles… Mmmm.” As she laughs again, I shake my head because I can’t let myself go there when there’re hours between me and time with Roger Rabbit. “I need a drink.” Using a corkscrew I find on the counter, I open the bottle of wine I brought and pour a healthy glass. “Sorry to drink in front of you.”

  “No worries. I don’t want it anyway. Everything I eat and drink makes me nauseated, except for water and crackers.”

  “Still? That sounds awful.”

  She nods. “It is. I hear I should turn the corner soon. Any time now. But back to you and Emmett…”

  “There is no me and Emmett. He thinks of me as a much-too-young minor annoyance that he has to tolerate because I’m your friend and Marlowe’s assistant. That is all I am to him.”

  Natalie strokes her chin and gives me a calculating look that makes me squirm ever so slightly.

  “What?”

  “I’m thinking,” she says, picking up Fluff when she comes wandering inside looking for her favorite person.

  “Don’t do anything. I’m not asking you to get involved. I just needed to tell someone. We’re not like you and Flynn. This isn’t that.”

  “Who says it couldn’t be?”

  I roll my eyes as dramatically as possible. “I don’t want to fall madly in love with him. I just want to fuck him.”

  “Who?” Flynn asks as he comes into the kitchen holding a platter that he puts in the sink.

  I’m going to die. Right here on the spot, I’m going to pass away. I feel my face turn every shade of red there is.

  As I say, “No one you know,” Natalie, that bitch, starts to laugh uncontrollably again.

  “Why do I feel like I walked in on something here?”

  Natalie laughs so hard, she can’t breathe, which amuses her husband. He thinks everything she does is adorable and amusing.

  “I’m out.” I give Natalie a don’t-you-dare-tell-him-who-I-was-talking-about glare as I go into the bathroom to change into my suit. Emmett is half-naked in the pool. You can bet your ass I’m going to join him. As I change, I try not to think about the fact that someone now knows about my secret obsession, which is no longer a secret.

  I hope I didn’t make a big mistake telling Nat.

  She’s fucking sexy as hell in a barely there teal bikini that could almost be called indecent at a gathering of close friends and children. Even Flynn’s nephews, who are still in grade school, notice the way her tits nearly fall out of the cups. Thankfully, most of me is underwater so they can’t see that I’m hard for her.

  I do not want to be hard for her. She’s a baby compared to me, and I’ve got no business noticing her tits or any of the many other parts of her left bare by a swim suit that is nothing more than a couple of strategically placed scraps. She reclines on the stairs in the shallow end, propped on her elbows as she watches me horse around with the kids.

  And yes, I can feel her watching my every move, thus the throbbing in my groin.

  “Are we going play or what?” I ask Connor and his younger brother, Mason, who is wearing blow-up floaties on his arms. I’ve had to redirect the little fish from the deep end several times.

  “I wanna play,” their youngest brother, Garrett, says from the side of the pool.

  I go over to fetch him and seat him on my shoulders.

  He squeals with delight at his newfound height.

  “Look out, boys,” I tell his brothers. “Garrett is gonna get you.”

  The other two shriek as they charge at us. I take my gaze off them for only a second to glance at Leah, who is licking her lips as she watches me. As I fixate on the movement of her tongue on her lip and contend with a surge of heat in my groin, two hyper-amped boys come barreling into me, one of them catching me in the hard cock with a firmly placed foot. I gasp from the shot of pain that travels like a bolt of lightning through my entire system and struggle to maintain my hold on Garrett as my knees buckle under me.

  “Emmett!”

  I hear Leah’s cry of distress, but I’m in so much pain, I can barely breathe, let alone speak. I’ve been completely unmanned, and I blame her. It’s one thousand percent her fault—and her tongue’s.

  Chapter 3

  “I’m so, so sorry, Emmett,” Flynn’s sister Annie says as she hovers over me. She should be sorry. Her wild-animal sons have completely broken me. I may never have sex again thanks to them. But I don’t blame them. Oh no. It’s not their fault. It’s her fault.

  While she hovers nearby, Natalie hands me a fresh ice pack.

  I change out the ice pack, handing her the used one. Ice on the package, even over boardshorts, is about as pleasant as you’d might expect, but frozen numbness beats vicious pain any day.

  Flynn, Hayden, Sebastian, Jasper, Kristian and Annie’s husband, Hugh, stand on the periphery of disaster, their faces pale and their eyes big. An injury to my junk hurts us all.

  Then Leah moves into view in all her sexy glory, and my poor, injured cock surges with interest. Agonizing pain permeates the numbness. “Get the fuck out of my sight,” I say to her in a low, sinister-sounding growl. I immediately regret my sharp words, especially when I catch her wounded expression. It’s not her fault that I can’t control my cock when she’s around. But he’s in no condition to be hard right now—or any time in the foreseeable future, for that matter.

  I shift positions and immediately feel like I’m going to throw up, so I put my head back against the lounge chair and pray for mercy to the god of injured cocks.

  “Dude.” Flynn squats next to my chair and takes a tentative look at the scene of the crime, not that he or anyone else can actually see anything. “What can we do?”

  “Nothing,” I say, gritting my teeth.

  “Do you need medical attention?” Natalie asks.

>   “God, I hope not.” The thought of my cock being broken is more than I can bear to consider.

  “One of us should take a look,” Hayden says, his tone making it clear that it’s not going to be him who does the looking.

  “Get the hell out of his face and go about your business,” Marlowe says to the other men. “Emmett, let me see it.”

  If the poor guy hadn’t already sustained a dreadful injury, he’d roll up into himself, another thought that nearly makes me puke. “I…” I swallow the bile that burns my throat. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”

  “Don’t be such a baby,” Marlowe says. “If you’ve seen one dick, you’ve seen them all.” She comes over to the chair and removes the ice pack. “Open up and say ahhh.”

  “Glad you find this so funny.” I untie my boardshorts and tear open the Velcro so she can see inside.

  Her eyes go wide and then she grimaces. “Yeah, that needs to be looked at by a doctor.”

  I venture a glance in the direction of disaster, and when I see black and blue, I nearly pass out. My cock is actually broken! Panic overtakes me. My heartrate skyrockets, and my blood pressure has to be well into the danger zone.

  “Leah can take him,” Natalie says.

  What? “No need. I can take myself.”

  “She’s heading in that direction anyway,” Natalie continues as if I hadn’t said anything. “Let’s get him to the car.”

  I want to whimper like a baby and beg them not to touch me. But before I can say a word, Flynn, Hayden, Kristian and Sebastian surround and lift me, tripping over themselves as they bump and jostle me through the house while I try not to cry like a wounded bitch. I hope they never quit their day jobs to join the rescue service. By the time we reach the driveway, I want to ask one of them to stick an ice pick in my jugular, because that would surely be preferable to whatever is ahead for me and my poor dick.

  They deposit me, painfully, into the passenger seat of my own car, chosen probably because it is closer than hers. Leah. Ugh. I wish I had the strength to say she’s the last person I want driving me anywhere, because she already drives me fucking crazy.

  She and Natalie come out of the house, locked in a full-on argument. I’m thankful for small favors, such as the dress that now covers the bikini. But then she comes toward me, visibly pissed and full of attitude, shoulder-length brownish-gold hair fluttering in the breeze and breasts bouncing with every step, and the blood in my southern hemisphere surges toward my cock once again, making me nearly scream from the pain.

  She gets in the car and slams the door.

  Even that hurts.

  “This is not my idea,” she says.

  “I was there. I know.”

  “Keys?”

  “Hit the button. And if you crash my car, I’ll sue you for everything you’ve got.”

  “You won’t be able to go to McDonald’s on what I’ve got, but knock yourself out.” She puts the car into Reverse and backs out of the driveway, hitting the brakes a little too hard before throwing it into Drive and heading down the hill to town.

  “Go easy, will you? On me and the car.”

  “Where’re we going?”

  I direct her to Cedars-Sinai’s emergency department, where she brings the car to a squealing stop twenty agonizing minutes later. She gets out and runs inside, looking for help, and returns with a woman in scrubs pushing a wheelchair.

  Has it come to that? I open the door, turn to put my legs outside and nearly pass out from pain that makes the wheelchair look really good to me.

  “Be careful with him,” Leah says. “He’s in agony.”

  “What happened?” the nurse asks.

  “He got kicked in the junk by a little kid in a pool.”

  “Ouch,” the nurse replies.

  Do you think?

  As she wheels me away, Leah says, “I’m going to park. I’ll be right in.”

  “You don’t have to stay. I’m fine.”

  “I’m not leaving you here alone,” she says.

  I don’t have the wherewithal to argue with her, not when I’m in a full-on, sweaty panic over what’s about to happen here. I picture a little shop of horrors, full of needles pointed at my poor wounded cock. What if there’s permanent damage? The thought of that is so debilitating, I can’t work up the fortitude to get pissed when Leah ends up in the exam room with me. The nurse checks me in and says the doctor will be with me shortly. Tell him to take his time, I want to say.

  “Can I do anything?” Leah is fidgety and paces the small cubicle like a nuclear reactor full of energy with nowhere to expend it.

  “Haven’t you done enough?”

  She spins to face me, eyes flashing. God, she’s sexy, and I don’t think she even knows it. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? I’m not the one who kicked you.”

  “You may as well have been.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Painfully, I lift myself onto my elbows, mocking her pose in the pool, and run my tongue over my bottom lip as slowly and seductively as I possibly can. “Bring back any memories?”

  At first, she stares at me in confusion, and then her eyes widen as her lips part. “Are you saying that when I did that, you…”

  “I got hard, then Connor kicked me and here we are. So yes, it is your fault.”

  Her eyes flash with fire and passion that spark a new wave of desire in a place that can’t handle anything resembling desire at the moment. “That’s the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard. How is the fact that you can’t control yourself my fault?”

  “It just is.” I sit back against the pillows, folding my arms and silently congratulating myself for winning this round.

  And then she begins to laugh. She laughs so hard that tears fill her eyes and run down her cheeks.

  “What the hell is so funny?”

  “All this time,” she says, gasping for air as she mops up the tears, “I’m thinking I don’t stand a chance with you because you probably think I’m too young for you, and it turns out I’m making you hard.” She loses it again, and suddenly, I’m not feeling as victorious as I did a moment ago.

  “You don’t stand a chance with me.”

  “Your dick seems to like me.”

  “Don’t be complimented by that. He’s easy.”

  If she could breathe fire in my direction, she would, and for some strange reason, that does it for me, and the beast comes back to life with an aching, agonizing surge that leaves me breathless from the pain.

  Through gritted teeth, I say, “Go home and leave me alone.”

  “Why? Is it happening again?” She leans in for a closer look, and when she sees the small tent in my hospital gown, she busts up laughing again.

  “It’s not funny.” I’m all but growling at her now.

  “Oh, yes, it is.”

  “You won’t be laughing when I put you over a spanking bench and turn your ass pink.”

  Leaning on the bed rail, she’s the picture of avid enthusiasm. “When can we do that?”

  Groaning, I almost pass out from the pain when my dick flares to full hard-on status. She wants me to spank her? Christ have mercy.

  I’m spared from one hell but presented with another when the doctor comes in, apologizing for making me wait.

  He introduces himself as Dr. Lowell, a surgical resident in urology. “What happened?”

  “I took a foot to the junk,” I tell him, trying not to overreact to the word “surgical” in his title.

  “While he was hard,” Leah adds in a helpful tone.

  I’m going to spank her until she can’t sit for a week. And then… God, stop. It hurts!

  “I see that you’ve maintained an erection since the injury,” the doc says, gesturing to the tent in my gown.

  “Oh, that’s a new one,” Leah says smugly. “He can’t help himself when I’m around.”

  I send the fiercest look I own in her direction, but she only smiles and waves at me.


  “Did you hear any kind of popping or cracking noise when the injury occurred?” the doctor asks.

  “Uh, no, not that I recall.” I swallow hard. Penises can crack and pop? That’s information I’d rather not have.

  “Any bleeding or other discharge?”

  I want to ask if precum counts, but I have a feeling that’s not what he’s after. “No.”

  “Let me take a look,” the doctor says.

  Before I can tell him she’s not my girlfriend and shouldn’t be in here, he’s raising my gown to reveal my hard cock, which sports a huge black bruise smack in the middle of it.

  The sight of that bruise makes me lightheaded, and for a second, I fear I might pass out. And then he touches it, and I’m lights out.

  Holy shit, he’s fucking huge. And by huge, I mean e-nor-mous. Easily nine inches. Maybe ten and thick, too. Dear God. I stare at his badly bruised penis and try not to drool at the thought of the things I’d like to do with that monster cock. Am I drooling?

  And then the doctor touches the injured area, and Emmett passes out.

  I rush to his bedside, and before I can question the wisdom of what I’m doing or why, I’m caressing his face and hair and pleading with him to wake up.

  His eyes open, and he looks up at me in confusion for a second before confusion turns to anger or maybe desire. I can’t tell yet. The anger intimidates me, but the desire has me staying close, continuing to stroke his face and hair as the doctor messes with his cock.

  “The good news is,” the doctor says, “I don’t think it’s broken and shouldn’t require surgery.”

  Whoa… Surgery? Holy shit.

  Emmett gives me a wild look that indicates his feelings about penis surgery.

  “If that’s the good news, what’s the bad news?” Emmett asks.

  “We’re going to need blood work and a urinalysis to start with. Then we’ll run a few other tests to make sure you don’t have a fracture, including what’s called a cavernosography.”