Phoenix Rising

by Lagomarsino, Giulia

  Sinner and Hunter looked at me in all seriousness. “Safety is no joke. You’ll see,” Sinner said. “After a few outings with Evie, you’ll see exactly why you have all this stuff. You need to be alert to not only her needs, but your surroundings. Kids are just too distracting and this will save your life. We’ve tested it ourselves over the past week.”

  “Okay,” I said, trying not to laugh at the seriousness of his expression.

  “Alright, now that the coolest present is out of the way, let’s go open up the gifts from the women.”

  “Then we’ll get to the baby games,” Hunter grinned.

  “The what?” I said in horror as they dragged me over to a chair that was surrounded by cute baby bags. Shit, this day was gonna last forever. There were so many fucking things that I didn’t even know what they were.

  “Oh, this is cool,” I said as I opened yet another bag. I pulled out the box that had some kind of mixer thing in it. I was lying through my teeth at this point, just hoping that I wasn’t offending anyone by the grimaces I was trying to hide.

  “It’s a baby food processor,” Lindsey grinned. “In case you want to make your own baby food.”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  Ice elbowed me in the arm and I quickly smiled. “I mean, who wouldn’t want to do that? That’s such a great idea. Healthy food and all that shit, all at my fingertips. Thank you so much!”

  I turned at glared at Ice for allowing his wife to get me such a useless piece of crap that I would no doubt be expected to use.

  “Okay, my turn!” Claire squealed. “This is a present from both Derek and me.”

  She handed over the bag and I pulled out a crocheted baby blanket and a little hat that looked more like a bag. “It’s adorable, Claire. I’m assuming Derek made the weird hat thing.”

  Her face fell and she looked like she would cry. “Derek made the blanket. I made the hat. It was my first attempt.”

  “Oh, shit. Sorry, Claire. It really is cute. I just figured that with you being a woman and him being a man…you know.”

  “He’s an unnaturally gifted crocheter!” she said, stomping away.

  “Thanks a lot, man. You couldn’t have just said thank you?”

  I turned to Derek with a steely expression. “What the fuck is wrong with you? I know we did that whole crocheting thing to try and calm down, but you weren’t supposed to take it this far. What the hell happened to your balls?”

  “I crocheted a nice sack to keep them in,” he grinned. “It’s nice and warm.”

  “You’re sick.”

  “Enough!” Hunter said. “Geez, you two fight like cats and dogs. This one is from me. Lucy didn’t approve, but I thought it was fucking brilliant.”

  I took the bag and stuck my hand down, freezing when I felt what it was. “Hunter…”

  “Yeah?” he grinned.

  “Please tell me there are not grenades in the bottom of this bag.”

  “I could, but then I’d be lying.”

  “You’re giving a baby grenades?” Vanessa shrieked. “Why would you do that?”

  “It’s totally safe,” Hunter insisted. “Pull one out.”

  I lifted my arm and the women all started running. All except Maggie. She sat right there and grinned happily. It looked like a grenade and it felt like a grenade, but I noticed it didn’t have the same weight.

  “It’s empty,” Hunter grinned. “See, this way you can teach your kid to catch and train her for the future. Plus, you can work those motor skills because the pin can be taken out and replaced. Pretty cool, huh?”

  “This is pretty cool. The only problem would be if I took one along on a mission,” I laughed. “Could you imagine?” I mimicked pulling the pin and tossing, then waiting for the explosion.

  “Yeah, maybe keep these away from your gear bag,” Hunter nodded.

  “My gift isn’t in a bag,” Cara said with a smile. “As you know, I used to watch my neighbors kids and then my brothers. But now that they’re in school and I have kids of my own, I’m pretty much available.”

  “Are you saying that you’ll watch Evie for me?” I was hoping, but I didn’t want to get too excited. Not yet.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying. I know you’ll be busy and need the help, so I can be her nanny. When you’re out on jobs, you can rely on me to take care of her.”

  I stood and swooped Cara up into my arms. “I can’t believe that you’d do that for me.” I turned to Sinner and glared at him. “You’d better take care of this woman or I’ll kick your ass.”

  “So, all she had to do was offer to take care of your kid and now I don’t fucking matter? That hurts, man.”

  “Alright, now it’s time for the big reveal,” Cap grinned. “Knight, would you like to show off what you’ve done?”

  “Sure,” he rolled his eyes. “Because you know how much I love being involved in this shit.”

  He walked off, leaving the rest of us standing in the living room. “Am I supposed to follow him?”

  “Yeah,” Cap answered.

  “He could have just said ‘follow me’. Hell, I would have responded to ‘get your ass off the couch, motherfucker’. You need to teach him to integrate with us some more.”

  “The man built you a state of the art nursery. That’s about as integrated as you’re going to get.”

  I went down the hall in the direction Knight had walked and stopped outside the door he was waiting by.

  “Alright, listen up because I’m only telling you once. This is a keypad that automatically changes the codes daily. You’ll receive notifications every morning.”

  “It’s hooked up to my phone?”

  He pulled out some kind of gun thing and shoved it against the inside of my forearm, releasing something inside that stung like a son-of-a-bitch.

  “What the fuck was that?”

  “Your passcode. Every day at seven o’clock in the morning, you’ll feel heat in that spot. The code will present itself for precisely ten seconds and then disappear.”

  “What if I’m not awake?”

  “Then I guess you’ll miss the fucking code.”

  “But that’s my kid in there,” I argued.

  “Well, I guess you’ll learn how to tell time real fast.” He turned back to the door and I glanced down at my arm. I couldn’t believe he had just shot me in the arm with something. He was fucking insane.

  “Hey, listen up. Now, there are sensors all around the door. If anyone approaches and doesn’t attempt to enter the code within one minute, an alarm will be sent to you. If you do not disable the alarm within thirty seconds, Ruby will take proactive measures.”

  “Who’s Ruby?”

  He pointed at the ground to what looked like an iRobot vacuum cleaner. “Ruby is a vacuum cleaner, but she’s also equipped with a camera and will constantly be monitoring your suite. When she has to charge, Robert will take over. He’s currently docked. If Robert or Ruby can’t identify a person in the house, they will immediately deploy a drone, or drones if the risk is high. Now, I’ve programmed both to identify different weapons and various household objects that could be used as weapons. They both have facial recognition and can scan any person that walks by. Those scans will be immediately run through the Reed Security systems, and if seen as a threat, will be taken out.”

  “What do you mean ‘taken out’? We’re talking about robots. You can’t possibly think this is a good idea,” I said incredulously.

  “Ruby and Robert are also equipped with miniature machine guns that will come out only when under attack. If the drones are activated, there are three different settings. Smoke, tear gas, and nerve gas.”

  “Nerve gas? Are you fucking crazy?”

  “That one needs activation. Don’t fuck that one up.”

  “Knight, this is my kid. Plenty of people have kids all the time and they don’t have robots and drones with fucking nerve gas!”

  “Once inside the doors,” he continued without paying an
y attention to my concerns, “you’ll have precisely ten seconds to shut the door before it will close on its own. Now, until you’re to the crib and can deactivate the sensors, you’ll need to do a little hopscotch to get there. The lasers are always moving and will burn the shit out of you if you get struck by one.”

  He walked over to the crib and opened the keypad using his thumbprint. “Your thumbprint is also in there for activation.”

  “Well, that’s good to know. It would be a shame to come in here to get my kid, but not be able to because my fucking thumbprint wasn’t activated!”

  “You’re very testy. You’re going to have to tone it down a little to be around children. Now, once you’ve deactivated the sensors, you can now move about the room freely.”

  “What? No timers on that?”

  “Did you want me to put some in?”

  I glared at him and he shrugged, continuing on. “If you look under the bed, you’ll notice a tube that goes into the floor. In the case of us being under attack, there’s a hatch in the floor of the crib that will open and Evie will slide down the tube to a sling and then be sent to the panic room.”

  “You’re sending my kid in a sling underground to the panic room,” I said slowly.

  “Yeah, it took some work, but I figured out a way to add in a secret compartment. The whole ride is about ten minutes. The tunnel is lit and plays soothing music, so it should be an enjoyable ride for her.”

  “Sounds peachy.”

  “And if you’ll take a look at the ceiling, I have a nightlight that shows the Battle of Gettysburg all laid out and here is a matching book,” he said, handing me a large book. “On nights that she doesn’t want to sleep, you can take her through all four days of battle. If that doesn’t work, I’ve also had a sound system built into the wall with different types of gunfire depending on the weapons. They say white noise is very soothing to kids.”

  “I think they meant ocean waves.”

  “That’s for pussies. Now, one last feature before we leave. Hanging above the door is a hermetically sealed pack of diapers filled with shit. If anyone does happen to make it past all my safety measures, they’ll be pummeled with shit diapers. If the diapers are released, Evie will automatically be dropped down into the sling and taken to safety.”

  “I have a feeling she needs protection from you,” I muttered under my breath.

  He slapped my back, turning for the door. “You’re welcome.”

  I stared around the room in bafflement. I was almost scared to go see what the rest of the guys had planned.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Chance

  I took another sip of my beer as the images started to fade into something unrecognizable. I had found a few weeks ago at the baby shower that if I drank enough, the nightmares weren’t quite so bad. I didn’t jump quite as much whenever someone walked up on me unexpectedly and I didn’t want to put a bullet in just any random person that passed my way simply because they pissed me off with their presence. So, I drank. It could be worse.

  “Chance?” Susan Cartwright asked across from me at the table. “Was the dinner okay?”

  What the fuck was she expecting I would say? After a year of eating dog shit, even a hot dog was a five star meal. “It was great.”

  She looked at me warily, almost like she was holding something back and that was when I realized that everyone at the fucking table was giving me the same look. That could only mean that either she or someone else had been trying to talk to me while I had been trying to drown memories. The last fucking thing I needed was someone’s pity, so I diverted their attention and made them think my mind was on something completely different.

  “You know, I was just thinking about that time that Gabe and I crashed dinner at Jackson’s on the way out of town for a job.” I continued talking, laughing about how frustrated Jackson had been with us, but Morgan wasn’t buying it. She looked uncomfortable sitting at the table with me, and I didn’t know exactly why that was. A huge part of me considered that I was just too fucked up for her, that she was regretting telling me that we could make it through this together.

  The rest of dinner passed without incident and I had a few more beers before I headed off to bed so that I could hopefully get at least five hours of sleep tonight. I was feeling pretty good as I headed off to my suite that I shared with Morgan and Payton. Luckily, she was already getting Payton off to bed, so I didn’t have to worry about being on tonight. It was exhausting to put on the face that everyone thought you should wear.

  “Payton’s asleep,” Morgan said as she stepped out of her bedroom. I must have dozed on the bed because I felt a little groggy.

  “Is she liking it here?”

  “She’s dealing with it. I think she likes being around the other kids.”

  “And you?”

  She shrugged, biting down on her lip. “It is what it is. We don’t have anywhere else to go right now.”

  “And if you did? Would you still want to be here with me?”

  She walked over to the bed and sat down angrily. “Why do you do that? You can’t tell me how much you want to be here with me and then accuse me of not really wanting to be here. It’s confusing me.”

  “Why? Because I want to be sure that you’re happy?”

  “Because it makes me think that you’re trying to tell me something else.”

  I stared at her, trying to understand her woman logic, but I couldn’t wrap my head around it. None of it made sense. “Look, I want you here, but only if you want to be. I don’t want you here out of some misguided sense of loyalty. You don’t owe me anything.”

  “See? This is what I’m talking about. It’s like you’re trying to push me away. I knew this was going to be hard and so did you.”

  “That doesn’t mean you should have to stay.”

  “What do you want from me?” she practically yelled. “I’m here with you. I’m trying to make this work, but you won’t talk to me. You don’t want my help or anyone else’s. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Just fuck me,” I said harshly, because that was what I really needed. I needed her to crave me the way she used to, with no expectations.

  “Excuse me-”

  I grabbed her around the waist and pulled her against me, kissing her harshly. “This is what we both need, to dull those thoughts in our heads. I need to be buried so deep inside you that nothing gets through.”

  She kissed me back, but I noted the hesitation there. She didn’t think this was the answer. But I didn’t give a fuck. As long as she wanted me, I was going to take her and give her exactly what I needed to so I could get my aggressions out.

  I spun her around and ripped the bra from under her shirt, palming her breasts to feel her nipples perking up for me. She still wanted it, no matter how hard she tried to deny it. I slapped her ass, pushing her forward between her shoulder blades. She went willingly, and when I ripped her panties from her, she spread her legs for me, just like I knew she would.

  I still wanted that ass and after a few fucks in her pussy, I spread her juices around her tight hole and sank inside her. I saw her fingers tightening in the blankets and the grimace on her face, but she didn’t stop me. Pretty soon, I was fucking her ass hard and playing with her clit to get her off.

  Every time one of those stray thoughts wandered in my head, I found Morgan and sank inside her. Every time I felt like I was about to lose my shit and start fucking up the room just to release some anger, I fucked Morgan so hard it hurt my cock. And when the silence was too much to take, I drank. It had become my way out, my escape. Tonight was just slightly different because tonight, I didn’t even see Morgan as I fucked her. It was almost like we were back that first time we met and she was just a girl to fuck. I took care of her and made sure she enjoyed it, but that was as far as our connection went.

  When she shouted as she came, I spilled myself inside her and pulled out to go wash myself. My head wasn’t completely cleared of all the bullshit, but it was a hell
of a lot better. When I finished washing up, she was already on her side of the bed, eyes closed and breathing softly. I got in my side and pleasantly surprised when I woke up four hours later. It wasn’t exactly what I had wanted, but four hours was better than sleeping for thirty minutes at a time.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Emma

  “Any luck?” Ivy asked as I tossed my purse on the table and flopped down at my kitchen table. I dropped my head to the table and groaned.

  “Nobody would give me a loan. The banks all said that dropping the business like we did doesn’t instill trust in us.”

  “Ouch. Well, I doubt that me being there would have helped. Nothing says trustworthy like a woman that’s been on trial for murder.”

  I grimaced and dropped my chin into the palm of my hand as I leaned on the table. Ivy got up and grabbed the wine and glasses off of the counter, pouring each of us a glass. I drank mine up and slid the glass back over to her.

  “What are we going to do? If the bookshop hadn’t been vandalized, we would have at least had the inventory to sell, but there’s too much damage to the store and the renters aren’t too happy with us either.”

  “I don’t know, I just make coffee, and apparently, anyone can do that at home,” she said, referring to Blake’s comment from almost a year ago.

  “If only we had jobs that were actually meaningful,” I said sarcastically. “Did I really survive cancer to be sitting around on my ass, trying to find something to do with my life? It’s been five years and all my scans are clean. You would think I’d be overjoyed, but instead, I’m pouting because I’ve lost my bookshop. Something’s gotta give.”

  “I think the universe is trying to tell you to stop trying to find something meaningful and just do something for fun.”

  “Like what? I doubt that writing an instruction manual for fucking a man would make me money.”

  “Wouldn’t it?” she grinned.

  “Wait-”

  “Just hear me out. Sex parties used to be a hot thing, but now that adult stores are all over the place, there’s no need for them. Imagine if we opened our own store, but it could be really awesome. We could review all the products and write about them from both perspectives.”