I’d seen them from afar, having been at Sin’s trials along with them, but we hadn’t actually met in person officially.
Speaking of, the moment we got to the table that Bellini took us to, Sin pulled me into his side.
“Bell, this is Blaise. Blaise, this is my younger brother, Bellini,” Sin officially introduced us.
Bellini didn’t have the same color eyes as Sin. He had glass blue ones.
That was where the dissimilarities ended.
Bellini was an exact replica of Sin when he’d first gone into prison.
Now, Sin looked just a little bit rougher around the edges. A little more unkempt. A little more… wild.
Bellini didn’t have that wildness about him for sure.
He held his hand out to me, and I shook it.
“It’s nice to officially meet the woman that made my brother go apeshit,” he said as he closed his hand around mine.
I felt my face fall flat, and then my heart beat a million miles an hour.
Sadness rolled through me.
“I didn’t mean to,” I replied quietly.
His hand tightened around mine just as Sin cursed.
“What the fuck, Bell?” Sin asked.
No. Growled.
He was pissed.
“That’s not what I meant!” he urged, but the damage had already been done. “Shit. That’s really not what I meant.”
He let my hand go and Sin moved to take it, but he was right.
“I seriously wish I could go back in time,” I told him honestly, keeping my eyes on his brother. “I wish I could go back in time and tell myself not to leave that night. Tell myself that it wasn’t going to be good for me if I did. And if I didn’t listen, I wish I would’ve been quieter.”
Bell’s mouth fell open.
“You wish you would’ve been quieter… why…” His face went totally white. “Honey, no.”
Yes.
Yes, that was exactly what I meant.
I wish that it’d all just happened to me.
I wish that Brees had just gone ahead and done what he would. I wished that Sin wasn’t anywhere near me that night. I wished that I hadn’t ruined a career that he loved. Sent him to jail. Changed both of our lives.
“I meant…” Bellini trailed off when he saw that he wasn’t going to get through. “Fuck, that’s not what I meant. I swear to God.”
“What’s going on?”
I looked over Sin’s shoulder to see two more men, both very large, and very similar to the two standing next to me, staring at the three of us like something was worrying them.
Me, probably.
Or they didn’t like seeing their family upset.
And that was how both Sin and Bellini appeared in that moment.
“Do me a favor and get us some cake to go,” Sin ordered as he threw his arm around me. “And maybe next time we come here, you’ll think before you speak.”
Then Sin was leading me out the door to the parking lot, and my feet were moving, but my mind was still back in that dining room, at the look of horror on Bellini’s face.
I put the brakes on, and Sin had no choice but to stop or drag me.
He slowed and stared at me with confusion.
“Everything okay?” he asked, turning to me. “Bellini really didn’t mean it like that. I know what it sounded like but…”
“I’m really hungry, Sin,” I said softly. “And I know that he didn’t mean it.”
He brought both of his hands up and cupped my face with two huge palms.
“I don’t want you ever, ever thinking that you suffering would be better than what I went through,” he said, voice sounding rough and sad.
I looked away. Or tried to, anyway. He hadn’t let my face go, so I could only move my eyes.
“I would do it a hundred million times over again if that meant that you didn’t suffer a single hurt,” he said quietly.
I sighed. “I’m fucking eating here.”
Before he could catch me or tighten his hold, I slipped out of it.
Before I could think better of it, I marched back inside, straight to the booth where there were now two men sitting looking at Bellini like he was a dumbass.
“I know you didn’t mean it that way,” I grumbled as I took my seat. “I don’t want the cake first. I want the rolls. I’ve heard they’re to die for. Then I want a salad, because I heard that the ranch dressing here is the bomb. Then I’m ordering a forty-two-ounce steak.”
“Our biggest steak besides the tomahawk is the thirty-two ounce one,” Bellini said, giving me a small smile as he flagged down a waitress. “Get her some rolls and…” He looked at me. “What do you want to drink?”
I gave him my order of sweet tea then listened as he ordered that and three beers.
When he was done, he opened his mouth to say he was sorry, but Sin shoved him out of the way.
“Just shut up,” he grumbled, plopping down into the seat beside me and slapping his palm out on the table. “Look what I made.”
He then removed his palm to reveal the black and white photo of the sonogram—our baby—that he’d just gotten from the doctor.
“Hot damn,” Jim or Bronx—I wasn’t quite sure which was which—said as he leaned forward. “Bronx, look at this shit. Our big brother is going to be a daddy.”
So the one talking was Jim. Noted.
He was the one with the full beard. A full beard of salt and pepper that was damn hot on him. Though, not quite as hot as his brother’s, who, might I add, had trimmed it up a bit to make it not so bushy.
Bronx, who had a light coating of scruff, offered Sin his hand, then turned those baby blues on me. “We had a bet going.”
My brow rose.
“Yeah?” I asked, curious to know what bet this would be.
“Before I tell you about it,” Bronx continued, “how far along are you?”
I had a feeling I knew where this was going.
“Ummm,” I hesitated.
“It says eleven weeks one day on the sonogram,” Jim pulled the paper off the table and brought it to his eyes.
“That means I win!” Bellini cried, pumping his fist into the air as if he’d just won the lottery.
My brows rose.
“Ummm,” I hesitated.
“Son of a bitch,” Sin grumbled under his breath. “Guys, give it a rest.”
“Can’t.” Bronx grinned. “Did you know that we knew you were a guard there?”
I hesitated. “Didn’t really keep it a secret.”
“No,” Bronx agreed. “You didn’t. Nor did y’all do very well at keeping your feelings to yourselves.”
I hesitated because, honestly, he was right.
I probably did a pretty shitty job at hiding that.
In fact, if I had to guess, I had a feeling that quite a few people knew about it.
And, obviously, his brothers did, too.
“We were just curious if you’d ever… you know.” Bronx lifted his eyebrows suggestively. “Because there was this tension in the air, and every single time y’all were near each other, we could practically feel it coming off of you two in waves.”
I closed my eyes as embarrassment started to flood through me.
“Not sure that any of us expected a pregnancy, though,” Jim admitted, leaning back in the booth as he alternated looking at Sin and I. “Though, technically, we probably should’ve planned for that. Because it’s not like Sin can carry those things around with him. Nor can you, I guess.”
I felt my eye start to twitch.
“I knew it,” Bellini said as he took our drinks from the waitress and put them down onto the table. Seconds later the bread followed, making my mouth water. “I told them that it was going to happen. The last time I was there visiting, he kept looking at you across the room. Everyone agreed that Sin would be good. But I knew that he wouldn’t give a fuck.”
My brows rose. “You knew that he was going to do bad things to me in prison?”
Bellini shrugged.
“I saw you. Saw how he reacted to you. Saw it coming a mile away, actually. I just kind of didn’t expect quite this level of explosiveness.”
He gestured to the paper that Jim and Bronx were studying with their heads together. As if they were looking at something that was out of this world.
Which, it kind of was.
I still didn’t have my head wrapped around it, and I’d had a month to prepare.
When I looked over at Sin, it was to see him already looking at me.
“What?” I asked.
He gestured to the bread.
“You might want to eat that while it’s hot,” he said. “That’s when it’s the best.”
I looked at the bread that I hadn’t touched, then back at him.
“You’re okay with this?” I whispered quietly, hoping that his brothers who were now all three looking at the photo wouldn’t hear.
He looked from me to his brothers, then back to me. “I’m more than okay with this.” He paused. “It was never my intention to make you think that I wasn’t okay with this, honestly. I love kids. Did I expect to conceive one while I was in prison? No. But that’s not going to change the fact that I want this baby. That I want this baby with you. That I want you. I was just trying to get my life straightened out before I started making demands.”
“Making demands?” I asked, feeling my heart rate accelerate.
He pulled a roll out of the basket and started to butter it. The moment he was done, he handed it to me.
I took a bite and was just about to swallow after chewing when I nearly choked due to his words. “I think you needed the time just like I did. You told me you needed me to come to terms. But I think that you needed to come to terms, too. And I was serious earlier. I think that we should move in with each other. We already know we’re compatible.”
Oh, we were compatible.
We were more than compatible.
“What if you can’t stand me?” I asked. “What if I do things you don’t like?”
“What if you can’t stand me? I haven’t had to live with anyone that I actually gave a fuck about in a really long time. You may think I’m annoying as fuck and leave me… but you won’t know until you try,” he countered as he urged me to take another bite of the roll.
It was very good.
I took another bite and listened as he spoke. “And there’s no other way to know if we like each other at this point but to bite the bullet and move in. If nothing else, you can always go back to your brother’s place if you decide I’m annoying.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
On one hand, he had a point.
But…
“We could get to know each other by, you know, dating,” I pointed out.
He snorted. “I think we’re a little bit past that. I did hard time because I beat the shit out of the person that was set on raping and beating you to death. You and I are now expecting a child. I’m not sure how we can put the horse back into the barn, but if you really want to try…”
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.”
“So you’ll move in?” he asked, sounding hopeful.
“I’ll move in if you do me a solid and not laugh when I freak out about ghosts,” I conceded. “Because I bet your place has them. And I’m going to have to come to terms with that.”
“I heard that his place was haunted,” Bellini said as he gathered a roll and pulled up a chair, obviously having listened to at least part of our conversation.
The waitress moved in beside him and stood between Bellini and Sin. “Can I get y’all some appetizers?”
As she asked this, she leaned forward and handed me a menu, only her eyes were so focused on Sin that she didn’t realize that she was knocking my glass of tea over until it was already being poured into Sin’s lap.
Sin cursed, and with nowhere to go, he ended up getting a lap full of tea and nothing to do about it.
“Oh, no!” the waitress said, reaching for the conveniently placed stack of towels that were on the edge of our table. “Let me help…”
She started to reach toward Sin’s lap with her stack of napkins and I placed my hand on his lap, fingers splayed over the supple flesh that I could feel there—even soft he had a lot of heft to him—and glared.
“I think we can handle cleaning him up,” I told her. “Now, kindly remove yourself from his dick.”
The waitress paused, her eyes wide, and stared at me in shock as if she couldn’t quite believe that I’d just told her to step away from his dick.
“I’m… I’m sorry.” She looked from Sin to me to Bellini and back. She even spared a quick glance for the other two brothers who were now laughing in amusement.
Whether it was due to the fact that I told the whore to step away from his dick, or because Sin had a drink poured into his lap, I didn’t know.
What I did know was that the dick underneath my hand was growing, and I was having a hard time not flushing with excitement.
I reluctantly pulled away, but not before my fingers brushed against the broad head of his cock that was now a little further down the length of his jeans than before.
“I’ll go get a towel to clean everything up,” Bellini murmured. “Tandy, you go and get a mop and her another tea, please. Then ask Beth to take this table over.”
Tandy looked pissed as hell for a second as she nodded in consent, then stomped off toward the bar where the bartender looked up and gave a jerk of her chin at Tandy’s words.
Bellini backed away from the table as he said, “Sin, I have a pair of sweats in my office. And some underwear, I think, in the drawer. I’m not sure whose they are, but it’s better than your dick flopping around for my entire restaurant to see in a pair of sweatpants.”
With that, he left to fetch the towel, and Sin was sliding out of the booth.
I pulled my feet up from the table since I could now feel tea dripping from the seat onto the floor, splashing on my boots.
“Be back,” Sin said as he headed down a back hallway and disappeared.
That’s when I realized that I’d been left with two men who were now staring at me.
“What?” I asked when they didn’t move their eyes.
“Tandy and Sin dated once,” Jim said.
My brows rose.
“Does he remember that they dated?” I asked curiously. “Because it was obvious that he didn’t remember her.”
“Maybe.” Jim shrugged.
“You’re not mad that they dated?” Bronx asked curiously.
I laughed then.
“Not at all. There were a lot of years that we didn’t know each other,” I pointed out. “In fact, if we’re going to keep count, then he should probably know about the four that I dated before him. But we’ve never really gotten to that point in our…”
Bronx held up his hand. “I get it.”
“You get what?”
I turned to find myself on eye level with Sin’s dick.
Sin’s very much not contained by underwear dick.
“You didn’t put the underwear on,” I mused.
Jim and Bronx started to laugh at Sin’s reply. “No, I didn’t.”
CHAPTER 10
I just released my own fragrance. Nobody in the car seemed to like it.
-Sin to Blaise
SIN
“How does this work?” she asked as I pulled up to her house.
“How does what work?” I wondered as I turned the truck off and got out, rounding it to get to her side.
She was already out and sliding down the length of the truck to come to a stop with her feet planted beside it.
“Do we start this just whenever?” she asked, gesturing between us. “What do we do? Are we just roommates? Are we more than roommates? Are we friends? Are we…”
I stopped her tirade with not my hand over her mouth, but my mouth on hers.
She gasped when my lips met hers, and I took advantage of her openness by sweeping my tongue inside, tasting her.
/> She tasted like chocolate still.
The way that she’d eaten the dessert that the chef had personally brought her had been such a complete turn on that I’d almost regretted not borrowing the underwear my brother had offered to keep my dick contained.
The bad thing was that my brothers had looked on just as hungrily, watching just as avidly as I had.
I couldn’t blame them.
They were red-blooded men just like I was. And I would’ve watched the show just like they did.
When I pulled back, her taste was on my lips, and I had a feeling that if I didn’t get her to her front door soon, then this night would be ending a whole lot different than what either one of us intended.
“That still” —she drew in a deep breath— “doesn’t really answer my question.”
I grinned and stepped away.
“I’ll help you move this weekend after meeting your parents,” I told her. “I want to meet them, at least officially as your man. I want them to know that I have true intentions aimed your way. And I want you to know that I’m serious about you. Plus, since I’m sure your family drops by just as much as mine does, I don’t want them thinking that we’re trying to hide it from them.”
She scrunched up her nose. “You do have a point. My brother, sister-in-law, friends, and family stop by a lot unannounced. Just today, my sister-in-law dropped in with her kids. So… that wouldn’t be a bad thing, for them to know.”
I curled my hand around her neck, loving that she leaned into me upon my touching her.
“What about tonight?” she asked.
“Tonight, I drop you off at your door, because I have a few things to do with Lynn before I go to bed,” I admitted. “There was a little girl that went missing this morning and they believe that foul play was involved. It’s all-hands-on-deck.”
Her face went sad for a moment.
“I heard about it. Do they suspect trafficking?” she whispered.
I squeezed her neck slightly before dropping my hand and gesturing toward the front door with a jerk of my chin.
She sighed and followed my chin jerk, looking up at me a few times as she did.
“What about tonight?” she asked. “Will you be there all night?”
“I honestly don’t know,” I admitted. “I’m still in the planning stage. We’re gathering information, following up on leads. If I do get home, it’ll be late.”
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