Mad Gold (Providence Gold Series Book 2)

by Mary B. Moore

  “You here for a reason?” I snapped, losing what tiny bit of patience I had left and getting a sharp elbow to the gut from the woman beside me in return.

  “Yeah,” Levi said, sounding worried suddenly. “Luna’s in labor!”

  And then I truly lost my shit.

  Fourteen

  Madix

  “W omen have been having babies since the dawn on mankind,” Dahlia repeated out of breath as she struggled to keep up with me as I stalked down the hallway toward Luna’s room.

  “Not my sister,” I growled, seeing the room I was looking for just up ahead.

  When I got to her door, I reached out and noticed how much my hand was shaking.

  “I understand that,” Dahlia said from behind me, having just caught up with me. “But was it really necessary to punch Levi?”

  Well, yeah! I had a list longer than my leg why that had been necessary. I’d started that list when they’d first met and it had just kept growing over the years. Granted, it was a Santa scenario – on one leg I had the good list, on the other the bad one, but fucking still! And his brother had married my baby sister in Vegas of all places. I had nothing against Vegas or people getting married there, but Luna deserved a huge wedding at a castle. Oh, and he’d knocked her up – which was why we were here.

  Gulping, I spun around and looked at the woman who I was starting to see a wedding and babies with myself. Out of the corner of my eye, I also saw a pissed off Levi who had the beginning of a black eye walking in our direction.

  “What if something happens to her or the baby?” I asked, my voice sounding desperate and croaky even to my own ears. “I can’t lose her!”

  My little sister was my world, and I’d already let her down…

  A sharp pinch and twist of my nipple made me yell a yodeling sort of noise.

  “Shut up,” she snapped, glaring up at me. “She’s like every other woman who has gone through this and who will go through this. Now get your very attractive and impressive testicles into that room and give her some support before I call Bonnie to break them.”

  With a groan, probably at the amount of information she’d just given about my balls and the mental image of balls being broken, Levi spun around and covered his ears with his hands.

  Ironically, seeing him grossed out made me feel better and somewhat smug. Grabbing her head in my hands, I planted a big smackeroo on her lips. “You’re the shit, Dahlia Ferguson,” I whispered, pulling back so I could make eye contact with her. “You’re everything!”

  I heard her gasp before Levi groaned, “Ah, fuck me. Can you go back to talking about breaking balls? Seriously, this is making me sick. There are women squeezing babies out of their vag…” he broke off and swayed, no doubt now picturing the birth process going on around him. This most likely wasn’t helped by a woman choosing that second to scream her ass off seeing as how he went even paler and sank back onto the wall, taking deep breaths.

  I didn’t bother even acknowledging him before I turned around and walked into the room with my hand over my eyes just in case. I really didn’t want to see my sister’s vagina, or see a human being coming out of it.

  Just as the door shut behind me, I heard the familiar sound of Levi yelping followed by a groaned, “What did I do?”

  “You know what you did!” Dahlia hissed back.

  And then the door clicked shut.

  All the irrational thoughts and worries I’d been stewing over since I’d heard the news about my sister vanished, and I became the strong big brother that she needed. This was partly thanks to Dahlia. It was also partly thanks to Levi. Then again, if Dahlia hadn’t done whatever she’d done to him just now making me feel like laughing, I might not have been able to totally shake the heavier shit and worries off, so I’d just thank her for all of it.

  And this, folks, was the random thought process of a man surrounded by women squeezing babies out of tiny holes.

  Of all the things I expected to encounter when I got here, I didn’t expect for my sister to be a sobbing wreck.

  “Mad… Ma… Madix,” she wailed, sounding like the world was ending. “She doesn’t like my vagina, and they’re gonna gut me like a f… f… fish!”

  Keeping my hand firmly over my eyes, I felt around the air in front of me as I moved toward the direction her voice had come from. With the help of someone’s hand, presumably a nurse’s given that they were wearing gloves – clean ones hopefully – I was moved to an area beside the bed. Immediately she stuck her sweaty face right in my palm.

  “Luna, you can do this. All you have to do is think of how time sensitive it is,” I told her, trying to sound as calm and strong as possible. I wasn’t feeling that on the inside, but she didn’t have to know that.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, then I felt her wiping her nose on my palm. Gross!

  “Well, remember when you were little, and we’d pull a funny face at each other, and Nana would tell us our faces would get stuck like that if the wind changed?”

  “Uh, yeah?”

  I might have been worried, but I was still a big brother and it was my right to mess with her at any point. At the same time, I knew that this analogy would sink in and motivate her to give it her all.

  “Well, you’ve had her in the chute for two hours,” he reminded me. “What if what Nana was saying was true? Two hours with her head right there…”

  I heard her growl before she yelled, “Get out, get out, get out!” as she grabbed my hand and groaned loudly then she pushed. “Whatever happens, forget it happened. Do you hear me?” she screamed before she pushed again.

  I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about, but her husband’s yell joined mine as she crushed our hands at the same time. At least I knew she was crushing my hand, I didn’t know what she was crushing of his. Seeing as how he’d gotten her into this situation, I couldn’t stop myself from praying it was his balls.

  On the tail end of our pain, came a new scream as the baby made itself known at the same time that Luna screamed again in pain.

  I didn’t remove my hand from in front of my eyes once. Not until the doctor announced that my niece was here, and then no one could have stopped me from looking at her.

  “She’s beautiful,” I croaked, taking in the angry smushed face of the baby who was still screaming.

  “What’s her name?” one of the nurses asked as they cleaned her off and the doctor did things under the blanket covering the lower half of my sister.

  “Oh shit,” Noah gulped, getting a glare from me in return.

  He’d gone slightly pale when he’d moved down to the bottom of the bed to cut the cord and I’d seen him glance down at what the doctor was doing briefly, but then he’d looked at his daughter and his face had immediately gone back to normal. I’d also been watching carefully as he cut the cord so I knew his hand hadn’t slipped (even though I’d had to gulp a couple times to stop myself throwing up as he did it, something that I noticed him do too). So, this had to be something else.

  “You don’t have a name for your daughter after months of begging me to be the one to choose it?” Luna shrieked over the wails coming from the baby.

  “I forgot it is all,” he stammered, looking around the room and not at Luna as he lied outta his ass. “Um, well, there was a couple and I’m trying to decide which one she suits best,” he lied – again.

  “Oh, you better decide,” she growled as the doctor finished up doing whatever it was that needed to be done, and then patted her on the leg before joining the nurses who were laughing silently in the corner as they did measurements on my niece and wrote stuff down on a chart.

  “Uh,” I saw the second his eyes stopped on a women’s magazine on the table in the corner of the room, with some guy called Jamie Dornan on the cover. “Jamie!” he yelled, spinning back with a grin on his face.

  It must have been the right name because not only did my sister settle back on her bed with a happy smile on her face, but the baby stopped screamin
g in the corner and made a tiny little cooing noise.

  Lucky bastard!

  Two hours later…

  I had a problem, a huge one.

  I was afraid of babies. I’d never been around one since Luna was born, and even then I was five years older than her, so it’s not like I could really remember it. Or even that I had to do much apart from poke her and run when she had a blowout.

  Being an adult with huge hands made holding a baby a very different and scary experience. Especially when the baby fit perfectly in both hands because she was that small.

  “Can you hold her now?” I muttered out the corner of my mouth to Dahlia who was standing beside me looking down at a sleeping Jamie.

  Luna hadn’t listened when I’d said that I’d hold her later, like in five years when she wasn’t as breakable, and had plonked her in my arms and told me to sit down. I’d walked like a kid carrying a glass of water, every step measured and careful with one foot directly in front of the other – heel to toe, heel to toe, heel to toe – the whole way until I got to a chair. Then, it had been like I was diffusing a bomb as I’d sat down, lowering my ass onto the chair one inch at a time.

  Not one person was taking her from me when I offered, even though they were all looking at her with that crazy baby addiction look. Well, apart from Levi whose first question had been, “What does she do?”

  They were all assholes. Oh, and I couldn’t swear. I didn’t want to be responsible for my niece’s first words being a cuss word.

  “When do babies start talking?” I asked the room.

  “At like two months old, isn’t it?” Tate replied from where he was tapping on his phone. He’d held Jamie briefly when he’d first come in and had then passed her back to his mom with an almost sad look on his face which had come and gone quickly.

  “Don’t be a dick,” Noah snapped, getting a slap to the arm from his mom. “Sorry, don’t be a penis,” he amended, still getting a slap. “She needs to be able to cogitate and then she can verbalize.”

  “I bet she talks before any other baby, ever,” Erica cooed, taking to the role of proud grandmother like a pro as she leaned over my shoulder. This put her boobs roughly an inch away from my face, which was only slightly awkward.

  “Please take her,” I begged Dahlia, trying not to show my relief when Erica moved her tits out of my personal space.

  “I don’t do babies,” she replied quietly, a similar expression to the one that had crossed Tate’s face, now crossing hers.

  Now this was something I’d be exploring, and soon.

  Dahlia

  As we were driving back to Madix’s house, where we’d dropped the dogs off after hearing the news about Luna, I poured over the memory of Jamie’s little face. Her tiny nose, her blue eyes as she’d stared up at her huge uncle, her teeny little fingers with their impossibly small nails…

  I’d never have that.

  It was probably a cliché, but I couldn’t care less – I had issues. My own mother hadn’t wanted me. If your parent didn’t want you and had actually said those words – wouldn’t you have issues? Even ones you hid and refused to acknowledge, you’d always have the doubt over your self-worth and abilities as a parent running around your mind. I knew it was her weakness not my own, but still. I was also worried sick that the baby would get hurt because of me. Stupid shit happened all the time, and just because I had a baby, it didn’t mean that it would stop happening!

  So, I’d never have that. I’d never be able to give that to Madix.

  Holy shit, I was being unfair to him then, wasn’t I? The longer this relationship went on, the more unfair I was being by depriving him of the ability to meet a woman who would and could give him a family.

  Just thinking about not having him had tears building in my eyes, making the headlights and streetlights burst into halos as we drove past them in the dark.

  I didn’t want to give him up, I wanted to be selfish and keep him…

  Oh, fuck me with a cactus and stick my nipples in a hornet’s nest – I was in love with Madix Blue.

  There was a fact about me, I was a snotty crier. Not an ugly crier, but my nose seemed to build up snot more than anyone I knew. That meant that even with tears building and not actually falling, my snot glands (or whatever they were called) had already gone into over-production mode. This also meant that the gasp of breath I took when I realized how deeply I felt for the man beside me was accentuated by a loud snort through the now full bags of snot in my face. There was no disguising it, no excusing it, no pretending it didn’t happen because it was so freaking loud, which meant that Madix knew immediately that I was crying.

  I was just taking a shuddery breath in – through my mouth this time – when his hand landed on my thigh and rubbed it gently.

  That made the tear dam break – and the snot one – and I started crying hysterically just as we pulled up in front of his house.

  Fifteen

  Madix

  I had no idea what had come over Dahlia as I carried her from the car to the house, but she wouldn’t stop crying. This was something that didn’t sit well with me. I hated it normally when a woman cried, especially my sister doing it, but Dahlia doing it made me feel almost crazy. I wanted to fix it all, I wanted to make it better, I wanted her never to do it again and not only because I was pretty certain that what was soaking through my shirt wasn’t just tears.

  Weaving my way through the dogs who were going crazy at my feet, I made sure not to stand on one of their paws whilst also making sure there were no hidden accidents from their time alone in front of me. Thankfully, there were none of either as I got to the couch safely and settled down with her shaking body on my lap.

  Did I let her get it out of her system herself? Or did I get it out of her system by getting her to talk about it? I wasn’t sure exactly what the best thing to do was.

  When she hadn’t stopped after a couple minutes and I was starting to worry about her being sick, I gently lifted her chin with my thumb and chanced a look at her face.

  Jesus Christ! – is what went through my mind on the inside. A high-pitched squeak is what came out of me though at the shock of seeing her makeup in pools running down her face, and her eyelids swelling.

  Then I realized, even in this state, with Alice Cooper makeup, swollen eyes, tears, snot – lots of snot – she was still the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my life.

  I was head over heels in love with Dahlia Ferguson, completely and utterly gone for her.

  Which made me even more desperate to get her to stop crying.

  I was about to act on the instinct of kissing her to distract her, but then I thought better of it and looked around the room for a box of Kleenex. Fortunately, there was one on the coffee table in front of me. So, holding her close, I leaned over and grabbed a handful before settling my ass back down on the cushions. Dahlia had opened her eyes slightly to see what was happening, so she reached out for a hanky. When I kept my hand away from hers and instead wiped her face myself – partly because I could see all of it, so I wouldn’t miss a spot – she looked up at me in confusion.

  As soon as I moved my hand away and she opened her mouth to say something, I swooped down and kissed her. The open mouth was advantageous as it meant that I could taste her immediately, too. Even though she tasted of tears, she also tasted familiar and like more than I ever thought I’d have in my life.

  I wasn’t letting her go. Ever!

  Dahlia

  I didn’t realize that he was going to kiss me, I just thought he was being the great guy he was by cleaning my face up. The next thing I knew, we were making out on the couch and it quickly turned into much more as he shifted our position, and then lay me out underneath him.

  Only minutes before it had felt like my world was crumbling, but now it felt like life had never been better. That was the way he made me feel – like I could do anything and that nothing was wrong.

  All too soon, he pulled his mouth off of mine as he t
ugged my shirt up my body so he could get to my breasts. I’d expected him to maybe kiss around my bra or pull it out of the way like they did in romance books. Instead, he hooked a finger in the little center bit of the material and pulled as hard as he could, ripping it in half and freeing my chest from the evil device. It was also a godly invention because if you got to a certain size, you definitely needed a bra or it was just uncomfortable (and rude to the general population), but when you were aiming towards flagrante delicto– or exploring punarnia as Bonnie and I had called it when we were teenagers – it was just evil and needed to be destroyed. Which it now was.

  “Fuck,” Madix groaned as he took a nipple between his lips and flicked it with the tip of his tongue. Each flick made my body twitch. When I almost twitched it out of his mouth, he closed his lips around it instead and sucked gently, driving me insane.

  I don’t know if it was the buildup from our picnic that was interrupted, the emotions of the birth of his niece, my tears, my realization I loved him, or all of them mixed together, but with only him sucking on one nipple, I was getting close to coming. Just from that!

  And then he switched sides and moved his hand up so he could gently pinch the nipple he’d just left, as he sucked on the one he hadn’t already dealt with… and that was it. It wasn’t a huge orgasm or a screaming climax, but it was enough to make me moan and shake under him, getting his attention.

  “Just from that, baby?” he mumbled around the flesh in his mouth. It sounded distorted, but his words were unmistakable.

  “Don’t gloat,” I panted, staring up at the white ceiling above us. For some reason, it stood out that there wasn’t one cobweb or mark on it – probably because of his height. That must make it easy to clean everywhere in a home, instead of getting the Dyson and attaching it to the extender hose thing and attacking the suckers that way.

  While I was distracted, he’d managed to undo my pants and take off his own t-shirt, something I found out when he kissed down my stomach and nipped the front of my panties between his teeth and tug without undoing my zipper.