I gave Vince a crooked smile. When it came to the idea of keeping Celeste and the baby, he would be easier to convince than Lincoln. Vincent had little to no regard for consequences. There were probably a hundred little Vincent’s roaming the greater New York area, because he swore by four rules when it came to women.
Never give out your real name, never have more than a one night stand, never bring them back to the apartment and never, ever make any promises.
I’d broken all his commandments that night with Celeste. But still, he wasn’t a worrier in the way Linc was. If I could convince Vince that this was a good idea, eventually Lincoln would have to fall in line.
“I’ll introduce you when she comes back out. You’ll love her. She's as tough as she is beautiful. She’ll bring you to your knees and you’ll smile while she does it.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “You know I’m a big fan of being on my knees in front of a woman, but somehow I don’t think we are speaking the same language here, bud.”
I huffed out a laugh, because I didn’t think we were either. But Vincent wasn’t dumb, despite the stupid boozehound rocker persona he liked to project to the rest of the world. No, Vincent was as smart as me. Well, maybe he might have started off that way but he’d been pretty intent on massacring his brain cells with cheap vodka for a few years there.
I looked in the direction of the bathroom, but Celeste still hadn’t emerged. I wanted to go and check on her, but I didn’t want to overstep. Vincent slouched onto the coffee table, kicking his booted feet onto the couch. I pushed them off and sighed. “Just give her a chance, Vince. I really like her.”
Vincent shook his head sadly. “That's the problem, brother. You really like them all. But Lincoln is out for blood. He isn’t going to be swayed by your puppy dog eyes and her pretty face.”
The door to the bathroom opened and I pretended like I hadn’t been watching it like a hawk. I stood and waved her toward the dining table that delineated the kitchen from the living area. “Let’s eat.” I hadn’t missed how thin she looked.
She eyed Vincent hesitantly from where he was lounging around on the couch, but she held her head high, meeting Lincoln’s eyes like it was a battle of wills. I worried, but I briefly heard Vince chuckle. Yeah, he’d let me keep her around purely for the entertainment fact.
It didn’t really matter what either of them thought.
I was keeping her.
Chapter Seven
Vincent
The girl could put away food like a growing frat boy. She inhaled her food in a way that made me wonder if she even had a gag reflex. Then I felt like shit that I was even thinking that way about Reese’s girl. And she was his girl. He looked at her like the sun rose out of her vagina every morning and set in her ass every night.
She was a way bigger issue than Linc could imagine, because while Reese professed his love for just about every hussy with big, fake eyelashes and a cute pout, the way he looked at this chick put them all to shame.
If Lincoln pushed this too hard, I think we’d lose him. That was the real reason I’d agreed to giving her a chance. Not because I gave two shits about her or the fact she was knocked up.
No, I agreed because if we didn’t play this right, it could spell the end of everything I’d worked so hard to build and maintain. Real friendships. Love.
I’d grown up without either of those things, but there’s that saying that you don’t know what you’re missing until it's gone. Well, it was the same the other way around. You don’t know you’re missing something until it pulls you out of a bush and makes sure you don’t die.
“So, Celeste, is it? That’s a pretty name. You kind of look celestial. Like a star,” I cooed at her, and Linc snorted. The girl in question just raised an eyebrow.
Reese rolled his eyes, but he was used to my antics by now. I flirted like I breathed. It was interesting that he was so protective of her, so desperate for her to stay, but didn’t mind me flirting with her. Maybe he didn’t like her as much as I thought.
“Uh, thanks? It was my grandmother's name.”
I ate an eggroll, sipping the beer that I was rolling between my fingertips. “Where have you been all this time? Reese here was quite in a tizz after you left.”
Her face went carefully blank, but I didn’t miss it. I people-watch for fun. “Here and there. Mostly women’s shelters and couch surfing. A couple of house sitting jobs.”
Yeah, that wasn’t suspicious as fuck. I could all but hear the cogs turning in Lincoln’s brain beside me. “Why no apartment?”
Reese gave me a warning look. “Vince…”
Lincoln pretended he wasn’t completely invested in her answers. “It's a fair question, Reese.”
Celeste laid a hand on Reese’s arm, and it made something churn in my chest. Jealousy? Nah, that wasn’t it. I was annoyed that she’d been with him all of two seconds, and now she was what, protecting him from us? What the fuck was with that? “They’re right. It does sound suspicious. I pissed off some bad people, and they’re chasing me. Well, not me in particular but that's neither here nor there.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, rolling my eyes at her non-answer. “Pissed them off how?” I said, sounding suspicious even to my own ears. I don’t know who looked more surprised, Reese or Lincoln, that I was taking this tact.
But Celeste looked me directly in the eye and grimaced. “By existing.”
Well, that was about as clear as mud. There was more to this, a secret Reese knew but hadn’t shared. Reese sucked at secrets, so it must have been a doozy. Lincoln could try and brute force it out of her, but I had different tactics. I sucked my teeth like I disapproved of people persecuting such a sweet, young woman. Well, I did on principle. The people who preyed on the weaker were the worst kind of scum. But they were prolific scum. Good people were harder and harder to find. They were everything wrong with the world, and it was the reason I trusted no one except the two men at the table with me.
I looked between Celeste and Reese. “So, is Star here going to stay? You don’t mind me calling you Star, do you? It suits you. Less over the top than Celeste.
She pointed a dumpling at me. “You can call me whatever you like, names can’t hurt me.” But she wasn’t looking anymore, instead her eyes had drifted to a taut Lincoln. Oh great, these two had a rocky acquaintance already. Yay.
I waved my fingers so she was looking at me again. “Star it is. Are you intending to stay?”
She nodded, her eyes drifting to Reese. “If it's okay with you guys. I need to get off the streets and out of the public eye before I get anymore pregnant.”
Reese placed his hand over hers, his eyes earnest. “Of course you can stay. We aren't heartless enough to throw a woman back on the streets, especially not you.”
My scoff reverberated around the room. “Especially not when you are carrying his baby. I’ll bunk with Lincoln and she can have my room.” Reese looked like he was going to protest, but I waved a hand. “She’s going to need her own space, and Lincoln won’t mind, will you?” I said to Lincoln, who was grinding his back teeth and looking like he wanted to murder me.
Instead of voicing the obvious ‘fuck you’ that was written all over his face, he gritted his teeth. “That would be fine.”
Reese looked torn. Like he wanted to invite her to live not only in his house, but in his bed. But he was raised too oldschool for that, he would never suggest she just jump back into his bed, unless she suggested it first.
I wasn’t raised with his manners. “Unless you wanna bunk with me instead, Star?” Reese kicked me under the table and I grinned. “I’m kidding, obviously.”
I stood and started clearing dishes and takeout containers. I felt the girl’s eyes track me across the room. Well, maybe she wouldn’t mind. After all, she didn’t say no.
But then she looked back at Reese and her face softened. Dammit, he had that effect on people. You could be the most hard ass of bastards, but you turned to mush at the sight of his big
earnest face, like a human golden retriever. Look at Lincoln. The guy went from ‘I eat livers for dinner’ to ‘no one fucks with my Reesey-Weesey’ in like three seconds flat. Unlike Reese and I, Lincoln was a product of his shitty upbringing. Well, that’s not so different to me. The difference lay in the fact his was compounded by poverty, and mine was compounded by apathy of the rich and famous.
Poor little rich kid. It was a phrase I’d berated myself with often over the years.
I stacked the dishes and refrigerated the leftovers. “Give me a second to pack up a few of my things and then it's all yours,” I told Star from where she was watching me like she wanted to eat me. Oh yeah, she was trying to hide it well, but I’d seen that look many times since I hit puberty and my mother's cougar friends started coming around for cocktails. They had made me uncomfortable as fuck, but my mother seemed to take my attractiveness as some kind of credit to her hard work, like she had any hand in the mixing of my genetics to create my aesthetics.
When Star looked at me, I was still uncomfortable, but it was only from the way my dick hardened in my jeans.
I wandered down the hall, pushing open my door and screwing up my nose. It was a bit filthy, but the cleaner only allowed it to get a certain level of messy before she held an intervention. That meant this week's clothes were on the floor rather than in the hamper. There were guitars and notebooks spread all over the place.
Other than mess and instruments, there wasn’t much in the room that was personal. I hadn’t brought that much with me when I’d abandoned the family of my blood for one of my choosing. I heard the shower start and then Reese was standing in my doorway.
He looked around and screwed up his nose too. Yeah. It was a bit like that. “I’ll help you, uh, clean up a little.” He picked up a handful of socks and aimed them at my hamper. I pulled some clothes out of my drawers, mainly just shirts and boxers.
He stopped me with a hand on my arm. “Thanks for this, Vincent. I really appreciate it.”
Gah, I hated when he got all sincere. It made me feel like the shittiest person alive. Even if I hadn’t done anything wrong.
“Whatever. It's not like I’m here much anyway.”
That was the truth. Between touring and one night stands, I rarely spent the night here. And even then, I was rarely in my bed. As if reading my thoughts, Reese stripped the linen off my bed and replaced it with fresh silk sheets. Black. Always in black. Because if Reese was a saint, then I was a sinner. “When’s your next tour?”
I shrugged. I’d just come off a world tour, and honestly, my heart wasn’t in it. I didn’t tell my best friend that though. He would worry I was burning out or something, and maybe he’d be right. But I didn’t need him adding that to his lists of worries. Reese was a fixer. See a homeless man under the awning at your office building? Give him a job in the mail room. Find an angsty rich kid in a bush, bring him home. Find a girl in trouble? Fuck it, bring her home too.
Find out your best friend hates the very career he swore he wanted to do for the rest of his life, bankroll him until he finds his passion.
Reese must be protected at all costs. He was too fucking good for this world.
So instead of all that, I just said, “Record label wants me to cut another album first, so I’m home for a bit. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll bunk with Lincoln. We don’t get to spend enough time together anyway.”
Reese’s eyes softened, and he reached out to cup my arm. “He misses you, I know he does. He just doesn’t verbalize anything well. I missed you too. I’m glad you’ll be home for awhile. We need you. It isn’t the same here with just the two of us.”
I cleared my throat before I did something very uncool like burst into unmanly tears. “Well, now there’s four and a half of us.” I stopped and drop-shotted my dirty boxers into the hamper. “How are you doing, man? It must have been a hell of a surprise.”
Reese looked at the door, but the shower was still running. Yet he still dropped his voice to almost a whisper. Jesus, she’d have to have ears like a bat to hear him. “Don’t tell Linc or Celeste, but I’m kind of excited.”
Of course he fucking was. “Star isn’t excited?”
Reese did that face he made when he was trying to find a lie that was close enough to the truth that he could get away with it. “Not really, no. I think she was a bit shocked. She wants to leave after the baby is born.”
I frowned. “Why even turn up on your doorstep then, if she was just gonna take the kid and run off anyway? She had to know you’d want custody.” Hell, you only needed to spend two minutes with Reese to know that he was all about doing ‘the right thing’.
He stepped closer to me, his voice still pitched low. “She doesn’t want to take the baby with her. She wants me to have full custody.”
I reared back like he’d slapped me. “She doesn’t want it?”
Reese shook his head sadly. “There’s more to it. You don’t understand.”
Damn right I didn’t understand. I was unwanted too, but at least my mother pretended she was a doting parent in public, even if she forgot I existed at home. But complete rejection? That was very uncool. “You’re right there, Bud. I don’t understand. Why don’t you explain it to me?”
He shook his head, grabbing my full hamper to drag it to the laundry room. “I can’t, Vince. It’s not my truth to tell.”
I fucking knew it. He was keeping secrets. “You’ve never kept secrets from us before.”
He didn’t say anything, just slunk out of the room.
Maybe Lincoln was right. Maybe she needed to go before she tore us apart.
Chapter Eight
Celeste
I stepped out of the shower and sighed. It was good to finally be clean and warm. To have a shower without worrying about getting your shit stolen, or being attacked in the bathroom. Though the way that Reese’s buddies were looking at me, maybe I should be on the lookout for an attack.
I found it hard to believe that a man as sweet as Reese would have friends that would attack women, but I’d been wrong before. So I’d keep an eye on them.
Yeah, in case of attack, not because they were both as hot as fuck. Lincoln was tall and broody, a long muscular body and a close trimmed beard that I wanted to rub my face against and purr. And those Alpha vibes he cast off? My snow leopard wanted to roll all over him. And Vincent… It had taken me a while to work out who he was, but when I did, I tried not to fangirl a little. It was Vincent Brazz, lead singer of Enlighten Me. I snorted. He was Enlighten Me. Every other member of the group had been replaced over the last couple of years, but Vincent was the one constant. He sang like an angel who’d fallen into a vat of whiskey, cocaine, and hookers. Probably not in that order.
His reputation didn’t help. He was always on the front of the trash mags with a different socialite on his arm, who were probably just using him to get back at their parents. Because he was the quintessential bad boy, and it was hard to comprehend how he and Reese, who was the sweetest nerd you’d ever meet, were even friends.
You only had to glimpse the concern in Vincent’s eyes, which was carefully hidden under his devil-may-care smirk, to see that he loved Reese.
I stepped from the shower, pulling on one of Reese’s oversized shirts. I wasn’t a tall woman, shorter and curvier than most, at least when I was well fed. For the last few months I’d been too worried to stay in one place for too long. To hold down much of a steady job. Because it wasn’t just me now. Capture meant a two-for-one which would make the bounty hunters more persistent, and that wasn’t a risk I was willing to take.
I was tired. So damn tired. My snow leopard wanted to make a den, wanted to settle down to prepare for her cub, and the moving was making her anxious and restless. Coming to Reese had been the right decision, even if his housemates thought I was after his money.
I wasn’t. I wouldn’t let myself stay for that long. A small part of me was glad that our child wouldn’t have to struggle though. I’d left all my possessions
in a train station locker that I’d have to go and collect tomorrow, but for now, I was happy enough in Reese’s shirt that hung down to mid thigh. I looked down at my underwear and decided against it. I’d have to wear these clothes tomorrow, and the idea of putting my dirty underwear back on after I was finally clean made me screw up my nose.
I bundled them all up and tucked them under my arm. I stepped out of the bathroom door, and then there were hands gripping my shoulders tightly.
I huffed, and so did my snow leopard. Pregnancy was making her slow. Or maybe it was the fact she liked being pressed between a wall and the hard body that was Lincoln. Traitor.
He glared down at me. “I don’t know what you’re about, but don’t think for a minute that I’m buying this whole thing. I don’t know who’s baby that is, but even if it is Reese’s, I won’t let him be a meal ticket for some conniving one night stand. Do you hear me?”
Oh, I heard him alright, but my leopardess was far too distracted by how close his body was, and the fact I wasn’t wearing panties, and how strong his hands were, and how good he smelled. I physically had to hold myself back from curling against him.
With that, he turned and walked down the hallway, the way his jeans molded against his muscular ass making me bite my lip even as I flipped him the finger. Fucker.
I heard a slow clap behind me, and I looked over my shoulder at Vincent. “Not going to lie, Star. That was kind of hot.” My face flushed and I glared at the sexy rockstar and his vapid expression. He waved me closer. “Come on, I’ll give you the grand tour of my bedroom.”
I huffed, calming my racing heartbeat.
At some point Vincent had lost his shirt and was walking around in low slung jeans and bare feet. He was bad for my heartbeat. Luckily he wasn’t a shifter and couldn’t scent what his wide tattooed shoulders, trim waist and that nipple ring really did to me.
Wicked Souls: A Limited Edition Reverse Harem Romance Collection Page 155