That was the last sentence I was able to say before Hyde started moving, and my entire being focused on how good it felt to be with him, on how magical this moment was.
He rolled me underneath him so that my shoulders were pressed into the fuzzy rug. He braced a hand above my head, and rather than rush like the previous round, he slowly and deliberately moved his body over mine. Instead of a flood of pleasure, it was more like the tide was slowly rising, creeping along my nerve endings and washing through my blood. I sighed happily and curled my arms around his neck. Our eyes locked, and within that green gaze, there was every type of love Hyde Fuller had ever had for me. It wasn’t always easy, but he loved me anyway, which was exactly why I’d never been able to stop loving him.
I wrapped my legs around his waist, lifted my hips up to meet each of his thrusts, and lost myself in sensation. This was really how I wanted to celebrate each and every holiday with him. My hands gripped his shoulders, and my fingernails dug into his skin. The Santa hat was a lost cause as my body rocked harder with each thrust. My skin felt extra sensitive, and my heartbeat was thunderous in my ears, which might be why I missed the sound of my phone going off. I still wasn’t the best at answering it all the time, but I’d gotten much better. And considering it was well past midnight, if I wasn’t getting my world rocked in the middle of having my brains fucked out, I probably would’ve realized there was some kind of emergency afoot.
I was too engrossed in Hyde and making him feel as good as I felt to give much thought to the repeated dings and shrill ringing. My mind was full of his hand running across my sensitive breasts and the warmth that was already gathered between my legs. Thank goodness we’d addressed the protection issue almost as soon as we decided to be serious; otherwise, there was no chance Hyde would’ve rebounded as beautifully as he did. We were messy, wet, and making totally inappropriate noises, all while the tree continued to cast us in a magical light. I couldn’t have timed it better if I tried, but as soon as I came, instead of seeing stars or closing my eyes to drown in darkness, my vision was filled with hundreds of blinking white lights. They made Hyde’s skin sparkle and glinted in his hungry gaze.
He swore when he found his own completion and collapsed on top of me. He shot out a muscular arm and blindly groped for my phone. It was buried somewhere in the pile of presents, so it took him a few tries to find it. He frowned as he handed it over, because from somewhere else in the house, his phone also started to ring and went crazy with alerts.
We separated, which made me suck in a breath. “What’s going on?”
I was bewildered when I saw I missed several calls from Ry, a few from Bowe, a handful from my mom, and a whole bunch from my Uncle Rule. There were also a ton of messages in my inbox from all of them, as well as Zowen. It seemed like the entire family was in crisis mode, and when they couldn’t get ahold of me, they turned to Hyde. I was just swiping on my messages when he came sauntering into the living room wearing nothing more than those damn gray sweatpants. He tossed me my favorite of his t-shirts and paused after looking at his phone.
After I read the first message, I sucked in a breath and jerkily climbed to my feet. Our gazes locked, and I was sure my expression mirrored the dread that was clear on Hyde’s handsome face. I tried to calm my suddenly racing heart and put a hand to my head as if I could physically keep my mind from spiraling into panic.
“Daire is missing.” My voice cracked as Hyde came over and wrapped me up in his warm embrace.
“It seems like she is. Don’t worry. We’ll find her.” He kissed me on the top of my head, but I could feel how tense his big body was.
I had no doubt we would find her, but what kind of shape was she going to be in when we did? And what could’ve possibly sent her running into the night on Christmas Eve? There were so many questions, and I was so scared of the answers.
I shook my head and looked at Hyde with wide eyes. A heavy sigh shuddered out of my lungs. I wasn’t the only one in the family who knew how to make everyone worry. And truthfully, it was my uncle Rule who started the Archer family tradition of never being predictable or easy to handle. We all came by our obstinance and defiance organically.
“That girl… she really is her father’s daughter.”
The End
One surefire way to get more of a series you love, and to ensure you see more of your favorite characters—be they old or new—is to leave a review on a retail site and Bookbub. Talk about the books you love with fellow readers. Your praise and criticism are the lifeblood of any new novel. You’re the best type of advertising an author can ask for.
(I have a couple more sons coming your way. I don’t know if I want to write Zowen or Daire’s book next. I may let my readers pick whichever one they want the most. So, be sure you’re part of my reader’s group and sign up for my newsletter if you want to chime in!)
Wayward Son will be Zowen’s book.
Son of a Gun will be Daire’s book.
Preview of Fortunate Son (Ry and Bowe’s story)
“I DON’T THINK we’re a good match.”
The softly spoken words echoed in my head for hours.
It wasn’t like the breakup came out of nowhere. The girl I was pretty sure I loved had been acting strange and had become more and more distant for weeks. I’d known her my entire life. We grew up together and had been the best of friends before falling in love. I knew her almost as well as I knew myself and could tell something between us was off, but I refused to believe the end of what we had was near.
I told myself she was just stressed out and worried about the fact we were soon going to different colleges and spending a lot of time apart from one another. Young love was already unreliable and tricky to navigate. When you added the hurdle of long distance to the mix, it seemed almost destined to fail. I tried to reassure her everything would be fine; after all, I was older than her and had already been in college for a year. Nothing changed between us while I waited not so patiently for her to finish high school. I foolishly thought she would apply and get accepted to my school so we could stay together. It never occurred to me that she was only going to apply to schools out of state. I was unaware that she had her heart set on leaving not only me, but also our hometown, for years. When she finally came clean and let me know she was moving to California in the fall, I was stunned but still optimistic that our relationship would survive. After all, she was my first love. I was willing to sacrifice and suffer whatever it took to keep her in my life.
Aston, unfortunately, didn’t feel the same.
I felt blindsided by both the breakup and the revelation that she was always planning to move halfway across the country. Suddenly, the adorable little girl who grew up following my every step and who had effortlessly stolen my heart with her sweet, cheerful, innocent demeanor seemed like a total stranger who never cared about me the way I cared about her.
It was easy enough to argue with her when she said we weren’t a good match.
It was impossible to fight against her when she told me she wasn’t happy being with me and needed a change.
I wanted to tell her we just needed some time apart. I had faith in my ability to change her mind and prove to her that we belonged together. But the look in her eyes when she ended things was definite. This wasn’t a rash decision on her part. It was something she gave a lot of thought to and she had clearly made up her mind.
She didn’t want to be with me anymore, and I was left adrift and discombobulated.
Heartbreak wasn’t something I had a lot of experience with.
I was the kind of guy who typically got what I wanted and excelled at whatever I put my mind to. I graduated at the top of my class in high school, got into my first choice of college, and was in the starting line-up of my first college football game. My parents had a wall full of trophies and accolades I’d earned over the years. They were always proud of what I’d accomplished, even though they had never pushed me to be perfect. All they wanted was for me to be ha
ppy, so they supported me regardless of how hard I pushed myself.
I was popular and well-liked among my peers. As one of the oldest members of my tight-knit inner circle of relatives and longtime family friends, I was often the voice of reason and the most responsible member of the group, even though we were all similar in age and life experience. I never had a problem getting close to members of the opposite sex, but there was only one I wanted to keep and call mine.
But she no longer wanted me, and I wasn’t sure what to do with myself now.
It was my first time being rejected, and I could admit I wasn’t handling it well… at all.
I glanced down at my phone, which had been ringing and pinging with messages nonstop for the last several hours. I wanted to turn the damn thing off, but there was a part of me that refused to believe I’d been dumped, so I waited for each call to show my ex’s info. She never popped up on the screen, but my mom called close to twenty times. My dad called no less than ten. And my best friend, who also happened to be my cousin, was sending a text every fifteen minutes like clockwork.
I avoided them all, but eventually, the one and only person I couldn’t ignore even if I wanted to called, and I finally caved and answered the phone.
“Ry Archer, where in the hell are you? Mom and Dad are worried sick about you.” My little sister’s voice was shaky and sounded like she’d been crying. She was normally a pretty tough cookie but could be overly dramatic and emotional. Part of that was because she was a teenage girl. But a huge chunk of it was that she took after our father in pretty much every single way except in her appearance. She looked just like our mother, with her white-blond hair and pretty green eyes.
However, she was reckless and rebellious just like our old man. She was as outspoken and opinionated as he was. She was as bold and as colorful as he was. She was fearless in everything the same way he was. And she felt everything in the same extreme way he did. Both of us grew up knowing without a doubt how much we were loved and cherished by our parents, but especially by our dad. The opposite was also true. Whenever we disappointed him or did something he didn’t approve of, we felt his displeasure down to our bones. It was a lot to take in and balance out, but luckily our quiet and mostly even-keeled mother kept our household and our father in check. I wished I took after her the way Daire took after Dad, but I was kind of the odd man out in our family.
I’d heard more than once from my grandparents and my uncle that my personality and behavior were almost a mirror image of my dad’s twin brother, who was no longer with us. It was a sore spot with my dad whenever someone made the comparison, but he didn’t deny that there were many times that I reminded him of his twin brother. No matter how much time had gone by since he lost his twin, my dad still very much missed his other half and felt the loss of not having him in his life. Sometimes my mom told me stories about the two of them when they were growing up, and I could sense the similarities in myself and my uncle. For so many reasons, it sucked he died so young, only one of which was I had no one to really relate to in my family. I was kind of the darkest sheep in a flock that was already mostly shades of black and gray.
I sighed and squeezed the steering wheel between my hands.
I loved my little sister with everything in me. We were extraordinarily close and rarely kept secrets from each other. We were close enough in age that it had often been the two of us against the world, no matter what. She was my favorite person and my most trusted confidant. But she was also my ex’s best friend. They were only a few months apart in age, and where one went, the other often followed. When I first started showing interest in Aston Wheeler, my sister was totally against the idea of us being anything more than good friends. She told me she never wanted to be caught between the two of us. She never wanted to have to pick a side or have to keep something from either one of us. I waved the concerns off because I was sure Aston and I were meant to be. I’d grown up surrounded by true love and examples of young love maturing into happy, healthy, long-lasting marriages. I thought staying with my first love through thick and thin might be the only way I might manage to take after my parents.
I didn’t want to think that it was possible that Daire knew what would happen to my relationship before I did. Or that she kept something so huge from me. But any way I looked at it, she had to have known things were going south before I did.
“I’m going for a drive. Tell Mom and Dad not to worry. I’ll be fine.” I would be. Eventually.
My sister sighed on the other end of the line, and I could hear her pacing around. She was the type who was constantly in motion. She never sat still, and her mind was always going a mile a minute. I knew if I didn’t convince her I was okay, she would venture out aimlessly into the night trying to track me down, even though she had no idea where I was or how long I’d been in my truck.
“You’ve been driving for the last four hours? Are you even in Colorado anymore?” Daire’s voice rose sharply.
I looked at the clock on the dashboard and blinked when I realized how much time had passed. I was still in Colorado, but just barely. I was almost at the southern border. I didn’t have a plan when I climbed in my truck and started to drive. Subconsciously, I started heading toward the one person no one would ever suspect me of turning to when I was hurting.
“Give me some time, Daire.” I wanted to close my eyes and make the world disappear until I could fully deal with the empty ache in the center of my chest. Since I was driving, that wasn’t an option, so all I could do was shake my head and blink my eyes, which alternately felt like they were wet with hot tears and yet still dry as the desert. “I have to get my head on right before I try to talk to anyone, especially you, about what went down today.”
She made a distressed sound, and I could clearly imagine her putting her brightly painted nails to her mouth. She always wore a bunch of rings and bracelets that clinked and banged together, making so much noise. My little sister was anything but subtle, and you could always hear her coming. She knew how to make an entrance, but she also knew when it was time to back down and fade into the background. She knew all my buttons and when to push them. I would always answer her when she called me, but I had limits to how much I would let her poke and prod at me when I was hurting.
“I didn’t know, Ry. I honestly had no idea Aston was going to break up with you. She’s been weird lately, but I thought it was because we were graduating, or maybe because Royce left last year and moved to New York. You know how close she was to her brother. She never mentioned anything about being unhappy with you to me. I promise I would’ve told you.” I could hear that she was starting to cry and it made me feel like shit.
I should’ve listened to her at the start when she said dating my buddy Royce’s younger half-sister was a terrible idea. We were all too close, our families too connected for it to end any other way than tragically. Aston had taken it hard when he decided to follow his birth mom to New York after she remarried. I knew it was an impossible choice for him to make because he considered Aston’s mom as his own, as well as his actual mom. He always called Poppy his bonus mom and never treated her with anything other than love and respect. He was also incredibly attached to his sister, regardless of them having different moms, so it’d been shocking when he made the call to leave.
Aston Wheeler was the daughter of a couple my mom and dad were extremely close with. All my best friends were actually in my life for the same reason. Their dad worked with my Uncle Rome, operating several custom car and motorcycle garages across Denver. And both Royce’s birth mom and Aston’s mother were ridiculously tight with my mom. Aston had been pretty sick when she was young, so her parents often turned to my mom, who just happened to be a doctor, for advice and guidance. My cousins Remy and Zowen, Royce and his sister, a couple of older kids we didn’t see as much named Joss and Hyde, and my dad’s coworker’s daughters Glory and Bowe, all spent a lot of time together with me and my sister growing up. We were a close group brought together by o
ur parents, but we stayed together because we all genuinely liked each other and had various things in common. Not all of us lived in Colorado during the course of our friendship as our families grew and the world around us changed and expanded. But we always saw each other over the summer, during the holidays, and we made it a point to be present for any major life event of the others.
Some of us were closer, like me and Zowen, and Daire and Aston. Bowe Keller, my forever nemesis, and my cousin Remy were also super tight, even though the younger girl had lived in Austin the entire time we’d known her. It was fun to have a big network of diverse and interesting friends, but there were a few of us who rubbed each other the wrong way and had to work at playing nice with one another.
Well… really, that only applied to Bowe and me.
She and I were the nearest in age out of everyone, but that was the only similarity between the two of us. We never particularly got along, even starting from the time we were figuring out how to walk and talk. I always thought it was a good thing she lived in Austin with her folks, and I only had to see her a couple of times a year. Sometimes it was hard to pretend to be friends when we had been more than that—and less than that—over the course of knowing one another.
Prodigal Son: A Sexy Single Dad Romance: Book 2 in the Marked Men 2nd Generation Series (The Forever Marked Series) Page 24